The Embattled Road (Lost and Found Series) (3 page)

“The arm had third degree burns. I’ve had several grafts that have taken well, but I may need more. The ones on my neck didn’t need grafted.” Chad touched the skin of his neck and grimaced as if he didn’t like the feel of it.

Duncan nodded in support. The grafting process was as painful as the actual injury sometimes. They’d taken skin from his thigh to graft to his back. The pieces seemed to be attaching fine but he still took meds to combat rejection and infection.

Chad looked across the room at Gunnery Sergeant Palmer, who was flipping channels on the TV. “Hey, Gunny.”

“Fuck you.”

Chad winked at Duncan. “Yeah, nice to see you too, buddy.”

“I’m not your buddy, Lowell.”

Chad made a comical face at Duncan. “The Gunny and I were in the same airplane for a while, weren’t we? Then we shared a rehab room for a while.”

Duncan looked at Palmer. He’d refused to talk to anybody unless it was to berate them. This was the first time he’d heard the man talk to anyone without having a ‘fuck you’ attached. And though he was flipping channels on the TV, Duncan thought he seemed to be paying more attention than he normally did.

“But don’t worry,” Chad continued. “His bark is worse than his bite.”

Palmer snorted but didn’t remove his eyes from the screen. “Come within reach of this bed you little shit and I’ll show you how bad I can bite.”

Chad laughed and wiggled his chair with his right hand. “Sorry, Gunny, I can only make left turns right now. Maybe another day I’ll let you take a chunk out of my hide.”

“Plan on it,” he murmured.

Duncan was in shock. The downright belligerent Gunnery Sergeant had berated and insulted all who stepped through the hospital room door, including Duncan himself, but he apparently had a soft spot for Lowell. The sharp kid was easy going and a bit of a cut-up. He’d been the perfect balance of tough and fun to work with the new pukes when they came in. Apparently the same approach worked well with Palmer.

They sat and talked for the better part of an hour before the orderly returned for Lowell. “Grub’s coming, sir.”

Chad nodded and made his goodbyes. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Duncan wasn’t going to hold him to the promise, but when he rolled into the room the next day he was very glad to see him.

They settled into a pattern of hanging out together unless one of them had rehab. Sometimes they scheduled their rehab at the same time, so they still hung out and encouraged each other.

Palmer unthawed enough to talk to him, but he seemed reluctant to mention his wounds. Duncan couldn’t blame him, even though it was the great purple elephant in the room. He’d overheard enough conversation between the doctors to know that the other man’s injuries were not recoverable. Yes, he might feel things occasionally, but he’d never walk again.  Guilt that his own feeling was returning but Palmer’s wasn’t nagged at him, and he debated whether or not to request to be moved to another room, just so the other Marine didn’t have to watch.

But he put it off the more connected they became. Palmer even gave him congratulations on the feeling moving up his legs. Duncan wished he could share his good fortune with the other man. They hadn’t been in the same unit, but he’d come to be partial to his grumpy ass.

Gunfire erupted right next to Chad’s head and it took everything he had not to clap his hands over his ringing ears. Instead, he tightened his fists on the stock of the M16 and tried to sight down the barrel. They were running low on ammunition. Every bullet had to count. “Short and controlled, men. Don’t waste your ammo!” Half a dozen ‘yes, Sergeants’ bounced back to him.

He squeezed off two rounds and the return fire coming from across the street stopped. His ears had gone beyond ringing to numb and his head ached from the percussion of the gunfire in the confined space, but he grinned. They were pushing the bastards back.

He glanced at his watch. Only an hour since they’d rolled into this damn little village. They’d only engaged the enemy less than ten minutes ago. Ten minutes in Iraq’s Diyala Province was longer than ten minutes anywhere else on the Earth though, and he knew he probably had injuries in his squad.

“Sims, you got air support coming?”

The Marine didn’t respond. Chad craned his neck to see through the dust and rubble of the bombed out building they were in. Sims was in the corner of the room, mic clutched in his hand. The radio box was sitting on the floor beside him and he was twisting dials but not talking. “Shit!”

Scrambling across the floor on his belly, he snatched the com out of the Marine’s grip and keyed it. Static filled the air. Calling out his location, he prayed that somebody would hear him, but it stayed quiet. Sims turned the box to the side, showing him the bullet holes in the back.

Fuck
.

Heavy gunfire erupted across the street again, pelting the front of the building they were taking cover in. Apparently the bad guys could get back-up but the Marines couldn’t. What the hell! First Sergeant Wilde was somewhere to the East. Surely by now he’d heard the explosions and knew that his Marines needed him.

The men he commanded were returning fire, but unless they got reinforcements or air-support, the entire sitch would swing the other way.

As if in answer to his prayer, M16 gunfire sounded from the east. “Oorah! ‘Bout time First Squad!”

He repositioned himself behind the weapon with new enthusiasm, firing at everything that moved. Seemingly too easy to believe, the two squads overwhelmed the few insurgents left in the village. They were quickly dispatched or ran away, and the silence rang through the heat of the day.

Chad scrambled to get care for his wounded and met up with his commanding officer. Wilde slapped him on the back for maintaining their position. It was high praise from the First Sergeant.

The men were all giddy as they started back to Base, and he couldn’t really blame them. The numbers had not been in their favor. But they’d all managed to walk out of the situation alive.

As the group fell into loose formation, he went from man to man checking to make sure they were tight. He had a lot of new blood in his squad. Sometimes, the newbies had to go through a meltdown before they could get on with the job. It was tough, shooting people for the first time. Usually, especially in close quarters, there was a lot of puking their guts out and moaning over going to hell. Not this time, though. They all kept their shit together.

Private Barnes seemed more quiet than usual. “You all right, Private?”

The young grunt nodded. “Yes, Sergeant. Just thinkin’. There was a lot going on all at once.”

“Well, that’s kind of the way they work around here.”

Barnes grinned and nodded, looking a little more comfortable in his skin. “Yes, Sergeant.” He moved on.

Chad pulled to the side a bit and waited as the men trooped past. Dodd paused in front of him and locked up at the position of attention. “Sergeant, my rifle malfunctioned a couple times during the fight. It wasn’t reloading correctly. I had to clear it manually before I could fire again.”

Chad took the rifle from the Marine and ejected the clip, clearing the weapon. The squad marched on. With one eye on his men and the environment, he examined the M16. Structurally, it looked fine.

“Was it mis-firing when you had it to your shoulder?”

Dodd shook his helmeted head. “No, Sergeant. Only when I was holding it away from me.”

Understanding dawned on the young Marine’s face as he worked out the problem in his head. “I know what it was, Sir. I didn’t have enough stability behind it to jack another round.”

Slamming the clip home, he handed it back to Dodd. “You got it. Always keep your shoulder tight to the butt. The rifle needs that stability to send the bolt back with the next round.”

Grinning, Dodd chambered a round and turned to follow the group, who was disappearing over a knoll. They picked up their pace to a jog, Dodd looping around a rock.

“Dodd, follow…”

…
the footprints
.

Chad’s world went supernova. Blazing heat seared his body, blinding him, and he went spinning through the air. He landed on his pack and floundered, trying to find up. His brain blanked out. Adrenalin pumped through his body and he managed to pull his weapon around, even though he couldn’t see a damn thing. His eyes refused to focus.

He heard voices to the right of him, and it sounded like a group of men. He brought his weapon to his shoulder but couldn’t find a target.

First Sergeant Wilde’s voice broke through the melee. “It’s just us, buddy. I’ve got your weapon, Chad. Let go, buddy.”

He didn’t want to let go. That weapon was his life and death. He slept with it, kept it in the latrine beside him. First Sergeant was asking for it, though, and of all the men in the unit, he trusted him the most. The weight of the M16 left his arm.

The world was slowly coming back into focus, and there were a ring of faces hovering over him. Warmth was spreading across his lower legs. It felt like there was wool in his ears. The feeling was similar to the aftereffects of a hard shoot when he didn’t use his hearing protection.

“I need a tourniquet above that knee!”

Nothing on earth could make a grunt focus like those words. “What…tourniquet? Wait…” He rolled his head forward enough to try to focus on his legs, but all he saw was a blur of gore. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck no. That much red couldn’t be good. Panic clutched at his insides. He reached out to his friend.

Rough hands released Velcro and buckles, pulling his pack away, and he dropped flat to the ground. His helmet thumped against a rock, but it didn’t really bother him. The heat that was licking up his legs and rolling up his left side was bothering him more. He shifted on the ground, trying to get away from the burning, but it followed him, making him grit his teeth. “First Sergeant, what’s going on?”

Duncan’s rough face leaned over his own, making solid eye-contact. “Chad, you got issues, buddy. Dodd stepped on a mine. Your left leg’s a mess, but we’re taking care of you. Medevac’s on its way, but it’ll be a few minutes.”

Chad fought to untangle the words and keep focus on the face above.  “Fuck. My legs?”

First Sergeant nodded. “Looks like just one though. The side that was closest to Dodd. Your other one looks good.”

“Are my nuts still there?”

First Sergeant grinned at him. “Well, I’m not going in to check, but from the outside it looks like you lucked out. You’ve still got your nuts.”

Chad allowed himself to relax back against the ground. There were two sharp pinches in his arms, and the roaring heat on his left side kind of started to ease. The sunlight straight up above was hard to look at, so he rocked his head to the side.

Dodd’s young face was surprisingly clean considering the mess the rest of him was in. His eyes stared unseeingly. Chad knew that wasn’t good. “You guys take care of him.”

There was a warm, soft wave blocking the blaze of pain from his side as it was tugged him into sleep. With a sigh, he let his worries fall away.

The next time he opened his eyes, he was in the hold of a Medevac. His stomach somersaulted as they surged into the air.

Chad jerked awake, clutching the rail of the hospital bed. His left hand banged into the other side, sending agony roaring throughout his body. Nausea twisted his stomach. The dream had seemed so real. Even his left foot was aching. The same images pestered him every night. Dodd, wide-eyed from his first engagement with the enemy asking about his rifle. Then Dodd in pieces. The doc told Chad he’d died instantly, but that didn’t ease his guilt. It was his responsibility to train them up to be good Marines.  

Sometimes, in his dreams, he’d be the one to step on the landmine rather than Dodd. And he was okay with that, because when he woke up he didn’t feel nearly the same amount of guilt. He’d been a Marine for years. He knew what the risks were. Dodd had been so eager, just starting out his career. He hadn’t deserved to die.

Over the months of being in the hospital, his images had changed sometimes. Since he’d reconnected with First Sergeant Wilde, he’d had flashes of helicopters landing on him. Talking to his roommate Swenson, his mind created scenarios of being mowed down by an AK47. The way he died changed every night, but he always flashed to
his
injury just before he woke up. The counselor he talked to said that was pretty normal, and that eventually the dreams would fade. Yeah, okay. It’d been six months already and they were just as vivid as if he were there yesterday.

Squinting, he tried to see the clock on the wall. Zero two seventeen in the morning. Swenson snored away, undisturbed. At least this one hadn’t been loud enough to wake him up. He looked down at his legs and was shocked all over again when he remembered the left one was gone. Every morning he was surprised it wasn’t there, because it still ached. And itched. God, the itching was the worst. The docs said that would probably go away too.

Chad pushed himself upright on the bed and dropped to the floor on his right foot, balancing. The wheelchair was right beside the bed, but he tried not to use it any more than he had to. Pushing away from the mattress, cradling his left arm to his stomach, he hopped to the bathroom, catching the rails just inside. Avoiding looking at himself in the mirror, he did his business and hopped back to the bed, grabbing his robe at the end. Once he was covered, he dropped into the wheelchair. Using the heel of his right  foot, he pulled himself out of the room.

Though it was ass-crack early, he wasn’t the only one up wandering the halls. More than one insomniac avoided his eyes as he rolled down the hallway to the elevator.

One of the nurses looked up from her paperwork and smiled at him, used to his nightly wanders. He dragged close enough to steal a peppermint from the bowl behind the counter, then a second, winked at her and moved on. When the elevator arrived he pressed the button for fifth floor where the SCI ward was. Dragging himself down the long hallway with his foot, he peered into room 523. Duncan appeared to be sleeping, his gray head turned away from the hallway, but Palmer’s bed was empty, as he’d expected. He turned down another hallway and pushed out through a glass access door. At the far end of the balcony, Palmer had parked his chair in his normal spot to look out over the hospital grounds. There wasn’t much to see other than yellow mercury-vapor parking lot lights, but they didn’t mind. It was one of the few places they could get away from the sights and sounds and smells of the hospital.