Hush Little Baby

*******

Two Hours Later... Home Again.

Lieutenant Ambrose had Dana in the front of the vehicle with him, it looked good for him when he escorted her into his commanding officer's office. After a quick debrief, Dana was escorted to the officer's mess. As we passed in the outer office, I think she realized that actions now have consequences and in my case, it would soon be time to pay the piper.

He made me stand to attention in front of him for a good ten minutes while he took great pains to ignore me.

Eventually he slid a sheet of paper across his desk. "When I phoned over to Colonel Knowles to let him know we had found his sergeant, he sent me this back." He pushed the sheet of paper over to me by another couple of inches. "I expected a list of what I could do to you for losing the reporter; instead, I'm told you are exempt from shaving until further notice."

Since I hadn't been asked anything, I felt safe in not opening my mouth.

"Report directly to the sergeant's mess, get showered and fed, transport for you will arrive in the morning. I want you out of here and away from my people as quickly as possible."

A wave of his hand got me dismissed and I wandered over to the sergeant's mess for some food. I was basically cold-shouldered the whole evening for getting the foreign reporter into this mess in the first place.

It wasn't until I woke the next morning that I found Dana was treated like royalty by the commanding officer that evening and was already on a transport back to the city. She would no doubt be on a plane out of there by days' end. A hummer came for me later in the morning to take me back to my regiment. The interview with Colonel Knowles and his adjutant took three hours to the minute, and that included two phone calls back home.

Once Colonel Knowles dismissed his adjutant, we both waited for the door to close before we looked at each other and smiled.

"General Hibbertson has been biting at my ass, Mike. He allowed you to go walk-about, but he's calling you back now that you've shown your face again. He told me to tell you that now your holiday is over; it's time to get back to work."

Running my hand over four days' worth of stubble made Colonel Knowles smile and he showed me the daily orders, I'd once again been made exempt from shaving until further notice. General Hibbertson was in a hurry to get me back, that was for sure.

I nodded before saying. "I would appreciate it, sir, if you keep me and my team apart. There is just something about goodbyes that I struggle with."

The Colonel nodded and told me that it was already taken care of, my group under Corporal Mendez had already been detailed as protection for a convoy up to the city, and they were to wait for the return convoy. They should be gone a week. That gave me the time I needed. It was mostly admin and closing stuff down but the regiment knew something was up, more so when I started acting weird.

Colonel Knowles gave me twenty minutes in the radio tent, a guard was placed at the entrance and everyone was told to grab a coffee for thirty minutes. Since the regiment had no one out in the field, the communications officer couldn't figure out why I was allowed in the radio tent alone. Once my comms time was up, I left, and when the communications officer checked the logs, no radio was used.

*******

A day later... Goodbye old friend.

I said my goodbyes to Colonel Knowles, even saluted a man who deserved the respect we all gave him. Charlie Mendez was leaning against a Hummer. She watched me leave the CO's tent and opened the rear door so I could throw my kit inside.

"I'll take it from here, Charlie."

Corporal Mendez didn't move; her usual smiling face was a mask to me at the moment.

"Stand down, Sergeant." Colonel Knowles had followed me out of the command tent. "Corporal Mendez is under my orders. The Corporal is your driver and will take you to where you wish to go."

I couldn't allow this. "With all due respect, Sir."

"Are you getting ready to disobey a DIRECT order, Sergeant?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I even looked towards Charlie to help me out here, but her face still as impassive as it was a few minutes ago. We had started to collect a crowd. I caved in and shook my head.

Colonel Knowles wasn't having any of it. "STAND to attention when you address me, Sergeant."

Me and the twenty or so people now gathered would have been able to make a drill instructor proud at that very moment. When Colonel Knowles shouted, we all knew the four horsemen hovered in the wings, just waiting to visit.

"Just when the hell did this man's army become a debating society? I'm the one wearing the birds here, SERGEANT, not you."

I swear everyone within hearing range stood ever so still while Colonel Knowles looked fit to bust.

"Corporal Mendez, get this man out of my sight." Now he had finished glaring at me, he looked directly at her, this time. "You have your orders, Corporal."

"Sir. Yes, Sir."

*******

The first ten minutes' drive was done in silence, but for me it was confused silence. It was then it occurred to me that I hadn't told Charlie where I was going, given her directions, nothing. When I turned to look at her that cute smile was back.

"I have a confession to make, well several, actually." She said when I looked at her.

"Well I seem to be a captive audience, Charlie, so go for it."

It seems Corporal Charlie Mendez was due a field promotion on the recommendation of Colonel Knowles, himself, and then I turned up and the promotion was put on hold. Charlie wasn't pissed, more curious about the man who could derail the Colonel's plans. I smiled when she expected some 'pompous ass' to turn up.

"I also started to notice things about you; you avoided all contact with the special forces people that came and went, although a couple of them recognized you, didn't they?"

There was no way I was going to acknowledge anything. My silence simply allowed her to continue.

"It was that brothers-in-arms nod that gave you away, more so when you didn't go over and shoot the shit with either of them."

My self-imposed silence was broken by only asking one question. "Did you talk to anyone about these delusions of yours?"

This time she laughed, it was such a cute laugh, we all tried to make her laugh just to hear it. She went to see Colonel Knowles and told him that the new Sergeant wasn't what he seemed. In return Knowles threatened to rotate her back home if she didn't keep her nose out of military business.

That laugh filled the Hummer once again. "Can you imagine what that would have done to my military career? So I'm sure you figured out by now that I thought you were worth keeping an eye on."

Then of course, enter stage left, Dana Hoffmann. It also seems that one predatory creature can sense another one. Charlie figured out really quick that Dana Hoffmann was put into our base for one reason and one reason only: me.

"The emergency evac threw up more questions, when we all landed and you two hadn't made it. To a man we all climbed back on the helicopters. It was Colonel Knowles himself that ordered us to stand down."

Her face showed real emotion just then. "We were coming for you, Mike, and Colonel Knowles knew that he was the only man capable of stopping us."

The corporal in Mendez took over that day and she got the team out and away from the helicopter pads before sitting them down and cleaning their kit, just to keep them occupied. The next day and still no word, so she went looking for the Apache pilot who had escorted them back to base.

"He had an interesting tale to tell, the original plan was for him to protect both Hawks. Once they were in the air, his orders changed and another Apache joined him, one that he didn't recognize, and it hadn't been seen since it escorted the second Hawk back to base."

Right about then I was feeling just a little uncomfortable, and all at the hands of Charlie Mendez. My turning to look out the window caused Charlie to stop talking. She wasn't pausing for effect, and she clearly wanted my attention so she could continue. I still spent my time looking at the scenery. Although I must admit that one small rock looked just as familiar as another, interspersed with dust, sand and the debris of humanity that when it broke-down, it was simply left abandoned because no one could afford to fix it.

With still no directions from me, we branched off the road. It was cross-country from then on. I was also brave enough to look at Charlie once again. It took her a second or two to realize she had my attention again, so she continued.

"For four days we were all restricted to base under Colonel Knowles' orders until we got word that both of you had made it across the river. It was then we got our orders to act as security for the weekly convoy back to town. What was unusual was that we were under orders to stay until it returned. We also heard through the grapevine that only you came back here, Dana had vanished."

That was the part that hurt the most. Or so I thought.

"We still speak."

I was trained from the very beginning never to express any emotions, and yet Corporal Charlotte, 'Charlie,' Mendez had just ripped through years of training with those three words. She came to a stop and got out, leaning her ass against the front of the Hummer, her arms crossed as she surveyed the surrounding area, flat and bleak, with the mountains in the distance being the only thing that broke up the landscape.

With my pack and weapon out of the Hummer I joined Charlie as she continued to stare off into the distance.

"We had been in town a couple of hours when my cell rang with a number I didn't recognize."

Charlie smiled at that, she often told us that bogus sales calls are the only ones she got since her own folks and immediate family had all but washed their collective hands of her when she left to join the service. Dana was a resourceful woman, and once she found out that Charlotte Mendez was in charge of security for the convoy arriving at the very place she was taken to before being medically checked and made comfortable until they could arrange transport out.

They met up and shared. I cringed when I heard that and wondered if everything was about to come undone. Charlie could see my anxiety and slapped my arm before giggling.

Her mood changed and she seemed to retreat into herself for a moment, this was Charlie Mendez and nothing fazed her, yet she stood no more than two feet from me and was afraid.

"Between us we know everything now, Mike; Dana has done her bit. The family knows the truth, or at least the truth she's willing to explain to them. She's the family's enforcer, so they have little choice but to listen to her."

She paused for a moment and then smirked; she looked really evil when she did that. "Her oldest brother now runs the company, Mike. He's also shit-scared of Dana, and since he knows of the promise his farther made to her, he willingly agreed to it." This time the smile looked genuinely carnivorous. "Between them, they have arranged to have a memorial for her father the same day of the wedding; that way the three letter agencies will be looking at them and not at anyone else."

Her arms parted from her chest and her hand sought and found mine, clasping it tightly. His voice lowered, there was that tone again.

Charlotte looked directly at me and blushed. "Dana and I needed to know if we could live with this new-found arrangement, I told her I would tell you that we both decided we needed to do this, Mike."

If anything, the color of her cheeks outshone her own skin tone. Her eyes watered up and that grip on my hand just got a little tighter.

"We both needed to know, Mike, ourselves I mean. We both just had to know if we were compatible or would we be odds or even girls."

She must have seen the total confusion on my face, and I think that made it more difficult for her. It wasn't my intention, but I was still unsure what point she was getting at.

So, with a deep breath she said. "We shared a bed, Mike, we had to know if we were both okay with it since I was the only one of the three of us who hadn't been with a girl before."

Shock took a back seat for just a second, as my now rampant imagination took over. A hell of a confession from the woman standing next to me. Never saw that one coming, I must admit, but nothing Charlie was saying to me so far was anything but honest. Her confession continued and stopped my own thoughts stone dead.

"She's a hot fuck, Mike, and Dana says I gave a good account of myself; she told me you've seen her goods." Again came that pause; eye contact seemed to be important to her. "We both realize you may not understand why we did it, but we had to. If we weren't compatible, we would have had to have shared you on odd and even days, Mike."

The kiss came as a surprise to me; the smile as her head moved away from mine added to the anticipation. She had heaped so much into her conversation that all she could do now was wait, not something Charlie Mendez was good at doing.

"We have a year, Mike, a year, remember that, Dana is going to be busy while we are both out here; she's rebuilding the house that burnt down." She had a little giggle spell and then decided to share. "I offered to send her money to help until the bitch told me how much she's worth."

Charlie looked at me, her other hand clutched tightly to mine.

"When we talked, we figured out, we both wanted you. Oh, we could fight over you but we quickly realized that if we ever fought each other it would be to the death. We will share you, Mike, with each other and without inhibitions so, as you can imagine, Dana is going to change the design of the house accordingly."

Looking at Charlie was always a pleasure; it was those lips that held my attention to a point that I leaned down and did something I had wanted to do for almost as long as I had known her. I kissed her and tasted the salt of her tears. The sob came next before our lips parted and she rested her head into my chest.

"You know where I am if you need me. I have leave due soon and I'm going to see how Dana is doing on the house."

Her hand went to her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, then opened it and I memorized the two cell numbers on the paper before nodding to her, and she placed the paper back into her pocket. "If you can make it, then give one of us a call and we will plan accordingly, if you can't. We will see you in a year."

Our next kiss was just as powerful. Eventually, Charlie stepped away and got back into the Hummer, quickly waving before she drove away. I watched until she wasn't even a dust cloud anymore. The smile was slow in coming, but when it turned up, it refused to leave. I kissed Charlotte Mendez and she kissed me right back. That was something I couldn't have got away with on base, that's for sure.

It also became obvious how much of this Colonel Knowles knew; it would have been him who allowed Corporal Mendez off base under the guise of driving me to my next assignment. She left me with a lot to think about, that's for sure. Eventually, all I could do was shake my head and wonder at life.

With the death of Marcus Hamilton, I came back to all this as a way to escape. That, in turn, brought me back into contact with a man I could trust with my life in a firefight. Colonel Knowles knew enough of my background from the last time I was there so that I would never have to answer any awkward questions

Corporal Charlotte 'Charlie' Mendez was a heart-stopper, and a real wet dream in my eyes. She was also untouchable to me for many reasons. Me hiding as a Sergeant when I held the rank of Captain was clearly one of them, and every day I seemed to add to those very reasons. Now, well now, it seemed that Charlie Mendez took the rule book and pissed all over it.

She was still career military enough to know not to ask "those" questions, just as she was woman enough to make her choice in men, and women, it seemed. My smile betrayed me and I left it there; I was in the middle of nowhere, so who was going to notice.

With my pack on my back and my weapons safety off, I looked down at my compass and started walking, pushing Dana and Charlie to the furthest reaches of my thoughts and most definitely away from the immoral ones.

I knew I was being watched from the moment the Hummer pulled away. Licking my lips was a habit and a gentle surprise to me that Charlotte Mendez was still with me no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on the task ahead.

*******

Two hours later... My Brother's in arms.

It took me a while to find enough wood for a fire. It had started to get dark, and when that happened it was like someone had flipped a switch. I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard someone walking towards me, the flickering fire still rendering my night sight useless to me. Two more people walking could soon be heard coming from my right. All four Arabs sat down, continuing to speak the local language to each other; their AK 47s resting on their laps as they helped themselves to the coffee from the tin sitting on the fire.

Eventually one of them must have realized I was there because they all stopped talking, waiting for me to say something I suppose.

"Okay, which one of you shits shot me?" I asked.

Two of them cast a glance at the big man at the end of the four, one of the group just pointed at the same man.

"Sergeant Thompson, you do know it's a chargeable offense to shoot your commanding officer?"

He looked down at the fire as the rest of the group laughed at his embarrassment. "Well, Sir, you kinda had it coming. I mean standing on that rock having a shouting match with Conner in the other Apache, you must have known that presented just too good a target."

The blush of his cheeks still visible through his beard. "Besides, when you presented that much of a target, I did load a special round in, just for you sir. That half powder load was going to stop when it hit your chest plate, a normal one of mine would have pocked a hole in the back of you."

He actually smiled through his beard before he added. "Besides, it worked didn't it? She believed you after that."

The rest of the group laughed, and I just laughed right along with them.

"Get some rest. General Hibbertson sent our next assignment over to Colonel Knowles and he briefed me before I left." My own thoughts on the meeting had just added the words "amongst other things."

One by one the group stood and disappeared into the darkness; Jamie Thompson stopped at the periphery of the fires light and turned to look at me. "You are okay, aren't you Sir?"

"Had it been anyone else taking that shot I would be dead. We're good Sergeant."

Jamie smiled, the relief evident on his bearded face. I dropped a couple more pieces of wood on the fire and stared at the flames. Even sitting there, I still ponder on how I ended up in the middle of the desert surrounded by thirty of the most intelligent and resourceful men in this man's army.

I joined the army straight after leaving college. With my exam results in one hand and my sports record in the other, the recruit sergeant looked on me as officer material. One afternoon we sat in class and the officer in charge of the class handed out pens and paper and just sat back down, when one of the cadets was brave enough to ask what we were to do, he simply shrugged his shoulders and went back to reading his paper. We all knew it was a test, we just didn't know what sort of test.

I looked out the window for a good ten minutes before even that got boring, then a thought came to me and I picked up the pen. I read a book by a retired British Officer who, during World War Two, used to be a member of what was then called the Long- Range Desert Group. I wrote that afternoon with those folks in mind, modernizing the notion that a small and highly trained group of men could indeed live for lengths of time, behind enemy lines.