Pibroch and Chaconne

"Eres un pinche idiota, Craig."

"Fuck you too, hermano." Hermano, slang for big brother. The two were that close.

"We'll rest at the crest," said Barros, ignoring the whispered insults between old friends that would have led to bloodshed if said by or to anyone else in the Corps. He didn't need to tell the wounded man not to remove his boot. Even though it acted as an anchor, dragging the bleeding foot into impossible angles to his leg, the boot was limiting the bleeding. On reaching cover, they would cut the boot away, dress the wound, and support the joint as best they could, although the corporal wasn't going to be walking on it anytime soon -- if ever again.

They never got the chance. Cresting the slope, they were met by a hail of gunfire. The three dropped to the ground instantly. Philips, already at the limit with loss of blood, slipped into momentary, dark-grey unconsciousness as the agony from his useless foot folding up beneath him sent his mind spinning into darkness with a shriek.

Barros and Sanchez hit the dirt, instantly returning fire with the Sig Sauer MCXs they both preferred on operation, trying to suppress incoming fire until they could see what they were up against.

Behind the dubious safety of a slight hump in the ground, they dragged Philips to one side, where a few scraggly trees somehow survived in the thin hostile soil of the heights, offering protection that was more imagined than real.

For a moment, Sanchez debated unslinging his sniper rifle, but the range was too short to be effective, and if they were rushed, the bolt action would make getting shots off too slow anyway. The two men crawled forward slightly, trying to scout the enemy without being seen. Periscopes were useless kit, just more weight to carry and slow down a soldier, but damn, one would be helpful right now, Barros reflected.

The thought was cut short by a thump nearby, audible even amongst the loud but strangely high-pitched barking sound of multiple weapons firing. Sanchez relaxed and slid back slightly, his face to the ground. Barros glanced at him and saw the raw exit wound on the back of his head.

He looked over at Philips, hoping he was still unconscious. The two had built a friendship more robust than most in the Marines, and this would...

Philips was staring at him, lying on his back, a pistol in his hand.

"Go!" he moaned.

Barros shook his head.

"Get the fuck out of here, or we're all dead," Philips was somehow shouting in a whisper. "Don't worry. They're not going to cut my fucking head off."

The captain understood. They both knew the reality of the situation. Philips was going nowhere without assistance, and Sanchez' death had removed that option. If they weren't killed outright, they would be taken, kept barely alive, and then executed by a sword to the back of the neck while they knelt in humiliation before gleeful cameramen. He'd had the same solution to that possibility in mind for himself. Still had.

Barros helped Philips roll over onto his belly, facing the enemy, and put his Sig Sauer in his hands. His Colt 1911 was laid on the ground alongside him, ready to be lifted and turned inwards underneath his chin.

No, Philips wasn't going to be taken alive.

The captain touched the wounded man's shoulder, gave a squeeze, knowing that nothing he said at that point would mean anything, and then turned away, leopard-crawling quickly to the left. Behind him, he heard a short burst as the corporal fixed all the ambushers' attention on himself.

He reached an outcrop of boulders, slid around it and started working his way down and away from the firefight, the fire from the insurgents seeming to step up a gear in anger and noise at the brazen defiance of the American.

There was a lull and then a further outburst of shots. Amidst the barrage, Barros heard the distinctive sound of the Colt and whispered a farewell to Philips. There would indeed be no public execution for him.

There hadn't been time to cover his tracks away from the ambush site, and the fighters -- especially the tribesmen amongst them -- would quickly find out that there had been more than two in the team that executed al-Nazir.

The hunt was on.

Snapping awake as the massive aircraft landed at Ramstein, he still felt muzzy and slightly stunned, his thoughts and memory cloudy as he was rushed straight to the plane that would take him onwards to Virginia. Determined to catch up on all that lost sleep, he settled on a sleeping mat and drifted straight off again, not even feeling the intense vibrations of the massive plane powering up for takeoff. His last thoughts were at his luck at finding a place where a Little Bird could find and pick him up, directed in with infinite precision by that clever little device. Waiting for his pickup with his finger ready to press the abort command on the device if he was discovered had felt like the longest part of the whole mission. Then, as they rose into the darkness to fly to safety, he had thanked the Night Stalker pilot wholeheartedly, knowing that flying the tiny MH-6J in the dead of night to a GPS position deep in enemy-controlled territory took profound, almost suicidal, courage.

Barros slept for the whole journey back to America and remembered almost nothing at all of the debriefings. He couldn't even remember climbing onto the bus that took him steadily into the heartland or any of the other passengers who thanked him for his service.

He did remember the long walk to his house, however. And he would never forget, no matter how hard he tried, what he found there.

**********

Later

Brian Barros opened the door to his house, revelling for a moment in the familiar scent of home overlaid with the odours of his wife's famous stroganoff. He'd never forgotten that smell, and it swarmed back to bring pleasure to his senses, no matter how rapid the beating of his heart and the heaviness in his thoughts. Hoping beyond hope that the situation was an official visit to tell his wife something about him, he looked around carefully. Without realising it, he was screwing up his cap between his hands and breathing heavily through his nose as suspicion began to cement into certainty. He was on high alert now, finding himself once more in enemy territory.

The first thing he picked up on was the highly polished pair of boots neatly tucked together below the coat hooks inside the front door. When it came to shoes in their house, Jenny was a martinet, and she had obviously insisted that her gentleman caller take them off when he arrived. Barros knew it was a 'gentleman' from the uniform coat that hung above them -- two gold stars prominent on the shoulder and rows of almost meaningless ribbons at the breast. So, not an official visit then. The Pentagon didn't send their generals out to tell the wife of a captain anything about her husband's work. If it was needed... well, that's what majors and chaplains were made for.

Barros wondered if Jenny had started on lieutenants and been promoted to generals because of her outstanding attention to duty in bed. He was going to miss that attention, he thought, as he stared at a pair of strange slippers parked neatly next to the fire.

Part of him screamed to go upstairs and burst into their bedroom. All three of them would deserve what happened. But did cheating deserve death?

He shook his head. If he entered the bedroom and they were both there, he knew he would kill both of them -- her quickly and him slowly. Or perhaps the other way around.

He heard her voice from above stairs, a voice set years ago like diamonds into his memory and now set like concrete in his heart.

Blindly he threw the twisted cap at the stairs, yanked open the front door and ran out. If he stayed, there would be two more deaths locked into his mind, deaths that would join the others in silent wait for the time and circumstance for them to bubble up again to plague him. Killing a man, even in war, exacted a price -- a toll. He had seen it in many of his Forces comrades. The killing was forced deep down under the surface of conscious thought like drowning a victim, and in the same way, it would bloat up over time until it slowly rose to the surface once more. Then would come the guilt, the shakes, the withdrawal from society, often the bottle, and sometimes the bullet. Men dealt with it in different ways, but those thoughts had to be suppressed at the time. They had a job to do, and usually, killing was part of it.

Barros thought he'd reached those limits. Two more right now would be too many.

He remembered the way without thinking of it, trudging blindly but confidently along the road, the blackness of his thoughts matching that of the night. He'd been away two weeks... two fucking weeks! 'How much sex did you need if you couldn't go two weeks without getting something jammed into your cunt?' He raged the question silently, his face showing nothing of his thoughts. 'And then moving the bastard not only into her body but my bed, my place at the table, my fucking armchair -- into every place in my life, except out on the dirty jobs where fucking generals never go.'

He was a replacement in every way, he realised. She had called in reinforcements and sent him back to the assembly area -- just another anonymous uniform in a milling mass of men. In a sense, she had removed his very identity.

Barros was not a man who questioned himself often; when there was the opportunity, he made command decisions after careful thought and planning. When the situation required it, he could also make good snap decisions and communicate them instantly.

That was who he was at home as well -- although now he didn't have a home, and he was lost. He had nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Headlights behind him lit up the road ahead, his shadow stretching far into the distance, and he halted, moving into a slight crouch and up on the balls of his feet. He'd recognised the sound of his own car -- you didn't forget that in a hurry -- but whether it was Jenny or Fuckface driving it, he didn't want to take the risk that they had planned to run him down. They had taken everything else worthwhile in his life; why not his life insurance as well?

The car slowed and stopped nearby, and the passenger door swung open. It was his wife -- his ex-wife, he corrected in his head. She leaned over to wave to him.

"Why did you leave?"

His thoughts swam, and he couldn't remember getting into the car. Then he was alongside her, staring at her profile in the dull, limp reflection from the headlights. Even her silhouette was beautiful, he acceded. He had thought the rest of her was too, but now he realised that she was ugly inside. What he had taken for a beautiful soul was, in actuality, just a disgusting pastiche -- a disguise.

"I know," he gritted through clenched teeth. "Everything!"

"I'm so sorry you found out this way. We had planned to all sit down together next week and discuss the new situation." Her tone was light and conversational as if she was discussing the neighbours popping over for a BBQ.

"How very pleasant for us all to be able to calmly discuss booting me out on my ass and shovelling that cockhead into my place." His voice rose as he spoke, trying to suppress the rage that was building at her words.

"Now, dear. That's not like you to use that language. And please don't shout. I'm sitting right here."

"Well, it's not a daily thing that I discover my wife has been cheating on me," he hissed, enraged even more by her reasonable tone. "Although now I think of it, it could have been a daily discovery if I hadn't been so blind. And don't call me dear. I'm not your dear anything anymore."

"You know, the way you're reacting, it's as if you don't realise I did it for both of us -- you and me, just like it will always be." She sang the last part, something she did now and again, as if she had no clue as to the devastation she had wreaked.

Barros felt his jaw drop open. He had fought in four warzones and had represented the Marines in nine more different countries, so he'd seen a lot of things -- good, bad and just plain weird -- but this night was the first time that he'd been shocked and surprised into silence on multiple occasions.

"What?" he gasped. "What?"

Her voice grew bright and bubbly. "It's going to be so great. He'll be around to keep me company while you're away and your career gets boosted onto the fast track all the way to the top. Isn't that wonderful?"

He stared at her in silence as she turned the car back into their, no, her driveway, his mouth open in astonishment once again. Jenny was as bubbly as the last time he had returned from a mission. And the one before that. She was happy, really happy. But she thought...

"What the hell are you talking about?" he said as she switched off the engine, pressed the remote to open the garage and turned to him.

"He'll pull strings to get you promoted quickly," she said, a smile in her voice. "He's very important. He's in charge of buying everything for the Army, so it'll turn out great for all three of us."

"You're kidding me! For one thing, no one man buys everything for the military. And if you mean quartermaster, that cockjockey you're fucking has two stars. The Quartermaster General is a one-star general. And she's a woman.

"But, more importantly, whatever gave you the idea that I would accept any of this... this... idiotic, disgusting slimeball idea? How could you ever believe for a second that I would go for... for sharing you? That has to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life. And believe me, I've heard some cracklingly stupid plans put forward at the base."

She dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. "I probably got it wrong about his job. I do know it's all very hush-hush."

He grabbed the waving hand and turned her fully towards him. The light from the garage illuminated her full lips and wide blue eyes.

"Jenny, did he give you something? Are you on drugs of some sort? You don't seem nearly as with it as you normally are. When did you meet him?"

"No, of course not. He wouldn't do that. And I'm as bright as ever." The overwide smile she gave him seemed to deny that, although he didn't push it.

"How do you know? You can't have known him long; I've only been gone two weeks, unless you've been slutting around while I've been here as well. I think he's a con artist. Is he threatening you or blackmailing you in some way?"

She slapped his leg fondly and laughed, climbing out of the car, which also forced him out to continue questioning her. "No, silly. He's just the nicest man. Why don't you come inside and meet him? I'm sure you two will soon be best friends. Comrades-in-arms."

"Oh, if I get him in my arms, I'm going to rip his off, believe me," Barros stated, staring at her with something approaching hatred over the roof of the car.

"Oh dear, that sounded very much like a bodily threat to a superior officer."

Jenny's gaze moved over his shoulder, and she gave a sudden smile. "Honeybear, this is Brian, my husband."

Barros span around, even more bitter at her betrayal in calling her lover Honeybear -- Jenny had always said it was her private name only for him, and now she had given even that to someone else. The man standing near the front door was dimly lit, and his face was in shadow. He was tall, not overly well built, and was wearing...

"That's my fucking robe, you son-of-a-whore. You don't get to wear my robe as well. Get it off so I can burn it, or I swear I'll..."

He broke off as something pressed into his back. It felt suspiciously hard and round. Jenny looked worried.

"Sorry, Captain," said a man's voice. There was something familiar to it.

Barros glanced over his shoulder at a uniformed soldier in uniform holding an automatic rifle. The man took a measured step back, preventing any sudden action from the captain.

"Stiles," he said. "Thank Christ you're here. I think my wife has been drugged and..."

He broke off as the rifle waved at him slightly, although never away from his body. The marine was being careful in keeping his distance. There was no chance of disarming him before he could shoot.

"I think you need to be quiet, sir."

Another figure moved up alongside Lance Corporal Leo Stiles. Barros immediately recognised Staff Sergeant Daniel Landry, although oddly, he seemed more tanned than usual. The two of them were from his company. Or what would probably be his company when he eventually got back to them. He had worked with them, fought alongside them, eaten and played basketball with them. There were his true brothers, the brothers-in-arms his wife had spoken about earlier.

So it was disheartening to see him pointing a rifle at him, finger on the trigger, as well.

"What's going on?" he asked, trying to control his voice and mask the rage rising even further at what felt like more betrayal, and by his own men.

The shadowed figure spoke again, the accent unplaceable. "Captain, you are an intelligent man, and I won't insult you with threats. But you should realise that in all probability, you are about to be court-martialed for undertaking an unsanctioned operation in which two of your men died. That would mean a very long stretch at Leavenworth. I hope you like Kansas. These men are here to arrest you."

Barros felt his mind whirl. What was he talking about? The operation was not only sanctioned; it was a direct order. He hadn't chosen to do the mission.

"Bullshit," he said quietly. "I didn't go rogue. Sanchez and Philips were killed in an ambush during a planned operation. And that has nothing to do with this. We both know that. This is about you fucking my wife -- my soon-to-be ex-wife. And you're about to be an ex-general. Fucking the wives of subordinates? You had to have moved in on the whore well before the mission was completed or even started. If I don't get you, then JAG will. The memory of Maher and Hale will ensure that."

The man seemed momentarily taken aback at the mention of John Maher; the general discovered having affairs with the wives of two of his subordinates. Hale had been found guilty of affairs with twice that number. Both had been demoted and allowed to resign -- with their pensions severely slashed.

Jenny gasped as if punched in her belly, although her concern seemed to be more at the words 'ex-wife' and 'whore'.

"No, honey, that's not..."

She was interrupted by her lover.

"I told you not to speak to your husband without my permission," the man said conversationally, his demeanour calm once more.

"Sorry," she whispered.

Barros found his mind whirling again. How did this happen, and more importantly, how did it happen so quickly. None of it made sense. What hold did this bastard have on Jenny? And as importantly, how could he break it? Even if he decided he was done with her, he didn't want to let this asshole get away with it. His rage raised another notch.

"The whinings of a cuckold mean nothing," his wife's lover said calmly. "I've already spoken with the distinguished Judge Advocate General. He was here a couple of days ago for the party and enjoyed your wife's excellent company. He's the one preparing the case against you."

"No, no! You're lying!" He turned to the frightened woman. "He's lying, isn't he?"

Her eyes were huge in the half-light. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It was just a party. I didn't mean to..."

"A party? How many did you fuck?" he hissed at her, his anger now at boiling point. He had to contain it. He had to hold it back, or it was going to end in bloodshed.

She shook her head.

"How many?" he screamed.

She started in fear. The silence drew on, thickening around the five of them. "Six or seven," she whispered finally. "But I did it for you! All for you."