Blood & Tacos #3 by Stephen Mertz, Todd Robinson, Rob Kroese, Chris La Tray, Garnett Elliott Read Free Book Online Page B

she explained to McCall that she wanted to experience his world. She would not have interfered under normal circumstances but this war was hardly normal. As his wife, she well knew his strength, his self-confidence. Now, she explained that morning at the airport, she yearned to know the source of that strength that she had decided could only be forged in sharing the fires of war with him.
    Well, hell.
    He had agreed to maintain the secret that she was his spouse as much to avoid complications as to avoid appearing the fool, but he’d made no secret of his displeasure during the drive to CID HQ and had protested adamantly, in her presence, to his commanding officer. Colonel Conglose had proceeded to not-so-patiently re-explain to McCall how this was part of an important PR campaign being waged on the home front by the Pentagon. McCall would obey orders and allow Miss Carpenter to accompany him during duty hours until further notice. That said, McCall was handed his assignment to Firebase Tiger.
    He and Tara crossed from the Huey to the trio of waiting soldiers.
    The ranking man stepped forward. He had the build and the leathery features of a farmer, thirtyish, with a sunburned crew cut and flinty eyes. He did not salute. Enemy snipers loved to disrupt the chain of command, and seeing who was saluted made selecting targets easy. Saluting was avoided in the field.
    “Major, I’m Captain Larson, Executive Officer in Charge. Welcome to Firebase Tiger, though I imagine you’d rather be someplace else.”
    The man next to Larson was a strapping man with a caffè latte complexion and E-6 stripes on his sleeve. “That goes for every mother’s son in this hell hole, sir.”
    Larson said, “Easy, Top. Major, this is Sergeant Hines. He’s my top shirt.”
    “I know,” said McCall. “I studied your personnel files on the flight in.”
    Hines kept shifting his attention between them and scanning the darkening jungle beyond the perimeter.
    The third man was a first lieutenant named Grey and everything about him matched his name. Blond-haired, in his late twenties, there was paleness to the junior officer that was almost albino-like except for the empurpled, swollen area around a bandage at his right temple.
    Grey said, “Sergeant Hines speaks the truth. I wish I’d never heard of Firebase Tiger.”
    McCall said, “You have a colonel who was fragged.”
    Larson nodded. “Lieutenant Colonel Emmett, 13th Infantry Battalion. Someone tossed a hand grenade into his hooch just before dawn and splashed the walls with his guts.”
    “Hooch” was GI slang for makeshift living quarters. “Fragging” was another recently coined term. Bad command decisions by an officer too often got good soldiers killed. Sometimes an officer’s own men—considering it more an act of survival than murder—would toss a grenade into the officer’s hooch, blowing the officer into itty bitty officer parts—“frag” him, in other words—before the officer got anyone else killed.
    “Where’s the body now?”
    Larson said, “What was left of it was tagged and bagged and sent to Saigon on the daily chopper run.”
    Grey cleared his throat and nodded at Tara. “Uh, if you don’t mind, Major, who is she?”
    “Her? Name’s Carpenter. Pretend she’s not here. Okay, Captain, show me where the fragging took place.”
    Larson led them toward a squalid, dust covered pile of sandbags that was somewhat bigger than the other hooches.
    “The colonel’s hooch was next to the main bunker.”
    Tara commenced taking pictures.
    Activity swirled around them; a world of coarse language, exhaust fumes and the clicking and clanking of engines, equipment, and weaponry. Nearly every soldier in sight was toting an M-16 and a wary attitude. The shadows of encroaching night deepened by the minute.
    The colonel’s hooch was a low, ten-by-twelve, makeshift structure of timber and plywood beneath a shell of sandbags. Its entrance was charred, misshapen from the outward