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★☆★☆★
The first month passed quickly. I had to learn the layout of the base and, more importantly, all the checkpoints I needed to know about. Each day on patrol, I had to ensure these checkpoints were safe. My fellow MPs and I would take turns, routinely making sure things were secure.
As I settled into a routine, I often thought about Cara and wondered how she was doing. When a weekend would roll around, I would wonder what she was doing and if she was thinking about me. Sometimes I sent her texts, but it would take hours for her to respond. I didn’t know if this was our remote location, or if it was because she just couldn’t be bothered to respond, or was just busy. These insecure thoughts would invade my brain, and I tried not to let them get to me. I had enough shit to deal with over here. I had only been here a month, and already, we had had two serious instances of very real threats come our way. I had to keep my head in the game and not back in the States where my family, and most importantly, my heart were.
Halloween was spent like any other day. Tyrone and I had sort of mended our friendship, and things weren’t awkward between us, but we were dudes. We didn’t hold grudges and act like hens. So, on Halloween, he put on a rubber mask depicting the face of our current President and goofed around. I had no idea where he’d gotten it from. I could only assume he’d brought it with him. He strolled into the barracks wearing it. Dan and I looked at each other and laughed.
“Mr. President, could you please get me out of here? Grant me a pardon?” My attempt at another prison joke, went right over Tyrone’s big head.
He placed his hands on his hips and pretended to adjust his imaginary tie. In his best presidential voice, he said, “No, Sergeant Forrester. You must stay and defend the nation of Afghanistan while I go play another round of golf.”
We all busted up laughing, but when we heard footsteps coming down the hallway, he quickly yanked off the mask and sat on it. Our CO came into the TV room, and we all jerked to a stand, saluting.
“At ease, men. I need three of you to take a truck and inspect checkpoint number six. We’ve received intelligence; there may be insurgents there.”
He didn’t wait for us to volunteer; he pointed at me, Tyrone, and Dan, and in unison, we responded, “Yes, sir.”
Playtime was over.
★☆★
The truck bumped and lurched over uneven terrain, each time my weapon bouncing in my lap, the grenades on my belt smacking against my hip until the truck came to a stop. It was nighttime, which totally sucked, but it was what it was. Dan had been driving the truck and suddenly skidded to a halt, rock, sand, and dirt flying up in front of our headlights.
“Holy shit,” Tyrone breathed.
Without time for me to even gasp, I watched half a dozen Taliban, dressed in white with some sort of scarves around their faces, raise semi-automatic weapons and begin firing. We all ducked down in the Hummer, which thankfully, was almost as strong as a tank, and waited for the pops of gunfire to stop. The front windshield had been cracked but did not burst.
Tyrone yanked a grenade off his belt, opened the side door without even checking to see if they were still there, pulled the pin, and threw it in their general direction.
The explosion rocked the ground, the truck shaking for a few brief seconds. We were left with a deafening silence. I slowly craned my head up to look out the windshield and saw nothing. I then carefully turned around and looked behind us and to the sides.
Nothing.
How bizarre, I thought. It was as if they were waiting for us. They could have ambushed the truck while they were shooting, but they didn’t. Tyrone had been quick with the grenade, though.
Dan slammed the truck in reverse, without even looking or even sitting up all the way, for that matter, and we flew backward. Then, he sat up a little higher in the seat and spun the truck around in a 180 in a spray of dust and sand. We headed back in the direction we’d come from, back to the safety of the base.
“What in the hell were you guys thinking?” My CO was practically spitting in all our faces.
We were all quiet, unsure if he expected an answer, or was just venting. A lot of times, his questions were rhetorical, and interrupting him during a rant made for tired arms after a hundred pushups.
“Well? Which one of you pukes are gonna answer me? Lakin, speak!” he ordered.
Dan didn’t look our CO in the face. He looked straight past him and began to talk. “We went to inspect checkpoint six, sir. By the time we got there, there were insurgents, sir. They ambushed us. It was as if they were already there waiting for us, sir.”
Our CO grunted something and said, “Continue.”
“Smith threw a grenade, and by the time the ground stopped shaking, the insurgents were gone. Sir.”
“How do you know they were gone?” This time he was in Tyrone’s face, which was actually a little funny because Tyrone had to be six-foot-three, and our CO was shorter than my six feet. Of course, I didn’t dare crack a smile.
Tyrone responded, “Forrester scanned the area. There was nobody. We reversed and got the hell out of Dodge.”
It was my turn to get blasted. “Forrester, did you get out of the truck to inspect?”
“No, sir. I did not think three against half a dozen was good odds, sir.”
He grunted again and walked out of the room, dismissing us as he left.
We looked at each other.
As I lay in bed that night, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep after the excitement. I was still pretty pumped up. But then my body melted to the bed, and exhaustion overtook me.
★☆★
The sun glinted off her fair hair as she threw her head back and laughed. It was most likely the champagne, but I couldn’t get over how carefree and happy she was acting. Cara was normally closed off and private. Sure, she let go while we were behind closed bedroom doors, but she was normally reserved around crowds or in public and spent more time observing than interacting. I enjoyed watching her tanned legs under the short dress she wore. The top of it was some sort of floral pattern and the bottom looked like denim. She had on high-heeled sandals that made her calves look amazing. She had talked me into wearing a button-up shirt and some khakis. I supposed it was nice to dress up occasionally.
This wedding we were at was for the daughter of her coworker at the prison where she worked. The bride and groom seemed awfully young, but who was I to judge? I’d gotten married to Kimber at twenty-two, and that wasn’t the wisest decision I’d ever made. It was probably the stupidest, but hey, you lived and learned. You thought you knew it all at that age. This couple seemed happy enough. But who didn’t on their wedding day?
Cara had had two glasses of champagne and was currently laughing at some very stupid jokes being told by the bride’s father. It was an outdoor wedding on the other side of the San Francisco bay near Stanford. The setting was very beautiful, but casual. There was no assigned seating at the garden reception, and the bride, groom, and their families floated carelessly about the tables, greeting their guests. I thought if I got married to Cara, this would be the kind of wedding I’d want.
I found it funny that my mind had gone to marrying Cara. not, “Oh, when I get married again.” Cara’s face very specifically flitted through my mind at the thought of marriage again. That being said, I definitely wasn’t ready to get married again, and I highly doubted she was either, but still, the possibility lingered at the back of my mind, niggling at me occasionally.
“Okay, crazy girl, I’d better get you home,” I said to Cara, but I looked at the table where we were seated. She had just allowed the roaming waiter to pour her another glass of champagne.
Every time he poured her one, the old saying Champagne... makes girls dance and drop their pants went through my mind and made me grin. I caught the bride’s mother, Jan, looking at me, holding my gaze a few times. It wasn’t flirtatious or anything like that. It was more like she wanted to ask me something but the words wouldn’t come. I would just smile back at her.
Cara and I said our goodbyes and thank-yous to the bride’s family and then made our way out to the car. I had to help her a little, but she seemed to hold her own as I ushered her into the passenger seat. I closed her door and climbed into the driver’s seat. I had to think for a minute about how to get out of the little chapel and garden’s lot where the wedding had been held. I eventually found my way to the freeway, making my way to the Bay Bridge to head back to the small town she lived in. I was somewhat amazed at my ability to find my way around the Bay Area already. I’d been here only a couple of months and could usually find somewhere I’d already been after only being there once. My mom always told me I had a good sense of direction.
My mom... my parents. I was missing them while in California, but it was nothing new; since joining the Army, I had missed them a lot while traveling the world. I had even missed my brother Damon’s wedding a few years ago because I had been deployed in Iraq. Damon wanted to postpone it until I got back but his fiancée got pregnant. They wanted the wedding before she started to show, and they didn’t want to wait until after the child was born. He said he wanted to do right by the baby and all that. That was just how our parents raised us.
Cara’s hand on my lap drew me away from my thoughts about my family very quickly. I looked down to see her delicate hand pulling down my zipper. I looked over at her quizzically.
She grinned mischievously. “Ever had a blow job while driving?”
Ha! No, I hadn’t. My buddies, however, had plenty of stories of road head, as they called it.
“Nope, never had any road head,” I answered.
The sly grin never lit up her face, and before I knew it, her head was in my lap, and I almost crashed the fucking car. The bridge was beginning to go up to allow a passing tugboat under the San Francisco Bay and I pushed on the brake...
The frickin’ buzzer bolted me out of my dream.
Damn alarm!
These dreams—these memories—had been plaguing me... or perhaps comforting me... for the past two months. The first month here was fine. I was so engulfed in learning my way around the base, my duties, and getting to know my fellow soldiers, that I collapsed into bed each night and awoke the next morning after six to eight hours of dreamless sleep.
As the routine became, well, more routine, the dreams started. Sometimes they were fantasy dreams that practically left me having to change my sheets, but they were mostly just memories. Memories of the summer I spent with Cara. The erotic ones were always about her.
I had never met a woman like her. I had never been with a woman whose love I could physically feel, even now. She was both hard and soft wrapped in a beautiful package, and when I made love to her, I wanted to consume her body, her heart, and her soul. Her love for me seemed to ooze from her and leak into my skin. I took her with me everywhere I went, and she was always on my mind. On patrol, in the mess hall, lying in my bed at night, there she was.