Page 32 of Black Sheep

“That’s not news. I know he knows I’ve made new deals with the Armenians and Albanians that cut him out. I have endless resources to ensure they never deal with him again—”

“That’s not why he wants to see you.”

“Fine. Tell me why.”

“Finnan wants to talk to you about Taranahar.”

Chapter Eight

CALL OF EXTRA DUTY

Anar Farah, Afghanistan

September 2011

I don’t remember the last time I slept.

I don’t care. Neither does my commanding officer. Turns out not needing sleep isn’t a bad thing when you’re a soldier.

Sure, a few chins were scratched when some pencil pusher discovered I was a raging insomniac who hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night for over a year. After two half-assed medical consults and a hastily scrawled agreement to stick to a rigid sleep regime, I went back to not sleeping and not caring about not sleeping.

What I care about is keeping busy. My CO is totally on board with that too because there’s plenty to keep you busy when you’re geographically situated one hundred miles west of hell’s butthole.

Except I’ve done nothing but sit on my ass for the past forty-eight hours. Or more accurately, I’ve moved from punching bag to bench press to skipping rope to punching bag in a sweltering tent. My body is drenched with grimy sweat. I smell like shit. I know this because the oldest member of my squad, the only man bold enough to state the obvious, begged me to take a shower yesterday.

I ignored him. Word quickly spread that Rutherford was in asshat mode, and no one has approached the exercise tent since, even though I know they want to burn off the restless energy that rapidly mounts when new assignments take forever to come.

When my feet grow numb from skipping rope, I throw it down and move to the speed bag. It pulses back and forth in a red and black blur, mimicking my mind. My racing heartbeat sings as I push my body to its limit.

In the land where a pocketful of cold hard cash can get me any drug of my choice, I wish for a moment that I still dabbled. Snorting a long line of coke, preferably off a stripper’s taut ass, would go a ways toward ridding me of the images playing on a relentless loop through my brain.

A year has passed since Finnan sent me the video. No. Let’s be precise. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this hell hole, it’s that extreme precision is the difference between life and death. One small miscalculation will see you sent home in much smaller pieces than you arrived in.

So…

Eleven months, twenty-two days, sixteen hours and four…no…five minutes since my life flashed before my eyes in vivid Technicolor. To think I once believed taking a life would be what kept me up at night. Turns out those were destined to haunt my waking hours. My night hours were reserved for reliving my father fucking the love of my life. Doggy style.

My piston-fast fists smash against the speed bag in an explosion of deadly rage. It flies clean off the hook and bounces across the dusty floor. It would’ve kept going were it not for the booted foot that slams on it just outside the tent flap.

One large hand reaches down for it.

Captain Crunch, a member of my squad, aptly named for his ability to crunch hazelnuts with his abs during sit-ups, pops his head into the tent.

In the squad, where the men know to give me a wide berth most days, Crunch ignores the flashing fuck-off signposts, his incessant banter and wit always in operation whether I acknowledge them or not. Within hours of my arrival in the camp, I knew everything there was to know about Conrad Whitby.

Married to his high school sweetheart. Father to two-year-old twin girls he head-over-heels adores. Born and bred in Montana. Allergic to sesame seeds and avocado. Broke his nose in a bar fight the night before he shipped out. The list is endless.

He eyes me for a couple of seconds, his hands rotating the speed bag. I don’t welcome the scrutiny or the state-of-mind probe coming so I turn away.

He sighs. “Yo, tough guy. CO wants to see you in the command center, stat.”

I grunt without turning around, my gaze fixed on the dangling hook until he leaves. I rip the bloodied bindings off my hands and stop long enough to wipe the excess sweat off my body before I jog to the command center.

Situated in the middle of the camp, the building is housed in a special hack-proof structure that continues to baffle our enemies.

Within the structure itself, the CO’s office is contained within a Faraday cage since all the laptops contain extra-sensitive material.

I approach his office, the rage eating away inside me nowhere near abated.

---