Page 33 of Nathan
The general made a tsk sound. “Do you have any idea what kind of shitty situation you’ve created for me? The Americans send over their top instructor, and you put the man in the hospital.”
“He’s a psychopath. He hurt Sergeant O’Malley and Sergeant…”
“I don’t want to hear it!” the general cut me off. “You initiated the fight, and even if the manisa psychopath, you could have de-escalated it. Now, he won’t be able to teach classes for at least six months, and he’ll face hours of rehabilitation. If you had a problem with him, you should have brought it to your superior.”
“I did!”
“Then you should have let him handle it.”
Turning my head away, I squeezed the armrest, as if I could transfer some of my chronic inner pain to the chair.
“There’s no room for that sort of behavior in the army. We don’t train soldiers to beat up their superiors, instructors, or each other. Just like we don’t teach you to use firearms for you to turn it on a friend.”
“That man wasn’t a friend.”
“Yes, he was!!” the general boomed out. “We are not at war with the US.”
I watched how the bluish veins on his pale temple pulsed and how his glasses had a smudge on the lower-left corner.
“Don’t think that I’m unaware of the comical aspect of one of our soldiers winning a physical confrontation against a US combat specialist. My amusement, however, stopped the minute he raised charges against you. The fact that you were convicted for assault in a civil court means I have no choice but to dismiss you from the army.”
I kept a stony expression with my mind stuck on the worddismissed.
“What you exhibited was a blatant lack of self-control, which makes you unpredictable and dangerous.” The general smacked his tongue with annoyance and moved some papers on his table. “All those hours we invested in you... gone! You chose the wrong man, Captain. Everyone knows how fast Americans are to call in lawyers.”
My chest rose and fell in a deep breath as I crossed my arms. I had hoped to get away with a warning.
The general gave a curt nod. “Do you have anything you wish to say?”
“Is there a way to appeal?” I asked with a level tone that hid the anger boiling under my skin.
Pulling out one of the drawers in his desk, the general picked up a code of conduct book and threw it on the desk in front of me. “I’ve already gone through this thing several times over the years, but feel free to have a crack at it. If Mr. Gomez had been a fellow soldier, you would be subject to summary charges and a potential court-martial, but he’s a civilian and civilian judges have an even lower tolerance for unnecessary violence than we do.”
“It wasn’t unnecessary. The man was overstepping his boundaries a number of times with the females before I told him to stop.”
The general mirrored me by crossing his arms as well. “According to Mr. Gomez, he treated the women equal to you men.”
“That’s a lie! He pinned them down and ground on top of them. He had his hands up their crotches, squeezed their breasts, and pulled at their hair as if he was dominating them in some cruel rape. Any decent man would have been repulsed with the way he abused them mentally and physically over the five days. It was disturbing to watch, and someone had to stand up to him.”
“We didn’t receive complaints from the women.”
“Because they’re afraid of being seen as weak. Several of us men told them to file a report.”
“Well, they didn’t. But it would have been the right way to handle the situation.”
My eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that you’d watch a woman get sexually assaulted and do nothing? Filing a complaint after it was over wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
“What I’m saying is that we have procedures for this kind of thing, and they don’t include assault.”
“I didn’t assault him. I pulled him off Sergeant O’Malley and told him to stop raping her.”
The general’s left eyebrow arched. “Rape is a strong word.”
“He immobilized her with his size and strength.”
“That’s his job. He was teaching her how to do that in a combat situation.”
“Have you ever had an instructor pin you down, growl into your ear, and grope your crotch with a sick smirk? What Gomez did to the women had nothing to do with combat exercises, and my protective instincts made me pull him off her.”
