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Unable to respond, I started trekking toward Pulley, whose mission was complete, so he had braked partway. Andre s
cooped up the empties to trash them at the threshold of the beach and parking lot where we’d been parked all weekend. I rode with him in his personal truck, so driving back couldn’t distract me from my whirling thoughts as we hurried to the base. Pulley drove behind us in a Humvee.
The Private First Class guarding the entry gate to the base waved us through. Andre had barely parked the truck when I jumped out in front of our barracks. Jogging through the double-iron doors, past the barracks’ entrance, straight to my superior’s office at the back of the building, I bum-rushed his door without knocking. That was a no-no, but this was an emergency.
Sixty-three-year-old Sergeant Major Lindon stopped shuffling the paperwork in his hands to chastise me with a raised, unnaturally thick dark eyebrow. “Because I have to tell you a couple things unpleasant, I’ll forgive you this time for not knocking. Don’t let it happen again, First Sergeant, and take a seat.”
Still unable to speak, I couldn’t verbally acknowledge his rebuke or command as it was custom to do. I could only wait for him to tell me the unpleasantries. He pointed at the chair on the guest side of his desk. Sure he wouldn’t tell me anything until I sat, I dropped down into the cushioned seat. A nagging feeling that my world had been forever changed blazed in my stomach. It wouldn’t allow me the luxury of rushing him into spilling the beans, changing life as I knew it a lot faster than he was going to. This was news no one wanted to tell, thus no one wanted to hear.
Lindon took a huge breath in, releasing it out in a whoosh. “It’s too often I have to do this. This is the part of my job I hate with a passion, and that’s saying something because I have to attend weekly dinners with the Generals and their unhappy wives who don’t want me in their homes any more than I want to be there.” Removing his glasses, he rubbed wrinkly fingers over his bald, sun-spotted head. “Graham, your brother is dead, shot through the heart early Saturday morning by a rival gang member who is in LIPD’s custody right now.”
I choked. The one thing I’d prided myself on being all my life was being Greg’s protector. I was the enforcer working closely with insane Shane because I wanted my brother nowhere near him. I was the one that endorsed Greg for the cushy but well-paying job of clean up after the bullets and knives stopping tearing through the air. Minimum wage at McDonald’s wouldn’t have fed us let alone housed us.
Yet, I failed to protect my brother. I. Failed. Miserably. It didn’t matter that he was an adult, his life fated to end this way the moment he continued to work for Shane. I didn’t care that Greg’s choices were his to live with or die with. He was gone. I wasn’t there to save him or die with him, comfort him in his last moments. And there were no redos. All I could do was be there to lay him to rest beside my parents and make sure his killer would be brought to justice one way or the other. Regrettably, that was all that was left for me to do.
Resolved, I rocketed up out of my chair. “Sergeant Major, I need grievance time of at least a month to bury my brother and see to his affairs. I need to talk to the cops, the district attorney, and find out what went down, who did this.” I wouldn’t come to terms with my brother’s death until I knew everything that happened that day.
Lindon dropped his elbows on the desktop and thumbed his eyes. “This is where I tell you the second unpleasant thing, Graham. I can’t give you leave. You’ll have to handle your brother’s funeral and affairs over the phone because your team is getting ready to deploy to Korea. Things are going sideways over there, and we, this country needs you to straighten it out.” Needed me to kill someone he meant.
I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t go home, I couldn’t see my brother one last time, who needed me more. I couldn’t be there for him, with him because of a conflict instigated by the greedy and powerful on both ends. A roar of “NO!” echoed throughout the room, startling the Sergeant Major.
“Son,” he started.
I didn’t want to hear it. “I’m not your son. I’m not anyone’s son, grandson, father, uncle, or nephew. Neither is Greg. He has no one else to make sure his body makes it into his final resting place. He has no one else to make sure his killer faces justice, but he has me. I am his brother. I am all he has. He was all I had, so don’t speak unless you’re ordering me home to see about my brother.”
“Graham,” he breathed out, “we wouldn’t ask you to lead the charge if it wasn’t absolutely imperative in Korea.”
“I’m not the only one who can lead. You have Marines coming out the ass who can take my place until I get back, so stick one of them in my place and let me go home.” I pounded my fists on his desk. “I’m going regardless.”
Sitting openmouthed and as still as a corpse, Lindon was thoroughly shocked that a lower-ranked officer would dare address him in such a manner. I was practically foaming at the mouth without any fucks to give for how he felt about my insubordination. Nor that it put me at risk for being court-martialed at the least, dishonorably discharged from duty at the most. If it was his brother, I had a high degree of certainty that he would act the same. Since he was a desk jockey that could be replaced for pushing paper up the chain with no fear of being ordered back to active duty, he wouldn’t have to decide if duty or his relatives mattered more.
Lindon began to blink rapidly as if waking up from suspended animation. “Graham, I’m going to let all that slide because I know you’re in a lot of pain right now.”
“And yet, you don’t really give a shit, do you, Lindon?” I snarled.
“I care, Graham,” was forced through his gritted dentures. “But, we both have our orders, and there’s a reason we are called Marines, not soldiers. Our loyalty and morale are the highest of any branch of service.”
If he thought I was going to fight a war while Greg lay dead on a cold slab alone, he was sadly mistaken. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been a real Marine, but we both have families that we’re loyal to, too. No one would expect you to go to war when one of them is dead. You wouldn’t stand for it either. I hope you wouldn’t, anyway. So, you can take your orders and shove them where the sun does not shine. I’m going home!”
Done with talking, I snapped to attention, saluted him with as much contempt for him as I could assemble in my expression, and then about-faced to quit the room without his permission.
“Graham!” he bellowed as my back turned. “If you go AWOL, you are forsaking your duties, and I have to follow up with punishment fitting of such actions.”
In other words, he was going to have my ass locked up until a military judicial system declared what to do with me. Any government agency that wouldn’t let a Marine or soldier go home to grieve the only family member they had left was not a place that would benefit from my skills in combat again. I twirled around slowly on my heels to let him know just that in my own special way.
Every inch of Lindon’s skin was blood fused. He was damn near rabid, huffing and puffing air like an overweight dragon with mustard on his company-issued undershirt. If he thought he was having a bad day, he hadn’t seen anything yet.
I marched over to his desk where I spat, “Let me help you with the decision I think you should make concerning my duty here, Garrett!” Use of a higher ranking officer’s first name was about as disrespectful as it got in the military, never mind calling a Marine a soldier.
A long ‘fuuuckkkk’ discharged from the other side of the glass panes encasing Lindon’s office. I didn’t have to look back to know Andre had shadowed me here. I never doubted he’d try to be there for me even if that regulated him to standing outside a door, eavesdropping because he didn’t have consent to enter. About to test the miles our friendship could endure, I proceeded to mule kick the chair I’d just gotten out of. It sailed across the room, striking the wall. A long black streak emerged in the white paint as a pointed end of the chair’s backrest scrubbed down it until crashing to the floor.
Lindon scrambled to his feet, wagging his finger and yelling, “Tobin, I advise you to cease the tantrum before you don’t have to worry about going to war or anywhere else!” Riding a desk had taken his ability to jump up a long time ago when he became a company man and began kowtowing to the Generals. No one here believed he knew what standing up for the men under his command was anymore.
His ambitions of becoming a general himself had gotten in the way of his compassion and fitness. It was no longer my business to make him look good on paper. Putting foot to the chair was the slightest amount of the damage I was about to do. The chair and desk needed to be moved to the side of the room for unlimited access to my main goal: Garrett himself.
I smiled. “The brig is the lesser evil compared to going to war for a coward behind a desk who doesn’t give a damn that I have someone, whether alive or dead, counting on me stateside too.”
“That’s not true, Tobin!”
