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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Once again, Pat spent the holidays with Russ and Cindy – and Celeste. The little girl was still too young to realize what was happening, of course, but her presence made it a great holiday for the adults.
On Christmas afternoon, Pat, Russ, and Cindy were enjoying a small glass of a rather fruity wine in the living room, with the Christmas tree all lit up. Pat was feeling very relaxed and expansive; by now, these people and this house had become very important to him. This kind of intimate friendship was something he’d never really experienced in Bradford.
All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, Cindy spoke up. “Pat, are you still comfortable with all this? I mean, the arrangement we have?”
“I couldn’t be happier,” he said. “The two of you and Celeste have come to mean a very great deal to me.”
“Good,” she said. “Look, I talked to the doctor last week about getting pregnant again. He says I could do it, but that I should really wait another three months or so. I can hardly wait, but I guess I can if I have to. Are you still ready for it?”
There he was, on the spot again. At least this time he wouldn’t have that rocket-heading-for-his-Bradley feeling. “I can wait that long if you can,” he told them. “This whole thing has worked out far better than I figured it had any right to.”
“Well, we’re pretty happy with it, too,” she smiled. “But I don’t want to put it off any longer than I have to. I can handle three months, but I think we need to be getting on with it.”
“It’s up to you,” he said. “I can usually make myself available when needed.”
“You have been so sweet and understanding about this it’s almost unbelievable,” Cindy told him.
“It took a little getting used to in the beginning, but I think I can say I got over that.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a little,” Russ said. “If we’re going to do the deed again, we don’t exactly have to do it here. What I’m thinking is that in three months we’re all going to be so goddamn sick and tired of winter it won’t be funny. What would you say if we were to take off and find a place in Florida for a few days? That way we can have a break, have some sun, and have a good time out of bed as well as in it.”
“Sounds like a possible idea,” Pat replied. “Unless it’s at a couple critical spots in a training cycle, I ought to be able to break free a week’s leave.”
“Great,” Cindy smiled. “It sounds like a good idea to me, too. I hate to say it, but we’ll have to wait until we’re a little closer before we can pin down a date when I’ll be primed and ready.”
“What are you going to do about Celeste?”
“Good question. We might want to take her with us, or we might be able to get my mother to look after her for a few days. We’ll work it out.”
It took a little juggling over the next few months, but in mid-March all three of them were on Longboat Key, near Sarasota, Florida, where Russ had made arrangements at a beachfront hotel. Cindy was thoroughly recovered from Celeste’s birth by now, and she enjoyed showing off for the guys in a couple of rather brief swimsuits from time to time. They laid out in the sun, swam in the Gulf a little, made some day trips to places like Tarpon Springs and Busch Gardens, had some great dinners out, and otherwise had a good vacation – really, the first honest-to-god vacation Pat had taken in almost twelve years in the Army.
But that was in the daytime. The nights . . . well, they were pretty close to a rerun of the couple of nights they’d spent together almost a year and a half before. However, in that year and a half Russ had spent a lot of time in the gym, trying to get himself back into shape. He wasn’t quite back to the strong, young high school athlete he had been in Bradford, but closer than he had been the last time the three had gotten together to do this deed. Once Cindy was in the mood, as usual it was hard to wear her out, but Russ’s new-found fitness changed things a little as he and Pat once again tag-teamed her time after time. They had some memorable and exciting nights as a result, although Pat was glad that he didn’t have to deal with that all the time. It sure gave him new respect for Russ.
All too soon their brief sojourn in the sun came to an end, and they had to head back north. However, a couple of weeks later Pat had a phone call from Cindy. “I don’t know why,” she said. “But in spite of all the trying, I didn’t take. It’s beginning to look like the weekend after next could be a good time. Are you up for doing it again?”
“If you and Russ are ready, I’m ready,” he told her.
“Good. If we miss this time, it looks like the next time is going to have to be in the middle of the week. Is there any chance you can get away?”
“In spite of last month I still have so much accrued leave coming it isn’t funny,” he told her. “It’ll wind up depending on where we are in training cycles, of course, but the odds are I’ll be able to make it work.”
All in all it took four different attempts to get Cindy pregnant this time – there was no telling why, other than timing might not have worked out quite right. Still, in the middle of July quite close to a year after Celeste had been born, Cindy and Russ were able to call Pat one evening and inform him that he was going to be a father again. They got together the following weekend to celebrate that fact, and to celebrate Celeste’s first birthday with cake and ice cream. Predictably, Celeste made a huge mess of herself, but that was fun, too – and part of the fun of parenthood, as both Cindy and Russ told him.
During Cindy’s pregnancy, the three of them continued to get together about once a month, mostly just to hang out together, and to let Pat enjoy some of the process. The following March Pat and Russ were once again standing side by side as Patrick Russell Bradstreet was born. The name had been agreed upon ahead of time, of course. While Pat protested that once again it might have cause to let the secret out, both Cindy and Russ assured him that they had no problems with naming the boy after their best friend. If someone else didn’t like it they could easily be either ignored or told where to go.
However, in the days after Patrick’s birth, Pat had a little bad news for Russ and Cindy. “This has been a really nice time,” he told them. “I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with the two of you as much as I have and watching the kids come along. It means more to me than you can imagine. But I hate to have to tell you that it’s coming to an end.”
“I guess we should have been expecting it,” Cindy sighed. “They move you around a lot, don’t they? Where are you going this time?”
“Fort Hood, Texas,” Pat told them. “But not till June. I’m a little surprised I’m actually going to finish the full three years at Ft. Knox. It’s the longest I’ve consecutively been at any one place since I’ve been in the Army.”
“Then I guess we don’t have much to complain about,” Russ sighed. “It’s been good having you around, but I guess the good days had to come to an end. Is there any chance we can still get together from time to time?”
“No reason why not,” Pat told them. “It’s a little too far to drive unless it’s for a longer period, but it’s a reasonable flight from Dallas to Cincinnati. It’s not going to be every month, but there’s no reason we can’t get together every few months. I still want to watch Celeste and Patrick grow up.”
“We’ll be glad to have you,” Russ said. “Any chance you’re going to wind up at Ft. Knox again?”
“There’s no way of saying but it seems unlikely to me,” Pat told them. “Bear in mind, I’m infantry, and Knox is an armor post. I only wound up there on a fluke, but it was really a lucky one for me.”
“It was for us, too,” Cindy smiled. “In fact, it was about the luckiest thing that could have happened to us. Don’t forget about us, Pat.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t intend to.”
Pat’s final months at Ft. Knox passed quickly. In early June his time was running down, but he took the time to drive up to Dayton for one last weekend with Russ and Cindy. As always, most of the day was pretty innocuous, but after the kids were down for the night, Pat’s two friends came to him.
“Pat, we’ve talked it over,” Russ said. “And we’ve agreed that you’ve become more than just a friend who helped us out in an awkward tight spot. Considering what you’ve done for us, we’d like to get together with you again before you go.”
“We can’t do a marathon session like we’re used to,” Cindy told him. “I’m still not up for it yet. But if we keep it, well, reasonable, there’s no reason we can’t have a little fun and say goodbye like we really want to.”
Once again, Pat put up a protest – after all, his involvement with Russ and Cindy, wide though it may have been, more or less ended at the bedroom door, except when they were trying to get her pregnant. And, once again, they overruled him – he lost the vote by two to one. “After all, it’s not like this is the last time,” Cindy said. “I still wouldn’t mind having another kid, but there’ll be the chance for that later.”
So once again they spent the night together, the three of them in the Bradstreet’s king-sized bed. As promised, it was much more tender and loving than the rather athletic bouts they’d enjoyed in the past, and that may have added to the intensity. It was a new plateau to the relationship, and was hard to bring to an end. There were tears in all their eyes the next morning when Pat got in his Dodge – his faithful Plymouth had been traded in over the winter – and started for Fort Knox to clear post, then drive to his new unit at Ft. Hood.
Pat had been at the base before. It wasn’t his favorite post in the Army, but wasn’t the worst place he’d been either. He was not particularly happy that he wasn’t going to be in a Bradley this time, but when the dust had settled he’d been assigned to a battalion operations staff. He’d done this a couple times before, for shorter periods. While he was going to miss the action of being a track commander, he could also see that in the future his time doing it was going to be limited. He was getting a little senior to be a squad leader or in charge of a single Bradley. He still got out in the field a little, but this was more monitoring training exercises, and the experience he’d gained at Ft. Knox was useful in training the battalion’s crews.
He was getting settled into the job by the time September 11 rolled around.
The news shook the post; there was no doubt about it. The whole unit went on alert, just in case something – no idea what – might happen. Because of the preparedness, nobody had time for much real-time coverage on what was going on in New York, but one guy in the operations office had a portable radio, and they were all listening when the second tower went down.
“Well, I’m afraid I know what this means,” the operations officer said into the stunned silence around the room. “I think we’d better get even more serious about training.”
“Yeah,” Pat agreed glumly. “Sooner or later we’re going to be headed to the sandbox again. We might as well be as ready as we can be. I guess that means a star on my combat infantry badge.”
“Sounds like it to me,” the operations sergeant, a master sergeant, agreed. “You and me both, Mac. It’s going to be up to the two of us to teach these kids what they’re really going to be up against. We’re the only ones here who were there the last time.”
Though no one knew exactly what it meant or what was coming, the base quickly moved closer to a war footing. The base had been an “open post” with unrestricted public access, but that ended the next day. Training plans were tightened up, and people operated like they were going to be doing something soon, although no one was quite sure what.
Things settled down over the course of the next few days. Although it still felt like war was coming, no one could tell where or when. There was certainly some work for the Army to do in Afghanistan, but it was a place that was just about impossible to reach. It began to look like it was going to be something that involved Air Force, Airborne, and Special Forces units. Mechanized infantry units seemed to be much less likely, and Pat made that observation in the office one day.
“Don’t be so goddamn sure,” the master sergeant said. “I’d be willing to bet good money that Bush will find some way to get involved with Iraq, and you know who’s going to be right on point. Us, just like last time.”
“Well, when you put it that way, you’re probably right,” Pat agreed.
Because of distance and getting settled in at his new posting, Pat hadn’t seen Russ and Cindy since June, and it was starting to seem like an awful long time. Prospective war or not, training dropped off to nothing over the holidays like it always did, and Pat took the opportunity to fly up to Ohio to spend a few days with them. The kids had grown a lot in six months. Patrick was getting around well on the floor and trying to walk, while Celeste was in what Russ and Cindy called her “terrible twos.” Pat didn’t think they were all that bad – she was just learning more about what was going on around her, and it was starting to make sense.
Pat spent several happy hours watching things like Sesame Street with her on his lap, or just playing with her. Granted, it might have been a little tiresome to have to do it all the time, like Cindy normally had to do, but his being there gave Cindy a little break, and the novelty was very enjoyable for him.
Finally he had to head back to Ft. Hood. It had been too long, and Pat resolved that he wouldn’t let it go so long next time. It didn’t work out that way.
When Pat got back to the base, he was soon called into the Operations Officer’s office. “Sergeant McDonald,” the captain told him. “I really hate to have to ask you to do this, but we’ve had a levy laid on us for an experienced operations NCO to go to Kuwait on temporary duty. The posting will probably last around six months. I really could use you here, but since you’re the only person I can send who’s not married, I’d really like to send you.”
“Back to the sandbox,” Pat nodded. “I’ve been there before, and it could be worse. I have no problems with it.”
“How could it be worse?”
“It could be Saudi,” Pat shook his head. “At least in Kuwait you can usually get a beer if you want one. How long do I have?”
“As soon as possible, but there’s no reason you can’t have a few days to get things in order. It would be a heck of a lot worse if you were married, I know that.”
Cindy and Russ were sad to learn that Pat was going to be out of the country, but were glad that he was only going for six months. A few days later Pat was in the air, heading toward the Persian Gulf again.
When Pat got there, he was assigned to a brigade operations staff, mostly doing relatively minor things, but he learned a lot. When he’d been there before – and admittedly, with a viewpoint from a Bradley – it had seemed to him that the focus was on defending the country. This time it was different; while it wasn’t clearly said, at least at his level, he had the definite impression that sooner or later the Army would be heading northwestward toward Baghdad.
He still had that impression when he came back to Ft. Hood in the summer of 2002. He hadn’t seen a great deal of national news while he’d been in Kuwait, but what he had seen had confirmed his impression: while things may have been happening in Afghanistan, that wasn’t going to be the end of things, not by a long shot.
However, when he got back to Ft. Hood, a surprise was waiting for him. “Since we had to bring in a replacement while you were gone,” the operations officer told him, “you’re sort of in excess to our needs. But we’ve had another levy laid on us. They’re trying to pump up the Third Infantry at Fort Stewart., and they’ve got some holes to fill. We’re aware that it’s pretty traumatic to have to move a family . . . ”
“. . . but since I’m single, I’m easier to move, right?”
“You sound like you’ve heard that before.”
“Yes sir, I have,” Pat smiled. “I’ve even heard it from you before.”
Pat really wouldn’t mind the move to Ft. Stewart. He’d been there before and liked the place better than Ft. Hood, anyway. It was not a great deal closer to his friends in Dayton, but even a little less distance helped. Within days he’d cleared post and was on his way to Georgia. He had the time to take a delay en route, so he made the trip from Texas to Georgia by way of Ohio.
The kids were growing – it had been a little over six months since Pat had seen them. Patrick was walking now, walking confidently, and Celeste was almost three. It was good to see them again, and good to talk to Russ and Cindy again. “Do you think you’re going to have to go to war over there again?” Cindy asked him. “I sent you to war once, and I’m not crazy about doing it again.”
“I go where I’m told,” Pat told her. “And if it’s someplace where the lead is flying, well, sometimes that’s part of the job. But yes, I’d be willing to bet good money that there will be another war there. I can’t tell you when, or if I’m going to be in it, or what.”
Reality still seemed a ways away as the three of them spent a few days together – and a couple nights in bed. Cindy said that while she wanted still another baby, it was the wrong time of the month, but that didn’t mean that the three of them couldn’t enjoy themselves anyway.
All too soon Pat was heading south down the Interstate to Ft. Stewart. Even as he checked in, he had a surprise. “McDonald,” a personnel sergeant said. “While you’ve been on your way here, we’ve gotten some orders for you.”
“Let me guess,” Pat sighed. “Kuwait.”
“I wouldn’t want to bet against us going there sooner or later,” the sergeant smiled. “But you should like this.” He handed Pat a sheet of orders. It was soon clear that the orders had been following him since before he left Kuwait. They were for a promotion to Sergeant First Class, giving him an extra rocker! In fact, he had been one for a while; it was just that the orders hadn’t caught up to him.
“I’ll be damned,” Pat said. “I didn’t figure on that for another couple years.”
“They’re ramping up, and you were in the zone,” the sergeant said. “Now that you’ve seen that, the old man wants to talk to you.”
In a few minutes Pat was in the office of the battalion commander, who proved to be an officer Pat already knew, although not exceptionally well. “Your promotion comes at a good time for us,” he told Pat. “It would be tempting to put you into a slot in operations, but what we’re really in need of is several competent platoon sergeants who know Bradleys backwards and forwards. Would you be up to taking a Bradley platoon? We’ve got one in Bravo company that desperately needs a platoon sergeant who knows his ass from a hole in the ground. The platoon leader isn’t bad, he’s just green and needs a good platoon sergeant to take him in hand.”
“It’s not like I have a lot of choice,” Pat told him. “But I’d rather be in a Bradley than behind a desk.”
“So would I, sergeant,” the commander smiled. “So would I.”
Whipping the platoon into shape wasn’t an overnight job, but Pat made steady progress; the platoon leader, Lieutenant Tyler, may have been relatively green but he knew his stuff and was open to suggestion from someone with lots of experience, which helped a lot. By the time fall rolled around, the platoon was in good shape, and, while there was room for improvement, it was happening. But the level of training just continued to increase. While no one yet knew for sure, it seemed more and more likely that they were going to be heading to the Persian Gulf.
Pat managed to spend Christmas with Russ and Cindy and the kids once again, but now it had a different feeling. The division was getting ready to ship out for Kuwait and would be on the way right after the first of the year.
In the process of preparing to ship out, Pat and a sergeant from personnel had to review his records. Ever since Pat had been in the Army, his records had given “none” for a home address. That still was pretty true, but on a whim, Pat changed it to “c/o Russell and Cynthia Bradstreet,” giving their home address in Dayton. Similarly, he’d never filed for serviceman’s life insurance since he had no possible beneficiary. Now, for the first time he signed up for it, putting the names of Celeste and Patrick Bradstreet on the paperwork. It felt a little strange filling out paperwork like this, to actually have something of a family after all these years.
In early January Pat and the rest of his unit were in the air, headed for Kuwait. It was familiar to Pat, of course; he’d been there before on three separate temporary duty tours, the most recent only a few months before. But this time, the atmosphere was different: everyone knew that unless something really unexpected happened, they would be shooting before it was over with.
For once, everyone was right. One dusty March morning Pat was standing in the commander’s hatch of his Bradley, one of a long line of vehicles going through a berm in the desert and into Iraq. No one really knew what to expect; they didn’t have anything like the overwhelming force they’d had a dozen years earlier, but they’d been told the enemy wasn’t very well prepared, either.
The last time Pat had been at war in the Gulf he really hadn’t seen much he could call combat. This time was different. Three weeks later, at Baghdad International Airport, Pat and a couple of his crew members took the time to count the dings in his Bradley, left there by bullets and the rockets he’d occasionally had bad dreams about. The Bradley had received the battle scars in skirmishes and downright fights all the way across Iraq, right up to the battle to capture the airport. The counting stopped when the total reached a hundred, and there were still some areas on the vehicle to go. In that three weeks the division and a nearby Marine division had broken records for gaining ground that had been set by people with names like Rommel, Guderian, and Patton.
Once Baghdad was taken things died down. Pat was relieved to have not lost anyone out of his platoon. A couple guys had scratches, but not bad enough to be evacuated. Pat would not have any doubts about his right to his Combat Infantry Badge this time.
Only in the next few days was it was soon discovered that the Army had only solved part of the problem. While they were as superbly equipped and trained to take ground as any unit in history, they were much less well prepared to hold the ground once it was taken. Iraq was a miserable stew of competing factions and interests, and very quickly Pat’s unit and the others were between a rock and hard spot trying and mostly failing to maintain any semblance of peace in the country. No one, up through the national leadership, had prepared for that eventuality.
In the next several months Pat and his unit were engaged in constant patrolling, low-level fighting, and sometimes pitched battles against one troubled area or another. No one was sorry to be pulled out of Iraq later that summer, but it was clear to just about everyone that the Army’s time in Iraq was not over with.
It was good to return to Ft. Stewart. Pat managed to get a few days off to spend with Cindy, Russ and the kids, but all too soon he was back to work. It had been decided to reorganize the division into a unit that was less concerned about taking ground than it was holding it, and the reorganization took over a year, which included several bouts of intensive training.
One of the things that came with the reorganization was that Pat was yanked out of his preferred spot in a Bradley; now he got moved to a brigade operations staff. Though Pat was sorry to not be in a Bradley, under the current situation he was quietly just as happy to let someone else take the pointy end of the stick.
Sure enough, in January of 2005 Pat was back in Baghdad, which had become just about as dangerous a place as it had been when the division had taken the place almost two years before. This time they had to stay there and try to get a lid on things in the area, rather than just suppress opposition and get on to the next objective. It wasn’t quite as bad for Pat. For the most part he was in a fortified compound, working in an office. While he may have missed being out where the action was, there was a part of him that was just as glad.
Still, every now and then he had to go someplace outside of the safety of the protected compound. One day about three months into the tour, Pat had to go with a convoy to a strong point in a troubled area, mostly to take care of some paperwork for his operations office. By now, improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs, had made their appearance, being touched off at passing military convoys. Pat was not very happy to have to be making the convoy trip in a Humvee; given a choice, he’d rather have been in a more familiar and much safer Bradley, but he had no choice in the matter.
They were not far from their strong point destination when Pat was instantly aware of a flash and the beginnings of the sound of an explosion, but he was aware of no more.
