13 - Shep
T he wake-up cal l at Edge changes every week, I’m told. Last week it was a simple tone that went off at five am for PT training. Not awesome, but I’ve heard worse.
This Monday morning, after drinking too much last night, the new call for the week is definitely on the offensive side because it’s a hundred decibels of barking dogs. Nothing but three minutes of barking dogs.
Upon hearing it, every guy in the bunkhouse complains loudly and some of them go as far as to threaten to quit. Apparently, this is not the first time the barking dogs have been used but it’s used sparingly.
“It’s your fault,” a guy called Razor says, punching me in the arm as he walks past.
“How is it my fault?”
“Because you’re new here and it’s a joke.” He frowns at me, then growls at me. “It’s not funny.”
I just roll my eyes.
For a bunch of mentally challenged criminals and killers, they’re not bad guys. I feel a sense of camaraderie with them.
They did tours in real wars. I can’t relate to that because as a Deep Recon Specialist, I was serving in an entirely different kind of combat. If Collin and I were on the same side back then, he might’ve been my commanding officer because he was running spies and that’s what I was.
Deep cover.
The guys I share the bunkhouse with were all regular military. Some of them SEALs, some of them Rangers, some of them Green Berets. All of them dangerous and all of them crazy.
It’s not a term of endearment, but a clinical diagnosis. Though, as everyone figures out eventually, crazy is all relative to the world around you.
Which is all fine and good while you’re ‘in country’ but doesn’t fly whatsoever when you go home. And, even though I’d bet all the money I have at the moment that not a single one of these men wanted to go home, you can’t hide forever.
That’s when ‘crazy’ starts to actually mean something negative. Something life-changing. Some of the guys here had families before they got all messed up. Some of them were never going to have close relationships like that because their personalities don’t allow for it. None of them have anything but each other now.
I like it.
I feel like this place could be a good second chance.
That’s why I walked away from Olive yesterday. I don’t know if what she was telling me was true—that Collin Creed is her brother—but either way, she’s a flashing red danger sign that’s gonna ruin everything. I can feel it.
If she is Collin’s sister, no way do I want a piece of that.
And if she isn’t… well, she’s definitely CORE and I don’t want a piece of that either.
I shove a protein bar in my mouth as I walk out the front door of the bunkhouse and fall in to the march with the other men.
You’d think we’d all complain about the PT every morning, but no one does. We all went to basic—even I went to basic—and we all hated it, I’m sure. But there’s something comforting about physical training. Something calming about being part of the group. Something settling about letting all the chaos inside your head go and just working through the physicality of it all.
We have a cadence caller, and everyone calls it back as we run, but it’s mind-numbingly easy to let everything go and forget the world exists when you’re doing morning PT.
About two dozen of the guys have off-base jobs so they all cut out about halfway through PT to shower and get to their assignments. Everyone else keeps going until it’s time for chow, and then we shower, change, and train dogs for the rest of the morning.
In the early afternoon, everyone goes to the range out back in the hills. And then, when that’s over, we work with the dogs again. After that we eat and hang out. Then sleep and wake up to do it all again.
I’m one of the guys now. And even though I’ve barely been here a week, it doesn’t take that long to understand that this is a pretty nice setup. I like it.
But my interaction with the girl last weekend lingers in my head and I can’t help but wonder, as I look around the compound, if this is all there is. If this is all there will be.
I’m not complaining. I don’t think any of the guys here are complaining. The Edge contracts come with room and board, meals, and seventy K a year to start. There probably isn’t a single guy, aside from Collin and his crew, who has ever made that kind of money. Or ever will any place else.
But it’s a little bit like a safety net. Here to catch you. A nice thought, but there’s always that nagging little question of… what if?
Especially when you look down the driveway at Collin and Amon’s houses and you watch them both go home to women every night. Amon even has a boy. And he’s a really likable kid. I’ve only spent a week with him and his puppy, but he’s got a sense of humor and he works hard. Acts like he’s thirty years old and just another one of the guys.
Every morning I come outside I’m thankful. For all of it. But it’s almost impossible to miss what I’m trading this safety net for because all I have to do is look down the driveway where Collin and Amon are living the real dream.
I will never have that. I’ll never have a son. Or a girl. There’s not gonna be a wife, or a house, or a puppy. Because this place—the safety, the men, the permission to be who I am—it’s addictive and necessary. And I don’t have my own house at the end of the driveway. I bunk with six other men.
There’s no place for families.
Not for us. Not unless we want to leave.
And of course we won’t leave. No one is officially ‘deployed’ at the moment. The contracts are local. Couple hours away, at the most. So even if some of the guys are staying in hotel rooms, they’re coming back.
I haven’t heard a single guy here say they can’t wait to work outside the compound.
They joined the military for a reason. They’re here for a reason.
And honestly, I think Collin Creed and crew might actually be a bunch of geniuses—because this isn’t a job they gave us.
It’s more than room, and board, and seventy K a year.
It’s a life.
So thinking about Olive is a waste.
Because I just got here and I can’t think of a single thing that could make me give it up.
The new week begins with Amon’s boy, Cross, and his puppy, whose name is Jagger. Cross is my new little sidekick since we’re assigned to the same puppy. He goes to school, but the bus pulls right into the compound and picks him up from the porch of Amon’s house, so he uses every spare minute from the time he wakes up to the moment that bus driver opens the door to hang out with the men.
He’s the first one lined up for PT every single morning at five am. And by Tuesday, I find myself becoming number two, since I know he’s already out there and he and I are partners. He stands under the flagpole in the dark like this is what every thirteen-year-old boy does before school.
No one eats before morning PT, so after PT he goes home to shower, and I go back to the bunkhouse to do the same, and when I walk into the mess at seven-fifteen, he’s saved me a seat.
He shovels food into his face as fast as he can and then he waits for me so we can go to the kennel together so he can spend the next fifteen minutes giving me instructions on what to work on with Jagger while he’s gone.
Then he salutes me, calls me soldier, and leaves.
He’s such a bossy little fucker, you can’t help but find the whole thing funny.
By Wednesday, Cross and I are best buddies.
By Thursday, we’re old friends.
We’re standing in the kennel with Jagger on the leash, and Cross is scribbling down tracking instructions on a whiteboard in purple marker. “See,” he says, tapping the marker on the board where he’s drawn a picture of a scent pad. “This is food. Food, food, food. All these little marks are food. You throw them down on the scent pad and tell him to ‘ such. ’ That’s German for seek. You tell him ‘ such , such , such .’ Real fast like that. And then you let him eat most of it, but pull him back before he finishes so we turn him into a little such- ing fiend. Got it?”
I do my best not to chuckle because he’s dead-ass serious about his dog training. “I got it.”
He checks his watch—which is, of course, military-grade—and sighs. “The bus is gonna be here any minute. But I got something for you, Shep. Come to the house with me so I can give it to you before I go.”
“All right. Lead the way.” I pan a hand to the door.
We walk outside where the sun is just barely rising, and he jogs ahead to his house. He stops on the porch. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.”
“I’ll be here,” I say. Then he goes inside and I take a seat on the steps and look down the driveway as a bus pulls in, stopping at the guard house. How the hell they got a bus driver to pull into the compound, I don’t understand, because it’s a hassle. No one comes in or out without stopping at the guard house. But down the driveway it comes, rumbling and filled with kids.
Inside, I hear Amon’s woman yellin’ for Cross to get his butt on the bus, then Cross yellin’ back, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
Since Amon’s house is at the bottom of the driveway and it’s a turnaround, it literally pulls up in front of me. The door opens and the bus driver—an older woman—salutes me.
I chuckle and salute back.
Then Cross is rushing out the door and stands on the step next to me. He holds up a finger to the bus driver. “One sec, OK, Fanny? I’m coming. Do not honk that horn at me, I’m standin’ right here.”
She rolls her eyes and cracks her gum, then starts checking her phone.
Cross turns his attention to me. “Here. This is for you, Shep. I designed it and everything. This is just the prototype. I got two. So there’s one for me and one for you.”
He hands me an embroidered patch in the shape of a shield with a German shepherd on it. At the top of the shield are the words ‘Edge K9s’ and at the bottom is printed ‘Handler.’ I look down at the patch, then over to Cross. “This is for me?”
He smiles and nods. “Yeah. You don’t have any patches on your uniform yet, so I figured you needed one. And I had one extra. Everyone will get them when the order comes in next week, but you can have yours now.”
A horn honk makes us both jump in surprise. Cross turns his attention to the bus again. “Fanny! I told you not to honk at me! I’m standin’ right here .”
She smirks at him, her voice old and croaky. “Then get your skinny-ass butt on the bus right now or I’ll honk at you again and then your mama’s gonna yell. You’re makin’ us late, kid!”
Cross sighs, glaring at her. But he softens when he looks at me. “See you this afternoon, Shep. Take good care of Jagger!”
I wave and he hops from the bottom step of the porch to the bottom step of the bus. The door closes and the bus slowly pulls away.
I look down at the patch in my hand, feeling the threads with my fingertips. It’s a nice patch. Lots of colors. The dog is black and brown—just a head in profile—but it’s against a background of wooded hills with several shades of green. Behind the hills is a sunset, or maybe a sunrise, and that’s in red and orange. The letters are in black and they’re set against army-green banners.
Patches. Kinda dumb, but also kind of genius. Morale patches, they call them. Because they make us feel good. And I have to admit, this one does make me feel good. I’m gonna go hunt down a needle and thread and sew this fucker on first thing.
I look up, ready to hop down the stairs and do that, when I stop in my tracks.
I squint, looking down the driveway, because Olive is walking towards me with Collin.
For a moment, I can’t move. I don’t know what to do.
What is she doing here? Is she here to out me?
She sees me, but doesn’t wave or pause the conversation she is clearly having with a delighted Collin. He’s looking down at her with bright eyes and a wide smile.
Like a brother.
She was telling the truth. She’s Collin Creed’s sister.
And there are only two reasons why she’s here.
One, to fuck with me. Maybe even get me fired, since she knows more about me than I ever told her.
Or two, she’s a spy.