Chapter 14
Fort Campbell, Kentucky
May
He wondered if he could find a cruise that would accommodate people with Down Syndrome. He should look into that.
He glanced over his suit jacket hanging on the outside of his closet.
He couldn’t believe that in just a few days, Phil Osbourne would get married.
He’d worried about his friend ever since the harrowing trek through the Katangela jungle.
Watching the decline in his personality and spirit had physically hurt.
As someone who made his living—a calling he answered, really—based on his physical strength and mental acuity, he couldn’t imagine what life would look like with any of that ripped away.
Yet, every mission he went on came with the risk that he might return no longer whole—if he returned at all.
That risk came with the job. He often prayed that God would give him the mental and emotional strength to handle it if anything ever happened.
He’d added Osbourne to those prayers over the last couple of years. Thinking of him now, in love, hearing the contentment in his voice, filled Jerry with a peace for his friend he didn’t know he could ever feel since Katangela.
His eyes glanced over the maroon velvet box on his bedside table. Nestled inside was a platinum ring with a traditional round-cut diamond. Just thinking about it made his heart race.
Was it too soon?
Probably. Regardless, it felt right. No one had ever made him feel like Olive Duncan made him feel.
He could talk to her about anything and everything.
She even understood the soldier aspect of his life, having served herself.
In fact, she respected everything about him, and he thrived in the light of that respect.
The question was whether she would want the military lifestyle to be a part of her life again.
Duty stations changed. In his twelve years in the Army, they’d assigned him to four different duty stations, and he knew they’d PCS him again soon.
Uncle Sam didn’t keep soldiers in the same place for very long.
He knew his place on the team would count for something, but eventually they would all disperse.
She had also left the army as a Captain. The lifestyle of a Commissioned Officer was not the same as the lifestyle of a Non-Commissioned Officer. They had different processes, different politics, and much different pay.
In an early conversation, she’d talked about buying her house and how it felt good to claim Clarksville as her home now.
Would she want to live that transient Army life again?
Would she want to live with his constant deployments—oftentimes with very little notice?
Could she continue to handle the secrets, the things he could never share even with her?
Or would those stack up until they toppled like a mountain of resentment?
Jerry had seen so many relationships collapse under the pressure of his type of work.
Did Olive want children? He had always wanted children. Lots of them. So many questions still to ask and answer. He wouldn’t know the answers until he asked a very specific question.
Until then, conjecture and five dollars would buy him a cup of over-roasted coffee.
Someone rapped on his door, then pushed it open. He glanced up as Calvin Brock lumbered in. “Yo.”
He had thinning brown hair and a pink tint to his skin.
His frame filled the entire doorway. He looked like a professional wrestler, though, in truth, he had once boxed.
A judge had recommended he join the army at age eighteen because his trajectory had him landing in prison in a few years.
Jerry didn’t know a lot more about his past life, but this current Brock was someone whose life he’d place his hands in—and had done so more than once.
“‘Sup?” Jerry asked, folding a pair of socks together, then rolling them into a neat cylinder. He picked up the empty laundry basket. “Burgers ready?”
“Just about.” His Bronx roots came out when he spoke in complete sentences. He pointed at the speaker. “Doesn’t that noise make you want to nap?”
Jerry chuckled. “I learned to appreciate it in sniper school. Helped me focus. Didn’t distract me.”
“That what you listen to when you’re up in a tree in your Gillie?”
Jerry set the basket in his closet. “When I’m not having to listen to your inane chatter.”
“I got you, bro.” He held up his phone. “Erin wants to know if she can get Olive’s number. Something about packing and being roommates.”
“Sure.” He swiped his phone and sent Brock a text with the requested number. “Erin ready for the full team experience?”
Brock’s cheeks turned bright red. “Don’t know, bro. I’ve cooked on it for a couple of weeks. I mean, what if it ain’t her cup of tea?”
“What ‘it’? Us?”
“Yeah, like, the whole brothers in arms thing. I mean, what if—”
Jerry put his hand on Brock’s shoulder. “Listen, this is who you are. You told me how much you found your real home when you had your first formation in basic, remember? If she doesn’t like this part of you, you might ought to consider that when thinking about making any future plans.”
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment, then went back to his lighthearted normal. “I’ll get this to Erin, and I’ll see you downstairs. Daddy said ten minutes.”
After Brock left, Jerry looked at the packing list he’d made. He had everything accounted for except his shower kit. He’d need that in the morning.
They had to be at the Nashville Airport by 0600 hours. He planned to pick Olive up at 0430. Sunday morning traffic shouldn’t cause a problem, but he didn’t feel comfortable without that thirty-minute buffer.
With everything in order, he left his room and went down to the courtyard.
On the stairwell, he could smell the grilling meat.
Per tradition, Norton fed the team lunch before breaking for block leave.
Several members of the unit would be at the wedding, but not most of them.
Osbourne had been gone a long time in Army years.
Norton watched him approach from his station in front of the grill. “How’s things, Jerry Maguire?”
“Smooth and steady, Daddy. Ready for tomorrow?”
“My entourage has it all planned out,” Norton said, smiling under his red beard. “All I have to do is show up.” Norton had to let the Secret Service coordinate a lot of their travel, which was the price he paid for having married the only daughter of the Vice President of the United States.
“Are they going to be on the ship?”
“Apparently.” He grinned. “Cynthia said she better not see them.”
Jerry laughed. “I can actually hear her say that in my head.”
Norton grinned a loving grin and looked up, staring at a memory. In a rare moment of vulnerability, he said, “We hadn’t been married long, and we just got that place near the gate.”
“The blue house,” Jerry filled in.
“Yeah, with the pool. Anyway, it’s late one night after a jump, and I can’t sleep because—reasons—so I decide it would be a great idea to sneak out of bed and clean my pistols down in the garage.
So I had just broken down the Springfield .
45, and she storms in there barefoot in her nightgown and, man, I never heard Cynthia read anyone the riot act like that, all about guns and killing. I will never forget that.”
Norton shook his head, still grinning.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I figured out that right then, Cynthia was much more interesting than my Springfield, so I took her back to bed. She’s really something when she gets up a head of steam like that, let me tell you.”
Jerry accepted a plate from Ibrahim and wandered over to the table with the toppings and sides.
Cynthia was a physician and the daughter of the VP, but women were women at the end of the day.
He didn’t think Olive would scold him for performing maintenance on his gear in their home.
They had really never had a disagreement. He wondered what might get her goat.
Captain Pena arrived with his wife, Emma, who had often acted as their tactical debriefer under the callsign 24-10 in years past. They made their way to Norton’s side, so Jerry made his way to elsewhere.
Some other wives and girlfriends had already arrived. Olive would have joined them today, except she had to pull her final shift before vacation. No getting out of it.
Tim and Leanne Waller arrived late. Jerry spotted the pair and cut across the courtyard, his grin pulling wide at the corners. Weeks back, Leanne barely looked pregnant. Now she rocked side to side with each step, palm splayed across the taut dome pushing out her shirtfront.
She smiled at him. “Hey, Jerry.”
“You look rather radiant,” Jerry said, accepting the hug from her. He shook Waller’s hand. “Tim. Glad you made it.”
“Yeah. We had a doctor’s appointment.”
Patting her baby bump, Leanne teased, “Uh, ‘we’ had a doctor’s appointment. Tim was just a straphanger.” US Army Airborne soldiers referred to paratroopers who added themselves to the jump manifest to fulfill their mandatory jumps as strap-hangers.
Tim said, “Glad I made the manifest.”
Leanne pouted her lip. “Well, ‘we,’ as in me and little Waller, are officially off the cruise manifest.”
“That’s too bad.” He looked at Waller. “What about you? Am I going to have to double down on groomsman duties?”
“Nah. Leanne and her mother are insisting I go. Her parents are coming here tonight. We have exit strategies in place for wherever we are in case I need to rush home.”
Major Norton stood beside Captain Pena and First Sergeant Wade “Commando” Chandler. He tapped a trill atop the grill with his spatula. “Hey, guys. Can we get your attention real quick?”
Everyone settled down and moved closer, Jerry included. Norton continued, “First of all, I want to thank all of our special guests for joining us today. Thank you all. It’s great when we have beautiful women here instead of just a bunch of hairy gorillas.”
Polite laughter.