GWOT IV - R&R

[drewkitty]

GWOT IV - R&R

It was a conspiracy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My orderly somehow had nothing on my schedule for late afternoon. The Psyche - the prison psychologist I'd been stuck with - stuck her head in and handed me something, then left before I could scream at her.

It was a prescription.

I had to read it twice. Here, give it a shot yourself:

To: Captain [Echo 18], Warden, Alviso Prison
From: Psyche Eliza Purcell, assigned Alviso Prison
Re: Rx for addressee

Sir, under the authority delegated to me by the Surgeon General of the California Republic, I respectfully prescribe for you as follows. You shall take 72 hours of leave to begin NLT 1600 hours this day. This is a lawful order under the UCMJ as amended by California practice. My commanding officer is Psyche Ian Jones, Valley Medical City, San Jose, CA and his contact phone number is 669-555-4231. Please direct any questions to him directly. The control number for this prescription is in the upper right hand corner. Yours In Health, Pse. Purcell [signed]

I resignedly reached for my freshly printed copy - they all were - of ROC Military Law.

Legally airtight. The Republic of California had codified the ability of medical personnel to determine someone as temporarily or permanently unfit to perform their duties. The next step, if I refused this leave, would be for her commanding officer to contact _my_ commanding officer - who had made it very clear that he didn't want me to contact him for anything, ever. I cherished hopes that he had forgotten my existence, and didn't want to extinguish them.

So I made a few calls, set an away message on my E-mail, advised my Exec that she had the duty for the next three days, closed the door of my office after setting the "DO NOT ENTER" slider, and put my feet up on my one luxury, the big desk.

About thirty seconds later, Betty Rize came through that same door. Locked eyes with me.

Oh, no you don't. You...

Turned and matter of factly dropped her pants. And panties. As she locked the door.

Unless I cared to dive out the 2nd floor window of my own office - which I seriously considered - it appeared that Betty was dead set on having her way with me.

Then she looked at me again, stopped undressing, and came over and sat on my desk with what I can only call a bedside manner.

"Hey. What's wrong?"

When I could think again, we were both lying on my desk. She was pillowing my head into her bosom, I was - rather to my own horror - crying, and the front of her uniform blouse was covered with tears and snot. She remained naked below the waist, but neither of us cared about that.

I stopped crying and managed to start to sit up. I had a handerchief in my back pocket, made a reach for it, and cleared my eyes.

She'd been murmuring those little things you say to someone who is weeping in your arms, without actually using words that might set them off. "There, there, ok, yeah," except that as a trained psychologist her patter was better than mine.

"The door," I said finally.

"It's secured. Oh. Oh! Yeah. I thought it would be a treat for you. You know, on your desk after so long."

I shook my head.

"They murdered her. She locked the door. She kept a pistol in her desk, hated the things, but I'd insisted. Homeland took about ten seconds to breach the door. I was in the hallway, they had a fucking army of goons on top of me, I heard one shot. Never knew if it was her shot or theirs."

She confiscated the handkerchief firmly and wiped my eyes for me.

We both knew who I was talking about.

"It was hers. She knew what she had in her head. Sharon told me, they got chewed out over it, they wanted her alive."

She would have broken in a day or two. Certainly long before meeting Biko and his chair.

"We have a lot to talk about before we get back to here. Let's get cleaned up and out of here. I'll take security. I have some ideas where."

When she dressed, she didn't bother putting the panties back on. She dropped them in the lower desk drawer where I kept my growing supply of meds.

A dab or two with the handkerchief and I was as presentable as I was going to get.

The outer corridor had three people in chairs - my XO, the Psyche, and an NCO MP I didn't recognize. My orderly was making them sit.

"I'm going on leave," I ground out. "Captain Rize will be accompanying me. I'll be back in 72 hours as directed. Good day."

My XO nodded. The Psyche was carefully blank, digesting her victory. The MP nodded and left.

We met the MP again at the building entrance.

"Sir. I am at your disposal during your leave. I have a marked unit and I'm to be your driver."

Rize was blunt.

"My idea of a 72 hour pass does not include a chaperon. Both of us are skilled drivers and are armed. Give me your number, I'll call you if I need you. Otherwise stay here on the prison grounds and give youself a tour. You'll see a thing or two that should be remembered for generations."

A slip of paper later, we were out the door and in the motor pool sedan issued to a Bear Force operative on leave. I of course was in no condition to drive.

We drove directly to a four star hotel in San Jose. There was valet service, who took the car. There was a doorman, who almost started to frown at our lack of luggage and then flinched when he saw our faces. There was a hotel manager.

There was me, not getting in the fucking elevator because I don't fucking do elevators.

So it was that we marched up fourteen floors to a penthouse suite. The manager opened the door for us.

As soon as the door closed behind him, I drew my handgun.

Rize nodded and drew hers.

We swept the suite for hidden persons. I'd neglected this exactly once post-Firecracker, and almost immediately regretted it.

We finished the sweep and holstered. Shades and curtains drawn, TVs and phones unplugged, door not only locked and secured but barricaded.

Then Rize turned up the temperature to as high as it would go (74) and stripped naked.

"Now, where were we? Old home week or hide the bone week?"

###

We were both naked and lounged in the bed. At some point in the festivities, we'd adjourned from the floor to the bed by way of the bathroom.

You know those hotel room water bottles with the $4 seal if you break one?

Immediately post-coitus, worth every penny. And it hadn't been just the once. Or the twice.

I thought of something.

"Birth control?" I asked.

"I don't care. I've been assigned to field work. I'll probably be dead before I know if you knocked me up. If you did, great, they'll take me off field work - unless I get an abortion and go back out."

I wasn't sure how I felt about any of that. But she'd made the essential point. She didn't really expect to live long enough to it to matter.

"So I'm a loose end you're tying up before you deploy."

"Something like that." She leaned over and touched my face, something she hadn't done while we'd been hiding the bone every which way but under the couch.

"This is victory. We won."

I shook my head.

"Not you and not me. We get killed, that's the breaks. Them. You know. The real people. The Site employees, the H1-Bs. All those who didn't get sidewalked thanks to you and me. And the Resistance. And now, the Republic."

It was not a thought that had occurred to me before.

"When does it stop?"

When they'd made me Warden of Alviso Prison, and sat me on the Commission, I'd been made responsible for so much more than those thousands of lives. I'd been given responsibility for justice for millions, some dead and some living.

"We do what we can until we break. That's the job."

"Who taught you duty?"

It slipped out of me. That was neither a kind nor a tactful thing to say. Especially now.

Bear Force was where you went when it was expedient that you die for California. That there would be a great peace someday, and you would suffer and die to make it happen, but you wouldn't be part of it.

"Brooke," she said, sober as a judge.

Then she told me about how Brooke died.

###

We were both weeping when she finished.

"What I don't get is why she exposed herself, just to get that one Homeland officer?"

I thought about it.

"From what you describe, they were a scratch unit. Not well led. She knew if she could kill enough leaders, that they would be stalled. That was the mission, disrupt the convoy."

"But why not snipe him from concealment?"

I thought about it.

"MRAP with the turret shield? Like this?" and I drew a motion in the air with my fingers.

"Yeah."

"She had to get him to turn the turret towards her to get her shot. Used the only bait she had. Her."

I thought about it.

"How did you survive?"

She told me. Waking up with the worst headache of her life. I could see the faint scar yet on the side of her forehead.

Then she told me about the first time she knifed someone.

She paused, embarrassed as she had not been at all this entire day.

"I liked it," she said simply.

"It hits some people like that, as I'm sure you've read about."

Reading about was different from feeling, or every boy who reads porn would know how to fuck.

"And still?"

Her eyes looked at something in the back of her head.

Intelligence operations even inside the Republic were not a matter of passing notes and questioning informants.

"Still."

"I'm getting cold. Let's shower."

We compared scars. I had a few more than she did. One thing led to another and she screamed sitting on the sink, then bent over the sink.

Finally we were hungry, and plugged the phone back in.

"You have ... eleven ... messages."

The third message was a recall for me. The tenth was a repeat of that recall.

The first, second, fourth through ninth, and the latest were all from the hotel and those who had the neighboring rooms. Paraphrased, would we kindly find a way to keep the noise level of the fucking down?

I called the prison.

"Warden [18]."

"Hold one, patching to your XO."

"Sir. Please disregard your messages, we got a shipment of prisoners in, there were some issues, it's been handled."

"Casualties?"

"No."

"Very well. Calll me if you need me."

Rize called for room service. On a cart. Cart to be pushed to the door, a knock, and then we would bring the cart in. Anyone trying to enter the room would result in a significant tip reduction.

And a fatal message to the brain stem from my pistol in hand.

"We will have to check out tomorrow," she murmured. "And probably wise that we don't have another meal here. A lot of people don't like you, Warden."

Tip the attendant, wheel in the tray, interrogate same. A bit of food, a little beer, and some desserts.

We helped each other all night and well into the wee hours of the morning.

We were barely presentable and completely sober when we left at 6 AM.

Via the stairs to the valet, who sleepily obtained our car and earned a fantastic tip for putting the claim check back on the rack with no key attached.

Our next stop was the beach.

We wanted to look at something timeless. The ocean. The waves. The sky, even if bleak.

Something to do while our exhausted libidos began to recharge.

Actually, our next stop was a turnout on a mountain road where Rize dragged me into the bushes and blew me.

I didn't think I'd had it in me. But she knew.

The next night was a beachside hotel. Still valet, still room service, but no one knew who I was. And although we did see some of the scenery from the hotel balcony, it was definitely the breaks in between.

Then there was only a day left.

The days of our lives are numbered.

Hers in a mere double digits.

Even here, even now, I choose to keep some secrets.

We lived a lifetime in that day. A relationship, a marriage, a divorce and a reconciliation. We cooked, we cleaned, we fought and made up. We rejoiced and we wept.

Then we were at the gates of Alviso Prison.

She kissed me goodbye for the last time, and drove off.

I watched that cheap sedan recede into the afternoon gloom of a rainy winter day.

I turned to my duty.