Whew. Here's chapter ten. I don't know why I had so much trouble with this. Now that I read back over it, it is rather simple.


Captain Baron looked at his watch as SSgt. Silas took a seat on his chic office furniture, a folding chair dating to the Vietnam War.

"Sergeant do you know why I've called you in here today?"

"No sir."

"You assaulted a television set last week SSgt. Silas." Capt. James Baron had to choke the pen in his hand in order to keep a straight face. The written complaint on his desk had made him laugh. He knew there was nothing funny about one of his best soldiers attacking electronics but such were the pitfalls of a developed brain in need of comic relief. "I have a whole list of equipment here you could have bludgeoned no questions asked but you went and messed with one everybody likes."

"Yes sir."

"Sergeant you're going through a rough patch. Ninety percent of the soldiers on their second tour haven't seen even half of all the fucked up shit you've seen in just the past couple months. You keep turning down your chance to take some R&R when you should really be thinking about it; you've been deployed longer than most people here soldier and I am getting worried."

"I don't see how four days eating Big Macs in Kuwait are supposed to help. Sir."

"Sergeant, I knew Captain Harms since she was a second lieutenant and her brother fixed up a lot of my men in Desert Storm. I'm having trouble with this and I didn't see either of them die in front of me. I don't want this thing to hit you in the wrong place so if you don't like Camp Doha and I don't blame you for that, you need to start thinking about maybe going home for a while." Silas looked up at the sound of the word. He wanted to laugh and not because it was funny. He bit his lower lip unsure of how to respond.

"Yes sir."

"This came for you today," Baron said handing Silas what he hoped were good news. The letter had been postmarked in Bellmore a little under a month earlier. The script was clearly a woman's. "I had my XO hold it for you when you didn't come to mail call."

SSgt. Silas took the airmail envelope without looking at it. He knew where it was coming from. He knew what it said and how it smelled. He knew the letter 'i' in her signature would be dotted with a circle she might have filled in with ink or not, depending on her mood when she signed and how long since his last call. Capt. Baron looked at the letter disappear folded into a pocket with no visible change in Silas as he handled it. He reached into his desk drawer and took out his last ace.

"This is also yours." He pushed the light, bulky envelope across his desktop. "Captain Harms left it here before she uh oh what the hell the day she died."

Baron looked at Silas' face closely as the man picked up his correspondence but nothing registered there. He heard brakes screeching behind his command tent and he didn't need to look to recognize Colonel Ryan's gunner chatting with his XO outside the tent.

"All right you are dismissed Sergeant." Silas nodded, drained the glass of water he'd been offered and walked out in the direction of his tent putting on his hat as he went. Captain Baron rolled his chair closer to the fan blowing hot air his way wishing he could dive into the oversized Tupperware bowls where five water bottles were swimming in a bed of melting ice. This was the look Colonel Ryan saw on his face when he walked into Baron's office.

"Sir," James said standing.

"That's me." Ryan took off his helmet with a sigh of relief and walked towards the cool water like a paper clip to a refrigerator magnet. "What's shaking Baron?"

"Not much." Capt. Baron replied sitting back down, sick and tired of not having any advanced notice of who might drop in or what unwelcome surprises were waiting to hit him upside the head as soon as he stopped looking. "How about you sir?"

"I was in the neighborhood but don't worry, I've come in peace." Ryan sat down on a chair still warm from Silas' tenure. He took an MRE power bar out of his pocket. "The reporter's anonymous source came forward today," he said revealing useless information meant to sound important. He laughed realizing the trick didn't work on anyone with a relatively clean conscience which made Baron immune. "There's going to be an investigation of course, into how this ignominy happened right under everyone's nose."

Baron reclined his chair, trying to channel his happy place; a hot tub with Brianna Banks and Jesse Jane. No his wife wouldn't like that.

"I take it you didn't interpret the news quite like the inspector general's bloodhounds did huh Baron? Someone blew up a mosque with ten upstanding pillars of Iraqi society in it and now we're arming our soldiers with bb guns or didn't you hear?"

"That's bullshit."

"I agree but when the shit hits the fan and it's going to, it'll drip down the chain of command to the lowest common denominator in charge."

"My staff sergeant," James thought out loud. His chair squeaked.

"Yeah they'll want to talk to him. It'll help if he's unavailable at least until the owner of all that heroin comes forth and we have a different way to spin the story."

"You mean to tell me that crack journalism is dictating policy now? Sir?"

"Something like that. They were making Captain Harms a Major, grooming her to take over for Mullally when he retires next year." Ryan paused to work the last chunk of power bar from the roof of his mouth. "When her name is released to the press tomorrow they won't care that she was a great soldier or that she did more to win over the locals with one ambulance and a handful of pencils than we've been able to do with millions in rebuilding money in two fucking years because the story that sells papers is all about how the stupid knuckle dragging monkeys got the pretty blonde doctor killed." He closed his mouth and his teeth clashed together like a gavel ordering order in the courtroom.

"Are you okay?" One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.

"The Dow's down 75 points but I'm making a killing on my Google stock."

"She was your wife…"

"Operative word being was," Ryan interrupted getting up from his chair. He crossed his arms over his chest defensively and looked outside.

"A divorce decree doesn't erase a ten year marriage," Baron said unsure of how much further it'd e appropriate to take the conversation despite the personal acquaintance with his superior. He looked at the back of Ryan's head. He would need a haircut soon.

"The memorial at Marez was shit. The chaplain said the same thing he's said fifty fucking times in a row." He shook his head. "They'll be buried in Arlington next to Harms Sr. complete with an Old Guard escort and a 21 gun salute. She hated that bastard you know. She said to me once she wanted to be cremated and that I should bury her ashes with her dog."

There was a long awkward silence between the moment Colonel Ryan realized he'd said too much and the time the mutual agreement surged to ignore anything remotely resembling an emotional outburst for the sake of unit cohesion in the true fashion of all Y-chromosome carrying specimens far and wide.

---------------------------------------

"Sergeant Murphy, have you seen Sergeant Scream?" Murphy looked up from his cards at Pfc. Del Rio standing in his light. He pointed behind him into the tent and tapped the table. Lady Luck was not into his new aftershave. Del Rio walked into the tent like it was the Principal's office.

"Female," she said to the relative darkness. "Sergeant Silas, Capt. Baron asked me to find you because he needs to speak with you," she blubbered.

Ozzy Osbourne answered from Silas' headphones with the second verse of Paranoid's Iron Man. Esmeralda took two steps towards his cot and tried again. And again. And again. She tapped his shoulder. Her eyes crossed trying to get a look at the barrel of the M9 pressed against the bridge of her nose and she shuddered, too scared to make a sound. Silas let go of her shoulder and Esmeralda felt her knees buckle as she took a step back. The words were stuck in her mouth and her feet glued to the floor as she tried to remember what she'd been doing in the tent to begin with.

"I'm sorry Doublewide," Silas said at last. He couldn't hear himself screaming above the music blaring in his ears. "The safety was on," he lied holstering the sidearm. He threw his headphones on the cot. Del Rio was almost translucent.

"Captain Baron wants to see you in his tent I mean office. As soon as possible. Sergeant," she whispered backing out of the room on legs like jelly.

"I'm sorry," he tried again.

Silas sat on his cot waiting for his heartbeat to get down to double digits and resumed staring at his mail trying to forget the look in Del Rio's eyes when he pushed the gun in her face. He looked at the date on his airmail letter and dropped it in the empty shoebox where it kept the others like it company. It was all noise to avoid opening Jerusalem's package. He rattled the envelope. He knew they were just more sleeping pills but throwing them out felt sacrilegious. He would have laughed at all this unwillingness under any other circumstances but then nothing seemed that funny on a month old headache and three hours of sleep a night. He ripped the top of the envelope, shook the pills free on his cot and scanned the top of the note inside.

"She helped me set up my clinic in al-Bareed then I saw her again on Election Day. Lt. Berro took the picture for the Stars and Stripes but she was smiling because I recognized her drawing of your unit patch."

Silas tore the empty envelope to pieces like he was looking for Waldo then flattened the sheet of note paper disappointed before he thought to try the box with the pills. He fished out the familiar picture of Jamila smiling for the camera and flipped it to the back.

al-Bareed Neighborhood

Area 611, Road 52, #6

He had to remind himself to breathe.


I'm the first to admit it; I'm a bleeding heart sentimentalist. When I was in high school, I read Pride and Prejudice until the pages were falling apart. I know I kinda killed Mrs. Al-Shahrani in one of the endings of Al-Hadith Hilton but I'm queen insofar this particular universe is concerned and if Jesus got Lazarus up and running again, so can I.

For those who might wonder when the fat lady's gonna be belting out show tunes, Miss Editor Lady is looking under the hood of the last chapter as I write this.