Side note: This story is named after the incredibly obscene song by 50 Cent and Lil' Kim. I thought all the phallic references in it were sort of relevant to the theme of the weaker sex being in charge. And no I don't think women are the weaker sex, hell, ask my husband. Tehehe.
"…you know Bina is mine Captain that was part of the agreement. I handed over my tapes of the dead Iraqis and held off my investigation into the needless, tragic deaths of five Americans because your commander promised me an exclusive on Bina and every operation being planned in that regard and now CNN is sniffing around my story! I will not be out-scooped."
Baron's wristwatch beeped twice to signal the start of a new hour. He looked at the black numbers on the digital dial without the slightest attempt to disguise the time check. Johanna Gilchrist had been talking nonstop for four minutes. He held off his reply on purpose, pulling a tissue from his pocket with which he wiped the spittle that had rained onto his desk from her mouth. He walked around it and sat on the edge with his arms crossed on his chest.
"Bina is not yours Miss Gilchrist; you can't own a town or its people and I'm sure you don't need to be reminded that the dead Iraqis you taped were not schoolteachers but armed terrorists who shot down a helicopter and killed five Americans."
"That doesn't change the fact that your people destroyed their…" He didn't let her finish.
"Or that you agreed to turn in your footage to help with the resolution of an ongoing conflict as a show of goodwill and to make up for releasing the names of our casualties before their families could be notified in a dignified manner. Am I right?"
"You will not bully your way out of your end of the bargain Captain. I am a journalist!"
"No Miss Gilchrist you are a parasite hiding behind a press jacket but I have to put up with you nonetheless."
"Captain I want…"
"Benally," he boomed interrupting Johanna a second time. "What are you doing?" The woman, standing in the doorway of the communications tent with the Filipino cook in tow stopped in her tracks. The tent flapped closed as she turned around to face an angry Baron.
"I have a friend in Tikrit who speaks Tagalog Sir. He's going to translate your instructions for the cook." Baron absorbed the information and dismissed her with a nod of the head, elated at the thought of taking his evening meal without worrying about the cook's questionable hygiene habits.
Kai Benally took one last look at Baron's locked jaws and the reporter's flushed face then disappeared inside the communications tent. She pulled a chair for her guest, dialed a number she didn't need to look up and after brief greetings handed over the phone. She watched until it was clear by the woman's gestures that the right topics were being discussed and walked the length of the tent to the exit on the opposite side. She consulted a layout of the camp inked roughly in her right palm and looked both ways before setting out for the table tennis game already in progress two tents away.
"So, what do you think about a female lieutenant?" Pvt. Frank Dumphy asked paddling his dog tags and the ping pong ball into Maurice Williams' side of the table all in the same sweep of his arm. His hand brushed the table losing him a point that tied the game 6-6.
"I think some college boy can't type."
"Yeah obviously but I mean a female, you don't have an opinion?" Williams seemed to ponder the question.
"She ugly?"
"That's not an issue," Dumphy replied serving, a note short of a whine.
"It is if you want my opinion Dimwit." Williams head bobbed up and down with the ball.
"About whether or not a woman can do the job not whether you can do her!"
"Underpants couldn't do shit so squatting to piss ain't the issue Dimwit." He bounced the ball hard and it caught Dumphy unaware. It rolled out of sight.
"Smoke is a feminist," Brenda piped in singsong.
"I love all the females Mrs. B, even you."
"What do you think Sergeant?" Dumphy asked setting down his paddle. There was no answer for fifteen seconds while SSgt. Christopher Silas negotiated a tricky turn on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Beside him Pfc. Tariq Nassiri paused his own stake in the game waiting for Silas' reply. The latter realized the room was waiting.
"I think I'm not dumb enough to get dragged into this," he said shaking his head.
"So you think you are dumb Sergeant?" Del Rio asked from her end of the couch. She reached over the back and handed over her Como Quiz answers for Mitchell to grade.
"Finish your quiz Doublewide. I'm dying to know your 'Sex and the City' personality." Esmeralda blushed. She was not the Cosmo Quiz type.
"Why doesn't anyone have an opinion?"
"Coz it's 105 fucking degrees outside Dimwit. Go get the damn ball so I can finish beating your ass man."
He did. He dragged his feet out of the tent and used his folded hat to shield some of the harsh sunlight roasting every uncovered surface around him. He was on his hand and knees peering at the space between each sandbag piled waist-high around the tent when Lieutenant Benally's shadow surprised him off balance. She was a woman with a purposed and dismissed him before he could stand fully upright in acknowledgement.
"There are two trucks in the motor pool with no sandbags," Dumphy heard her say as he followed the Lieutenant inside. She pulled the plug on the video game. "I want a shovel in each of your hands in one minute and those trucks squared away before anybody else comes back into this tent. Is that clear?"
There were seven nods of agreement, even one from SSgt. Silas' startled head. At 5'4" Lt. Kai Benally was only taller than Pvt. Brenda Mitchell but her orders had sounded a lot taller than that. She bent down beside the couch and picked up a ping-pong ball just beneath the sofa's skirt. It bounced on the table eight times before it rolled against the net in the middle and stopped on the edge.
By the time all of first squad was ankle deep in sand in the process of filling enough sandbags to protect the two trucks as ordered, the mood in the pit was downright mutinous. The fact that Lieutenant Benally joined them ten bags into the detail with a shovel and a straight face did not matters help. Frank Dumphy emptied shovelfuls into the open bag between his legs stabbing the sand as he went.
The mix of anger and frustration in him was volatile. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell off this idiot beside him, this Hunter II he had wanted so much to like only minutes earlier, but SSgt. Silas' shovel clipped his and a glimpse of his eyes led him to swallow the words unsaid. He looked up with murder in his eyes, disappointed that his role model was just standing there; hiding his tail then saw Captain Baron closing in on them with Johanna Gilchrist quick on his heels. Dumphy relaxed as he realized he'd been ordered to shut-up not out of cowardice but because their CO would be within earshot before he put enough words together to make a dent.
"Lt. Benally," Baron said through clenched teeth stopping in front of the sand pit, "what are you up to now?" Benally dropped her shovel and stood up. The sand pile beneath her feet brought her eye to eye with the Captain.
"I asked Sgt. Silas and his men to help me outfit the two trucks going back out with the re-supply Sir. The cook is already squared away, Sir." Baron looked from Gilchrist and her press jacket to the men and two, no three women shoveling sand in the pit.
"Sergeant. I. Need. Someone. I need someone to get Miss Gilchrist off my ba..." Baron didn't finish the word. He remembered his orders to be polite and helpful with members of the press whenever operationally possible. "Never mind Sergeant, Lieutenant. You are gainfully engaged, carry on." And he was gone.
Seven heads watched his progress then strained to hear the exchange a hundred feet away where Sergeant Murphy was yoked into public relations and put in charge of Johanna Gilchrist. The same seven heads turned back to Lt. Benally in the sandpit. The tension at boiling point a moment before drained almost visibly. Benally unscrewed the neck of the shovel and folded it in thirds. She threw it in a box with others like it and gave all of first squad a Mona Lisa smile before walking away. Pvt. Williams was the first to speak.
"Was that… was she…"
"Yup," Dumphy replied.
"Doing us like a favor?"
"Yup. Unless you wanted to hang with the Tapeworm," Dumphy added in reference to Johanna.
"So then…"
"Uh-huh. The new L-T is one of us."
"This I gotta see Dimwit." SSgt. Silas looked at Williams and Dumphy's exchange with amusement he was able to keep to himself. The men were standing with their hands on their hips like old ladies chatting away at a coffee house. He resumed his shoveling.
"The new L-T is an officer," Angel said joining Silas. "Don't forget you are a grunt." His first words in the past hour were as usual, on point. SSgt. Silas checked his watch, picked up four of the filled sandbags and started toward the truck.
"Get back to work Dim, Smoke, we are relieving third platoon in two hours," he said over his shoulder.
"Food detail again Sarge? Damn, we are taking turns with Echo Company! We are not up again until next week!"
"Scheherazade lives in al-Bareed Dimwit," Williams said lowering his voice enough so that Silas loading the sandbags in the back of the truck nor the rest of the squad around them could hear him. "Why do you think he's been so laid-back all month?"
"Hell if that's all it takes to make him happy I'd have…" Dumphy's voice trailed off as he realized there was no safe way to end his statement.
If you haven't had a chance to count them, there are 118 ridges on the sides of every dime.
Thy Author and Her Editor.