The Ascendant: A Thriller (20 page)

“There’s one other thing, Captain.” Alexis snapped her head around. She didn’t like the tone of the doctor’s voice. “We ran a blood test. Beyond a very high blood alcohol level, he tested positive for THC. I’ll have to report that. It’s grounds for immediate discharge.”

“Have you noted it on his chart yet?”

“No. Not yet. I just got the blood workup.”

“Destroy it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Rip it up. Delete the digital test results. It never happened.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can.”

Colonel Rogers started to protest but Alexis cut him off: “I’ll have the secretary of defense call you personally.”

The doctor looked like he wanted to reply to her, then thought better of it, and stomped angrily from the room. Alexis, exhausted, grabbed a chair, pulled it next to Garrett’s bed, and sat down to wait for him to wake up.

“I
’m sorry,” Alexis Truffant said, for the thousandth time.

Garrett said nothing. He sniffed at the breeze coming off the Pacific. It smelled clean and fresh and pure. He loved that smell. Alexis pushed his wheelchair down the ramp from the entrance to the Naval Hospital toward the waiting Humvee.

“I’m sorry for lying to you. But it wasn’t a complete lie. I’m married, but separated. I haven’t seen my husband in three months. We’re trying to work out our differences. Not that it makes it any better.”

She craned her head to catch his reaction. There was none. “You were right. I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to think you had a chance with me. That was wrong.”

Celeste and Bingo were waiting by the Humvee. Celeste held the rear passenger door open. Bingo stood beside her. Jimmy Lefebvre was leaning on the hood.

“Hi, Garrett. How you feeling?” Bingo asked. He tried to look at Garrett’s face, but winced and quickly turned away. “You look good. Really.”

“Thanks. Never felt better.”

Celeste leaned close and stared at his bruises. “I dig the swollen, lumpy thing,” she said. “Very fuckable.”

Garrett snorted a laugh. Even that hurt. Hurt his lungs, his broken ribs, sent an electric pulse of pain through his head. It had been twenty-four hours since he’d woken up. But still the pain was intense. He would have to ask for more meds. Soon.

“Easy, big fella,” Lefebvre said as he helped Garrett out of the wheelchair. “Later, you and I should talk about what happens when you break a bottle over a Marine’s head. Statistically, it rarely turns out in your favor.”

“Ha. Ha,” Garrett said. “Fucking hilarious.”

“Enough, guys,” Alexis said, strapping him into the backseat. “Leave him be.”

Lefebvre chuckled, then got behind the wheel and drove the stretch of road back toward their barracks headquarters. Every bump in the road sent more pain through Garrett’s head. All he wanted to do was sleep. They rolled him into the barracks, where Bingo and Jimmy laid him out on the cot in his room. He closed his eyes and was instantly asleep—a deep, dreamless sleep. When he woke again, it was dark out, and he was hungry.

He hauled himself off the cot and shuffled into the kitchen, a fleece blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Alexis was standing over the stove, heating a pot of soup.

“You’re up. Good. We were beginning to worry.” She smiled broadly at him. He opened the refrigerator silently. “Still mad at me?” she asked.

“Not mad,” Garrett muttered as he struggled to open a plastic-wrapped block of orange cheese. Even moving his fingers seemed to shoot pain up his arms. “Hate you. Completely different animal.”

Alexis slumped into a chair. “Fine. Hate me. I don’t blame you. But you’re still going to work with us, right?”

Garrett grabbed a handful of Triscuits from an open box. It was an easier meal. “Can’t decide. Head hurts too much.” He turned and shuffled back into his room. He lay down on the cot, but Alexis appeared over him, her face tight with emotion.

“This is serious, Garrett. Lives are at stake. That is bigger than how we feel.”

“Not sure I agree,” Garrett said as he closed his eyes. “Nothing bigger than how I feel.” In seconds, he was asleep. When he woke again, it was the sound of a voice he recognized that brought him to his senses. Older, authoritative, menacing; Garrett couldn’t place it exactly, but he knew he didn’t like it. He blinked his eyes just as the door to his room swung open. The voice preceded the body.

“A waste of time and money. It’s over, you’re shut down, and he’s discharged.” Secretary of Defense Frye marched into the room. He wore a dark gray suit and a burgundy power tie. Alexis trailed him, followed by Lefebvre. Bingo and Celeste hovered by the door, looking spooked. “Dishonorably, by the way,” the secretary said.

“In all fairness, we haven’t even started, sir,” Alexis said, trying to step in front of the secretary and get Garrett to his feet. But Frye brushed her aside and walked up to Garrett’s cot. Garrett was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a pair of gym shorts.

“There is no such thing as fairness, Captain. Not in this world. And certainly not in this Army.” Frye turned his glare to Garrett, who rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed. “What do you have to say for yourself, son? Drinking. Getting stoned. Fighting with Marines. Didn’t even have the good sense to win the fight.”

Garrett’s head hurt less. He could take deep breaths without too much pain in his ribs. He could see, from the rays of sun streaming through the drawn curtains, that it was morning, and that he had slept through the night. “I had the first three, no problem. Their friend got me from behind. Which is sneaky-ass bullshit.”

Frye bent low over the bed. Garrett could smell the coffee on his breath. “Is that supposed to be funny? Because it’s not.” He turned to Alexis, waving his hand in the air. “Close up this office.” He pointed to Celeste and Bingo. “Send the civilians home. The lieutenant goes to the War College. And you get yourself back to Bolling, where you can do some good, ASAP.”

Frye marched toward the door. Lefebvre stepped forward. “Sir, if you could see your way to giving us one more chance. I believe we are beginning to do some good—”

The secretary cut him off. “You can do good other places. And speak out of turn to me again and I will bust you to private. I don’t care how rich your daddy is.”

Lefebvre’s face reddened. He saluted stiffly. “Sir, yes sir.”

“The U.S. military can fight any war, any time,” the secretary said, leaving the room. “We train our own just fine, thank you very much.”

“Your officers are morons.”

The secretary froze. He turned slowly and reentered the room. “What did you just say?”

Garrett staggered to his feet and fumbled for his bottle of Vicodin. He stuffed a pair in his mouth and dry-swallowed them. “I said, I can outthink any Army officer, outmaneuver any Marine commandant, on any field of battle, any time you want.”

“All of a sudden you think you’re a field commander? Spend a few days at a Marine base and you think you can fight a war?”

“Not me, personally. But I can lead troops. And I’ll make sure they take down your best.”

“Garrett,” Alexis said, edging toward the bed, “the secretary is—”

“You suggesting we put you in charge of a field exercise? A battle simulation?”

“You can stack the odds. Five to one. Ten to one. I don’t care. But I’ve seen how these Marines are trained to fight. And I can take them to pieces.”

“That’s preposterous. But even if it weren’t, why should I give you a second chance?”

“Because you know—deep down inside, you know—that you don’t really have any idea of what you’re dealing with. And you suspect that I just might.”

Silence enveloped the room. Secretary of Defense Frye stared at Garrett, blue eyes level and focused, for a good quarter of a minute. Then he said, “Tomorrow morning. Oh-five hundred. I’ll get a Marine colonel to set the sides. Win and you get to keep going. Lose and you get a court-martial. Drug use, assault and battery. You’ll spend the next ten years in a military prison.”

Frye pushed past Alexis and Bingo and marched out of the room. Celeste, Bingo, and Jimmy Lefebvre stared, wide-eyed, at Garrett.

“Have you lost your mind?” Alexis asked.

“Guess so,” Garrett said, feeling at his ribs. “But I figured it was worth a shot.”

T
he sun lay just below the San Jacinto Mountains. The air was still. The yelp of a coyote broke the predawn quiet in a shallow ravine that wound its way down from the peaks of the scrubby Peninsula Range. Marine Corporal Jonathan Miller peered through the night-vision scope on his M4 carbine, scanning the low brush that ran off into the distance. He picked up the distinct green heat signature of a deer, then another one, but that was all. Nobody was moving up the arroyo toward Miller or his fire team. The enemy was not on the move. Which left an opening for Miller, and he told his squad leader as much.

“Clear below us to two clicks.” Miller keyed his walkie-talkie and waited for the response.

“Roll down to the next way station and hold for my command.”

Corporal Miller waved his arm and made his way down the slope of the canyon. Behind him, twelve Marines rose up out of the scrub and followed silently. Miller checked the flanks of the canyon around him, and sure enough, two more squads of Marines, all part of the 1st Marine Regiment—Inchon, they were called, after the regiment’s heroics in the Korean War—appeared like ghosts out of the brush and moved toward lower ground. They were a rifle platoon, ground combat elements of the 1st Marines, headquartered at Camp Pendleton. Grunts. The shock team of the U.S. military. And they were about to inflict some serious shock on their fellow Marines, Miller thought to himself. On the poor suckers who had to fight for that asshole with the attitude. The jerk-off who had sucker-punched a Marine at Tio’s in Oceanside, and then got
his butt beat by all the other grunts in the bar. Put his sorry ass in the hospital.

Who picks a fight with a Marine in a Marine bar? A retard first class, that’s who.

Miller’s team, back from its third tour of duty in Afghanistan, had jumped at the chance to participate in this morning’s field exercise. They were battle-tested hard-core shit-kickers, and they were more than happy to prove that to anyone who doubted them. And to make it even sweeter, rumor had it that the secretary of defense himself was monitoring the simulation back at field HQ. That would be some shit—winning a field exercise with the SecDef watching. Miller would tell his grandkids about that.

And they would win this field exercise pronto. They had two rifle companies, a weapons platoon, two Super Cobra helicopter gunships, and a fleet of Humvees, all matched up against one puny rifle platoon. Thirty-six Marines. Led by the asshole bar fighter. Who were trying to hold a bunkered encampment between Miller’s position and the highway that ran through the middle of the camp. Good luck to them. It would be over by dawn.

“Flanking maneuver. Coordinate GPS systems,” came the word from the company captain. The captain was in a field tent, on a hilltop, five kilometers behind them, supervising the exercise. Maybe, Miller thought, the SecDef is with him. Hot damn.

Miller squatted in a dry riverbed. The three other men in his fire team settled in next to him. Miller broke out his GPS and plotted the course. The enemy’s bunkered encampment was three kilometers due south of his position. They could follow the dry riverbed, unseen, right to the edge of the encampment. Then the platoon would split into threes, encircle the encampment, and take the place with overwhelming force. The captain would call in air support when they were within 500 yards, effective firing distance for the M4 carbines his team carried. Standard procedure. Nothing fancy. Corner and kill.

Corporal Miller radioed the other team leaders. “Everybody have the objective on GPS? Latitude 33.315037. Longitude minus 117.409859.”

“Roger that.”

“On it.”

Miller turned to his team. “We’re point. Expect ambushes. That’s their only chance.”

A young private squinted toward the faint light that was gathering over the mountains to his left. “They ambush us, we die.”

Corporal Miller stashed his handheld GPS. “No. That’s the beauty. We got a whole ’nother company shadowing us. Alpha Company. They ambush us, Alpha ambushes them. Game over.”

“No shit,” the private said. “I thought we only had two companies. I read that in the exercise parameters.”

“Well, the parameters lied.” Miller smiled. “You can’t trust the planners. Overwhelming force is a bitch. And war is hell.”

Corporal Miller’s team jogged quickly down the riverbed, stopping every hundred yards or so to check the GPS and reorient. Two platoons followed, tramping wordlessly in the dust. In twenty minutes they had closed to within 500 yards of the target. The sky to the east was fully orange now. In another twenty minutes it would be light out. The time to strike was now.

Corporal Miller hissed into his microphone: “Captain, sir, we have not encountered any bogies. No ambushes. No sign of them.”

The captain’s disembodied voice crackled over the walkie: “They’re waiting for a frontal assault. Proceed as discussed. Over.”

Miller walked back along the line of Marines stretched out a hundred yards behind him, and tapped the fire team corporals, telling them each the same command: “You know the drill. Flank the objective. Wait for gunship fire suppression. Then take the position.” He walked back to the head of his team.

“Let’s go.”

Corporal Miller broke his men into a full run as they circled the encampment along the bottom of the dry riverbed. Using his GPS as a guide, he spread his men out around the objective, one man every twenty yards or so. When he reached the far edge of the bed, 180 degrees opposite the rest of the company, with the encampment between them, he dropped down and called in to his captain. “We’re in place and ready for air support.”

“Roger that. Three minutes.”

Miller settled down to wait. He’d barely had time to sip his water and check the night scope on his carbine when he heard the telltale thudding of the helicopter rotors. The Cobras, two of them, roared up from the ocean, and hovered, thirty feet off the ground, just beyond Miller’s view. Miller popped up from the riverbed, raised his binoculars, and took his first real look at the objective.