Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Truett
Eighteen years earlier…
Peering down the scope of my rifle, I used my shoulder to wipe the sweat from my neck. Nothing in my training had prepared me for the suffocating heat of an Iraqi summer. The windows of the dingy apartment had been covered with screens to obscure our presence. An occasional breeze would blow through, offering me a reprieve from the oppressive heat. Those moments were few and far between, so the majority of the time, it felt like someone had replaced my blood with lava.
Ya know, real comfortable shit.
My rickety chair echoed through the room as I shifted my weight, trying to ease the pain in my back. I’d been perched on the edge for so long my ass had fallen asleep.
“Jesus, Cherry. Keep it down. It sounds like you’re having a seizure over there,” Nutz whispered from the secondary window a few feet away.
With five years enlisted, a Ranger tab, and the newest member of one of the most elite reconnaissance teams the Army had to offer, I was far from a cherry. Though, being that it was my first deployment, the nickname came with the territory. Before Cherry, I had been strapped with the wild creativity of “Dubs” since my last name started with a W. Now, I’d be Cherry until the day I retired.
“Shit, my bad. I didn’t realize anyone could hear me with you over there breathing like an asthmatic wild boar,” I deadpanned while continuing to scan the street below.
Focused. Always focused.
The Army didn’t pay me to fuck off, though being in an abandoned apartment with trained professionals who knew to keep their voices barely audible helped when it came to a little banter.
Steve-O joined the conversation from the door at our six, where he was keeping watch on the interior stairwell. “Both of you smell like a fucking wild boar who’s been dead for a week.”
He was not wrong. It had been days since any of us had taken a real shower. With five men in full kit sweating our balls off, it smelled exactly as rancid as one would expect. Possibly worse.
For three days, our team had taken up residence inside that apartment. We had been sent to conduct a low-vis operation on the building across the street. It was a known meeting place for several high-value targets, and we had been tasked with collecting intel on anyone who so much as glanced at the door as they passed.
So far, the operation had been a bust. There hadn’t been a single soul entering or exiting the property. The neighborhood felt like a ghost town with the exception of the occasional elderly local who had been too stubborn to leave their war-torn home.
Long story short, it was as hot as the sun’s asshole, fragrant as a rotting corpse, and boring as fuck.
Otherwise, it wasn’t too bad.
Don’t get me wrong. We’d all have rather been at home with a cold beer and a hot woman, but I could think of worse company than the guys on my team.
As the room returned to a watchful silence, I reflected on the odd family we’d become—not bound by blood but by shared experiences and the unspoken promise to watch each other’s backs no matter what. We leaned on each other during the good times, the really-fucking-good times, and the occasional bad time, which would inevitably turn into the aforementioned really-fucking-good times after we’d attempt to solve our problems by going downtown and drowning them in alcohol. It was something of a tradition for us. And something we were all looking forward to when we got back home. Deployment was dry—the best thing to ever happen to our pickled livers.
Nutz was my brother in every way other than DNA. We’d grown up together. He was older by a few years, but when he joined the Army, it wasn’t long before I followed in his footsteps. His real name was Nathanial, but he’d more than earned his nickname. He liked to play it up that he’d been dubbed Nutz because he was this crazy wild card who should never be crossed. Truth be told, his ball sack had fallen out of his PT shorts one day during sit-ups.
If we were keeping the whole family dynamic going, Steve-O would have been the weird overachieving cousin who made everyone else look bad at the family reunions. If the Army had a school for it, chances were Steve-O had already completed it. The man was a stud. More so in the gym and the classroom than with the ladies. I shit you not, Wyatt looked exactly like Steve-O from the MTV show Jackass. Less charming if that was humanly possible.
He didn’t have nearly as many tattoos as the TV star, but the ones he did have were equally as embarrassing. Like, say, the words “fuck me” he had inked in giant black letters on his lower stomach like his cock was wearing a crown. Yes. I’d seen it. Like it or not, communal showers were a way of life in the military.