David Golemon - Ripper

He looked over at Sergeant Major Reynolds and winked.

“Major, I have one hell of a stupid question for ya,” Reynolds said in his Texas drawl.

“And what pray tell can that be Sergeant Major Reynolds?” Garcia said as he studied the other thirty men inside the cavernous hold of the C-130J. He saw that most of them had their eyes closed, bored as always with the “getting there” portion of a mission.

“Who in the hell is in charge of naming these missions? I mean, come on, my fifth-grade niece could come up with something better than this.”

“Well, according to my sources Sergeant Major, this one comes from the very top.”

“Besides the name of the mission, I also noted a name that wasn’t entirely blacked out on the mission parameters. I guess it got through some egghead sensor.”

Major Garcia turned away and saw that no one else was listening over the drone of the four powerful engines.

“I saw that myself. I’m glad most of these boys are too young to have noticed and recognized the name, or maybe they just didn’t care. But it did add a little element of surprise to the game.” He looked over at the smaller man from Texas. “I mean, if the man that trained most of the officer corps in this outfit is in deep shit, it definitely means we’re not headed for a picnic.”

The sergeant major nodded his head and adjusted the oxygen tank on his back. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep but leaned over and said, “Yes, sir, if the Jack Collins I know is in trouble, there must be one large shitstorm where we’re goin’.”

The huge aircraft increased power as it slipped out of its planned flight path and climbed with its four engines screaming.

Operation Nerdlinger was nearing the sand and scrub of Nellis Air Force Base.

Jason Ryan was feeling the course of light-dose morphine as it rushed through his system. He watched as the duty nurse administered the injection through the IV line attached to his right hand. For the first twenty-four hours the doctors had been worried about infection setting in, but since his three bullet wounds had been treated right away by the attending physicians in Laredo, that fear had been laid to rest very quickly. With the drugs running through the naval aviator’s body, he had decided he hadn’t felt this good since his Annapolis days. And the nursing staff was on the receiving end of that feel-good situation.

The young nurse looked down at the dark, short-haired Ryan and shook her head as she finished administering the morphine into the IV tube.

“Look, if you persist, I’ll write your fantasies down on your chart and then you’ll have to deal with the nurse we call Ratchet.”

“That doesn’t sound too good,” Ryan said as the warm feeling started streaming through his head. “Did you know I was shot taking down the largest drug dealer on the American continent?” he said as his hand wandered down to the nurse’s leg and “accidentally” brushed the white nylon stocking.

“You are so humble,” she said as she took a step back.

“Yeah, that’s me, humble and shy.”

She shook her head and wrote down her injection on his chart. “With any luck to the staff, you can leave here in a couple of days.”

“Ah, come on, I don’t want to go back to work. You don’t know my boss like I do.”

“I’m sure he knows you though,” she said as she left the room with a smile. Jason tried to sit up in time to see her hindquarters but was too late. Instead of lying back down he reached over and grabbed the cell phone from his table. He had one of the younger nurses buy it for him in the gift shop and actually talked her into purchasing minutes for him on the promise that they would all be used talking to her. He opened the cover and dialed the security cover number for the Group. As the TV in the corner of the room showed some of the devastation wrought by a massive explosion south of the border in Nuevo Laredo, Jason smiled. His smile faltered somewhat when there was no completion to his call other than a recording administered through the office of the National Archives. The United States government offices you are trying to reach are temporarily experiencing technical problems with their phone lines. Please try your call again at a later time.

“What?” he said as he tried again.

After receiving the same message again, he punched in Will Mendenhall’s cell number he knew by heart. Again there was no answer as his call went straight to voice mail.

“Ah, to hell with it,” he said as he set the phone down and changed the channel on the television. After perusing the channels three times he snapped off the set. He again picked up the cell phone and tried Will and the complex once more. He closed the cover in frustration.

“Damn, this isn’t right,” he mumbled. He again opened the cell phone cover and dialed a number he had only used one time — Jack Collins. “Goddamn it!” he cursed as the colonel’s phone also went straight to voice mail. The hair on the back of the aviator’s neck rose as he dialed one number that was always answered, Charlie Ellenshaw’s. As he listened, the phone rang ten times before he heard Charlie’s voice on the recording. You’ve reached Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw the third. If I’m not answering, that means I either don’t want to talk to you, or my music is so loud I can’t hear the phone. Either way, call back later.

Jason’s face turned whiter than his lack of blood could account for. He swallowed as he realized that something was wrong. He tossed back the blanket and sheet and then sat farther up in bed. He started to place his legs over the side, became lightheaded, and then paused while his equilibrium settled back down into its rightful place. Jason tried to reach over and pull himself to the right with his left hand, but the connected IV pulled his hand back with a slight stab of pain. He cursed and yanked the needle out of his vein, tossing it to the floor. Then he slowly placed his right foot on the cold tile of the floor and hissed. His head felt fuzzy, but he persisted in getting his left leg off the bed. As he braced himself as best he could, he used his ass to push up and off the bed. He felt a sharp stab of pain from the bullet wound closest to his heart. It had passed through cleanly between his heart and lungs, and the doctors said he had been far more than just lucky that there hadn’t been any more significant damage — that it had been a small miracle.

Right now Ryan wasn’t so sure about the lucky part as he realized he had never felt this horrible in his life, even after ejecting from an F-14 Tomcat over the Pacific Ocean five years before at over a thousand miles per hour.

After holding on to the bedrail for as long as it took for his head to clear, he realized that his ass was hanging out of the back of his hospital gown. As he half turned he saw his reflection in the mirror attached to the bathroom door. He saw the white of his butt and tilted his head. “Not bad,” he mumbled as he attempted his first step. He actually felt that things were going well as he raised his right leg and stepped. The one thing he didn’t realize until too late was the fact that he raised the right leg just a little too high and brought it down where he thought the white tile was located. He was wrong — about a foot off as a matter of fact. If he hadn’t been able to grab the rail in time he would have flipped completely over.

“Okay, let’s try that again,” he muttered.

Still holding the bedrail, Jason cautiously tried again. This time his right foot came down where the estimation of distance and space had been calculated. Then as he removed his hand from the bed he tried it again, this time with the left foot. Success. Moving at a snail’s pace he reached out and again calculated correctly as he grasped the doorknob to the closet. He took a deep breath and waited for his heart rate to slow and his mind to scan his wounds for any leaking that may have happened. There was none.