No Good Deed by David R Bishop & J Scott Cordero

Author:David R Bishop & J Scott Cordero [Bishop, David R & Cordero, J Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: My Little Island in the Ether Publishing
Published: 2022-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

The Blackhawk helicopter banked left, and the contents of Drake’s stomach lurched upward. Drake swallowed hard and grimaced from the burn in his throat. He looked over to Paul who lay relaxed against the bulkhead, eyes closed, head bobbing, headphones blasting what Drake couldn’t hear, but he was pretty sure was The Devil Went down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels or Swamp Music by Lynard Skynard. Both tapes were as worn out as his tape of The Big Red One.

It was Paul’s ritual and Drake marveled at his ability to sleep on a helicopter. Drake could never sleep on his way to a mission. He was always too hopped on adrenaline to sleep. His ritual was to swallow lunch back down, marvel at Paul sleeping, and think back over their past together in the Service.

Three weeks after he walked out of his parents’ dinner party, they’d caught the six A.M Greyhound bus from New Orleans bound for Columbus, Georgia and Fort Benning, the home of Army Infantry. Drake had thought Louisiana had been hot and humid, but apparently Georgia or the military, or both, had a stock pile of humidity stored at Columbus. Humidity and red clay.

As they stepped off the bus at the Greyhound station Drake opened his mouth to ask Paul how they’d get to the base or post or fort, whatever it was called, when a man dressed in Army fatigues and a sour face pointed at him and Paul and threw a thumb over his shoulder at the school bus painted green parked behind him. How this man knew who they were he wasn’t sure. In the weeks to come, Drake would become convinced all NCOs could read minds and knew the future better than any fortune teller.

On the bus, twenty young men sat all looking the same: a shot of exhilaration chased by a pint of dread. They found a seat together and sat down, remaining quiet. A few more dreadfully exhilarated young men climbed onto the bus and did the same. Finally the sour faced man jumped on the bus, tapped the driver’s shoulder, and turned and faced forward as the bus stuttered away from the curb.

Slowly, the tension, mixed with the feeling of being on a school bus headed for a field trip, loosened the young men’s tongues and they began to talk, introduce themselves, even laugh. The soldier standing beside the driver never sat or turned around. They were all complete non-entities to him. As the bus passed through the main gate, the conversations died down and every eye was gazing out the windows trying to take in every sight.

The bus squeaked to a stop and the soldier jumped out as the bus driver opened the door. The young men got up and started to exit the bus as a man who looked more like a shaved gorilla in fatigues marched up to the bus. His arms, the diameter of Drake’s waist and painted with tattoos, reached up and grabbed the

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