Punk's Fight (Punk: U.S. Navy Pilot Book 3) by Ward Carroll

Author:Ward Carroll [Carroll, Ward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency
Published: 2022-01-22T20:00:00+00:00

“Ever fired an M-4 before?” Waco asked.

“Not an M-4,” Punk replied. “I have fired an M-16, but it’s been a few years. Why?”

“Because you and me are at the top of the batting order for guard duty tonight. Grab one of those rifles and an MRE and let’s get on it.”

Punk walked over to the rifles piled in the corner. “Does it matter which one I grab?”

“Well, not the one with the melted stock,” Waco said. “The rest of them should all be fine.”

They pushed through the door and Punk gazed up into the night, pleasantly surprised to see stars. The breeze had died; the air was still and cool. He scanned the terrain and saw he could make out some of the contours; it wasn’t as dark as it had been the night before, or maybe his eyes were just working better now after a few hours of rest.

“Where are we going?” Punk asked as he fell in behind Waco.

“This little hill out that way,” Waco said. “It’s the highest point around here.”

Punk’s first steps were a bit sluggish. Although the cuts hadn’t completely lost their sting and his body still ached from his fall down the mountain, the eight hundred milligrams of Motrin Og had given him seemed to be working. After walking a few yards he thought he could keep up with Waco’s quick pace.

“You an outdoorsman, El Cedar?” Waco asked, deftly stepping over a calf-high rock that Punk didn’t notice until he nearly kicked it.

A moment of truth. “Outdoorsman” implied many things to which Punk arguably could not lay claim. The events of his life quickly reeled through his brain, starting with a Cub Scout overnighter and ending with the time he caught a carp using a paper clip and a wad of white bread during Naval Aviation survival training when he was an ensign.

“Sure,” Punk said. “I love the outdoors.”

“Me too,” Waco said. “That’s the best part of this job. Could you imagine being in some nine-to-five bullshit buried in one of them cubicles so deep that you don’t even know if the sun is shining?”

“That would suck, all right.”

“Scares the shit out of me. I’ll tell you that. That would be worse than getting shot at on a daily basis.”

After trudging up the small hill Punk felt winded, much more so than he figured he should have been considering the short distance he and Waco had traveled. He also began to feel light-headed. It had to have something to do with the altitude, he figured, the altitude and maybe the medicine Og had given him. Those pills were Motrin, right?

But just as Punk was about to ask Waco to hold up, Waco leaned his M-4 against a boulder and worked the knapsack off his back. “Come on up here, El Cedar,” Waco said. “You ain’t gonna see no bad guys from down there.”

Punk gathered himself enough to make it the last dozen yards to the top without falling over, and once up there he marveled at how high above the steppe they were for having climbed so little.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.