Nicosia, Cyprus 07:00
THE WHOOP-WHOOP OF THE CHOPPERâS blades forbade normal conversation so the five men were silent, each staring out the open doors at the Mediterranean island, but none of them seeing it as anything but the first stop in what would be a long journey stateside and home.
Matt Guerrero squinted against the sun rising in the east, a winter sun that held little warmth, shedding cool January light on the landscape and the situation that awaited him in Columbus, Ohio.
âHey, Lieutenant, what say we jump out and swim the rest of the way?â Lance Corporal Eddie Cash shouted.
Matt grinned. âYou start, Iâll follow.â
All five men chuckled and relaxed from the tense stance theyâd taken upon embarkation from the USS Stennis anchored a mile offshore.
Matt took each of them in. They looked too serious for men who were returning home from the front lines, either on break or for good. Usually the prospect of some fine sex and time off was enough to leave them all smiling like stupid fools.
Then again, this was no ordinary trip for any of them, was it? Not given what each of them faced at home.
Not given what had gone down a month and a half ago that had left one of them facing court-martial.
Matt tried to push aside the somber thought.
Eddie Cash was always the first to break the ice. A good kid who was quick with the wit and even quicker with his M-16. Although at twenty-five he wasnât much of a kid anymore.
Not that there really were any kids in the marines. Whether they were twenty or thirty-eight, like he was, the classification of kid was further away than even home.
Eddie Cash was returning to North Carolina to a woman he barely knewâ¦and the kidâEddieâs kidâshe would bear in a couple of months, a result of a shore leave romance that had ended when heâd shipped back out. Eddie believed with all the gusto of a tried-and-true marine that he loved her. She insisted she didnât love him and wasnât interested in marriage, but had been de-termined to have the child.
Matt pushed back his helmet. He supposed there were worse things. In fact, he knew there were.
He watched Lance Corporal Eric Armstrong slide his M-16 from his shoulder and hold it upright between his large, beefy hands. Hands that had seen more combat in the past fifteen months than Guerrero had seen in his entire first tour of duty almost twenty years ago. While he wouldnât admit it, he knew Eric was thinking about the woman heâd forged an online relationship with, only to have her disappear when he told her he would be on leave and wanted to see her.
Cybersex. Matt shook his head and looked at his own weapon, freshly oiled and ready to go. He supposed it wasnât much different from what he and his then new wife Ana had done years ago with racy handwritten letters to each other. But back then there had been no risk of their missives landing in the wrong e-mail box. And he certainly had known what she looked like and where to find her.
Thoughts of his wife erased the grin from Mattâs face. She hadnât responded to the message heâd left on the answering machine when heâd called to say when he expected to be home. He wondered if she somehow hadnât gotten the message, if the line had gone dead while he was leaving it.
But he was afraid it was his entire marriage that was suffering a long, slow death.
He looked over at Lance Corporal Chris Conrad, the one man heâd met in his years of service that didnât deserve to be called a man much less a marine. He was responsible for the professional pall that hung over them like an impending desert storm. And if Matt had had his way, he wouldnât be on this transport with them.
Mattâs hands tightened on his weapon and he ordered himself to stand down.
He forced his thoughts away from Conrad and shifted his attention to Captain Brian Justice. All Mattâs personal concerns instantly paled in comparison to what he faced.
Justice was by far the toughest out of the group and their supervising officer. Matt recalled one of his lighter moments, when one morning Eddie had filled Justiceâs cereal bowl with shrapnel. Matt had nearly busted a gut laughing when Justice had actually spooned the metal into his mouth and commenced chewing.
But there was nothing funny about what Justice faced stateside. With a court-martial and dishonorable dis-charge hanging over his head, his eight-year career in the marines could very well be brought to a screeching halt.