Promises to Keep Read online

  Promises to Keep

  By

  Nikki Sex and Zachary J. Kitchen

  Copyright 2013 by Nikki Sex and Zachary J. Kitchen

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgements

  If we’d tried to do this all on our own, it wouldn’t have been half as good. So a very big thank you to our Beta readers, Trish, Mike, Faye, Sheree and Larry.

  Also to Traci Roe, our eagle eye proofreader.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26.

  Chapter 27.

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29.

  Chapter 30.

  Chapter 31.

  Chapter 32.

  Chapter 33.

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35.

  Chapter 36.

  Chapter 37.

  Chapter 38.

  Chapter 39.

  Chapter 40.

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42.

  Chapter 43.

  Chapter 44.

  Chapter 45.

  Chapter 46.

  Chapter 47.

  Chapter 48.

  Chapter 49.

  Epilogue.

  Chapter 1.

  “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

  —Robert Frost

  FALLUJAH, IRAQ

  Jack felt, rather than heard, the distant explosion.

  The sensation of a slight push on his eardrums and a sickening shift in his gut registered as the pressure wave passed through him, an instant before the familiar, chilling noise. The distant rumble slowly rose to a crescendo before rolling away. It sounded as large as it was faraway.

  Small bombs were quick—sharp and crisp like a Fourth of July firework.

  The big ones were more like a force of nature.

  Shit.

  Jack was already tired. Bone-dead tired. Stare-at-the-wall-and-forget-who-you-are tired.

  As the only ER doc this side of Fallujah, Iraq, Jack M. Curren was stretched thin from long hours and hard work. He and a handful of corpsmen—who everybody outside the Navy called medics—took care of an entire battalion of Marines.

  Corpsmen sewed up cuts, passed out antibiotics and did their damnedest to get the guys under their care out of there alive.

  The ebb and flow of insurgency caused Jack some busy days and some easy days. By this point today, he'd already been up and working for more than thirty-six hours. Given the latest blast somewhere in town, he'd be up for many more hours to come.

  Dammit to Hell.

  Jack pulled himself up off the floor where he'd been sitting with his back against the wall, holding a bottle of water in his hand. Wearily, he stood up. He’d have to make sure Chief Whitley knew there'd be incoming. Knowing Whitley, he'd already be on it.

  Shit.

  "Chief?" Jack called, as he shuffled to the tent that served as both exam room and triage center.

  It was hot in the desert this time of year. Oppressively hot. Strip naked and still find no relief hot. Start sweating the moment you get out of a cold shower hot. It was the kind of heat that tested tempers, strained testosterone levels and put everyone on a slow, irritable boil.

  All of the men in his little team wore the same lightweight uniform when in their small, secured area of town: olive drab T-shirts, shorts or fatigue trousers and boots.

  His boots were no longer the light tan they were when brand-new. Spilled blood had turned them splotchy with rust and maroon stains. The older the blood, the darker the splotch.

  Today his boots had very bright, very red new splashes on them.

  Chief Whitley was the highest-ranking enlisted man and Jack's right hand man. Chiefs’ ran the Navy, and they both knew it.

  "Yeah, I heard it boss," Whitley said as he strode toward him.

  Chief kept his head shaved and ran over it with a Bic razor every morning, no matter what. Drops of sweat ran down his bald skin and into his eyes. His hairless scalp—usually a light mocha color but was now burnt into the deepest, darkest black—glittered, shining in the sun.

  "Screw me blind; can't they ever give it a rest?" He raised his worn and weathered face to the cloudless blue sky. "Give us a break, you cock-eyed bastards."

  "Haji doesn't take weekends off, not one. It must be their union."

  "If they had a union, they'd only mess with us eight hours a day," replied Whitley, looking off into the horizon. "Yep. There it is, right over there."

  Jack followed his gaze and saw the cloud—a black, oily smudge billowing up between the concrete buildings of Fallujah proper. "Down by the train station, it looks like."

  "I guess so," Whitley sighed. "Well, better get ready for more customers...Tony!"

  One of the other corpsmen popped his head around the corner. "I heard it, Chief. I'm pulling out more gear, right now."

  "Everybody on deck?"

  "Everybody but Wynn. He went out with the last patrol."

  “They should be back soon, I hope. I think we’re going to need him.”

  Bob Wynn, Jack thought. Nice kid, but too damned green and gets into trouble—nothing serious. He's a slacker at times, but he goes way past that extra mile with injured soldiers. Good hearted. Might make a decent corpsman yet.

  Claxons wailed in the distance as the men began gearing up. Jack was upfront with three of the corpsmen, stretchers and IV poles at the ready. He was the first line, determining who was hurt and how badly.

  Jack knew that life and death depended on his decisions. It was all about triage. Small wounds waited. Life-threatening ones were stabilized as best they could and then flown out on the choppers.

  Treat 'em and street 'em.

  In a few minutes, several HUMVEEs pulled up. When the driver of the lead vehicle got out, Jack recognized him instantly. It was the patrol that had been sent out that morning.

  Dammit. It's our guys.

  "What happened, Lieutenant?" Jack asked the driver.

  The young officer grimaced, pain evident on his dusty face. "We were coming back into camp when some son of a bitch set off an IED, right in the middle of the convoy. The bastard was watching and he'd waited until he could get most of us. One truck's gone, completely gone, and we've got casualties in the two vehicles behind me. Everybody else is back there, securing the perimeter."

  "Big one?"

  "Shit, it was big. I'd guess a bunch of old artillery shells with gas cans piled on top of them. Fuckin' fire everywhere."

  "Damn." Explosives were bad enough but Jack knew from painful experience, when flammables like gasoline or diesel oil were added to an IED, it created an even bigger world of hurt.

  "Let's get 'em out!" Jack’s urgent order rang above the general conf
usion.

  Marines rushed to pull their injured comrades out of the trucks. Jack ran from man to man to see how badly they were hurt, with the Lieutenant right at his side.

  The first guy's head was lolling to the side with a large shrapnel wound in his scalp. He was obviously dead. Jack took a few seconds to check for a carotid pulse.

  Yep. Probably never knew what hit him.

  "Take him over there," he ordered the Marines who were holding him. They looked at him blankly. He pointed to an empty, shaded area. "Take him over there, out of the way and cover him up. Don't drop him."

  They obeyed swiftly and silently, but Jack caught the fear in their eyes. He wondered briefly if that had been their first run in with a dead man, up close and personal.

  It's fucked up, but they gotta learn sometime.

  Jack tugged the Marine Officer's Jacket. "Say, where's your Corpsman?"

  The Lieutenant pointed at the last HUMVEE

  It’s just like that knucklehead Wynn to goof off when we've got work to do.

  Jack ran over, ready to give Wynn an ass chewing. He was trying to understand why he’d be sitting in the truck when there were hurt Marines all over the place. He pulled up short as the door opened and a young Marine in full battle gear pulled something off the seat and into the dust.

  At first, Jack thought it was some sort of pile of charred up gear the men had salvaged from one of the bombed out trucks.

  Then he saw the boots. It was a man, a charred up man.

  The burned man’s boots were American made, but that was the only thing he could identify of the charred human wreckage. Jack had found his missing corpsman.

  Just then, he wished he hadn’t.

  Chapter 2

  "Doc got hit," the Marine said flatly, as if in a daze.

  "Doc" was what Marines called their Corpsmen, the trained medics that went out with them on missions or assisted the doctor at base camp.

  As Jack’s worst fear was confirmed, his pulse—already speeding—kicked into overdrive. Only once before had he seen a man burned to this degree, and Jack still had nightmares about it.

  Being burned alive was his own particular, wake-up-screaming, night terror.

  "Dammit, Wynn," Jack breathed. "Help me lift him," he said to the Marine as he bent down.

  When Jack reached for him, he almost recoiled from the smell coming off of the man’s body. Wynn blindly jerked his arms back and forth, trying to make contact with someone, anyone.

  Jack flinched when his wounded corpsman touched him. He couldn’t help it; his stomach was roiling. It took all his effort not to throw up.

  Cloying and oily, the overpowering scent of burned flesh mixed with gasoline flooded Jack's nose and throat. He spat on the dirt, trying to get the awful taste out of his mouth.

  Wynn coughed. "Help me, guys—you gotta help me..."

  Wynn didn’t sound panicked or in pain. He spoke slowly and carefully, like a boxer fresh out of the ring—the kind that’s taken way too many hits to the head. Some sort of enthusiastic prizefighter, whose manager threw in the towel far too late.

  Jack swallowed hard and murmured back, "You’re gonna be OK, buddy. We got you. We got you now."

  "My mom's gonna be pissed," he said.

  A primal, instinctive response, Jack reflected on how often wounded soldiers, no matter their age, always thought of their mom first. It showed how important a mother’s influence was in life. Even bad mothers come into an injured person’s thoughts.

  This young man was no different.

  Calm. Keep him calm.

  "Don't worry. You got your ticket home, right here," Jack answered as he took stock of his young corpsman who’d been an energetic, blond-haired, goofy kid just a few hours before.

  Wynn’s eyelids were gone. Jack found himself looking into two opaque marbles as they stared sightlessly into the distance. His ears were burnt away, as was his nose. Black or white, Jack wouldn’t have even be able to tell the man's race if he hadn't already known.

  "Dammit! Somebody get a stretcher over here!"

  Jack and the Marine gently lay the wounded corpsman down. He talked to Wynn, trying to soothe him.

  "Where you from again, Wynn?"

  "Iowa."

  "Cornhuskers, right?"

  "That's Nebraska. We're the Cyclones." He slurred the words, but other than that he sounded almost normal. If he’d been breathing in during that heat flash he would have been killed instantly.

  "Right, right. I'm from L.A. It's all the same to me."

  "Grew up on a farm."

  Of course you did. Just like in a bad war movie, the innocents are always fresh off the farm.

  "You'll be back there in no time, Wynn."

  "No, I got to get back to North Carolina—that's where I left my girl."

  Instinctively, Jack put a comforting hand on the burned man's forehead. The skin crumbled away in his fingers. Jack could see whitish-gray bone from where living flesh used to be.

  Ah, shit.

  "Sir—I got a kid coming soon. Ain't seen her yet. Laura was pregnant before I shipped out. That's why we got married so fast."

  In spite of the burns, his speech was calm. Wynn displayed no indication of extreme pain; no guarding, no clenched teeth, no moans, writhing or rapid breathing.

  He should have been in agony from the physical damage that he’d suffered.

  Jack recognized the signs immediately. Almost one hundred percent of this man's body was covered in third-degree burns—the worse kind imaginable. With all of his nerve endings seared away, the young Corpsman was literally, feeling no pain.

  This was not a small mercy for the poor bastard… it was a huge one.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Jack forced the anger and frustration out of his voice. "You'll be OK, Wynn. Everything's good. We’re gonna get you fixed up and on the next bird out of here."

  "That's cool. I knew you guys had me." Wynn slurred, trying to smile with what was left of his lips.

  "Relax, we'll get an IV started and I'll help you get ready to go on the next one. OK?"

  "Do what you gotta do, Doc."

  The IV went in quickly with practiced hands, lifesaving fluid began to flow into Wynn's veins—not that his life would be saved.

  "Chief!" Jack stood and scanned the area for Whitley. "We need to call in a MEDIVAC right fucking now!"

  “Already on it.”

  Jack pulled a syringe out of his pocket and turned back to the wounded man. "This will make you feel better," he said as he injected morphine into the IV. "We'll get you out of here soon, I promise."

  Wynn’s body visibly relaxed as the drug hit his bloodstream.

  "You hang tight. I'm gonna see about getting you a ride."

  "Sweet," replied Wynn, slightly slurring his words. "Nothin' but a thing. Goin' home."

  "Yeah." Jack started to leave.

  "Doc?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You gotta take care of something for me."

  "What is it, Wynn?"

  Wynn raised his left hand. "You gotta get my wedding ring to my wife. I lost one the first week we were married. She'll tear me a new one if I lose this ring, too."

  Jack stared at the faded wedding ring on the twisted and scorched hand.

  "No need. You'll get it back to her soon enough. Just relax."

  "No sir," Wynn replied, still slurring from the drugs. "Somebody'll steal it, sure enough." He tried to move, to pull it off, but his fingers wouldn’t work.

  “Let me,” Jack said. He didn't want to see the man struggle, so he eased the ring off for him. "Easy there. I got it." He cringed as large fragments of blackened skin slid off with it, exposing bone. “Don't worry about it. I'll make sure it gets back with you."

  "No." Wynn tried to sit up, his body tense and straining. "Take it yourself. Don't mail it. Don't give it to one of those rear-echelon jerks. You take it. She's got a place not too far from Lejeune. You can give it to her when you get back."

  S
hit. As if I need this kind of responsibility.

  "OK. Sure, dude. I'll take it, myself." Jack slipped it into his pocket and buttoned it in. "I just tucked it away in my top shirt pocket."

  "You promise?"

  "Sure, I promise. Now, lay back and relax, OK?"

  "OK."

  Shit. A dying corpsman and a promise I didn't want to make. Yet Jack couldn’t refuse the young man.

  Especially since I was the one who got him killed him.

  Chapter 3.

  Jack watched until Wynn seemed calmer, not quite drifting off, but the tension in his body had eased.

  “I’ll be back soon, Wynn,” he said. He saw Chief Whitley across the compound and strode over to speak with him.

  "Chopper's on its way, boss. I've got some minor stuff over here. What do you got over there?"

  "Wynn, and he's bad."

  "The crazy-ass kid?" Whitley frowned and spat into the dirt. "Damn. That really sucks. "

  "He's not going to make it, even if we get him on that bird. He's all burned up."

  "Son of a bitch. Sorry, Boss. I'll get his things out of his tent and send them with him."

  "That's good." Jack turned to go back to Wynn's side, stopped, then turned back to Whitley. "Chief?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Did you know that Wynn got hitched before we deployed? His wife's pregnant."

  "No sir. Stupid kids. Some of them get married to the first piece of tail they get. Especially the guys from the sticks. She’s pregnant? That makes this even worse."

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Jack walked back to Wynn and squatted down on his heels beside him. The IV bag was almost empty. He waved another Corpsman over.

  "Why didn't you change this IV bag?"

  The man looked embarrassed. "'Cause Lieutenant LaGuardia said not to."

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. "What? Why?"

  Dwight LaGuardia was a new hotshot doc that had recently come to play over there in the sand box. Young, intense and straight from Hopkins, he was arrogant since he'd only been a doctor for about eighteen months. He was always going on about how superior his training had been at what he called "The Hopper."

  Jack grabbed the Corpsman by the elbow. "Keep the fluids running into him. He'll dehydrate in minutes with those burns if we don't keep pouring it in. I'll talk to Lieutenant LaGuardia."