One September Morning Read Online Free Page B

Blood, most likely. John’s blood? It’s possible, though with Noah’s medical assignment, it could be any number of things.
    Still…as Noah rubs polish into the black leather, Emjay fights off a sickening chill at the thought of one brother cleaning off the blood of another. It seems to make this war too small and personal, and way too close. Beside the boots Noah has laid out his belongings—ammo, desert fatigues, a few canned rations and books, skivvies, and equipment like his rifle, a gas mask, and an NOD, a night operation device, goggles that clip over your helmet.
    “You getting everything in line for the trip back home?” Emjay asks Noah, who nods over one boot.
    Emjay shoots a look to the cot behind him, where John used to sleep. The floor beneath the metal frame is bare. John’s gear is gone.
    “Hey, what happened to John’s stuff?” Emjay shouts to the room at large.
    “Whaddaya think? Chenowith,” Lassiter says, venom on his tongue.
    Lieutenant Chenowith, a West Point graduate, views the army differently than these enlisted soldiers, many of whom came to this career by default. Lassiter worked in a shoe store, Gunnar McGee mowed lawns, Hilliard drove a beer truck till he fucked that up by getting a DUI. Most of the guys in the platoon are here because they have no direction and they need to get out of debt, while Chenowith’s direction has always been to rise up the ranks in the U.S. Army, just like his old man, who was some hotshot in another war.
    “The lieutenant confiscated all of John’s gear,” Doc explains. “Pending investigation. He wouldn’t even let Noah here go through and take out some personal items for John’s wife.”
    “Goddamned army,” Hilliard grumbles over a mouthful of licorice. “They fuckin’ own you, even when you’re dead.”
    Unresponsive, Noah briskly swipes a stiff brush over the toe of one boot.
    Weary to the bone, Emjay shakes his head and stares at the NOD lined up with Noah’s stuff. What the hell happened to his today? Last time he used the night operation device it was working just fine, but today when he lowered the equipment over his eyes, he saw nothing—just blackness. He’d been complaining about it to John when the first shot rang out in the dark warehouse.
    Now he kicks himself for not having working equipment. If the device had worked, he would have seen the shooter. Maybe he would have seen the gunman taking aim, closing in on John. Maybe, he might have saved John’s life.
    His heartbeat picks up, thumping in his ears as he pictures the scene. After the two shots, Emjay had grabbed John’s NOD and soaked up everything around them. That was when he saw the soldier—one of them—walking away.
    A goddamned soldier.
    But John must have seen the guy. That’s why he was yelling that he was a friendly, that he was John Stanton, U.S. Army. John knew who shot him, and it wasn’t some Iraqi insurgent.
    Had the raid of the warehouse been a staged mission? A way for Lieutenant Chenowith to get rid of John so that the media would stop dogging his platoon?
    Crazy theories from a crazy man, but Emjay can’t think who else would have wanted to kill John. He removes his helmet and presses two fingers into each temple. Wish I had an NOD in that warehouse, a way to see the shooter.
    Who was it? One of you?
    Did one of you fuck with my NOD? Screw it up so I wouldn’t see your face when you took out my friend?
    His eyes obscured by shades, Emjay studies the faces of the men in quarters. Hard to believe it could be one of your own. Noah and John are brothers, and Doc played football with John back in college, so those three are pretty tight. Antoine Hilliard isn’t the aggressive type. He’s been goldbricking the army since they got here, claiming a back injury so he could stay behind the wire to do paperwork—until a mortar round came through and took out an Alpha Company soldier while he was asleep in quarters. But Hilliard, he and John got on okay.