The Valley Read Online Free

was a term Black had once used himself, before he became one.
    It was dark when he emerged into the cooling night. Passing under an aluminum awning he heard another voice calling him. This one he didn’t recognize.
    â€œExcuse me there, sir.”
    He turned and saw the rank. He stopped, glaring.
    Sergeant major is the highest of the enlisted ranks. Sergeants’ sergeants, in for life.
    A favorite sergeant major project is squaring away young lieutenants, whom they generally view as bumbling embarrassments to the officer corps. Black didn’t know this one, but he looked the part. Short, stocky, fiftyish, square chin, mouth a grim line.
    â€œWell, sir, if you don’t mind, you’re just a little crooked here. . . .”
    Black’s own hand slapped hard over his own American flag patch at just the instant he heard the tearing sound of the Velcro coming up. The sergeant major’s iron finger and thumb were momentarily caught beneath his palm. The man’s eyes went wide.
    â€œI do mind, Sergeant Major.”
    Black turned and stalked off into the dark, leaving the flabbergasted old soldier with his mouth hanging open.
    That was dumb.
    The guy would find out what unit Black was in. A sergeant major can find out anything. He would tell the story like Black had struck him, which was basically as bad as punching out a general.
    â€œHey, sir!”
    He ignored the voice from behind him. Some other sergeant who saw the thing, no doubt, coming to do a citizen’s arrest on a lieutenant who’d violated the cardinal rule of always kissing a sergeant major’s ass.
    â€œHey, sir!”
    Heavy hand on his shoulder. He windmilled it off him and spun around in the dark, hands up and ready to shove.
    â€œGET THE FU—”
    Cousins. Standing there wide-eyed in the dark, his face confusion.
    Black felt himself deflate. He said nothing. Just turned around and walked away.
    â€œSorry, Sergeant Cousins,” he mumbled as he disappeared between a row of generators and shipping containers.
    He didn’t stop walking until he got back to the S-1 shop, didn’t stop to talk to the couple of S-1 soldiers who greeted him along the way—didn’t respond to their “evening, L.T.” or return their salutes. He didn’t stop as he weaved his way through the desks and swept up the manila envelope, already on his way back out the door.
    Didn’t even stop, really, as he knocked on his commander’s door, two temporary buildings over. Didn’t wait for the inevitable “Come!” but just strode through as he knocked, envelope clutched in his hand.
    Lieutenant Colonel Gayley, the battalion commander, responsible for the lives and welfare of the unit’s four hundred soldiers, barely looked up from the papers on his desk. He was busy signing something.
    â€œOh, Lieutenant Black. Good. Sergeant Cousins found you.”
    Black blinked.
    â€œHere, have a seat. I’ve got something for you.”
    He gestured offhandedly at one of the two chairs permanently stationed before his desk. Every commander in the Army had two chairs before his desk. He rooted among his stacks.
    â€œOkay, here we go.”
    Gayley located a packet of papers, which he began skimming.
    â€œThis is the thing.”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œYou’re not going to like it.”

2
    B lack had decided a while back that Gayley was not a bad guy, as far as commanders went.
    True, the beating bureaucratic heart of the Army had a slobbering crush on officers like Gayley. Somewhere in a lab at West Point his instructors had mixed him in a bowl, whipping into him the precise proportions of accountability, flawless attention to detail, chipper optimism, and bold cooperativeness, folding in a hardy tolerance for paperwork and a relentless professional ambition, with a dash of tanned physical perfection for flavor. They had tried and failed many times before, but when they poured Gayley