Warlord: Dervish Read Online Free Page A

shit with sugar on top? And maybe if you ask me down on one knee and all sorts a’ shit? Maybe then I’mma still tell you go fuck yourself.”
    “I got you, Gift,” Jason volunteered.
    “Thanks, Jay. You alright. That ungrateful, nappy headed little…” The Gift was trying to get a rise out of Tucker, but the other man didn’t comply.
    As the Gift climbed down the Hescos, Jason clambered up. He settled in behind the sandbags, placing his M-4 aside. From habit he cracked open the feed tray cover on the M-240B and checked the ammo belt. He was comfortable with the machine gun. He’d trained on it and knew what it was capable of. Mounted on its tripod, it had a maximum effective range of eighteen hundred meters. It could spit out six hundred to a thousand rounds of 7.62mm a minute. Satisfied the chain-linked cartridges were fitted properly into the receiver, Jason lowered the tray cover, the latches catching.
    Rudy had been nineteen. Back home, Jason had taught kids almost as old as the kid.
    There were big differences between here and back home. There was no way to compare sitting behind a gas-operated machine gun to sitting in a faculty meeting. There was no common ground listening to the whistle of incoming mortar rounds versus listening to the pledge of allegiance over the PA, between patrolling hostile streets—waiting for a burst of AK fire or the white smoke trailing a rocket—and walking down a polished hallway, Squibs grade book under your arm.
    Rudy had been in the Humvee ahead of Jason’s when the IED went off. After the initial cloud of dust had roiled past, Jason had taken a look at what was left of the Humvee, and he started looking for the kid’s good luck charm.
    Other people were looking for arms and legs.
    Christ, what’s wrong with me? Jason shook his head and rubbed his temples with his gloved index fingers. Yeah, he wasn’t eating like he used to. And his bowel movements were infrequent and uncertain, solid one time, liquid the next. He knew all about the Iraqi ass piss. Nineteen months in this sandbox would do that to you.
    But it wasn’t anything physical getting to him.
    It had to be mental. The suck was enveloping him. This place was getting to him. These people…the hard looks on the young men’s faces. The way the women wouldn’t look at them. The Gift blowing snot out of his nose with his finger on his nostril. The kid all over the road like that last week…
    More and more, Jason found himself retreating inside himself. Thinking of things past, things sacred, things that didn’t deserve to be thought about out here in this godforsaken desert. Playing in the snow with his friends when he was nine years old. Uncle Ritchie and his mom. Aspen and the girls.
    “I hate this dust,” Tucker snarled. “Black man ain’t supposed to deal wit’ dis shit.”
    Big Meech nodded.
    “See, even Meech know what a nigger talkin’ ‘bout. Everywhere this man’s army has sent my black ass— dust ! Springtime in Yongson? Nigga’ up five in the mornin’—everythin’ covered in yella’ dust. Goddamn Mongolian sand, fuckin’ yella’ wind…”
    Jason tuned Tucker out as the other man launched into his harangue about the sand in Korea. He’d heard it before. They all had.
    He looked down upon the dirty, sand swept street and felt grimy. The end of each day wound up with him back in Choo-ville, filthy, sand-encrusted, streaks of dirt on his face where the sweat had streaked a path.
    The sand was everywhere, in everything.
    When you breathed, you inhaled it. It stung your eyes. On the days when the dust and winds were real heavy, Jason figured the guys back in Virginia weren’t seeing much more than static from their precious aerostat.
    He considered the sand coating the Hescos and the M240B. The first time he’d seen a sand storm he’d stared at it, open mouthed. It hung over the city, a draped blanket, sweeping everything under in its path. The way it started, a gust of wind would come