Page 53 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
We rumbled on in silence for a bit, as the incline steepened.
“So yeah, I’d like to think we brought Jaxon back, so to speak,” Oakley finished. “Not all the way back, maybe, but eventually he learned to trust again. And we trusted him, of course. With our very lives.”
“Just as you trusted Sarge,” I noted.
It was meant as a casual statement. But it caused Oakley to stiffen, visibly.
“All the way,” he said, his voice lower and tinged with sadness. “Until the day he gave his life forus.”
~ 30 ~
CAMRYN
The fire crackled, and my feet were toasty. My whole body was toasty, really, although that probably had more to do with me being halfway through my third glass of wine.
“So Sarge went over the hill,” Oakley repeated again, “before any of us could stop him. Tore the M2 straight off the mount. Last thing I saw was the belt, flowing over his shoulder like a ribbon. It was still dangling behind him, as he disappeared into the smoke and chaos.”
“He took a lot of rounds with him over that hill,” Jaxon agreed solemnly. “And he used every damned one of them.”
I don’t know what made them want to tell the story, but I was finally getting it. It could be the lateness of the hour, or the whiskey, the general level of comfort the boys felt around me by now. Personally, I thought they just needed to get it off their chests. The story was far too fantastic, and too important, to be kept only amongst themselves.
“It was hard to hear anything over all the gunfire and grenades,” Oakley went on. “But Sarge had told us to stay. And not just told us, he’d ordered us to hold position. Almost as if he knew what came next.”
I didn’t have to ask; I knew they’d eventually tell. Besides, it was better for me to sit there, quietly absorbing their story, than to interject.
“We ran to follow, of course,” said Ryder, “once we knew what was happening. But Sarge was one step ahead of us. He’d kicked us back, scattering our things. He screamed in our faces too, louder than I’d ever heard him. And I’d heard the man scream ten thousand times.”
“He knew,” Oakley acknowledged. “He knew, and he saved us.”
Their heads bowed, and for a few long seconds the room went silent. The crackle of the fire brought us back to reality however, as Jaxon cleared his throat.
“The explosion was tremendous,” he said coldly, “and so bright it blinded us. It was also so loud, our ears didn’t work right for the better part of a month.” He gnashed his teeth. “When the smoke cleared, we found him on the other side the berm. Sarge was in the middle of their trench, lying atop a pile of rebel corpses. Most of them had been shredded by machine gun fire. The last few were covered in plunging knife wounds.”
“Easy,” Oakley admonished his friend, his eyes shifting my way. But I shook my head.
“No need to water it down for me,” I murmured. “Please. Tell it like it happened.”
“Point is, he took one for us,” continued Jaxon. “Somehow he knew about the charges they were about to set off. He sacrificed himself. He saved the squad.”
Ryder was on the other couch, feet up, hands folded on a pillow behind his head. He nodded, thoughtfully. “Sometimes, I think something like this was always his exit plan. Like he knew he’d never get out.”
“But he built this place,” I pointed out. “He obviously wanted a life here.”
“He did,” affirmed Oakley. “And I think that’s why he took the diamonds.”
My wine glass was paused against my lips. I’d stopped drinking mid-sip.
“See, Sarge was old-school,” he continued, this time shifting his attention toward me. “The man went to war all the way back during Desert Storm. He was an officer at one point, but got demoted back to Sergeant Major and never rose through the ranks again. He always told us it was his own choice; that he made a better grunt than a desk jockey. Rumor had it though, back in Kuwait, somethingbigwent missing during his watch.”
“Diamonds,” Jaxon took over. “Big, clean stones, too — all of them supposedly raw, and uncut. They disappeared from the broken palace of a Kuwaiti sultan, during a time Sarge’s men presided over the ruins.”
The fire crackled steadily. The flames lit the darkened room with their orange glow.
“And you think Sarge, uh, ended up with them?” I asked carefully.
“You mean took them?” grinned Ryder.
“Yeah. That.”
