Page 4 of Grissom
Grissom and Karras had stayed put while Hauser and Anderson squatted alongside Halliway. “A fuckin’ French drain?” had hissed out of Anderson. “Out here? In the desert?”
Quietly, Captain Hauser had stuck a gloved hand deep into the hole up to his shoulder and jerked out one end of a twelve-inch-diameter plastic perforated pipe stuffed full of small arms, cell phones, and a tangled mess of—
Incoming! Suddenly, they were taking fire from somewhere in all that nothingness behind the schoolhouse. Thumper charged the attackers, who Grissom still couldn’t see. They seemed to be shooting high and wide, not aiming to kill as much as to annihilate the schoolhouse. That was when a bullet slammed into his chest and knocked him on his ass. He’d assumed it had hit his tactical vest. He’d shaken it off. Kept covering Thumper’s fluffy butt.
When another spray of bullets went wild over his head, years-worth of muscle training had taken over. Grissom had jumped to his feet and nailed the two-foot-high scrub bush where most of that wild-assed gunfire had been coming from. It didn’t register until much later how small that bush was, or how narrow a grown man’s shoulders had to be for him to hide behind a foot-wide sprig of dusty branches.
Karras took out the other shooter, and Thumper—poor, poor MWD Thumper—had earnestly ripped the third bastard apart.
Like the good attack-trained dog she was…
Had been…
Would never be again…
Everyone there saw the limp, bloodied, and too small to be a man’s arm she’d dragged back to her handler, her tail held high like a flag. She’d done her due diligence—like she’d been trained. She’d ended the assailant, and she was proud. She’d come back for the rubber ball in Halliway’s pocket. Her reward for doing a good job…
For being a good girl…
Only then did Grissom realize the shooters were three malnourished ten-year-old boys, who’d looked more like they were seven. Three boys who’d been bullied into shooting American soldiers by Syrian terrorists who’d threatened to kill their mothers if they hadn’t obeyed.
Intelligent, gun-smart Americans understood the difference between select-fire assault rifles and machine guns. But ten-year-old, frightened kids, armed with bump-stock modified AKs, only knew how to squeeze triggers. Three little boys, damn it. They’d gone down like pins in a bowling alley. No bravado. No belligerent screams of ‘Infidel!” They’d just dropped, their tiny bodies torn apart by the best of America.
Caught up in the somber reverie, Grissom fantasized how, if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t’ve returned fire that day. If he’d known who the shooters were, he would’ve shot to disable the AK, not to kill a child. But he couldn’t turn back time, and he hadn’t shot to disable anything. He’d returned fire to save his men, and bottom line, he’d do it again. He didn’t need forgiveness for killing a kid. A mother’s son. A father’s pride and joy. Forgiveness would never be in the cards. He just needed to put the past behind him and move on.
Shaking his head at the utter injustice of war, Grissom knew he’d carry the grief from that tragedy the rest of his life. Thumper went home with Halliway when he’d processed out. She was living the life on his ranch in Texas, like a good WMD should. But Grissom had gone back to his life of hell with Pam, and he’d be damned if he’d carry the pain of losing his boys, too.
Lifting his face to the shower’s spray, he ran the tiny bar over the rest of his body and wished the water could rinse the confusion out of his head, as quickly as it got rid of the soap suds. Cranking the tap as hot as it could turn, he let the stinging heat work his shoulder muscles, then turned and offered his back for the same harsh treatment. He was a rubber band stretched so damned tight that every muscle and bone in his body hurt. Had for days.
Absent-mindedly, he fingered the scar in his right pec, the puckered divot beneath the inky tattoo glaring out at the world, left by the bullet he’d received that day. Of all things, the debacle at the schoolhouse happened the same day Tanner was born…
The day Pamela had finally informed Grissom he was a father…
That what they’d done during the one and only alcohol-induced night they’d spent together had produced a child. Even though he knew for damned sure he’d used a condom…
That he’d better plan on marrying her, unless he didn’t care if people called his kid a bastard. Her ugly word. Never his. Not for one second, not for the space of a breath, had Grissom ever regretted the births of either of his boys.
How was that for Karma?
Marrying Pamela was his greatest regret. A barfly who’d zeroed down on any guy in uniform, she was supposed to have been a one-and-done. He’d been drunk off his ass that night. She’d been particularly aggressive, and, okay, good-looking enough, if a guy liked a woman with long, stringy red hair, tight metallic stretch pants, and jugs that had more than filled his hands. Which apparently Grissom must’ve liked that night. Hadn’t taken much for Pam to get him out of his uniform and into her bed.
Waking up in that same bed the next morning was another mistake. He’d rolled out of there as quickly as he’d opened his eyes. He didn’t do breakfasts or mornings after. The one thing he remembered wasn’t the sex, only the condom, which was nowhere in sight the next morning, although he damned well knew he’d suited up the night before. He never went bare, not with barflies or hookers, not even with the occasional woman he might’ve cared for. Or liked. Which were damned few. Which made him wonder if she’d kept the condom. If she’d planned the whole thing.
Barflies and tag chasers were known to poke holes in rubbers to trap soldiers into marriage. Or to inseminate themselves with what a guy left behind in that latex trap—if he’d been smart enough to bring his own condom to the party. Either way, she’d gotten what she’d wanted. The first chance Grissom had, he’d flown back to the States and asked her to marry him. That was the day he’d finally met his firstborn. Pam hadn’t given their tiny baby boy a name yet, hadn’t even filled out the form for his birth certificate. So Grissom named the beautiful child in his handsafter his Army buddy, Captain Tanner Eli Gunn. It was a strong name. Grissom took care of the paperwork that made Tanner legally his son, and then, like it or not, Grissom made Pamela his wife. God, he hated that word.She’d never been a wife. More like a soul-sucking leech who’d preyed on stupid, horny men like him.
Where are my boys? What’d she do with them before she died? To them?
A fierce breath of determination sent the steam in the stall billowing up to the vent in the ceiling. There was no curtain or shower door. No lock to the head. Not like Grissom cared. If some nurse or doctor needed to invade his privacy to make sure he wasn’t hurting himself or jerking off, let them look. Dumb asses. What hurt was everyone treating him like an incompetent idiot, as if he ever had or would hurt himself. As if he were suicidal. A danger to himself and to others. To his boys.
Shaking his head at all the know-it-alls in the world, Grissom let the past stay where it belonged—behind him. He couldn’t change what happened to those boys in Syria. Sure, it sucked. Always would. But so did his life. The only things keeping him going were his sons.
Turning the faucet off, he hurried through the rest of his abbreviated grooming routine. Towel dried. Raked his fingers over his wet head to keep his too-damned-long hair out of his eyes. Finger-combed his beard so it’d air-dry quicker. Used the tiny sample-sized deodorant standing on the counter by the sink. Because, hey, the damned drawers to the one and only cabinet in the room were painted on, and he had no idea where his jeans and boots were.
As a final salute to the almighty powers in this place, the ones who thought they knew better than him, Grissom ripped the wet towel off his hips and tore it into narrow strips, then braided the strips into a single rope. If the staff in this asylum thoughtthey could, in any way, restrain a man like him, they needed a lesson in creativity. Twisting the rope into a tight, efficient noose, he left it hanging on the showerhead, where any damned fool could’ve hanged himself if he’d wanted to.
People didn’t need height to hang, just gravity and something tight around their necks. From then on, all a person had to do was lean into the act and let gravity take over. Risk-takers who dabbled in the dubious pleasures of autoerotic asphyxiation found out the hard way. Lean into that noose too long and you ended up dead.
Not Grissom. He had two God-given reasons to live. He just needed to find them.
