Open Season by Cameron Curtis (great novels TXT) 📕

says. “Brought in from all over. We’re in here. Women’s quarters, the row across the street.”

I dismount the vehicle and sling the duffel over my shoulder. Koenig leads me into one of the huts. Eight rooms and a toilet facility. The three rooms nearest the door are unoccupied.

“Take your pick,” Koenig says. “Most of this block is empty. Lots of space since the drawdown. More coming free every day.”

I grunt. Pick the spare room closest to the entrance, set my duffel on the floor. There are four racks in the room, two sets of top and bottom bunks. The unoccupied living space is the first tangible evidence I’ve seen of the troop drawdown. I’ve never seen such luxury.

“Nice, huh.” Koenig grins. “Each of the rooms is built for four. The troop drawdown has been so sharp, we each get a private room with space left over.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Come on, I’ll introduce you to the team.”

The first room on the left is still dark. The man inside is asleep. Koenig throws the door open and bangs the wall with his fist. “Hubble, roll out. Briefing at 0800.”

The room on the right is occupied by a young sergeant in digital fatigues. The pixelated camouflage pattern has been determined through testing to provide concealment in a wide variety of environments. He wears a studious look, and plastic birth control glasses. Nerdy army-issue BCGs guaranteed to repel the opposite sex. Secured by a thin black elastic attached to the temple tips.

A homemade bookshelf has been shoved up against one wall. Plywood boards, nailed together. The books are field manuals, texts on electronics, chemistry, and explosives. A cardboard carton on the floor is packed with technical magazines.

“Ballard is our eighteen-echo,” Koenig says. “This is Breed. Civilian contractor.”

Eighteen-echo. A special forces communications sergeant. It is his job to manage our radio lifeline to base.

Ballard and I shake hands. Koenig leads me to the next pair of rooms.

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

Koenig permits himself a thin smile. “The general is persuasive.”

“I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Sergeant Lopez here is a hard-ass,” Koenig says. “Eighteen-delta, our medic. Lopez, this is Breed. Civilian contractor.”

Lopez is in his late twenties. He’s wearing digital camouflage pants and jump boots. Bare-chested and sweating, he sits on the edge of his bunk doing bicep curls. He grunts an acknowledgment. His attention seems fixed on making the tattoos ripple on his biceps and forearms. A fierce hawk has been tattooed across his pecs.

One wall of the room is decorated with a huge poster of a silver-and-gray, 1965 Shelby Cobra. A showpiece in pristine condition. Parked in a suburban driveway. “Lopez likes his cars,” Koenig says.

The captain turns. The doorway to the right is open. A Eurasian man is sitting on the edge of his bunk, cleaning an M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle. He wears shoulder-length black hair under a faded green baseball cap. A cigarette dangles from his lips. He takes a long drag, exhales as we poke our heads into his room.

“I heard of you, Breed.”

“What you hear?”

The man is Japanese, or Korean, with European blood. He puts the rifle down, takes the cigarette out of his mouth, and rises to shake my hand. “I’m Takigawa,” he says. “I hear you are a bad-ass hunter. A legend.”

A firm grip. He’s six-one, solid muscle.

Koenig says, “You’ll work together. Takigawa is our eighteen-bravo, the best sniper we have in-country.”

Takigawa shrugs. “Not much action anymore.”

“Takigawa is holding your gear,” Koenig says. “I’ll leave you for now, be back in an hour.”

Koenig turns on his heel and leaves.

Takigawa puts the cigarette between his lips and lifts a big cardboard carton from one end of the room. Hands it to me. Digital camouflage, boots, plate carrier, chest rig, pistol belt. He leans into a closet and grabs a second M110. Suppressed. Exactly like his own.

“Let’s get this stuff to your room,” he says. “Get you kitted out. Captain tells me they had your sizes on file. Hope you’re still in shape.”

A year spent jogging, and sipping pineapple juice.

I hope so too.

4 The General

Bagram

Monday, 0700 Local Time

Lieutenant General William Anthony’s command is in the same corner of Bagram it was the day I left the army. The number of troops in-country has been drawn down, but the general’s HQ has grown. It’s a secure compound. A fenced-off three-story building inside the wire that protects Bagram. There are two gates, one for VIPs, another for day staff. Koenig drives us to the VIP gate.

The MPs at the gate check Koenig’s ID and my civilian contractor badge. They log us in, wave us through. Koenig parks the vehicle, and we march into the building.

I recognize the old HQ. A huge concrete office block has been grafted to it. “I don’t get it,” I say to Koenig. “They’re drawing down the troops, and the HQ space has tripled in size.”

“That’s right,” Koenig says. “As conventional troop strength is drawn down, we expand unconventional forces and air power. Most of our operations these days are air strikes. Tactical aircraft or UAVs. This building is devoted to UAV command and control.”

“I thought we direct UAVs from California and Texas.”

“We can, but it’s more convenient to do it from the same time zone.”

An elevator whisks us to the general’s command suite on the third floor.

The pretty first lieutenant in the antechamber is exactly what I expect from the general. Attractive and toned, she looks like a storehouse of vigor. She’ll be promoted to O-3, Captain, spend six months in this billet, and move on to another command. Make way for the next bright O-2 looking to test herself against the general’s rigid standard.

The woman checks me out. She obviously knows Koenig and is not impressed. She studies my fresh digital camouflage, notes the absence of unit patches and badges of rank. Healthy, vigorous women are outnumbered by men at Bagram. Without embarrassment, the O-2 checks out my rank on the Man Buffet. The general will have to watch this one.

“Captain Koenig,”