Fictional short stories - Free Range International

April 20, 2025April 20, 2025

The Foot Sergeant

*Although based on actual events, this is a fictional story of love and forgiveness that seems timely on Easter Sunday. But this is a man’s story, so there is no actual love or formal forgiveness, because that is not how men love each other.

When the 1MC (ship loudspeakers) erupted with “Mass Casualties Inbound,” I hustled down to the hangar bay and started to set up stretcher stands. Ship-to-shore communications were not robust in 1983, so we had no idea how many wounded we would see when the elevator came down from the flight deck. It was just one Marine on a stretcher; the red shirts from the flight deck deposited him in front of us; one of the squadron corpsmen was with him, and as he talked with the surgeon, the other corpsmen and I started prepping him for the Operating Room.

The Marine was a sergeant, but he didn’t look like any of the Marines from Beirut International Airport that we had previously treated. His camouflage utilities were clean and starched, and the boot he still wore was shined. He didn’t smell from weeks without showering, yet he was lying before us, missing a good bit of his right hand and left foot. The battalion aid station had administered morphine before he flew out to us, so although alert, he wasn’t feeling any pain. When I removed his boot, I gasped in amazement. The surgeon and Marine looked at me, so I pointed to the intact foot, saying: “Holy shit, his feet are clean, and toenails trimmed; he doesn’t even smell bad. I’ve never seen a wounded Marine who wasn’t filthy; I think he might be a homosexual.”

I made the joke because the sergeant was starting to freak over the severity of his injuries; getting him focused on something else was a professional move. Back then, you could joke about the gays without fear because the military was male-dominated. Men don’t coddle other men – they teased them, often unmercifully, even if they were friends. The Foot Sergeant was a public affairs Marine assigned to the USS New Jersey and had been riding a CH-53 ashore to do man-on-the-street interviews of the grunts for his ship’s newspaper. The pilot thought he saw an RPG grenade launched at his aircraft as he was landing and dumped the collective, skipping his tail rotor off the deck. The rotor shattered on impact, and pieces flew into the big airframe, hitting the Sergeant, the only passenger. When the sergeant heard my allegation, he protested his innocence as expected, starting a heated back and forth with me until the Anesthesiologist put him under. We were professionals, after all, and knew how to handle injured Marines, even clean ones.

The surgeons trimmed up his lower leg stump and right hand, and both were elevated with Penrose drains inserted in the wound tracts to facilitate proper healing. The sergeant joined another recently wounded Marine in the USS Guam’s seven-bed sick bay. The other Marine was a machine gunner from New York City nicknamed Second Best. He had been wounded in the right leg by First Best, a Syrian machine gunner. They had been dueling for fifteen minutes before Second-Best, who was lying prone behind his gun, was hit by a round that traveled the length of his leg. Although the wound track was long, the injury was minor, allowing Second Best to return to duty in a few weeks for another attempt at his Syrian nemesis.

The Foot Sergeant would be sent back to Bethesda Naval Hospital at some future date. For now, he was stuck on the USS Guam because all our helicopters were ferrying the equipment and entertainers for a Bob Hope Christmas Special to the ship. The lineup included TV stars Brooke Shields, Cathy Lee Crosby, Ann Jillian, and Miss USA Julie Hayek. This would be the last Bob Hope Christmas Show for service members deployed in a war zone, making it a big deal. Not that the Pentagon was admitting Beirut was a war zone, but the loss of over 250 Marines, sailors, and soldiers over the months made it seem damn close to one.

The big show was on Friday, the 23^rd of December, and was impressive. The Marines had flown a few hundred of the grunts in from the beach, and they were given the front-row seats. I had a dirty pair of Marine Corps cammies stashed in my locker for just such an occasion and was hanging out close enough to the stage to be selected to go up and get a Christmas present from Brooke Shields, who kissed me on the cheek on national television. I couldn’t have had a better day before Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, I strolled into the ward to check on the Foot Sergeant and Second Best, who were restricted to their racks while their wounds drained. The Foot Sergeant asked if one of the Hollywood stars or Miss USA would be dropping by, and I said they would, but added, “Not to see you; they want to see wounded Marines, not a closet homo injured by a shitty pilot.” My joke was not well received; instead of calling me foul and filthy names, the Foot Sergeant started to cry. I didn’t know what to do and looked to Second Best for some guidance, but he called me a motherfucker for teasing the Foot Sergeant until he cried. I felt like shit and apologized profusely, but the Foot Sergeant was inconsolable.

I had to make things right; it was Christmas Eve, a time to share joy and love with your fellow man, even those with clean feet and trimmed toenails. I glanced into our two-room ICU and was suddenly inspired. I told the Foot Sergeant to calm down as I was moving him into the ICU, where we could cover him with bloody bandages, hook him up to the EKG, and lure a Hollywood starlet in to spend some time comforting him. The sergeant thought about it for a minute and decided he liked the idea, so I got a wheelchair and moved him over to the ICU.

Pulling Liberty in Haifa, Israel, with one of the Foot Sergeants’ Marine buddies

In 1983, the ICU aboard the USS Guam had an illegal washer and dryer set up in its bathroom. The washer and dryer ran 24/7, except when patients were in the ICU, so the room was hot, and the floor was covered in dust bunnies from the dryer vent. The ICU beds were bigger and taller than the medical ward racks, so the foot sergeant fit comfortably in one, wearing just his pajama bottoms. I covered up his chest and head with gauze, poured a little blood on him, hooked up the EKG monitor, and put an oxygen mask on him without connecting the hose to oxygen (that required doctor orders), so it hung down on the deck.

I sat at a portable stand with a logbook open, mimicking the ICU critical patient watch because the Foot Sergeant looked like a goner. A chair was between the two ICU racks for the Hollywood stars to use if they felt compelled to comfort the fallen warrior. The Foot Sergeant was happy; Second Best was delighted too but bitching about not being in the ICU with us, and I felt like I had made up for teasing the Foot Sergeant until he cried (which was gay, as I pointed out to him later). The stage was set, and we didn’t have long to wait.

The first VIP to wander down the passageway was Bob Hope, who appeared to have had too many celebratory drinks. He was escorted by the Surgeons from Mobile Medical Team 11 and my boss, Dr. Derbert. Fortunately, they, too, had been drinking because they overlooked the missing Foot Sergeant when they escorted Bob Hope to meet with Second Best. I had closed the door to the ICU when I saw them coming, saving the Foot Sergeant for one of the starlets. When I saw a gaggle of news photographers in the passageway, I opened the ICU door and told the Fort Sergeant to stand by. Brooke Shields was the first celebrity to poke her head in, but she immediately decided against entering. Miss USA did the same; looking at the bloody, bandaged spectacle of the Foot Sergeant, she took a pass. But not Ann Jillian. She and her husband immediately entered the ICU, asking how badly the Foot Sergeant was injured. I made up some bullshit about him being shot multiple times when he ran into the no man’s land to rescue a small child in the middle of a firefight. I finished my report, telling the couple we did not expect the Marine to survive the night.

The story moved Ms. Jillian; she had wedged herself into the chair between the ICU beds and was stroking the Foot Sergeant’s blood-matted hair while whispering in his left ear. As I watched, I realized that the Foot Sergeant may not handle this attention well. The room was hot, so he just had a thin sheet covering him; his pulse was starting to skyrocket, which we could hear on the monitor, and suddenly his breathing became labored. That was most likely due to dryer lint clogging the open end of the O2 mask tubing. Then nature stepped in to refute my claims about his sexual orientation. Suddenly, the Foot Sergeant had a massive, rock-hard erection that lifted the sheet covering him like a tent pole.

When that happened, the poor guy turned bright red and began making strange noises as he struggled to breathe. Being a sharp lad, I shouted, “Oh my God, he has a priapism. I’m afraid you must leave now.” I thought I was home free as I escorted the pair to the passageway. But when they left the ICU, they ran into the ship’s doctor, who looked in to see what was happening. “What the fuck is going on in here?” He shouted, probably because he, too, had been drinking.

As the other physicians crowded into the ICU, I explained that some of the corpsmen had been teasing the Foot Sergeant about maybe being gay for some reason. I wanted to make amends for their despicable behavior by getting him some one-on-one attention from a Hollywood starlet. My boss, Dr. Derbert, wasn’t having it; “Bullshit, Lynch, you’re the one who started that rumor when he arrived in the hangar bay, and you’re the only corpsman to tease him about it ever since.” That wasn’t true; one of the other corpsmen occasionally teased the Foot Sergeant, but I was still screwed. The only thing that saved me was the propensity of the American military to cover up embarrassing incidents.

When the officers piled into the ICU, one of the nurses escorted Ann and her husband from the room. He confirmed to them that the badly wounded Marine would probably not survive, while Dr. Derbert read me the riot act. The medical men then gathered in a scrum to get their story straight before heading to the bridge to report to the Captain what had happened. When everyone cleared out of the ICU, our charge nurse, Frank, stood there looking at me with a wry smile. He was a good man, and we got along well, but I was still surprised by his following comment.

“Look at the bright side, Lynch; you got the physicians so pissed off they didn’t notice the washer and dryer. Your illegal laundry is safe for the time being.”

That was a big deal; clothes washed in the ship’s laundry returned damp, smelly, and wrinkled. If I had been responsible for losing our machines, I might have been even less popular with the crew. My new reputation for being the guy who took advantage of Ann Jillian’s kindness and sympathy was bad enough.

At Captain’s Mast, the skipper fined me three hundred bucks for being a dumb ass but suspended half of it after Nurse Frank read a statement from the Foot Sergeant about the impact Ann Jillian had on his flagging morale. The Foot Sergeant was a stand-up guy, and we stayed in touch. He married and left the Marine Corps for the big leagues in 1990. In 1992, he won a Pulitzer while writing for the New York Times. Then the son of a bitch got leukemia and died in 1995. I don’t think I ever cried as hard as I did the night his wife called to tell me. The fucking Foot Sergeant was a good man, and It’s been lonely growing old without him.

December 24, 2023

Burn Notice

This is one in a series of fictional short stories that I’ll be posting in the ensuing weeks. Like all good fiction there is enough truth in the stories to include pictures, which I believe is an interesting modification of the fictional short story genre.

The heavily armed American bumped along the Lashkary Canal road at the wheel of an old Toyota Hi Lux heading south into the vast Dasht-e Margo (Desert of Death). He watched the not-so-bright lights of Zaranj, the capitol of Afghanistan’s Nimroz province recede in the rearview mirror. His Afghan driver and constant companion, Haji jan, an old Taliban fighter who couldn’t see shit at night, was riding shotgun. Zaki, one of his construction project foremen was sitting in the center of the back seat staring pensively out of the windshield. All three of the men wore chest rigs with rifle magazines and smoke grenades, the American also carried a .45caliber Kimber holstered on his chest for easy access. Tor Spay (Black Dog in Pashto) sat behind the driver, the massive black beast was relaxed, panting slowly, as he rested contently. Tor Spay loved being out at night on the hunt.

Migrating sand dunes were a constant menace in this part of the desert. On some nights they moved at 10 miles per hour in gigantic piles of talc fine sand shaped like arrow heads. You could see dozens of them blasting across the flat desert floor when you flew in or out of Zaranj. One of those arrowheads could bury the Lashkary road under a 30 foot wall of sand in less than 15 minutes and they were hard to see when the sand was blowing. Hitting one was like hitting a concrete wall and the buses running between Zaranj and Ring Road at Delaram occasionally hit them at speed causing horrific injuries.

The autumn night was cool and clear, with bright ambient light provided by millions of stars stretched across the high desert sky. Normally beautiful, tonight the ambient light was magnifying the blowing sand making it that much more difficult to navigate. The American was a singleton, part of an off-the-book’s black operation called The Eclipse Group that was loved by ISAF and loathed by the CIA. His source code was Willie 4 which came from the “Free Willie” operation a few years back that involved rescuing a well-known reporter from even better-known kidnappers. He had not done much on that operation because the reporter self-rescued, but his participation landed him a meeting with The Old Man at his oceanfront home in La Jolla. His presidential pardon for the Iran Contra affair was the first thing you saw when entering the home and the six MG 34 German machineguns in various states of assembly littering his garage added to the ambiance.

The Old Man explained what a singleton was telling him that if he ever got pulled into some sort of agency ass covering operation he was on his own. He then added that if he directed him to participate in such an adventure it was because there were no other options. Wreathed in a halo of cigarette smoke the Old Man had stared hard into his eyes and said, “If you get yoked up, you are on your own; I don’t know you, Uncle Sam don’t know you, you’re fucked; do you understand this, and I want to hear you say it out loud”. He liked his code name; he liked the mission, and he liked the Old Man; he understood and said so.

The Spy was a retired 48 year old Marine who looked to be in his 30’s, he was fit and even with the long hair and two fist beard, penetrating blue eyes and perpetual pleasant smile he still looked like a solider. And now here he was, launching a rescue mission on blind faith that the Old Man wouldn’t send him into the unknown unless it was some sort of national level emergency. The Old Man had skyped him from his villa in La Jolla in a state of high excitement. Being old school, he was certain the NSA couldn’t hack into Skype calls, so he used Skype frequently which was how the NSA knew what Eclipse was up to. Speaking in a hushed tone, staring intently into his laptop which was perched next to his poolside lounge chair, the Old Man told the spy a disaster was unfolding just a few hundred miles from him in Iran.

Dewey explained that the current administration had bragged about a cyber attack conducted by the Israeli’s using the Sextent virus. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden had crowed about the op on national television while claiming credit for it despite having nothing to do with it. The Iranians had responded with a mole hunt that turned out to be child’s play when they discovered the internet-based platform the CIA used to communicate with their agents in the field was a post 9/11 temporary quick fix. Nobody at the CIA ever thought it important to go back and fix the quick fix so their now archaic platform was easily penetrated by the legions of professional grade Iranian and Chinese hackers.

The Iranians had already killed 15 CIA assets; the Chinese had cleared the board of every CIA asset in their country. The agency needed to get their one remaining agent out of Iran with an emergency extract but had nobody positioned to do it. The American was in the position to do something; he could get across the Iranian border with Nimroz province into the uninhabited desert. He had gone over the border before to gather a census of the scores of ancient abandoned walled cities that dot the Dasht-e Margo. The flourishing Persian civilization that once lived in those towns were forced the flee when Genghis Khan dammed the Helmand River turning the productive farmland into a desert. If the Old Man could get his agent and family into the Sistan basin portion of the desert of death then the American could get him over the border and on a plane to Kabul. Inshallah.

They forded the Helmand River easily; the intake dam the American had built the prior summer for the Charborjak district irrigation system took in most of the river upstream. That had caused the Iranians to bitch about not getting their mandated share of Helmand water, which amused the American, but not the USAID field representatives who had funded the project. Once they moved away from the river deeper into the desert the blowing sand abated, and they made good time across the hard-packed desert floor. An hour northeast of the river Zaki’s Icom radio sparked to life; Baloch tribal fighters from the Iranian side of the border were waiting to link up. A red star cluster shot up into the sky marking the stationary Baloch patrol, the American stopped and sent up two green star clusters to signal they were coming in clean.

The American pulled into a small cluster of Ford pickups that had once belonged to the Afghanistan National Police. They were now painted is desert camouflage and sported the markings of the Iranian Border Police. The men inside the trucks, like the American and his crew, wore local shalwar kameez pants and tunics; unlike the American their tunic bottom hems were squared in the Pakistani manner. The American took turns greeting the patrol leaders with a big hug, and three kisses on the cheek because they knew each other well. The American had repaired the irrigation systems the desert Baloch needed to re-occupy the land that the Soviets had driven them off some 30 years prior. The American had kept his word and delivered on every promise he made and that meant something to the desert tribes.

The American produced a claymore bag containing 50,000 US dollars: all of it in Benjamin’s which were immediately stashed in the patrol leaders’ truck without being counted. The men sat around a small campfire drinking chai and smoking cigarettes, the American was staring into the fire while visualizing the linkup in his mind, trying to anticipate how it should go down while inventorying in his head things he should not see like firearms or bulky clothing. The rule of opposites is a powerful subconscious observation tool that humans use instinctively. Thinking about what ‘opposite’ would look like in this context was critical, the American was not going to end up in an orange jump suit on Iranian national television.

At midnight they took off with the main body tucked in behind the point element and flankers dispatched by the Patrol leader to screen their movement to an abandoned walled city identified as EF 595 – C on the satellite imagery that had been provided him by the DARPA funded, burning man loving, humanitarian outfit at the Taj guesthouse in Jalalabad known as the Synergy Strike Force. The claimed they were “prosocial cyberizing in complex combat zones” by running a guesthouse with a bar and nice pool but that was just a cover, they were spooks.

The Baluch patrol leader looked at the imagery and said the target was known as Qala Fath which meant clear water, which also meant it was a frequent stop on the Taliban rat lines running out of both Pakistan and Iran. Clean, clear water was hard to find in the Dasht-e Margo; this was a popular spot and the American wondered how the Old Man had known to send his guy there. They were 45 minutes away and had to move fast, being on the Iranian side of the border when the sun came up was asking for trouble.

The fighting patrol pulled into the eastern entrance to Qala Fath and stopped. Baba D dismounted with his weapons and went alone to the center of the old complex with Tor Spay. He found some steps to sit on, broke a green chem light shaking it good to get the fluorescence going, and threw it on the ground in front of him. He then lit a cigarette and waited, Tor Spay sitting obediently by his side. An old man accompanied by three women stepped out of one of the buildings and approached him. The man asked in English if he knew Jack; the American replied “ Yep”, before adding “I’m from the American government and here to help” then laughed at his own joke. The old man looked confused, the women behind him were shaking, clearly terrified by Tor Spay who was up on his feet looking at the Iranians with interest.

The American stood walking over to the family while asking them to stand still so Tor Spay could meet and smell them which they did with trepidation. Once that was completed he took the massive black dog off his lead and gave him a one word command: “Hunt”. Tor Spay took off like a rocket back towards the area the family was just occupying. He moved like lightening and made no sound at all as he searched the ruins for any signs of uninvited Iranians. He returned ten minutes later looking at the American expectantly for some treats.

They arrived at the American’s safe house in Zaranj, with the dawn. The safe house was across the street from the Zaranj municipal airport which consisted of a runway, an abandoned building, and a resident pack of feral dogs. The house staff had hot chai and breakfast waiting. The American made a pot of coffee and headed outside to the porch to watch the sunrise. The Iranian walked out on the porch to ask for a cup of his coffee. The American smiled and said there was plenty. The Iranian stood there uncertain what to say or do so the American spoke first.

“Look I don’t want to know your name or who you are or how you got to that old walled city in the desert. I’m not from the CIA, they will meet you on the flight to Kabul which leaves in three hours. I would appreciate it if are vague in your description of me, the less the CIA knows about me the better and the less I know about you the better. Both you and the CIA know the Old Man sent me and that is all any of you need know”.

The Iranian relaxed and sat down taking in the spectacular sunrise with the American. “How do I thank you for what you have given my family and I”?

The Spy didn’t look at him saying quietly “You owe the Old Man, not me for your rescue, but when you see him next if you would please tell him Willi 4 deserves a serious cash bonus and a long vacation I’d be much obliged”. The two sat quietly watching the sunrise until Haji jan called them down for breakfast.

At 1100 they left the safe house and drove to the airport gate where they were met by Zaki’s uncle Mohammad, a local mullah who doubled as the airport manager. Mohammad had been the airport manager for 30 years and spoke fluent Russian, Persian, English, German as well as all the local languages of Afghanistan. At 1115 a Beechcraft Super King came screaming down the runway mere feet off the deck which sent a large pack of feral dogs fleeing towards holes in the fence line. Having rid the landing strip of dogs the plane gained altitude and kicked the rudder to starboard (going to its port side would put it into Iranian airspace), came back around and settled on the runway, taxing to an old abandoned administrative building.

The airport consisted of a chain link fence around a single runway with a single entrance gate on the western side. There were no other passengers for this flight just the Iranian and family so the Spy and the ten truckloads of Afghan Border Police sent by Governor Abdul Karim Brahui to secure the airport. The plane did not shut down its engines as Iranian and his family were hustled aboard. He was met by his CIA case officer who apologized profusely for his cover being blown and for failing to give him a burn notice. Interestingly the CIA man did not speak to or acknowledge the American who had rescued them from Iran. The Iranian thanked Allah, for the hundredth time, that the man who had recruited him had not forgotten him. That man had told him 30 years ago that he could never trust the CIA but could always trust him. He had been true to his word.

As the plane taxied down the runway towards freedom, he looked for the American, but he had disappeared. The man was a ghost; he would never see him again, never know his name, and never forget him.