SNAFU - A Situation Normal series book one

CHAPTER ONE

“You look like shit.”

Archie Warren sat up on the thin mattress on the concrete bunk and started through the bars at the man on the other side.

“Sgt. Hammer,” he cracked a grin through one side of his face. “Didn’t they tell you not to speak to a superior officer like that?”

Hammer grinned back.

He was a wide man, from broad shoulders that stretched the seams of his cobbled together uniform to thick thighs that would have looked at home on a football field.

“What I hear is you ain’t so superior anymore? What did they bust you to this time? You make it back to butterbars?”

Archie shook his head and motioned to the narrow six by eight concrete cage that penned him.

“I think I’m looking at home for now,” he said. “At least until the Lick get here.”

Hammer turned his broad face and spit on the floor.

“Fucking Licks,” he snarled. “You think we got enough to fight without fucking fighting each other.”

Archie shrugged.

“I think we’re always going to fight each other,” he said. “Trouble is who is still standing after the first punch is thrown.”

Hammer glanced further up the hall.

A second later, bootsteps echoed on the floor. Two sets of boots from the sound of it, Archie thought.

Hammer moved back and stood at attention as a white haired gentleman in an immaculate uniform stopped in front of the cell and peered inside.

Archie glanced at the bird on his collar.

“Colonel,” he snapped to attention.

“As you were,” the man answered.

Archie went at ease and let his eyes go out of focus. It was a trick that allowed him to take in the entire field of his vision without seeming to focus on any one thing.

He had learned it speed reading and tried it during a droning General’s lecture on field logistics.

He was happy to find it did two things.

Made him look attentive and kept him aware of his entire surroundings.

At the moment, those surroundings were two concrete walls he could stretch out his arms to touch and still have room to move, and the steel bars that separated him from the ice eyed man glaring at him.

“I told them we should kill all the prisoners,” he said in a flat voice. “Waste of time and resources that should be put into the fight.”

Archie didn’t answer.

What was there to say to a man who wanted him dead?

The fact the man was on one side of the bars maybe made him a little braver than he would have been under different circumstances.

Archie had a reputation outside the prison as a man of violence.

Inside, he hadn’t had a chance to prove anything yet.

“High Command has sent me to make you an offer, Warren,” the Colonel spit through the bars.

“You gonna offer to take me out back and put a bullet into the base of my skull?”

The man grinned but it didn’t touch his eyes.

“If I had my way, I’d strap a bomb to every single one of you and airdrop you into Los Angeles.”

Archie nodded.

“I can’t argue that it wouldn’t be effective. We still losing?”

The skin around the colonel’s eyes grew tight.

That told Archie all he needed to know, that and the fact the man was standing here talking to him.

“Sgt,” the Colonel said without looking at Hammer.

“We got a General Officer Bright idea,” he answered.

“As bad as air dropping live prisoners as kamikaze bombs?” Archie asked.

“I didn’t say it was a bad idea,” the Colonel smirked. “I said if it was up to me.”

“If you’re part of this GOBI, spill it Colonel. Sir. Not that I don’t like your visit breaking up my daily routine, but,” he motioned to the empty cell around him.

“Seems like Command thinks you boys are gonna have some use after all.”

“What is this goat rope, Sarge?”

Hammer glanced over the Colonel’s shoulders.

“They aren’t gonna just drop us,” he grunted. “They’re giving us parachutes.”

CHAPTER TWO

He didn’t know the other men in the room.

Two guards sandwiched him between their rifles and marched him four steps behind Sgt. Hammer who trailed the Colonel to the far edge of the prison somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

Archie knew that because he had done his crime in Kansas, and they hadn’t dragged him too far for the punishment.

No trail needed with plenty of witnesses, and considering what he had done, he expected to be shot.

The Army didn’t bother with hanging or lethal injection anymore, not since the Licks showed up.

The war wasn’t going so well for humans.

Archie knew that much.

The big corporate civilian prisons had been emptied out in the first few years of war, sent to Mars to die by the millions.

Gulag, concentration camp, hell, Archie had even heard rumors that refugees were shipped across the space lanes to fight as cannon fodder against the advancing alien armada.

None of them came back.

Mars was a death sentence, and if he had been in this prison a few years ago, it would be his.

He might last longer than some, due to his training.

But so far, Mars was a one way ticket.

None of the space fleet brought anyone back.

He glanced up at the brilliant blue sky as they led him from one building to the next.

Everything looked empty.

No guards, no prisoners to guard. Not anymore.

The steel door at the end of a short corridor was guarded by one man with a rifle.

He opened the door and Archie followed Hammer and the Colonel through.

It closed behind him with a metallic bang.

The Colonel was in the room alone with him.

With them, he corrected.

A short man with black hair sat in one of the chairs, one leg crossed over the other and watched them all with an air of detachment.

Archie didn’t like him.

Didn’t like his vibe, his longer than regulation hair, or the superior smug set of his face.

The other three were almost as bad.

At least they looked like soldiers, or some variation thereof.

He knew with the war going the way it was, that pickings were slim and it was a take what you could get recruiting effort, but those three looked like they had at least survived basic.

Not like the man in the chair.

He was the only one sitting.

One more strike against him, Archie thought. Just sitting there, looking calm and shit.

The Colonel turned around.

“I would tell you I’m glad you could make it, but it’s not like you had any choice,” he addressed the men in the room. “You can stand, you can sit, this won’t take long.”

His eyes moved over the men in the room.

Archie stood next to Sgt. Hammer opposite the man in the chair.

Two stood on his left, one on his right.

They all looked pale, thin, like they had been in their cells on low rations for as long as he had been.

Which meant the Army hadn’t decided what to do with criminals in the rank.

Until now.

“You’ve got a chance to do some good,” the Colonel said.

“What’s your name?” Archie asked.

“My name is Colonel None of your Fucking Business, shit for brains,” the Colonel answered. “Does this look like a q & a to you?”

“Numbnuts,” Hammer muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“This is all A, and the only answer you’re going to get is what I say. Lima Charlie?”

The man on his right grunted a Hooah.

“I’d tell you that you had a choice,” the Colonel continued. “But you won’t like your options. Command has decided your more valuable to us alive than dropping you out of a plane with a backpack bomb or taking you into the field and putting a .45 in the back of your head.”

Archie nodded.

This was a one choice mission.

“The Licks have built up an FOB in Santa Monica. You six are going to destroy it.”

“The Licks have landed?” Archie gulped.

How much had happened in the few weeks he had been behind bars?

He knew they were coming.

Hell, everyone knew they were coming.

But no one knew when.

Communications with Mars had gone dark almost a year ago, and fleet communication was spotty as satellites were knocked from the sky by scout ships.

Archie had fought several scout parties, two or four alien crews.

But a forward operating base in Los Angeles meant they were serious about a western push.

He wondered if there were other locations on the east coast or Texas.

“Is this a part of a concentrated effort?” he asked.

This squad could be one of many, he thought.

“Need to know,” said the seated man.

Archie shot him a look.

“You’re telling me I’ve got one option, to go fight Lick in the streets of LA and I don’t need to know if he’s got back up?”

He sneered at the dark haired man.

“Where’s the map? Where’s the roster and mission plan?”

He turned toward the Colonel.

“You’re going to drop us strapped up, but with chutes, right?”

The Colonel glared at Hammer before he composed his face into a stoic expression.

“We can’t get you close to the base,” he said. “We need boots on the ground to deliver the packages with redundancies in place.”

“Four?” Archie pointed to the line of men he stood in.

“Six,” Hammer corrected.

The broad man tapped himself on the chest and nodded to the man in the chair.

“What do they have on you?” Archie asked Hammer.

“Chance for glory and honor?”

“Stow the gung ho bullshit, Hammer. You can sit this one out. They can’t make you do it.”

Hammer shrugged.

“People have lots of reasons, Arch. Not all of us need a gun to the head to do the right thing.”

Archie sniffed.

“And you?”

The man spread both hands in a wide, placating gesture.

“I know things,” he shrugged.

“Yeah? Well I don’t know you. I don’t know any of these soldiers, except the one man who shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

“Guards!” snapped the Colonel.

The guard crashed open and the two soldiers that had escorted him from his cell pounded into the room.

He tried to get in a punch or two, but they snagged his arms and cinched them behind his back.

“Back to his cell?” the guard on his left asked.

The colonel shook his head.

“Shoot him.”

They lifted on his arms and dragged him from the room.

Hammer reached out, but the Colonel snapped out his name. The sergeant drew his hand back and watched as the two guards dragged his friend out to his death.