“I see. Well, thank you for being so candid and explaining the situation to me, Captain Grant. I’ll ensure that I get as much work done as I can, and I’ll be ready to leave when you advise.”
The Captain looked relieved; perhaps he’d expected me to argue, or throw a hissy fit. I may have been a stupid woman who overslept on her first day embedded with his unit, but I wasn’t selfish enough to risk the lives of others. Especially not Sebastian’s.
The worst part was that I’d be leaving him behind. I’d always known that day would come, I just thought we’d have a bit longer first. He was right: we always seemed to be traveling in different directions.
I stood up, and Sebastian escorted me out of the Captain’s office.
“Sorry, baby,” he murmured.
“That’s okay,” I replied, quietly. “I don’t want to cause more problems out here. Besides, I can get some stories from Leatherneck, so the paper won’t be shortchanged.”
“If anything happened to you…” he began.
I interrupted him quickly. “I told you, Sebastian, I’m not going to take risks. If you care about me, you won’t either.”
“If I care about you?” he said angrily.
“You know what I mean – and keep your voice down.”
He scowled, and looked mutinous.
Great. Sulky Sebastian was back.
Reluctantly, he left me outside my room, and marched off to the other side of the compound where he threw angry glances at me until it was meal time.
I was just drowning my sorrows in some piss-weak coffee, when Lieutenant Crawley emerged from Grant’s subterranean office.
“Supply chopper on its way,” he announced, then picked out a platoon to retrieve the goodies.
A few minutes later, we all heard the distinctive thrum of the Black Hawk’s twin engines chewing up the air around it, and small parachutes began raining down.
Once the swag had been collected and relocated to the compound, everyone gathered around to sort out the supplies: ammunition, water and – thank you God – fresh rations. There was also a bag of mail which I volunteered to sort out, much to Captain Grant’s obvious surprise.
There weren’t as many letters as I’d expected. My two shadows, Ben and Larry, helped me do the sorting, and explained that any parcels from home would be held back until there was room (or spare weight) on the next heli drop.
When they weren’t looking, I casually slipped my letter to Sebastian into the pile. It didn’t take long to finish sorting, and it was easy to tell which of the guys were family men – they had the most letters, some obviously addressed by their kids.
As he’d said, Sebastian didn’t get many letters and that day, mine was the only one addressed to him.
The rest of the unit circled us like sharks, waiting for the moment they heard their name. I saw Sebastian’s surprise when Larry called out ‘Hunter’.
“You got mail, Chief,” and he waved the thin envelope at Sebastian.
Of course, I hadn’t written a return address, so that should have clued him in, but instead he just looked puzzled. I watched him as he scrolled down the first few lines of my scandalous letter. Then his eyes widened in shock, and a wicked grin crept across his face. He glanced up, and I winked at him.
He read through the whole letter, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the mud wall of the compound. Then he closed his eyes and let his head rock back: he was still smiling.
Yeah, think about those positions, Chief.
One of the other men, a young guy named Ross from Minneapolis, scrunched up his letter in disgust and dropped it in the dirt.
“What’s up man?” said Larry.
“Fucking ‘dear John’ letter,” he said bitterly. “She said she didn’t want to spoil my last few days of leave, so she thought she’d wait till I got out here to tell me she was seeing someone else. Bitch.”
He got some sympathetic looks. A lot of the men had been there. It could be hard to hold onto relationships in the military.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains and the air was beginning to cool, when there was a sudden flurry of activity.