Forged in Fire Page 7

  Holly ran her tongue over her teeth. “Sarn’t Freeman is trouble. I just can’t figure out what kind,” she said.

  Cox leaned forward. “Your instincts are pretty solid. Get me something to work with and I’ll support you. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

  She ran her hands over her face. “You weren’t kidding about this place, were you?”

  Cox stretched out behind his desk. “Told you. So changing the subject, what’s your take on Diablo Company?”

  “The commander or the first sergeant?”

  “All of the above,” Cox said.

  “Bello has an ego the size of a Mack truck. You were right about him not listening to anyone. The first sergeant…I don’t know. There’s something there but I’ve honestly spent more time arguing with their commander about the range than getting into it with Delgado. But Delgado came over to my company today, yelling about how the females were distracting his men.”

  Cox grinned. “Oh and I’m sure you told him where to get bent?”

  “With gusto, Sarn’t Major.” Holly grinned then sobered. “Still, I think there’s more to his being a douche bag then him just being a douche bag. My commander won’t be around him or Bello.”

  “I noticed that about her,” Cox said. “Work on that with her and I’ll keep an eye on things with Delgado.” Cox chewed on his thoughts a moment. “You don’t think it’s odd that your sergeant is tied into two Diablo Company guys?”

  “I think it’s very odd but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit down and let their company leadership blame it all on the fact that Freeman is a female. It takes two to tango and Pizarro is the senior here.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs and stood up. “Guess I’ll get started on those counseling packets.”

  “Have fun. And while you’re at it, I need you to do me a favor.”

  She stopped, waiting for him to drop what could only be bad news in her lap.

  “Work with the other companies on their legal packets.”

  She glared at her mentor. “Is it wrong that I was hoping you’d forget about that?”

  “Only because I know you know how to do these things better than any of these guys. I want you mentoring the platoon sergeants on this, Holly.”

  She ground her teeth. “You hate me, don’t you.”

  “Nope. I just know you’re exceptionally competent and I plan on working the hell out of you.”

  She flipped Cox the bird on the way out of the office, knowing he could take the joke. It was good being here with him. Reassuring in a lot of ways. Even if he did keep piling on to her workload.

  She walked outside of the battalion headquarters in time to see Bello stalking toward her. “Oh good God, you’re like a goddamned bad penny,” she said as she saluted him.

  Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

  “I hear you and my first sergeant had a disagreement.”

  She lifted her chin, unwilling to take any more of his shit. “I didn’t make him cry, did I?”

  “No, but he did have some colorful things to say about you.”

  “Did you defend my honor?”

  He looked at her then and she thought she almost saw a crack at the edge of his mouth. She was starting to take it as a personal affront that she hadn’t made him laugh or even crack a grin yet.

  “Well, I at least stopped him from burning a picture of you in effigy, so I guess that’s a start.”

  Holly tipped her chin at him. “Did you just make a joke?”

  “No.”

  Holly grinned. “You really need to relax, sir. Maybe get a flask at work. Take up smoking. Seriously, you’re going to die of a heart attack by the time you’re forty.”

  “I think we’ve had this argument,” Bello said.

  “We have. Let’s leave it alone for once, shall we?” She paused. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning for the separations packet scrub.”

  “What packet scrub?”

  “The one sarn’t major scheduled with all of our platoon sergeants to get the legal packets up to speed.”

  “We’re going to be on the range tomorrow morning.” Irritation crept back into his voice.

  “Not your platoon sergeants,” she said.

  “Yes, my platoon sergeants. My lieutenants can’t lead themselves out of a paper bag, let alone lead an operation without their NCOs, and we’ve got limited ammo. I need my NCOs on the range.”

  Holly lifted one eyebrow. “Fine. I’ll meet your platoon sergeants at the range and they can back brief me while your lieutenants are running range.”

  “Look, I appreciate that you’re just trying to do your job but I don’t have nearly enough time on the range as it is,” he said. “I need them shooting.”

  “You also need your soldiers who aren’t deploying off your books so you can get new soldiers in,” she said. “This is the only way to get rid of soldiers who aren’t contributing to the fight. You actually do need to do this.”

  He closed his eyes and for a moment his expression was pained. Not the careful mask he kept in place. No, what she saw there was worn down and tired.

  And afraid.

  Fear was the last thing she thought she’d see on Sal Bello’s face. And instead of pissing her off, it drew her closer, made her want to know more. Made her want to reach out to him and offer to help, to ease the burden of command. Because that’s what good first sergeants did.

  Except that it wasn’t a first sergeant type feeling twisting in her gut. It was something warm. Something dark and needy.

  Something personal.

  “What are you afraid of?” she whispered.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at her. And in that moment, she saw the depth of the uncertainty that he hid from everyone.

  “Failure.”

  There was no smart comeback for that single, loaded word. No smart-ass comment that would ease the tension and move them back into familiar territory.

  Because she was far too intimately acquainted with that word and everything it brought with it.

  * * *

  “I can’t help with the fear,” she said softly after a long silence had dragged on between them. “But I can help you on the range tomorrow.”

  He lifted one brow, looking down at the stick of dynamite that was contained in that deceptively small package. “How?”

  She grinned. “How about you let me surprise you?”

  “I hate surprises.” But he was intrigued at this new side of her. This warmth looking back at him. The warmth that made him want to reach for her and feel her body curl into his.

  She grinned and patted his cheek. “You’ll just have to trust me then.”

  She walked back toward her ops, leaving him standing there wondering just what she had up her sleeve for tomorrow.

  And the want inside him grew, making him wish for something that could never be.

  7

  The range had been running smoothly right up until the point when Holly showed up. Sal knew the moment she set foot on the range complex.

  He paused, realizing he’d just thought of her as Holly instead of First Sergeant Washington. When had that happened? When had she stopped being First Sergeant Washington and become someone more…personal? More human. More than the rank on her chest or the uniform she wore to hide her vulnerable parts.

  But as he watched her on the range, he realized she was still First Sergeant Washington to his men. And that was a good thing.

  Soldiers were all of a sudden preening and pointing and whispering, when they should have been focusing on putting steel on target. Like they’d never seen a female in uniform before. Instead, they were trying to look cool as Holly walked the firing line, quizzing the NCOs about range operations. Sal watched her walk the line from the tower, irritated that her showing up had ground things to a halt. He slipped his hand into his pocket, finding the lighter, warm and smooth beneath his fingertips.

  But as he watched her, he realized that it only took a few minutes for the soldiers to pul
l their heads out of their collective asses.

  Then she paused, turning toward the other end of the firing line. He followed where she was looking and saw one of his platoon sergeants teeing off on a soldier.

  “Ah shit,” he muttered as she stalked down the firing line toward the confrontation.

  By the time he got there, he heard a venom in her voice he’d never heard before.

  “I don’t really give a shit what technique you think you’re drilling into him, Sergeant, but screaming at soldiers isn’t exactly the way to inspire self confidence,” she said, not flinching away from the anger and defiance in Pizarro’s eyes.

  “I don’t know who the hell you think you’re fooling—”

  “First Sergeant,” Sal said from behind her.

  Holly stiffened but didn’t turn at the sound of Bello’s voice.

  Pizarro inhaled deeply. “Firs’ Sarn’t, Hawkins just can’t shoot. And now she shows up and tells me I have to be nice because it’ll make him shoot better?”

  She hooked her hands into the space between her body armor and her shoulders. “Screaming at him is a great way to teach him fundamentals, right?”

  “He’s never qualified once in his entire military career!” Pizarro spat.

  “Sarn’t P, take a break,” Sal said to the big platoon sergeant.

  Holly didn’t acknowledge him as Pizarro stalked off. Instead, she turned to the skinny private. “Get down in the prone,” she directed.

  She dropped down next to him and Sal simply stood there and watched, keenly aware that every swinging dick on that range was watching what he did at that exact moment. If he undermined her, she’d be dead in the water for the rest of her time in the battalion, and while she wasn’t on his favorite person list, he wasn’t about to cut her feet out from under her. He wasn’t a complete asshole.

  Pizarro would get over his pride being wounded. Maybe.

  He watched her as she adjusted Hawkins’ weapon.

  “Look, you’re holding your weapon wrong, for starters,” she said. She pulled Hawkins’ arms in tight so that the weapon rested in his palm properly. “Now your finger is wrong. Just the tip goes on the trigger.” She adjusted his grip so that the tip of his finger rested on the trigger. “Pick up a good sight picture and breathe out.”

  Hawkins fired three shots before Washington stood up and held up the cease-fire paddle. “Follow me,” she told him.

  Hawkins followed like a puppy. Sal didn’t need to hear what he said to see the triumph on his face. Pizarro was going to be pissed but he’d get over it. Especially if it meant Hawkins could now hit the target.

  Washington left Hawkins on the firing line and fell into step next to him.

  “The next time you feel the need to correct one of my platoon sergeants, I’d prefer you didn’t do it in front of everyone.”

  She glanced over at him. “You mean how Pizarro was not correcting Hawkins in front of the entire company? Or how he was screaming at one of my NCOs on the busiest intersection on Fort Hood?”

  Sal sucked in a tight breath. “That’s different.”

  “No, actually it’s exactly the same. If you want to teach people to shoot, screaming at them is a remarkably bad technique. Like it’s scientifically proven to make people shoot worse.” She paused at the base of the tower. “However, if you want to make people piss themselves, screaming is an excellent starting point.”

  “Pizarro is a good platoon sergeant.”

  “Next time, you should try telling a lie you actually believe,” she said. “That’s the second time in forty-eight hours I’ve caught him yelling at your soldiers. Is that the kind of organization you run? Management through screaming?”

  Sal bristled at the insinuation. “You’re in an armor company, sweetheart. We don’t sit around the campfire and make s’mores.”

  “‘Sweetheart’? Don’t be a dick.” She tipped her chin and stared up at him. “There’s a fine line between ‘hoah’ and just being an asshole,” she said quietly. “Pizarro crossed it a long time ago. You give weak men power and bad shit happens.”

  Sal ground his teeth in frustration. Part of him hated that she was right. Pizarro might have been a decent platoon sergeant once upon a time, but currently he wasn’t in top form. Sal didn’t know if he wasn’t sleeping or what, but things were not straightening out with him, no matter what Delgado tried to tell him. “I know. I’m trying to give him a chance to unfuck himself.”

  She narrowed her eyes, studying him for a moment. She looked out over the firing line. The rising sun glinted off her eye protection and highlighted the smooth arc of her cheek. It was a rare woman who could look attractive in body armor and helmet but somehow, Washington radiated a power and a confidence that appealed to him on a primitive level. She was the epitome of a feminine warrior, a Valkyrie striding into the fight.

  “You don’t train soldiers like that, sir,” she said.

  “He’s an infantry platoon sergeant. I’m not going to argue with hundreds of years of tradition.”

  She paused, long enough that Sal thought about wagering whether it would be sarcasm or anger that came out of her mouth next.

  Instead, it was a cutting remark that sliced open an old familiar wound. “Fine.” She hesitated then. “I never took you for a bully, sir. But that’s exactly the kind of unit you’re developing here by allowing him to do that to your soldiers.”

  * * *

  Holly flipped through the garbage that was Pizarro’s counseling packets, swearing six ways from Sunday that she was going to make a voodoo doll of Sarn’t Major Cox for making her do this.

  If it wasn’t for him specifically asking her, though, she’d never put up with this shit. Pizarro stood next to her, where she leaned against the hood of the Humvee, radiating interpersonal hostility. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable position to be in. “Sarn’t Pizarro, not a single one of these counseling statements is signed,” she said mildly. A moment later, she handed the entire file back to him. “You need to have every soldier sign and date their counseling statements.”

  Pizarro looked at her like she had a dick coming out of her forehead. “Every one?”

  “Well, if you want to get this kid promoted and this kid put out of the Army, then yes, every one,” she said, pointing out two different packets.

  His eyes were pinpricks of darkness, even in the bright Fort Hood sun. He was a threat, plain and simple. She made a mental note to check the installation police report. She had a feeling he’d had more than one run-in with the law.

  He was pinging all of her warnings.

  That made her uncomfortable. And she hated being uncomfortable.

  “I’ll talk to my first sergeant about this,” he said, and there was thinly veiled violence in his words.

  “You do that.” She wanted to get away from him. He made her skin crawl with an old familiar fear, one she didn’t feel like unpacking at the moment.

  He turned to go, hesitating long enough that her heart started pounding in her throat. Then he was gone, heading back toward the ammo point.

  She flipped through the rest of the packets, glad that the other platoon sergeants weren’t as actively hostile as Pizarro.

  “So you’re the sarn’t major’s new secretary, eh?”

  She stiffened at the ugliness lacing those words. “Well, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to be an asshole.” She turned and pasted on a patently false smile. “Looks like you win the prize, Delgado.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe they brought you into this unit.”

  “I could say the same thing about you,” she said. Her words might as well have been daggers.

  Delgado rotated his jaw. “You better watch yourself. This is my formation. These are my men. I don’t give a flying fuck how many hand jobs you gave out to get this job; stay the hell away from my men.”

  “You are just the most charming guy, aren’t you?” She straightened. “You’ve got a problem with me, take it up with
the sarn’t major. In the meantime, I’m doing my job. Unlike you, if these counseling packets are any indication.”

  Delgado glared at her. “Paperwork is for bitches.”

  She made a noise like an error button. “Wrong answer, there, First Sergeant. Paperwork is how we get the important shit like, oh, I don't know, new soldiers, beans, bullets, and bandages. Stuff like that. Stuff your company commander shouldn’t be handing me on a sticky note because his first sergeant is too busy fucking off to do his job.”

  “Listen you little—”

  “First Sergeant!”

  Holly couldn’t say when the exact moment that relief crawled over her skin was but Bello’s timing couldn’t have been any more perfect.

  Granted, he was not an ally, not by a long shot, but he broke the flow that Delgado had been in. A flow that would have likely ended up with Holly in the hospital with a broken jaw.

  “Sir.” Holly straightened but didn’t salute.

  “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

  Holly glanced at Delgado, who was daring her to rat him out. She smiled sweetly. “Nothing drastic. Just discussing leadership challenges with your first sergeant.”

  Bello’s expression said he didn’t buy it, not for a second, but he didn’t push and for that, she was grateful. The fine line she was walking was dangerously close to leading her off a cliff. “Top, we’ve got a small problem on the range. Can you go see what Hawkins’ problem is?”

  “Roger sir.”

  When Delgado was out of earshot, Bello turned to her. “You okay?”

  She frowned, instantly suspicious of the question. “Not sure where that question or the underlying concern actually just came from. Did you hit your head?”

  Bello sighed. “Look, I know my first sergeant. He can be a little sandpapery.”

  “A little?”

  “Fifty grit at least,” he admitted.