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Shelby’s whisper followed Bolan as he walked down the line. “Sweet…”
Bolan found himself in front of a fifteen-year-old youth who could look him in the eye. The young, lantern-jawed mesomorph in the making stared straight ahead with a grim look on his face. Bolan looked long and hard at the name embroidered on the front of the young man’s uniform.
Hudjak.
“Cadet?”
“Yes, Sergeant.” The tall young man was a tower of stoicism.
“I think we’ll just call you Huge.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Until you screw up, Huge.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Next cadet in line was the only black cadet. Except for Huge, he was the biggest in the group. Bolan read his tag. “Johnson.”
“Yes, Sergeant. John Henry.”
“You know the legend of the man you were named after, Cadet?”
“Heard it every day growing up, Sergeant. Told every day it was something I’d better live up to.”
Bolan smelled leadership potential. “Good to know, Hammer.”
Hudjak elbowed Johnson in congratulations as Bolan moved on.
A young Chinese man stood at attention. “King, Donald, Sergeant!” The cadet’s voice dropped low. “Sergeant?”
Bolan dropped his voice in return. “Cadet?”
“Sergeant, please don’t call me Donkey Kong. It takes a fistfight every year at the start of school to scrape that one off.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Cadet. We’ll keep it Don King.”
The cadet looked confusedly for the rub. “But, Sergeant, that’s my name.”
“Don King,” Bolan prompted. “The Rumble in the Jungle? The Thrilla in Manila?”
Cadet King stared at Bolan vacantly.
“The Sign from God hairstyle?” Bolan tried. He was becoming painfully aware of the fact that it had been some time since he had spent any quality time with the latest generation of America. “Fine, what’s your real name?”
“Sergeant?”
“You’re second-generation Chinese.”
“Yes, Sergeant. My parents came from Taiwan.”
“So ‘Donald’ is the American name they picked for you. Chinese put the family name first and the given second. That makes your family name King. What’s your real name, Cadet?”
The cadet sighed painfully. “Dong, Sergeant.”
“Donger, I tried to be merciful.”
Cadet King rolled his eyes. “I knew it.”
Bolan lunged. “I will roll your eyes right out of your head, Donger!”
Cadet King snapped to attention. “Cadet Donger! Ready for duty, Sergeant!”
Bolan came to the last cadet in line. If he hadn’t looked down, he might have missed him. The cadet was clearly Indian or Pakistani. The young man just cracked five foot two, and if he was more than ninety-eight pounds dripping wet Bolan would be surprised. He read the young man’s moniker.
The cadet just barely kept his shoulders from sagging.
Bolan heard Metard snicker back in line and made a note of it.
For the moment the soldier looked at the cadet before him with a modicum of sympathy. “Son of the Indian subcontinent?”
“Technically I was born in California, Sergeant, but we went back to West Bengal right after for five years for my father’s job. Then we came back again.”
“Lovely country,” Bolan opined. “Been there several times.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. My family goes back to visit every year.”
“Well,” Bolan mused. “Might as well get this over with.”
The young man nodded bravely. “Yes, Sergeant.”
Bolan read the embroidery again—Rudipu.
“Hell of a handle,” Bolan admitted.
“Yes, Sergeant. Thank you.”
“You got a first name, Cadet?”
“Gupti, Sergeant.”
Metard snickered again. The young man was digging a deeper hole for himself. Bolan stayed with the business at hand. “Gupti Rudipu.” Bolan nodded. “Hell of a handle.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You know the possibilities are mind-boggling.”
“Yes, Sergeant. I know.”
“I bet you do. Any mitigating factors before I pass judgment, Cadet?”
The teenaged cadet considered his résumé. “Well, I am captain of the rifle team at the academy.”
Bolan perked an eyebrow. “NRA Whistler Boy High-Power Junior Team Match?”
The sack of chicken bones Cadet Rudipu called a chest swelled with pride. “This will be my second year, Sergeant.”
Bolan nodded. “Never met a rifleman I didn’t like, Rude.”
Rudipu beamed. “Yes, Sergeant! Thank you, Sergeant! I’ll make you proud of me, Sergeant! I promise I will!”
“No one likes the squad cocksucker, Rude.”
Rudipu snapped back to attention. “No, Sergeant!”
Bolan turned back to face the line. “All right, I want—”
“Hey!” Metard’s outrage boiled over. “How come everyone else gets cool names and me and Jovich’s suck?”
King held his peace on that one. Jovich stepped away from Metard like he was radioactive.
Bolan rounded on Metard. “Because they know when to have themselves a tall frosty STFU when certain others I can name ran their mouths.”
Metard’s face flushed scarlet.
Bolan regarded the cadet like something he had just scraped off his shoe. “You want another nickname, Meatwad? You earn it. You read me?”
Metard shook with impotent rage.
“I asked you a question!” Bolan bellowed.
“Yes, Sergeant!”
“Yes, what?”
“I read you, Sergeant!”
Bolan took a few steps back and eyed his squad. “You have questions. Let me answer ninety percent of them right now. I am the angry god of your universe. You will do what I say when I say it. You are cadets, in training to become officers in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. I expect you to act like it. Do those two things, and you might just live through this. I hope that clears things up.”
The eight cadets stared at Bolan in a mixture of shock and awe.
Bolan glanced up at the sinking sun. “We need to do distance, but given the nature of the situation, I am going to allow each of you to ask me one question, once. After that, every last question had better be pertinent and about survival. Now. Go.”
The cadets glanced around at one another. Johnson raised his hand.
“This isn’t the classroom, Hammer. We’re in the jungle. We don’t raise our hands. We don’t have the time.”
Johnson nodded. “Sorry, Sarge, I just—” Johnson suddenly balked at his own temerity. “I mean, may I call you Sarge, Sergeant?”
“If it’ll speed things up.”
Johnson gazed on Metard with cold pleasure. “Well, I don’t want a new nickname or anything, Sarge, but I’m with Meatwad. I mean, what’s going on? Don’t get me wrong, you are super-bad, but, like, where are the choppers and Navy SEALs and shit?”
“There are no choppers. There are no Navy SEALs and shit. There are no carriers or special operations teams currently in range. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them. All you have is each other and me.”
Jovich eyed Bolan warily.
“You got something to say Jock-itch?” Bolan asked.
“We’re American citizens. Our plane got shot down. I mean, why isn’t anyone coming?”
Bolan looked around the squad. “Anyone know why not?”
It was Johnson who spoke. “Because all modern U.S. administrations have had a reluctance to have American soldiers shooting black Africans.”
Bolan nodded. “And?”
“And neither the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sudan or anyone else has authorized the United States to send military flights over their airspace, much less Egypt, Libya or any other North African countries, and the DRC sure as hell hasn’t given Uncle Sam permission to mount a military rescue mission within its borders.”
“You just made squad leader, Hammer.”
Johnson seemed to have mixed emotions about the promotion. “Thanks, Sarge.”
Eischen gave Bolan an appraising look. “So, who are you?”
“I don’t know, Ace, you tell me.”
Cadet Eischen continued to maintain his positive attitude. “Expendable, deniable and…super-bad?”
“Something like that.”
The truth was dawning on Metard. “So who sent you?”
“You tell me.”
Cadet Shelby addressed the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the camp. “He’s here because you’re the son of a United States senator, Meatwad.”
Metard reappraised Bolan. “My father sent you?”
Bolan locked eyes with the prize. “I wasn’t sent. I was begged.”
Metard flinched.
“Your father is a senior United States senator and a war hero. When you went missing, he called in every marker he had. Then he begged the President of the United States—your soon-to-be commander in chief, assuming you live that long—for his son’s life. The powers that be begged me. I said yes.”
Metard cast his eyes down.
Hudjak frowned. “So if there are no carriers in range, where did you come from?”
