Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 Read Online Free Page A

knew he dug drainage ditches and similarly unedifying features for a local construction company. College had been a fairytale notion, and neither had been attracted to joining the armed forces, even when their friend Zack made a bee-line for the recruiting office immediately after 9/11. Neither were married. Flynn had an on-off relationship with a mail lady, which made him a figure of fun just as much as Zack was for his patient gardening.
    “Sold me a Buick to a guy from Floresville,” reported Flynn, without further elaboration.
    “Dug me a fuckin’ big hole near Stockdale,” added Mitch, without any need for further elaboration.
    “Stellar, gentlemen, just stellar.” Zack knew how easy it was to hit too close to the bone, and reigned in his admonishment of his two school friends, lest they blame themselves for their economic woes. “Sutherland provides, yet again, boundless opportunities for those prepared to work hard.”
    All three men got a laugh out of that one. Zack ordered beers and took a look around. Thursday nights weren’t exactly the peak of the week, and this place was seldom crowded, even on a weekend. There was a girl shooting pool with her guy, a noisy drunk with bad cue control; two old-timers played checkers in their usual booth, and a dude in a cowboy hat was eating a steak at the end of the bar.
    “There ain’t no jobs in town,” Mitch admitted. “You could always rejoin the service. The money was OK, wasn’t it?”
    “Sure,” Zack conceded. “They’re nothing but generous to the people they accidentally blow up.” His friends treated the actual incident itself with more circumspection; Zack wasn’t over it, they could see. “Or at least, I think they blew me up.”
    “Still can’t remember nothing, huh?” asked Flynn gently.
    Zack shook his head. “Don’t even remember coming back down from patrol, but I’m told we did.” Zack took a moderate sip of his beer, nursing the pint which he knew could be his only one tonight; the local cops had no sense of humor about drunk driving, and besides, his doctors had been explicitly clear on the importance of taking it easy.
    “They need to court martial that dude, the flyer.” Neither Mitch nor Flynn understood how the F-16 pilot had escaped official sanction.
    “Can’t. No point.”
    “Why not? He pressed the button, right? Caused the whole thing?”
    Zack drew a diagram on the bar-top condensation. “He’s getting instructions from the squad on the ground, right? They call him in, and he uses a mix of GPS co-ordinates and his own eyeballs. He saw an encampment, was told there were enemy in the area, and attacked.”
    “Don’t a SEAL camp look a little different from a towel head camp?”
    Zack flicked Mitch’s forehead really hard. “Racial slurs, man. Don’t.”
    From the pool table in the far corner came a loud, “Fuck!” as the drunken guy missed another easy shot.
    The three tried to ignore the interruption. “Sorry, Zack” muttered Mitch.
    “The flyboy couldn’t see shit ,” the ex-SEAL explained. “Think about it: he’s going at 300 knots, maybe faster. He’s got one second – at most – to make a decision. The squad were calling him in fast and hard. He just made the best call he could. Fact is, if his aim had been better, I’d not be here today.”
    “So, he’s an idiot, and he can’t put ordnance in the right place? The one thing he’s paid to do,” Flynn pointed out.
    “It’s like an NFL kicker who goes wide. All that training and he fucks up the money shot.”
    “Well, I’m glad he fucked it up, or I’d be lying next to Nick Vines at Arlington and you assholes wouldn’t have me to make fun of anymore.” The three clinked glasses and resolved to change the subject.
    There was a sudden crack to their left. The guy playing pool had just up and smacked the cue on the table so hard it had broken in half. His girl, terrified but cowed into silence, cringed at the far end of the