Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

had two other kids as well. She was working herself to death, I imagine. The colonel—he was a major back then—stepped up and made the move over to the Guard. This let them be closer to family, and Fayetteville had a pretty good medical center back then.”
    That little tidbit kept me thinking as we continued to work. If anybody would know the colonel it would be Warnecke. He was permanent cadre, like Hotchkins, which meant the National Guard was his fulltime job and Warnecke was proud of the fact he’d spent nearly twenty years in the Arkansas National Guard after doing a stint in the Army. He’d been to just about every school the military had when it came to repairing and servicing armor and armored vehicles.
    Warnecke seemed to be well tied in to the rumor mill too. For instance, he knew who I was and even knew some of the details about what went down at the school in South Bentonville. Not direct knowledge, but he’d heard the talk. After a while, he proved willing to ask questions to fill in the blanks too.
    I was initially confused by this apparent change in the sergeant’s demeanor, but then I realized this morning had been all about getting a feel for me. He was doing his own evaluation of me while I was sizing him up. I almost laughed at the realization.
    “So, I heard your girlfriend or sister was being held at that school? Is that why you volunteered?”
    I did laugh at that. So part of that bull we cooked up still managed to make the rounds? I decided to give him the truth—some of it—and see what the grapevine carried forward. I knew some of the troops at the fort looked at us a bit skeptically; especially with the civilian contractor tag we’d picked up.
    “Neither one, Master Sergeant; we found out what was going on at the school from some girls we rescued. The girl that knew the most about what was going on in there had a sister still inside. She’d told us enough that I could go in and pretend to be her brother if we could get the local Guard unit to back our move.”
    “Did it work? I mean, obviously you managed to convince some of Captain Devayne’s men to go along, but I heard things went to shit after you got inside. The story got you through the door though, didn’t it?” Warnecke asked, and I could tell he was really curious even though his thick, nimble fingers never stopped working at backing out a hard-to-reach screw.
    “Sergeant Conners and Private Borden got us inside. All my story did was make the first guard decide it was a good idea to stonewall Sergeant Conners. Bad idea for him.”
    Warnecke nodded. “Yeah, I heard both those guys did good. Earned Conners his next stripe and I’ll bet the other guy will be promoted soon as well. They made the Guard look good, and we haven’t had a lot of chances to shine lately.”
    “I beg to differ. You guys are short-handed and the situation is just impossible. They were great and so was the relief force Captain Devayne brought in. Got all those people freed and didn’t lose a man.”
    I thought that was the end of it when Warnecke went back to work and it was silent for nearly half an hour.
    “I heard it got really hairy there, once you got inside. I heard from someone who talked to Nathan, I mean, Sergeant Conners, that you had to hold the stairs for nearly an hour while under attack.” He asked the question of truth carefully, not wanting to push too far, I figured.
    “Closer to half an hour really; still, I won’t lie, it was bad. I’ve been in some scrapes before, but that was just… I can’t see how you guys do it. I was in over my head, Master Sergeant.”
    “I heard different. I heard you did just fine. Most of what we do, or did before, doesn’t involve getting into pitched battles. You know, even when we were deployed it was mainly random mortars and harassing fire. Sometimes the hajjis would try to hit us from an ambush, but mostly they just died when our choppers showed up.”
    I thought about what Warnecke said,