Youngblood Read Online Free Page A

soup sandwich. Even in my head it sounded contrived.
    I walked over to the stone guard shack on the roadside. It was the only piece of shade for miles on the bleak stretch between Ashuriyah and Camp Independence, the base to our east that served as a northern border for Baghdad proper and as a logistical hub. Chambers joined me a couple of minutes later.
    Our new squad leader looked out at the road, still critiquing our positioning. Low and broad, he swung his shoulders side to side, stretching his back. Deep lines slit his face, creases that gave him a rugged sort of dignity.
    â€œHow old are you, Sergeant?” I asked.
    Chambers spat out a wad of dip. “Thirty last month. Don’t tell the youngbloods, though. Don’t want them thinking their papa bear is too old to whip their ass.”
    I’d thought him older. A pocket of acne scars on his temples somehow aged him too, as did stained teeth and his gray, pallid eyes.
    â€œGot a wife or girlfriend back home? Kids?”
    â€œTwo ex-wives, four kids that I claim.” He waited for me to laugh. “Two in Texas, the others, not sure. Last I heard, they were moving back to Rochester.”
    â€œHuh.” Though it was common enough, I hated hearing about young children having to deal with divorce. My mom and dad had managed to stay friends, but that tended not to be the norm. “Lady back home?”
    He snorted. “Learned that lesson. Hope you’re smarter than that, Lieutenant. Jody is a dishonorable son of a bitch, and he got your woman months ago. When they say there’s no one else, just know there always is. Part of a soldier’s life.”
    Good thing Marissa and I broke things off before we left, I thought. Though she had stressed that there was no one else. A lot.
    â€œJody can’t get a girl that don’t exist.”
    I had no idea why I’d said “don’t” instead of “doesn’t.”
    â€œBeen banging a new piece of ass at Independence, when we’re there,” he continued. “Intel sergeant from battalion. A choker.”
    There was only one intel sergeant from battalion he could be talking about, a quiet woman with milk chocolate skin who somehow filled out the shape-repressing uniform with curves and angles. I’d talked to Sergeant Griffin a few times. She was kind. Every enlisted man in Hawaii had been trying to get with her for years. None had been successful, as far as I knew.
    I whistled. “How’d you do that?”
    â€œPower of persuasion,” he said, his voice slurring past the tobacco nestled deep in his cheeks.
    I fumbled about for a change of topic. Talking about women I didn’t know was one thing, but Sergeant Griffin was a fellow soldier.
    â€œRumor has it you’ve walked this strip of paradise before,” I eventually said.
    â€œFuck, Lieutenant.” He considered his answer, longer than seemed natural. “I’ve spent more time in the desert than I can remember.”
    â€œOh yeah? With who?”
    â€œOnce to the ’Stan with Tenth Mountain. Two times here, with Fourth Infantry right after the Invasion, the other with First Cav. Now back with the Electric Strawberry.”
    I bristled at his use of the derisive nickname for the Twenty-Fifth Infantry, though I wasn’t sure why—I myself had used it often enough. I leaned against the shack and stuck my hands in my pockets, looking far into the brown sands. Lasik-sharpened eyes might’ve spotted a lone mud hut, but besides the large berm to the north that hid the canal, there was nothing. This was our no-man’s-land.
    I heard laughing and looked over at the checkpoint. Doc Cork and three other soldiers were watching something on a cell phone. Two jundi swith them began air humping, one with his rifle, the other with a metal detector. Dominguez, up in the Stryker’s gun turret, flung a water bottle at one of the gyrating Iraqis, hitting him in the