First to Burn Read Free Page B

pretended.
    “Look, today an inbound medevac radioed an incoming with penetration wounds, Staff Sergeant Wardsen.” Her words hung between them. The wait seared her lungs, as if the air-conditioning had stopped, until she felt compelled to fill the silence. “We’re missing his file.” She could smell her own sweat despite the fully saturated tang of the gym. “Was he treated?”
    “No.”
    The men beside Chris loomed larger as she turned to search each face. Their physical training uniforms didn’t have name tapes, so she couldn’t determine who among them was Wardsen. The dark blond with the tortured eyes shifted his weight, but a Polynesian-looking soldier shouldered into him.
    She wanted to ask Chris for the real story, but the testosterone and stench clogged her throat. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”
    “No.”
    “What?” She struggled to keep her eyebrows from meeting over the bridge of her nose. She needed to project friendly and professional, and she didn’t want to come off like a badgering fobbit, the stereotype of a forward-operating-base paper pusher. She worked up a smile. “Well?”
    Chris shrugged. “Nothing to talk about.” He bent to a barbell for a set of arm curls. “Dust-off made a mistake.”
    “Four times with the same soldier? And only that soldier? I don’t believe it.” Chris was concealing either who had been injured or how. But why? “I want to meet Sergeant Wardsen.”
    The dozen men blended into a pool of silence so thick, so viscous with disapproval and rejection, that she struggled to move. The answer hit like a fifty-pound weight— friendly fire. The other captain didn’t make eye contact. “If that’s all, Doc, we have our workout.”
    “Fine.” A fellow officer had dismissed her in front of a pack of staring enlisted guys. Her cheeks burned and she could barely pry her lips far enough apart to speak, but if Chris wanted a pissing contest, she’d give him one. “You’ll receive a written request from me tomorrow for the sergeant’s treatment records.”
    “Classified.” He grunted over another rep without facing her.
    “Really? We’ll see what Colonel Loughrey and I can do about that.” She spun on her heel and stomped to Jennifer.
    Her friend slowed the treadmill. “How’d it go?”
    “Don’t ask.” Theresa grabbed a five-pound barbell and curled with gusto. The weight bounced off her upper arm. Whoa , too hard. She’d have a bruise.
    “Didn’t I tell you not to bug those guys? They don’t talk to lesser mortals.”
    “You were right.”
    Jennifer tucked her chin and stared, eyebrows raised. “You never say that.”
    “To quote the boss, they’re shitheads.” She thunked the weight on the ground. She needed to get out of the gym. Now. “You can write that in stone.”
    * * *
    Thirty minutes later, draft memorandums requesting medical files danced in Theresa’s head as she left the women’s shower for the dining facility. After six months in-country, Theresa ranked the lavish mess hall food provided by Black and Swan contractors on par with cold med school pizza. Crispy shrimp, loaded burgers, and surf and turf were better than the chicken breasts she cooked, but she missed her empty apartment fridge in Texas. At least when she opened it after a night on call, the half-and-half carton and jar of olives were hers.
    While she stopped at the dining hall entrance for the mandatory weapon safety check, a soldier exited and the cold burst of air-conditioning brought the promise of dinner. Tuesday’s meal rotation included the one item she still desired: deep-fried chicken cordon bleu. She usually substituted salad for fries, but no monthly weigh-in could make her give up cordon bleu.
    Inside the metal building, she headed for the hot line as the server slipped the last golden mound to the private in front of her. She hadn’t run four miles on a treadmill for iceberg lettuce. “Excuse me, are there more?”
    “Two minutes,