This story is a spin-off of my ongoing "Snugglebunny" series about the life and love of Chris and Chloe Weber. To understand all of the background and context, you will need to check that series out. As the stories are posted under different areas of Literotica, I suggest you check out my profile for links to those. To fit the timeline of those stories, this has been set to take place some time in the future.
The story includes one of the main characters from "An Ounce of Prevention" and "A Pound of Cure" and mentions an incident from "Revenge in Advance: Mona."
For the perfectionists among you, I realize that Special Forces types work in much smaller units than depicted here, so I took a bit of artistic license for the purpose of this story.
Constructive comments are always welcome and appreciated. As always, remember this is a work of fiction and not a docu-drama...
June 3, 2036:
Captain Mike Weber, U.S. Army, looked over the rugged terrain he and his men had just cleared of enemy combatants. It was a hard-fought battle against the latest group of radicals, who had apparently taken after their predecessors in ISIS and al-Qaeda. The battle over, he and his men were clearing the area as they prepared to return to their base camp in the Sub-Sahara.
After briefing his battalion commanding officer, Mike was handed a piece of paper by a clerk.
"Congratulations, Captain," the female corporal said. "You and your men just earned a 30-day leave."
"Thanks, Corporal," Mike said, smiling. God knows they had earned it. Reading the orders, which came down from "on high," he noticed that in addition to a 30-day leave, they were to spend an additional 15 days at Fort Benning to regroup, which meant getting replacements for those who had been either killed or otherwise taken out of action.
Moreover, he learned that one of his superiors, Brigadier General David Masters, would temporarily leave the Pentagon and accompany them back in-country to act primarily as an observer. Right, he snorted to himself. The man was just bucking for his second star and probably wanted to finally pin a Combat Infantryman's Badge on his uniform. Fucking politicians in uniform, he thought to himself.
He went back to their area and ordered 1st Sgt. Roberts to assemble the men. A few minutes later, the big man reported back to him.
"The company is assembled, sir," he said. Mike shook his head and walked to the formation as the 1
st
Sgt. called them to attention. He performed a smart about face as Mike approached.
"Company present and accounted for, sir," he said. Mike nodded.
"Posts!" Mike ordered. The 1
st
Sgt and the other company NCOs turned and took their place as the officers came forward. There were no salutes exchanged as they were still in a combat zone and a salute could instantly alert a sniper looking for a quick kill.
"At ease," he said after the exchange had taken place. The dusty, dirty soldiers relaxed a bit, watching their commanding officer.
"Good news, men," he said. "We've accomplished our mission for now, and the Army has rewarded us with a 30-day leave." He paused as the soldiers exclaimed their appreciation. "After that, it's on to Fort Benning for 15 days with a return trip." There were groans at that bit of news. "So, it's time for us to pack our trash and head out. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning at 0530, immediately after breakfast. That is all." He called the company to attention and ordered the 1
st
Sgt to dismiss the troops.
He headed back to his tent and began packing his duffel bag. Sitting down at his field desk, he pulled out his tablet and tried connecting to the secure satellite feed. It was difficult here, as the geography of the area, combined with the minerals in the local rocks, conspired to act as something of a natural jamming device for many of their satellite communications. Video comms were nearly impossible here, but short text messages could usually go through.
He tried contacting Lynette, his wife of three years, but couldn't. So he sent a short text letting her know he would be home on leave in a day or two. His plan was to collect his wife, then go visit his parents in Springfield.
His brother, Brian, had just graduated from West Point and was already home on a short leave, waiting to attend his Basic Officer Leadership course before being transferred to Fort Huachua, Arizona, where he would get advanced training as a military intelligence officer. Mike was the bigger and stronger of the two boys, which came in handy now, but Brian was always the smart one.
It was a bit funny, he thought to himself. While Brian looked up to his big brother and wanted to follow in his footsteps, the truth was that Mike admired his younger sibling for his cunning and his ability to work through a problem.
As kids, they often played "Army" in the woods behind their parent's home. Brian would pretend to scout the area out and get intel on the "enemy," which usually consisted of rocks that were, in their game, really the bad guys. He would sneak out, then later sneak back, giving Mike the layout of the land and a proposed course of action. Mike, being the bigger and stronger of the two, would then go and take the "enemy" out, with Brian providing the necessary backup. He smiled at the memory.
"God, I'd love to have Brian with us out here," he said to himself.
Then there was his teenage sister, Marilyn. She would be 15 this month, he thought. Being the baby of the family, and the only girl -- other than his mother, of course, she got away with a lot more than either one of the boys. That might also have been due to the fact that she was the spitting image of her mother at that age and was just as precocious. She was growing into a real beauty and he knew she would become a heart-breaker someday.
"I hope Dad has a good shotgun," he thought to himself.
Of course, he thought of his parents, Chris and Chloe Weber. The two had been married since 2002 and were literally life-long lovers. He never knew a couple who still showed as much passion for each other as his parents. Many times, growing up, he would come home from school to find them in the pool, locked in a tight embrace.
He thought it rather cute that even in their 50s, they chased after each other like a couple of lovesick teenagers in heat. They even sometimes referred to each other as "brother" and "sister," even though they weren't related. He knew the story behind that and thought it was cute, but still found it just a bit strange.
His father, an accomplished photographer who started at the local paper, had many photos published by major news organizations and had won awards for some of his work. He was also a best-selling author, having written several books, including one about a man facing the death penalty after being falsely accused of adultery. He read all of his father's books and was in awe of the man's talent. His mother had become the head nurse in the maternity ward of the local hospital, where she had worked since college.
He also knew that Amy Jenkins, a woman they all knew as "Aunt Amy," would be there with her husband, Dr. Mark Jenkins. Amy really wasn't their blood relative, but was a close friend of their parents, who had unofficially adopted her as their "sister." Amy is the one who told him that he had been conceived at a balcony party in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
"How do you know that?" he asked her.
"I was there," she said, smiling. "I was also there when Brian was conceived." That, he thought, was "TMI," or too much information, and he never mentioned it again.
His tablet buzzed, letting him know he had a message. Coming back to the present, he read it twice. It was a short response from his wife letting him know she wouldn't be available and would instead be with her boss who was taking a "fact-finding" mission to Europe.
Crap, he thought. Of all the weekends for her to be gone, it had to be this one. This had happened more than once and it was frankly beginning to piss him off. Worse yet, her boss was none other than the aforementioned Brig. General Masters, who always seemed to find the most inopportune times to keep her away from him.
Between trips to various military installations for "inspections," meetings with officials on Capitol Hill or foreign junkets, it seemed she was gone more than she was home. He wished that she would just once tell him she needed to be with her husband. She wasn't in the military, after all, and the general could always pick another personal assistant to arrange his schedule.
He started to wonder if maybe there was more going on than what she let on. He always trusted her, but thinking back, he realized that their time together had been cut very short and their sex lives had almost disappeared since she started working for the general.
She was even gone the night before he left for this deployment, saying the general had an important meeting with a senator who didn't think the Army should be sending troops to this part of Africa. She didn't get back home until about 4:00 am, just in time for him to leave. They briefly kissed as they passed each other on the driveway, and he thought she smelled odd, but he couldn't place it.
"Call me," she said, entering the house. That was it. Not a "love you," or "be careful" or anything. He wondered if she even gave a shit that he was about to be thrust into the latest meat grinder in the seemingly endless war on terror started in 2001.
During this latest deployment, he got a grand total of two letters, three emails and four short text messages. She sent nothing on his birthday, the holidays or their anniversary. The first email said the general was keeping her very busy and it was possible she wouldn't have a lot of time for communications.
"But I still love you and miss you," she wrote.
Yeah, right, he thought. He, on the other hand, sent text messages or emails every day he could, even though he learned not to expect a response. It was hard, but he didn't to even want to think of the possibility that she was cheating. He had seen what that did to other soldiers in the field, and it wasn't pretty.
Now, she was supposedly on some mission with the general. Something didn't sound right. He picked up his tablet. Opening the phone finder application, he punched in his wife's number. In recent years, Congress had passed laws requiring trackers on all civilian mobile phones so they could easily be located and tracked. If the phone was on or its battery was installed, its location could be tracked and recorded by the carrier, which in turn, gave access to Homeland Security and the Defense Department. The idea was to keep track of potential terrorists.
After a few minutes, the finder showed a map with a glowing red dot. He looked and couldn't believe what he was seeing. The dot was about 150 miles east of the Bahamas. What the hell was she doing there? He wasn't stupid, and knew this certainly wasn't the route one would take for an official trip to Europe.
According to the app, that was the last known location of her phone, recorded two days ago. Where the hell was she, and what was she doing? And how the hell was she texting him if her phone hadn't been on for two days?
