Free Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within by James N. Cook Page A

squat Green Beret walked in precise circles around hives of activity, constantly tapping his ‘teaching aid’, a slender length of cane, against the outside of his boot.
    Although I stood nearly five inches taller than he did, he probably outweighed me by a good twenty pounds, and none of it on his waist. Nearly as wide through the shoulders as he was tall, Grabovsky was a dense, bulky, fireplug of a man.
    “Took you long enough,” Gabe said as I pulled the brakes on my bicycle and stopped next to him, standing on one leg.
    “Hey, it’s my day off. You should be kissing my ass for showing up at all. Where’s Marc and Curtis?”
    Marcus Cohen and Curtis Wilkins were the other two drill instructors. Marc was an ex-Marine and current sheriff’s deputy, and Curtis was the second Green Beret under Steve’s command.
    “They’re with the general’s men at the old pawn shop doing inventory,” Gabe said. “Got another supply drop coming in today at around noon.”
    “They send us any uniforms yet?” 
    He shook his head. “Not yet. Hopefully they’ll come with today’s drop. We did get some rifles, though, and a couple of crates of ammo.”
    “M-16s?”
    “No, M-4s. Also a few grenade launchers, claymores, and a couple of M-240s.”
    “Good. Now you just have to teach these kids how to use that stuff without blowing themselves up.” 
    Ahead of us, a recruit dropped a box of food he was carrying, and Grabovsky cracked him on the back of the leg with his cane. “Watch what you’re doing, knucklehead. Those supplies are worth more than your life.”
    The offending recruit rubbed the back of his leg and glared at Grabovsky before picking up his box and carrying it to the mess hall.
    “Do you think it’s a good idea, letting him do that?” I said, keeping my voice low. “Sooner or later, he’s going to hit the wrong person and things are gonna get ugly.”
    “He knows what he’s doing,” Gabe replied. “That stick saves time and effort getting the point across. How many times have you seen someone make the same mistake twice around Grabovsky? And anyway, I’d put money on him against any one of these kids. He’d break ’em in half.”
    He had a point. The Army veteran’s methods may have been harsh, but I couldn’t argue with the results. And if any of these recruits had delusions of grandeur and tried to step up to the G-man, well … it would be over quickly, at least.
    I stepped off my bike and pushed it over to the instructor’s barracks. I didn’t bother locking it up; no recruit would be stupid enough to risk stealing it. Gabe would rain death and fire on their heads if they tried. The smell of hot butter and frying eggs wafted from the mess hall, making my stomach rumble in response. Breakfast would have to wait, however. I wanted to see what kinds of goodies Uncle Sam had brought us.
    On the way to the supply building, the distant thup-thup-thup-thup of the Chinook carried to me faintly over the treetops. I stopped and looked westward, catching a speck of movement against the far horizon. Gabe walked over and stood next to me, looking in the same direction.
    “Never thought I’d be happy to hear that sound again,” he said.
    “Makes you want to reenlist, doesn’t it?”
    He glanced at me and snorted. “Yeah, it’s on my to-do list. Right under gouging my own eyes out and cutting my balls off with a rusty nail.”
    The helicopter became larger as it grew closer, a bulging cargo net swaying slowly beneath it.
    “Come on man, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”
    “You remember that fight with the Legion a couple of months back, right?”
    I grimaced, absently touching the scars on my side. “How could I forget?”
    “Imagine doing shit like that day in, and day out, for fifteen months at a time, with only seven months of downtime between deployments. Then repeat it five times. Do that, and you’ll have the beginning of an idea of what it was like over there.”
    I turned to look at