![]() "Hi ya, baby," she said with a wave and a smile, as she neared. They all had the same walk and look about them, especially when approaching a potential customer. He's been with enough of them all over the world to recognize their gait and their stare. She was a young, pretty thing, petite but with big tits. He didn't recognize her and even though he never saw her before, he knew what she was. What happened to his country?įrank watched a woman walking on the other side of the street. A war zone and an unsafe place where residents had to watch their backs, this street could have been a street in Bagdad. Symbolic of the state of the economy and the empty political rhetoric on the war on drugs and on gun control, his old neighborhood was no different than any other slum anywhere in America. He grew up here and this used to be a beautiful street with kids playing and families gathering. With him home now and on duty 24/7, the Marine has landed, this neighborhood was on its way to being secured. Pit bulls walked wanna-be tough guys and, in a four-on-one confrontation, he convinced the gang members that sold drugs on his street to find another corner in a different neighborhood to do their dirty business. The trees that lined his street were dead or dying. Not hard to find, the gutter collected needles and spent condoms there was litter everywhere. With transients replacing familiar faces, now a stranger in his own neighborhood, he didn't recognize anyone. Foreclosures had taken their toll and every other house on the street was boarded up or had a for sale sign in front. He was having the headaches and the bad dreams again. The conscience that never came into play then, reared its ugly head now. He more belonged in the desert with his buddies, the guys who understood what they needed to do and did it to survive. Out of his element, he didn't belong here. ![]() Programmed to die for his country and for his buddies, removing him from combat was akin to bringing a cage fighter to a formal dance. He rubbed the sweat from his crew cut and spat his indecision on the sidewalk. Bored and antsy, bouncing off the wall, he was thinking about re-upping. His team losing another game, when in a pennant race, always put him in a lousy mood. Hoping to improve his mood, he listened to his favorite team lose a ballgame on the radio. He was a trained killer, an assassin.Īlready in a foul mood, he hated how his old neighborhood had deteriorated in his absence. Besides, there was nothing normal about Frank. Normal men hate it when their backs are up against the wall but Frank preferred it. Sitting in this way from his perch on the top step, with a commanding view of the street, his back was one side he didn't have to watch. With his back to the wall, much in the way how Wild Bill Hickok sat when playing poker in the saloon, so that no one could surprise him from behind and shoot him in the back, he sat on his stoop having a beer in his shorts and tee shirt, while wearing his ever present unlaced combat boots. Continually on and never off, he couldn't help himself, that's how he was trained to be. Relaxing, but never fully relaxed, always on edge, he remained vigilant. This hot summer weather was nothing like the deadly weather Frank endured, when wearing a vest and a helmet, carrying a weapon, and shouldering a full backpack of gear when in country, all while watching his ass and protecting the backs of his buddies. They all enticed him with money to return to active duty. Even at his age, with his skills, he was still highly regarded by the CIA and a dozen private, mercenary outfits, that pay by body count, dead or alive. A linguist with an expert ear for dialects, fluent in 10 languages, he could curse in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Kurdish, Urdu, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. Still coughing up and spitting out sand, he was looking forward to grilling out later. Now that he was finally home, the chow he had here was better than eating baby food, mushy ready-to-eat meals, MRE's. Compared to what he endured during his 4 tours of desert duty in Afghanistan and Iraq and before that, during the Gulf War, in Kuwait, and special op missions in between, this weather was a relief. He was alive, when so many of his best buddies were dead. He was looking forward to seeing snow it had been a while since he saw any. The kind of day that Frank could fry an egg on the sidewalk, he'd be too hot to eat it. Judging by the extended weather forecast, next week didn't offer much relief from the 90 plus degree, high humidity weather. Highly trained, elite recon Marine cleans up his neighborhood and finds love along the way.Īnother hot one, 3 in a row, it was an official summer heat wave, after just having had one last week and the week before.
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