Terminal Leave

There was a hard chill in the air, but surprisingly, no frost on the ground. Autumn had come early to the Carolina coast and had progressed rapidly since early September. The sun had yet to show it's face and no warmth could be drawn from the harvest stars. He fought back a shiver as he walked from his truck to the company offices.

It was all quiet, save a few TVs or radios, in the barracks off to his left. Most of the grunts in both Fox and Weapons Companies were still racked out. Staff Sergeant Lucas Kyrkendall nodded to the duty NCO who was sitting in the hut in the center of first deck.

Corporal Ezra Dannings, one of the best in Weapons Company, had the hearing of a wild dog and had taken a break from the book in his lap when Kyrkendall had drove up on the opposite side of the building. He moved to get up, taking his boots off the desk, but the staff sergeant was at the window before he could stand.

"Kinda cool this mornin huh Staff Sergeant?" He lit a cigarette and put his boots back on the desk, leaning his medium frame back into the chair.

"Almost winter weather Dannings, how's the family?"

The junior Marine shrugged his shoulders as he exhaled a cloud of smoke, "Oh ya know, the boys are demons and my wife is pregnant."

Kyrkendall laughed at the look on his Corporal's face, but he silently envied the younger man. Ezra Dannings was twenty-two years old and had a bright future in the Marine Corps Infantry. He also had a wife that lived to volunteer with the battalion where ever and when ever she could. The boys he spoke of were young and hyper, and to make the family postcard perfect Danning's wife, Fae, would be giving him a little girl in a few short months. If he would motivate himself a little bit harder, he would be a Sergeant before the child was born. The Staff NCO shook these thoughts away as he glanced at the sky. "We're probably going to be in for a humid afternoon, ya know how it is around here. You ready for the hike?"
Dannings scowled again and ran his hand over his face, "The hump's today? I thought it was tomorrow!"
"Oh well, yeah it was supposed to be, I guess being on duty yesterdy morning you missed the word passed down at formation that it was switched to today since it's supposed to rain tomorrow."
The younger Marine shrugged, "I'll have to see if I can get my gas quals out of the way before chow then so I can be good to go by the time to step off."
It was Kyrkendall's turn to scowl, in sympathy for the kid. A 21 mile forced march after a night spent on duty and a morning in the CS chamber. "Hey don't worry about the hike, I'll talk to Gunny about it."
Dannings cracked a grin, "Thanks Staff Sergeant, but I'll be ready. Hey you want to bring your old lady out to the house this weekend? There's a fight on pay per view."
Kyrkendall would have leaped at the chance to bond with his Marines, but this time it meant bringing Alyssa along. "Your wife ok with the company invading your house?"
Danning's shrugged his shoulders, "She's glad she's got more notice this time. Last month I was just about to buy the fight when James called and as soon as he heard MMA I had 15 guys in my living room."
Kyrkendall chuckled, knowing that with his own wife that would have been grounds for divorce. The word sent a cold feeling down his spine that had nothing to do with the weather, he threw a glance at his phone in order to get out of the conversation.

As if reading his mind Dannings threw a glance at his own phone noting the time, "0415 on deck, Staff Sergeant. All's quiet in the barracks with no incidents to report from the previous night." He put his cigarette in a half empty soda can and stood to make another round.

The senior Marine smirked at how Dannings could be personal and warm one minute and intensely all business the next. That's what made him a good Marine. "Very good Corporal, we'll see you this weekend; carry on." He replied and turned to walk to the company offices.

Kyrkendall had started unlocking the door when he realized he had forgotten paperwork he needed in his truck. Relocking the door, he jogged back to his truck. It was on the opposite side of the building so he wouldn't have to worry about using Corporal Dannings as a distraction again. He didn't need anymore distractions this morning, and everytime he thought of Dannings he thought of the Corporal's wife, which made him think of his own wife.
Alyssa would never be the way that Fae Dannings was. The notion of the brotherhood had eluded her for as long as they had been together. She had begrudgingly moved to the coastal swamps of Carolina only after he told her he was not leaving the Corps, and since she had been here her malice had only grown with each passing day. How much longer would it be before...

Kyrkendall shook his head at himself harder then usual, he refused himself thoughts of his wife leaving him, he always had. For as much as she hated everything about him and the Corps, it equaled how much he loved her.

Grabbing the file off the passanger seat he steeled himself for the work day ahead. It was never an easy day in this battalion. He had to get the final list of those going to CAX to Captain Malensky by chow and if he didn't hurry it wasn't going to happen.

Slamming the door he turned to head back into the offices, when a shadow at the corner of the building caught his eye. He glanced at his watch, 0420. Who would be up yet? PT wasn't for another hour. "Whose there?" He shouted, loud enough for whoever it was to hear him, but not so loud that it would alert Dannings. The figure stepped from around the corner.

"Hey, what are you doing here so early?" It would be his last words, a question that would never receive an answer. Because at that moment he felt a pressure in the middle of his back. Turning to confront his attacker, the hilt of the Ka-Bar protruding from his flesh, he was speechless with shock. He tried to form his thoughts into words. Why were they doing this? The last thing he knew was another sharp pressure in the same proximity as the first, the concrete rushing up to meet him and the fleeting prayer that his loyal Marines would understand.
The attackers glanced at each other and hoisted the newly dead Staff Sergeant from the ground. Taking out loose ends had been easier then they thought.

Sergeant Miguel Ruiz walked briskly to the group of Marines gathered for morning PT. He exchanged salutations with a few of the junior Marines on his way to the circle where the familiar faces of the Marines he'd been in the unit with since he was a boot Marine himself stood smoking their morning cigarettes.

"Nice morning for a run, eh boys?" He joked, lighting a cigarette of his own. Accustomed to the weather, the majority of them were in issued sweats while the rest of the platoon were freezing in shorts and Tshirts.

Corporal Grayson James snorted as he exhaled a cloud of smoke, fighting hard to keep his teeth from chattering "Yeah sure, if it's such a fine mornin why aint Staff Sergeant runnin with us?"

Ruiz was used to James' sarcasm and opened his mouth to remark, but was stopped short by the sight of two of their more senior Lance Corporals running up to the group, obviously late. He made a mental note to ask them about it later as the platoon formed up for PT.

He hit the talk button on his cell phone for what seemed like the thousandth time that afternoon. He let it ring four times and hung up when he heard the voicemail recording. He could leave another message but what's the point?

Adding to the frustration was the fact that the chill of pre-dawn had gave way to a steamy midmorning with no hope of a breeze from the ocean a few miles away. Blouses had come off as early as 0730 and now, as chowtime drew near, he caught glimpses of barechested grunts as they smoked on the catwalk from the window on the other side of the room. The window behind Kyrkendall's empty desk. If the Staff Sergeant were there, as he was supposed to be, he would be turning and yelling every five minutes until T-shirts were donned, at the least.

Ruiz knew that Gunny Torres, the CO and most of the platoon, for that matter, were trying to get a bead on Kyrkendall; the days work all but forgotten. It just wasn't like Kyrkendall to disappear and Ruiz could not understand what was going on. He sat at his desk in the company office and stared at the computer screen in front of him. The mountain of paperwork that had to be done by the end of the day remained untouched, all the Sergeant did was pick up his phone and hit redial every five minutes. Every time the familiar voicemail picked up he got a little more worried about the Staff Sergeant. Lucas Kyrkendall was his best friend and the most squared away Marine in the company, possibly the battalion, and that was a fact that Luke prided himself on. It wasn’t like him to just up and disappear, but how had he gone anywhere? His truck was there in the parking lot and the motor pool had reported no missing vehicles when an inquiry was made by the Gunnery Sergeant. Where was Kyrkendall? At 1130 Ruiz stopped asking questions and released the Marines for afternoon chow. He went back to his desk and tried to concentrate on some paperwork.

About ten minutes later a shout came in from the parking lot through the open windows. It was barely audible through the noises of engines and stereos that generally accompany Marines going to and from the respective eateries on and around the base. The sounds that became louder by the second, however, were out of the ordinary. Ruiz threw himself back from the desk and stormed to the window joined seconds later by the Gunny and Captain. The entire company was gathered in front of the duty hut, kneeling around something.

Ruiz’s fears were realized as he stepped into the middle of the circle of the junior ranked Marines and fell to his knees beside the still body of the man he had spent all morning searching for. It was quite clear that Lucas Kyrkendall was dead. There was no color except for the blue of his lips and the unmistakable almost black crimson of dried blood on the back of his utilities, a smell that hung thick in the air. For the few Marines in the company that had not yet experienced combat the look and the smell were too much for them, a few distanced themselves from the scene, others vomited. On the other hand, Ruiz’s seasoned Marines were on their phones relaying the message to those who needed to know and those who needed to be on the scene when the police arrived.

“Who found him?” He didn’t know he had spoken until the words had left his mouth and when no one answered him he realized that it had been barely audible, even to himself. By the time he could bring himself to ask again he was surrounded by base police and officers going all the way up to the Division XO. The level of confustion was just below chaotic and the Sergeant knew there was no point in trying to be heard now. Before the coroner took the body from under the small grove of trees in front of the duty hut of barracks number 535 Sergeant Miguel Ruiz of the US Marine Corps reached out and gingerly closed the lifeless eyes of his best friend.

"You're serious about this?" Special Agent Kyla Winters had done her fair share of time in the Corps, like some of the other agents at NCIS and like most female Marines she had a certain apprhensions about Infantry Marines. "You couldn't have gone with Thompson or Gray?"

"What's wrong with you?" McMichael asked climbing out of the crime scene truck. He knew that fresh out of the Corps and new to the Navel Criminl Investigative Service Winters would have to overcome several years of the stereotypes the other side of the Marine Corps had about the Infantry, where he had come from himself.

"Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, I'm female." Winters looked down at her blue jeans and black shirt as if only just now noticing her anatomy herself.

McMichael raised an eyebrow, throwing a sideways glance at her as they walked towards the barracks. "And you think that's going to make a difference because?"

"The only thing these grunts are going to notice is that I have a chest. They're like dogs almost."

"Oh no ma'am!" came a voice behind her, she turned, almost startled because she hadn't noticed the two Marines.

Some agent I am! She thought bitterly, aloud she tried to apologize "I wasn't meaning to insult Corporal-"

The Marines looked at each other and laughed, the smaller Corporal spoke again "Oh no insult ma'am I was simply trying to say that we're more like coyotes then dogs. Dogs are pampered, we ain't."

They walked past her and McMichael before the larger one turned, walking backwards, and added, "You don't have to worry though, the only one that bites is me and I've had all my shots!" He turned back and continued joking with his buddy as they disappeared into the barracks.

It was then that Winters looked up and noticed that almost every Marine on their suspect list had just witnessed the exchange and were openly staring at her as she followed behind her partner and the Marines that had just entered. Definately work on your observation skills! she scolded herself as she climbed the stairs to the second deck.

The entire day of questioning continued in the same manner as it had started. The grunts, realizing she was a female Marine, would come in wearing gas masks; claiming they were the closest things to a muzzle they had. For the most part, though, after the laughter had faded the Marines knew how to get down to business reguarding their murdered Staff Sergeant.

"Can't think of any one of us that liked him all that much in the beginning, ma'am." The Corporal that had joked about her remark earlier leaned his large frame back into a chair and glanced around the common area that they had turned into a makeshift work area to question the Marines seperately.

Winters popped the top on a soda and tried to not make it obvious that she had to look at her paper to remember his name, "Well, Corporal James, what about now? Is there anybody that might still be hanging on to bad sentiments?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders and pulled a can of smokeless tobacco out of his cargo pocket. He started packing it to take a pinch while he answered, "Nothing out of the ordinary really, ma'am, you get the ones that just don't like the Marines in charge no matter what their leadership style is. Some guys are just born pranksters and some are born hardasses."

Winters was unsure why James had added that last comment, "What do you mean, Corporal?"

He shrugged again shoving a fair amount of tobacco grains into his bottom lip before closing the can and brushing excess grains onto his trouser leg. "Aw, nothing really, just remembering the way ol Staff Sergeant used to rip us a new one in public and slap our backs when no one was looking if we got one over on the Captain or the Gunny. Hell he even went as far as to get Sergeant Ruiz passed over for Staff select last month for a prank he pulled on Gunny Torres."

Winters almost choked on her soda, "Kyrkendall kept Sergeant Ruiz from being promoted?" She picked up her pen and started writing at a furious pace.

The Corporal nodded and stood quickly, he was getting out of that room as quick as he could, "Yes ma'am, said something about how it showed a lack of proper bearing which would cause immature leadership choices or some trash like that." He moved to open the door, "Now ma'm if that's all I've got to get out of here before I start tweaking, PTSD is a bitch to me if I have to stay in closed areas for too long."