"But, First Sergeant—", I began.
"But? BUT?" interrupted my First Sergeant, looking up from the paper he was holding. "Butt-FUCK, Sergeant Kernig!" He leaned back into his chair. "It's pretty simple. You fucked up, you're off the Fleet Week detail and to get back into the colonel's good graces, not to speak of Captain Newsome and Lieutenant Plume, you make yourself scarce by doing this little job." He tossed the paper onto his desk, marginally in my direction.
I took the hint, retrieved the paper, and started to read.
Proceed to ... for a period of one week... evaluate... submit written report within...
He continued, forcing me to split my attention.
"You probably woulda got away with it if the two boots had been from your platoon. But, no, you put someone else's two Marines on four hours of 'rattlesnake patrol' in the motor T area just because they pissed you off when you were duty NCO."
I looked up from the paper and gave him my best "aw, shucks" expression. It didn't phase him.
"But, nooo. You had to fuck with Jakowitz's platoon and he's already pissed off ever since he got those recruiting duty orders." He looked through the window at the glorious Southern California day then back at me. "Good initiative, bad judgement, young sergeant. Next time - if there is a next time - just turn them over to their own NCOs for discipline. Being Duty NCO, yeah, you're the sheriff for a day, but that don't make you judge." He looked through the window again. "Not like the ole days."
I had finished reading the paper.
"Why me, First Sergeant?" I asked.
He glared at me. "Besides the obvious, numb-nuts?"
I nodded.
He shrugged. "Somebody's gotta do it. You're the guy at the last hot wash-up who told the colonel you didn't trust those egg-heads at Quantico when they threw some new gear at us."
"And?" I asked.
"And so, get on up there to- " He paused.
"Vandenberg," I supplied.
"Yeah, there," he grinned again. "And let the Air Force show you some high-speed, low drag, comm shit they put together for their whatever-they-call their tactical air field security guys." His face grew somber. "You come back and tell us and Quantico if you think we, the Marine infantry, can do something with it."
"Yeah, but why a grunt?" I complained. "Why not some comm puke? Isn't that their job?"
He shook his gleaming bald head. "Comm dogs ain't infantry. This ain't for them, this is for us." He put his finger down on his desk top firmly. "US. If you think it will work, if you think it isn't a waste of time and assets, then we know the communi-skaters won't have any problems with it."
He waited.
I sighed.
"Where the hell is Vandenberg Air Force Base?" I said.
"Somewhere between here and that's-not-my-problem," he replied. "Now, go away."
"Aye aye, sir," I said and about faced, papers in hand.
Since I was no longer on the rappelling demonstration team, I put my lead corporal in charge and took the time I would have given to it and spent it in the comm shop. There, I was spun-up on gear with which I wasn't already familiar, which, as it turned out, was a lot.
Eventually, the time came for the Fleet Week teams and me to split up.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," I got from Corporal Waters as he shook my hand. I shot him the finger since I wasn't sure if he was serious or just joking about how I wound up in this predicament. I left on Friday morning, just as they did, but unlike them I was in civvies. Fleet Week started that weekend and I didn't have anywhere else to be, so why not get there a bit early and get familiar with the area? I jumped in my pickup and set my wheels on the highway, heading north with my temporary additional duty orders.
LA traffic made me want to shoot someone but I managed to crawl to the other side of the metroburg undented. After that it was pretty easy driving. I got lucky when I stopped for gas at Oxnard and picked up a Daisy Duke and halter top wearing teenaged hitch-hiker. I let her pick the music and she was suitably impressed with my khaki and green uniform as well as my Marine sea-stories of where I'd been and what I'd done. As we were passing through Santa Barbara I had my hand teasing her thigh while she blushed and assured me, "I don't normally do things like this."
By the time we hit Goleta, her halter was dangling loose, my hand was inside her shorts and two fingers inside her very wet pussy, and her hand was in my lap, still protesting this was abnormal behavior for her. The motions of her hand implied that wasn't the complete truth, but I didn't challenge the statement. I suggested finding a place to pull over to continue our conversation. That part of California is burdened with hills aplenty so it would be fairly easy to find a turn off where I could demonstrate to my ride-along the benefits of a bench seat.
She was slumped next to me, moaning, eyes closed, breasts peeking out from either side of her top, thighs wide to accept my touch, and her hand working up and down my rock-hard shaft when motion registered at the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see a California Highway Patrol officer in his patrol car staring at us from the adjacent lane.
I mentioned to my rider that we had company and she shrieked, arms and legs flying, grabbing at her clothes and covering all the bits I had worked so hard to uncover. The CHP officer paced us and I gave a small wave of acknowledgement. She was gabbling that she didn't do things like this and she really hadn't done anything wrong even if she did. Apparently satisfied that I was no longer a distracted driver, the officer pulled away. I gave her a sideways look and asked a question I should have asked before.
"Say, sweetheart, how old did you say you were?"
Her reply of "Old enough" was hardly reassuring and by mutual agreement we parted ways at the small town of Las Cruces, where two local highways intersected. When I pulled back onto the road I wryly noted a sign declaring Point Conception was a few miles that-away. I took the path less traveled toward Lompoc, the other side of which I knew I would find Vandenberg Air Force Base. As planned I would arrive just at the end of the work day, too late for anybody to do anything with me, too early to present a real imposition. This would give me the chance to discover the accuracy about the truth behind the rumor that the Air Force had the nicest bases, easiest duty, and prettiest girls in America's armed forces.
I hit the main gate and presented my orders and ID, playing it safe even though I was in uniform. I was told I was early and given a map of the base with a nice X marking my next stop. That proved to be a very modern building, a seeming alien concept in the Marines. There again I heard "early", but they stamped my orders making it official that I had reported for duty. My temporary duty didn't start until Monday, leaving me with the week-end to kill by exploring the myth of Air Force.
In the meantime, the attractive woman with a few more up-side-down bent chevrons on the sleeves of her pale blue uniform shirt than the others I had seen, put a big circle on my map and told me to go there to get a room for my stay. So far, the Air Force myth was holding up. She was prettier than the average female Marine and smelled very feminine. I felt myself respond below the belt buckle and this was made worse because the halter-top girl had gotten me up and going, with no relief. More myth exploring was in order.
I pulled away from the admin center and took note of the immaculate green spaces and more buildings that did
not
date from the Second World War, which seemed to be all we Marines had. Moving against the flow of traffic, I burrowed deeper, and had no trouble finding what we would have called a barracks and what the Air Force NCO had said was a Bachelor Enlisted Quarters. On the other hand, a Marine barracks formed from poured slab concrete was a far cry from the seemingly luxury hotel to which I had been directed.
Again, I parked and pushed through the doors with orders in hand. A desk was conspicuously present in the foyer and at seated in a chair beside, but not behind, the desk was yet another attractive woman, this one younger than the last. She wore her dark hair in a conservative up-do that still managed to frame an oval face accentuated by full lips and large, dark eyes. She wore a casually open dark blue uniform sweater over her light blue shirt which was pleasantly pushed out. A dark blue skirt allowed her legs to be displayed, crossed wonderfully, an open magazine was draped over a well-rounded thigh. Except for the fact she wasn't armed, everything about her said she was standing a guard post.
She looked up from her reading, full lips slightly parted. Her eyes swept me once from head to toe, pausing a split second at the papers in my hand.
"May I help you?" Her voice was low and the tone polite.
"They sent me over to get a room," I responded, placing my orders on the desk.
Her eyebrows arched a bit as she picked them up and started to read. "A Marine? Here?" She gave a half smile.
"I guess you don't get many of us jar-heads up here," I said.
"Well, we got you. How many more do we need?" Her smile was warmer when she handed back my orders. "Let's get you settled in, Sergeant Stanislaw Kernig."
I watched her hands; fairly short nails, no polish, no rings, as she quickly and efficiently plucked a key from a locker, filled out some forms for me to sign to acknowledge receipt of the key and bed linens. "They are already in the room," she explained, standing. She was taller than the average girl, about five feet eight inches, which went well with her robust build.
"I think you've done this before," I said.
"Been CQ? Assigned rooms?" She nodded solemnly. "Oh, yeah. I'm
