Soldier Up Read online

  That’s OK he wasn’t really back to visit anyone in specific, he really wanted to see his mom and dad, they were getting along in years and he wanted to see how they were holding up. They were actually doing very well considering both were in their early seventies. He stayed in town for two weeks, mostly doing chores around his parents’ house, things they couldn’t do anymore. After he completed his mom do list, he packed it back up and headed to California.

  He started in a week and still had no place to live, he had only been out there for the interview and from all that he gathered it looked like a nice place. The company was going to put him up in a two bedroom two bath condo for three months while he looked for a place of his own. They even offered to help him buy a house if he needed it. What house hold goods he had were being moved west by a moving company and would be held in storage locally until he found a place, the company was paying for that too.

  The new job was six figures, thanks largely in part to Gerald’s recommendation; he would also be getting three bonuses a year and a ton of stock options which a good part of them would vest within a year and subsequently every year after that. He got lots of other perks too; it looked like a great start to a new life. He only requested for everyone involved that no one spoke of his military service, he was very proud of it, but that was another life, he wanted to move forward. He knew a lot of guys he served with that when they got out they really ended up missing it. Then after a while it’s all they could talk about, he understood, but he didn’t want to be that guy.

  He would be working in Mountain View near the San Francisco Bay area, the cost of living was outrageous compared to Fayetteville. His salary was very generous so he wasn’t all that concerned about it. His plan was to try to find something close to work, he was told traffic was horrendous and he really never had to worry too much about it, yeah there was traffic near Benning and Bragg but not nearly to the extent it was in the Bay Area. He had a couple of weeks still to get his bearings, he would hit the street running and look for a place to live immediately, he wanted a house and he had a lot of money socked away because when in was in the Army he was always gone.

  It was very early morning as he hit the early morning traffic in the area; the condo he was staying in was furnished and looked very nice in the brochures they sent him. He had GPS, it wasn’t installed he bought one of the units at Walmart for his cross country drive. So far it had served him well.

  Chapter Ten

  He had been at his new job now eight months and loved it, quantum computing, everyday was a new challenge. What he did was research and development although a quantum computer was years away from making it to any market. They were making leaps in discovery and implementation. This life was so foreign to his previous one and that’s ok he still fit right in.

  Not only was his job going great he meet a woman about a month or so ago by the name of Mellissa Grey. She was the same age as he was, athletic, slim and absolutely beautiful; she was also a College Grad, graduated from Berkley with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts. She was a pharmaceutical rep – sales, for a company not far from where he worked.

  They had met at happy hour, Green Brier Brewery, which was also a restaurant located in the business district where they both worked. It was pretty simple how they met, she walked in with a group of friends from work and he walked in with a group of friends from work. One of the guys who he worked with used to work for that company (her company) and he introduced to the two groups. Once he shook her hand and they both looked at each other that was it, they were inseparable after that.

  They had been dating now for over a month which for him was unusual, his previous girlfriends never lasted this long, mostly because he was gone all of time. He would get a call in the middle of the night and had to leave no questions asked, or they were out to dinner or party he gets a call and he’s got to leave no questions asked. It’s amazing how women want to know every little thing going on in your life, but he couldn’t tell them and that did not help his love life.

  At one point the previous week while out to dinner they had gotten onto the subject of the military and military service. Like John’s family no one in her family had ever served in the military and had no intention of ever doing so. When she asked if he had ever considered it and not wanting to lie to her he told her he had been in the Army for over twelve years. She was taken aback for a moment then she changed the subject, his time in the Army never came up again, she didn’t even ask him any questions about it.

  Mellissa loved the outdoors as much as he did, hiking, camping, mountain biking she loved everything outdoors. To his surprise she was also proficient with firearms, in other words she could shoot. He found that an odd contrast with her aversion to the military but she didn’t mind guns. He asked her once what was her take on all of the second amendment fuss, her response was that yes her family was liberal, political affiliation, but there were some things they were very middle of the road, gun control was one of them. She believed that everyone had a right to possess a firearm and should learn how to use it. She was against any automatic firearms and there were already plenty of laws on the books against people owning those, without a license. Yet, she also knew that people, bad people owned them still, she and her family didn’t want to become a casualty.

  She had invited him on a range date once and he didn’t see the harm in it, besides he hadn’t fired a weapon since he got out. When they arrived she walked him through all of the range safety and how to properly use and fire a 9mm pistol, he thought it was cute. When she finally let him fire the weapon it lay out in front of him, the mag wasn’t loaded into the pistol and the paper target was twenty-five feet in front of him.

  Within thirty seconds he had loaded the pistol and fired all bullets in the mag at the target, discharged the mag from the weapon and laid it down. She starred at him for a moment then she pulled the target in. Once she saw the target she immediately noticed there were two separate shot groups both very tight, one in the heart and one in the head, it looked like every shot went in right over the other. In her mind it was some incredible shooting she had never seen anything like it before. It also got a lot of attention of people on the range who knew shooting like that was not an accident, that it took a lot of military training to shoot that well. The questions came from people on the range; fortunately he was able to get away from it all before he had to answer them.

  He never went back to the range with her and she never asked although she did keep going back. It did spark his interest in firearms though he enjoyed firing the weapon and he was still very good at it. He would think about it maybe join a gun club like the military had, it was something to think about anyway.

  Dating Mellissa had gone from thirty days to six months in a flash and he was head over heels in love with her and she was the same, so she said. She was also hinting around at a much larger commitment from him such as moving in together maybe marriage if he asked her, she wasn’t afraid to put it out there, it’s one of the things he liked about her.

  He was now in his early thirties, had a great well-paying job, didn’t do much traveling anymore he had the woman of his dreams, he was a happy man, maybe it was time to make that leap, she had all but said it that she wanted to get married. So maybe it was time to pop the question and get things moving. John examined the marriage issue from all angles which meant he really over thought it and thought about it in terms from and Engineering perspective and then as an SFOF-D Operator, he didn’t know which one was worse.

  A week later they went out to dinner at a very nice upscale restaurant that had a dress code, evening dresses for women and a suit for men; they have been trying to get into this place for weeks. Once he was able to get reservations he decided it would be the ideal place to propose.

  The dinner was great and everything was lovely, at the end of the meal, John scooted his chair back, moved over to Mellissa, he got down on one knee, took her hand, “Mellissa Ann Grey, I love you with a
ll of my heart and I would love to spend the rest of my life with you, will you Marry Me?”

  Mellissa sat there for a bit, making him squirm, she took his hand with both of her hands, looked at him in the eyes, “Can we get some dessert? I’m still hungry.”

  Not exactly the answer he was hoping for, now struggling for a response, “Well yeah I guess.” he said clearly confused.

  Mellissa still looking at him, squeezing his hands, “Of course I will marry you.” The entire restaurant broke out in applause and chuckles.

  Chapter Eleven

  Almost nine months from the date they were married a gift from God was bestowed on John and Mel, at least that’s how they looked at it, Kai Mark Clayton was born, nine pounds two ounces, a baby boy. Mom was doing great and Dad was ecstatic, John was in the birthing room holding Mel’s hand and encouraging her the entire way, in John’s eyes the entire process was a miracle.

  He remembered that his first twelve or so years after college were all about taking life and the best and most efficient way to do that. How his life had changed a hundred and eighty degrees, now it was about making life and doing everything he could do to preserve it. Right after the baby was born he was asked to leave the birthing room as mom needed her rest.

  John stepped out and called his mom and dad and told them the good news, they were no longer able to travel, too many medical issues, but he assured them they would be out as soon as possible so they could meet their new grandson. On the other hand Mel’s parents who lived near Berkeley were there at the hospital in the waiting room to hear the good news, which after his phone call he shared with them. From there they made phone calls to all of the other relatives to let them know. For John the only phone call he made was to his parents, he was an only child and he had no idea where most of his childhood friends were. He had lost track of them while he was in the Army and his life was entirely different and he was sure he had nothing in common with those people any longer.

  He ended up making a couple of other calls to some friends from work and they spread the word there, essentially letting everyone know that John wouldn’t be in for a couple of weeks at a minimum. When he was in the Army he had a lot of friends, of course they were teammates and their families, then everyone they hung out with at the local dives and clubs. For some reason the civilian world was very different he found no one really had your back like they did in the Army, everyone was always out for themselves.

  Although he loved his job and his wife and his new born son he missed the camaraderie of the Army and his team, he missed it a lot. He even went so far to talk to a US Army National Guard Recruiter about joining. When the recruiter saw his DD-214 he damn near shit himself, it was impressive, quite impressive was his exact words. He was shuttled into talking with the recruiter’s commander who was an O-3 (Captain) who then shuttled him off to talk to the Battalion Commander a Lieutenant Colonel; none of them had ever met a man with John’s background.

  Last he heard from them was months ago and nothing came out of it, they had no openings for him, not at his current pay grade and MOS’s. He thought about reaching out to SFOD-D to see if they might be able to help him out but he was afraid that Mel and others would find out. So he dropped that idea both actually, thinking about it more he realized going into the National Guard Mel would certainly find that out too, one of the things though he had never tried was to talk to her about it.

  He was working off the assumption that over a year and a half ago when they first met he had told her he was in the Army once and she never asked about it nor brought it up ever again, so he believed she was anti-military, especially when she said who would ever want to be in the military.

  Mel wasn’t naïve or stupid, she saw how he handled a weapon, people at the range talked to her about it and they told her it looked to them he wasn’t your average Soldier when he was there and there was something special about him. She knew he liked war movies and reading books about the military she wasn’t oblivious to his interest. Then she liked to snoop too, she was home by herself for a month before the baby was born and one day she was rummaging through the garage. John has always had a foot locker that he kept lock, anytime she asked him about it he was always very evasive and just said it was some personal stuff. That day she was rummaging through the garage she found it unlocked.

  That being the case she felt obligated to look into it, obligated in this case meant curious as hell, what could he be hiding that was so bad he couldn’t tell his wife she wondered. She found his DD-214 and a bunch of medals and other awards which she read through, a lot of it she couldn’t make heads or tails from but she was impressed by the ones she could understand. She wanted to know more and so she made a copy of his DD-214 and put the original back, then put everything else back where she found it.

  The following day she went down to the range and spoke to a few guys, who had served in the Army, she showed them the DD-214. She was not prepared for what they told her, according to them her husband was officially a bad ass, meaning that he was from what they could tell from the document he was Ranger and Special Forces Qualified with a bunch of tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was also in SFOD-D which meant he was in Delta. Which means that he was in the less the one percent of the highest trained members in the entire military and he was an Officer, it looked like he was a Major when he got out. She didn’t know what that meant either, “Was that up there in rank?” she asked one guy, “Well yeah he was a field grade officer, I mean he wasn’t a general, but it looks like by reading this he might have been if he stayed in long enough.”

  “Does this mean he killed guys?” she asked another former Soldier. “Well,” he said. “Given that he was in all of these units and had all of these qualifications and all these deployments, I would say yeah. But only he knows for sure.”

  Each man she spoke with was truly impressed by her husband’s qualifications what they told her he was by and large he was one tough son-of-a-bitch. They had never seen anyone else with all of these schools under his belt and a ton of medals to go with it. She had a lot to think about and take in with everything she was told. At a minimum she was very proud of her husband and everything he did for the country, she was incredibly impressed by his achievements and his service.

  She couldn’t get over it, this was not the man she married, he was so laid back and came across as non-threatening and a computer geek. “Wow!” she kept saying over and over to herself, she thought about talking to him about it, but there was a reason why he didn’t want her or anyone else for that matter to know, so she would keep it to herself and destroy her copy of the DD-214 which she did. She fell in love with him all over again, her husband was a “Bad Ass!” she smiled and just shook her head.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nineteen months after Kai was born they welcomed Morgan Ann Clayton she was born ten pounds eight ounces and two weeks late. The couple was elated to add her to their family, a little girl, for John she was a Minnie-me of her mom, he would treasure her and treat her like the princess she was. Starting today he said he would create his own “Rules for Dating My Daughter” and God help the poor bastard that broke them.

  By this time tragedy had struck the Clayton household as Johns dad has passed away earlier in the year. He had Alzheimer’s and for the last few months of his life the quality of it was horrible. His mom couldn’t care for her husband and she had a whole host of medical problems herself. They had hired a homecare nurse to help with his care, but by the time he passed John reasoned it was time. One of the things that surprised Mel was that John showed absolutely no emotion when his dad passed away. She talked to him about it and all he said was that he saw it coming awhile back and he had time to think about it then and grieve about it months ago, so when his dad did pass he was ok with it, he was in a better place now.

  Mel wasn’t sure that’s how he really felt; she had an idea his service in the Army made him feel certain ways about death. When she had found out about his past she secr
etly read everything she could about Army Special Forces and Delta which made her even more proud to think her husband could go through all that. She recalled that she had read once that the men learned how to compartmentalize their emotions when a man was killed so they could continue the mission, if they didn’t do that they would become emotional wrecks.

  As the months went on and they found out Mel was pregnant again John’s mood changed from bored and moody to happiness and jovial. They were looking forward to having another baby, John and Mel were having a great time with Kai, they were fortunate that they could afford in home care for him and Mel’s mom who was retired also lived close so they had plenty of back up. John was engrossed in everything Kai up to this point, but she wished he spent more time out with friends the few that he had. She was still active with hers granted she had grown up in the area and John grew up in Colorado and moved here from North Carolina, she felt he missed the Army but never said anything about it.

  With the new baby coming they spent the time getting everything ready, there would be no hand-me-downs from brother to sister, matter-of-fact Kai was still using most of his stuff. For the time being she would have to share a room with her brother until they moved into a larger home which they had talked about a lot more these days.