Chapter 5

Commander Strong's office was no more than four walls, painted a light blue, with a desk situated in front of a window that looked out onto the barracks.

The bare walls and shelves said that Strong preferred to spend his time outside but this morning was different.

This morning he paced in front of the window, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, and he looked to be holding a great deal back.

"I would expect something like this from some of the younger recruits but not from two senior Marines," Commander Strong appeared to be speaking calmly but Jules could hear the constraint on his voice.

He was finding it difficult not to shout at them. Neither Marc nor Jules dare move an inch.

They were stood to attention in front of their commanding officer's desk but their eyes were glued to the wall as Strong walked away from the window and passed them.

Julia could see his eyes, the colour of dark chocolate and secretive, focus on her face before he reached Marc and turned around to walk back.

"I do not need to tell you how disappointed I am in the pair of you," Strong continued, "Assaulting young, civilian men in nothing more than a pub brawl!"

Jules's throat worked against her. She knew he was upset, she could feel his anger reverberate through the room, but her stomach twisted to think that he was upset with her.

She felt like a little kid being told off for the first time by their father. She hated it.

A tense few moments passed as Strong let the gravity of the situation settle fully on their shoulders. Julia didn't think she could feel any worse than she did right then as Strong walked back behind his desk.

Marc was the first to breach the silence. "Sir, if I may-"

"No, you may not." Strong cut him off, his fist resting against his desk.

Julia could see Marc swallow out of the corner of her eye as he fell back into line.

"The one thing I need from the both of you is discretion," Strong seemed to shake his head a little before he looked up at them and Julia could see that he was battling with something, "More now than ever."

Jules frowned at his words.

He wondered if he should tell them, but he remembered his orders and, despite his personal objections, he was a good soldier so he held his tongue.

"You will not be punished this time but if I hear about any more senseless brawls then you'll both be court marshalled. Is that understood?"

"Sir."

"Sir." They saluted.

"You may leave." Strong fell into his chair behind his desk as he watched them turn and leave through the door they had entered.

They had no idea what was happening, Strong scoffed. It was absurd, wrong even that he could not tell two of his best Marines something that affected them directly.

Making his decision, he reached across and snatched the phone from its holder.

Dialling the number he had been given, the phone rang three times before it was answered on the other end.

"Yes?" The matriarchal voice answered.

Strong did not bother to introduce himself, "I cannot keep it from them for much longer."

"Are you on a secure line?" She asked but Strong simply repeated his last line.

"I cannot keep it from them," Strong answered, "I can't."

"You must, Commander, until all available options have been explored." She replied with a soft sigh.

Strong knew what she was going to say but he refused to believe that his only option was to wait. He wasn't a very patient man.

"Are you sure?" He asked, "Remember, they have been there, they could help with the geographical-"

"-No, they couldn't. It would be nothing more than a conflict of interest," The voice replied. She was getting tiresome of his disobedience, "Be patient, Commander. That is an order."

She must have sensed that her tone of voice was too harsh and it softened immensely, "I look forward to seeing you at the meeting next week. Goodbye, Christopher."

The line went dead and Strong dropped the phone back into its cradle.

Sometimes he hated his orders.

* * *

"Well, that could have been worse," Jules commented when they left Commander Strong's office.

Walking adjacent to the fence that bordered the street outside the base, Julia judged that she felt slightly underwhelmed and confused after the meeting.

Underwhelmed because she had expected a lot more than just being shouted out and confused because she was sure that the Commander was holding something back from them, she just didn't know what.

She had been shouted at before and she still had the gut wrenching feeling that she had disappointed him, but she stood by her actions. She would never argue with Strong but those racists in the pub last night deserved a good beating.

"Something tells me that it's not over yet," Marc replied.

Jules looked at him trying to understand what he meant when she glanced passed his shoulder and towards the street outside.

A black BMW with tinted black windows was parked directly opposite the gates and the longer she looked at it the more she felt like she was being watched.

"Marc," Jules muttered under her breath and pretended to look at Marc as she kept an eye on the car.

"What?" Marc frowned at her.

"The car that nearly ran me down last night, it was a black BMW wasn't it?" Jules tilted her head ever so slightly to his left.

Marc got the hint and looked towards the street. He knew which car she meant because the moment he looked around an engine purred to life, LED headlights flickered to life and a sleek black vehicle came speeding out of its parking space and fled up the street.

They watched it screech towards the junction before it turned right and was lost from their view.

"What do you think that's about?"

They stopped and stared at the place where the car had been.

"Strong keeping tabs on us after last night?" Marc suggested.

"That car was there before we reached the pub though," Julia said and a moment of silence passed between them.

"How did Strong know about last night?" Marc turned and looked at Julia, his brows drawn together in the middle, "The pub landlord didn't ring the police, so how did Strong know what had happened?"

Julia hadn't thought about that and she mentally kicked herself for being too slow, "do you think the two are connected? Strong and the BMW following us?"

Marc lifted a shoulder in a shrug, "Could be. But then again we could be making something of nothing. How many BMW's are there on these streets? Hundreds I would imagine."

He started walking again, as if leaving the subject behind them.

"Maybe," Jules jogged to catch up with him but she couldn't help looking over her shoulder every time she heard a car passing on the street outside.

It was never a black BMW though.

When they reached the rec hall, they could hear the laughing and the sound of a ping pong ball hitting the wall before they had even reached the door.

As they opened the door and stepped in, Jules saw a flash of white immediately to her right. The laughter in the room died away as looks of surprise erupted onto the faces of a dozen marines.

Reacting instinctively, Jules turned and lifted her hand into which an ivory ping pong ball landed.

"Look where you're throwing that thing, will you?" Marc scoffed as he slipped past Jules, his hand trailing along her lower back as he did so.

It left Jules's skin tingling before she remembered where she was and saw Walker smirking at her from where he was leant against the ping pong table, twirling the bat in his hand.

"You've got some reflexes there, Langdale," Walker winked, "Fancy trying them out sometime?"

"You ought to think about trying out a bath sometime, Walker," Jules laughed as she threw the ping pong back over to them.

Their recreation room was a large rectangular room with sofas and chairs spanning out from a large television set, a stack of DVDs directly beneath it, a small kitchen in the corner and a vending machine at the other end of the room.

A green carpet ran the entire length of the room, blending nicely with the top of the ping pong table at the far end near the door but contrasting horribly with the red and black leather sofas.

Jules took up her spot in an armchair near the window, it looked entirely out of place in a Marines Rec Room and suited a nursing home better but it was comfortable and she had fallen asleep in it one too many times.

"Tea?" A voice called across to them and Jules glanced over her shoulder to see Twitch holding up a mug to them.

Jules instantly relaxed when she saw Twitch with his freckly nose and genuine smile. His eyes, a light blue, were warm with laughter.

"Of course," Jules nodded, "Thanks Twitch." Of course, she still hadn't gotten used to the close shave he had done, removing most of his red hair and only leaving a light dusting of it around his scalp.

Conversations soon erupted all over the place as the television set talked to itself on the wall behind them, drowning out their own topic of conversation.

"So, how did it go? What did the doctor say?" Twitch sat back down on the sofa beside Carlos and handed out their drinks.

Marc's face instantly changed, it became more shut off, but the others didn't notice.

Jules blew against her hot tea to bide for time. She could feel Carlos's dark chocolate eyes staring at her, waiting for her to speak.

They had been through so much together that Jules couldn't not tell him about her and Marc's difficulty to conceive.

Carlos was like a brother to her so when she told him the news she didn't have to look at his face to know that his dark, full eyebrows were drawn together and his eyes were wide with anger for her.

She knew he would say the right thing to make her feel better but when no words came, Jules looked up and saw that he was looking back and forth between her and Marc.

His olive skin was almost glistening beneath the lights, highlighting his chiselled jaw beneath a thick layer of stubble, and his straight nose.

"Well, that sucks," Twitch filled in the void for Carlos,

"Yeah," Marc stared into his half-drunk cup of tea, not hiding the frustration in his voice.

"But . . . it'll happen," Twitch nodded, "When its right, it'll happen."

Jules smiled at Twitch as she was reminded of the age gap between them, "Thanks."

The mood around them changed instantly and Jules started to feel depressed as their sat there in silence. She kept looking at Carlos, expecting him to say something, but he had stopped looking at her and Marc and was now glaring at the carpet as if it had done him some personal injustice.

"So, what's been happening whilst we were away?" Jules asked, shifting in the chair and curling her legs underneath her.

Twitch began to fill them in on everything they've missed, which hasn't been a lot, whilst Julia watched Carlos feeling bereft.