Last Warning!” I Said – But They Jumped Me Anyway.
My cover was blown, but in a way, that was a good thing. The time for quiet observation was over.
An hour later, Lieutenant Dennis knocked on the door of the small, spartan barracks room I’d been assigned. He was holding two cups of what smelled like burnt coffee.
I stepped aside and let him enter. He placed one of the cups on the small metal desk.
“I’ve confined Havens and the other two to their quarters pending a formal inquiry,” he stated, reciting the procedure like a nervous cadet.
“There will be no inquiry, Lieutenant,” I said, leaning against the wall. “Not a public one, anyway.”
He finally looked at me, his eyes full of questions he was too terrified to ask. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I don’t understand.”
“You’re not supposed to,” I told him. “What you are supposed to do is answer my questions. Honestly.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sergeant Havens. Is he always like that? A bully?”
Dennis hesitated, looking at the floor. “He can be… aggressive. Pushes the recruits hard. We value that kind of intensity.”
“No, ma’am. When you put it like that…”
“I’m putting it like it is,” I interrupted. “How many complaints have been filed against him? Formal or informal.”
He shifted his weight. “There have been a few whispers. Nothing official. Recruits are often hesitant to speak up.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want to be seen as weak. Or become a target,” he admitted.
“A target. Like Private Anna Sterling?” I asked, letting the name hang in the air between us.
The last bit of color drained from Dennis’s face. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “I… I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
My unit was the one they called when things needed to be handled quietly and permanently.
“She was in your platoon, Lieutenant. She was a sharpshooter who out-qualified everyone in her class, including Havens. And then, suddenly, she couldn’t hold her rifle steady. She started failing inspections. Crying in the mess hall. She was medically discharged for ‘failure to adapt’,” I recited from her file. “Sound familiar?”
Dennis sank onto the edge of the cot, his officer’s bearing completely gone. “Havens rode her hard. We all saw it. I told him to back off a couple of times.”
“Did you? Or did you just tell him to be less obvious about it?”
He had no answer. He just stared at his hands.
“I want Havens’ entire file. I want a list of every recruit who has washed out of this company in the last two years. And I want access to the base security logs for the motor pool,” I commanded.
“The motor pool? Ma’am, what does that have to do with anything?” he asked, confused.
“Just get it for me, Lieutenant. And this conversation never happened. As far as anyone is concerned, you’re just following orders from a visiting specialist from Command. Understood?”
“Understood,” he squeaked.
He left the room in a hurry, leaving the burnt coffee behind. I didn’t drink it. I had my own work to do.
The files Dennis provided were telling. Over the past two years, twelve recruits had been discharged from his company for psychological reasons or disciplinary infractions. Nine of them were women. Four others were young men who didn’t fit the hyper-masculine mold Havens championed.
Each file told a similar story: a promising start followed by a sudden, inexplicable decline. It was a pattern of systematic abuse, designed to break people down and force them out. But it still felt bigger than just Havens and his ego. Bullies like him are rarely masterminds; they’re tools.
That night, I went to the motor pool. The security logs Dennis gave me showed a blind spot – a two-hour window every Tuesday night where one of the cameras mysteriously malfunctioned. It had been happening for six months.
The air was cold and smelled of diesel and grease. I moved through the shadows, a ghost in the cavernous garage. I found what I was looking for behind a stack of old tires in a disused maintenance bay.
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