Excerpt
“Hello? Who is this with my g…damn number?” Garvin asked.
With a smile, Leo said,
“I was hoping you’d answer. This is Leo. What’s the deal, my friend?”
“Hey, how you doing? How’s life treating you and Mrs. Knight?”
“We’re doing fine. How is Uncle Sam treating you?”
“Not nice! He’s playing hardball.”
“Where are you, man?”
“Shit! We left the nice warm weather in Afrika for this cold ass Dakota weather. It’s storming out here, I mean SNOW STORMING! Got us nigga’s out here and you know we don’t like this shit, man. You ought to be glad you got the fuck on when you did! Aint a white boy out here and you know how much they like the cold. I’m freezing my balls off! They feel like two ice cubes hanging on a rope!”
Leo wanted to die laughing, but he knew how much his buddy was suffering. He knew Garvin was mad as hell but he was an enlisted man who would have to go to the far corners of the earth if he was called upon to do so and that meant even the coldest or the hottest weather on record couldn’t save him.
“What you doing in Dakota? Can you tell me or is it top secret?”
“It’s top secret but hell, they moved them damn space ships out here. For what, I don’t know, I’m just a sergeant.”
“Which Dakota are you in?” asked Leo.
“North, man and it’s snowing like a mother-fucker out here. That damn Doctor Ocellos is here too and all the rest of them ass holes prying around and looking at these damn ships! I don’t know how true this is, but I heard them damn spaceships lead them here. It’s crazy man!”
“They did what? Told them to? Man that is crazy! How did they do that?”
“The front panels started to light up and it gave them the longitude and latitude to North Dakota. I overheard the General talking to the doctor.”
Garvin paused and said solemnly,
“It aint been the same without you, man. Why don’t you rejoin and get your old job back. We miss you.”
“There’s no way I’d come back. Twenty years was enough for me. Hey, don’t want to keep you on this phone, beside the way you sound, you out in it, patrolling?”