MARINE (Agent of Time Book 1) Read online

  MARINE

  BOOK ONE: Agent of Time Series.

  By

  Tanya Allan

  Marine- Copyright2012 Tanya Allan

  The author asserts her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Any adaptation of the whole or part of the material for broadcast by radio, TV, or for stage plays or film, is the right of the author unless negotiated through legal contract. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited.

  This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental. Mention is made of persons in public life only for the purposes of realism and for that reason alone. Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge.

  The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone.

  The Author

  With enormous experience of life, the author brings to life some of the nastier sides of the human condition, with many of the better attributes. Having started writing as a teenager, but never publishing anything until the half century loomed, Tanya successfully brought together elements of the real world, her dreams, fantasies and failed aspirations to breathe life into three-dimensional characters and situations that warrant further attention. Known for producing happy endings (for the most part), but also keen to see true justice is seen to be done, which unfortunately doesn't happen as often as it should in real life.

  Now concentrating on writing, the author enjoys foreign travel, family, faith and furry friends.

  Books by Tanya Allan

  Her AMAZON.COM PAGE: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004VTB5OQ

  A Chance would be a Fine Thing (Knox Journals Book 1)

  A Wedding and Two Wars (Knox Journal Book 2)

  A Fairy's Tale

  A Girl can but Dream

  Amber Alert

  United States of Amber

  A Tale of Two T’s*

  Behind The Enemy - Book 1

  Beginning's End – Book 2

  The Candy Cane Club – Book 1

  Dead End – Book 2

  Dragons & Stuff!

  Emma*

  Every Little Girl's Dream #

  Extra Special Agent

  Flight or Fight

  Fortune's Soldier

  Gruesome Tuesday*

  In Plain Sight*

  In The Shadows

  It Couldn't Happen, Could it?

  Killing Me Slowly*

  Last

  Marine I: Agent of Time*

  Modern Masquerade

  Monique*#

  Queen of Hearts*

  Ring the Change

  Shit Happens - so do Miracles*

  Skin*

  Tango Golf: Cop with A Difference

  The Hard Way*

  The Offer

  The Other Side of Dreams

  There's No Such Thing as a Super Hero

  The Summer Job & Other Stories

  The Torc (Book 1 – The Emerging)

  To Fight For a Dream*

  Twisted Dreams*

  TWOC - A Comedy of Errors

  Weird Wednesday*

  When Fortune Smiles - Book 1

  Changed Fortune – Book 2

  When I Count to Three #

  Whispers in the Mind* - Book 1

  Whispers in the Soul* - Book 2

  *Paperbacks can be found here: http://www.feedaread.com/profiles/368/ # = Published on KOBO.COM

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Marine - 1990

  “Alright, Sergeant, you may get dressed again, now,” the M.O. said to me.

  Standing, I started to put my uniform back on, lacing up my boots while he finished writing on the file. This simple act caused my right knee some pain. I certainly found it took longer to do so many simple things, these days.

  “Well, Doc, what’s the verdict?” I asked, as I finished tying my bootlaces.

  “I am afraid, First Sergeant, that your days of active service may well be over. Your knee injury is such that it will never be able to take the kind of stresses that you men insist on applying. No, I’m afraid it looks like a desk job for you. So, no more flinging yourself out of perfectly serviceable aircraft,” he said, with an ironic smile.

  “Shit! Are you sure, Doc?” I asked.

  “Son, I’ve been a US Navy Medical officer for nearly thirty years, I’m aware that you have almost as long in the service as I, so you know that if I tell you your active days are over, believe me, they are over. Neither of us is getting any younger, and we both know that this is a young man’s game.

  “You’re one of the fittest men of thirty-eight I have ever examined, but that doesn’t alter the fact that your right knee is very weak, you’ve been wounded and injured once too often,” he said, not unkindly. “Hell, Ed, we both go way back together, but I’ve operated on that knee for the last time. You’ve more steel and poly-carbon in there than bone.”

  I knew in my heart that what he said was true, but that didn’t mean I had to like the fact that my life, as I saw it, was as good as over.

  The Doc was a Surgeon Commander in the US Navy, and, of all the officers I knew, he was the one I trusted the most. He had put me back together on no less than four occasions.

  “I’m sorry Ed, I know how much this means to you,” he said.

  I nodded. “The Corps is my life, Doc, you know that. I’m not cut out for a desk.”

  “A lot of men have been here before you, said the same thing, and yet most have found their niche,” he said, trying to reassure me.

  I stared out of the window, watching a squad of recruits run past with their drill sergeant bellowing at them. I knew that I could never take an office job.

  I was a First Sergeant with twenty-one years in the corps. I had more stripes on my sleeves and more medals on my chest than most of the recruits had hair on their heads. I had seen active duty in seven areas of conflict and I’d been wounded six times.

  I came to attention, holding my cap.

  “Sir, thank you, sir,” I said, about turned and marched out of his office. I marched down the corridor and through the front door into the sunshine. I stopped at the top of the steps, wondering what silly bastard ever designed the medical facility with twelve steps at the front door. I’d bet my pension it was a fucking civilian or an officer.

  I surveyed the scene. Although not currently stationed here, this, and places like it, have been my home off and on for many years. I have been all over the world, so I could safely say that the Corps was my only real home. I had married once, a long time ago. It had lasted six years, ending when she had left me for someone else. She had told me that she loved me, but hated the Corps. I loved her, I guess, but I was prepared to see her go, as I said, the Corps was my life, while she was just my wife.

  My two kids learned to call another man ‘Dad’, yet still I stayed in the Corps. I went to the Far East, the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, South America, The Caribbean, Europe and small places that no one ever heard of. I wouldn’t know what to do with a house and garden.

  I was seriously worried for the second time in my life.

&
nbsp; The first had been a long time ago, when I had just started at High School, in Columbus, Ohio.

  I was a gangly kid, all arms and legs. My old man left my mom when I was eight, so she lived above the diner where she worked to keep the three of us kids. I was the eldest. I had a younger brother and sister. Never a great academic, and too uncoordinated for many ball games, I had few friends. When I was around twelve or thirteen, I realised that I was not the same as other kids.

  I got beat up once too often and went berserk. I was waiting in line at the water fountain, when three guys from the year above pushed me and teased me for some reason that I’ve long since forgotten. Whatever they said pushed me over the edge, so the red curtain came down. When the mist cleared, one kid was unconscious and the other two suffered with bleeding noses and a few broken bones.

  They dragged me in front of the Principal, but if it hadn’t been for the facts that, firstly, several kids and at least one member of staff witnessed the incident, and secondly, the injured kids were well known for picking on younger kids, I would have been suspended. As it was, they sent me to see the school shrink for anger management counselling.

  The shrink was a young woman called Michelle. I liked her, so used to look forward to our sessions. She encouraged me to talk, so I did, about everything, even that part of me that I hid from the whole world, even from me for most of the time.

  See, like all teenagers, now and then, I just wanted to be normal, but my real problem was that I wanted to be a normal girl. I just believed that I was in the wrong body, as if someone mixed up the order at birth. I wasn’t gay, and I didn’t necessarily just want to dress as a girl, I just felt I should have been born as one. I had never shared this with anyone, hardly even admitting it to myself, but I told it to Michelle. Or rather, she managed to squeeze it out of me bit by bit.

  My other problem was that I started to grow. In the space of a little more than a year, I went from 5’6” to 5’10”, and started to broaden out. In order to pay my way, I went to a local gym and got a job sweeping the floor, collecting towels and clearing up. A tough ex-US Marine called Mike Reid ran the gym.

  Mike had lost his leg in Korea and was the toughest guy I knew. Part of me wanted to be like him. There was another part of me, however, who wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe, so as you can imagine, I was having serious difficulties keeping sane.

  Michelle diagnosed me as suffering from ‘temporary gender dysphoria’, as a direct result of my father leaving my mother. It was a relatively new disorder, so no one knew whether it was treatable or not. As in my case, it meant that the subject, me, was convinced that they were in the body of the wrong gender, and there were only three options.

  One, to suppress all such desires and urges, and to try to live out one’s life as the gender one was born; two, to dress, act and live as the opposite gender, taking limited hormones to create the effect of that gender. Or, three, the go whole hog and have a sex change operation, which was a lengthy, costly and relatively unsatisfactory procedure that meant taking hormones for the rest of your life, yet, as far as society was concerned - never really becoming a complete woman.

  Michelle convinced me that we could take option number one, so she tried to analyse the shit out of me. I was content, as she convinced me that I could never be a real girl, so I just worked hard at being the best man I could. I learned to suppress all of those feelings and was, for the most part, successful. I started to live my life without those dreaded inner feelings and desires.

  At the same time, Mike took me under his wing and taught me to box. I started exercising, doing weights and working out. I grew some more, so by the time I was fifteen, I topped 6’2” and was developing a body like a brick outhouse.

  The school football coach noticed me, selecting me for the football team. I kept training, boxing and doing weights. When I turned sixteen, I was 6’4” and weighed 210lbs. No one picked on me anymore, so I even convinced Michelle and myself, that I no longer had any silly thoughts about wanting to be a girl. She was pleased, as she believed that I was her first success. I didn’t tell her the feelings were still there, just hidden deep down.

  I was a jock. In my last year at high school, I had the pick of any of the cheerleaders, and, hey, I didn’t do too bad.

  My mom’s health was bad, mainly from the booze and the cigarettes, so I left school and enlisted in the Marine Corps. I sent most of my pay home, so my younger brother and sister could get a chance at college. I could have got to college with my football skills, but my academic grades were not good enough, besides, I wasn’t convinced the laid-back life at college was any good for me.

  By the time I was twenty, I had stopped growing, and was now 6’6” and 225lbs of pure bone and muscle. I was a corporal and had a reputation of being one mean son of a bitch. I went back to High School for a reunion, wearing my uniform, with the few medals that I collected in the last few days of the Vietnam War.

  As I walked into the gym and looked at the kids that had been my contemporaries, I realised that I now belonged to a different world.

  I was tall and lean, with broad shoulders. I was physically fit and capable of taking on anyone in the room and winning. I had very short hair and my face was tanned from my time in the open air. I walked proud, with a sense of purpose and an air of power. These kids had long hair, pale and spotty complexions, unhealthy habits, scruffy colourful clothes, and generally had contempt for the values I had sworn to protect.

  I was very restrained, as I didn’t hit anyone in the first ten minutes. Then this hippy kid called Darren, dressed in floppy flares and with hair all over the place dared to call me a puppet for the capitalist warmongers of Washington. I asked him quietly to retract that treasonous remark, but he laughed at me, despite his six friends getting my message very clear.

  They were pulling him away, when he shook them off, saying, “I am not afraid of this robot, he is incapable of independent thought, without getting an order to …”

  Darren never finished, as my single punch broke his nose and rendered him unconscious. Satisfied he was still alive; I turned and walked out, never to return. I suppose he's a fancy lawyer now and there's probably an arrest warrant out for me.

  When I was twenty-two, whilst on home leave, I met a girl called Jeannie. We had a good time, but she fell pregnant. I thought I loved here, so I did the decent thing and married her. We had a little boy, Scott, and then another child a couple of years later. We called her Michelle, after my shrink.

  Jeannie was from a small town, so at the start everything was new and exciting for her, while it was a good time for me at the start, but then somehow it didn’t hit the spot any more. She loved the first few years, but then the Corps sent me on a long tour abroad, so she found someone else. When I got back, she left me, although I was sad because of the kids, but I have to confess that the main emotion I felt was relief.

  Then, as an unattached, experienced NCO, I volunteered for everything and anything. From the jungles of SE Asia, to the deserts of the Middle East, I saw action. I could drive most forms of ground transportation and anything that went on water. I even was sufficiently familiar with helicopters that I reckon I could even fly one of them too, if my life depended on it.

  I was familiar with every type of weapon, from throwing knives to rocket launchers and tanks, and was skilled in five martial arts. I was a Marine. Hell, I'd been wounded for my country and I was prepared to die for it. I twice very nearly did.

  I all but lost touch with my kids, but occasionally heard from my brother, who was now a lawyer in San Francisco, thanks to his college education paid for by his big brother. He never said thanks, but I never wanted him to. My mom died of lung cancer in 1980. I was abroad at the time, so I never even got to the funeral.

  My brother was embarrassed more than anything else, as he knew it had been my money that had put him through college. On the one occasion I'd visited his home just after Mom died, I so hated his pretentious friends, social climbing
wife and phoney life-style, I left after three days. We'd never met since.

  My sister, Maria, is the only person with whom I keep in regular touch. She’s married to a cop in Worthington, Ohio, and they have four kids already. I occasionally stay with them, just to catch up on old times. The kids think I’m something else, as I always bring them weird gifts from abroad, so they love my visits. Steve, Maria’s husband, is an ex-Marine, so he and I often drink beer well into the night. He is the only person outside the corps that I can relate to, or even call my friend.

  He tried to persuade me to leave the Marines and join his police department. I, am, no, I was secure and happy in the Corps, if I left then I would have to become normal and get a house. Now, with my knee, I guess the cops wouldn’t take me either. Still, I have a vintage Ford Mustang, so as far as I'm concerned, that’s all I ever want.

  I was now about as high as I could go, in the active list at any rate. I had been everywhere and seen stuff that would make most people shrivel up and die.

  As I stood on the steps on the medical centre, I realised that it was time for me to look at my life seriously.

  I’m thirty-eight, my eyesight may not be as good as it used to be, but I know that my long distance sight is fine, but I have a real problem reading in poor light. My knees are more bionic than Steve Austin.

  I am qualified to kill people in about a thousand different ways, and am capable of the Recon motto, ‘adapt, improvise and overcome’. I have a working knowledge of French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Korean and even Serbo-Croat. I’m not fluent in any of them, but with a serviceable firearm in my fist, I can make anyone understand me.