Saturn Run by John Sandford, Ctein Page B

over to a harsh, hawk-nosed marine gunnery sergeant named Cletus Smith, who didn’t care for Jesus hair or burnt-orange GnarlyBrand pants or RhythmTech overshirts.
    The gunny was not happy: “I don’t know exactly what’s up, Dingleberry . . .”
    “That would be Darlington . . .”
    “. . . Darlington, but I don’t like it. It wasn’t done right. I got some freshly made West Point asshole shoving security papers down my throat, I got the sergeant major yapping at me, my schedule’s screwed for the next six months, I was supposed to start an advanced vid class . . .”
    The gunnery sergeant was wearing the usual uptight marine camo uniform, which had some kind of special marine name that Sandy didn’t remember, and as ex-army, really didn’t care about. He reached forward and slipped two fingers inside the placket on the sergeant’s shirt, and gave it a tug.
    “Gunny, gunny, gunny,” he said, leaning toward the sergeant until their noses were only six inches apart. “Nobody gives a shit what you think or how inconvenient it is, or what Mrs. Cletus or the Cletus rug rats think. But you should give a shit what I think—because if you don’t have me up to Ultra Star vid status in two weeks, Major General Harrington will be down here with a fuckin’ power mower. Guess whose ass gonna be grass?”
    Few marines had ever had their placket tugged; Smith was not one of them, and his nose turned white. “Get your fingers the fuck outa my . . .”
    Sandy broke in: “. . . and if you ever give me any serious shit, I will personally take your skinny, ignorant peckerwood Marine Corps ass outside and stomp a new mudhole in it, to replace the mudhole you already got.”
    Smith stared at him for a moment, then showed a very tight grin: “They didn’t tell me you’d been in the service, and the hair fooled me. Argentina?”
    “The whole cruise,” Sandy said. The whole cruise was insider code for those who had been shot up.
    “I was on that boat,” Smith said. He took a step back. “All right. You can call me Clete. Let’s take a look at your gear. . . .”
    Ten straight days of hard work—and a Marine Corps haircut: Jesus hair didn’t work all that well in weightless conditions.
    Maybe he wasn’t Ultra Star when he finished, but Sandy was two thousand percent better than he had been, and he hadn’t been bad to begin with. Cletus Smith had been a combat videographer, and had actually filmed himself being shot down in a Marine Blackfoot IV helicopter; he rode the vid right into the ground, with commentary, although the commentary had been suppressed for the good of the Corps. Smith said, at the end of their last day, “Y’all come back: I got more.”
    “Clete, I wish I could take you with me,” Sandy said, as they slapped hands. “Once I get some space under my feet, I’ll be looking for ideas.”
    “Bring the vid. And boy, I’d love to go to Mars. If you can find me a slot . . .”
    Sitting outside his condo, Sandy’s wrist-wrap told him that his ride had been held up on the 110, because some underclassman had dropped a bowling ball off a bridge. Traffic had resumed, and the underclassman was being pursued through the Avenues, where he wouldn’t be caught. Sandy hoped the cops were watching all available bowling balls. Having a sixteen-pound Brunswick blow through your windshield could seriously screw up your trip to Disneyland.
    Eight or ten minutes later, his wrist-wrap told him his ride was turning the corner, and he got to his feet. A black limo, unmarked. The car hummed to a stop, and a driver got out of the front. A rear door slipped open, and the truck lid popped. Sandy said, “I got it,” threw his bags in the back, kept the coffee, and climbed inside.
    The driver got back in, the door slid shut. Sandy nodded at the woman who sat opposite him, and put the coffee cup in a cup holder.
    The woman was a redhead, a spectacular example of the species, and it took only a moment