Enemy Combatant

Enemy Combatant

Chapters: 27
Updated: 19 Dec 2024
Author: Ron Albury
4.1

Synopsis

Samantha, a young girl with a traumatic childhood, finds a home in the US Army. After brutal tours of duty in Iraq, she returns home and tries to use her anti-terrorism skills to save her country. But is she saving it or destroying it?

Action Adventure Thriller LGBTQ+ GxG Abuse

Enemy Combatant Free Chapters

Prologue | Enemy Combatant

The beat-up van struggled up the steep gravel driveway, forcing the driver to downshift into a lower gear. The roar of the straining engine scattered the birds roosting above the driveway and flushed a young deer across the van’s path.

Jennifer, a pretty woman in her late-20s, parked the van next to a log cabin at the top of the drive. The cabin was over one-hundred and fifty years old. Made from hand-hewn logs, it sat isolated on top of a wooded hill in Clinton County, Ohio. Originally built for a wealthy merchant who used it for hunting, a subsequent owner repurposed it as a vacation cabin when the surrounding area was cleared and turned into farmland.

Jennifer was medium height, tanned, and had wind-blown shoulder-length black hair, with bangs that hung just over her eyebrows. Her clothing consisted of ragged jeans, a stained green T-shirt that was too large for her, and hiking boots. Her makeup was slightly heavy but carefully applied, and the muted tones were very understated. Unusual but not remarkable looking, she easily blended into most crowds.

Before exiting the van, Jennifer picked up a stack of glossy promotional brochures from the passenger seat and removed a loaded 9mm pistol from the glove compartment. She walked to the front door, fumbled with the deadbolt, and burst into the cabin. The air smelled slightly musty, and she wished she could have left the windows open while she was gone.

“Hey! I got those vacation brochures like I promised. You wanted to go to the Gulf Coast side of Florida, right?”

“Fuck you!” a woman’s voice barked from the back of the cabin.

Jennifer continued into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair next to the table. She set the gun down and began to flip through the brochures.

“I don’t like this one because it is three blocks from the beach. It’s cheaper, but I think it is worth the money to be right on the water, don’t you?”

“You asshole,” the unseen woman’s voice called out again.

Undeterred, Jennifer persisted with her sales pitch. “This one has an Olympic-sized swimming pool. I don’t understand why they would build a swimming pool at a beach-front motel, but what do I know?”

“Why are you torturing me like this?” The other voice is nine parts anger and one part fear.

Jennifer eased up from the kitchen chair and walked toward the back of the cabin. Jennifer was not her real name; she was just currently using it. After each assignment, she rotated between the five most popular girl names for her age group: Jennifer, Amanda, Jessica, Melissa, and Sarah.

“Aww, you know I’m not really torturing you. I’ve told you before, Americans don’t torture.”

Walking into the back room, Jennifer studied the woman who had been cursing her. She had on a blue denim skirt and a slightly soiled white knit top. About the same size and coloring as Jennifer, she could probably have passed as her sister. Her hair was unkempt, and her tears had mixed with mascara to give her zebra cheeks. However, that’s not what would catch your attention if you walked into the room.

The woman was sitting in a child’s chair. Her ankles were bound to the front legs with plastic cable straps, forcing her knees up in an awkward and uncomfortable position. There was a blindfold across her eyes, and her arms were tied behind her back at the wrists and elbows with a cotton clothesline. A second rope went from her wrists through a pulley screwed into a ceiling support beam, forcing her to lean forward to take the pressure off her shoulders. There was a large blue tarp on the floor under her.

“So,” Jennifer said, “Did you miss me while I was out?”

Chapter 1 — Sammie: The End of Childhood | Enemy Combatant

I was almost eighteen and had been through another rotten day at school. Randy dumped me because I wouldn’t give him head at lunch. I got a C on my poetry assignment because the teacher thought it was too self-absorbed. And it was a Tuesday, which meant I had been subjected to six hours of “Your Mother is a Drunken Whore” taunts. Then I came home and found my mother passed out on the living-room couch, like a drunken whore.

I’d never seen Mom so messed up before. Her head was tilted back and mouth wide open. Her hair was a total rat’s nest. That ugly yellow housedress of hers was all hiked-up and twisted around. Her legs were wide open showing everyone that she was going commando.

The condition of the room added to the “drunken whore” ambiance. It smelled of alcohol and stale sex. The coffee table was shoved away from the couch, laying on its side in the middle of the room. The floor was appropriately decorated with two Styrofoam cups (one of which was crushed), an open vodka bottle laying on its side in a puddle, and an upside-down ashtray resting on a pile of ashes and cigarette butts.

This was way too much for me to shove into my mental worry box. I was furious. My life already sucked, and I surely didn’t need something like this piled on top. One part of me wanted to start throwing things and wrecking furniture. One part of me wanted to run away from home. Then this little part of my mind poked through and told me I was lucky the bottle was almost empty when it fell on the floor so there would be less mess for me to clean up.

Mom may have been a real shit, but this scene was way over the top even for her. I was certain it wasn’t the first time she had been in this condition, but it certainly was the first time she was in this condition at home in the middle of the day. It was the first time she was like this in front of her daughters.

I got worried and started looking for Chris. Middle school let out before high school did, so Chris should have been home for about a half-hour. I wanted to know if she had any idea what had happened. I wanted to make sure she was okay.

I followed the sound of running water and found Chris in the shower. She was in one of her ‘clammed-up’ moods and wouldn’t talk to me. She always acted this way when she had been in a fight, so I thought that maybe she got into a scuffle on the way home. Or maybe she was upset about Mom on the couch. Or maybe it was worse.

When I finally poked my head through the shower curtain, I realized that there was something seriously wrong when I saw Chris using the shower spray to hide her tears. She never cried. It scared the shit out of me, so I started pushing for answers; I wasn’t going to go away until she talked to me. Finally, I got a hint out of her: she told me that she saw George pulling out of the driveway when she was walking down our street.

That asshole, George. He just got out of jail and did odd jobs for Mom’s current boyfriend. About forty-five or fifty, he had dyed black hair and badly capped teeth. When he wasn’t talking shit about his friends, he was coming up with ways to “shoot the angles” and get something for nothing. He even propositioned me once, saying he always kept some money set aside for pretty girls who were nice to him. He was a rat-fuck bastard, and I wouldn’t put anything past him. He had absolutely no business drinking in my house with my mother while I was at school. And I sure as hell didn’t want him anywhere near my little sister, drunk or sober.

With every step I took toward my room I could feel anger tightening its grip on me, working its way up my back. It almost felt like bony fingers were sinking into the base of my skull. By the time I threw my schoolbooks on the bed, I was furious. I was angry at Mom for all the shit she’d laid on us over the years. I was angry at her boyfriend for not protecting her. I was angry at George for taking advantage of her. I was angry that Chris wouldn’t spill the beans on what really happened and even angrier that it must have been really bad, or she would have told me more. I was so fucking angry that the next thing I knew I was walking down to the kitchen to call George on the phone.

George, of course, started off by saying he hadn’t been visiting my mom. Then he said he stopped by but left immediately because she was already drunk. I called him on his bullshit and told him flat-out he was never to even set foot in our yard again.

He wasn’t used to a girl standing up to him, so he got all blustery and tried to cow me, but I was not going to back down. I told him that if he wanted to come sniffing around my house again, he better buy a gun and get a carry permit. I calmly explained that if he showed up here even once more, I would have both of his knees broken, even if I had to fuck every guy on the varsity football team in payment.

He could tell I was serious. The line went silent, so I made him confirm that he had heard and understood everything I said. Then I hung up on him.

I was proud of what I had done. I had actually taken a stand and tried to make things better for us. However, time has repeatedly shown me that no good deed goes unpunished and I began to consider how my mother would react when she discovered what I had done.

My mental worry box was already overloaded, and I began to panic. This could be bad. I needed to plan, but I couldn’t seem to think straight. I watched myself walk into my room and hide in the closet. I was crying pretty loudly, so I guess I wasn’t so much hiding in my closet as I was just finding a womb to crawl into.

It took two days for my mother to find out about the call, and when she did, all hell broke loose. She was drunk, of course, and for some reason, she went after Chris first. She wasn’t just slapping her, she was full-on, closed fist punching her, driving the air out of her lungs, cracking her ribs, loosening her teeth, all the time yelling about her big fucking mouth and calling her a whore.

My mother is a big strong woman, and she was too busy hitting Chris to pay attention to my screaming and tugging when I tried to turn her vengeance on me. Chris needed to fall down and play dead. She needed to let Mom come after me. I was the one who called George! I was the one who had threatened him!

I had to do something. When dogs are fighting, you are supposed to turn the hose on them. There was no hose in the kitchen, so I grabbed the fire extinguisher from under the sink and started spraying Mom with it.

That finally got her attention, but it wasn’t my mother that turned and looked at me. I was face-to-face with a cold-blooded murderer. It was my mother’s body, sure, but the spirit behind those eyes belonged to something barely human. She snarled that she was going to kill me.

I backed away as she started coming toward me. I tried to warn her off, but she kept getting closer. I slid along the counter and reached for the phone with my left hand. She shook her head and wagged a finger at me, silently telling me my time had come and I should accept my fate. She closed her right hand into a fist and drew it back, preparing to do to me just what she had done to Chris.

I didn’t know what to do so I swung the fire extinguisher with all my might and caught that bitch on the side of her head. She collapsed in a heap, a thin line of blood snaking out of her ear. I stood there for a moment, trying to catch my breath, trying not to puke. I stepped over Mom, accidentally kicking her hard in the ribs, and went to check on Chris.

When I was sure there was nothing that I could do for her, I called 911, requesting an ambulance for my sister and a police car for my mother. Chris was fading in and out, babbling about George molesting her. I held her hand, comforting her, waiting for the emergency squad.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked New York, destroying the twin towers. On October 11, 2002, I was responsible for destroying my family, almost killing both my mother and my sister. I know terrorists did more damage, but is there anything lower than a daughter trying to kill her own mother?

After a never-ending stream of social worker interviews and family court appearances, Chris ended up in foster care, Mom ended up at home drunk, and I ended up at the mall wandering around aimlessly. I was supposed to be looking for a job; actually, I was just walking around thinking about suicide. But, if you are planning your death, shouldn’t you at least make it count for something?