Bye, Mr. Ex! novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Colonel

The Group commander's outer office had a flag, a sergeant major at a desk, and a wall of framed photographs of men shaking hands.

In half of them, the man shaking hands was Colby.

Jonas stood in front of the sergeant major's desk in his dress uniform with a manila envelope in his hand.

I stood one step behind him in mine.

Darden had told me not to come.

I had told her a man who walks into a lion's den alone is a fool or a hero.

Either way, I wanted to see.

"The Colonel will see you now, Captain," the sergeant major said, without looking up.

The inner office smelled of leather and floor wax.

The Colonel sat behind a desk the size of a bed with a pen in his hand.

A framed photograph of his daughter in a graduation gown faced the visitors.

He did not ask us to sit.

"Captain Swafford," he said. "I assume you're here to resign."

"I'm here with a document, sir."

Jonas laid the envelope on the desk and took out a color photocopy of a yellowed card.

The Colonel looked at it for a long time.

His face did not change.

That was how I knew.

An honest man reads a thing like that, and something in him moves.

This man read it like a man reading his own name on a list.

"A field casualty card," he said at last.

"It's mine. Seven years old. It says Specialist Pickens treated me at the scene, and kept me conscious for eleven minutes."

"A scrawl on a card, in the middle of a firefight, by a girl who'd been awake for a day."

"She was right there, sir. She signed it."

"So did a Special Forces sergeant who carried you onto the aircraft."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bye, Mr. Ex! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.