He sat on the sidelines, the trainers poking and prodding his ankle. Each failed play by the offense twisted the knife in his heart. The clock ticked down to zero, and Brutus, blind with rage and disappointment, limped off the field.
"Brutal! You fucking blew it!” A voice cut through the cacophony of boos. Brutus's head shot up.
A man in military uniform, his face twisted with disgust, pointed at him. "You had your fifteen minutes. Washed up!"
Normally, Brutus would have ignored it, but something inside him snapped. He'd given everything to this team, to this city. Now, they were turning on him. A wave of shame washed over him, hotter than the pain in his ankle.
"You know what? Come down here and say that to my face!" Brutus yelled back, suddenly not caring about the consequences.
"You're done, football star," the soldier called back, each word laced with contempt. "Some warrior you turned out to be."
As beer rained down on his head, Brutus lunged towards the stands.
“Know what, how about you get your ass down here, motherfucker!” Brutus yelled, waving the man down onto the field. “See who’s a bitch? Fuck you and fuck the Army!”
The pain in his leg and the quick hands of security personnel stopped him from reaching the railing. His fingers brushed it before they pulled him back.
"Let me go!" he shouted, but they dragged him toward the tunnel, a chorus of boos following him.
Later, as a trainer examined his swollen ankle, the General Manager stormed in, his face red with anger.
"Do you know the mess you've made?" Hank McMahon demanded, standing over Brutus with his arms crossed.
"Hank, it's the end of the goddamn season," Brutus replied, hissing as the trainer slowly moved his ankle. "Can you please not yell at me right now?"
"Can you please not start fights with military personnel who are here at the team's invitation?" the GM countered. "This Bad Boy of Football routine needs to stop, Brutus."
Brutus winced, the label stinging almost as much as his ankle. It wasn't like he'd asked to be called that. Sure, he picked up his share of penalties, but he wasn't dirty. And he'd been clean off the field since college.
"Or what?" he challenged, though he already knew the answer.
"Ask the league," McMahon said, turning to leave. "I've already got my phone blowing up with texts asking what happened. Trust me, Brutus, there will be consequences for that outburst."
He left, and Brutus laid back on the table, letting out a frustrated groan.
"Goddammit," he whispered, covering his eyes with sweaty his arm. “Just the cherry to put on top of the shit sundae of not making the playoffs.”
1
LINDA
"You know what I like about this job?" Staff Sergeant Aaron Orkin said as they disembarked the C-17 at Blackstone Army Airfield, the cold Virginia air a sharp contrast to where they'd been. The rest of first squad followed, heading towards the waiting vans.
"What's that?" Linda Castellanos adjusted her pack on her left shoulder. She shivered slightly under her body armor, not enjoying the return to true winter weather. "The frequent flier miles?"
"Don't I wish," Orkin admitted with a laugh, running his hand through his short hair, his helmet resting in the crook of his elbow. "I'd be taking leave in Australia for free if that was the case. Nah, it's the weather."
"The weather?" Takeshi Satomura, Linda's assistant team leader, asked. "No offense Sarge, but are you nuts?"
Orkin laughed. "Not at all. How's the weather right now, 'Keshi?"
"'Keshi, huh? Guess you're officially one of us now, Sarge," Linda said with a playful edge to her voice that didn't quite mask her protectiveness of her team.
"Colder than the inside of my fridge," Takeshi answered, wrapping his arms around himself. Like Linda, he wasn't originally a warm weather person and definitely did not enjoy Virginia winters. "Why?"
"That's the beauty of our job, don't you see?" Orkin said with a grin, gesturing broadly at their surroundings. "Think about it. We're freezing our butts off here in a good old fashioned Virginia winter, scraping snow off our windshields and making sure we've got our Chapstick on before PT so we don't start bleeding when we run. And bam, Uncle Sam needs us to go take a week's vacation in the warm, sun-drenched tropics. All for the low, low price of doing what we've been trained and paid to do. How sweet is that?"
Linda had to chuckle at Orkin's enthusiasm. The mission hadn't been too difficult compared to others she'd seen in her time with the unit. Two journalists had flown down to South America for another 'exposé' on the drug trade and gotten themselves into trouble with one of the cartels. They'd asked too many questions to the wrong people and captured too many faces on camera.
