A Time to Die Read Online Free PDF

who’d last called to tell him she was getting married, there was only one person who’d be calling. He glanced up at his student’s approach, decided he had a minute and snatched the device from its belt holster and flipped up the cover.
    As he’d hoped, there was an email from his commanding officer. He was to report for a readiness assessment at the base on Thursday, April 11th. A posting was being held open for him in the wings CAS unit currently stationed in Riyadh airbase. If all went well, he’d be on a transport to the sandbox in seventy-two hours. His heart was racing and he felt light headed. Back in the cockpit again after all these months? He was so caught off guard that when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, his student was taxiing towards the hangars, having already landed safely.
    His fellow ex-military buddies took him out to dinner that night, all toasting his good fortune and seeing if they could get him drunk. With a fitness evaluation in only two days, Andrew kept it to three beers for the entire night. The next morning he was in his skivvies doing calisthenics for a bored army physical therapy specialist and answer inane questions like “Do you ever wish you hadn't been wounded?”
    “No shit, Doc,” was the answer he wanted to give, “I wish at least twice a day that some damn eighteen year old kid hadn't crushed my leg with a JDAM.” Instead he shrugged before he spoke. “What happens is often outside of our control.”
    The doctor nodded and made a note. “Ever think about ending it?”
    “Never.” The doctor regarded him with his dark eyes and Andrew stared right back. That thought had never entered his mind, even as he lay in the hospital bed and a German doctor was telling him he'd lose his leg.
    The questions went on as a nurse came in and Andrew went through the grinder. Up and down steps for ten minutes as fast as he could. Jumping jacks. Lifting a ten kilo weight from the floor and putting in on a table as many times as he could in five minutes. After, as he sweated and controlled his breathing, they removed his prosthetic and examined the stump.
    “A little irritation,” the doctor noted and typed on his tablet.
    “Almost gone now,” Andrew admitted. The doctor gave him 'The Eye' once more but Andrew stood his ground.
    “Okay,” he said and typed. Andrew tried not to sweat any more. Hey, it's only your life, right flyboy?
    An hour later he was buttoning up his shirt in the examination as the doctor walked by to attend another patient. Andrew knew better but he spoke up anyway. “So, Doc, did I pass?”
    “You'll hear by tonight, Lieutenant,” the doctor said without stopping.
    A cute redhead nurse came in a minute later to pick up one of the testing instruments. She saw the frustrated look on his face and paused for a minute then caught his eye. He looked up and she winked. Andrew drove back to his apartment and started to pack.
     
    * * *
     
    The clerk glanced at his watch, only fifteen minutes to closing. Outside San Antonio, the life in a big-box store could often be crazy on a Tuesday, and he had no idea why. The other clerks all claimed Sundays were the worst, but many of them didn't work Tuesday. He hated Tuesdays. This one, though, looked to be ending on a high note. Then the clerk spotted 'him'.
    The guy was a nondescript white dude, in his late forties, wearing his typical faded blue jeans and camo pattern tee-shirt. He cleared the door ten minutes before it was to be locked, and he had a massive list dangling from one hand. And he was a regular. “Fuck.”
    Vance caught the look from the clerk as he stopped to orient himself in the discount store and smirked to himself. He always did his bulk item shopping on Tuesday because the coupons came in the mail on that day.
    A few minutes later, two shopping carts in tow, Vance was in the bulk commodities isle and had his list in one hand as he moved down the row. Beans, he’d circled on the list, kidney