Getting Dunn Read online

  GETTING DUNN

  Tom Schreck

  PRAISE FOR GETTING DUNN

  “Schreck's hard-hitting, plot-driven conspiracy thriller provides nonstop action with a dizzying blur of weaponry and covert activity. The characters come out of central casting, but are perfect for NCIS: Los Angeles or JAG fans. Schreck takes a new direction in this entry, although his series character Duffy Dombrowski plays a cameo role as TJ's sparring partner. Recommend to Merry Jones and Christa Faust readers, i.e., those who like really tough female leads.” —Library Journal

  Copyright © 2012 by Tom Schreck

  First Down & Out Books Edition November 2022

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by Pixelstudio

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Getting Dunn

  About the Author

  Books by the Author

  Preview from Moonlight Gets Schooled by Vincent Zandri

  Preview from The Vegas Knockout by Tom Schreck

  Preview from Bad Day on the Bayou by Mark Johnson

  March 1, 2007

  The muzzle flashed and TJ felt the bullets whiz just past her face.

  She had caught sight of him, bearded and dressed in black, as he had come around the corner of the building. In the midst of the mortar fire, the yelling, and the chaos of the middle of the night, it seemed a miracle that she had spotted him.

  “We’re taking fire! Seven o’clock!” TJ yelled, ducking down the hatch of the Up-Armored HMMWV. Laserlike “pings” bounced all around TJ’s M2 .50-caliber machine gun. The UAH was moving forward. TJ compensated with the rifle and fired at the guy in black. The movement had changed the man’s positioning from seven o’clock to five o’clock and she missed shooting Alvarez, who was coming out of the air guard hatch, by inches.

  “TJ, what the fuck!” screamed Alvarez, the platoon sergeant. TJ didn’t have time to respond. Instead, she aimed again. A volley of bullets cascaded against the metal armor of the UAH and they sparked up. She felt the recoil of the .50 go through her.

  TJ looked to her left. Alvarez was now sprawled out. He wasn’t moving. Half his head was gone. In the chaos, she felt a chill and the taste of vomit in the back of her throat. Less than five seconds ago, Alvarez had been within two feet of TJ; it registered that he got hit with fire probably meant for her.

  The UAH moved forward, into the bedlam of the firefight. A dilapidated building ahead erupted with gunfire. In the space where windows had been, dark figures appeared, lit up by their AK-47 fire. They were all over the place, shooting at TJ and the rest of the convoy. She continued to aim and fire almost mindlessly, working through the most intense fear she had ever felt. I am going to die here, she thought.

  RPGs crisscrossed in front of TJ’s line of sight, while several IEDs exploded at the same time. She felt her heart pound.

  “They’re all over the fucking place!” TJ screamed inside the UAH. The driver, Milford, helped by calling out targets, and TJ let the .50 go. The UAH directly in front of her got hit with an RPG. It caught fire and rolled over to its right.

  Milford floored the UAH right into the heart of the ambush. The rounds kept pinging off the truck’s armor, flashing past TJ’s eyes. She fired into the building, pivoting off balance as the UAH accelerated. The roar of the firefight was deafening, and it was all physically exhausting. Milford kept the vehicle at full speed, and they blasted through the smoke and pings of incoming fire. The continual fire and explosions vibrated through TJ. She felt them as much as she saw them. Her body pulsated less as the UAH moved away from the action.

  The UAH made it to Bridge 4. Milford pulled a U-turn so they were facing what they’d just been through and came to a stop. They were now a relatively safe distance from the firefight, so TJ took just a moment to catch her breath. Alvarez was dead, and the UAH was riddled with damage, but she was alive. TJ dismounted. She noticed she was bleeding from the shoulder, though she knew she hadn’t been hit. A glob of something that looked like uncooked chicken breast was on her sleeve, covered in blood.

  It was part of Alvarez’s brain. She vomited reflexively. She didn’t have time to process the horror of it, but she felt it physically and it went right through her. There was no time for it now. That would come later.

  She scanned the sector in front of her and saw black smoke, fire, and a loud explosion coming from the factory just to the left of the intersection. It felt unreal and way too real all at once.

  When they got the call to return to the ambush TJ cursed to herself. She would go, no doubt, but she knew there was a good chance she would die there. The fact that they were heading back into fire with Alvarez’s lifeless body didn’t help the way she felt.

  The squad headed back with TJ scanning out of the hatch. Up ahead at the intersection where the building had caught fire there were Iraqis running all through the streets, and it seemed like each had an AK-47 in his arms. The UAH was moving way too fast to get off any meaningful rounds so TJ held her fire. When the UAH slowed it was a different story.

  TJ fired the .50-caliber and kept 360ing as fast as she could, firing at everything that moved. Out of the back guard hatches, Murphy and Dobson manned their own M2 machine guns, like TJ, firing at everything. Kiowa helicopters were now overhead. Usually their presence comforted TJ, but not now, not in this mess.

  Dangerously low on ammunition, TJ knew she would need to reload, and soon.

  “Where’s the ammo?” she yelled. She had no idea where the ammunition was kept because she had never come close to running out before.

  “Strapped to the right side!” Marquason shouted back. No fucking way. She would have to crawl out of the hatch and into the line of fire to reload. TJ thought to herself about the fucking military genius that must’ve designed that bullshit and how far his head was up his ass.

  With no alternative, she crawled out of the hatch and across the UAH to get the ammunition. Like everything of perceived value in the army, it was strapped down and sealed. Murphy did his best to cover her while she undid the straps and broke into the boxes of ammunition. She noticed her hands shaking as she tore through the cardboard and got her hands around the rounds. Bullets from the enemy’s AK-47s continued to ping around her. What the hell was Murphy doing?

  When she turned to get back to the hatch she got her answer.

  Murphy was split open from chest to navel. His face, a twisted mask, was pressed against the UAH.

  TJ crawled back into the hatch with as much speed as she could muster. She started to reload and realized she’d gotten the wrong caliber. She had picked up the 7.6 ammo meant for the 240 gunners.

  Is this some sort of fucking joke? she thought. TJ crawled back out onto the UAH, this time without cover. She crawled as low and as fast as she possibly could while the whizzing rounds sparked up the metal of the vehicle. She grabbed the ammo, made sure it was .50, and hurried back to the hatch.

  TJ felt a searing burn go through her bicep, and she knew she had been hit. She reached for the wound and lost her balance. She rolled off the UAH, trying and failing to grab at anything to hold her weight.

  The thud to the ground sent pain through her shoulder. But it didn’t come close to her panicked reaction to being alone, off the UAH, and unarmed.

  “I’m off the vehicle!” she screamed. Through the din of the firefight and the black smoke it was impossible for her to be noticed. She dropped to her belly to crawl around the UAH for cover from the right side, which was only marginally safer than where she had been. She was near the rear axle when the UAH lurched forward. Milford must’ve floored it on orders to get out of the ambush.

  That left TJ alone and in the open. She knew she was about to die.

  She screamed as loud as she could, but it was useless. Watching the UAH pull away from her, she waited for the inevitable.

  Then she watched in horror as an RPG struck her UAH and exploded, obliterating it.

  March 4, 2007

  “Lieutenant Dunn, I’m sorry to have to be the one—” Father Rivest started to say.

  TJ, sedated and loaded with painkillers, looked up from her hospital bed. Her affect remained flat.

  The chaplain lowered his head. David Strickland, TJ’s college classmate and the best friend of her fiancé, Trent Halle, was there too. He stood next to the chaplain.

  “David?” TJ asked, ignoring the chaplain.

  The chaplain’s eyes darted to Strickland and then back to TJ. He seemed thrown off, as though his routine had been interrupted.

  “Father, I know. They’re dead, right?” TJ said.

  “Well, I’m sorry to say, yes, Lieutenant.”

  TJ closed her eyes. She knew, but hearing confirmation made it real. She let the narcotics and the tranquilizers wash over her. She kept her eyes closed, trying to make t
he world go away. Then, the vision of the RPG exploding came back to her and that weird feeling of pins-and-needles anxiety washed over her. Even through the fog of the drugs she felt it. The pharmaceuticals didn’t take it away, they just muffled it. She finally opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry to say that’s not the only reason I’m here, Lieutenant,” the priest said.

  “What? What are you talking about?” She shifted her gaze to Strickland, who looked down at his boots.

  “David?”

  Strickland looked up for an instant without making eye contact and then looked down.

  “It’s Captain Halle,” the priest said.

  Oh no, no. TJ closed her eyes again.

  “Lieutenant Dunn,” the priest began. “Lieutenant, I’m so sorry.”

  She began to cry, knowing what she was about to hear.

  “Captain Halle is gone. I’m so sorry,” the priest said.

  TJ kept her eyes closed while she shook. Tears streamed down both cheeks. The realization went right through her and she could do nothing about the feelings it brought. After a long moment she opened her eyes. Her stomach felt sick. She felt nothing was real.

  She opened her eyes and looked again at Strickland.

  “How, where, David?” she asked.

  Strickland looked at the priest for help, then back down at his boots.

  “Lieutenant—”

  TJ didn’t let the priest finish. “David! How?”

  Strickland finally looked up. Tears filled his eyes. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “David! Tell me.”

  Tears now covered Strickland’s face.

  “He killed himself, TJ, in the barracks. In Kabul,” Strickland said.

  Chapter One

  March 15, 2008

  “You can’t touch me there,” Tommie reminded him. But she said it playfully, with a flirt in her eyes. Working the floor brought in most of her cash.

  “Tommie Gunn, you know you want it,” Roy said. The fortysomething construction foreman was dressed in dusty Carhartts. He was a regular on Tommie’s shifts.

  With an exaggerated forlorn look, he slid the ten-dollar bill over her shoulder and down her arm, where it dragged over the scar on her bicep. From there he tickled her side with the bill until he slid it in the space between her G-string and hip. He let the palm of his hand linger while he raised his eyebrows to her. Tommie winked and kissed him on the cheek.

  A ten was a lot, but Roy was consistent with it. He tipped the other dancers a single but the girls knew Tommie was his favorite. They all had regulars, too.

  “How many crunches you do in a day, Tommie?” Roy asked. “You’re shredded.” He tilted his head and watched as Tommie shimmied between his legs to rub up against his midsection. Every customer who nodded got a lap dance with the expectation of a big tip. With a half dozen trips to the stage and by working the room, the best girls could bring in three hundred to five hundred a night during the week, and twice that on weekends.

  Tommie Gunn was one of the best.

  She hit every single customer and did her best to flirt just the right amount to titillate a tip out of each of them. She finished the room and took the wad of bills from both sides of her black leather thong and headed to the green room. The absurdity of calling the space off the greasy kitchen at Belle’s Taco Stand the “green room,” like it was the Tonight Show, wasn’t lost on Tommie.

  Tequila Sheila went on right after Tommie. If she lived up to her nickname, there was a good chance that she’d take a spill right out of her Lucite platforms. In the green room with the other girls, Tommie rifled through her bills, placing them all right side up and ordering by denomination with the dexterity of a bank teller.

  “Fucking razor burn. I should’ve done the laser,” Maureen “Whitey” O’Hara said. “Whitey” was a pale redhead. “Fucking bumps, damn!” She was standing topless in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, pulling down the sides of her G-string. She dabbed Noxzema around her shaved pubic area.

  “Girl, what you thinking, goin’ all Brazilian and shit? You weren’t meant to be hairless. Besides, they all be getting off on that little red tumbleweed,” Kaneesha said. Kaneesha went by the stage name “Dee-lish,” and she didn’t ever hold back.

  Whitey rolled her eyes and winced at the Noxzema sting. The group was startled by a loud thump followed by, “Aww, shit!”

  “Bitch fell on her ass again!” Kaneesha said.

  The three of them looked through the curtain that separated the green room from the stage platform. Tequila, on her back, topless and rolling from side to side, kept repeating, “Fuck, it hurts.”

  The door that connected the office and the green room flew open. Maria Belle, the club owner, was not pleased.

  “She fall again?” Maria asked them. Her pursed lips and furrowed brow let everyone know that this wasn’t an evening to mess with Maria. An even five feet and a shade under two hundred pounds, she was built like a Mexican sumo wrestler.

  The girls didn’t answer, not wanting to throw Tequila in.

  “Dumb bitch,” Maria said to herself, her accent heavier with the anger. “Kaneesha, get out there.”

  Maria stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head. The girls knew to stay away from her when she was like this. They had all been on the wrong end of her tantrums and, at times, hated her. Tequila came limping into the green room, plopped herself down on the couch, and slid into an impossible slouching position, eyes closed. Maria rolled her eyes while the girls suppressed laughter. The tension eased.

  “TJ, you want to pick up an extra shift Sunday night?” Maria said to Tommie. “We got a bachelor party requesting a girl-girl.” TJ Dunn went by “Tommie Gunn” when she danced.

  “I don’t think I can, sorry,” TJ said. “If I can, I’ll call.” She had finished her last shift of the night and was changing into her street clothes.

  “You in a hurry or something?’” Maria said. She watched Tommie get out of her thong and top. She was naked only for an instant and then threw on a baggy pair of camo pants, her Fighting Irish hoodie and Yankees cap. Her dirty blond hair was short and spiky. She just ran her hand through it then put on her hat.

  Maria watched TJ while she finished dressing and threw the canvas knapsack over her shoulder.

  TJ felt her stare.

  “What?” TJ said.

  “Hey, don’t let the regulars see you on the way out. It’s bad for the image,” Maria said.

  TJ smirked, put the $311 in a zippered case, threw her knapsack over her shoulder, and went out the kitchen exit to the parking lot. With the brim of the ball cap pulled slightly down, she walked right past Roy, who was smoking a Marlboro at the back of the building. He didn’t notice her.

  She started the Suzuki, let it rev just for a moment to get it warm, and put it into gear. She headed downtown on the motorcycle the hardcore bikers referred to as a “Rice Rocket.” TJ didn’t care; it was simply a mode of transportation for her, not a lifestyle statement. It got her where she wanted to go, and got her there fast.

  The bike’s power was wasted on Central Avenue’s stop-and-go traffic, and TJ felt the engine wanting to let loose. Instead, it revved, then stopped, then revved again every quarter mile. The stop-and-go bullshit got worse as she got downtown, to the small stretch of the city that catered to the bohemians.

  Albany liked to call it the “Village in the City” a not so-subtle reference to Greenwich Village. A few gay bars, cheap Chinese takeout, and tattoo places didn’t exactly equal Delancey Street, but the street had a certain feel to it. She pulled up in front of the storefront with the small “Aquarius Switchboard” sign in the window, killed the engine, and walked the bike in the front door.

  “You do have things to live for!” Heather said into the phone while acknowledging TJ with a quick wave. Heather was a social work student from Westchester County.

  “There’s the hope for the future. There’s a chance to see a sunrise. There’s baseball. You said you liked baseball,” Heather said into the receiver.