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Title: According to Plan 2
Author: heartofslash
Fandom/Pairing: BHD, Hoot/Sanderson
Rating: Adult
Warning: Violence, minor character death
Disclaimer: Hoot and Sanderson are composites and have nothing to do with any real life men. Any resemblance to copyrighted works of art, or two particularly hot manly actors, is superficial in nature, and should be used only as a visual aid.
Note: Sanderson thinks back on his past with Hoot while waiting for Hoot to return from a mission.
According to Plan 2
Grenada was hell. A short-lived hell, but a hell nonetheless.
Sanderson was lucky, or unlucky, enough to be among the first twelve Rangers dropped on the Point Salines airfield at a time by which, according to plan, Delta was supposed to have secured the runway.
Sanderson could tell, even in the midst of the sheer terror of the jump, that it was only small arms fire coming from below. But that’s small comfort when the small arms fire is directed at you. Doesn’t matter what is headed for you or from what it’s propelled – if it hits you between the eyes mid-jump, you’re dead before you hit the ground.
Sanderson hit the ground alive. Barely. He just missed landing on a bulldozer by a few feet. It he’d landed on the upturned blade, he would have been sliced in two. But at least the dozer gave him cover while he got his bearings.
Fire was coming from the east, and was being returned from what looked like a ravine just north of his position. He bet it was Delta in the ravine, so he figured he’d head that way. He dove behind the tread of the earthmover when a huge, dark form hurtled in his direction.
“Fuck! Sanderson?”
“Malloy? Sanderson pulled himself together. “You scared the shit outta me!”
Malloy laughed. “I’m way ahead of ya. I was scared shitless back up in the air, man. Why the fuck didn’t Delta secure the field?”
“Pinned down.” Sanderson jerked his head in the direction of the ravine. “We should join them.”
“Fuck that, and get pinned with them? Fuckers were supposed to clear this shit outta the way!” Malloy kicked the side of the dozer with a loud clang.
Sanderson and Malloy located a pocket of enemy rifles up the strip and took out at least three shooters, but that was all they could accomplish without support. The rest of the unit was in chaos, moving haphazardly west instead of taking the objective to the east.
“Can you believe this?” Sanderson muttered as he begrudgingly moved to join the rest of the Rangers dug in at the end of the half-constructed runway. “This isn’t an invasion, it’s a fucking joke.”
He didn’t even know who half these guys were. Someone up high, in their infinite wisdom and reluctance to be left out of the glory, had combined elements of his battalion from Fort Lewis, Washington with the 2nd Battalion, so there were guys he’d trained with - guys he could trust - stuck back in temporary quarters in Georgia, and he was in the middle of this first wave having to coordinate with troops from Fort Stewart he hadn’t even met until 12 hours ago. Insanity.
It was also the first time Sanderson and the rest of the Rangers on the ground had participated in an operation with Delta. At least Sanderson and Malloy had seen some combat before; this gave them a real edge. Most of the Rangers in his company were raw. He could see men wandering across the airfield, in a daze or running for cover.
Once they dug in, he and Malloy made a pact to never get in a situation like this again. They had no way to make that happen, but they made a solemn vow anyway.
Rangers were supposed to be elite, but they were being used as pawns by JSOC in this battle. Malloy had been bugging Sanderson to move on for months now. Malloy was right; it was time to go seriously special forces.
But not Delta. Those guys had themselves in a terrible situation out there.
“No, man, Delta’s where it’s at,” Malloy kept insisting. “They’re just being misused, same as us. But Delta, that’s where we’re going, if we ever get out of here.”
Sanderson wasn’t sure what to think of Malloy’s assessment of Delta. He knew Delta was partially modeled on the SAS, and that Malloy had an ex-SAS uncle he worshipped. He didn’t want to volunteer for a unit just because Uncle Nigel was cool and had let Malloy drive his pick-up when he was 13 years old. Didn’t seem a sufficient reason to risk his ass any more than he was already risking it.
But what he’d heard of Delta from more reliable sources made them sound… exciting.
Eventually, the half-constructed airstrip was cleared so reinforcements could start to land, one plane at a time. Sanderson looked up and could see C-130s and C-141s circling, waiting their turn to land. Nightmare. He didn’t’ know what was worse – sitting in the shit on the ground or being crammed into the belly of a plane wondering what the hell was going on down there.
He found out a couple of hours later, when he and Malloy hooked up with Gibson from 82nd Airborne. “Hate not knowing,” Hoot drawled in greeting. “Better to be on the ground where you can see who’s shooting who.”
The ground assault was in such a shambles, they could pretty well form their own units. Sanderson felt much better with Malloy and Hoot at his side. A group of ten of them began to make their way toward the True Blue Medical Campus, where they were supposed to rescue the American students. Their progress was steadier than most, and they found themselves far ahead of the rest of the ground force.
They found cover and surveyed the school.
“Hey, should we wait for the CO?” Sanderson whispered.
“Fuck the CO,” Malloy snorted. “He can’t keep up he can kiss my ass. Let’s rescue some fucking students.”
“Thinks he’s in Delta already,” Hoot muttered through a mouthful of some kind of dried fruit. “Sit down, Malloy. At least wait until cover of night.”
So Hoot and Malloy had discussed the Delta plan as well. Sanderson had thought that was their plan, his and Malloy’s. But Sanderson wasn’t jealous about it. It was okay for Malloy to share it. Besides, Sanderson liked Hoot, even though Hoot sometimes teased him a bit, calling him a ‘babysitter’. At least they respected each other.
Sanderson was old, for a Ranger, so he did feel like a babysitter at times. He’d always been older than the other guys, all the way back to basic. That was because Sanderson had gone to college.
Back when he was the same age as the other guys in basic, he’d been enrolled at a somewhat radical campus, attending lectures on shamanism, and discussion groups about the need to go beyond Marxist dialectics to a new, egalitarian libertarianism, or avidly listening to the ramblings of an English professor who advocated the dumping of the entire Western canon, and the replacement of Milton and Shakespeare with Burroughs and Ginsberg.
If you had told college-aged Sanderson that he would drop out of that college to roam the country seeking ‘the answers’, he would have believed you.
And if you’d told him he would not find the answers he sought while hitchhiking, or hanging out with unsavory bikers in Tijuana, or attending Zen retreats in the High Sierras, or by dedicating himself (for one summer) to the cause of the migrant worker in California, he would have believed you again.
But if you’d told him that he would end up in Topeka, spending his last eleven dollars on a scalped ticket to a Ramones concert, and that at that show he would meet a crazy-ass sonofabitch like Malloy, and that in the course of the subsequent three-day road trip in a barely road-worthy Buick (liberated from Malloy’s orthodontist Uncle Lionel) Malloy would manage to convince Sanderson that he would find the answers he sought by enlisting in the US army, which was what Malloy was planning on doing the next time he drove past a recruiting center, the college-going Sanderson would likely have asked you what you had been smoking, and could he please have some, too.
But Malloy had been right. It briefly earned him the nickname “The Prophet” from Sanderson. And it all led to the two of them sitting in a ditch in Granada, waiting for the command element to catch the fuck up. Malloy muttered to himself while, Sanderson studied the alert yet calm face of Hoot Gibson and remembered the night the three of them really met.
It was at a bar during their first leave after enlisting. There were three companies going through basic training at the same time. Sanderson didn’t even see Hoot until B and C companies hooked up for exercises in the second week.
He noticed Hoot right away. Everyone noticed Hoot. Even that far back, Hoot was a machine. Unstoppable. Indestructible. Tactical. Whether he was on your side or not, you were scared to death of him. And you prayed he liked you.
So Sanderson wasn’t sure how to respond when Hoot sat across from him at the table.
Sanderson was in the middle of a story about his crazy English prof – the canon-hater Sanderson did not really believe had actually attended the 6 Gallery reading in 1955, but was willing to believe really had met Ferlinghetti in ‘58 – and the time the prof decided the best way for the class to experience On The Road was to have the entire class eat ‘shrooms twenty minutes before taking turns reading excerpts.
Hoot gave Sanderson one of those sly Hoot smiles, raised his shot glass of Jack Daniels, and announced, for all to hear, “Kerouac was a jerk-off.”
If Hoot had said that to college-age Sanderson there would have been serious words spoken in indignant tones. But Sanderson was older, and wiser, and he’d been on the road himself. So he raised his own drink and said “To paraphrase Truman Capote, ‘That’s not writing – ”
“ – that’s masturbating,” Hoot finished Sanderson’s joke for him.
Hoot smirked, and the little voice in the back of Sanderson’s head, the scholarly one that said “Typing – that’s not writing, that's typing!” was easy to quiet, because Sanderson knew that Hoot, against all odds, knew what the real quote was. And since Hoot had said exactly what Sanderson had been planning on saying anyway, he could forgive Hoot for stealing his little joke. He figured he was lucky there was anyone at the table who would get the reference anyway. And somehow Hoot knew that too.
So, Sanderson howled with laughter, and later that night the two of them raided the colonel’s liquor cabinet.
These are the sorts of things from which long-term friendships evolve.
But a solid knowledge of Beat literature and an appreciation for single-malt scotch whiskey would do neither of them any good in Grenada.
Hoot kept chewing whatever that weird dried stuff was, and giving Sanderson intense looks. Malloy was quaking with aggression. He couldn’t wait to storm the campus. At one point, Hoot stuck out one long arm and shook his head. Malloy calmed down. Hoot had that effect on people, when he wanted to.
They waited as long as they could rein in Malloy, until night fell, then made their way to the students’ residence. That would be the residence of the students who did not, in fact, need rescuing, because they’d never really been threatened in the first place.
But the order was to evacuate them, and it was Sanderson who had the idea of getting the names and phone numbers of students on the other campuses from the students at True Blue, and there he was on the telephone, getting a detailed description of the terrain surrounding the dorm near Lance-aux-Epines, planning the assault, when the command element finally did catch up.
Sanderson was co-ordinating the lists of students and locations when Malloy volunteered to go off with the Rangers headed for the Calvigny Barracks. By the time Sanderson was finished it was late, he was tired, so he went to find a place to sleep until dawn.
It would have been the perfect place to sleep, a hollow in a hill beside the campus, protected by buildings on two sides and earth on the other two, except Hoot had found it first.
“Go crash inside,” Hoot mumbled, already half-asleep but alert enough to sense Sanderson’s approach from yards away.
“No way. The captain keeps waking guys up and telling them to go on watch. I’m beat.”
So Hoot moved over, and Sanderson squeezed himself into the space beside him.
They talked a bit about the plan to join Delta before nodding off.
“They value independent thinking. Initiative. You have that, Sanderson. Not like your 'Prophet'. He’s gung ho, but that’s not what Delta wants. They want brains. You got ‘em. I think it’s the place for you.”
“What about you?” Sanderson asked.
Hoot shrugged. “If Delta thinks it can handle me…”
Hoot wasn’t bragging.
Out of all the guys on the ground, Hoot was the best one to be hunkered down with, so Sanderson didn’t have much trouble drifting off to sleep. The sheer size of Hoot’s body made him feel safe, and he knew Hoot would be woken by anything that didn’t wake Sanderson. And Hoot stayed perfectly still when he slept. Sanderson appreciated that. He wasn't even embarrassed when he woke up just before dawn with his head on Hoot's shoulder.
"Sure could use a shot of the colonel's Glenfiddich now," Hoot joked good-naturedly.
They rejoined their original units in the morning, so it was separately that they found out about the disaster at the Calvigny barracks.
The next time they saw each other was beside Malloy’s hospital bed.
Malloy had wrangled himself a spot on the first helicopter to land unload its Rangers in the courtyard. He’d been on the ground when the second and third helicopters crashed above and fell to the earth, killing four.
But Malloy didn’t die. He lost his right arm and part of his leg.
“Rotors,” he spat out in his sleep, pumped so full of morphine he didn’t recognize either of his visitors. “Fucking rotors…”
Sanderson and Hoot met again at the graveside, a year later. Neither of them understood why it happened - or so they tried to tell everyone, especially Malloy’s mother and many assembled uncles - but when they sat down and shared a bottle of Scotch - not Glenfiddich, not on army pay - they admitted that what they really didn’t understand was why it had taken a whole year for Malloy to pull the trigger.
“I expected him to do it right away,” Hoot confessed.
“Me too. After the six month mark, I thought maybe he’d accepted it.”
But that’s not the kind of thing a guy like Malloy accepts.
Delta was accepting applications. Sanderson and Hoot applied.
The smell of the airfield reminded Sanderson of that landing at Point Salines. The prickling fear in his gut reminded him of rushing out of that ditch toward the campus they thought was occupied by the enemy. And the sound of an approaching Black Hawk made him think of the stumps where Malloy’s limbs used to be.
All this was tied up with Hoot, and Hoot being late, and Sanderson being a mother hen. Babysitter.
The sun was sinking, and Sanderson’s angle was wrong, so he couldn’t see clearly when the helicopter landed. He could see a mess of long legs and boots through the open door. He watched Gordon unfold himself from his position on the floor, shoulder his weapon, start striding toward the hangar. Busch was next, carrying his weapon and a bag. Then Shughart got out. He turned back and reached into the bird. Sanderson couldn’t see precisely what he was doing. Then he could see Shughart drag something out.
A bicycle.
Sanderson could make out one more pair of dusty boots. Then Hoot slid out onto the tarmac.
Slumped down, Hoot walked out from under the blades, kept slumped as he made his way to the hangar. He passed by Shughart, passed by Sanderson, headed for the storage room where he usually retreated to write his reports.
Shughart trailed him, stopping beside Sanderson.
“Jeff, you gotta see what you can do. He’s not talking.”
Sanderson shrugged, trying to look casual. He couldn’t see any wounds. No blood. No physical trauma. “He’s putting the report together. He’s concentrating.”
Shughart shook his head. “No, Jeff, that’s not it. He hasn’t said a single word since we picked him up. Nothing.”
Gordon appeared out of nowhere. “Something happened, Jeff. Talk him down.”
Sanderson nodded, but he didn’t know why they thought he could do anything. “I’ll get him some food,” he offered, and went to the mess.
With a plate loaded with a burger, potato salad and tomatoes, Sanderson approached the room.
It wasn’t like Hoot to not talk. He wasn’t the most verbose guy at times - and he did seem to take a perverse pleasure in subjecting those of whom he did not approve to unnatural and unnerving silences - but he always said something in the bird. He always made a joke. Always.
Sanderson pushed open the door and put the food a couple of feet away from Hoot’s right arm. He took a seat on the other side of the table.
Hoot didn’t even look at the food. He must have been starving, but he ignored it.
“Everything okay?” Sanderson wondered why he felt so nervous. It was just Hoot, after all. Concentrating. Tired. Hungry. Except he didn’t even look at the food.
Hoot stared down at a blank sheet of paper. He rolled the pencil between his forefinger and thumb.
“Had us worried a bit, missing the first rendezvous.”
Hoot dropped the pencil.
“I was sure you’d make this one, though.”
“I wasn’t.”
Sanderson felt the sweat trickle down his neck.
Hoot looked up, and his eyes were big and dark, darker than Sanderson had ever seen them.
Fuck, Sanderson thought, and the prickles of fear and sweat turned into an uncontrollable shiver of realization.
Hoot was scared.
Next: According to Plan 3
Back to: Soldier Porn
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