Project Whores

Chapter 1

Switch. Kyle Brewster sat alone in the DFAC eating lunch. The fries were cold and the burger was dry, but you couldn’t beat the price so he refused to complain. Most days the food they served was pretty decent, and since you did not pay for it, gratitude was the only thing you should feel, if you were smart. He went to get ketchup and spotted Joice Battle in the self-serve line making a salad. Damn! he thought, she is the last person I want to see right now.

Kyle slept with Joice for the first time last night, and did not want to be bothered with her just yet. She was nice enough, he mused, as he sat back down, but seemed like she could be clingy and that was the last thing he needed. Kyle had many female friends on the base and did not like drama, that’s why he ate solo and most of the time when you saw him, he was alone. A girlfriend was not on his most wanted list, although he had to admit he really enjoyed his time with Ms. Battle last night. She started off slow, but when she did get down to business, she got down to business and he liked that.

Joice Battle is a freak. Kyle smiled when he had that thought, but a little too much went on with her and he needed to put some space between the two of them so he could regroup. His mind crept back to last night and he grimaced. Shake it off, Kyle, he chided, and pushed that part of their evening out of his mind. She was probably a little older than him and she was pretty and she was feminine. That particular quality rated very high on Kyle’s scale as far as women he wanted to have sex with was concerned. He liked women that acted like women. If there was anything old fashioned about him, that would probably be it.

He had seen her around the base a few times but did not have an opportunity to talk to her until about two weeks ago. Damn! She spotted me. Well, maybe if I had not been staring at her like I was crazy… No worries, he would speak, but would do so in a way that did not invite company. Kyle Brewster wrote the book on being nonchalant. He took another bite of his burger and pretended to be very interested in the news on the big screen television. Suddenly, a tray plopped down on the table and a body was seated next to his. Here we go, he thought, as he turned to tell her he was just finishing up.

“Hey,” Tyra said, as Kyle looked at her startled. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, frowning and reaching for the salt.

“Hey,” he said, absently, looking all around the DFAC, but not seeing Joice anywhere.

“I gotta go,” Kyle mumbled, rising and picking up his tray.

“You always have to go,” Tyra replied to his back.

Bagram is a very large U.S. Military Base in Afghanistan. So large, it resembles a small city and is completely self-contained with shops, restaurants, and recreation centers. The military is there on official business, but the recruits still have to eat, bathe, and wear clean clothes, amongst other things. This is where civilian contract workers come in the picture. Their job is to support the men in green through food, electrical, power generation, cleaning, and plumbing services, just to name a few. Civilian contractors are a large part of the congregation in Afghanistan. They work in hundreds of different capacities in support of the mission.

There are people from many different countries and walks of life and everyone is there to get a piece of the pie known as LOGCAP. Their mission here is also commonly referred to as a project, and like all projects that take humans from their natural habitat and into the jungle, it is wild. There are thousands of soldiers and civilians alike and they are thousands of miles away from their homes, their husbands, wives, families, and everything familiar to them. Here, you can be whoever you want to be and if you play your cards right; the consequences are minimal, or so it would seem…

There is never any fear of anyone who is not deployed sneaking up on you. No stakeouts, or sneak attacks. One cannot just hop on a plane and go to Afghanistan. People going to that part of the world must be deployed, and to be deployed, they must obtain a Letter of Authorization from the U.S. Government. Deployment to Bagram is a tedious process and can only be accomplished through proper channels, so there is no such thing as a drive by or surprise visit from a non-deployed individual.

Kyle was no stranger to overseas contract work. He was deployed to Anaconda in Iraq for 4 years, with a short break at home before he came to Afghanistan. He left Iraq as part of a reduction in force commonly referred to as a RIF. Prior to Iraq, he worked in Kuwait. He was now a senior logistics manager on this project and was making money hand over fist. His love affair with contract work was manifold. The money was unbelievable, and the fact that he had someone to wash his clothes and cook his food was also a huge bonus. However, the piece de resistance for him, was the women.

Kyle had always loved women, and setups like this were the equivalent to putting a fox in the proverbial hen house. Although he’d never had any problems getting a woman, he felt like females out there made it so easy it was unbelievable. That there could be so many like-minded individuals in one place, was mind blowing. I like what I like and they like what I like, he sometimes mused. But Kyle had slowed down a bit in the last year, because no matter how casual he tried to keep it, somebody always wanted more. So, he narrowed down his personal cache to a special few and the rest were put out to pasture. Of course, if something came his way that was irresistible, he wasn’t opposed to it.

But one need not ever forget that Bagram was also declared a war zone, and where there is war, there are sure to be casualties.