Ocho snorted. “Don’t sweat it, war maggot. LT was right. We got to keep discipline. We don’t got discipline, we got nothing. Don’t matter who you are. No one gets a free pass.”

“Yeah, well, you were so stoned you were drooling.” Van hesitated, then said, “LT wants you up top.”

“He say why?”

Van avoided his gaze. “No.”

Ocho gazed up at the torched building. On its top floor, Sayle had ordered an observation platform built. The concrete and iron was all sooty and scorched and the old doctor’s squat was completely burned away, but Sayle still wanted to stand on top of it.

Ocho’s instinct had been to pull out of the whole damn building after what the coywolv had done to them, but Sayle had given him a cold look and said if they showed they were afraid, then all these civvies in town would start playing them like that castoff girl had done.

Just because Ocho had coddled himself up with a castoff didn’t mean they were going to start sending that kind of message.

So they’d rounded up a bunch of townspeople and put them to work. The maggots had worked damn fast with a gun on their kids.

Now Sayle spent all his time sitting cross-legged on top of the tower, looking out at the jungle, and taking reports from their recon teams as they quartered the jungle, bit by bit, trying to turn up evidence of the dog-face, the doctor, and the castoff who’d done them.

“You need help getting up?” Van asked.

“No.” It was a test. LT liked to test. Make sure troops were loyal. Make sure they had semper fi. No way was Ocho going to cry about climbing a ladder, no matter how much it hurt. He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt. “I’ll do it myself.”

He slowly climbed up the series of ladders to the building’s pinnacle, feeling his stitches tugging, feeling the burn of his back. He hoped he wasn’t doing some kind of new damage, but it didn’t really matter. The only way to survive was to show the LT that he was still loyal, and that he’d do anything for the man. Especially after the caning.

Ocho finally reached the top, gasping and sweating.

Sayle looked up from his maps. Ocho forced himself to stand at attention. Sayle evaluated him across the short distance. “How are your wounds, Sergeant?”

Ocho stared straight ahead. “Fine, sir.”

“And your back?”

“Hurts, sir.”

“I went easy on you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Do you remember how we met, Sergeant?”

Ocho swallowed, forcing down memories. “You saved me.”