Bones 2 “Your black-market stats are for shit,” Staff Sergeant Riley growled. He tossed a printout to Ernie Bascom, my partner, who caught it on the fly. “So what else is new?” Ernie replied and tossed the printout into the trash. “You’d better retrieve that,” Riley said. “The First Shirt has a case of the ass and later this morning he’s going to be reviewing your lack of performance.” “Screw the First Shirt.” Ernie grabbed Riley’s issue of today’s Pacific Stars and Stripes and snapped the pages open. The three of us sat in the headquarters of the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Detachment on the first floor of Building 306-A on Yongsan Compound Main Post. Riley, his skeletal body lost in the starched folds of his khaki uniform, glared at Ernie. As the Admin NCO, it was Riley’s job to make sure that our statistics looked good in the reports that wound their way up the labyrinthine corridors of 8th Imperial Army.
