The Long Night

by Jessica Scott

  Concrete and dust, that was his home now. It surrounded everything of even moderate importance, and what wasn't protected by the massive barriers was barricaded by walls of sandbags.

  Things lived in those sandbags. Creeping things. Along with massive fucking camel spiders. One had attacked him two weeks before he'd left for R&R. He'd thought about shooting the damn thing before it had skittered into a hole beneath a sandbag wall. The thing had been the size of his fist, and apparently pretty pissed that Sam had dared walk by its cave.

  He'd never cared for spiders, but he fucking hated them now. What made it worse was that Benning had some of the biggest fucking spiders he'd ever seen until he'd gotten to friggin’ Iraq. He was convinced that he was going to go take a shit one day and a spider was going to latch on to his balls.

  He dragged a hand over his face. He needed a cup of coffee if he was going to start contemplating vasectomy by spider. He hoped the ops sergeant major had gotten over the cinnamon-flavored coffee fetish he'd had going before Sam had gone home. He rounded the next barrier as the sliver of moon disappeared behind a bright cloud.

  Something skittered in the shadows. Fear tingled up Sam's spine and he turned, half expecting to see something charging from the shadows. He fucking hated the feeling of being chased.

  When he'd been a kid, he and his Uncle Horace had been out fishing in the bog late into the evening. Uncle Horace had thought it would be funny to hide from Sam in the woods. Sam had been nine.

  He'd been leading the way back up to the clearing that night when he'd realized he was alone. His uncle had disappeared into the trees. A dozen doves had lit from their roosts, coos mixing with the rustle and flap of wings.

  A twig had snapped behind him and nine-year-old Sam had spun, convinced it was the devil himself.

  He never knew what had stepped out of the woods. All Sam remembered seeing was a shadow melting from behind a tree and he'd taken off, tearing through the trees until he'd run out of breath and adrenaline.

  He'd slammed face first into a low branch. His eyes watered but he kept running away from the shadows that had nipped at the back of his neck and chased him into the clearing and across the field to his mother's kitchen.

  Now he swallowed the fear that prickled at the base of his spine and made his guts clench. His fingers tightened on the butt of his weapon. He didn't call out but it was a close thing. Primitive terror rose up and whispered that he was a coward masquerading as a warrior.

  Nothing moved in the silence except the rapid pounding of his heart against his chest. Sucking in a deep breath, he turned and headed back toward the company ops.

  And was grateful that no one was around to see him pick up his pace just a little bit.

  8

  It was hot as balls and it was only 7:00 a.m. Sam hadn't managed to get any more sleep and he hadn't managed to eke any information from the staff officers riding the night shift at the battalion headquarters. He was fucking irritated, on his way back from the chow hall with shitty food weighing on his guts and a piss-poor attitude.

  He walked into the company ops and immediately noticed the changes. The first sergeant's office was empty. Not missing-a-person empty, but missing all of a person's stuff. There was a blank desk and an empty chair. The humidor that First Sarn't Gnash had kept on his desk was gone, along with the Maxim calendar he'd pinned up by his monitor. Gnash had always sworn that Mila Kunis was his future ex-wife, a statement that had prompted some uncomfortable visuals.

  But now his office was empty and Sam wanted to know why. He knocked on the commander's door.

  Captain Lehr looked up from where he was swearing at his computer. "Fucking SIGO can't make the goddamned fucking computer talk to the fucking printer."

  Sam leaned on the doorframe and hooked his thumbs into his belt loop and waited for his commander to stop beating up on the signal officer. His M4 bounced on his hip. "Someone having a good morning?"

  "Fuck you, Brown."

  Sam jerked his head back toward Gnash's office. "Where's Top?"

  Lehr's nostrils flared. The vein in the center of his forehead throbbed. Sam wondered if it was possible to have a heart attack from a temper tantrum. Lehr was known for those — the tantrums, not the heart attacks. The vein was the warning sign that he was approaching blast-off.

  "He got moved down to Camp Victory."

  "For what?"

  Lehr sniffed roughly. The muscle in his jaw pulsed as he slammed his fingers into the keyboard, trying to use brute force to make the computer do his bidding. "For pissing off the sergeant major."

  "Huh?"

  Lehr swore and threw the keyboard across the room. Sam leaned back to get out of the way of any other projectiles. "First Sarn't decided to tell the battalion commander his plan for the mission we’ve been working on was fucking stupid. So now he's guarding the burn pits with the other rejects who didn't have sense enough to keep their fucking mouths shut."

  "The Surge is going well, then?"

  Lehr stopped what he was doing and stared at Sam. Everything was quiet and tense. The commander looked at Sam like he wanted to nail him square in the jaw. Lehr was an angry bull, and Sam felt like he was wearing a bright red cape.

  The silence hung on. A thousand emotions flickered across the commander's face. His chest rose and fell in hard, deep breaths.

  His nostrils flared a final time before he spoke. "Swimmingly," Lehr said, his voice dangerous and low, his temper barely restrained. "You hear about the latest plan?"

  "Yeah. Mostly just rumors, though."

  Shifting the conversation away from the first sergeant, then, was a wise move.

  "It's not going to be easy," Lehr said. The vein in his forehead stopped throbbing as he picked up the pieces of his keyboard and tossed them on the ratty chair in front of his desk. "We've got a briefing in about an hour. I need all the squad leaders there."

  "Okay." Sam paused. "Who is acting first sergeant?"

  "Tick."

  Tick was Sergeant First Class Tykowski. He was built like a pit bull and had the disposition to match. He was also known for having a porn addiction. Rumor had it that Tick had gotten caught jerking off in the middle of their fifty-man bay on the initial invasion. Sam didn't really want to know either way, and he always had second thoughts after Tick slapped him on the back or wanted to shake hands. But what he did on his off-time was his business. Tick was an asshole, but he was a competent asshole. So the resident whack-off king was now Sam’s first sergeant.

  He shrugged. "Anything else I need to know before I go round up my guys?"

  "We're doing a joint op with another unit."

  Sam raised both eyebrows. "Huh?" That didn’t sound like a raid.

  "There's a unit attached to the other brigade. We're going to conduct a relief in place into their sector during the operation."

  Sam frowned. "I’m confused, sir."

  Lehr pointed at a map. “Our battalion has been ordered to move into this battle space,” he said, pointing at an area covering several kilometers in a particularly shitty part of town. “The unit holding it has been there for fifteen months. We need to replace them so they can redeploy. So rather than do two separate operations, we’re going to send our folks out to transition with them while providing support for the raid on this mosque.”

  Doing a joint operation with an outgoing unit was not unheard of. He'd seen it numerous times over the last few deployments. The problem was, joint ops always raised confusion about who was actually in charge. No matter how many times the guys in charge clarified it, someone didn’t get it—usually some dumb shit lieutenant who ended up getting left in sector.

  “So they get to go home and we get left holding the bag of shit in the form of an area that’s too much for us to hold with the number of people we’ve got?”

  He wasn't surprised. He just wished it felt like more of a plan. Maybe he'd feel better about it once he had an idea that was better than the current muddy-water visual.

 
Then again, he was never sure what the higher-ups were doing. He went where they told him to go, shot what they told him to shoot, and hoped he managed to bring all his boys home in one piece.

  Lehr nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much sucks, sir. Top was right. This plan is fucking stupid.”

  “Yep. And I need you to keep that to yourself because I don’t need any more of my sergeants getting fired.”

  Sam pressed his lips together until a split at the edge opened back up. He needed to remember to get a new ChapStick the next time he was at the shoppette. “Roger that.”

  He headed back up the hill toward the squad bay where the platoons hung out between missions. The squad bay had a giant television for video games—the violent cathartic kind, not the music video kind—along with a raggedy old couch they'd stolen on their first patrol.

  Captain Lehr had merely shaken his head and walked off when they'd come rolling back through the base defense checkpoint with a couch strapped to the roof of the Bradley. They'd sprayed it down with Febreze and pretended that because it smelled clean, it was clean. Sam was pretty sure he didn't want to know any of the things that might be growing in the fabric.

  Sam walked into the squad bay in time to see Lewis take a swing at Hale. Hale ducked and danced out of his reach, laughing.

  Sam waited for the shocked look on one of the new privates' faces to spread through the crowd. Guilty looks flashed through the formation. The last two to notice were Lewis and Hale, and not until Lewis attempted to knock Hale's teeth out one last time.

  "Honestly, will you two just make out and get it over with?" Sam said, hooking his thumbs into the loops on the front of his pants.

  "Ha ha, fuck you, ha ha," Hale said flipping him the bird. "Finally done making the commander's coffee?"

  Sam returned the gesture and everyone relaxed. "I need you guys to stop making googly eyes at each other and get your shit on. We've got a mission brief in"—he glanced at his watch—"twenty-six minutes."

  A subtle shift passed through his squad. Huggins put down the video game controller and adjusted his pants. Jinx shifted his weapon higher on his shoulder. One by one his boys stopped fucking around. Sam preferred it when they were fucking around but it was oddly calming to go through the ritual of getting everyone kitted up in their body armor.

  "Jinx, start getting everyone loaded up and doing our pre-combat checks. Twitch, get with the maintenance guys and make sure we're fully mission ready on all counts. Go get the commo guy out of his fucking trailer and off the video games and make sure our comms are wired tight. I don't want another episode where we lose radio contact with half the convoy."

  His boys peeled off, each on their missions as Lewis and Hale picked up their weapons where they'd stacked them against the couch. Lewis popped his knuckles, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  "So what do we know?" Hale asked, slinging his weapon across his chest at the low ready, muzzle pointed at the ground.

  "Joint mission with Quarter CAB."

  "Not those fucking cowboys," Lewis said, tucking his t-shirt into his pants before the sergeant major caught him and went balls-deep on him for looking like a slob.

  "Yes, those fucking cowboys," Sam said. "We don't get a vote on who we're running around out in sector with. And after what happened to First Sarn't, I'm thinking we need to just shut up and color."

  Hale looked at him, his cheeks flushed from sparring with Lewis. Only his eyes belied the seriousness of his question. "And when do we argue that this is fucking stupid?"

  Sam looked the younger sergeant in the eye. "When it's time to argue, we'll argue," Sam said quietly. "Now get your shit and let's head to the ops."

  Sam didn't want to remember the time they hadn't argued. Not when Captain Lehr had ordered them to clear and hold the school in the middle of the sector. They hadn't argued when the order had come down to secure it because there was a weapons cache inside.

  Sam had wished with everything he was that he'd disobeyed that fateful order. But he hadn’t. And only Lewis and Hale knew what had happened because of that order. The fact that both men were still unflinchingly loyal to him said more than any words ever could. He would go to the wall to protect them after what they'd done for him.

  He could never repay their silence.

  The guilt, though. The guilt was his alone.

  * * *

  The company ops was no longer empty. It no longer smelled like fresh coffee and dust, either. Instead, it was packed full of dirty men and smelled like balls that hadn't seen the wet side of a baby wipe in a long, long time.

  Sam didn't usually notice the smell, but crammed into the small space, everything was concentrated. The stench was a thick, greasy taste on the tip of his tongue. He could almost consider dipping to rid himself of the flavor.

  He slipped a piece of gum in his mouth instead.

  He squeezed his way to the conference room. It wasn't really a conference room—more like a plywood lean-to that had been nailed to the back of their ops. The table was another piece of rough plywood balanced on two homemade sawhorses. The single light dangled from a dirty orange extension cord and a thin green piece of 550 cord hammered into the wood with a rusty nail.

  Sam made his way to Tick, who was sweating profusely. On any other man, Sam would have thought it was nerves. On Tick it was normal. Tick could sweat in thirty-below-zero weather. It was just how the man was built.

  "Nice crowd," Sam murmured.

  "Tell me about it." Tick spat into a soda bottle.

  "So what are we doing?"

  "We’re support for this mission." Tick pointed at the sand table, a mock-up of their sector. "We've been running through the different routes all week, trying to make sure we don't tip them off that we're coming." He stuck his finger into his bottom lip and fished out the dip only to replace it instantly with another wad. "Merrick is going to be in charge of your sector," Tick said.

  "Which one is Merrick?" Sam scanned the partially hidden nametapes on upper arms, but none stood out as the name he sought.

  "I'm Merrick."

  Sam turned and looked into the face of a man who had no business being anywhere but eating. He was skinny, his face lined and weathered from too many years in the vicious sun. The man was constant motion. His hand tapped against his thigh. His eyes darted around the room before landing back on Sam.

  Merrick was taller than Sam, forcing Sam to tip his chin to look into the bigger platoon sergeant's face.

  "Brown," Sam said, offering his hand.

  Merrick glanced at Sam's outstretched hand and nodded before returning the grip. “Merrick. Nice to meet you.”

  It was an oddly pleasant greeting in a place where manners weren’t often on display. Sam couldn’t say what made it stand out in his mind, other than that.

  Sam dropped his hand to his waist, tucking his thumbs into his belt loops. "So, what's our task and purpose?"

  “Our task is to provide support to clear this block and provide security for communications support for the main element. We’ve got intel that there’s a weapons cache behind this mosque.” Merrick leaned over Sam to the table to watch as Tick briefed the mission on the sand table.

  “Wow, actual information about the mission,” Sam muttered. “I’m forever in your debt." From what he'd gathered from the conversations around him, Sam wished they were going out in elements that were better prepared to defend themselves.

  "We're pulling security on the tactical command post," Merrick said. His voice was low and scratchy, as if he spent too much time smoking. Or breathing in the grit and sand in the desert. "Two squads."

  “We’re jumping the TAC?” Sam asked. They hadn’t launched the TAC since they’d arrived in country. This was a much bigger operation if they were pushing out the TAC as opposed to just controlling the battle from the main headquarters. "To secure this entire area?"

  He looked again at the area he was tasked to secure. With less than a platoon. It was almost two
full blocks. “Two squads aren’t nearly enough to properly secure the building with an inner and outer cordon, let alone keep from getting overrun if the enemy decides to get froggy. And you can fucking forget trying to hold all that battle space.”

  “We’ll have enough men. The mission will be fine. We’ve got good support from the locals here.” Merrick’s voice didn’t waver. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t hold the edge of panic Sam felt licking at the base of his spine.

  He kept trying to get his brain around the nagging detail that was escaping him. Something wasn't right, something more than the lack of manpower.

  It flittered away, just out of reach.

  Damn, but he wished he’d gotten some sleep.

  Merrick continued, ignoring the tension in the room. "We're going to take two squads and secure this area around this orphanage. We’re security for the TAC, which will establish the communications relay point and monitor the battle. And then we will pack it all up and go home. Questions?"

  "Yeah, a lot of them, actually," Sam said, bristling under Merrick's calm façade. He couldn’t be that calm, could he? This mission sounded like a world class clusterfuck.

  "You have a problem, Sergeant?"

  Sam frowned at the way Merrick said the full word “sergeant”. The same way that fucking weirdo on the plane had said it.

  "Yeah, I do."

  Across the table, Lewis looked up from the map. Silence fell across the room. Sam could have sworn he heard crickets chirp.

  Merrick blinked and leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. "Let's hear it, then." He spoke in a way that sounded like he genuinely wanted to hear Sam’s opinion as opposed to letting Sam skewer himself on a pike of his own making.

  "This area is too big to properly secure with less than a platoon. Even if we go out loaded for bear, we'll leave holes in the perimeter. The terrain works against us because the house you're talking about using is at a low point at the edge of the neighborhood. We'd be better off securing this building and using it instead." He pointed at the satellite image of a building next to a mosque.