by Weston Ochse
Boy Scout felt his own rage building.
The universe should rage.
“Probably lost a girlfriend in all this carnage,” Criminal said.
Lore turned from the front seat and shot him a look. “Not funny.”
Criminal’s smile evaporated and he nodded to her. “I know. Just a coping mechanism.” He turned to stare out the window.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Killing Fields, Afghanistan
BOY SCOUT DROVE the SUV like an enraged NASCAR driver after they finally left the dead sheep behind them. Narco’s double-cross was hitting Boy Scout hard, even if it was because of some entity that had possessed him from the Sefid. Had the man tried to fight it, or was it something that had achieved such firm and instant control that Narco had no choice but to do its bidding? Boy Scout had signed Narco to a contract on the recommendation of one of his old friends. Although Narco had his issues, he’d proven to be a major asset for the team and had protected them from attack on several occasions. To lose him to some entity seriously pissed Boy Scout off. He realized that the anger stemmed from his own feeling of inadequacy. As the team lead, he owed it to the team to protect each and every one of them. Boy Scout had utterly failed to protect Narco.
Never mind that he’d never had the opportunity. That’s not how leadership worked. It had been Boy Scout’s responsibility. Period. And now instead of helping Narco, he was hunting him down. The rage that surged through him would have made the Hulk explode.
“You okay, boss?” Lore asked.
He opened his mouth to speak, but anger was a hard fist in his throat.
“You look like you could chew through the windshield.”
“That’s how I feel.” He cursed as he slammed his right hand down on the steering wheel. “Fucking Narco.”
“No shit, boss. He fucking shot me.”
“And now we’re going to hunt him down... and then what?”
McQueen spoke from the back. “I don’t think Faood’s going to make it.”
Lore turned around in her seat and looked everyone in the eye. “We try and capture Narco alive. Then after I bitch slap his sorry, possessed ass, we figure out a way to get whatever is in him out!”
“I suppose you know how to do that?” Criminal asked.
“Not in the least. I’ll let Hollywood inform me. God knows we’ve seen enough movies about exorcisms. Any one of us could probably do it given a Bible, some holy water, and some restraints.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Criminal said. “How can that shit work if the entity isn’t Christian? I mean, what if it’s Muslim or Hindu or something? What if it doesn’t even have a religion?”
“You’re right,” Lore said, her voice still angry. “On the whole, exorcisms are conducted within a specific religious community, allowing for shared symbology. The idea of possession in the Catholic and Christian churches at large is one of spiritual trespassing. Where many of the other religions of the world invite what we’re referring to as possession, they refer to it as channeling. That said, in Islam, an exorcism is referred to as ruqya and is used to repair the damage done by black magic. In Judaism, an exorcism is performed by a rabbi who has mastered the Kaballah.”
“You sound like Wikipedia,” Bully said. “I’d forgotten you’ve been to college.”
Lore grinned. “Some people are experts in breaking other people’s bones while others are experts in world religions.”
“If you’re such the expert, why were you bouncing around in your trailer wearing a tin foil bathing suit?” Boy Scout asked.
“Think of it as a small exorcism. I was trying to get that damned phrase out of my head and it worked.”
“What phrase was that?” Bully asked.
“In English it was The wound is the place where the light enters you, but I was evidently speaking it in Persian... a language I don’t know.”
“What does it mean?” Bully asked.
“I have no idea.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Criminal noted.
“Maybe all the religious mumbo jumbo isn’t to hurt the invading entity, but instead to provide energy to the invaded soul,” Lore mused. “I know Narco was Catholic, so perhaps it will speak to the part of him that believed.”
Criminal laughed hollowly. “I can’t believe Narco was very religious.”
Boy Scout glanced in the rearview mirror at Criminal. “You know as well as any of us that God lives in the foxhole.”
They crested a rise and all eyes searched for danger.
Suddenly Lore shouted, “There he is!”
They’d left the valley of the cisterns and a great plain rolled out before them. Far ahead, trailing a long line of dust, was a dark speck that could only be Narco in the other Land Cruiser.
“Can you get closer?” Lore asked.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Boy Scout said.
“I don’t think we’re gaining on him,” Criminal said.
“Well thank you, Captain Obvious,” Boy Scout replied. “Now I guess we know where we stand.”
The dark speck suddenly rose into the air, pushed by a red-and-yellow ball of fire.
“Oh, shit!” Criminal cried.
“Was that an IED?” Bully asked.
“Had to be,” Lore said.
Boy Scout slammed his palm against the wheel again. “Keep your eyes peeled and shut down the chatter.”
The dust trail fell before them like a funeral shroud as they neared. Dark smoke curled madly into the air. The Land Cruiser lay on its left side. The entire right side looked as if a giant monster had chewed away the doors, ripping and gnashing. Of Narco, there was no sign.
They pulled to within fifty meters and stopped.
“Lore and Bully, you take the right. Criminal and I will take the left.”
“I’ll take the left with Criminal,” McQueen said.
“No, I want you watching over Faood.”
“Nothing to watch over. He’s dead.”
Boy Scout met McQueen’s gaze in the mirror. They both knew they’d needed the Medlevi dervish alive to save Narco. Not that it mattered, of course, because now Narco was probably dead, too.
Boy Scout was the last to get out of the vehicle.
Lore was limping from her wound, but still ambulatory. While Bully scanned the ground in front of them, Lore monitored the horizon, the butt of her HK 416 sunk deep in her shoulder.
McQueen and Criminal were doing the same on the left side of the road.
Boy Scout held his rifle at the ready as he walked down the middle of the road. One side of the road was on fire, as was part of the vehicle. The conflagration roared in the silence.
The IED could have been manually detonated by a spotter. They were too far out for a cell phone signal, but a simple FM radio receiver and transmitter could accomplish that—which meant they needed to be wary of someone in the surrounding hills. They were searching for movement or a glint of light—anything. It could also be part of a more sophisticated ambush. There could be dozens of enemy fighters hidden in the scrub grass waiting for them to get on the X. The IED could have been placed there years ago and was auto-detonated by the weight of the vehicle. They were so far out it could have been—
He squelched his MBITR. “Hey Bully.”
“Yes, boss,” she said over the radio.
“This the road you took into town?”
“The very same.”
“You ever have any problems?”
“Never, boss.”
“Know what I think?”
“Think they were targeting me?”
He was absolutely sure they were. “Look tight. Everyone get down.”
All four of his remaining TST members slid into a tactical crouch.
He got down as well, waiting for the ambush to proceed. There was no doubt that the location of Narco’s vehicle was the X. Once the enemy fighters, whoever they were, realized that he and his team had no intention of going there, he hoped that they�
�d get impatient. They probably carried AKs, so at distance they weren’t as accurate as their HKs, but they could still kill. Although his torso was protected by body armor, one lucky head shot would ruin his day.
“McQueen, what’s the terrain look like on your side?”
“Flat. Grass is only knee high. Could be lying down but I doubt it.”
“Lore, what about yours?”
“Same. Although there seems to be a depression about twenty meters out.”
Boy Scout considered what to do next. “McQueen, ascertain Narco’s condition. Just don’t get blown up. Criminal, establish a fighting position and prepare to cover Bully and Lore. You two prepare to bound back to me.”
“Roger, boss,” came four voices.
“And if you come under fire, let’s do an Aussie Peel.”
Again came confirmation of his order.
He sat back on his haunches with his weapon draped across his knees. His eyes and ears were alert for even the slightest movement or sound.
“No sign of Narco,” McQueen said.
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. No. Sign. Of. Narco.”
Was he thrown clear? Where could he have gone? “Are you sure?”
“He’s not there, boss.”
Boy Scout couldn’t figure it out. “Establish position fifteen meters on the other side of the vehicle. I want to see if we can get some crossfire if they show.”
“Roger, boss.”
“And everyone keep your eye out for Narco,” he added.
“Or else he might shoot you, too,” Lore murmured into her coms.
As gallows as her humor was, it could also be prophetic. They needed to not only worry about possible enemy combatants, but Narco as well.
“McQueen, inform when in position.”
“I’m there. I also see some blood on the ground.”
“Think Narco went through there?”
“Could be. It’s fresh. I’m gonna watch my six.”
An image of a possessed Narco creeping up on McQueen flashed through Boy Scout’s mind.
“McQueen, let’s not do that. Move back to Criminal. I don’t want anyone alone with Narco out there.”
He heard McQueen sigh, but nothing else. Still, he knew the man would do as he said.
“Get ready and get down,” Boy Scout said.
Then he removed an F1 Australian fragmentation grenade from his pouch. As a security detail, they weren’t supposed to have grenades, but Narco had traded fourteen cases of Jack Daniels to an Australian military unit for four crates of grenades a year ago, and they’d had them in stock ever since. The F1 was roughly the same as the American M67. The F1 contained four thousand steel balls with an effective range of thirty meters.
He pulled the pin and released the spoon. With a five-second cookoff, he threw it right toward the depression indicated by Lore.
“Fire in the hole,” he said stonily, then crouched back down.
The explosion came as expected. He could hear the pings and rush of the steel balls as they sought flesh, but no one in the TST was even close. But what came next was exactly what he’d been looking for.
He was sighting down the barrel of his HK when the first two came over the lip of the rise. Both fighters were bloody although there was no way to tell if it was their own blood or someone else’s. He put two rounds into each of their chests, sending them backwards.
Then nothing.
He pulled out another grenade and threw it after the first one.
Rinse. Repeat. Explosion.
“Bully, check for casualties. Lore, provide cover.”
Bully stepped forward in a tactical crouch, her weapon leading the way. When she got to the edge of the grenade area, she took two quick steps forward, then backed up the same. She adjusted her grip on her rifle and stepped forward more carefully.
“Seven, Boss. You fragged seven of them.”
“Any alive?”
“Not that I can see.”
“See any affiliation?”
“Looks like Taliban to me.”
“Lore, you’re clear. Go to Bully and assess. Just don’t move any bodies.” The latter he said because he didn’t want to take the chance that one of them was booby trapped. The former he ordered because Lore was more attuned to the different tribal outfits than Bully, who until last year had been little more than a convoy driver.
When she was on site, Lore spent a few moments walking around the depression. “Definitely Taliban,” she said. “Looks like you got them all.”
“Talk about anticlimactic,” Criminal said over coms.
Boy Scout was about to agree when a bullet shattered his right shoulder, sending him to the ground. It was only after he was on his back, writhing in pain, that he heard the shot. Wherever it had come from, it was from a long way off.
Chapter Twenty-Six
HE FELT HIMSELF being pulled by his body armor, the rough dirt grating against his back. He began to slide out of the armor but grabbed a handful of webbing with his left hand. Whatever was happening to his right hand, it felt like it was attached to a vast ocean of pain.
“Aniewonnowhrethtshtcamefrom,” he asked the universe.
The universe responded. “Up on the hill. Criminal and Bully are sussing it out.”
The pain enveloped him for a swift instant, then retreated like the outgoing wave of a tsunami, taking with it every possible feeling of good and health, leaving him completely depleted. His shoulder was shattered. That he knew. He’d been shot there once before, but he’d only had soft tissue damage. This was something else altogether. This was something magnificent.
He was suddenly rumbling down an unknown road. He sat shoulder to shoulder with other rangers in a mine resistant armor protected vehicle, or MRAP. They were on mission to take out an IED factory. They’d studied the factory layout and each of them knew everyone else’s mission in the event one of them might go down.
Then came the explosion. The MRAP rose into the air like a bucking bronco. Much of the damage and effect of the blast was diverted by the v-shaped hull, but the charge was enough to send the ten-ton vehicle skyward. The front end slammed back to earth with the force of a comet. He felt the driver lose control, turn to the left, then the flip. Soon they were rolling, rangers flying against each other like monkeys in a barrel. Bones breaking, faces bruising, muscles tearing, but not a one of them screamed or complained. Not a sound could be heard louder than a grunt, and it was in this carnival silence that Corporal Bryan Starling realized he might actually die. Up until that moment, he’d been swathed in a carefully woven tapestry of propaganda, preaching his invulnerability as a United States Army Ranger. In the end, he was merely an extremely well-trained and motivated killing machine made of flesh, bone, testosterone, and a healthy slice of American apple pie full of blood.
He blinked and was back to the present, where he recognized McQueen working on him. He could hear gunfire but didn’t know who was firing.
Night had fallen. McQueen had a flashlight held between his teeth. His narrow eyes were focused on Boy Scout’s right shoulder.
“What… what… what…” Boy Scout struggled to form words.
After a few more seconds, Boy Scout felt a wash of warmth so sensuous that he almost smiled, remembering a short time with a woman named Pak Hyung Mi in a Korean village, then a long time with a Pinoy named Alsace in a club barely outside the gate of Clark Air Force Base.
“Morphine,” McQueen said, removing the flashlight from his mouth and holding it in his right hand so he could examine the wound. “You’re fixed up for now. I can’t get the bone pieces out, but I did stop the bleeding. You’ll need surgery so I think this whole exercise in trying to keep the daeva from leaving their valley is over for you.”
“Daeva?”
“Remember the mission? Remember the speech you gave? We’re trying to save the world from destruction and all that hooraw shit?”
Amidst the brilliant light of the opiate sun f
lare, Boy Scout remembered himself standing in the cistern delivering a speech when they’d first learned about the consequences of what they’d done. Yeah, now he remembered... but fuck it. Morphine. And as the solar flare died, it all went black.
HE WOKE UP cold and alone in the dark.
His mouth was a vast desert planet that hadn’t seen water in an epoch. He moved and felt the leaden weight of his right shoulder. Then he remembered. He’d been shot. McQueen had done something to him and then given him morphine. He could still feel its leisurely journey through his system, a weight as heavy as the memory of the boy he’d saved from Colonel Amanullah Sharif. The boy who was not just any shy boy, but a paraplegic in a wheel chair whose body was constantly used as a sexual tool for an Afghan military officer’s vile needs. Although he’d never actually seen it happen, he’d heard the colonel’s innuendo.
“I can see in his eyes that he loves me.”
“He frowns like my sister but I know she liked it.”
Each word was a land mine of predatory violence and hate. The man he’d garroted hadn’t even understood the meaning of love. He hadn’t known that to love was to submit. He forever sought to control, and in that controlling had become a monster whose upward mobility was destined to be ended by a former US Army Ranger.
When Boy Scout had reported the suspected molestation of the handicapped boy to a military police officer at Camp Phoenix, he’d been told that Afghan officers weren’t his jurisdiction and that if Boy Scout decided to take it to the Afghan police he’d be laughed out of the room.
What was the jurisdiction of human suffering?
Wasn’t that everyone’s responsibility?
The cold radiating from the dirt through his back brought Boy Scout back to the present.
He struggled to sit, but the volcanic pain in his shoulder made it almost impossible. Any move, even the act of breathing, sent shivers of agony along his arm and down his spine. But not willing to merely lie there for eternity, he managed to lever himself into a seated position. His body armor had been removed and lay beside him, bloody and unfastened, but he let it be. He struggled to his feet, falling twice, while the earth reeled in concert with his opiate-soaked brain. Each time he fell, he blacked out for a time, the pain summoning him to a place of hushed darkness. He finally managed to climb to his feet.