“Meaning?”
“Meaning lots of things, Nat. One way or another, something exploded.”
Connor’s smirk was infectious. Nat let the humour swirl headily between them for as long as he could stand, then looked back at the map.
Conner cleared his throat. “Are we going to talk about what happened on the roof?”
“Doubt it.” Nat kept his gaze averted. “Unless you’re about to propose, in which case I’d have to decline.”
“Fuck you.”
“Next time.”
Connor chuckled. “All right, all right. I’ll settle for being on a promise if it saves us the deep and meaningful.”
For reasons Nat couldn’t decipher, disappointment swept through him. Casual hookups were a way of life—snatched encounters and half-arsed relationships. Deep and meaningful had never held much appeal, but everything about Connor was appealing, damn it.
“Pass me the map, Nat.”
Nat passed the map. Connor squinted at it and traced the main river with his fingertip. His nails had become as grubby as Nat’s. Nice.
“Nat?”
“Hmm?” A streak of dirt on Connor’s forearm stood out. Nat wanted to rub his face on it.
“The next closest mosque is here.” Connor tapped the map. “It’s not by the main river, but what about this waterway? Is it a canal?”
“Could be. What are you thinking?”
“That this mosque is near enough to the destroyed mosque for the men from that neighbourhood to be able to use it. Perhaps there’s a reason they weren’t invited in or that they chose not to go.”
The theory had legs. Rival clans aside, Muslim communities were open and warm, and they looked after their own. There had to be a reason a whole neighbourhood of men was choosing to pray in the street.
Nat checked his watch. Fuck. He was out of time. He stood, refolded the map, and tucked it back in his pocket. “Worth a look. I’ll talk to the OC, but you’d better not be sending us on a wild-goose chase. If this gets me killed, I’m going to take it personally.”
“Thought you didn’t care?”
“I never said that. Just said I couldn’t feel it anymore.”
Eight
“Just said I couldn’t feel it anymore.”
Connor watched with a heavy heart as Nat walked away. Nat had an honest face, and his eyes didn’t lie. Far from being dead inside, Connor was painfully certain he felt it all.
He found his laptop and opened his latest attempt at a coherent column. A little while later, the rumble of vehicles moving out reached Connor’s ears. He stepped onto the balcony in time to see the gates opening for the supply convoy. One, two, three, four . . . he counted the trucks and ARVs from the front until he reached Charlie-3’s Jackal six vehicles back in the convoy of nine. Nine vehicles. Was that enough to dissuade a waiting ambush? Connor had no idea, and part of him didn’t want to know.
But part of him wanted to know everything, which was a quandary he tapped out on his laptop in an attempt to keep busy while Charlie-3 was gone.
A thousand words later, he sat back and scanned the article. Fuck. The pacing was off. He frowned and mentally retraced the timeline of events since the last column he’d sent . . . arriving in Basra, the briefing, and the patrol . . . the IED, and subsequent debrief he hadn’t been privy to. Everything was there, but the gnawing sensation that something was missing wouldn’t quit.
He clicked another window and brought up the journal he’d begun back in Hereford. He read it through, highlighted the entire text, then hit delete. That shit didn’t feel right either.
Or did it?
Fuck’s sake. Connor restored the text he’d deleted. His encounter with Nat on the roof came flooding back, and before he knew it, it was all there in black and white, every kiss, every touch. Every breath and groan . . . Jesus Christ.
Connor highlighted the racier parts of the essay and hit delete again. He renamed the journal folder “Private and Personal,” and set his laptop aside. The article wasn’t due for a few days. He’d deal with it later.
That done, he retrieved his notebook—Nat had banned him from taking it out on patrol and into the briefing room—and drifted downstairs to have a proper look around the palace. It was a fascinating place. Beyond the equipment and rugged, operation-worn men, Connor saw the battered palace for the opulent presidential residence it had once been. He wondered what would happen to it when the war was over, but with the thrum of military activity all around him, it was hard to imagine that reality anytime in the near future.
His gaze fell on a group of men who’d separated themselves from the general crowd. Lazing around the obligatory hexy block with their scruffy beards and World Service–tuned radio, they were probably Echo-4, the other team from Troop-9 who’d come to Basra with Charlie-3. They looked more like truck drivers than soldiers, and Connor allowed himself a small smile, imagining James kicking back to the international news channel, a full face of scruff, and a metal mug of builder’s tea. It would’ve suited him, though Connor far preferred the last image he had of James, passed out after a belated Christmas get-together, beer can in hand, and Jenna’s cat asleep on his chest.
As though sensing attention on them, one of the men glanced up and caught Connor staring. “Oi, you’re the hack from the Guardian, ain’t ya?”
“Er, yeah?” Connor ventured forward and took the mug the man held out with a grin far friendlier than any he’d first seen from Nat’s team. “How did you guess?”
“You look lost, mate. Nice to meet you. I’m John. This lot are Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
Connor dubiously shook hands with all four men. “John, Tom, Dick, and Harry? You pulling my leg?”
John chuckled. “Wish we were. Would stop those gits in Charlie-3 calling us the bloody Enid Blyton crew. Though, I don’t suppose you need to know our names, do you? It’s Nat’s lot you’re stalking.”
“Not stalking them very well, am I? They’ve given me the slip.”
“Just as well,” Harry said. “Heard you had a lively patrol yesterday.”
Connor followed John’s direction and took a seat on the floor beside Dick. “Some IEDs went off as we left the market. It was pretty bloody scary, for me, at least. I got the impression everyone else had seen it all before.”
“Probably have,” Dick said. “I think Nat’s boys get blown up everywhere they go these days.”
There were a few chuckles, but the humour seemed loaded. Connor knew better than to ask why, though. Experience so far had taught him that these blokes would only talk if they wanted to and there wasn’t much he could do to persuade them otherwise.
He tried another tack. “Have you worked with Nat’s team long?”
“Fishing for gossip, are ya?” John offered Connor a box of fags.
Connor waved them away. It was beyond him how these guys stayed so fit. “Not fishing, just curious. Trying to get a feel for the dynamics around here.”
“Best start with Charlie-3, then, eh? Wedge is the newest on Nat’s team. ’Bout three years, I reckon? He didn’t come over here with them the first time, did he?” John looked to Dick as Tom got up and slipped away.
“Nah,” Dick said. “He was in Afghanistan with B Squadron, fucking about in the mountains.”
No one volunteered what had prompted the personnel shift-around, but it wasn’t hard to work out.
Tom rejoined the group. “Dinner time. Got your mess tin, hack?”
“It’s upstairs.”
“Don’t worry.” Dick handed him a tin of orange-hued meat stew. “We’ve got a spare. Our fifth man broke his leg on our last deployment and left all his gear behind when they shipped him home.”
Connor murmured his thanks and eyed his supper warily. The food had got worse with every stop on his journey from London, and the rations in the palace had proved to be the worst yet.
“Put some heat in it.” John passed Connor the smallest bottle of Tobasco he’d ever seen. “Makes it taste l
ess like dog food.”
Connor wasn’t convinced at first, but sure enough, with a bucketload of chilli and Tom’s mustard, his supper became something halfway edible. “How do you lot survive on this packet shit? Don’t you crave real food?”
Dick snorted. “Course we do. Don’t do us much good, though.”
The sachets of orange goop probably didn’t do them much good either. “What do you miss the most when you’re deployed abroad?”
“What do you reckon, boys?” John said. “I miss the pub. Feels like we’re on bloody Mars out here with no juicer up the road.”
“Batteries,” Dick said. “Or electricity that works.”
Harry grunted. “True that. Could do with a full English too. The hack’s right. Food here really is fucking shite.”
“It’s got worse, too,” John said. “Remember the curries we used to get in Sierra Leone? Magic, they were.”
Connor made a mental note to find out if Nat had been deployed to Sierra Leone. It wasn’t relevant to his work, but his fascination with Nat seemed to know no bounds. “What about your families? Is it hard to leave them for so long?”
“Depends,” Dick said. “It’s tough for the blokes who’ve got young kids, but most of us have been doing this since we were fresh out of school. I don’t know no different, and neither does my missus.”
“What about your parents, and, uh, siblings, and any extended family?” Connor pressed, half hating himself for being so masochistic. “How do they deal with you not being around so much? Is it hard to stay bonded to them?”
Dick raised an eyebrow. “My brothers are my brothers. Don’t matter how long I’m gone.”
“We miss this shit too, though, when we’re on leave,” Tom said.
Connor swallowed the lump in his throat and shot him a quizzical look. Tom had said the least so far. “You miss your mates?”
Tom shrugged. “And the rest. We laugh a bit harder here, ’cause it means more. It’s not easy to feel so alive when you’re tucked up in bed back home.”
What could he say to that? What was it about these men who said so much with so few words? Did Nat feel like that too? Had James? Was that why James had spent so little time at home after the Trade Centre attacks had drawn the British Army into the War on Terror?
The conversation went on without Connor as he pondered the broader impact of the prolonged state of combat these men had found themselves in. With no end in sight, what did it mean for them? For their well-being? There had to be long-term effects. He’d heard others speak of the “buzz” of the battlefield. Some made it sound like an addiction. Was that PTSD, or simply feeling alive?
Connor left Echo-4 to their supper and went on his way, trying to ignore the growing agitation deep in his gut. To counter it, he found a quiet-ish corner and sketched out a vague interview template. He doubted Charlie-3 would play ball, but it was worth a go, especially if it gave him the chance to have Nat to himself.
Perhaps we can do it up on the roof . . .
The innuendo in the errant thought made Connor hot all over. Damn it. He was supposed to be distracting himself. He glanced at his watch, but seeing the time only added to his disquiet. Charlie-3 had left for the airport run three hours ago. The airport was an hour away if the journey had gone without a hitch. Wedge had said loading the supplies would take a good few hours, plus they had to touch base with some people while they were there.
Fuck’s sake. Even if the operation went without a hitch, the convoy wasn’t expected back for ages yet.
And it was the very real possibility of a hitch that kept Connor’s foot tapping restless rhythms as he scribbled in his notebook. Kept his stomach churning. Kept his gaze darting to the barricaded gates every time it looked like they might open.
But they didn’t open and eventually, as darkness fell, he gave up his vigil and climbed the stairs to the empty room, still strewn with the team’s belongings: Marc’s books, Wedge’s collection of Zippo lighters, Bobs’s radio, and Chris’s curious array of flashguns and torches.
Nat’s bed caught Connor’s gaze. He seemed to have less stuff than the others, just a few books and an iPod. The urge to investigate Nat’s taste in music was strong, but sanity prevailed, and he lay down on his own bed and reached for his abandoned laptop. He opened his drafted article and scanned through it again. The missing link clicked: he’d left out Nat’s quiet conversation with the teenaged girl. He added it in and felt the piece come full circle, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why he hadn’t included it in the first place.
It wasn’t until he shut the computer and laid it on Nat’s bed that it occurred to him that perhaps he’d put the conversation in the part of his brain he’d reserved for just the two of them—that he’d blurred the lines between Nat the soldier, and Nat the man who’d blown his mind on the roof.
Connor returned to his own bed and lay on his stomach, closing his eyes against the thrumming noise of the base that never slept, mind racing, foot still tapping. He’d known Nat a little more than a week, but for him, the blurred lines were already irrevocable. The man Connor had kissed and so much more was a soldier, and Connor wouldn’t find rest until he returned safe and whole.
It was light when Connor woke to a still-empty room.
He sat up, searching for any sign that the team had returned while he’d slept. There were none. Everything was exactly as it had been when he’d last checked his watch at 3 a.m.
Connor scrambled out of bed and dashed downstairs, rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes. He hurried to the communications room and found most of Echo-4 gathered outside. “Are they back?”
Dick was the only one to look his way. “Still out there. They got popped on the return route, had to hole up overnight. Just been popped again a few miles out. They’re trying to fight through. Get home for lunch.”
There was no humour in Dick’s words, and Connor’s heart dropped through the floor. “Is everyone all right?”
No one answered. Connor peered through the tiny window on the closed door. John was there, headset on, looking tense, and the flurry of activity around him did nothing to ease the painful tension in Connor’s chest. “How long have they been under fire?”
“Be quicker to count the hours they haven’t. It’s been a long night,” Dick said.
“Thought they holed up till dawn?”
“They did. Didn’t stop the rockets, though.”
Connor sucked in a deep breath. “Can they get back?”
“Hope so.” Dick blew out a gusty sigh. “Fucked if I can be arsed to go and get them.”
Again, the gallows humour the Special Forces blokes wore like a second skin felt unconvincing. A few bodies pushed past Connor and went into the communications room. Connor strained his ears, but caught nothing except a buzz of radio chatter until Harry stepped around him and lodged his foot in the door, jamming it open.
Harry listened a moment, then nodded at Dick. “Wedge just took out the launch site.”
Dick grunted. “If that’s the same site they’ve been popping us from since we got here, some lazy buggers around this place need my boot up their arse. Shoulda blown the fucker up days ago.”
“Now, now.” Harry looked amused. “Gives us something to do, eh?”
Dick’s reply was drowned out by a commotion over the radio. Harry stepped quickly into the room, and the door swung shut behind him, cutting Connor’s tenuous link to Nat.
The sudden silence felt like a kick to the gut. Connor leaned on the wall, resisting the urge to pace the corridor like Dick. Beside Connor, Tom stood silent and still, his face betraying nothing. Was this a standard day for him? For Nat? For all of them? For the first time since he’d arrived in the Middle East, Connor couldn’t bring himself to ask.
It seemed like hours had passed by the time John and Harry emerged, grinning, and talking about football like nothing had happened.
“Squared away?” Dick asked.
“Yup.” John shot Connor
an inscrutable sideways glance. “Light casualties, walking wounded. They’re on the move again. ETA twenty minutes.”
“All right, all right,” Dick grumbled. “Don’t need their fucking life story. Come on, I need a cuppa.”
Echo-4 disappeared, leaving Connor to his own devices. Lacking any better ideas, he went back upstairs and sat on his bed, counting the minutes until Nat returned.
Nine
Nat climbed the stairs with heavy legs that belied the lingering adrenaline still coursing through his veins. It had been a long day—night, whatever—but he felt good—alive—and there was only one thing, one face, one set of molten brown eyes that could improve his mood.
He found those eyes waiting for him on the balcony or, at least, the back of the head they belonged to.
Nat stepped out into the early morning sun. “It’s shit up here for birdwatching, mate.”
“Yeah?” Connor didn’t turn around. “Good job I’ve never had much interest in watching birds.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” Nat joined Connor at the railing and followed his gaze to the dusty road Charlie-3 had spent the night on.
“Actually, I do. Summer holidays, 1991. Miranda Doherty.”
“You shagged a bird?”
Connor grimaced. “Think I gave it a good go. After the amount of White Lightning I drank, though, I’m pretty sure I failed.”
“And you never looked back, eh?”
“Oh, I did,” Connor said. “Many times, but it never changed anything. Only thing I regret is I didn’t give that girl the magical night she probably deserved.”
Nat chuckled.
Connor tilted his head to the side. “You seem different.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was waiting for you to come back, all bloody and banged up, like last time, but you look like you just had the ride of your life. You’re practically vibrating. I can feel it.”
Nat pictured Connor waiting for him, and tried to ignore the unintended innuendo in his words. Connor was right—Nat was buzzing—and the simmering heat between them was an added thrill he couldn’t deny.
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