I didn’t respond. I was still trying to differentiate between fear and well-being. My heart was racing, but I was pretty sure that was just fear.
“Did it mess with your head or anything, son?” he continued.
“Nah,” I said, trying on Ranger Tough for a second and then remembering I was talking to the sergeant major. The command sergeant major of a Ranger batt. Yeah, I’d gained some kind of special inside confidence role, but best not to take that for granted. “Negative, Sergeant Major. Good to go.”
He stared at the ring a moment longer, his weather-beaten face frozen like some statue as his eyes searched its surfaces and he studied the dull silver of its composition, musing to himself about something. He pushed the thing back to me.
“You hang on to this for now, son.”
And that was that. I had a ring that made me invisible. Like Frodo, or one of the hobbits. The other one first. Frodo later. I hadn’t read the books or seen the movies in a long time, but I knew colleagues in the Language Arts who spoke and communicated to one another in one of the made-up languages Tolkien had created. I knew a few words. I’d always meant to play their little game but…
“Boys over in the weapon section caught one last night,” said the sergeant major, shifting to a new topic. He drained the last of the coffee in his canteen cup. “Need you to go over there and talk to it. See if you can understand it and find out what it knows about the enemy’s disposition of forces.”
He scanned the forest once more like it was full of invisible enemies just waiting for him to go kill them. Just looking at the sergeant major looking for enemies made me nervous.
“Uh… Sergeant Major,” I began.
The sergeant major said nothing. I was used to, after the last year of introductory military training, waiting for permission from NCOs to speak to NCOs. I guess we were beyond all that now.
“I’m not really an interrogator, Sergeant Major,” I said.
The old NCO put his empty tin cup down on a rock near the blue camp percolator and leaned in close.
“I know that, Talker. But… John. He taught you the basics. Gave you the course, right?”
How did he know that? I’d looked at my records jacket, and the two-week stay in a cheap Vegas motel had been designated by only an alphanumeric string of numbers and letters. Meaningless and indecipherable even to someone in personnel and admin. Somewhere in some government computer it meant something to someone who could read that particular language. Knew what it meant. But me, I had no clue. I knew what it stood for only because I knew what had happened during those two weeks in Vegas at a hotel no one would ever think twice about. Most military schools noted in records jackets on the appropriate line said something like Basic Training. Eight Weeks Completed. Or Airborne Training. Three Weeks. Fort Benning. Completed. The sergeant major had looked at my records jacket and had been able to determine what that mysterious string of numbers and letters had meant? And he knew…
“He still call himself John?” asked the sergeant major.
I nodded that he did.
“Good,” drawled the sergeant major. “So… you know what to do. How to interrogate for intel.”
I nodded again.
There was a lot of nodding going on. We’d entered that world. A world I’d been told about by John. He’d told me about that world one time in a conversation I thought was just a break between lessons. But later I realized it had been just another lesson. Sometimes, he’d told me, when you were talking about stuff that didn’t openly get talked about, you ended up just nodding a lot. Using words that didn’t seem to mean what they were supposed to mean, to stand in for the meanings of the dark words you needed to use to communicate valuable intel.
I’d had no idea, at the time, what I was being trained for, but apparently this kind of behavior was part of it. Intel stuff. I’d read a couple of spy novels, and I was pretty sure I was being groomed to either “run joes”—a John le Carré term—or be one. Very low-level spy stuff, I was sure of that. Observe and Report. Not James Bond, if that’s what you’re thinking.
I remember John and I were eating eggs at a diner one evening. South side of Vegas. No one else there in that cheap diner. I kept looking for the waitress to have some horrible scar around her throat where it had been slashed once, long ago. But she didn’t.
John said, low in the quiet while some jazz instrumental version of the song “Goin’ Out of My Head” played over the bad speakers, he said, “It’s like this…” He put down his fork. “If the mob asks if you kill people, professionally, the way they ask you is, they say, Do you paint houses? Like that. That’s how they ask you. And sometimes, if you ever do get asked to do some work, I’m not saying assassination, I’m just saying… to employ some of the skills I’ve taught you, then it will be requested indirectly using a code phrase, some of which I’ll teach you. Because these are things that can’t be reported. Can’t be official. Can’t be known. Understand? This is what you signed up for.”
I sure, kinda, did. At the time. I thought I did.
I mean c’mon. I was in Vegas, in a diner, on the absolutely wrong side of town, getting an off-books intel course before being told to go who knew where and do who knew what. It was all very not real and very exciting at the same time. Probably because it wasn’t real. And if you thought I had Area 51 and then ten thousand years in the future on my dance card then you’re giving me way more credit than I deserve. I just thought I was headed off to some embassy in Germany where I was gonna pick locks on government file cabinets, which is what we’d spent most of our time on during the two weeks in Vegas in the cheap motel. The other stuff had been along the lines of Oh-by-the-way-if-you-do-happen-to-need-to-interrogate-someone-here’s-how-you-do-it. Y’know… like that. Like I’d probably never need to actually do it.
Or maybe that’s just what I told myself the whole time throughout those two weeks because there were some things being taught that… let’s just say… required one to be morally flexible.
I nodded across the wisps of campfire smoke, and the sergeant major folded his large weathered hands together as we just sat there. Hands that had probably murdered people and left them out in deserted forests similar to my current surroundings. He stared into the fire and I couldn’t tell if he was thinking or just watching the dying orange coals turn to gray as the afternoon moved into its decline.
I decided to change the subject.
“Hey, that State Department guy…”
The sergeant major’s gray eyes came up fast. But nothing else in his tall and powerful body moved.
“He asked me how we were doing,” I finished.
I waited for the sergeant major to react. He didn’t. So I clarified.
“Used the word… men. As in How are the men doing. Know what I mean, Sergeant Major? Seemed… odd. Like he’s up to something.”
The sergeant major thought about that for a moment. His eyes seemed to see, and not see, the drifting smoke in the coals.
I drained the last of my coffee, indicating I wouldn’t mind more if there was any.
“Lemme see your sidearm, Talker,” rumbled the sergeant major abruptly.
Okay, I said to myself, wondering if I’d just committed some error that was about to get me buried in a shallow grave close by. I put my empty canteen cup down and drew my weapon, ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and then handed it over.
The sergeant major put my weapon aside on a rock and drew his own sidearm. It was the same as mine. M18. We’d all been issued M18s as our secondaries at the Fifty-One armories. He handed his over, and that was when I saw the difference between his and mine. His barrel was threaded. Mine wasn’t.
John had covered a little bit of this. One day when we took a long drive out into the desert east of Vegas.
The sergeant major reached into his ruck and took out a wrapped bundle. Green cloth and t
hen bubble wrap. He handed it across the fire to me.
“Clean him,” muttered the senior NCO as he sat back. “Can’t have that going forward.”
I unwrapped the cloth knowing what I’d find. Knowing the sergeant major had understood exactly what I was saying about Volman. Even though I hadn’t. Or I had. Maybe I’d just expected a different solution. A talking-to. Even a punch in the face.
Instead I was looking at a silencer.
“Back in the old days, Talker, we called it R&R. John probably used ‘clean’ like they do in the Agency. We’d say take a guy out to R&R. Some thought it meant Rest and Relax.”
I’d really been waiting to pick some locks on file cabinets. I’d gotten really good at that. But I also knew the code word the sergeant major had just used and what it meant. I just never thought anyone would use it.
“R&R don’t mean that, son. It meant Roughly Retire. Just so we’re clear. Know what I mean?”
Clean him. That’s code for assassinate. In Russian it’s ubiystvo. In Korean it’s amsal. In American it means kill him. R&R.
Silly me.
Chapter Eleven
On the way over to talk to the prisoner Kurtz’s heavy weapons team had managed to capture, I ran into two Rangers from one of the rifle squads. One was the typical age of the average Ranger. Early twenties. Maximum rage and physical prowess intersected at around that point. Plus, youth could absorb the constant damage of Rangering. But the other was a man on the far side of middle age. Not typical for a line Ranger. And other than the command sergeant major and the captain, no one was even remotely that old. Not even the first sergeant. I’d never seen this guy around. No one with gray hair and hunched over, limping like an old man. Not at Fifty-One or here on the island.
They were sitting on opposite logs along the trail I’d been following out toward that area of the defenses. Like they’d been coming the other way and had stopped for a chat. But not to chat. The old guy looked like he was having trouble breathing.
I stopped to see if I could help.
“You guys all right?” I asked. “Anything I can do?”
The older one held up his hand before he spoke. His hand shook and the skin there was wrinkled and liver-spotted like he’d worked in the sun all his life and thought sunscreen was a conspiracy by the government to control our minds. He’d either ditched, or lost, his assault gloves. Or any of the other kinds some of the Rangers preferred to use when sticking their hands into nasty places. Like I said, a lot of them liked a brand called Mechanix. I just had the issue gloves that came with the RLCS loadout. And there was probably never gonna be another store where I could buy the other kind ever again. So…
“He ain’t doin’ so good,” said the other Ranger. He was carrying both of their MK18 rifles.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Most messed-up thing I ever saw,” said the younger one. “Last night about zero-three-thirty we’d just been repositioned to support a machine-gun team. Bravo got hit hard earlier. So, we’re in the LLC waiting to go forward, and this… I don’t know what you’d call it, but this is what I’m callin’ her… this witch is what she looked like, she just comes out of the darkness along our flank and points right at Sims there…”
Sims, the old man, began to cough, and his lungs gave their best performance of an actual death rattle.
“She’s shriveled up and old and she’s got a big crooked nose, nothing but a sack on,” the other man continued. “But her eyes were like nothin’ I ever seen before. Like looking into an ocean that ain’t got no bottom to it… know what I mean?”
I did. And that creeped me out. But go on…
The one telling the story fumbles for some smokes he’s got in one of his cargo pockets. He lights one and hands it to Sims. Rangers never smoke in the field. Only when they’re drinking. It’s always dip when they’re operational. So these guys are pretty shook if they’re breaking out the pack they brought along in hopes of finding a bar somewhere in the post-apocalyptic future.
Sims is hacking up a lung but he’s gonna smoke anyway. Ranger gonna Ranger as they say. Personally, I don’t think Sims needed a smoke so much as an iron lung. Or a full team of geriatric specialists at this point.
Sims takes the offered smoke and inhales weakly, coughing, forcible coughing like he’s trying to hack up something that won’t come unstuck. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna die right on the spot there at the worst of the coughing fit. But he doesn’t.
I notice the other Ranger holding a smoke out for me.
I take it. Why not try to fit in, I tell myself. I quit two years before I joined the Army. But hey… it’s like ridin’ a bike and all. Or falling off one, as they say.
“Ain’t had one since Honduras and that was the real deal down there,” said the one handing out smokes. I notice his hands are trembling a little too. The forest around us is all quiet. I’m guessing some of the Rangers are sleeping in shifts while they can catch it. It’s been two nights now without sleep. Three is the accepted Ranger maximum.
The cigarette calms down Sims’s fit, but he just keeps his weathered old face toward the ground. After a moment he takes off his bucket and I can see his hair hasn’t just gone gray. It’s stark white. Pure bone-white. Like he saw a ghost.
“I’m Sims and this is Matthews,” the old man tells me, and we just sit there smoking in the quiet woods. Occasionally Sims coughs softly. Then he mumbles, “I’m dyin’, man.”
“So this… lady…?” I prompt. ’Cause I’m curious. And afraid. And I’ve found knowledge is a good cure for fear. I always restrain myself from asking a survivor or loved one about the symptoms someone they knew had before they died. Even I know that’s selfish. As in self-interested. I don’t ask. But I gotta admit it here… I wanna know.
“Ain’t no lady,” mumbles Matthews. “Was a witch fer sure. I’m from Appalachia. I heard enough about ’em down in them hollers ya ain’t supposed to go to, to know one is right in front of me and all. Reyes was right. Confirmed. Except he called her a brujita. That’s Rican for witch, y’know?”
By Rican I assumed he meant Puerto Rican Spanish. Brujita I knew. Surprise. I speak Spanish too. That one was easy. Italian, French, and Spanish all unlock each other, more or less.
Bruja. Witch or sorceress.
Old Man Sims picks up the story from there. “She comes outta the darkness,” he wheezes. “One minute she ain’t there and we got NVGs on and everything. Next minute she just appears out of the dark and points right at me…”
Sims indicates himself by stabbing his bent and bony finger into his plate carrier.
“I open up on her, but she’s gone in the next second.” He coughs. “I’m firing into nothing but smoke. And…”
He takes a long drag on his cigarette and mumbles something I can’t hear. Like maybe he was just swearing.
“What was that?” I ask.
Sims looks up at me sharp and angry.
“I said… I can still hear her laughin’. Thought it was out across the forest and over the outgoing fire last night, but… it’s still there in my mind, man. I can hear her laughin’ like she’s up in the attic of my head. In some old rocking chair. Just slow-rockin’ and laughin’ at me. This is really jacked up. I didn’t enlist for this, man. One more and I was gonna get out and go to Cali and maybe become an actor or somethin’. That’s…”
He starts coughing again.
“That’s what I say,” he finishes once the fit is done.
The forest is silent, and some crow flaps off moving from one tree to another. Its wings make a leathery hush and when it lands in a tree nearby it just watches us like it knows what’s going to happen and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Okay. I officially have the creeps.
Sims looks at me, not angry this time, but like he’s asking me to believe him. To understand. To say somethi
ng like, Oh yeah. That’s happened to me, man. That’s nothing. It’ll clear up.
The emotional equivalent of when the doctor tells you to just put some cream on it. Nothing to worry about. It’ll clear up.
That’s what Sims needs to hear right now.
But I’m just sitting there with my half-smoked cigarette. Listening. And thinking about witches who can curse you and make you old. Just like that. That’s gonna really cut down my chances with the cute co-pilot. Getting turned into an old man and all.
“She said…” coughs Sims, who flicks the butt of his cigarette off into the wet forest. “Para… malda City or something. Then… Hilly po-yahss. And then, all of a sudden, I felt like I got the flu and had a heart attack all at once.”
Matthews chimes in. “We didn’t see what happened until first light. When Kurtz made us stand watch until his guys got more ammo. That’s when we could see that Sims got turned into an old dude. So now I’m takin’ him back to the chief for a look. What do you think’s wrong with him? Ya think they got somethin’ besides Motrin for somethin’ like this? I mean, this is messed up, man. He’s only twenty-two!”
Sims starts to hack up a lung.
Both of them look at me.
Unlike them, I know what the old woman said. Para… malda City or something. Then… Hilly po-yahss.
Para maldecirte, gilipollas.
Curse you, bastard.
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t tell them what it meant. What the witch had said. The brujita, another Ranger had called her. Little witch. I just stood there in the quiet forest and considered the implications while we finished our smokes.
Sims the old man and Matthews the young one didn’t need to know. Didn’t need that on their plate along with the double helping of Ranger Alamo we just got served. What was coming at us next, by all indications, and even just by the feel of the air, was going to be a junkyard dog fight for our lives in the night hours ahead. They didn’t need to think about curses and witches that turned into smoke when it came time for round three.
Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller Page 11