by John Renehan
Black didn’t return his gaze.
“Mmm-hm,” Hill said to himself, taking a nice long smoke before speaking again. When he did he addressed the group.
“Never be the last man,” he said, looking out at the mountains. “Traynor knew that. Traynor knew what he was doing. After the firefight, when everything was all over, the chief medic on the MEDEVAC bird told the investigators all about it. He said when the helo touched down and he jumped out onto the ground and ran over to where Traynor was at and he saw the poor fuckers that Traynor had dragged to the landing zone, it was just pathetic. It was obvious none of ’em was gonna make it. They were all mostly dead already. Medic grabbed Traynor by the arm and told him, ‘These wounds are not survivable, private,’ and told him to bring him some other casualties that might have a chance. Traynor told him ‘Fuck you’ and made him put the casualties on the bird. Told him the rest of the dudes were okay. Told him ‘We’re good.’”
Hill rose from his camp chair and walked to the edge of the slab. He had a water bottle in his hand.
“So rest in peace, Jason,” he said, tipping a quantity over into infinity. “Say hi to the boys.”
He came back and sat. Everyone stared at the stone walls or the slab.
Black looked at Brydon, who stared miserably down at the rock.
“And that,” said Hill, surveying the newcomers, “is the story of Private Traynor, for all you O.P. Traynor cherries.”
He glanced at Black.
“No offense, there, sir.”
Black nodded.
“Where’s the latrine?” he asked.
“Eh, we got a chem toilet if you need it, sir, but if you gotta take a whiz . . .”
He swept his arm across the vista before them.
“. . . the world’s yer oyster.”
Deciding it would be unclassy to urinate on the memory of Private Traynor, Black rose and squeezed down between the boulders at the entrance to the fishbowl. He looked around himself. From there it was a short scramble up and over a spine of rocks to the back side of the mountain and a wooded area.
He unslung his rifle and went that way, hopping and scrambling from rock to rock, the heavy bulk of the mountain to his right, empty space falling away to his left as he rounded the summit mass. He had just hopped down from the last boulder and landed on the wooded backslope when hands grabbed his shoulders from behind.
“L.T.!” the voice hissed.
25
He ducked and spun, sending up an elbow to shrug his attacker free.
Danny’s surprised, sweating face shone wide-eyed in a leafy shaft of moonlight.
Black charged, holding his rifle crosswise before him. His momentum, with all his gear on, drove Danny several tripping steps backward across the slope until they both fell across a log and landed hard on the slanting mountainside.
Black pushed himself up and away from Danny, backing off several feet and raising his rifle.
“No!” Danny gasped, terrified. “L.T.!”
“It’s you!” Black hurled at the linguist, squaring on him. “He’s you!”
“What?!”
“The servant! You’re the servant!”
“L.T.! No! What?”
“Don’t bullshit me, Dan—”
A crackle of leaf and twig behind him.
Five meters roughly.
He spun. A dark figure loomed before his rifle. Before any conscious thought, he squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened but the dull metallic snap of a weapon failing to fire.
He blinked. The Monk stood frozen for a moment, then glided away downslope, through the trees.
Black whirled around again to Danny, who remained motionless on the ground with his hands up. He let his rifle fall, swinging taut from a short strap D-ringed to his gear, and drew his pistol.
“L.T.!”
“Shut up.”
He looked around him and moved a few steps further away to where a log lay across the ground. He lay his pistol on its side on the log, pointing in Danny’s direction, close where he could grab it. He unhooked his rifle from its strap.
“What did you do here, Danny?”
He cracked open the rifle and began to strip it, keeping one eye on his work and one eye on the frightened ’terp.
“What, did you rape a kid or something? Did you try to cut in on the chief’s drug business?”
He pulled the charging handle out, freeing the bolt assembly, while Danny stammered and protested.
“I’m sick of everyone lying to me out here, Danny.”
He yanked a patrol cap from his cargo pocket by its bill, snapping it open with a flip of his wrist and setting it upside down like a dish on the log.
“So you need to tell me the truth now or I’m going to shoot you, right here on this mountain. Do you understand?”
Danny’s wide eyes widened further.
“What did the chief want to tell me, before he freaked out over the heroin?”
He tossed the charging handle into the upturned patrol cap and got a fingernail underneath the loop of the retaining pin as Danny opened his mouth to respond.
“Why did he want to get me alone?”
He tugged the retaining pin free and pinched it between his teeth.
“L.T.!” Danny exclaimed, harshly. “This is what I tell you! It was not the chief!”
“What?”
He tipped the bolt carrier into his palm and nothing came out.
“It was not the chief who wanted you to talk alone,” said Danny. “It was me, L.T.”
There was no firing pin in his rifle.
He looked up at Danny.
“The chief did not say for Caine to leave,” Danny said. “I say that. I wanted you talk to the chief alone.”
Black looked at him uncomprehendingly. Danny went on in a gush of words.
“I make it up, L.T. Chief is talking about Who is young officer, He looks like baby, and this. I tell him Sergeant Caine makes apologies but has to go, but he can tell any problem to young lieutenant, and young lieutenant will tell his boss and bring help.”
Black’s mind spun.
“I hope maybe he tell you, L.T. Tell you what happen.”
“What do you mean? What happened when?”
“On patrol,” Danny said. “Not goat patrol. Before. One week, ten days.”
“What patrol?”
Danny shook his head miserably.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t see. I don’t go on this one. Night time. They tell me, Danny you stay at Vega. They come back, something is wrong. I know something is wrong. Too much whispers, soldiers are scared.”
“Which soldiers?”
“I don’t know all, but some the guys you talk to for investigation. Some these guys for sure.”
“Shannon?”
“Yeah. And Corelli. These guys on patrol.”
“The Wizard?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“The sergeants?”
“Caine for sure. Merrick he stay at Vega. And lieutenant too, he goes. He looks bad when they come back. Goes to his room—your room—and stays. He knows the bad thing happens.”
“He didn’t stop the bad thing?”
Danny just looked at him reproachfully and shook his head slightly.
“I don’t know what happened, L.T.,” Danny said. “But everything is bad since the night. Everybody is scared. Nobody talks nobody. Then you come. I hope you help. I know chief knows story, because he is different too, every time we come to town after. I hope chief tells you the story.”
And you screwed that up.
“What are you doing out here?” Black demanded.
“After Darreh Sin, after chief, I cannot stay at Vega. You do the heroin . . .”
His h
ands churned the air for the word.
“Heroin square, and the chief is so mad, and the attack and the bombs. Sergeant Caine, Sergeant Merrick, they will ask me what happened with chief. I know you will not tell them, because . . .”
He peered at Black in the dark.
Because you screwed up.
“So I go,” Danny said with finality. “It is not safe for me staying at Vega. They will ask, and I’m scared if I lie and help you they will know.”
He looked at the ground.
“I don’t know what they do to get me to answer.”
That hung in the air. Black picked up his pistol.
“Are you lying?
“L.T.,” Danny said sadly. “I watch you.”
Black cracked open the pistol too and began pulling it apart.
“You are man who needs the truth.”
It only took a few moments to get the simpler pistol down to its basic parts. It too had been disabled.
Black looked up at Danny wordlessly. He set the useless pistol pieces down. His thoughts circled backward until he understood.
“What else do you know?”
Danny looked at him with dark eyes.
“The valley, it . . .”
He swept his hands toward himself as though trying to contain a cloud of smoke.
“. . . gathering, L.T. No one at Vega is safe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear too much. All valley people says get the Devil out of the valley.”
“Are you with the Monk?”
Danny swallowed.
“I go, L.T.,” he said. “Please.”
“Are you with the Monk?”
Danny stood slowly.
“Please, I go. I help you if I can.”
“Wait.”
Black sat back on his haunches, his mind spinning.
“What else did the chief say?”
“L.T.?”
“Right when we were running out. He was saying some stuff that you didn’t translate.”
He saw recognition in Danny’s eyes. Danny shook his head.
“You watch out this chief, L.T. He is in a bad . . . place? With his people.”
“What was the thing he said?”
Danny nodded.
“I don’t understand this part,” he said. “I mean, I hear the words, I understand the words. I don’t understand what he means.”
“What were the words?”
“Well, you hear he say I should kill you all, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the next he says, this one is no sense. He says I kill all, I kill every man of you to . . .”
He made spheres in the air with his hands.
“Earth . . ?” he said, frowning. “Ball?”
“World?”
“This, I think, L.T.,” Danny declared. “I kill every man of you from this place all the way to the . . . to your end of the world.”
Black watched Danny head downhill through the trees as he reassembled his useless weapons. When he was done he rooted deep in a cargo pocket and came up with the little heart-strewn envelope the Monk had given him back at Vega. He slumped down, sitting against the hillside, and tore it open.
A single slip of paper lay inside. He read it, then closed his eyes for a few moments, memorizing its contents. He folded it back into the envelope and returned it to his pocket.
He stared downslope a moment in the direction Danny had gone. He pulled a map from his cargo pocket and held it close to his face, squinting under the red light of his flashlight. When he was done he folded it back up and put it away.
He picked his way slowly back to the rocks that would take him up to the fishbowl where the soldiers were waiting. He was already squeezing himself back up through the last boulders before he noticed the extra voices up on the slab.
He emerged and stood. Everyone turned and looked at him.
Shannon and the two soldiers Merrick had brought on the patrol stood off to the right, near the ledge, having a smoke. Hill and the guys from the guard tower were still in their chairs.
“Hey there, sir,” came a voice from his left.
Caine sat in a camp chair next to Brydon.
26
Brydon shrank in his seat next to the burly sergeant.
“Hey,” Black answered, looking around the group.
The assembled soldiers had lapsed into an uncomfortable silence without being sure exactly why. Guys exchanged awkward glances.
Except Shannon, who wore his habitual sneer, and Caine, who watched Black with a blank expression on his face.
“Everyone beat it,” Caine said. “Gotta talk to the L.T.”
The soldiers from the guard shack hesitated, then rose to go. Shannon elbowed the two with him, sending them toward the exit. Brydon squirmed in his seat.
“Yeah,” Black said, looking at Brydon. “Everyone beat it.”
Brydon rose, scowling at the ground, and went with the others. Only Shannon, Caine, and Black remained.
“Pull up a chair, sir,” Caine said, his face still blank.
Shannon was standing near the edge of the slab, behind the chair where Black had been sitting before. Beyond him, the night.
Black stepped forward to a chair at the head of the semicircle instead. He sat, keeping his eyes on Caine, with Shannon’s towering figure in his peripheral vision. He placed his useless rifle across his knees, pointing to the left, with one hand resting on it, and waited for Caine to speak.
Caine took his time lighting up a smoke for himself.
“I’m glad you told me where you were going, sir,” he said through an idle cloud. “I was getting worried down there.”
Black watched the sergeant carefully, his mind racing.
Don’t do it.
“Yeah, well, I’m fine,” he responded. “But I’m glad you came up here.”
“Oh yeah?”
You have to.
“Yeah,” said Black. “I was hoping you could do me a favor when you go back down to Vega.”
Off to his right he thought he saw Shannon smirk. Caine carefully maintained his empty expression.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I was hoping you could check my room for me.”
Caine showed confusion in spite of himself.
“Yeah, I must have left it unlocked when I went to talk to Sergeant Merrick about Danny yesterday,” Black said, watching Caine’s eyes carefully. “Someone was in there.”
There it was. See it?
“Maybe you could check and make sure I didn’t leave it unlocked again,” he went on, glancing at Shannon, who was looking at Caine.
Caine said nothing.
“Anyway,” Black said nonchalantly, turning back to Caine. “It’s a good thing I checked all my stuff before I came up here.”
Caine’s cigarette dangled, momentarily forgotten. Shannon looked from Caine to Black and back again.
“Hey, Shannon,” Black said, eyes locked with Caine’s. “Why don’t you beat it too?”
“Yeah,” Caine said slowly. “Beat it.”
Shannon gave a last look at Caine and stumped off toward the boulders. He worked his hulking frame down through them with effort, and was gone.
There was no one left on the slab but Black and Caine and the untended fire, which was working its way down to embers. The smell made Black think of camping.
Caine took a long, theatrical pull on his smoke and exhaled slowly, his hardened eyes fixed on Black the whole time.
“Wonder if you’re lyin’,” he said idly, his gaze drifting down to Black’s rifle. “Or who gave you the parts if you ain’t.”
“Cut the crap,” Black said. “What’s this, your mob boss impersonation?”
Caine shook
his head in mock sadness.
“Told you not to come up here, L.T.,” he said. “Tryin’ to help you out.”
“Where’s Traynor?”
Caine’s eyes rose from Black’s rifle to his face.
“Wonder what else you’re lyin’ about,” he said quietly.
“Where’s Traynor? Why’d you tell me you didn’t know him?”
“There is no Traynor,” Caine answered. “He’s dead.”
“No he’s not. He just went on leave and came back a few weeks ago.”
Caine couldn’t conceal his surprise at that.
“Who,” he asked, “told you that, Lieutenant?”
Careful.
Black swallowed.
“I’m an S-1 POG, remember?”
POG—“pogue”—was for Person Other than Grunt, a fighting soldier’s term for those who did noncombat jobs.
He pressed the bluff.
“You think we don’t have unit rosters down on Omaha?”
Caine’s eyes narrowed as the gears turned. Black knew where the sergeant’s thoughts were headed.
Stop.
“You lied about Traynor getting killed here,” Black said, piling on. “Merrick may believe that bullshit, but I don’t. Where is he? What did you do to him?”
Caine looked Black from top to bottom, seething. His bulk filled his chair, rippling forearms draped over the straining fabric arms, and for a moment Black thought he might spring from it.
Instead he flipped his cigarette at the fire, admiring the opposite rock wall.
“You’re reaching,” he announced with some satisfaction. “You don’t know shit.”
He turned to Black.
“And you’re bluffing,” he said, his eyes cold.
“Bullshit,” Black spat. “You don’t know what I know and don’t know.”
“Who told you about Traynor?”
Stop.
“You lied about the day you took Vega,” Black pressed. “I know that. Why’d you leave out the drugs? Why’d you lie about who you were fighting that day? What have you got going on that you don’t want me to—”
“I fucking told you, Lieutenant!” Caine snapped, nearly shouting. “I told you I was trying to help you, and I still a—”