by John Renehan
The ledge shook with the sound of an explosion from below. Caine and Black both jumped up from their chairs. Caine went first, practically leaping through the opening in the boulders. Black followed him down through the network of steps and ladders, to the level where the radio shack sat.
Several soldiers were there in the shadows, looking down into the night with goggles and night scopes. Shannon was pounding up the stairs from the level below.
“What happened?” Caine demanded.
Bosch was there, leaning on a wooden rail, peering downward through a rifle scope. He wore only a T-shirt underneath his body armor, ropy arms bare and tensed.
Shannon started to shout something, but Bosch cut in.
“Thought I saw three guys with rifles,” he said blandly, scanning left and right.
Shannon looked at him in surprise.
“What guys?” Caine demanded.
“Don’t know,” replied Bosch in a bored voice, eye to the scope. “Musta been wrong, or they scattered when I tossed the grenade.”
He lowered his rifle and turned to the assembled crowd. Shannon peered at him in scowled confusion.
“Or I got ’em,” Bosch mused as though pondering the weather.
He scrawled a finger back and forth across his mustache. His eyes briefly met Black’s.
“Probably should check it out in the morning,” he concluded with a shrug.
Black looked from Bosch to Shannon and back to Bosch, who raised a palm in a mock calming gesture.
“Relax, L.T.,” he said. “Ain’t the end of the world.”
Heavy steps stomped down the stairs above them.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Merrick, sweating from the climb back up and over the mountain, emerged from the darkness above them.
“Who’s lobbing grenades?”
“Bosch,” said Caine, looking at Bosch skeptically, “said he thought he saw someone down there.”
Merrick noted Caine’s presence with surprise.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
Caine shrugged.
“Came to check on the L.T.”
“What?”
Caine was all innocence.
“I knew you had your business to do, and the L.T. don’t know his way around up here and we’re sorta responsible for him, so I figured I’d come up and look after him.”
Merrick looked squinty-eyed at Caine.
“Anyway,” Caine went on, “you find anything out about Danny?”
Merrick brushed off the question.
“How did you know the lieutenant was up here?”
Caine looked at Black in the shadowy light. For a moment Black thought he was going to say it.
“Just figured,” he said, shrugging again, his eyes locked with Black’s. “He wasn’t at the COP, and everyone’s trying to find Danny, so I just figured.”
“Yeah, well don’t just figure,” Merrick said brusquely. “Get back to Vega where you’re supposed to be.”
In the dim light Black imagined Caine reddening, being dressed down like that in front of a bunch of joes. Caine opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Finally, he put his hands up.
“Hey, no sweat,” he said. “Just tryin’ to help.”
“Yeah, well, go help at the COP where you’re supposed to be fucking helping.”
That one, Black thought, must’ve burned.
“Take Brydon and Shannon with you,” Merrick directed. “And stop wandering around by yourself.”
“Hey, roger that,” Caine muttered, turning to the stairs. “You the man.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Merrick said to his back, grinding it in. “I’m the man.”
“I’m coming,” said Black out of nowhere.
Caine and Shannon turned. Everyone else did too.
“What?” said Merrick.
He looked at Black with furrowed brow. Black held his eyes for a long moment.
“I’m going with them,” he declared, shrugging as though it were the obvious thing to do.
“I need to talk to you, sir.”
“Later,” Black replied.
He turned back to Caine and Shannon, who regarded him with unconcealed surprise.
Thanks, Bosch.
“Let’s go back to Vega,” he said.
—
They walked the entire way down, nearly two hours, in silence. Black walked in the middle of the line, with Shannon’s looming figure behind him. Brydon walked ahead of him, and Caine led at the front. The only words came toward the end when Caine radioed ahead to alert Vega they were approaching.
It was still dark when they came in through the gate to the puzzled look of the soldier on duty there. They crossed the courtyard, where Caine turned to Brydon.
“Go check on the wounded from yesterday,” he said.
“Roger,” Brydon mumbled and went off, stealing a last look at Black.
“Go get some chow or something,” Caine said to Shannon.
Shannon paused a moment, regarding Caine, before lumbering away. That left Black and Caine standing in the courtyard facing each other.
“Guess you probably oughtta go see about your business too,” Black said to Caine.
Caine said nothing.
“Thanks for the lift back here,” Black added.
He stood motionless, staring blankly at the sergeant, who stared back with barely concealed rage. Finally, without a word to Black, Caine turned and stalked off toward the complex.
Black watched him go as he himself ambled nonchalantly toward the passageway which he knew would take him to Bay Two. As soon as Caine had disappeared from sight, he broke into a run.
27
Corelli wasn’t at his room. A soldier wandered around the corner. Black grabbed him by his uniform and demanded to know where Corelli was. The startled kid stammered that he thought Corelli had just gotten off shift at the CP and gone to chow.
Black made his way quickly, stopping at each corner to peer around. The chow hall was empty except for a lone soldier chewing on cold cuts.
“Was Corelli here?” he asked, crossing briskly to the stack of M.R.E. cases in the corner.
“Uh, roger, sir. Like, just a couple minutes ago.”
The soldier pointed at a paper plate with half-eaten food on it.
“Where?” Black asked, stuffing an M.R.E. into a cargo pocket.
“The armory, I think, sir,” the kid answered. “With Shannon.”
No.
Black pushed out the door at a run. He pounded clumsily through the corridors, his heavy gear jouncing against its straps.
He slammed through the door of the armory, his rifle upside down in his hands like a club. Corelli leaped up from his table in surprise.
“Where’s Shannon?” Black nearly shouted, looking left and right in the shadows of the room.
“Oh, he just left a minute ago, sir,” said the jumpy Corelli, gesturing at his paperwork with the pen he was holding. “I was just recording his draw.”
“What draw?”
“He was minus one grenade, sir,” said Corelli. “He was out on a patrol tonight, I guess.”
The world seemed to spin. Bosch had said he had thrown the grenade. . . .
Focus.
Black took three long strides around the table and grabbed Corelli by the arm.
“Come with me now,” he said, hauling the confused soldier up from his table.
“What? Sir, I—”
“Where’s your weapon?”
“There, sir,” Corelli answered, pointing to his rifle and body armor leaning in the corner.
“Get it all.”
He shoved Corelli toward his gear and turned to the spare parts shelf where Brydon’s rifle bolt still sat
. There were several rifle firing pins. He grabbed one and pocketed it.
“Have you got a pistol slide assembly?”
“One down, sir,” stammered Corelli, pointing at a lower shelf. “Sir, what’s going on?”
“Where’s your map?”
“Here, sir,” answered Corelli, pointing at a pouch on his body armor.
“Have you got water in here?”
Corelli pointed to a case near the door. Black pocketed the pistol part and went to the case, grabbing two bottles and waving Corelli to him.
“What about your sidearm?”
Corelli patted his pistol holster.
“Come on, then,” he told Corelli urgently as he stuffed one bottle in a cargo pocket. “Hurry.”
Corelli, desperately confused but obedient to a fault, complied without further question, hustling over with his rifle in one hand and his body armor in the other.
“Take this and give me yours,” Black said, holding out his rifle and an empty hand to Corelli.
Corelli complied wordlessly, giving over his rifle. Black charged it and cracked the door, peeking out into the empty hallway.
In a little over a minute they were passing the foot of Oswalt’s stairwell and moving down the darkened corridor beyond it. Three booted kicks and the flimsy closet door burst through its lock. He pushed it shut behind them.
Outside it was still dark, though he knew that would not last. He dragged Corelli to the corner in the wall, where a triangle of moonshadow provided some limited concealment. He squatted down with his back to the corner, looking left and right down both stretches of wall for anyone approaching. Corelli squatted down next to him.
“Gear up,” he told Corelli in a near whisper.
He kept watch as the young soldier began shucking on his body armor.
“Sir, what’s going on?” Corelli pleaded.
“You’re leaving Vega,” he said.
Corelli’s eyes widened.
“Don’t stop,” Black admonished him. “Hurry.”
Corelli resumed sealing up his vest.
“You need to get out of here now and hide,” he said, speaking quickly. “You’re in danger here.”
Corelli’s face was bewilderment and fear.
“Sir, what do you mean? Why am I in danger?”
Because I lied to save my skin, he wanted to say. And now Caine thinks it’s all on you.
“Because you gave me rifle parts,” he said instead. “And you gave me Traynor.”
“What, sir?” Corelli stammered helplessly. “But, sir, I only—”
“No time,” Black cut in. “Here, turn around.”
He commenced to pour both water bottles into the water pouch on Corelli’s back. When he was finished, he handed Corelli the M.R.E., which Corelli stuffed in his own cargo pocket. Finally, Black pressed the rifle he was carrying into Corelli’s hands and took his own back.
“Can you handle a map?” he asked.
The shaken Corelli nodded weakly.
“Then listen to me, Corelli,” Black said, rooting in his cargo pocket. “You will die if you stay here on Vega. You are ordered to leave the COP and hide.”
“Hide where, sir?”
Black brought out the Monk’s envelope and handed it to him.
“Go here,” he said. “Don’t stop until you get to these coordinates, and don’t leave until the Monk comes and gets you, or I come and get you.”
Corelli took the envelope with fumbling hands and started opening it.
“Don’t look at it now,” Black admonished him. “It’ll be light soon. Get over the wall. Go that way.”
He pointed cross-slope through the trees. Corelli looked flabbergasted and pale.
Black put his hands on Corelli’s shoulders.
“Michael,” he said, abandoning protocol. “This is too easy. Get over the wall and get out of sight. Use the map and find your point.”
Corelli looked down at the envelope. Find your point. Black could see him processing the words. Just like land navigation training.
His hands were shaking visibly. All at once Black saw him as he was, as he was in his prior life just yesterday, and as he was today.
In a man’s costume.
He rooted in a cargo pocket and pulled the little zip case that Smoke Toma had given him, pressing it into Corelli’s hands.
“Take this too.”
Corelli looked down at the case. Black put his hand under Corelli’s chin and lifted it.
“He’s watching,” he told Corelli. “Do it right.”
Corelli’s eyes came into focus and he nodded, swallowing hard.
“Now go,” he urged, pointing at the ladder, which still stood where Shannon had left it. “We’ll get to you.”
Corelli shoved the envelope and case in his pockets. He climbed the ladder and swung a leg over the top.
“I’m sorry,” Black called after him in a whisper.
Corelli gave him one last frightened look and disappeared over the wall.
—
He repaired his own weapons by the light of his flashlight in the closet. When he was done he holstered and slung everything, then stepped into the hallway, pulling the broken door shut behind him as best he could.
He straightened and walked purposefully around the corner, straight through the heart of COP Vega.
It was getting light outside now. Soldiers were going about morning routines. No one paid him much mind except to note privately how haggard and tore-up the visiting lieutenant looked, and to wonder briefly why he was walking around the outpost in all his gear.
Most figured it had something to do with the periodic gunshots that could be heard outside. Nothing new there.
He entered Bay Two for the second time in the past hour. Brydon was not at his room. As Black suspected, he hadn’t bothered to lock it.
Black stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He sat on the bed and waited. Presumably when Brydon was done cleaning and dressing wounds he would be back.
An hour later he gave up. But he had an idea where to look.
On his way, he detoured and passed through the hall where Pistone’s hootch was. He pulled open the door of the Porta-Potty and peered inside.
What looked to be another hand had taken a marker and filled in words in all the spaces around the entry, leaving in its place two new and unrelated Chuck jokes.
28
The Christmas lights were switched on in the Taj Mahal. It felt like nighttime as he pulled the door shut behind him.
At the far end of the container, under the poster of the villa girl, was a raised wooden riser, giving the space a split-level effect. Brydon sat leaning against the rear wall, facing the doorway, elbows crooked over his knees, eyes on an infinite point someplace ahead of him. His gear and weapons sat leaning against the side wall near him.
He had put a CD on the tinny little player. Something Black recognized as disco. A breathy, sprite-voiced woman sang over bass and electric piano.
Black stepped forward, bringing a chair from the poker table. He set it just short of the edge of the riser so that when he sat, he and Brydon were speaking roughly face-to-face.
“Thank you,” he told Brydon.
Brydon’s eyes didn’t leave the point before him.
“I didn’t throw the grenade,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, but I owe you and Bosch for not saying anything. And Shannon.”
Brydon’s eyes showed surprise at hearing Shannon’s name.
“Yeah,” Black said. “I know.”
He looked at Brydon’s weapons.
“Merrick didn’t know about the firing pin and the slide, did he?” he asked. “That was just Caine.”
Brydon said nothing.
“Caine brought them to you at the O.P.”
Brydon just eyed Black.
“What did he offer you for them?” he asked Brydon. “What did he ask you to do?”
“Wasn’t like that,” Brydon murmured, looking at the riser.
“Okay,” Black replied.
He meant it. He believed Brydon.
“Anyway,” Black said. “I think those are from my weapons.”
Brydon screwed up his brow at Black as the song on the CD cycled over. A mash of rising keyboard tones that made Black think of someone stretching taffy. Another jumping disco tune, with the same airy woman.
“I have to ask you something,” Black said to Brydon.
“Okay.”
“It’s important, but it’s the last question I need to ask.”
“Okay.”
“What did you mean when you told Corelli that Xanadu is what comes before the end of the world?”
Brydon closed his eyes and shook his hanging head.
“You go there, it’ll just take you too, sir.”
A weight squeezed on Black’s chest and filled his throat. He felt his hand reach out involuntarily, then drop. He looked at the miserable soldier without words.
“What is it?” he finally whispered. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”
Brydon spoke softly to the floor.
“None comin’ for me,” he said flatly.
Black shook his head, uncomprehending.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “No one’s getting left behind.”
It tasted like a slogan in his mouth. Brydon let out a heaving sigh. He dug in his pocket and brought out something small and white and rectangular. He cupped it in his hands.
The disco woman sang like a fairy giving a full-body massage.
“I wanna ask a question now, sir.”
“What?”
Brydon stared at the rectangle, cradling it.
“What were you gonna do with your life?” he said. “Before all this?”
It was the first time anyone had asked him that since his smartass friend, early in their training together.
“I was in seminary.”
“What’s that?”
“I was going to be a priest.”
Brydon let out a single hard laugh, without merriment. It was the closest Black had come to seeing him smile.
“Figures,” Brydon said, shaking his head.