by John Renehan
That stopped Merrick. He shot a look to Black.
“When?”
Oh, another question. Surely Merrick didn’t expect him to talk again.
“Sniper,” Black wheezed finally.
Merrick looked at him blankly.
“Two days ago,” Shannon said. “You were still at the O.P. The sniper that was out there all day, that shot Garza on the roof.”
Merrick snatched the paper off the ground and read it again, processing.
“Shit,” he said finally.
Thunder again in the mountains. Merrick peered up through the trees at the ridges surrounding them.
“We can’t stay here any longer,” he told Shannon. “You got the flex litter?”
They began unfolding a long piece of black fabric with handles. A person could lie on it like a hammock and be carried by two others.
“Corelli,” Black said weakly.
“What?”
“Corelli,” he croaked again. “Blockhouse.”
“What blockhouse?”
His memories were fuzzy and running together.
“Signal,” he heard himself say hoarsely. “Mountain.”
Shannon jerked around to look at Black. Merrick shook his head impatiently.
“What are you talking about, Lieutenant?”
Black’s hazy thoughts focused. He tried to swallow.
“Telegraph.” Deep breath. “Station.”
“What the hell is he doing up there?”
“Prisoner,” he gasped, followed by a fit of painful coughing.
“What!?”
He needed to stop trying to talk. He needed to rest.
“Girl.”
“What girl?”
Merrick was coming into and out of focus.
“Shot me . . .” Black mumbled.
Merrick looked at him without comprehension, trying to decide if Black was simply out of his head. Black gestured weakly at Shannon.
“Meadows.”
Shannon just scowled at him, then turned to Merrick.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
C’mon, Shannon.
“Caine . . .” Black wheezed.
He realized he was getting ready to pass out again.
“Kill Corelli.”
“What?!”
Shannon, who’d been looking at the ground and muttering to himself, swore and looked up at Merrick.
“Yeah, he’s probably right,” he said tersely.
Black saw a fuzzy Merrick turn to look at Shannon questioningly.
“I think Caine knows where Corelli’s at,” Shannon said. “Shit.”
“Get him . . .” Black murmured.
Thunder crashed through the ridges. Merrick had no time to press Shannon.
“We’ve gotta move,” he declared.
He pointed at Black.
“Take him,” he ordered Shannon. “Can you make it back?”
Shannon turned his disdainful gaze down on the crumpled Black.
“Yeah, I can make it back,” he grunted.
Thunder, closer. It wasn’t thunder.
“What’s happening?” Black wheezed.
“It’s all going to shit, that’s what’s happening,” said Merrick, reaching for his rifle and assault pack.
“They’re coming,” Black said in barely a whisper.
“No, they’re not,” Merrick replied, shucking his pack over his shoulders. “They’re here.”
Shannon approached Black.
“Get him back to the COP,” Merrick directed.
“End of the world,” Black murmured.
“Go,” Merrick said, looking down at Black’s limp form.
“Roger.”
He turned to go, then turned back.
“Shannon.”
The big soldier, looming over Black’s wilted form, turned.
“Sergeant Caine does not leave the COP for any purpose.”
Shannon nodded his surly assent and turned back to Black. Merrick disappeared into the woods.
Another booming crash shook the ground around them. Closer.
“This,” grunted Shannon as he squatted next to Black, “is gonna hurt, sir.”
It did.
Shannon moved powerfully uphill. Black, draped around the corporal’s massive shoulders like a sack, his own shoulder and side screaming profanities at him, managed three words before he passed out.
“You didn’t tell.”
—
The Talib sipped his tea placidly and watched the chill wind move the trees.
It had been an odd morning. But she was an odd little girl indeed.
And from an odd people. He’d heard of their females shearing their hair in mourning. These valley people and their ways. But in this case the confluence of tradition and ruse was perfect.
Admirable, even.
He saw it clearly now, of course. The strange girl who’d come to him all alone, many weeks ago, desperate to fight the infidel. Apparently an American had killed her father and brother at their home. She was wild for revenge.
This actually had been quite useful information to have. Not because the death of a sinful poppy grower and his son among these godforsaken lands was of intrinsic interest in itself. But because the chief of Darreh Sin, that buffoon, had told him nothing of this.
He claims to want, pretends to accept, my help. And yet he tells me nothing when an American soldier, an officer even, executes one of his growers like a dog.
The fact of the not telling told the Talib everything he needed to know about the chief and his loyalties. And knowing the deep grief, the rage of the chief’s people, these backward, proud, emotional people—this had also been useful to him, regardless of what their chief wished. Very useful.
Then I must think, God, that you guided the girl to me for this purpose. She was, for a moment, your vessel.
Imagine that. God’s mysteries abound.
She had been spirited indeed. He remembered the fire in her eyes. Oh, she had been very unhappy when he’d sent her back to her mother. He had generously overlooked her insolence as a product of her understandable grief.
Now he saw it, though. The resemblance. The simplicity of the disguise. The even stranger boy who had come to him that night not long after, calling himself Tajumal. Always wearing the headband, always pestering him in the dark, always coming in his rain hood whatever the weather. So earnest and humorless. As eager as the girl had been to fight.
The Talib chuckled, now that he knew.
He was younger than they usually came, but he’d had talents. Well, she’d had talents. Or luck, and a talent for deception.
Knocking out the radio equipment had been impressive and bold. He’d give him—her—that. But the piece of clothing with the officer’s rank, and the prisoner, if this was true about the prisoner . . .
Here the girl had not yet learned how to stretch the truth convincingly.
Shot the officer and bound the soldier! An eleven-year-old girl!
The only thing interesting about this preposterous falsehood was to imagine what real story might lie behind the scene she had come upon. What had caused Americans to bind and shoot one another, up in the old English tower?
These things we will never know about one another. Our peoples’ secrets.
I bring you another prize, she had said somberly, with such portent, after she revealed her true self. Then begged once again to fight the infidel. I am the guardian of this valley, she declared, or something equally silly and bombastic.
He shook his head and sipped his tea. Youth.
The prisoner—well, prisoners are always useful, as far as they go. If this part of her story turned out to be true. He would know soon enough.
One of
many revelations this cold day will bring.
He had felt the tiniest bit sorry for her as he sent her back to her mother yet again. A bold girl. But she really ought to be whipped for lying like this.
38
Bootfalls echoing on tile. He lay on his back in darkness, on a jouncing, traveling litter.
He cracked his eyelids and saw stone above him. Stone to his left. Light and air to his right. Too bright.
Cold.
The dark of a stone column passed through his vision. The courtyard.
Before losing consciousness again, he noted with mild and detached interest the great tumult and shouting all about him, the whumping force of concussion waves pressing down upon his chest, and the tremendous volume of rocket and automatic weapons fire that rained down on Vega from every direction above.
—
When he came awake next it was with a start.
His right hand, moving like a rubber fish, fumbled uselessly about his pistol holster. There was no pistol there anyway.
He opened his eyes and lurched upward onto his elbows, his head punishing him mercilessly for it. He twisted left and right, panicked. Bright lights spun and stabbed at him. Somewhere nearby was a powerful, muffled rumbling.
“Whoa, there, L.T.,” said a voice. “Easy.”
He flinched away from a hand on his shoulder, pressing him down.
“Easy, sir. Easy.”
Two hands now, firmer, pressing harder.
“Lay back, sir. You’re okay.”
A shape close in his squinted vision. Other shapes farther throughout the room. Some standing, some horizontal. The whole room seemed to vibrate every few seconds.
Explosions. Outside. He was indoors.
“Where’s Sergeant Caine?” he demanded, trying to crane his head to look behind him.
“You’re at the aid station, sir,” came the reply, in the cool tones of an Army medic. “You’re good.”
A single, searing explosion of light, inches from his face, washed out his vision. He wrenched away from it, grunting, squeezing his eyes as tight as they would go.
“Whoops,” said the voice. “Sorry, sir. Penlight. Here, try this.”
He opened his eyes reluctantly and followed the young medic’s index finger left, right, up and down. The effort of doing so made the cot shift beneath him. He grasped its sides queasily.
The kid pulled his eyelids wide and examined his pupils, nodding to himself.
“Dizzy, sir?”
He lay on a cot in a corner of the stone-walled room. Several casualties occupied other cots and litters. The nearest was awake, staring at Black silently as he held a soaked bandage to his upper arm.
Two medics stood crowded close around another, lying motionless and making weak wheezing sounds. A third medic lay on an exam table nearby, a red tube running from his arm to a transfusion bag slowly filling with blood.
Beyond that, a door, through which he thought he could see a portion of the courtyard. It was very, very noisy outside.
“Yeah, I’m dizzy,” Black answered impatiently. “Where’s Sergeant Caine?”
The young medic, coming into focus now, shook his head.
“Don’t know, sir. How dizzy would you say you’re feeling right n—”
“He hasn’t been through here to check on your casualties?”
“No, sir, haven’t seen him,” the kid answered in clipped tones. “But it’s pretty crazy outside right now, so everyone’s a little bit busy. Now, how—”
“What about Sergeant Merrick? Where’s he?”
“Sir,” the kid answered impatiently, “I don’t know where anybody is at except who’s in here right now in front of me. Now stop trying to sit up and lay back so I can check you out.”
He pressed Black firmly back to the cot and completed his exam in about thirty seconds, satisfying himself that Black was lucid and cogent, then rolling him gingerly to peek under the bandage on the back side of his shoulder. Black felt like he was going to keep rolling right off the cot.
The medic rolled him back again.
“What day is it?” Black asked, closing his eyes while the dizziness cleared.
“Sunday.”
“What time?”
The medic checked his watch.
“About fifteen thirty.”
He stood and turned to go.
It occurred to Black that he had no idea what time he’d arrived at the aid station. Nor for that matter what time it had been when Merrick and Shannon had found him.
“Hey, how long have I . . .”
But the medic was gone, back to his other casualties.
Black stared up at the stone ceiling, his mind racing. His head throbbed from his earlier effort at lifting himself, though his shoulder, and much of the rest of him, was now happily numb.
He turned his head gingerly and looked around at the other casualties.
No one had seen Merrick. No one had seen Caine.
They don’t know.
An enormous crash outdoors sent another wave of vibrations through the aid station. Guys cursed.
“That one was fucking close,” one of the medics spat, annoyed.
Get with it.
Grasping the cot rails with both hands, Black pushed himself fully upright. Angry sparkles filled his vision and his head felt as though all the liters of blood in his body were filling it. He put his boots on the hard floor and stood, knowing it was a mistake. The room careened wildly.
Willing the floor to right itself, his legs stiff as planks, he began to walk toward the door. He heard his soles scraping the tile but couldn’t feel his feet. He figured he must have looked like the Frankenstein monster.
His right arm was trailing behind him. Someone was tugging on his wrist, squeezing it hard with their fingernails. He yanked it away roughly and scuffed onward.
The metallic crash behind him made him turn. He looked dumbly down at the intravenous line running from where it was taped to his wrist in a taut diagonal back to where it was now dragging the bag stand across the floor.
He had only an instant to register blurry annoyance before realizing, as the room went sideways entirely and he saw the wall rising up to meet him, that turning around had been a mistake.
It smacked him, hard and cold. His cheek scraped along its surface.
“What the fuck, L.T.?”
The same medic, easing him sideways toward another wall. No, the floor. Floor was good.
“What’re you doing, sir?”
“Take me to the C.P.”
Why did his own voice sound so slurry?
“What?”
“I need to go the C.P.”
“C’mon, sir, let me help you up.”
The kid squatted next to him, trying to figure out how best to haul him up without injuring him.
“I need to go now.”
“C’mon, sir, we got other hurt guys here. Come get back in the cot.”
“I need to talk on the radio.”
The kid paused a half second.
“Right, sir,” he said, adopting the placating tones medics used on casualties who weren’t in their right minds. “The radio. Come back to the cot first.”
Black, slumped along the bottom of the wall, grabbed him roughly by the forearm.
“I need to talk on the radio now.”
The kid startled, wrenching his arm free.
“No, sir, you don’t,” he answered, urgency and annoyance in his voice. “You need to get back in your cot and stop fucking up my triage.”
His voice went cool again.
“Now, c’mon.”
He attempted to sit Black fully upright. Black pushed back against his efforts.
“It’s important,” he pressed.
The kid was agitated now, look
ing over his shoulder at the rest of the room.
“Shit,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Fine, sir, if you get back in your cot you can use my radio, okay?”
He reached into a little holster on the back of his equipment belt and produced his walkie-talkie, holding it up before Black’s face.
“Now let’s go.”
Black shook his head, regretting it immediately.
“Not that one,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “The radio. The battalion net in the C.P.”
The kid shook his head.
“Let the dudes in the C.P. take care of that shit, sir.”
“There’s no one there.”
The kid’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Negative, sir, there’s dudes in the C.P. right n—”
“They don’t know what I know.”
“What?”
“I need to tell them.”
“Tell them what, sir?”
“Take me there.”
“What?”
“I can’t walk.”
The medic looked at him like he was crazy.
“No way, sir! It’s off the chain out there.”
He sent a thumb over his shoulder toward the direction of the noise.
“And you’re concussed as fuck and you lost a shit-ton of blood,” he finished. “I can’t take you outside.”
Taking too long.
Black grabbed the young soldier by both arms this time, tugging the kid’s body down toward his own until they were face-to-face.
“Do you wanna die here today?” he nearly shouted.
The medic looked at him blankly.
“Am I altered?” he demanded. “I’m talking to you, right? I can talk on a damned radio!”
He saw that he finally had the kid’s attention.
“I need to talk to Battalion!”
Had finally tapped the black reservoir of fear capped off below the surface.
“I’ll lie down on the cot in the C.P., but I need you to take me there, now!”
The wide-eyed medic searched his face. Something in him clicked over, or broke.
“Fuck,” he said.
Black released his arms and slumped back to the floor, exhausted.
The medic looked back over his shoulder at the room full of medics and soldiers. The wheezing casualty was now bellowing incoherently at someone or something imaginary, and no one was paying them any attention.