The Valley
Page 41
“You passed me a note.”
Pyne hemmed and hawed.
“Fair enough,” he allowed. “But I kinda had to see how it played out.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You asked who the hell we are.”
“Yeah?”
The Monk looked off at the horizon.
“To the extent we have a name, we mostly call ourselves The Activity.”
DEMONS
Recalled with fondness and annoyance in equal measure by generations of Forward Observer and officer trainees, the imposing presence of Signal Mountain dominates the “no-man’s land” of Fort Sill’s firing ranges and impact areas. A lone sentinel at the southeastern end of the Wichita Mountains, so named for General Sheridan’s emplacement of a heliograph signal station at its summit during the Indian Wars (and having been put to similar use by the Indian peoples themselves, via smoke signal, for uncounted ages before that time), Signal Mountain now serves as a primary impact point for the numerous area-fire weapon systems trained upon it at the Fort.
Among its notable features are slopes of gently increasing gradient and a single-story stone blockhouse at the summit, dating to 1871, which housed the signalling activity. Though never fired on directly, it has seen many decades’ use as a convenient aiming reference point by Observer trainees as they hone their craft, sending shells and bombs at the many hulks and target vehicles dotting the mountain’s flanks, e.g.: “From the Blockhouse, Signal Mountain: Left five-zero, down two hundred, fire for effect,” &c. Though they may never enter the impact area and approach it, the Blockhouse is as a second home for these trainees, and once seen is never forgotten; one might say almost venerated, in the way that those vexing and mundane particulars of military training come to be viewed in an entirely different aspect in the light of fond recollection. Memories of the Blockhouse are the badge of the Observer; and for those officers and enlisted men who spent their hours and days sweating in the Oklahoma heat, squinting up at its shadow as it looked down on them from its untouched height, its radio designator rolls from the tongue even many years later like the old familiar name of an old familiar friend, with whom one may have squabbled in youth but who is by now practically family.
From Rogers’ History of the Field Artillery,
The Fort Sill Museum Press, 1972
The professor frowned at the leatherbound journal in his hands. Its cover was embossed with Celtic scrollwork.
“This is evidence,” he said disapprovingly.
His guest ignored him. The professor undid the leather band around the book and turned it warily in his hands, holding it up to catch the light of his floor lamp. As always in the evenings, his cavernous office was sparsely lit. Shadows cowered in its vaulted ceilings.
He was not old, though it would be an unkindness to youth to call him young. While his long face was yet unlined, the silver at the temples and above the ears was making a real encroachment into the jet-black now, and the winner of this contest was no longer really in doubt.
He opened the journal’s cover and thumbed to its final entries.
2 November—
Danny has been acting so shady since the thing. When I asked him about SFC Merrick I thought he was going to jump out of his skin.
A 15-6 investigator is coming next week, probably about whatever all
He turned a page.
of this is, and hopefully everything can get sorted out. I told Merrick about the investigator, to see how he would react. He was pissed like he always is, so I couldn’t really tell anything from that. But he told me not to tell SSG Caine about it, which is totally shady too.
I don’t know if all of this has to do with Caine’s drug thing or what, but I’m pretty sure one of them’s got Danny working for him. I told Caine he needs to knock it off but he doesn’t listen to me. I’m just going to tell the investigator whatever I know. I hate this place, but it’s my responsibility to try to make things right in my platoon.
“You shouldn’t be showing me this or telling me this,” he admonished, scanning the pages with dark, close-set eyes. “If you want to talk to me, you should talk to me about you.”
He closed the journal and looked up at Black, frowning again. Black slumped, arms crossed, in an easy chair and waited out the older man.
The professor sighed.
“If Private Corelli’s account was true—” he began tentatively.
“It’s true,” Black cut in sharply.
“Then,” the professor continued with some annoyance, “this is, once again, evidence you are holding in your possession, which I am certain you are not authorized to possess.”
“Potential evidence.”
“Semantics.”
Black shook his head.
“It’s bullshit written for my benefit.”
The professor cringed visibly at the mouth on his guest.
“It’s worthless,” Black said, “unless Corelli is found.”
“And you think he’s alive because . . . ?”
“Because Sergeant Caine had his I.D. and dog tags on his person when he was found.”
The professor put his fingers to his temples and looked pained.
“Which sounds to me,” he said, hesitating, “rather like . . . like—”
“Only Corelli knows everything,” Black stated flatly.
The professor shook his head and stubbed a finger to the center of the journal’s cover.
“This isn’t yours to keep,” he stated flatly.
“Shannon didn’t trust anyone else with it.”
“Which is relevant how?”
“Shannon saved my life.”
“Will . . .”
Black pointed defiantly at the journal.
“If I gave that to the investigators,” he said, “they would just read those entries and chase down Danny and Sergeant Merrick and give them even more grief than they already have.”
He held the professor’s gaze until the older man looked away.
The professor examined the words again purse-lipped.
“I take it you wish me to safeguard this for you?”
Black shook his head.
“I got it covered.”
He retrieved the journal and stuffed it back in his pack. The professor regarded him unhappily.
“Aren’t you worried about a psychopath knowing that you have his diary?”
Black’s eyes blazed.
“I want him to know I’ve got it.”
The professor looked unimpressed.
“Your bluster is beneath your years.”
Black reddened and looked down at the carpet. The professor said nothing else. Black knew he was already admonishing himself for embarrassing his young friend.
“Pistone’s not a psychopath,” Black said finally.
He sank back in the deep chair, ruminating.
“That’s too easy on him.”
His gaze traced the tendrils of the tree-of-life design as its paisleyed buds danced along the curve of the carpet’s medallion.
“I don’t care,” he murmured, “if anybody finds out I was there when Billy died.”
“Yet you do care if people know why he died.”
Black watched woodland creatures leap beneath willow fronds.
“And you believe that that is your judgment to make.”
Black said nothing. The professor softened, but pressed.
“You don’t think his family deserves to know the truth about their son?”
Black frowned.
“That’s what my sister said.”
“Wise sister.”
A page of ancient parchment sat in a heavy oaken frame on the far wall. On its carefully preserved surface was a passage from the Vulgate, Saint Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible, inscribed in Gothic
blackletter, illuminated in gold leaf and crimson.
Black’s eyes moved down the text.
IN PRINCIPIO ERAT
VERBUM : ET VER
BUM ERAT APUD
DEUM : ET DEUS
ERAT VERBUM :
The professor broke the silence.
“Do you . . .”
He hesitated, clearing his throat and studying his hands.
“Do you still talk to your brother?”
Black turned a scowl toward the older man and glared flaming daggers. The professor put his palms up in surrender and rose from his chair. He crossed to a side table, where he poured them each a drink.
“You know it’s my job to ask,” he murmured, his back to Black.
He brought the glasses to a large window and waited. Black rose and watched his own reflection approach as he moved from the pool of lamplight, the pinpoints of a far city emerging through his apparition.
The professor handed Black his drink.
“Is it all gone now?”
Black nodded, taking the glass and turning to the window. They drank silently, looking across at the distant city.
The professor glanced sidelong at his young friend.
“My son,” he said. “Am I really the only one you came here to see?”
Black only scowled. The professor smiled.
“For goodness’ sake, you fool,” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s what my sister says.”
“Wise sister.”
Black left through the ground-floor exit beneath sneering stone gargoyles and crossed the shadowed campus grounds, the great building with its parapets and buttresses receding behind him. Moonlight shafted onto him as his feet found the path through the trees, to the wooded neighborhood where he sat for a long time behind the wheel of another rental car, keys in the ignition, watching the darkened house as it slept before him.
—
Four days later he sat in the same car on a tree-lined by-road in the American Midwest. The houses were sparse along here. Large unfenced properties opening to gentle swells of grassland and wood. It was gorgeous, at least what he could make out at night.
He slept, and when he woke he confirmed that it was indeed beautiful land.
As he had done many times over the past weeks, he replayed in his head the conversation he’d had with Pyne as they roamed the outskirts of the transit camp in the Kuwaiti desert.
You’re saying that I have “people skills.”
He’d said it in the most drab and incredulous tone he could muster.
You have a specific ability to learn things from people. That’s valuable.
I’m not a cog.
No. You are anything but a cog.
Black had stopped and looked his friend in the eye.
What’s that supposed to mean?
He reached into his pocket and drew out his tiny leatherbound notebook. He unlaced it and stared at the page, counting the scratches, then put it away.
“See you,” he murmured.
Looking through the car’s windows at the well-groomed home behind the trees, he realized that he needed to go clean himself up before he went and knocked. He could drive into town and find a motel or someplace where he could shower. Then he would come back.
And he would come back, he told himself. He was not going to lose his nerve.
He took a last look at the mailbox before he pulled away. The name on it was BRYDON.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I hope military readers will excuse my simplifications of rank, gear, terminology, uniforms, and tactics; it’s a story for civilians too, guys. Readers familiar with Nuristan and its peoples, languages, and geography will similarly recognize the points where this Nuristan departs from the actual, which I have never visited. The work of Richard Strand and Eric Newby, among others, was especially useful on this score, though any errors are of course my own. There are many valleys in Nuristan, but there is no Valley, and the places depicted there aren’t real. Most importantly, while this story took inspiration from many places and events, and many honorable people, nothing in it is meant to stand in for their actual stories, which only they can tell truthfully.
I am indebted to Alex London, whose generosity got me on the road. My agent, Robert Guinsler, is a gentleman and a force; he stuck with me, improved my work, and made it happen so smoothly. Bryan Fyffe is an extraordinary illustrator who managed to do a war book cover like no other. Geddy, Alex, and Neil: We’ve never met but if you see this, please accept a fan’s humble offering. Finally, I am deeply fortunate to have worked with my editor, Ben Sevier, whose talents are formidable, and his team at Penguin, especially Stephanie Kelly and Nancy Resnick. Ben saw just what needed to be done and showed the way.
I am grateful to any reader who has made it this far. Mostly, to the Bravo guys: I wouldn’t know anything about real soldiers if you hadn’t shown me.
John Renehan served in the Army’s Third Infantry Division as a field artillery officer in Iraq. He previously worked as an attorney in New York City. He lives with his family in Virginia. This is his first novel.
Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!