by Tal Bauer
He was a lit fuse at all times, a hair trigger ready to snap, ready to fight. Ready to launch off at anyone who looked askance at him. In the field, he was a brawler. He’d soaked up Muay Thai and Krav Maga, Jujitsu and even straight boxing, in training. Most nights, he hung around the CIA gym, waiting for a sparring partner.
It was the only way he felt anything at all.
He slumped on his couch, legs akimbo, and stared out his giant windows. DC was lit up, the National Mall, the monuments. The dark spill of the Potomac cut through a thousand glowing lights.
He liked looking at the Capitol. Staring down at the bureaucrats who made the decisions that shaped his life. That made him a hero and then an outcast and then a hero again.
Though, of course, all heroes fall. And every gay story ends tragically. Wasn’t that how the world was supposed to work? It wasn’t enough to be brown and gay and outside the lines. He had to taste perfection and then have it all ripped away.
Kris imagined he was in a tower overlooking the city. Exiled, forced to watch as the world carried on. As his world was shaped and reshaped by assholes, morons, and idiots.
His phone rang.
It was probably Dan, checking in on him after his mission. He wasn’t up to seeing anyone, but maybe tomorrow they could grab a drink. Dan was his one friend, his only friend in the whole world.
He probably needed to change that.
His blood boiled and his stomach curdled whenever he was around his straight teammates. They still barely tolerated him, and the reverse was also true. He preferred to work alone. He preferred to never see straight people. It was irrational, completely. And yet he resented their happiness. Their ease. How they met and loved and married. How no one told them their love wasn’t valid, that their marriage didn’t exist because they crossed a line printed on a map. How no one took away their love, their memories, if everything went catastrophic. He just couldn’t stand it.
There was a gay community center in DC. He should check it out. He hadn’t seen a play in two years, hadn’t been to an art gallery since—
Well, since Toronto, and David.
His phone vibrated, in time with the rings.
Blinking, he stared at it.
It wasn’t Dan.
It was George.
George hadn’t said a word to him, not once, since everything had come apart. He’d turned his back on Kris when Kris was locked in the Learjet while the coffins were unloaded, and he’d left before Kris deplaned. He’d never called. Never sent a card. Never left a shitty VM or even sent a text saying he was sorry for Kris’s loss.
Kris had called him. One time, drunk, raging, fuming at the world, he’d called George at four in the morning and hollered at his voicemail, at the CIA, at George, at everything that was wrong in the world, over a year and a half ago.
Nothing.
What the hell was this?
He answered just before it went to voicemail. “George?”
Silence. Then, “Kris…” He heard George sigh. “I know it’s been a while.”
“Three years, six months, and twenty-eight days. Since David died.”
More silence.
“You didn’t call, George. We always called each other. Wasn’t that what we did? When things were bad? We called each other.”
“Kris—”
“You never called.”
He heard George swallow, like he was trying to swallow back vomit. “Look, I’m calling about something else.”
“If you’re looking for a favor from me, I am hanging up the phone. No, I’m ripping the phone in half.”
“No. I need to tell you something. But I can’t go into details. Just… Look, something is happening. Tonight. We’re finishing our mission. And, getting revenge. For David.”
Time slowed. Kris tried to think. His eyes closed. He inhaled, forced himself to ask, “What do you mean?”
“What we started, back in Afghanistan. It’s ending. Tonight.”
Osama Bin Laden.
Kris’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He shook his head, tried to jumpstart his brain.
“Stay by the news,” George said quickly, his voice hushed. “I’m at the White House. And it’s happening. Right now.” He paused. “I told the guys to put in an extra bullet. For him.”
“George—” His voice cracked. Somewhere, his body found tears he hadn’t shed yet, and they cascaded down his cheeks, tumbled from his eyelashes. “George, wait.”
“I have to go.” Muffled sounds. The line cut out.
He moved on autopilot, dropping his phone and his ice bag and drifting to his closet. His studio wasn’t large. His and David’s old kitchen was larger than his whole unit. But he had a small walk-in closet, stuffed with his designer threads, and on the top shelves, his rifles and handguns.
In the back, the very back, stuffed out of sight, were two old duffels from Afghanistan.
He pulled out David’s clothes, three years, six months and twenty-eight days old. They still smelled like him, like Afghanistan. Like woodsmoke and sweat, like David and spice. Like hazy sunshine and Virginia woods, and happiness that had nearly burst him apart. How was it possible to be that happy, he’d thought. How was it possible to love someone this much?
He buried his face in David’s shirt, trying to fling himself back in time, trying to will the world to stop turning, to reverse course, to return to that morning. He’d do everything different, everything.
Hours later, he huddled with David’s old clothes and his duffel in front of his couch, watching the television. Nothing had happened. CNN was still reporting the daily news as talking heads bantered back and forth over domestic policy. David’s clothes shrouded him, and he’d buried his nose in the fabric of David’s old workout shirt. He held his phone like it was a lifeline, his only connection to a lifeboat and he was about to drown.
Breaking News flashed across the screen. News anchors fumbled, flabbergasted. The president was about to address the nation. They had moments, and they blubbered, cut to the White House feed.
The president strode down the entrance hall on a red carpet. He stopped at a podium and stared into the camera. “Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world, the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
The rest of the president’s speech spun away, each word, each syllable warbling and stretching until it snapped.
Bin Laden, dead.
David, you should be here. You should see this. This is what you wanted.
He kept inhaling, dragging David’s scent in through his nose, over and over.
It felt like an ending. This was where they’d started. This was how they’d met. Hunting Bin Laden, chasing him across Afghanistan.
Now, Bin Laden was dead.
And so was David.
Everything died in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. In the shadowlands of the mountains, at the ends of the earth. Afghanistan, Pakistan, the tribal regions. They were just lines on a map. The earth in those countries was the same as the earth everywhere else. There wasn’t any reason to believe they were haunted, that those spaces on the planet were different, somehow, than all the rest.
Except, they were. Afghanistan was the graveyard of empires, the mausoleum to millennia of men who had the hubris to think they were capable of defeating the land. The soil was made of bones, and only death bloomed. The mountains were the home of ghosts, ghosts that would always remain. The haze over Afghanistan wasn’t just dust. It was the remnants of a million lives lost within those dark lines on a map.
Part of David was there, and always would be.
And now, so was Bin Laden.
His phone rang, again. He answered, never taking his eyes off the screen. The president was talking about how he’d directed the CIA to make finding Bin Laden their top priority. That had been him. He’d been given th
at mission. He’d been in charge of the hunt, in a remote base on the edge of the world.
“Hello?” His voice was hollow. Even to himself, he didn’t sound human. He sounded like something that had died and come back from the grave, but was missing something integral.
It was George. “Are you watching?”
The president spoke, echoing eerily over the line. He could hear the president speaking somewhere near George and over his television, an echo of a delay. “As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never will be—at war with Islam. I've made clear, just as the president did shortly after September eleventh, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al-Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”
“That’s what David thought. What he believed. What the president just said.”
“The guys, they did it. They got him.”
“Did they give him an extra for David?”
“They gave him ten extra.”
“Show me,” he growled. “I have to see.”
George hesitated. “Hold on.”
A moment later his cell vibrated. An incoming picture message.
Bin Laden, dead. Shot through the head. More rounds in his chest. Dead, undeniably, unequivocally, dead.
George spoke again, his voice faint through the phone’s speaker. “For David. And for everyone.”
Fury roared, racing through him. “Don’t you dare speak his name!” he hissed. “Don’t you fucking dare! Not after ignoring him! Ignoring his memory!”
“Kris—”
“You’re a fucking coward, George! You used me when you needed me for your career! Used us! And then you threw us away! You used us and you used us and then you abandoned us! You’re a fucking coward!” He was bellowing now, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“You’re right,” George said. His voice wavered. “You’re fucking right, Kris. I just couldn’t—”
“You are a fucking monster!”
“I couldn’t face you! I couldn’t look you in the eyes! Goddamnit, Kris, I sent you there! I was the one who convinced the director that you were the only one who could get Bin Laden. That you were the one we needed at Camp Carson. I fucking sent you, and him, there!”
He felt like a plane plunging to earth. Like a passenger on September 11 facing the end. The air rushed out of him. He clung to the carpet.
“You never liked me. You never—”
“I respected the hell out of you. I knew you were the sharpest mind we had in CT.”
“You threw me out of CT.”
On TV, the president was thanking the nation, reminding them of their history. The pursuit of prosperity and equality for all. The words rang hollow in Kris’s empty, dead heart, constricted around the memories of David being ripped from him, in the end. There’d been no equality for him and David, never.
George’s voice wavered again. “I’m sorry, Kris. I’m sorry for everything. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. It was my fault—” His voice choked, died. He sniffed and blew out a rush of air that scratched over the line.
“The part where you didn’t call? Where you didn’t do anything, not one single thing, to help me? That’s your fault. You know, once, I thought we were almost friends.”
George took it, his cutting hatred. He stayed silent.
“I didn’t deserve to get all the blame for what happened. I didn’t deserve to be thrown out in the cold. I didn’t deserve to lose my husband, the love of my life. I didn’t deserve how the CIA treated us, after. You ripped everything, absolutely everything, away from me. You never let me say goodbye to my husband. To my husband, George. You knew, you knew how much we loved each other, and you let them take David away from me in Afghanistan. Did you want to make it hurt? Did you want me to suffer?”
Another snuffle, over the line. It sounded like George was crying. There were voices in the background. The TV had cut away from the president, back to gobsmacked talking heads on CNN, commentators who didn’t know what to say, how to frame the announcement. Kris heard someone call to George.
“You have to go. You’re the big man at the White House now. Deputy director of the CIA. Such an important job. Do you ever think about the backs you stepped on to get there? How many times we bailed your ass out of a jam? Do you ever think about my dead husband?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Good.” He was vicious. He wanted George to hurt, even a quarter of what he felt, every day. “Good. Think about him every fucking day.”
“I’m sorry, Kris. I just hope this helps, somehow. Closure, maybe…” George sighed. “I spent an hour in my office after it was done. Just… empty. I don’t know what to feel about this.”
“You should feel ashamed.”
“I do,” George whispered. “About you.”
Someone called to George again. It sounded vaguely like the president.
“Go. Go save the fucking world, or whatever it is you do in CT now. Don’t call me again, George. I have no use for your sorrys. Your wasted guilt.”
“Kris—”
He hung up. He didn’t want to hear another apology. He couldn’t take it. Not a single one. He wasn’t going to absolve George, save him from his bad decisions. Not this time.
In his unit, he had a single picture of David, his official Army photo from his last year in Special Forces. The David he’d met, the David he’d fallen in love with. David before a thousand souls weighed heavy on them both, and when they spent the best years of their love working for others, for governments and bureaucrats who didn’t care, in the end, at all about them.
What if they had just run off into the sunset? What if they had been selfish? Why had the burden of security, of saving the world, landed on their shoulders?
He held the frame, traced David’s stern expression. In the back of his closet, David’s Army uniform still hung in a garment bag. David had told him once he wanted to be buried in it.
But no one had asked Kris what David’s last wishes were.
Kris pressed a kiss to the cold glass. He pitched sideways, lying in David’s dirty clothes, David’s picture in his arms, and watched the commentators on TV recount the past decade, the War on Terror. He watched his life play over the screen, days and months and years of war and terrible, terrible decisions.
My love. Wherever you are, I hope you have found the peace that this world never was able to give you. I will always love you.
Pakistan Northwestern Frontier
Bajaur Province
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
“It is all right,” Dawood cooed. “No need for tears. This is only a little cut.” He wiped tears off the dirty face of Behroze, a young boy from the mountains. Behroze had a jagged slice from his elbow to his wrist, almost down to the bone. Somehow, he’d skirted the arteries. He and his brother had been playing, goofing off when they were supposed to be helping their father in the fields.
Behroze’s father held him in his lap. “You can help him? You can?”
“Yes, ’Bu Behroze.” Dawood cupped Behroze’s father’s cheek. “He will be just fine.”
“Allahu Akbar. Alhamdullilah, you are a gift from God.” The father kissed his boy’s hair and held him tight, offering prayers to Allah as Dawood washed his hands in a bucket of rainwater.
The mountain villagers, those who lived with Abu Adnan, stretched across the highest of the peaks in Bajaur Province, had banded together and built a qala, a central gathering fort, on a plateau on the slopes of the middle mountain. Every week, they met at the qala, joining as extended families within the safety of the mud walls. They traded food, stories, and companionship. Each week, they roasted a deer or an antelope, sometimes a hyena, and rarely, a tahr, after Friday prayers.
David had been introduced as Dawood, Abu Adnan’s adopted son. He was welcomed with o
pen arms, a brother of the faith.
As the sun set, they lit fires in the qala and gathered around the warmth. Children, boys and young girls, played in the shadows, running and hiding and drawing in the dust. The wives and mothers retreated to the women’s quarters, relaxing in the company of friends. The men stayed by the fire, watching the stars burn above.
They were so far removed from the world, so distant from any hint of civilization. The stars seemed close enough to touch, jagged diamonds hanging in the sky. They seemed to grow there, like seeds planted in the garden of time. The Milky Way stretched from one horizon to the other, bright enough to turn night into day. When the moon was full, it was as if the sun was still shining.
Dawood became the villagers’ medic. He helped a woman with pneumonia, having her sit over a pot of boiling water and inhaling the steam until she was able to expel the infection. He treated cuts and broken bones, cared for newborn babies, after the women helped the mother through childbirth.
There was no war in the mountains, and he never saw a gunshot wound, or the aftereffects of a bomb blast. He saw the best of life, in the face of a newborn baby, and eased the pain of life’s end, as the elderly laid down their burdens for their final rest. Children loved to run to him when he was in the qala, look at the mountain herbs and plants he’d collected. He had a small garden, and he grew Kava Kava and ginseng, carrots and barley. He collected bamboo and birch, aleppo oak and arjuna bark.
He traded for needles and thread, and was able to close wounds with stitches, perform small surgeries. He taught the children how to wash their hands, though they spent more time splashing in the plastic basin than actually washing.
More and more, he was chosen as the Friday prayer leader. Slowly, he became not just the medic, but the imam for the mountain.
His life was simple. Austere. He rose with the sun and prayed beside Abu Adnan. Every day he set out for the qala, and families in need came down to him and his small medical office, made of mudbrick walls with no door. He stopped to make his daily prayers under the sun, and then journeyed back to Abu Adnan. The families paid him in food, in eggs and flatbread and fruits, and he had something to bring home to the man who had become his father, ’Bu Adnan.