by Alex Ryan
“What’s that?”
“An ice cold Budweiser.”
“You want alcohol?” the woman asked. “Kill Saleem. It will make it easier for all of us to live a little safer, and enjoy a little more fun.”
The motel was within walking distance of Redondo Beach. There was that pier that the seafood stand on it. You could get these big, huge king crab legs and a tub of melted butter to dip them in. And beer. Rex sat at the small table, watching the television in the background, drinking the rest of the six pack of bottled beer. He placed one bottle on the table pointing due north to the state of Washington. Fort Lewis. He placed another bottle pointing to the DC area. Kirsten lived in a little townhouse some place in Alexandria. He knew that much. Then he placed another bottle pointing to Korea. Why? Just to do it. Lost cause.
Five spins, let’s see where the bottle points. He knew where he wanted it to point. And he knew where he didn’t want it to point. He had to drink that one last beer, however, to have a bottle to spin; tough problem to have.
What would it be like to have a little town house? The ancient two story house he grew up in wasn’t that big and the whole family lived in it. The townhouse in Alexandria, from her description, sounded a lot like the layout of his folks’ house, except it was new and it adjoined other townhouses, and even had a wooden fenced back yard, with a dirt alleyway that separated it from the other set of townhomes. That was popular on the east coast. That really wouldn’t happen for him. He was relegated to motels. Renting a room at a house, sharing an apartment, even if the transaction was cash, was out of the question. But, at least he was free. Quit thinking about that. The bottle probably isn’t going to land there anyway.
What would it be like to live in Korea? The place gets cold. Then he’d probably have to learn a new language. Maybe not. Lots of people there speak English, but probably only in the major cities and near the GI bases. Besides, that would be awkward. So-Young sleeping on his right side, and Gyeong sleeping on his left. No, that’s a bad scene no matter how you break it down. The bottle probably isn’t going to land there anyway.
Simon was right. It almost didn’t matter if he cleared his name or not, he was pretty much committed to living out the remainder of his life as Rex Muse. Let’s say he was successful. Could he return to battalion? Not at this point. More importantly, did he even want to return to battalion? Hell no. The beret looks good, plus you get to play with cool toys, but frankly it’s a life of bullshit. And part of that bullshit is what got him in this mess to start with. That only leaves one option. Get some kind of civilian desk job or work at a factory or a warehouse or something like that. Maybe become a cop. Fuck that.
The truth of the matter is that as the more he got in to it, the more he realized that this life was his identity. Then, why on earth would he want to follow the lead of the bottle, should it end up pointing due north to Fort Lewis... if it ended up there?
The answer was simple; to fix an injustice, even if it wasn’t his own. Captain Tyrell Lewis was a good man. And Rex had a hunch about who was responsible. No, a hunch means there is a lot of uncertainty. There is a little bit of uncertainty, but not a lot. Mueller and Starr. They were a couple of rotten apples. And they were tight as a hamster’s ass with First Sergeant Wilson. Rex took that last swig of beer, placed the bottle sideways on the table facing north, took a piss and went to bed.
The banner was a great idea. A hooded figure pointing a sniper rifle from a rooftop stands out like an erection in the shower room. He could hide behind it the small opening between the two poles, and he had a clear shot. The problem was, would Saleem take the bait? He was pretty careful. He’d never actually seen him in person, just some grainy images, and unfortunately all these bearded terrorist leaders tend to look the same. He’d just have to figure out on his own who is who. It’s not like everyone in the party isn’t rotten, but he’s got maybe two shots at the most before they scatter for cover and one of them had better reach Saleem.
There was a little bit of wind, but it was consistent. He’d feel more comfortable with his M21 rather than this locally procured Dragunov, but it’s still capable of achieving one shot kills at this range. He spent some time dialing it in out in the desert. It will do. It will have to.
Damn, there were a lot of cars. SUVs. It was Saleem’s damn security detail. There was nothing to do now but wait and see. A part of him wished that he had formulated a contingency plan. A claymore mounted on the wall would have been a nice touch. A cruise missile to vaporize that hotel would be nice, but the political climate can’t quite justify the action. That might well change at some point, but it isn’t an option now.
He put away his spotter scope and positioned the Dragunov as the figures walked out on the deck. They liked their smokes. There was that one man, the center of attention, wearing the red head dress, talking with people, hugging them, kissing them on the cheek surrounded by turban clad men armed to the hilt underneath their robes.
And that wasn’t him. No. That was a patsy. He saw the side conversation. The side conversation with Al-Hasan, and the man Al-Hasan was speaking with. They were speaking with a little man. A small man. People had reported that Saleem was short. He was nondescript, he appeared to be the least important person in the whole crowd. Yet, he was having a heated conversation with Al-Hasan. Al-Hasan was sweating profusely, even though the morning was cool and pleasant.
That was Saleem.
The one was obvious. The second was not. If you had to pick two, which two? It would be Saleem and somebody. The flamboyant man was there to draw attention, and potentially fire. He was probably unimportant. Al-Hasan probably wouldn’t see the light of the next day, regardless of what happened. The man he was talking to yesterday was the most logical choice, and he was right there.
Four shots rang out almost simultaneously, as Saleem’s head exploded out the backside, spattering blood, brain and bone fragments on the wall behind him. The second shot entered his torso. The third and the forth went in to the other man, the man that was talking to Al-Hasan, hitting him in the chest cavity. He fired the remainder of the magazine into Saleem’s security party.
He threw down the Dragunov, hopped off the backside of the building’s roof as fire was already being returned, and leapt on to the back of the motorbike driven by Qandi. There was no chase. There shouldn’t be. If there were, then planning would have been piss poor. By the time they circled the reservoir on side streets to the west, they hit Kabul-Paghman road which led directly back into central Kabul, and then they were home free.
The bearded man followed Qandi up a series of stairs through various locked doors. The apartment complex was like a maze; hard to navigate into, but easy to get out of, with numerous exit options. Finally, they reached the small flat, and the man bolted and barred the door from the inside.
“I’d ask you how it went,” said the man with the thin goatee “but it’s already hit the news. Saleem is dead. The place is crawling with Afghani police and military.”
“Piece of cake.”
“There have already been opposition factions claiming responsibility. That’s sweet. We might be able to hit the airport by tomorrow and get the hell out of here.”
The thick bearded man looked over at Qandi. She was preparing an evening meal for the men, before returning to her own home. “You know. I might just hang out here.”
“For god’s sakes why?”
“Guess I’m getting a little too used to lamb stew.”
“Now how’s that going to work? You can exist here for a short period of time, but not a long period.”
“Bah, maybe you’re right.”
“I need to go now. I will see you in the morning. Do you need me to bring anything, besides food?” Qandi asked.
“No, I think we’re good,” The thick bearded man said. “Hey can I talk to you outside, alone for a minute?”
“Of course.” Qandi led the man through a locked door leading to an exit.
“Listen.
My partner plans on leaving tomorrow for the States. Let me just throw this out at you. Let’s say I wanted to stay. How would that work?”
“You’re a walking target. You don’t read or speak Dari, at least not well enough to get by. You can’t even walk in public without hiding your face. Why would you even want to stay?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
“You were sent here on a mission. You completed it. Go back to your family.”
“I have no family. And I know you don’t either. I know what happened to them, and why you are doing what you are doing. But maybe your mission is over too.”
“If you have any great ideas on where I can go, I am open to them.”
“This is craziness, this is a really bad idea,” the man with the thin goatee said. “She isn’t even passable as an Indian.”
“Not Indian. Pakistani.” The thick bearded man said. “Damn close to Afghani. Don’t worry, it’s going to work.”
“We might make it as far as Frankfurt, but there’s no way in hell they’ll let her in the States with those creds.”
“Relax. We aren’t flying commercial from Frankfurt. We’re hopping a MAC flight. Remember?”
The three sat together in one row of the Bakhtar Airlines’ single 727 passenger jet. The man with the thick beard whispered in Qandi’s ear. “Once we land in Frankfurt, you’re going to have to ditch that hijab, okay?”
“Am I going to have to pretend to be your wife once we get to the United States as well?”
Think about that question. Carefully. “No,” the man said with a smile. She clenched his hand and rested her head on his shoulder.
Chapter 12 – Tyrell’s Revenge
“Okay, I get it,” Captain Woods said as he accompanied First Sergeant Wilson on a sweep through the barracks with an MP holding the leash of a drug sniffing dog. “The sergeants get to live off-post if they want. But technically, a single corporal should be living in the barracks.”
“Well, Starr does maintain a bed and a locker here. As long as he shows up for formation every morning, what does it matter?”
What mattered was that Starr was hiding something. Mueller too. And Wilson was protecting them, if not in on it himself. How convenient. The man gets to maintain a clean, empty locker and regulation made bed, which only has to be redone maybe once every three months. “I guess it doesn’t. Where is everyone anyway?”
“It’s a Saturday afternoon, sir, the last place they want to be is the barracks, where they’re likely to get scabbed for a detail if they hang around.”
“I guess I don’t poke around here as much as I should.”
“That’s my job, sir.”
“Nothing here sir.” the MP reported.
“All right, thank you specialist.”
“No problem sir.”
“And thank you for spending some afternoon time here, first sergeant.”
“No problem.”
Both the MP and the first sergeant left the barracks. Even though it was a Saturday afternoon, it was strangely empty. Goddamn strangely empty. Except for one lone figure lying on the bed on the far corner of the large room. The captain walked over. It was Chang.
Chang got of the bed and stood at attention as the captain approached him. “Sorry sir, I didn’t realize that was you in here.”
“Sit down, Chang. I realize I’m not your favorite person right now, but you have to understand that somebody’s running drugs through this company and nobody seems to want to fess up.”
“A lot of guys are spooked.”
“Spooked? About what?”
“You didn’t hear about Jefferson?”
“You mean about that bar fight he got in to last week?”
“That wasn’t a bar fight. Some guys wearing white sheets grabbed him and worked him over as he was walking back to the barracks. Called him a nigger. Said they would kill him. And then Horowitz found that swastika carved on his locker. That’s why the black guys are hanging together, and everyone else is sticking to their cliques.”
“Does the first sergeant know about this?”
Chang shook his head. “Top acts like it’s their fault.”
“I’m going to ask you a direct question. Your non-response will be taken as a yes. In your opinion, do Sergeant Mueller and Corporal Starr have something to do with that?”
Chang sat on the mattress with a stone face.
“I see.”
Damn, it was a long day. Fifteen hours of solid driving, and that was going full bore. At least, navigation was easy. Just jump on the 5 heading north and stay on it, all the way up to Lakewood, a district just south of Tacoma adjacent to Fort Lewis. The 5. This southern California thing is rubbing off on him. Everyone else in the country calls it ‘Interstate 5’ or ‘I-5’, but south of the Grapevine Pass they call it ‘The 5.’
Rex grew some hair, and enough to significantly mask his appearance. Some people look the same with or without hair. Some people look completely different. Rex was the latter. Nobody had seen him since he wore the short high and tight ‘Ranger’ haircut. As long as he didn’t engage anyone, he could pass as part of the local grunge crowd with his unshaven face and torn jeans; nobody’s going to pay too much attention. Plus there’s been some turnover. People are getting shipped out every day.
Most of the junior enlisted GIs from Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force base tend to hang out at the sports bars in Lakewood and Parkland, which are pretty much right there. As the food chain goes up, the crowd goes north to Tacoma and even Seattle proper. And then there are the cowboy bars, which start north of Tacoma and become more upscale as you move into Seattle. Technically, they are country western bars, not cowboy bars. They cater to urban cowboys, not people that actually know how to ride horses and look up the prices of livestock commodities daily as they eat their breakfast.
It was a little bit late in the evening to go to Whiskey Joe’s, given that it was a school day. Guys like Mueller, Starr, and Top Wilson usually go there about five nights a week. Fridays and Saturdays are a given. Maybe a Wednesday and a Thursday. Sunday is dead. Monday is dead. Tuesday, maybe, maybe not. It didn’t matter anyway, after getting up at four in the morning and crossing two state lines, Rex just wanted to sleep. There were a handful of cheap motels off the freeway. Pick one, check in, grab a six pack at the corner store, and plan the next day, or week, or however long things might take.
Everything was a mission for Rex, everything. Those first three beers went down quick. It’s amazing that he can drink that stuff and stay as lean as a rail. They say that, at some point in life, that will change. But for now, enjoy it. He flipped on the local evening news. It’s not raining tonight. It is raining tomorrow and the next day. It always rains in this damn place. That’s what sucked so badly about being stationed here. It rained every goddamned day. You couldn’t stay dry. You had to adapt to being wet. The familiar feel of cold, worn parkerized finish of the M1911 pistols was replaced by the Sig Sauer P226 he managed to scab off that immigration agent. It’s not that he was looking for gunplay, but you never know. It’s better to have the option and not need it, than not to have it when you do.
Although justice for Captain Lewis was altruistic and lofty, there was another sneaking little nugget of attraction that caused Rex to gravitate back to this godforsaken, cold, rainy forest. That diner off-post that had the killer breakfast. Not the diner itself, but the waitress. He had gone there with his buds a few times. He used to watch her. She caught him watching her. She would smile. He never caught her name. She never took his order. She had golden brown hair, almost a redhead, but not quite. And those steel grey eyes. There were days when he wish he could just camp out there, alone, free of his buddies, in the middle of the morning when the place wasn’t busy. Maybe he could pick up a good paperback to read. There would be a lot of downtime, so why not?
Rex was disappointed. She wasn’t there. Then again, it’s the luck of the draw to have any given person there on any given day. Maybe, she went
to the evening shift. That would be problematic. Rex needed evenings free, for the most part, to spy on Mueller and Starr. There was something about the diner coffee. It was coffee for the common man. Rex never really cared for the taste of plain black coffee, but the diner coffee wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t bitter. Seattle is a coffee place, with lots of coffee shops and coffee aficionados that practice and preach coffee snobbery. Indy specialty coffees are the big thing. And they are all goddamn bitter. They make you practically wretch when you try to drink them. These damn, snooty coffee snobs sit around sipping steaming black liquid that tastes like battery acid and pretend it’s the greatest thing on earth. They do that all morning long, then all evening long, they drink these goddamn bitter overly hopped craft beers with an almost syrupy consistency, and pretend those are the greatest thing on earth too. It must be the constant rain; it makes people do strange things.
The large waitress with the hairy armpits and holes in her stockings placed a plate with a big omelet, sausage, bacon, and a biscuit, all covered with creamed beef, on the table. Creamed beef was a specialty. It was a military thing. You go to the mess hall and you get eggs. Usually, you could get an omelet. Sometimes, you could get a sausage. Other times, it might be bacon. And on special days, it would be creamed beef. Just dump it on there. The nice thing about the diner is you could get all of them at once, and more of them.
“Hey?” Rex asked the waitress. “What happened to that one girl, the waitress; the one with the wavy reddish-brown hair, birthmark on her left cheek...”
“Oh, Carol. Yeah, she doesn’t work here anymore. She left a couple weeks ago,” the waitress replied.
“Damn.”
“This ain’t a career destination for everyone, honey.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You a bookworm are you?”
“Huh?”
“That book you got there.”
“Oh. Yeah, I like to read.”
“Well, you might try out the Tacoma Public Library.”
“Thanks. Anyway, do you have any idea where she might have gone?”