The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  Sam watched the billowing smoke, then looked south again. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got another eight miles. It’s getting late. I want to make the army post before nightfall.” He hoisted his pack and started jogging.

  Bono fell in behind him. They stayed on the embankment of the highway, away from the people as much as possible. Angry, frightened eyes stared at them as they passed. Most everyone called to them, recognizing the uniforms.

  “Hey, you! Soldier! What’s happening here?”

  “Stop there! Can you help us?”

  “Hey, I’ve got a carload of kids with me! I need some help. Why are you running? I demand to know what’s going on!”

  The shouting was insistent and angry; the soldiers just ignored it. It would take a month to get to Fort Belvoir if they had to stop and explain what had happened to everyone they passed.

  Ten minutes later, Sam saw them. Three men. Two young women. Lots of leather, lots of chains, and a bunch of ugly, moody eyes. They stood around their car, cursing and shoving all the strangers that walked by. He watched them carefully as he and Bono approached, still at a gentle run. One of the men saw the soldiers coming and reached toward his hip. He’s armed, Sam thought, instinctively moving his hand toward the weapon underneath his camouflage uniform. He was in the lead and he turned to the left, moving farther off the road to give the men a wider berth.

  A screaming woman ran toward him, her eyes wild, her arms flailing in the air. “He shot someone!” she cried. “There’s a dead body up there! Between those two cars!” She motioned frantically toward the men on the road.

  Sam slowed. Bono came up behind him. “Are you certain?” he whispered toward the woman.

  She didn’t answer, her hands darting to her mouth.

  Sam watched the three men and two women. The girls had backed off. The men turned to face the soldiers, maybe forty feet away. “You got no business here, grunt boys,” the nearest man shouted to him. “You ain’t the freak’n police. You ain’t nothing. Go on, keep on jogging. You got no business here.”

  Sam shot a look to Bono. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Bono looked at the mass of empty cars and walking people all around him. “I don’t know. We don’t have time for this. And we don’t really have any authority . . .”

  “But if they’re armed . . . if they’ve already popped someone . . .”

  Bono nodded slowly. “We ought to do something, I guess.”

  “I know the world’s gone crazy, but man, Bono, it’s only been a day. Wouldn’t you think these people could hold off the barbarism for at least a week or two? And murder is probably still illegal. Inadvisable, at least.” Sammy had a habit of slipping into sarcasm when he was working up to combat mode.

  Bono studied the men, who had grouped together now.

  “If they’ve hurt someone, I don’t think we can just leave them here, not with a weapon,” Sam said.

  “Okay,” Bono finally answered. “Check it out. See if it’s true. But we’re not the judge and jury. We don’t want to hurt anyone, you understand. All we want to do is make it impossible for them to intimidate or hurt any of these travelers, okay?”

  Sam nodded. “You got me?” he whispered softly.

  Neither of the men had pulled their weapons, but Bono nodded slowly. “Left hip for one, right hip for two,” he said.

  Sam started walking toward the group of hoods.

  “Go on, soldier boy,” the first one sneered, waving him back. “You got no business here!”

  Twenty feet between them. Two lanes of cars. Sam looked down. Between a set of tires he saw the body. Brown leather shoes. Expensive suit pants. A pool of drying blood beneath the ankles. He quickly moved his eyes, not letting on that he had seen. A young woman hunched in the backseat of a nearby Lexus: dark hair, lots of makeup, her head slumped against the window, her face stained and bruised and purple beneath her dark eyes. Half a second was all it took him to understand what had happened here.

  “No worries, buddy,” he shouted back. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

  “Stay back!” the man screamed in fury. Pulling out a weapon from under his loose shirt, he aimed at Sam. “Go on, keep on running, you got no business here, soldier boy.” His voice was thick and hopeless. Nothing left to lose. Nothing left to gain. The world was over anyway, why not have some fun, stake your claim while there was something left to stake a claim to.

  Sam moved his eyes again, evaluating the threat. Three men. The first one armed. The second one? . . . almost certainly, from the way he held his hand beside his hip, just a few inches from the small of his back. The last man stayed away, his eyes darting between the soldiers and his friends. He was no threat.

  Sam swallowed, moved two steps to his right to allow Bono a clear line of fire, and lifted his hands, palms toward the screaming man to show that he was not holding a weapon.

  “Go back or I will kill you!” the man screamed again. He moved his finger to the trigger and squinted down the short barrel of his gun.

  Sam slowly dropped his right hand toward his hip.

  The bullets passed by his ear. Buzz, buzz. Hot and angry. There was no other sound like a passing 9mm bullet.

  The first man screamed in pain and dropped his gun, the blood already spouting between his fingers as he held his shattered hand. The second man fell back, his shoulder bloody, his right arm hanging worthlessly at his side. The window behind him burst as the flattened bullet passed through his shoulder and into the car. The two men screamed and cursed together, crying in pain and fear. Their buddy, the oldest of the three, swore, his eyes wide, then turned and ran, sprinting like a rabbit down the line of empty cars. One of the young women screamed, fell to her knees, and threw up, her long hair falling into the watery flow. The other girl, no more than a teenager, ran toward her boyfriend, bent over him, saw the blood, then stood and ran, following the other man.

  Sam drew his weapon and held it with both hands, his face deadly and intent. He moved toward the hoods with careful steps. “Get down,” he told them, his voice low and calm. Behind him, Bono kept his weapon trained on the attackers. Sam made certain he maintained a line of fire for his friend.

  He moved toward the Lexus and pulled open the back door. The woman stared up, her eyes wide with dread and fear. She seemed to be as afraid of him as she was of the other men. “You okay?” he whispered as he pulled her from the car. She felt heavy, fragile, too weak to help herself. “Come on,” he urged, his voice harder now. “Get up. You’ve got to get out of here.”

  She stood, brushing her hands across her face. Sam saw the tear in her dress, the bruises and scratches across her cheeks. She had fought them. He was proud. She was going to be okay.

  Across the highway, among the passing strangers, two older men were hiding behind a nearby car. “Over here!” Sam shouted to them.

  The two men hesitated, then came toward him. “Take care of her!” Sam said, gently prodding the battered woman toward the men.

  “What?” the first man answered in surprise.

  Sam nodded impatiently to the scene of carnage: the dead husband, the bleeding attackers, the injured woman. “Take care of her!” He cocked an eyebrow.

  The two men understood. “All right, sir. You got it.” The first man reached out for her hand. She cried, then fell into the stranger’s arms.

  Sam turned toward the two young men who were crying on the ground. He moved toward the first one, who sat holding his bleeding hand against his chest. “You’ve been a bad boy,” he muttered, kneeling down by his side.

  “He shot me! He shot me in the hand!” The young man cursed and swore at Bono, calling him every foul name that Sam had ever heard.

  “He could have shot you through the mouth if you’d prefer that,” Sam said in disgust. “And if you don’t shut up, I still might let him.”

  “He shot me, man!” the man screamed. “I’ll get you, you stinking soldier. I’ll kill you!” He swore again.

&n
bsp; Sam bent over and looked the young thug in the eyes. “Tell me, what is there in this situation that would lead me to believe that?” he asked.

  The man sniffled, then closed his mouth. Sam reached out and took his hand. Examining it carefully, he pulled a thick gauze pad from his first aid kit and compressed it into the man’s palm. “You’d better count your blessings,” he said. “My buddy there is good enough he was able to miss the major tendons and nerves. Believe me, tough guy, that was no accident—he could have destroyed your entire hand. He did you a huge favor: Your hand will heal okay. You’ll be able to stand trial for this murder with no problems, you slimy scum.”

  The man shook his head, then turned away.

  While Sam was working, Bono had moved toward the other man, kicked away his handgun, and examined his shoulder. It took them a few minutes to administer first aid.

  Standing, Sam gathered up their weapons. Bono wiped his hands on the attacker’s pants, then moved and stood at the side of his friend. Sam nodded toward the injured shoulder.

  “Just a flesh wound,” Bono told him. “It’ll be okay.”

  Sam tucked their two handguns inside his backpack, then turned toward the men. “You made things a whole lot harder than they needed to be,” he said. “Think about it, guys. Things are going to be tough for everyone right now, but they’re going to be a lot harder for you. How are you going to get to a hospital? What kind of care do you think you’re going to get? I wouldn’t want to be either one of you. But you made your own bed.”

  Bono reached into his backpack and pulled out some plastic bands they used as handcuffs to handle captured insurgents when working in Iraq. He dragged the two men together, cuffed them to each other, then ran another cuff around the dead man’s wrist. “A murder was committed here,” he said as he cuffed the men. “It would be a whole lot better if you didn’t leave the scene of the crime.”

  Sam wrote a brief note, explaining what had happened, wrote down his name, rank, and contact number, and left it on the windshield of the dead man’s car.

  “Come on,” he said to Bono, “we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “And now, O all ye that have imagined up unto yourselves a god who can do no miracles, I would ask of you, have

  all these things passed, of which I have spoken?

  Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay;

  and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.”

  —Mormon 9:15

  Chapter Thirty

  Fort Belvoir

  South of Washington, D.C.

  Look, I don’t know what to tell you,” the army colonel said. “I mean it, guys, I’ve got my hands full right up to my elbows, and the last thing I need is a couple lieutenants asking favors and hanging around my neck.”

  “We understand that, sir,” Bono answered respectfully. “But please remember, our Cherokee unit was brought back from overseas just a few days ago. Everyone has already scattered, heading off to see their families. Our unit has been gone for twenty-three of the past twenty-four months and we were all anxious to get home. The problem is . . .”

  “The problem is, now that you’re all split up, there’s no way Special Forces Command is going to reconstitute your unit. Not right now. Not under the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “What does your boss want you to do, then?” the commander of the helicopter aviation unit at Fort Belvoir demanded.

  Bono slid to the edge of his chair. His face was tight and sweaty. And he looked tired. Really tired. Not so much physically—although the hike across D.C. had worn him out—but there was a much deeper weariness and worry on his face. “He wants us to stay available,” he started to answer, “but frankly, sir, he knows it’s unlikely our particular unit is going to be called on anytime soon. So he’s giving us two weeks to go home and see our families. Two weeks. Not a lot of time when we’ve been gone for two years, but hey, we’re not complaining; we’re very happy to have any time at all. The problem is, of course, we’ve got no way to get there. We don’t own any horses, which might be the only way to get around right now. So we need a ride, sir. One of your helicopters out there. If we could get out to Andrews Air Force Base or down to Langley, we might be able to catch a hop from there. I’ve got to get to Memphis and Lieutenant Brighton here needs to get to Salt Lake City, or . . .” Bono hesitated . . . “somewhere in between.”

  The gray-haired colonel raised an eyebrow and turned to Sam. “You don’t know where you’re trying to get to?” he asked, his voice tired and sarcastic.

  Sam shook his head.

  “What, your family lives in a Winnebago or something? Your dad packed up his three wives and headed out when things began to hit the fan?”

  Sam blushed with anger and looked away. Bono huffed as he leaned back against his chair. “Where did that come from, sir?” he demanded, his voice hard. “Are you so ignorant as to assume that (A) anyone from Salt Lake has to be a Mormon, and (B) members of the LDS faith are running around with half a dozen wives?”

  This time the colonel blushed. “Sorry,” he said, lifting his hand in apology. “Really. I wasn’t thinking. You know, guys, I’ve been working for weeks on about two hours of sleep

  a night. It was a bad joke, a weak attempt at humor, but I meant nothing, okay?”

  Sam shrugged. “A joke. Oh, I get it. Funny, sir.”

  Bono slumped. He was too tired to really care. “No sweat, sir. And as a matter of interest, it turns out that you probably knew Lieutenant Brighton’s father . . .” The colonel’s face began to soften . . . “General Brighton at the White House.”

  “Of course, of course, I knew your father well.” He turned to Sam. “I hope . . . you know, I hope he’s okay. Did he, you know . . .”

  “No, sir, he didn’t. He was killed in the explosion.” Sam stared at the colonel, his face blank.

  The older officer cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. I had the honor to fly your father many, many times. Even got him the front seat in one of those UH-60 helicopters out there. He did a pretty good job for an air force guy. Couldn’t ever learn to hover, but he was a right good ol’ pilot. More, he was a really decent fellow. Everyone who knew him liked him. Everyone knew how hard he worked.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sam answered.

  Bono watched Sam for a moment, then glanced around the boxy office. Typical army: brown, faux-wood desk, a dozen pictures on the walls, an American flag in one corner, the regiment flag opposite it, a small window where the colonel could stand and count the choppers—mostly Sikorsky UH-60s and Bell UH-1s—out on the flightline.

  They were sitting on the east side of Fort Belvoir, a section of the military installation known as Davidson Army Airfield. A component of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, Davidson’s most important mission was to provide air transportation for army bigwigs, foreign dignitaries, and senior members of the Department of Defense.

  “So, sir, what do you say?” Bono pressed. “Please, it would only take a few minutes to fly us to one of the air force bases around D.C. It would take us a week, maybe longer, to walk, the way things are right now. It’s turning crazy quickly, you surely know that, and this may be our only chance. We’ve been gone an awfully long time, sir.”

  The colonel walked to the window and stared out on the flightline as he thought. “Do you have any idea how dear these helicopters are right now? They are literally the only transportation left inside the District. I’ve got my pilots flying twenty hours a day and we’re not even close to keeping up. Now you want me to what, gin up a sortie so a couple Special Forces soldiers can go home and see their families?”

  Bono shook his head at Sam and raised an eyebrow. It doesn’t look good, his frown said.

  The colonel stood in silence. Sam fidgeted nervously. Bono watched the colonel’s back.

  “I’ve been flying some critically important missions,” the colonel continued. He thought
another moment and then added, “But some of it is bogus. Yesterday I had to fly some congressional staff out to one of the bunkers in West Virginia. Bunch of snot-nosed college kids. They couldn’t have explained the difference between national security and a security blanket, but they are so critical to the survival of our nation that we had to get them out there. I’ve got senators’ wives demanding to be taken home to mama, some pukes down at the DNC—the Democratic National Committee, for pity’s sake—demanding we get them out of town.”

  Bono started smiling.

  “And you want me to take a couple grunt lieutenants down to Langley just so they can try to hitch a ride. A couple guys whose only excuse is that they’ve been living in the desert for the past twenty-four months, eating snakes and burying themselves in the sand to get away from the heat. Senators’ wives or you two pukes? Now, who do you think I should put as my priority?” The colonel turned around.

  Bono looked him in the eye. “Us, sir?” he said.

  “Dang straight there, lieutenant. It’d be an honor to help.”

  Bono grinned. “Really, sir?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” the colonel answered indignantly. “After what you guys have been through, it’s the least I can do. Believe me, guys, I would rather fly this mission than almost anything else I’ve done in the past week.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sam said.

  The colonel turned toward them. “You do realize, I hope, that it’s extremely unlikely it’s going to do you any good anyway. No flights are going in or out of Andrews; the radiation levels are still too high. Now, we can get you two down to Langley, but what are the chances the air force is going to be able to help you? It’s not like they’re scheduling regular service down to Memphis.” He turned to Sam. “And you don’t even know where you want to go.”