The Wild One

by Nick Petrie

  Peter had skimmed the guidebook on the plane, trying to figure out what to expect. The island nation was the size of Maine, but with a quarter of the population: only three hundred thirty thousand people. More than two hundred thousand of those lived in and around Reykjavík, the capital city, in the southwestern section of Iceland.

  Reykjavík itself was fairly temperate, because the Gulf Stream’s North Atlantic Current carried warm ocean water up from the Caribbean to northern Europe. In winter, the book said, Reykjavík actually got as much rain as it did snow. Iceland also sat at the junction of two tectonic plates, which helped warm the island further, and created a surplus of geothermal energy, hot springs, and volcanoes.

  The northern part of Iceland, on the other hand, could get snow year-round, and the high mountain interior was filled with glaciers. Big sections were accessible only a few months a year, if at all. And Iceland’s weather was unpredictable. Powered by strong Arctic winds, major storms could develop anywhere in a matter of hours, no matter the season.

  The driver made a right into a rambling, piecemeal industrial park. He hadn’t spoken since Peter got in the car. They passed sheet-metal buildings set among storage lots filled with rusted fishing equipment and concrete building components and rows of tiny prefab cabins sitting on blocks, waiting for a crane to load them on a flatbed. Few lights shone. Other than the taxi, nothing moved. It felt like midnight, rather than almost midday.

  The rental agency was in the oldest, shabbiest section, a dented steel shed with a variety of four-wheel-drive vehicles parked haphazardly around it. The taxi meter read fifteen thousand krónur, which was about a hundred and twenty dollars. Peter was glad it wasn’t his money. He paid the driver, then dragged his gear out of the car. The driver pulled away. All told, he hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words the entire trip.

  The rental office was plain, stifling, and close, with only a single small window. A door opened to a big garage section where an air wrench shrieked. The static rose up and filled Peter’s head. It took everything he had to stay at the counter.

  The rental agent was a young guy in a blue-and-white Iceland World Cup stocking cap and an oversized quilted flannel shirt. He wiped grease from his hands with a rag as he talked Peter through the paperwork. The agency provided coverage for gravel damage, he said, but river crossings and wind damage were Peter’s responsibility.

  Peter raised his eyebrows. “Wind damage?”

  “Yes. Always park facing into the weather, so the wind doesn’t bend the doors back. That’s an expensive repair.” He handed Peter a single key on a ring with no identifying information. “Your vehicle is outside,” he said. “The white Mitsubishi Pajero on the left. Please remember that it requires diesel fuel. The wrong fuel is a very expensive repair.” He gestured toward the door. “Safe travels.”

  * * *

  —

  Reykjavík proper was crowded with traffic and pedestrians. A small cluster of glass-clad towers crowded the waterfront, and a cruise ship sat in the harbor. Clusters of construction cranes rose high, and modern new apartment buildings grew on the lower reaches of the old city. Packs of tourists in expensive new parkas wandered aimlessly through the snow, standing in curious clumps with their shopping bags. Iceland was booming.

  Peter parked the Mitsubishi on a busy street in front of a bakery, used a credit card to feed the meter, crossed at the light, and walked uphill into the old city.

  He’d spent a lot of time overseas, but most of that was in combat zones. He drank in the flavor of this peaceful, prosperous foreign city. The snowy streets were narrow and clogged with traffic. The buildings got smaller and older as he climbed the hill, breathing in the open air. Oddly, the proportions of some buildings were very much like the barns in northern Wisconsin, where Scandinavian immigrants had settled. Heavily customized 4x4 vehicles lined the side roads, Jeeps and Toyotas and strange European campers, many of them vintage, often parked halfway up on the skinny sidewalks. In this fashionable European city, they looked like improvised moon rovers.

  The fatigue that always followed the receding static tugged at him like rocks in his pockets. The long trip with little sleep didn’t help. At a tiny coffee shop on a cobblestone courtyard, he sat under a narrow overhang to sip his rapidly cooling espresso while the snow swirled around him. With the low heavy clouds and the snow, the sky hadn’t gotten any brighter. He wondered if this was all the daylight he would get.

  He rode the wave of caffeine through a maze of narrow side streets to a hand-lettered sign on the side of a building. SNORRI’S RAVE CAVE. Below the sign, stone steps led down below street level. Swirls of brightly colored paint covered the concrete walls of the stairwell. At the bottom, a dented steel door, electric green, glowed faintly in the subterranean shadow. Another sign screwed to the door gave the hours: 20:00–???

  That was eight p.m., six hours away. He tried the knob, but it was locked. He rapped on the door with his knuckles. The dull sound seemed to disappear into the falling snow. No answer. He took the rental key from his pocket and used the steel to sharpen his knock. Still no answer.

  He found an outfitter’s shop, where he bought a better sleeping bag, good to twenty below. His old gear was still sound, but Iceland seemed to call for an upgrade, and his choices would likely narrow significantly once he left Reykjavík.

  Exercise always helped with the static, so he walked the city with his shopping bags, working his travel-stiff muscles on the hills. His stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten since the day before, so he stopped for a bowl of Thai noodles and chicken from a takeout window and ate standing in the street. Finally he walked down to the Mitsubishi and drove along the harbor road until he found a half-empty parking lot sheltered from the traffic noise by a wide earthen berm.

  The espresso wore off as he drove, leaving him in a black pit of exhaustion. The drifting airplane unconsciousness of Valium and vodka wasn’t the same as real sleep. It had been too long since he’d had a full night’s rest without gunfire dreams.

  The Pajero was a full-sized SUV with the boxy feel and diesel rattle of a truck. The rental company had removed the back seats and converted the vehicle into a kind of camper, with a slim plywood storage shelf, a hinged tabletop, and a little couch that unfolded into a bed. It was a small space, more like a two-man tent than anything else, but even with all his gear, there was enough room for Peter to stretch out comfortably. He cracked the windows for ventilation, then kicked off his boots and rolled into his new sleeping bag. The view was of the swirling snow and dimly lit sky. The wind howled in his ears like something wild.

  He closed his eyes, hoping he was too tired to dream.

  Knowing that it didn’t matter. He would dream anyway.

  4

  The dream was always the same.

  Peter stood in a dusty street, binoculars fixed on the face of a small brown man with sad eyes and a thick black mustache. The man sat behind the wheel of a faded blue Toyota Camry rolling toward a makeshift checkpoint at the edge of Sadr City, an impoverished Baghdad neighborhood at the heart of the insurgency.

  The afternoon air was still and thick. It tasted of burned metal and raw, rotting meat.

  Four of Peter’s Marines stood sweating in full battle dress by a pair of Humvees parked in a V, blocking the road, waving at the Camry to stop. It was make-work duty, designed to keep Peter’s Recon platoon occupied until their next real mission. The sad-eyed driver was coming too fast. This was a year into the insurgency, and the driver should have known to slow down. More than that, Peter’s Marines shouldn’t even have been there.

  When the driver was a hundred meters out, Big Jimmy Johnson stepped from behind the hood of his Humvee, M4 slung and hands held palms-out, knowing the riflemen and turret gunner behind him would have his back. Big Jimmy smiled his big peacemaking smile, a smile so wide and infectious that it made hardened insurgents smile back out of pu
re human recognition. Peter had thought more than once that, if every U.S. servicemember had Jimmy’s smile, the insurgency would have been over before it started.

  No matter that they shouldn’t have been fighting that wrong war in the first place. The weapons of mass destruction didn’t exist. All those people dead for nothing.

  The sad-eyed driver got closer. He put a hand up. He said something, nobody knew what. His eyes got wide. But he didn’t slow down.

  Big Jimmy shouted. Raised his rifle. Made it clear in word and deed that the man should stop or there would be consequences. Bad things would happen. The driver got closer. A voice came through Peter’s earpiece. “Lieutenant? Do we fire?”

  The sad-eyed driver became more agitated. He took his other hand off the wheel and waved his arms. He wore a pale button-down shirt with short sleeves. His face was freshly shaven. He shouted. He didn’t slow down.

  Behind his own Humvee, Peter kept his binoculars on the man’s face. A car bomb had hit an Army checkpoint the day before. Another had blown up a Sunni market that morning. The sad-eyed man still didn’t stop. “He’s too close,” Peter said. “Okay to fire. Light that fucker up. Repeat, light him up.”

  The Marines fired their M4s. The windshield filled with impact stars, but the dusty Camry kept coming. When the turret gunner let loose with the fifty-cal, the deep thumping sound was almost physical in the thick, foul air. The Camry shook on its springs as it turned into Swiss cheese. Steam came from the punctured radiator. It wasn’t until the tires were shreds and the engine died that the car finally lurched to a stop.

  There was no bomb. It turned out that the Camry’s brakes didn’t work. Later, Peter discovered that the driver was a Sunni, facing death threats from his Shia neighbors. He was fleeing his home, scared out of his mind, reacting poorly, in a car that, once started, didn’t want to stop.

  His young wife and two small children were huddled out of sight in the back seat. Probably so his neighbors would think he was just going to work, and not frag everyone in the car.

  They had died anyway.

  Peter had given the order and a family had died.

  The driver hadn’t even slowed down. It was a righteous call, by the book. Nobody had questioned it. Until the dreams started, after Memphis, Peter had barely remembered it.

  How many calls like this had he made? How many more innocents had died in that dumb fucking war? How many children?

  At the time, Peter hadn’t wanted to learn their names. He didn’t want to make it personal. He was doing his job. They all were.

  It was personal, anyway.

  When you take a human life, whether through action or inaction, how could it be otherwise?

  The honest truth was that Peter hadn’t hated the war when he was fighting it. He was often desperate or exhausted or scared shitless, but once he’d reconciled himself to the fact that he could die at any moment, his war had changed. It became a place to test himself, to improve his skills. He’d signed up to fight for his country, but that was before it all went bad. Then his mission became to protect his men. Get them home alive.

  No, the real honest truth was that, more often than not, he’d fucking loved the war. Standing with his brother Marines, armed and armored before an assault, amped up and focused and ready to take the fight to the bad guys. Wordless patrols through the corn along the Tigris while the insects screamed. Night drops into the dry, bony mountains of Afghanistan, with Pakistan just over the next ridgeline. The beauty of pink tracers curving through the darkness as the remains of his platoon huddled behind a crumbling stone house, praying for the bombers to save their asses before the flankers eliminated their cover. High as a kite on terror and adrenaline.

  He’d felt alive, then. Well and truly alive.

  But that was then.

  Civilian life wasn’t the same. Not at all.

  Of course, civilian life wasn’t supposed to give you nightmares, either.

  A VA doctor had prescribed him the Valium. The VA loved their drugs.

  The Valium helped, until it didn’t. It was a tranquilizer in the benzodiazepine family, and it was easy to build up a tolerance. It was also addictive.

  Now, he woke sweating in the cold dark truck, wondering how many more faces would swim up out of the past to visit his dreams.

  5

  The snow was falling faster when Peter left the Mitsubishi to walk the narrow, winding streets of Reykjavík. The wind pulled on his coat, but a warm yellow glow poured through shop windows and restaurant doorways, illuminating the old city in reflected light. Tourists in enormous parkas and locals in wool sweaters headed out for drinks and dinner. Peter’s stomach growled again. You burned more calories sleeping in a cold car than in a warm bed.

  The sign above the steps to Snorri’s Rave Cave was lit now, too. Black lights in the cracked concrete stairwell made the painted walls glow in luminescent swirls that grew more vivid with each descending step. The steel door at the bottom shone an unearthly green. Peter tried the handle again. This time, the door opened.

  He found a low, darkened vestibule with an unmanned coat check and an empty doorman’s podium. A red velvet rope hung from two metal stands, blocking the entryway to the club. Peter kept his coat, stepped over the rope and down another flight of stairs. The static foamed up his brainstem. He hoped he could find his guy quickly. Peter had never been a nightclub person. Now less than ever.

  From the entrance, Peter had thought Snorri’s Rave Cave would be small, but at the bottom of the steps he found a large, high-ceilinged space, several large rooms connected by wide, arched openings. The basements of multiple adjoining buildings had been dug deeper and merged. The original rough foundation stones were exposed, but they somehow stood atop crisp new concrete walls, the lines of the steel forms still visible. Standup tables ringed the room. Rope lights hung from the ceiling in wild, tangled loops.

  The static sparked higher. It didn’t like the windowless club, or the way the arched openings between the joined spaces limited his sight lines. He felt its pressure at the base of his skull, the muscles of his shoulders and back and neck tightening with the tension. He found himself checking the corners and scouting the exits, as if he’d find an insurgent with an AK hiding behind one of the long leather couches. He clenched his teeth against the static’s rising insistence. He’d been getting better, goddamn it.

  It was barely eight o’clock and the house lights were still bright. The dance floor was huge. Concrete mixed with broken glass, then polished to a fine sheen, glittered underfoot. At the far end, a DJ with a shaved head and a long, braided beard assembled his equipment on a raised platform. The heavy bass and insistent rhythms of electronic dance music poured from high speaker towers.

  A wooden bar ran down one side of the room, where a pair of bartenders in crisp white tuxedo shirts chatted with early customers, and two barbacks methodically stocked the coolers. Peter put his elbow on the polished oak and caught a bartender’s eye.

  “I’m looking for Bjarni,” he called over the music.

  “There are many Bjarnis.” The square-shouldered young bartender reminded Peter a bit of the well-fed farm boys he’d grown up with. Except for the fat gold ring in one ear, along with the stylized black tattoos peeking out from under the rolled-up sleeves of his tuxedo shirt, which made him look like a pirate dressed for the prom. He wore his straw-blond hair short on the sides and long on top, not a great look in Peter’s opinion. Maybe it was a Viking thing. His square, clean-shaven face was polite and uninterested. “Which one?”

  “Bjarni Bergsson. He works here, right?”

  Peter only had a year-old photo of a face blond-bearded to the eyeballs and half-hidden in a long tangle of hair, with a prominent black metal nose ring. He’d looked on social media for others, but there were half a dozen of Bjarni Bergssons in Reykjavík. He wasn’t sure if Bjarni still worked at the club, but if n
ot, maybe his former coworkers might know where to find him.

  “Why do you want this Bjarni?”

  “It’s personal. About his family.”

  The bartender swiped his hair out of his eyes with a practiced hand. “You are American?”

  Peter nodded. “Is he here?”

  The bartender glanced over his shoulder down the bar, then turned back to Peter. “He’s late. But he should be here soon.” He had the same soft, sibilant Icelandic accent. “If you are staying, cover charge is two thousand.” About twenty dollars. “The club will fill soon. Beautiful women, great music. Dancing.”

  Peter would rather be on June Cassidy’s front porch, watching the stars and listening to the wind in the trees, but that was a wide ocean and a continent away. “Sure.” He took four of the colorful Icelandic bills from his wallet and held them out. “Two thousand for the cover charge. Another six for you to point out Bjarni when he gets here.” If the static let him stay that long.

  The bartender nodded again, slipped the money into a pocket, and walked down the bar to the taps. A minute later, he came back with a pale, foaming pint. The inside of his right arm was covered with a large tattoo of a stylized Viking sword. A tattooed shield covered the other. “Our special Icelandic bitter,” he said. “No charge. Our most popular beer.”

  “Thanks.” Peter took a sip. It was definitely bitter, and strangely foamy, but also pretty good. Peter took a longer sip. He was hungry and thirsty. The beer would help with both, for a while. Drinking a single beer wasn’t the same as draining a half-dozen airline bottles of vodka, was it?

  There was a noise at the entrance as a dozen people clattered down the stairs. The women were dressed in sleek skirts and glittery tops that bared their arms and shoulders. The men wore tight jeans and shiny shirts and pointy-toed shoes. They were much younger than Peter, with sculptural hair. A doorman in a white tuxedo shirt and a black bow tie met them at the velvet rope to collect money and stamp their hands. The music got louder.