After the War

by Jessica Scott

  Kearney had been wrong for fighting with Smith, but Sean had too much loyalty to the man who’d bled on the streets of Fallujah with him than to the officer who was supposed to have Sean’s loyalty. He’d spent too long as an enlisted man to be blindly loyal to the officers he served with. In Sean’s world, loyalty was earned, not a given.

  Sean dragged his hands over his face and rolled onto his side, staring into silence.

  What had he missed? It felt like it was staring back at him from the edge of the darkness like a pair of cat eyes lighting the back of a Kevlar in front of him. It teased at his consciousness until he slipped into sleep.

  And it was no longer Sarah in his dreams. Once more, death’s hand wrapped around him, pulling him back to that street. To the casualties. To the horrible choices he’d made and had to live with.

  To the choices he had made and would have kept making had Kearney not pulled him back from the brink.

  * * *

  “Mommy?”

  Sarah glanced at her bedroom door, which had parted just a crack to reveal a small dark head, still wet from the bath over an hour ago. She set the laptop next to her on her bed and patted the comforter near her hip. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Anna shuffled into her bedroom and climbed up next to Sarah, immediately curling her small body into the crook of her mother’s arm. “I had a bad dream.”

  Her voice cracked at the end of dream and Sarah brushed her hair from her face and kissed her forehead. “What was your dream about?”

  She always worried about what the impact of not having Jack had on Anna. Sarah’s heart pounded a little faster as she recalled the night terrors Anna had after she’d been born. She’d wake up screaming and crying. She’d arch her back and refuse comfort and Sarah had felt beyond helpless until she figured out that she needed to wake Anna up, then comfort her.

  Sarah dreaded hearing about Anna’s dream, afraid she already knew what had upset her daughter.

  “I dreamed that I was a dog,” Anna said in a small voice. “And I had a really great house. But then another dog came and took my house.”

  Sarah fought the urge to laugh. Anna was really upset, but Sarah had this visual of her daughter as a basset hound and choked on a small laugh. She cleared her throat instead. “Why did the other dog take your house?” she asked, stroking Anna’s hair.

  “Because he liked it better than I liked it.”

  The complexity of a five year old’s dreams was amazing stuff. “How did he know whether he liked it more than you?”

  “He was bigger, so he got to tell me what to do.”

  Ah. Reality dawned with a bright light and Sarah squeezed Anna close, any thoughts of laughter chased from her heart, now heavy with a host of confusing emotions. “I’m scared you’re going to go away, Mommy,” she whispered. “Like Daddy.”

  Again a silent nod against Sarah’s cheek. Sarah cupped Anna’s face and tipped her chin up, stroking the hair at her temples. “Honey, no one will ever take me from you. You will always be first in my life.”

  “But what about the Army, Mommy? The Army might take you away like it took Daddy.”

  Sarah bit her lips hard to fight back the tears that welled up. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t lie to Anna but right now, she just wanted to reassure her.

  And she couldn’t. She couldn’t promise that the Army wouldn’t take her away.

  For one bitter moment, Sarah regretted the decision to stay in the Army after Jack died. How could she have thought that her life as a soldier would be compatible with her life as a widowed mother?

  She breathed in deeply and waited until the wave of emotion passed. “Sometimes. Sometimes I might have to go away for a little while because of the Army. But my heart will always be right here with you. No matter where I am in the world, I’ll always love you and I’ll always take care of you.”

  “What if you get married again? My friend Shelby’s mommy got married and Shelby says her mommy loves Shelby’s new daddy more than she loves Shelby.”

  She’d always done her best to keep pictures up and talk about him, knowing that it wasn’t fair that Anna had never known her father. She’d been torn by what to do and how to handle it and in the end, she’d made the best decision she could, never guessing that she would someday question the wisdom of that decision.

  It was a terrible thing the day a mother regretted keeping her daughter’s father alive in her young memory.

  Because at that moment, Sarah realized that this wasn’t about Jack. This was about Sarah, and Anna’s claim on the only stable thing in her life.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “Will you always love me best?”

  Sarah smiled and pulled her daughter close, cherishing this quiet interlude, knowing they would lessen and then finally stop as her daughter grew up. “Yeah, baby.”

  Work fell away and Sarah pulled the comforter over their shoulders and just savored the time with her little girl.

  Twenty-Three

  Thanks to Evan, Sarah finally got her hands on Smith’s investigation from the previous year in her inbox Sunday morning. It was even unclassified, so she wasn’t breaking any rules. Evan had found it on the SharePoint server. She scanned Smith’s inquiry.

  “Facts: The platoon, under SGT Kearney’s direction, fired randomly, using no positive target identification. Witnesses (see appendix A for statements) state that they heard orders to ‘kill everything that moves’ in the midst of the firefight. The militia we engaged strategically placed women and children at the front of the formation moving down the street, effectively creating human shields for the advancing forces.

  SGT Kearney was out of control during the firefight, urging his men to lock their sectors down through alternating fire and ensure that nothing moved in their perimeter.

  As the platoon leader, I was unable to stand SGT Kearney down, despite multiple attempts to stop the bloodshed. He completely disregarded my orders. As the platoon sergeant, SGT Kearney should have been focused on the wounded at the casualty collection point but instead was running around the inside of the perimeter to ensure that no one stopped firing.

  After approximately fifteen minutes of constant fire, all weapons abruptly ceased. Multiple witnesses reported hearing SGT Kearney ordering the cease-fire but that conflicts with earlier witness reports stating he ordered weapons free.

  Conclusions: The wounding of four men set off a panicked reaction in SGT Kearney. In his fear for the safety of his men, SGT Kearney ordered the escalation of force without proper target identification, the result of which was 15 dead civilians, including six children. Despite the militiamen’s use of the children as human shields, SGT Kearney made no attempt to order his men to shoot over their heads at the armed men or to try to disperse through the use of warning shots.

  Recommendations: SGT Kearney should be formally tried for his actions, which were clearly outside the rules of engagement. His failure as a leader resulted in chaos within the platoon and did not save lives that day.”

  Sarah frowned. Despite the legal rhetoric, Smith’s inquiry was one-sided at best.

  Despite sleeping well, she felt a dark frustration burning in her heart for the lack of progress she’d made on the fifteen six and the competing pressure to get the damn thing finished. Everything looked cut and dry, if she believed the reports. Smith had placed all responsibility on SGT Kearney and Kearney was holding a grudge. She found the endorsement memo from the previous commander, closing the investigation and taking no action against anyone.

  Sean would be out with his formation, conducting maintenance. She sent him a note, asking him to meet at the company. Heat snaked between her thighs at the thought of seeing him and she tucked her hair behind one ear, even though there were no hairs out of place.

  She’d slept with him. Sarah had let the man completely back in her life and with him had come an awareness of herself as more than a soldier and a mom. It was awareness of hersel
f as a woman. She didn’t want to feel that kind of intense passion again. She didn’t want to become accustomed to feeling him next to her even when he wasn’t. Didn’t want to depend on the sound of his voice and the craving curling through her veins. He warmed her and comforted her, and at the same stroked a need inside her that she’d tried to forget.

  She glanced at her phone before she tucked it into her pocket. She needed to finish this today. She wanted to turn in her report to the brigade legal office and be done with it. She wanted to be free to see where this thing between her and Sean would lead.

  Something ached inside her near her heart, but part of her was glad, too. An incredible guilt wrapped around her chest for being glad that Sean had come home when her husband and the father of her daughter had not. She frowned, wondering how she could feel the two mutually exclusive emotions at the same time.

  She met Sean at his company ops. His eyes warmed when he saw her but otherwise, his expression was carefully professional. She mirrored his expression, not wanting to broadcast what had happened between them to the entire company.

  “Smith is in the back.” His voice was subdued. Professional. “I’ve cleared space for you. You won’t be interrupted.”

  “Thank you,” she said, keenly aware that they were being watched by the soldiers in the company ops.

  Lieutenant Smith sat at the conference room table, his hands folded in front of him, his uniform neat and fresh. Sarah cleared her throat and retrieved her notepad, setting the flustered feeling behind a barrier of calm composure as she sat down across from Smith.

  As she read him his rights once more, she refused to glance toward the door where Sean had disappeared. And she was terrified of what she might find. Not for herself. But for Sean and what it meant for the loyalty he had toward his men.

  “Tell me about the Iraqi civilian who died on August 15th.”

  There it was. The flicker of surprise in Smith’s eyes. A quick flash of white terror before the mask shuttered down. “Ma’am?”

  “The local national. One of the civilians who died in that escalation of force incident. He was your biggest contracting contact. Must have made life difficult when you accidentally shot your contractor.”

  Smith shifted, gripping his hands together in front of him. “It was a pretty fucked up day,” was all he managed.

  “I read through the reports. You purchased a lot of expendable supplies from him. Did you really go through that many batteries?” She kept her voice calm. Level.

  This was a dangerous game she was playing. She had very little to go on other than a hunch and a name.

  But something more than an escalation of force was driving the wedge between Smith and Kearney. And if she was right, that wedge involved money. Large sums.

  “I think I need a lawyer, ma’am.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Sarah said, having all she needed in that simple statement. “But I’m going to recommend to the brigade commander that this investigation be turned over to CID. I suspect that you and Kearney had a scheme going where you were getting bogus receipts from the man who died that day. He was giving you the receipts and you were keeping the money. But one of you got greedy.”

  “You’re so fucking full of shit.” Smith leaned forward, his face twisted with anger and bitterness. “You think you know what combat is like? You think you know what it feels like to patrol streets knowing that the men lining it would rather gut you than talk to you.” Smith’s eyes held hers but there was something about the frozen set of his features that had the hair on the back of her neck standing up. “You know nothing about war.”

  “I know that war asks good men to do terrible things,” she said quietly.

  “I did nothing wrong. I protected my platoon. Yeah, we got bogus receipts. But we were putting most of that money back into the local Iraqis pockets. We were paying them. The powers that be down at Camp Victory wouldn’t let us use the money for bribes but that’s what they were. So we lied. And we bought our boys’ lives with that money,” Smith spat.

  “Why are you and Kearney fighting?” Sarah asked.

  “Because that little fucking weasel felt bad that our contractor got himself killed. That rat fuck contractor wanted more money. We couldn’t get any more money. He threatened to go to the commander with the proof that we’d been buying him off. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Sarah’s throat went dry. Smith had just admitted to being party to what could easily be construed as a murder. It explained why he and Kearney were falling apart.

  A man was dead, and while they might not have outright murdered him, it certainly was on the edge of being justified under the rules of war. “Lieutenant Smith, I’m going to advise you to seek advice from a lawyer. Our interview is over.”

  Smith went still. The kind of still that had fear crawling over Sarah’s spine like a live thing.

  Then he leaned forward, covering a ragged sound with his hands. “You don’t know what it’s like, ma’am.” When he looked at her then, she saw grief and regret looking back at her. Not contrived. Raw.

  Real.

  “We didn’t mean to kill him. It…he…we just panicked. I panicked. When they changed the rules of engagement, I thought if I sent up the report we’d all get court-martialed. I couldn’t leave my team, ma’am. Not where we were. We were getting hit every day and they changed the rules of engagement and it made us more vulnerable.” He met her gaze, then. “Everything has just gone to shit since then.”

  “Why did you blame Kearney for the escalation of force?”

  “Because he told me to. Said he’d take the fall because they wouldn’t punish him. They overlook that stuff when it’s an NCO. Said it had happened before. That it wasn’t a big deal.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Then everything got complicated with Kitty and…fuck. I don’t expect you to believe me, ma’am.”

  Sarah did not miss the crumbling of LT Smith’s expression. The ragged grief that ripped across his features, making him look at once vulnerable and young. Too young to have made the kind of choices he’d made.

  Too young to have dealt with everything the war had thrown at him.

  Her sympathy for the man surprised her. But it did not outweigh her duty to do this right.

  “You need a lawyer, LT.”

  * * *

  Sean paused outside the door to Sarah’s office. He’d never been to her space before. It felt like her. Organized and neat and focused. Her head was bowed, her fingers flying over the keyboard. She was entirely focused on her work. He admired her intensity, her drive. He could see that now. Regretted being the young man who’d been unable to accept her for who she was.

  But he wouldn’t change anything. Because she’d had Jack. He still couldn’t believe he’d never run into her. But Jack had joined the unit late and she’d been on another base. They’d been so damn overwhelmed with the war—the fighting and the absolute fucking chaos.

  He shifted and she looked up, her expression softening when she saw him. “So things are pretty fucked up, huh?” he asked.

  “I’m meeting with the battalion commander in an hour.” She sighed and moved around the desk to stand close to him, nudging the door closed with her toe. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kearney is a murderer.”

  “Some people would be hard pressed to see the distinction between killing and murder,” he said after a moment.

  “Some people haven’t been to war. There is a difference between defending your men and killing someone outright in cold blood.” She rested her palm over the US Army nametape covering his heart. “I don’t know what the boss will say,” she said. “But I think you gave your man the benefit of the doubt. Far too many leaders can’t say they’ve done the same thing.”

  He nodded, his heart tight in his chest. “That means a lot to me. More than you know.”

  She leaned up, brushing her lips against his. “So once I’m done, I wanted to see if you’d like to have dinner with us to
night.”

  “Us?” He knew what she was asking. Needed her to say it.

  “Me and Anna.” She finally dared to meet his gaze. “I’d like you to come home with me.” He slid his hand up, covering hers where it rested on his chest.

  “Sarah.”

  “It’s not a marriage proposal,” she said with a quiet smile. “It’s just dinner.”

  But it was so much more than that. It was an offering. A taste of a slice of her personal life that she held apart from her life in the Army.

  Such a simple thing. That overwhelmed him in its magnitude.

  * * *

  Sarah knocked on LTC Gilliad’s door and he motioned her in. She handed him the file and stood silently as he read through her findings and recommendations.

  Finally he looked up at her. “Looks like we need to get CID down here.”

  “Sir, I think that’s the best course of action at this point. We can’t know if the killing was within the rules of engagement or not. Given the tie-in with the contractor, I think it’s best to dig deeper into this.”

  “So much for a simple bar fight,” he said dryly.

  Sarah said nothing.

  “I appreciate you digging into this, Sarah. You’ve been thorough and persistent in hunting this down.”

  “Roger, sir.” She didn’t need the compliment. She just wanted to do her job.

  “If you were investigating this as CID, what would you recommend?”

  She paused, thinking through her options carefully. “Sir, this is really tough. I think both Smith and Kearney have bigger issues than just this. Kearney…I think Kearney needs counseling. Lots of it, or he’s going to end up on the streets. Smith? I can’t get a read on him, sir. I don’t know if he’s telling me the truth or not. I can’t say, honestly.”

  It hurt her to recommend even this. Hated that men might have made decisions during war that would haunt them—legally and morally—for the rest of their lives.