by Will Mackin
—
THE SKY OVER Baker’s Strong was empty. No B-52, no moon, no clouds. Just blue, but not uniformly so. It was dark at the edges, like the void beyond was peeking through. Looking into that void, I imagined Cheyenne back in Reed’s motel room. She was sitting on the corner of the bed with the pistol in her lap, staring at the locked door. Or maybe she was on the highway, with the windows down, and she had to keep brushing her hair out of her face to see where she was going.
Reed was still looking through the scope while firing the laser. “It’s gotta be right fucking there,” he said.
And there it was: as unnatural as a castle suspended in midair. With its walls, gatehouses, drawbridge, and moat, suspended. With the earthen mound on which it was built, suspended, its underside whiskered in shadowed roots. With all its red flags blowing in the wind.
They piped all the shit into a reservoir. When the reservoir was full, they poured diesel on top of the shit and lit it on fire. The diesel burned, and the shit turned to vapor. The vapor rose and condensed into clouds. The clouds thickened, forming drops heavy enough to fall to earth. Then the stars disappeared and it rained shit. This happened often enough. This happened at night, whenever the shit reservoir was full.
Mir’s memorial took place on such a night. Mir was a Belgian Malinois, trained by monks. The monks taught Mir to obey voice commands and hand signals. They taught him to sniff out bad intentions in men. The monks sold Mir to us for a king’s ransom, and we took him to Afghanistan. There, Mir found booby traps, machine gun nests, and false walls. There, Mir flung himself at barricaded shooters. Nights the wild dogs howled, Mir did his best to ignore them, same as us. Then one night one of our own guys, Big Country, shot Mir. The next night it rained shit and we held Mir’s memorial.
The ceremony occurred in the plywood hut where we briefed our missions. First to arrive, I turned on the lights. The intelligence that had been used to brief the previous night’s mission still hung on the wall. Pictures of the men we were after hung in a row. The satellite image of the compound in which we thought we’d find those men was stapled next to their pictures. That image had been captured by the satellite in summer. There were leaves on the trees in the compound’s courtyard. Now it was autumn, almost winter, and those trees were bare. A map of the Helmand River valley, hanging next to the satellite image, showed the patrol route we were supposed to have followed. That route began at a point in the valley’s eastern foothills—where the Chinooks had dropped us off—and continued west in a long blue line toward our target compound by the river.
* * *
—
TWO CHINOOKS CARRIED us forty miles north of Kandahar and into the mountains. They dropped us off at midnight in a high meadow, five clicks east of our target compound. We filed westward across the dry grass. Passing through a narrow saddle, we descended into the valley.
The stars were so bright we could’ve gone unaided. Still, night vision afforded certain advantages. I saw ice crystals trailing off the drone’s wingtips, meteor showers in the ionosphere, plasma connecting unnamed constellations. Down in the valley I observed wind, not just playing on the corn, but the actual movement of air in evergreen loops. The sky was jade, the faraway mountains aluminum, the river like something you’d see out the window of a time machine.
I was at the center of the single-file formation, following Big Country with his M60 slung over his chest, and belts of seven-six-two crossed on his back. Big Country followed Hal, who followed Goon, and so on up to Able and Mir. Frank walked behind me. Descending through the foothills, we passed caves that tunneled deep into the mountains, and wide-open shafts that dropped a hundred feet to underground canals. Wild dogs perched on ridgelines. Meanwhile, rocks gave way to stones, and stones to dirt. The dirt ended in a tall cornfield.
We didn’t know what was hidden in the corn, so Able unleashed Mir, and Mir slipped into the crop at a sprint. He ran a search pattern—visible in the shaking tassels, audible in the torn leaves—of ever-widening scope. When we were no longer able to see or hear Mir running through the corn, Hal signaled: Move. We entered the cornfield on a tractor path that started out wide and flat but soon became narrow and rutted. Corn closed in on either side, bending to touch overhead. On a long thin curve, I lost sight of Big Country and Frank. I continued on course, or what I thought was on course. After it seemed like I’d walked a full circle, the path turned the other way; then the path became less of a path and more like the space between stalks.
I stopped walking, shut my eyes, and listened. I felt the separation between my troopmates and me increasing. The part of me that was always telling myself that I didn’t belong, that I’d never belong, whispered those things to me. The wind died down, the corn fell still. Stars jumbled overhead. I considered breaking radio silence, disrupting the mission, exposing us to detection and possible attack. Then I heard something running at me through the corn.
I stared through the goggles in the direction of the noise. The corn was diseased. The thermal image of blight was an effervescent black. Whatever was running my way was not human. I felt its charge reverberate in the ground. It seemed too big to be Mir, but then again, I’d never been on this end of his attack. I took a knee in the mud and tried to remember Mir’s safe word—Lollipop? Oklahoma? I raised my rifle to my cheek. A switch on the front grip activated both the infrared floodlight and the laser. A switch on the trigger grip released the safety. I stared through one night-vision tube, and through my holographic sight, into the corn. The laser dazzled at the center of the infrared beam, creating the impression of a portal between worlds, through which I might escape. Metal warmed against my cheek. I took the slack out of the trigger, gently. I tried not to think. Then Mir appeared: wild, shining, suspended like a quicksilver dog. Splashing off a mud puddle, he turned away.
I flipped the safety on and lowered my rifle. I stood, and walked toward the river. Still lost, I found myself at the edge of an open field, where crows were propped like suitcases amid rows of stubble. Spotting one of my teammates on the opposite side of the field, I reached for an IR chem light to signal: Friendly. But he cracked his first. And there was Big Country, bathed in infrared waves, holding his chem light like a votive. The image of his face on my night vision alternated between a bronze and a tin mask. His shadow surged over the cornstalks behind him, while the shadows of crows surged my way.
* * *
—
A KNOCK SOUNDED on the plywood door of the hut where the memorial was soon to begin. I opened the door to find a new chaplain standing in the shit rain.
“May I come in?” he asked.
Once inside, the new chaplain wanted to know who I was, and where I was from. I could’ve asked him the same thing. The old chaplain—taller, happier—had shown up at the beginning of deployment to take down our names, points of contact, and next of kin. This information went into a sealed envelope that, the old chaplain had assured us, would be destroyed in the event of our safe return home. Then he’d asked us to bow our heads and pray for our safe returns, which, I remembered thinking, would’ve made me feel like a phony if I’d done it, and would’ve made me feel like an asshole if I hadn’t. This new chaplain, though, didn’t seem like the sort who’d force anybody to pray. In fact, the very idea of prayer seemed to have worn him down. I told him who I was, and where I was from.
“Never been there,” he said.
“You should go sometime,” I said. “There’s a boardwalk with rides,” I continued, leaving out all the fistfights that went on in the parking lots. “And the ocean’s warm in summer.” I failed to mention the trash that occasionally floated ashore. “And there’s this beach where, on the night of a full moon, one wave will leave a million silver minnows flipping in the sand, and the next wave will carry them all back out to sea.”
“Sounds great,” the chaplain said, looking around the plywood hut. “Where do you want me
to sit?”
I unfolded three chairs—one for the chaplain, one for Hal, and one for Able—and placed them against the front wall.
“And is there a lectern or some such?” the chaplain asked.
I dragged the podium out from behind a stack of busted swivel chairs in the corner, and I centered it at the front of the room. Taking his place behind the podium, the chaplain looked out at the rows of empty benches. He must’ve imagined the audience, who’d be looking to him for answers.
“So, tell me what happened,” the chaplain said.
* * *
—
I CRACKED MY chem light and shook it. Big Country signaled: Come. I crossed the muddy field, stubble folding under my boots. Crows hopped aside. I felt relieved, even happy. That’s when Mir flew out of the corn, on a white-hot line toward Big Country.
The 60’s muzzle flash resembled an orchid bloom. Mir folded in half. Crows leapt into the air, flapping their huge black wings, as the boom echoed.
* * *
—
“I’M SORRY,” THE chaplain said.
By now my teammates were entering the room, one by one and in pairs, to sit where they always sat—breachers with breachers; snipers behind them; Rangers, minus Big Country, in the back rows. Hal entered, carrying the ammo can that contained Mir’s ashes. He set it on the podium. Able arrived with a plug of chewing tobacco in his lower lip, and a paper cup to spit in. I sat in the middle row. Chuck wandered in and sat next to me.
Chuck was a civilian contractor in his sixties. His last war had been Vietnam, where he’d done PSYOP, which, as far as I could gather from the stories he’d told, had entailed walking through villages naked and unarmed in broad daylight and spray-painting oxen gold. Afterward he’d gone off to a ranch in Texas, where he’d cleared brush, watered cattle, and driven the plow. Now he was our camp commandant, responsible for the day-to-day upkeep of our tiny compound within the larger FOB, and arguably the best one we’d ever had. Because Chuck knew the difference between those things we needed (hot water, clean shitters, 120 VAC) and those things we wanted (NFL cheerleaders, broadband, tins of bear meat) and those things we didn’t even know we wanted.
Chuck leaned over. “Who wants an orange whip?” he whispered.
“Me,” I said.
“We’ll go right after this.”
The ammo can containing Mir’s ashes was decorated with photos. In one, Mir held the windpipe of a barricaded shooter between his jaws. Blood covered his muzzle, thick as paint. Dust caught in the flash on that dark night looked like stars. In another, Mir licked beans from Able’s plate at a barbecue back home in Virginia. In a third photo, taken from Able’s helmet-cam during an assault on a farmhouse outside Shkin, Mir lunged at some poor Taliban who’d just lifted himself from his hiding place in the muck. Who, if I remembered right, managed to sprint a few yards before a hail of bullets twisted him off his feet.
* * *
—
BIG COUNTRY AND I knelt in the mud on opposite sides of Mir. Big Country dug in his med pouch. I kept pressure on the exit wound with one hand while talking on the radio with the other. I tried to tell everyone where we were and what had happened, but my thumb kept slipping off the transmit button. I used the crows, circling overhead, to reference our position. But there were other crows circling other fields. Able crashed through the corn first. He shoved me out of the way.
“I’m sorry,” Big Country said to Able. “I thought—”
“Get him out of here,” Able said to me.
As I walked with Big Country across the field, the noises of the lifesaving effort fell away. Standing in a far corner, Big Country closed his eyes and sighed. I told him it was a mistake anyone could’ve made and Big Country took a deep breath. Then he started, very softly, to roll his lips in scales. Low to high, do re mi…, then high to low, as if warming up to sing. He scrunched his shoulders and let them drop. He stretched his face into smiles and frowns. He rolled his lips—brrreee, brrrray, brrraaa. It was all very soft and private, with his eyes still closed, which made me want to walk away. Later, Big Country’s boys explained to me that his dream was to star on Broadway. That he did those exercises to keep his voice strong, so that he could audition when his army career was over. Had I walked away from Big Country, I would’ve never known.
* * *
—
IN HIS INVOCATION, the chaplain called God “the author of life.” Hal told a joke, then opened it up to the rest of the troop. We sat on the wooden benches, looking up at the ammo can on the podium, waiting for someone to go first. That someone was Frank, with his boxer’s nose and his big Hawaiian shirt.
Frank reminisced about the night Mir had torn open the barricaded shooter’s throat. This had happened at a walled compound at the base of the Khost bowl, under a new moon. The shooter had hidden behind a woodpile in the far corner of the courtyard. He opened up on us from there as we filed through the gate. Frank’s recollection differed from mine in that Frank felt like he was walking on the moon, whereas I felt like I was at the bottom of the sea. Regardless, we agreed on one key point: what had driven Mir to launch himself at the triggerman, and kill him so viciously, had been love, pure and simple.
Next, Chuck told the story about a mutt who’d lived on the range in Texas, where Chuck had spent the decades between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Chuck explained how, leaving the mutt behind at the house, he’d ride off on horseback to mend distant fences. Not even Chuck knew when he’d be back. Yet this mutt, who apparently lay on the front porch from one unchanging day to the next, did. Furthermore, the mutt knew, from three hundred and sixty degrees of total emptiness, the direction from which Chuck would return. Walking this line, the mutt would meet Chuck halfway. Chuck ended his story there, leaving us to imagine their reunion on a dry, level plain, where shade cast by tall clouds crept over scattered rocks. After Chuck, it was my turn.
I told the story of how Mir had once bitten my hand. This had happened on a winter’s night, at an outpost high in the mountains bordering Pakistan. I was outside, in the snow, walking to the shitters. Starlight had fallen on Able and Mir walking toward me. As we’d converged, Mir had wheeled around and chomped my hand. His teeth had hit bone, and it had stung like a motherfucker. I’d said as much, loudly. Able had stopped walking and turned on his headlamp.
“What?” he’d asked.
“Fucker bit my hand,” I’d said.
Able had shone his light on Mir, bug-eyed and panting steam. Then he’d turned his light on my hand. Through the fog of my own breath, I was surprised to find the skin unbroken. I was surprised that my hand was not on fire.
During my eulogy for Mir, I talked about how sharply that bone had stung. How that sting had spread to every other bone in my hand. How it had risen into the bones of my arm and neck. How the pain had almost made me feel bad for the enemy.
Subsequent eulogies turned into calls for revenge. The inevitability of this saddened me more than Mir’s death, or the fact that the men we’d been after the night before had escaped. In all likelihood, they’d spooked after hearing the 60’s report. We’d found their warm bedrolls in a tearoom. Their phone booth odor had lingered, but without Mir we were unable to track it into the night. Now we’d have to hunt those men down and kill them, one by one. Then hunt down their fathers and sons. Then their cousins and uncles, and so on.
As the penultimate eulogy wound to an unforgiving close, Able tilted in his seat, looking a little slack-jawed. He was either lost in thought or half-asleep. Probably the latter, since he’d stayed awake all day. Not only had he lost his best friend, he’d carried his bagged-up remains to the morgue, and waited for Mir to be cremated. He’d walked his ashes back to the camp. Then, while he was on the phone to the States, arranging for Mir’s replacement, he’d searched the hard drive for photos to decorate the ammo can. He’d printed those photos, cut them out, and
taped them to the sides, all the while thinking about what he was going to say for the eulogy.
Hal elbowed Able and pointed to the podium: Your turn. Able looked at the podium as if he’d never seen such a thing. The plug of chewing tobacco, poking out from his lower lip, appeared cold and whiskered. Able used his tongue to roll it into his paper cup. Standing, he set the cup on the seat of his folding chair. He walked a bent line to the podium, and stared out at us through bloodshot eyes.
“It was a Tuesday, three years ago. November,” Able began.
He’d left our compound in Virginia Beach at zero four and driven all the way into the Green Mountains of Vermont. The leaves were all sorts of colors. He’d reached the monastery gates around noon, and parked across the street. The wrought iron bars were topped with angels. There was a call box on the stone pillar to his right. He’d pushed the button and said, “I’m Dave Jones from Poseidon Security,” or whatever the cover story was at the time. “I’m here for the dog.”
The monk on the other end of the call box was like, “Great. We just need you to come inside and complete our assessment.”
Able had picked up dogs from the monks before. He’d done all of their assessments. He knew that the monks would sit him down in their little classroom and ask their little questions. What are your shortcomings? How do they prevent you from being a better person? What does it mean to be a better person? Able understood the rationale behind this line of questioning—that his limitations, via his interactions with the dog, would become the dog’s limitations. That only through a constant process of self-improvement would he and the dog evolve into a truly effective team. Able did not necessarily agree with this philosophy, which the monks liked to call “the mirror.” But he had to hand it to them. They’d built a highly successful operation upon it.