Fire in the Blood

by Perry O'Brien

  They watched together for a little while in silence.

  Over the last week Moko had assumed a battle-buddy intimacy with Coop, driven by his discovery that they were both Mainers. It was a lucky friendship; while Moko was technically a midlevel NCO, his status at K2 was closer to that of a minor warlord.

  Now the televisions showed a pretty young correspondent in the newsroom. She had sharp blue eyes the same color as the Texas sky into which the Columbia had vanished. The same color as Kay’s. Coop rubbed at his chest, where he felt a hot pain growing. It was like this, anytime something called up her memory. A tender stab, like a stinger slipped in between his ribs.

  Ask him now, Coop thought. The blue eyes of the reporter were an intrusion against his resolve, and he worried that if he was too keenly reminded of why he needed to approach Moko, he might lose the courage to do it at all.

  “No way,” said Moko, out of nowhere. “I’m not gonna suck your dick.”

  “What’d you say?” said Coop, looking around, seeing other grunts looking.

  Moko grinned. “Just fucking with you, man. You look so nervous.” Then he lowered his voice and leaned in. “So what you need?”

  Coop felt his face go red. “Maybe we can talk outside?”

  “Okay, but hang on,” said Moko, distracted again by the screen. “I want to see this.”

  Now a correspondent stood in a Nacogdoches field, one finger held to his ear, answering questions from the reporter.

  Coop tried to stay patient. He looked around, checked the button of his cargo pocket, where he’d put $1,200 in an envelope, along with a printed copy of his emergency message from the Red Cross.

  “Rick, I want to ask you a question on the minds of many Americans,” the newswoman was saying. Her face assumed a grim intensity. “Is it possible that we’re looking at some kind of terrorist attack?”

  Several soldiers in the airport made guffaws and fart sounds with their mouths, but Rick on television bobbed his head with utmost seriousness and waited a few beats before responding.

  “Great question, Janet. Authorities are telling me there’s nothing, at this time, to suggest terrorist involvement in the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. But it’s probably too early to know anything for sure.”

  “Terrorists in space, you imagine that?” said Moko. He scooped up his poncho. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  Leaving the terminal, Moko and Coop came to a covered marketplace of tarpaulin roofs and ramshackle stores, each operated by an impoverished-looking Uzbek local. Mostly they sold PX crap, backpacks and commemorative coins and camouflage teddy bears. Moko stopped under one of the tarps to light a Black and Mild. He smoked the plastic-tipped cigar with one hand cupping the ember, and Coop couldn’t help a flash of judgment: this pogue rear-echelon flyboy, smoking like he was worried about snipers.

  “So what you need,” said Moko. “Calling cards? Pills?”

  “That other thing we talked about,” said Coop, keeping his voice low. “The orders. I’m ready to go.”

  Moko blinked and stared at him. Just then a colossal shadow moved across the tarmac, and they both turned to look. A C-17 Globemaster, gliding after a tiny airman waving neon batons.

  “You hear me?” said Coop.

  Moko took the cigar from his mouth and threw it into the gravel. “You’re really ready to pull chocks?”

  “You said you could do it,” said Coop.

  Moko looked back at the horizon. “Understand,” he said, “if you get caught, I will categorically deny any kind of arrangement between us.”

  “Sure,” said Coop.

  “Hang on, I’m fucking serious. Do you doubt I’ll be able to produce witnesses on my behalf, who will all swear I never helped your ass in any way?”

  “Not at all,” said Coop, noting how fast the same-state camaraderie had faded, now that they were talking business.

  Moko studied him. “And you understand I’d need a thousand dollars.”

  Coop patted his cargo pocket. “We can do it now?”

  Moko’s office at K2 was a giant shipping container perched on the gravelly shore of a water-filled depression. Someone had removed several odd-angled sections from the hull and bolted sheets of Plexiglas in their place to make windows, complete with drapes of camouflage netting. The hot, rust-filled gloom overflowed with cardboard boxes, supply crates, and ammunition canisters.

  Moko stooped toward a miniature fridge. “Would you care for a nonalcoholic malt beverage?” he said.

  “No thanks,” said Coop.

  “All we can get out here, thanks to Wesley Clark. The fucker.”

  Moko seated himself in an ergonomic black leather chair with a backrest of octagonal mesh, the undercarriage sprouting a complex system of chrome adjustment levers.

  “You like that?” said Moko, tracking Coop’s gaze. “When I first got here I sent a query to Command Supply about our budget. Got back a fax with, what’s it called, one of those loopy sideways eights?”

  “The infinity symbol,” said Coop.

  “Yeah man. Un-fucking-limited.”

  While Moko’s computer booted up, Coop peered around at the stacks of boxes. Many were open. Cartons of Mefloquin and Ambien. Flashlights, velcro pouches, ballistic sunglasses, and all manner of gear mounts, sprockets, and weapon attachments. He picked up a box of frame-lock Striders with coyote-colored grips.

  “You like those knives?” said Moko. “Give you one for a hundred bucks. That’s like eighty percent off the asking.”

  “Nice operation you have going,” Coop said, surveying the hoarded equipment. Thinking how back in Afghanistan there were guys still waiting on armor plates for their vests.

  “Shit, I’m small-time,” said Moko. “You should see what the contractors have going. Talk about a bunch of gear queers. Not to mention they got hash, porn, real booze, whatever you want. Outside the wire I hear they even have a hooch full of girls.”

  “Huh,” said Coop. “So how do we do this?”

  “Pure fucking magic, that’s how,” said Moko, turning back to his laptop. He hit more keys, cycling through a series of menus and forms. “Okay, I’ve got Kandahar as your point of embarkation. Where you going?”

  “New York.”

  “You want JFK, LaGuardia, or Newark?”

  “The Bronx, whatever’s closest.”

  “LaGuardia it is,” he said, and began flipping through a spiral-bound book. “Hang on, I gotta call up the movement designator code.”

  Moko made some entries into the computer.

  “And how long you plan on being gone?”

  “Just a few days.”

  “All right,” said Moko, “you know the deal, right? Forty-eight hours until you’re technically AWOL. And this provisional pass I’m cutting, it’ll only exist on paper. Someone looks you up in the system, you’re out of luck.”

  “They do that?”

  “Unlikely. MILPER is all dicked up these days because of restructuring. Plenty of guys traveling outside the system.”

  “Wait, what happens if they do look me up?”

  Moko sighed dramatically. “Lemme make this Army-proof: Don’t give anyone a reason.”

  Coop flexed his jaw. Six days, he thought. Six days he’d been stuck in bureaucratic limbo, waiting for the Army to unfuck itself and green-light his emergency leave. And now Kay’s funeral was just a few days away, leaving Coop with no other choice but to pay off this computer gnome, to break the first rule of military service: Never abandon your duty station without orders.

  Coop took one of the Striders from the box. He felt the heft of the blade in his palm. Then, while Moko was focused on the screen, Coop transferred the knife to his back pocket.

  Meanwhile the printer chugged out three sheets of paper: blue, yellow, and
white. Moko crumpled the blue and yellow forms and hucked them into a burn barrel, then set the white form down and signed a squiggle over the signature line marked “Adjutant General.” He handed Coop the forged orders.

  Coop looked them over. “How do I get back?”

  “At the airport, tell them your duty station, and that you lost your papers. They’ll issue a Form 460.”

  Coop folded the orders gently and put them in his pocket. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You’re on the manifest for a flight leaving at 0340 Zulu, connecting in Dublin.”

  From his cargo pocket Coop dug out the money and slapped the envelope on Moko’s desk. It represented one-fifth of his total savings from the war.

  Moko toasted with his nonalcoholic beer. “Slaínte, motherfucker. Don’t get caught.”

  * * *

  —

  Back in the transition tent, Coop packed up his gear, preparing for his flight, still seven hours off. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so he clipped his tactical light to a loop of cord hanging over his cot while he played with his new knife, oiling the mechanism so he could flip it open with one hand. Then he reread one of Kay’s postcards. All of them were handmade, with illustrations from an old book of fifteenth-century religious prints (“Maybe it’s unhealthy,” Kay had written in her first correspondence, “sending portraits of doomed martyrs to my overseas soldier man”).

  The image on the back of the card he’d selected was titled “Madonna and Child in a Glory.” The woodcut showed a red-robed woman wearing a crown of stars. In the sky over the Madonna’s head was a crescent moon, and at the bottom of the postcard was a quote by someone named Jorgius: “As the Moon rules the tides, so Mary by her prayers helps those who are tossed on the bitter surges of the world.”

  Coop flipped the card over and read, even though he knew the words by heart:

  Hello My Husband,

  I hope you get this, I know you said they’re still working out the kinks in the mail. Hope you don’t mind these postcards. Some triple-p (pervy postal private, I just made that up) will probably be reading my innermost thoughts, but I figured the Patriot Act lets them read your mail anyway, right? I really hope you’re safe over there. I tell myself you are OK. This distance is so cruel, Coop. Do you know how much your baby misses you?

  It was one of the postcards from the early months of deployment, when things had still been good between them. And now nothing. Nothing more.

  Two days ago Coop had waited in line for the chance to use one of K2’s sat-phones. Each booth was a plywood cubicle, the walls covered in dirty carvings, a knife-marked collage of tits and pussies and spurting cocks. Coop dialed in the code for Pope Air Force Base, where an operator bounced his call to the New York Police Department. He was hoping to get more information about what had happened to Kay, about how it had happened at all. But the NYPD operator told him she couldn’t say anything over the phone, he’d need to come to the precinct in person and be prepared to offer proof of his relationship with the deceased. In response Coop informed the operator he was in the middle of fucking Uzbekistan and wondered if she could make an exception. She thanked him for his service but said that being a military man he should appreciate there are rules people have to follow.

  Coop slipped the card back inside the envelope and with great care returned it to the stack, which he kept in a Ziploc at the bottom of his duffel bag.

  I’m a widower, Coop thought.

  Widower. The word sounded like a title for someone who makes widows for a living.

  The wind picked up outside. Coop imagined the wildfires stoked into new fury, flames spreading across the foothills. He lay awake the rest of the night, listening to the tent walls relax and go taut, like the lung sounds of a giant animal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Red light glowed from the tip of one wing, and Coop watched it flicker against the onrush of frozen clouds. He was thinking of Kay’s heartbeat, the wiry throb of her pulse. Don’t start, he told himself. There’s nothing you can do. Focus on your surroundings. The felt rainbow on the back of the airplane chair, a hot cup of coffee in an eco-friendly polystyrene cup. Across the aisle, a suited man in heavy sleep. Coop imagined flies buzzing around his open mouth.

  In the seat next to him there was a woman knitting. A ropy trail of purple yarn wound off the folding tray and into her lap, and in the darkened cabin the needles made an insect clicking. Coop found himself studying her fingerwork. Click, swoop, click, swoop, a private cadence, mangled by the words from the Red Cross message: hit and run, hit and run, click, swoop, hit and run.

  “It’s for my brother,” said the woman. Coop blinked at her. Doughy face but still pretty, flashing him with big friendly teeth. A small gold crucifix hung between her breasts.

  “The scarf,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Coop, and he turned back toward the window.

  “So, are you just coming back?” said the woman.

  Coop nodded.

  “Wow,” she said. “I can’t even imagine.”

  Coop scratched at a rash on his elbow. While waiting for his flight in Dublin he’d become convinced that his uniform was still carrying particles of Afghan sand.

  “Well,” she said, a little more tentatively, “your wife must be happy you’re coming home.”

  “Goddamn,” Coop said loudly, shaking his burned hand. Hot coffee dripped down the rim of his crushed cup. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  “Oh no,” said the woman, making room for him to slip into the aisle.

  In the bathroom he stooped to run water over his scalded hand, the skin raw and pink against the dull gold sheen of his wedding ring. During his last night in K2 he’d retrieved the band from the Ziploc at the bottom of his duffel bag, a talisman for his rogue journey. Now he regretted it.

  A few minutes later he was back in his seat. Out of the limbo rose New York City, a kingdom of orange lights. The plane banked toward the glowing coast. The pilot thanked everyone for flying and said he wanted to offer a particular thanks to the soldier in the twenty-seventh row. The lady with the scarf beamed. The pilot went on saying how proud everyone was of our men and women in uniform. Coop stared down at his lap during the scattered applause. Across the aisle, the man in the suit came awake in a fit of blinking annoyance, trying to make sense of the disruption.

  Coop’s first priority after arriving in New York was to use a real toilet. For seven months he’d been stuck with the claustrophobic reek of Port-a-Johns, where you had to control your gag reflex for any latrine trip lasting longer than thirty seconds. Now he sat in the men’s room of LaGuardia’s USO lounge, a private stall with crisp rolls of toilet paper and white-tiled floors. He listened to the murmur of ventilation in the walls. Afterward, Coop had just returned to the terminal when he felt a panicked, diagonal nakedness across the fat of his back. He hurried back to the lounge, banging on the doors of the bathroom stalls, then putting his hands on his head when he found them empty.

  “Something the matter, sweetheart?” said a frowning, middle-aged USO worker as Coop rooted through cushions in the sitting area, looking for his M4, and it was then he remembered he hadn’t lost his weapon. It was back in Afghanistan, racked in the unit armory.

  Back in the neon concourse, Coop reeled at the sick-sweet odor of cinnamon buns, the dizzying glare of the lights, and the urgent beeping of a golf cart. Something clipped his shoulder, hard, almost making him drop his duffel bag, and Coop whipped around but it was just a red-faced suit on a cellphone, dragging a wounded piece of luggage. His anxiety worsened as he exited the airport into Ground Transportation: a freezing world of concrete, traffic, and blowing snow. Coop waited shivering beneath a vibrating overpass, trying to figure out where he was supposed to go. There was a long line to get a cab. An Arab guy in a leather jacket came up and whispered “Taxi?” like it was some kind of code word.
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br />   Coop shook his head, feeling a sudden itch to move. He shouldered his duffel bag and marched off toward a narrow, snow-covered sidewalk, and soon found himself walking along a congested freeway that led out of the airport. The cars kicked up icy spray as they passed, and quickly his desert boots were saturated with freezing silt from the road.

  As he walked, Coop did a slow 360 every minute or so to check his rear, trying to keep it nonchalant. He imagined himself at the center of a geometric flower, direct bullet paths and graceful mortar arcs, vectors of potential attack radiating from a million points of origin: far rooftops, windows, the highway, the airstrip of snow and blue lights. Yet the cars all followed one another in an uninterrupted line, edging together in the imagined safety of their vehicles, not understanding that a bomb of sufficient power would kill them all and mix their pieces together in fire. Coop wondered how they could all be so stupid, especially in this city, where the war had started.

  As if convened by these thoughts, three cars ahead of him tried to merge into one lane, and amid the sharp blare of horns Coop found himself scuttling away, a sudden gravity of nerves bringing his body into a low crouch. A Prius swerved around the blocked cars, and through the window Coop caught a disturbed expression on the face of the driver.

  Coop got back to his feet and lifted his bag. The cold had soaked his desert-thin uniform, but he was more conscious of a throbbing embarrassment. The problem, he felt, was war movies, where you never saw the tough guys flinch or take cover. But in Coop’s experience the best soldiers came off like tweekers, with quivering jaws and eyeballs buzzing in their sockets; signs of a superstitious nervous system. So excuse me if I flinch, he thought, glaring after the Prius as it vanished into the river of red lights.

  Once outside LaGuardia, Coop picked the first place he saw, a cheap-looking roadside bunker called the Crotona Motel. At the front desk sat a black guy with thick glasses and a cursive tattoo on his neck. His name tag said Denis.

  Coop came in expecting attention for the uniform, but the man didn’t look up until Coop cleared throat.