Brave Deeds

by David Abrams

  Fish rolls forward, gravel crackling under the van’s tires.

  The speaker continues to blare at us, louder now and higher pitched. Another rifle pokes out of the slit in the turret.

  Arrow walks forward with his hands in the air.

  The loudspeaker gives two shouts and Arrow yells something back, but in the next instant two shots ring out. Arrow dives to the left as asphalt chips in a puff of dust ten feet in front of him. Fish brakes 150 yards out from the barrier.

  Arrow screams, spread-eagled on the pavement.

  The next rounds, when they come, will puncture the van’s grille. After that, according to the rules of engagement, we know we can expect the bullets to shatter the windshield and bore straight into our heads, if these guys are good shots—and, from what we can see, they are.

  Our hearts thump. Our scalps burn with prickles. Our mouths go slack.

  Even the woman has fallen silent. She knows what’s going on. Maybe she’s had her car fired on once or twice when she was out grocery shopping.

  The two gate guards come at us, walking with rifles against their cheeks, slow and steady.

  Cheever moves to open the side door.

  “Don’t!” Drew yells. “That could make it worse.”

  Cheever has the door slid halfway back before he stops.

  “But—but—” he sputters. “Can’t they see we’re on the same team? Our uniforms—”

  “Iraqis can steal a set of DCUs same as anyone else,” Park says.

  “We need to go help Arrow.” Now Cheever has a boot out the door.

  “Cheeve!” Fish yells. “Stop! Please.”

  It’s the “please” that does it. Fish isn’t known for his pleases and thank yous.

  Cheever gets back in the van.

  “No sudden moves,” Fish says. “All nice and calm now, okay?” He’s staring out the window, talking to himself as much as he is to the rest of us.

  We hunker down below dashboard level. Arrow, Mr. Big Balls himself, can take it from here. We hope.

  O, nestled between the dry husks of what were once tulips and roses, breathes shallow. His eyes are glazed and his skin is paper white.

  “O,” we say. “O.”

  O, at ease in his bed of flowers, smells the ghost of a bouquet he once gave his ex-wife. No, wife—his wife. Their fourth anniversary. Roses, dyed lavender because that was her favorite color at the time. They’d been having a bad week because she thought he’d forgotten their anniversary. Melinda was all stony silences and averted eyes, acting like he hadn’t been picking up any of the hints she’d dropped, breadcrumbs strewn in the path before him. He saw the back of her head a lot that week. What did she know? He heard everything. He listened and absorbed, dammit.

  That’s why, when he showed up at her workplace, standing at the front desk of the fitness club with a fistful of lavender roses and, in his pocket, the earrings she’d pointed out in the glass case at Costco a month earlier, O had a big, goofy grin on his face. He couldn’t wait to see her expression when she came through the doors from the towel room. He would be redeemed, dammit, re-fucking-deemed.

  God, these roses smell good, he thinks now in the back of the van. He closes his eyes and sinks back into the flowers. The petals crackle and crumble behind his head.

  And then he is running across that field again and he is reaching the other side and he is taking Melinda in his arms.

  “O!” we cry. We put our hands on him, as if to pull him back, but it’s no use.

  He’s gone.

  We sit back, stunned. This can’t be happening. No. No no no. This isn’t real, is it?

  The woman breaks our silence with a sharp cry. She bucks her hips, arches her back.

  Cheever feels something odd and fluffy well up inside him. He scoots across the van to be by her side. He takes her hand and lets her grip him hard as she can. He doesn’t care. In fact, he hopes she’ll break his fingers so he can feel her pain.

  Outside, on the pavement, Arrow is totally focused on the dark mouths of the rifle barrels coming toward him.

  “Guys,” he calls out. He coughs against a tickle of dust in his throat. All he can think to do is call out his name, rank, and unit. Just like in a goddamn movie. He repeats his name over and over until the rifles halt their advance and one of them goes to sling arms while the other barrel keeps pointing at Arrow’s head.

  A pair of boots approaches, then stops ten feet away.

  Arrow tries to lift his head, but his helmet stops him from going very far. “Friendly,” he coughs. “We’re friendlies.”

  A voice, high and thin with a Tennessee twang, says from far above, “Well, Jesus Harvey Christ! We thought you was al-Qaeda or something. Welcome to FOB Saro, you lucky son of a bitch.”

  53

  Zero to Hero

  Arrow is inside the Entry Control Point’s shack, talking to one of the guards. There are a lot of hand gestures on Arrow’s part.

  The other ECP guard stands between the van and the small shack. Like he’s gonna stop the van from rolling through into the base.

  This gate, the one we’ve stumbled on, is in a remote corner of FOB Saro. There is no one else around except us, the two guards, and a plastic bag skipping across the road to the barrier fence, which it hugs like a lover.

  Arrow is still talking. It doesn’t look like he’s getting anywhere.

  From inside the van, Fish goes, “Fuck this.” He pulls the keys from the ignition, grabs his rifle, and gets out.

  “Where you going, Fish?”

  “Just gonna go have a talk with this guy, Drew.”

  “Arrow said to—”

  “Chill, Drew, chill. Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere soon.” Fish slams the door shut and walks toward the ECP.

  Cheever grumbles, “So I can’t get out, but he can?”

  Drew goes, “Not like we could stop him. Fish being Fish.”

  The guard at the barrier tightens the grip on his rifle as Fish walks up. He’s a short guy shaped like a bulldog. The way he wears his sunglasses, he obviously thinks he’s Hollywood. A walkie-talkie is clipped to the shoulder of his flak vest like a badge he wants to make sure you see.

  “Hold it right there,” he says in a high, guitar-string voice.

  “Relax, brother. We’re the good guys here. See?” Fish points to the US flag embroidered on his shoulder.

  “I’ve been told to keep the rest of you in the van.”

  “I just want to ask you something.”

  Fish is right up on him now, but the guard doesn’t raise his weapon, keeps it low and easy at belt level. That’s his first mistake.

  His second mistake is allowing Fish to keep his own M4 slung over his shoulder. We don’t know for sure, but this might be the dumbest soldier in the United States Army. If he really thinks we’re a threat, he would have taken Fish’s rifle right away.

  Third mistake: Fish gets to ask his question.

  “You got a cigarette I can borrow? I mean have?”

  The guard wavers. “Yeah, sure,” he says, taking one hand off his rifle to dig in his cargo pocket. He hands Fish a crumpled pack. Fourth mistake. “Keep it. There’s only two left anyway.”

  “Thanks, man.” Fish pretends to look for something, pats his pockets. “You got a light, too?”

  The guard hands him a lighter.

  “Thanks.” Fish tries to light his cigarette, but there is wind—the same breeze that pushed the bag into the fence. Fish goes, “You think we could step around the back of the guard shack so we’re out of the wind?”

  The guard looks at the van.

  Fish goes, “Don’t worry about them. They aren’t going anywhere. I’ve got the keys.” He pulls the key ring out of his pocket and jangles it in the guard’s face.

  The guard sighs. “Okay, fine.”

  They walk behind the turret. Fish lights his cigarette, then leans back against the barrier arm.

  Fish goes, “Shit, what a day.” He holds the smoke in his l
ungs as long as he can, then lets it drift from his lips like slow-creeping fog.

  “What’ve you guys been doing out there?”

  “Just walking.”

  Arrow comes out of the guard shack alone. He starts toward the van, then stops when he sees Fish out back with the other guard. “Fish?”

  Fish waves to him. “Hey, Arrow.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Just having a smoke and a chat. I’ll be right over.”

  Arrow goes, “Make it snappy,” then gets in the van.

  “That your squad leader?” the guard asks.

  “He likes to think he is.”

  “What’s with the van, anyway?”

  Fish looks at the flower-topped cargo van. He sees Arrow turn in the front seat, then lunge toward the back as he gets the news about O. A muffled cry of grief rises from the van. All falls silent for a few seconds, then a female voice begins her ascendency along a scale of pain once more, huffing a series of notes that go “Oo-ooo-oooo!”

  Fish turns back to the gate guard, picking a fleck of tobacco off his tongue. “Like I said, we were walking. And then we got tired so we kind of hijacked the van.”

  “Hijacked it? Shit.”

  “It’s a long story. We’ll sit down over a couple of beers one day and I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

  “Who’re you guys with, anyway? Third Herd?”

  “Tenth Mountain.”

  “Tenth Mountain? I thought they were up at Taji.”

  “They are. We are.”

  “So what’re you doing here in the city?”

  “We’re just out for a walk. Like I said.”

  Now the guard is looking like he wishes he didn’t give Fish those cigarettes. He grips his rifle and holds it higher.

  “I think you need to go finish your smoke in the van.”

  “I’d rather stay right here and finish it. Then I’ll go back to the van.”

  “No, you need to—”

  The walkie on the gate guard’s shoulder crackles. He half turns from Fish and speaks into it, listens, and speaks again, signing off, then turns back to Fish. “You’re to wait here.”

  Fish laughs. “First you tell me I need to get in the van and now you say I need to stay put. Which is it, Einstein?”

  “I mean you all need to wait here. At the ECP.”

  Fish pulls in another lung of smoke, holds it, then releases it, this time in a sharp, hard puff. “Okay, look. There’s something else I need to tell you. We’re kind of in a hurry. We’ve got an appointment we need to get to. It’s somewhere else here on the FOB, so we can’t afford to sit around and wait here all afternoon.”

  “Well, looks like it will have to wait.”

  “It can’t wait.”

  “Sorry, higher says to keep you here for now.”

  “Higher, huh?”

  “Yeah. You know, the head shed. My higher.”

  “Look, I’m asking you to let us do one little thing and then we’ll be done.”

  “Higher says—”

  “Just one small thing,” Fish insists. “It’ll take twenty minutes, max. We go do this one thing, and we’ll come right back here. Then we’re all yours. Higher can do whatever they’re gonna do to us.”

  “Sorry,” the guard says. “I’ve been told to keep you here.”

  “I understand. That’s probably what I’d do, too, I was in your shoes. Unless I had a better option.”

  “Buddy, there are no other options. Higher says keep you, I keep you.”

  Fish nods. In the time since we first arrived, there’s been no other traffic, no other vehicles approaching the ECP. What kind of sleepy, backwater FOB is this place anyway? Fish looks around. The nearest building is a half mile away and it looks deserted. The road leading from the guard shack is cracked, weeds poking out of the macadam. The guard shack is small, big enough for two of them, maybe one chair. No other equipment—no computers or cameras, just a walkie and their weapons. There’s not even a shitter nearby. These guys must be a pair of grade-A fucktards to draw the short straw for this duty.

  Fish smiles at the guard. “Let me ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to be a hero or a zero?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to be a hero or do you want to be a zero?”

  The guard chuffs in dismissal. “I don’t like my options.”

  “Why not?”

  “Zeros are … well, zeros. And heroes usually end up getting killed.”

  “What if I said you could be a hero and stay alive? A twofer deal.”

  The guard shakes his head. “I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. You all need to sit tight, shut up, and wait until we get further instructions from higher.”

  The wind kicks up again, makes the weeds in the road shiver.

  Fish goes, “What’s your name, private?”

  “Abernathy. Obviously.” The guard points to his name tape.

  “I meant your first name.”

  “David. Why?”

  “I’ll say again: Do you want to be a hero or a zero, David?”

  “This again, huh?” Abernathy sighs. “Okay, I’ll play along. A hero. Why?”

  “Not why. How.”

  “Okay, how?”

  “You get on the horn and tell them you’re bringing us in to higher yourself.”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “You’re out of your mind, dude. I can’t leave the ECP. Duncan gets left alone, he’ll freak out. Besides, I’d get an Article Fifteen for abandoning my post.”

  “What time’s shift change?”

  “Any minute now.”

  “Okay, we wait for any minute to arrive, then you take us.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “No, I’m desperate. Like I said, we’ve got someplace to be. What time’s it, anyway?”

  “Nearly sixteen hundred.”

  “Shit,” Fish says.

  “You miss your appointment?”

  “Most of it. But there might still be something left. We just need to get there.”

  Abernathy looks back at the guard shack. Fish gives him a minute to think without putting on any more pressure.

  The guard shakes his head. “I don’t know about any of this.”

  “What don’t you know? You take us to higher headquarters, easy peasy. We’re going there anyway. Only difference is, you take us, and you take us right now.”

  “This all sounds pretty hinky.”

  “Nothing hinky about it, Abernathy. It’s all on the up-and-up.”

  “Besides, why should I take you? Higher is sending some cops down here to pick you up.”

  Fish goes all electric. “They’re what?”

  “You heard me. MPs are on their way right now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Abernathy grins. “It never came up in conversation.”

  “Well, shit, Abernathy. This changes everything.”

  Fish raises his M4, pulls back the charging handle, then lays the muzzle against the side of Abernathy’s head, gentle as a kiss. The grin falls off the kid’s face, goes splat in the dirt at their feet.

  “Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa!”

  “You should have told me about the MPs.”

  “Fucking A, man! Fucking A! This is some UCMJ shit right here. That’s what this is!”

  “Keep it down, Abernathy.” Fish looks over at the guard shack. The other guy hasn’t even poked his head out. He must be either scared, lazy, or deaf. One thing’s for sure—he’s just edged out Abernathy for the title of Worst Soldier in the World.

  Fish reaches over and takes the rifle from the guard’s hands. Never mind. Abernathy has the crown back now.

  “Jesus Harvey Christ! I thought you said this was gonna be on the up-and-up.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Arrow gets out of the van. His face is pinched. He’s still dealing with O, but now
this is happening—everything sliding out of control again. He spreads his hands: What the fuck?

  Fish waves back: We’re cool.

  “This is so wrong,” Abernathy whimpers.

  “You left me no choice.”

  “Bullshit. Jesus God, man, you can’t wait to see the inside of Leavenworth, can you?”

  “To be honest, I don’t care right now.” He taps Abernathy’s helmet with the tip of the barrel. “It’s been a long day. And you’re wasting my time trying to decide whether you should shit your pants right now or hold it for later.”

  Arrow starts toward them. Fish holds up a hand to stop him. He’s got this, no cause for alarm, boys and girls. Arrow shakes his head, but gets back in the van.

  We wait and watch for the next move.

  Fish goes, “Okay, Abernathy. Here comes your big moment.”

  “You are in such deep shit, man.”

  “I want you to go over and poke your head in the guard shack—just your head—and tell what’s-his-name—”

  “Duncan.”

  “And tell Duncan you just got a call on your walkie from higher saying the MPs got diverted and now they’re authorizing you to bring us in. And that you cleared it with your sergeant of the guard—what’s his name?”

  “Staff Sergeant Molina.”

  “That you cleared it with Sergeant Molina and he, Duncan, is supposed to sit tight until shift change, which is any minute now, and you’ll meet him later at the chow hall and tell him all about it. Then you walk around our van, nice and easy, and get behind the wheel.”

  “Duncan’ll never buy it.”

  “So you make him buy it.” Fish gives a barrel tap on Abernathy’s helmet at each word.

  Abernathy, calmer now, says, “You’re bluffing. You won’t shoot me.”

  Fish raises the rifle to his shoulder. A look comes into his eyes. “Take a guess at how many people I’ve killed. Not counting today. It’s no big deal for me to do it one more time. Go ahead. See if I’m bluffing.”

  Fish thinks of Charles Yardley, bleeding from his eighteen wounds.

  Abernathy sees the look in Fish’s eyes. His mouth is too dry for him to speak, so he just nods.