A New Day in America (23 page)

“Nay, come here hon.”

She walks inside the cabin.

“Hold this steady, OK? Try your best not to let it move.”

“OK Pa,” Naomi nods, shivering, trying not to shiver, trying to hold on tight to the bottom of the wheel. A bead of sweat dribbles down her forehead.

Nos goes back to his crouch and finds the tail rotor once more. The rhythm of the waters guide his scope in a circle and every time the bob hits its peak his hairs fall on the tail.

Here goes
.

Stock firmly in shoulder. Cheek behind the scope. Focus on hairs. At the third revolution, he fires.

The shot pops his ears.

He bolts and checks the scope.

The helo hovers. It turns toward Nos.

And then keeps turning. And turning and turning, falling like a black snowflake.

Damn right
.

Nos blows a kiss as the chopper spins out below the mists and out of sight.

“Beautiful, Nay,” he tells her, kissing her on her sweaty forehead.

Nos turns and bares northwest. The current quickens and the water whitens as they ride along the peninsula toward the river. They pass under the tall beams of two bridges when Nos sees the charcoal smoke.

“Nay, in the cabin.”

He draws his rifle and points the scope downriver. The fallen helicopter idles on the water’s surface like a great hippo with two huddled men inside. The Apache has a .50-caliber minigun and rocket pods. Can carry nine men. Two are inside.

Nos directs his scope along the land and sees no one. He then lays crosshairs on the water and traces the running current. A black shadow runs in the deep green and he fires. Waits. Blood fills the water, and a body rises to the surface. He sees another shadow and fires again, and again, and again, and bodies strapped to air tanks pop up above the water like buoys. Only he can’t find the point.

Waves lap along the rigid hull. He hears a bump from below.

He rushes to Nay and cups her face.

“Naomi, hold your breath!”

Nos hurls her into the water. He floors the pedals and speeds away. He dives in the water as the boat careens toward land and explodes—the hull blows into pieces and massive waves concuss, driving him below.

A beam of light from an amphibious rifle searches for Nos underwater. He unlaces his boots, kicks them off, and shoots upward as the light finds his feet and bullets punch though his falling boots. Nos tunnels after him as the gunman jabs a bayonet knife. Nos evades and swims overtop. Nos grabs his mask, tears it off, and cranks a choke under his chin. Nos crushes him breathless. Nos puts the mask to his own face, breathing the air from his enemy’s tank.

Nos removes the tank straps from the corpse and slides them onto his back. He takes the ASM-DT and the flippers from the frogman’s feet and is quickly flying back up to Naomi.

She drifts shore side in her life vest. A solid piece of the scattered boat hull floats nearby and Nos swims it over to her.

“Here Nay, hold this.”

He swims her to shore as she shivers. He helps her onto the grassy bank. Nothing dry to cover her. She makes a turtle shell, hugging her knees as Nos rubs her dry. Only he can’t stay.

“Be right back.”

Mor
e pressing business
. He dives and comes up at the river’s center. He hovers afloat and looks past the floating corpses to the fallen helicopter.

Nos swims along the river floor and points the ASM-DT light up toward a corpse floating in the skyward light. He swims up to him and removes the C4 from his pack and dives back down to the floor. He cuts the light and swims through the murky brown-green until he is beneath the Apache. He flies up to the surface and hooks the explosive to the bottom of the helo. He swims back upstream and waits.

The explosion blows, sending the chopper scraps in the air. A wave through the underwater current shoots him back with a rush of water.

Nos emerges to the surface and looks about. Sharp chunks of the helo are everywhere. Naomi’s hovers over by the shore where he’s left her. His ears ring.
Didn’t die
.

As he swims back toward Nay he spots a camo figure in the green, and Nos quickly draws the ASM above the surface and holds it to the figure.

“Don’t fucking move!” he shouts. Nos kicks until his feet find the bottom of the river, and he stands with the soldier in his sights.

Dirty blond hair. Heavily muscled. Ray-Bans. Chewing hard. Smile cocky as all hell.

He holds a rifle pointed downstream at Naomi.

“The Greenes,” he says. “My favorite family.”

Lawlor
.

Nos should be surprised. Somehow he isn’t.

“What do you want?” Nos demands.

“To hunt.”

“Advise you find easier prey.”

“I heard about that amusement park stunt, and I knew it was you. I’m tired of easy prey, Greene,” says Lawlor.

“Then why are you pointing your gun at a six-year-old girl?”

“Just keeping you honest. What would happen if I turned and tried to shoot you right now?”

“You seem the curious type. Why don’t you find out?”

“Humor me.”

“I’d put a bullet through your sunglasses.”

“Right. And that’s not how this is going to end.”

“Maybe not the glasses. But one way or another, my rounds will find your head.”

“Try and your girl is dead. She’s so cute, and I love killing cute.”

Nos sees the flaming chalice bandana around Lawlor’s arm. “Why did you sign up with those lunatics?”

“I love a winner.”

“You’re sick—they see that and they’ll kill you.”

“I aint sick, Greene. Why you think that?”

“You tried to take my medicine. Naomi’s necklace,” says Nos.

Lawlor just chuckles.

He backtracks slowly into the green brush, holding Naomi at the tip of his rifle. He vanishes without a sound.

Nos aims at his vacant footprints until the quiet becomes a ringing noise.

And then his voice calls out, from everywhere and nowhere.

“I didn’t want your medicine,” Lawlor bellows. “I took back that necklace because it’s
mine
.”

They walk the shore of the river. The waters calm and spread into the open mouth of a lake. The rains begin, hard and fast, puncturing the glasslike reflection of the water. Naomi is moaning, covered in his overcoat.

Doesn’t make sense. What did he mean, ‘mine?’ That necklace was in my basement when Naomi found it
. Truth was, Nos never actually knew where it came from. He figured one of his boys left it there by accident.
Lawlor said he’d been to my house
. The image of Lawlor with his puffed up chest and chewing grin in Nos’ brownstone makes him shudder.

Nos shakes the thought away. The guy is crazy anyway. Naomi’s condition is critical. Her skin has turned blue and she shivers. Her forehead is hot to the touch. She is so wet it’s impossible to know where the sweat ends and the rain begins. He has to find someplace dry where her fever can break.
And the wound on her thigh can heal
. Nos has a thought of Naomi having to lose her right leg.
She has already been through way too much. More than a lifetime’s share
.

A settlement is perched at the north end of the lake. The river then funnels into the long and treacherous mountain whitewater. This is their last chance.

Nos carries Naomi in the pack along a paved road leading through a small town. A blue pickup sits pelted by rain. All the homes have the flaming chalice painted on their doors but one—a cabin sitting at the edge of town, dimly lit. Nos knocks on the door.

An eyehole clicks open in the door, and a voice speaks from the other side.

“What is it?” asks a woman.

“A traveler in need of a dry night. I have food, supplies, and money for payment.”

Nos holds soggy cash up to the eyehole. It closes.

“I have a daughter sick with a fever,” he calls. We must get out of the rain.

“One moment.”

Nos flattens away from the door and hears rustling and a metallic cocking inside. He draws his Sig.

The door opens.

“Come, stranger.”

Nos finds a man inside crouched with a rifle pointed at him.

“Disarm, if you please,” the man says with a collected authority.

Nos lowers his pistol, and the man lowers his rifle.

“Just lay the gun on the table there.”

Nos complies.

The man is gray, square-faced, and clean-shaven, holding the gun barrel down, close to safety and close to engagement. The woman has blue eyes so pale that they blend with her white skin, with thin blonde hair cleanly showing the white part of her scalp. A silk scarf curls around her neck.

“Can we see the girl?” she asks with concern.

Nay is on the brink of consciousness, eyes thin, woozy slits.

“Oh, over here,” she leads them to a couch and Nos lays her down.

“She has a cut that’s infected,” Nos explains. “I have to wash it. Do you have alcohol or hydrogen peroxide?”

“I do,” the woman answers.

Nos unwraps his shirt from her leg. Her reddish scab bubbles white with a moist yellow-green outline. The woman shudders.

She opens a drawer and lays out a needle, suture, and a bottle of antiseptic.

“Lets get a look at you,” she tells Nay. “Might have to drain the puss,” she says, dabbing the wound with the antiseptic.

“Might have to cut around it. If you can give me something sterile to cut with,” says Nos.

“I’m happy to do it,” says the woman.

“Not necessary. We appreciate the offer.”

“Please—I’m—I was a registered nurse.”

Nos is quiet. He looks away from the woman. Nos is not confident in his own rudimentary medical skill. He has sutured himself many times, but never a wound that is so far gone. Yet he is viscerally uncomfortable with the thought of another handling Nay.
Even a nurse
.

The woman opens Naomi’s sweatshirt. She exposes Naomi’s rash. The pink bumps crawl along Naomi’s neck.

The woman gasps.

Shit
. All the concern about Naomi’s cut, now the rash.

Nos tenses and steps back, putting his hand on his gun at the table.

The man aims his gun at Nos.

Clair raises a gentle hand. “You are among friends,” she says. “I love my God as much as anyone. But I was a nurse, and I don’t persecute the sick. I help them.”

Nos steps away from his gun.

The man lowers his.

The woman turns to Naomi. “Oh my, you darling, you’re soaked. Steve, get some blankets, babe.”

Steve disappears to the back and brings out blankets. The woman peels the wet clothes off the girl.

“What are you doing so sick out in this rain?”

Steve offers Nos his hand.

“Steve.”

“Eddy.”

“This is Clair.”

Clair removes the wet hood covering Nay’s scabbing head.

“Careful,” Nos says, “Her head is also injured.”

Clair throws a harsh glance at Nos.
She thinks this is my fault
.

“This is Sarah. She fell in the river a few miles down. The current dragged her a ways before I could reach her.”

It seems like hours that Nos watches Clair. She gives Nay something for the pain, and she passes out. Naomi’s cadaverous body stirs and shakes from the push and pull of the draining, the cutting, and sewing. When the job is finished Nos lifts a stiff neck and unfolds his arms, realizing he has been still the whole time. Naomi’s wound is now a thin-lipped red line grinning from her thigh to just above her knee, with suture running evenly along.

Her rash is getting worse. The pink froth climbs over her shoulder toward her chest.

Clair wraps the girl in blankets.

“Come, there’s a fire inside.”

Clair sits with Naomi on her lap by the gray stone hearth. It’s quiet as Nos surveys the room, and Steve watches his wife with a wistful smile. A twelve-point deer head is mounted above the fireplace and the tusks of a wild boar are window-side. A brown hound sniffs Nos’ leg. Nos scratches her ear, and her tail wags. Clair brings water from the kitchen without offering anything to Nos.

“Something to drink?” asks Steve.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Military?” asks Steve.

“Navy,” says Nos. “Special Warfare.”

“A SEAL, huh?” says Steve.

Nos nods. It’s a good lie. Unlikely that Steve would’ve made that cut. Few do. “You?”

“Army Rangers,” says Steve. “Seen much of the world?”

“Too much.”

“Yeah. Been up and down the Middle East. In Iran before the evac. Some massacre.”

“Yeah,” says Nos, collective thoughts trailing to battlefields and bloodshed.

“Gave it up?” asks Steve.

“Not much choice. You?”

“Didn’t pass the born again test, and I can’t stand contractors.”

Nos nods.

“How’s the living here?”

“Precarious, but where isn’t?”

“Looking for it,” says Nos. “Was driving through when my pickup broke down. Ran out of motor oil and fried the engine for good.” Steve must know he’s lying. Likely he heard the fight on the river.
Who didn’t?

“The little things kill you these days,” he says.

Clair pats Naomi down with a damp towel, shielding her face from the men. Nos thinks he hears her cry, like pipes squeaking behind distant walls.

“She’s burning up,” she sighs. “She has a fever.”

“Why’d you give it up?” Steve asks.

“It was Iraq that did it. Big suicide bombing in Falluja. My team rushes in, and I see a kid in a truck sweating. Couldn’t be more than eleven. Every civilian clearing way out and here’s this kid sitting in a truck, sweating. I put two bullets in his shoulder. Go to the truck and he’s strapped with enough dynamite to kill every last one of us. The whole explosion was a set up, only I shot the kid before he could pull the trigger.

“The kid lived, and we interrogated him. Turned out he had been with Al-Qaeda for three weeks before they convinced him to die for them. He was ten years old.”

Clair is turned to Nos, hanging on his words, clear-eyed in the firelight.

“I decided I couldn’t kill another child.”