Knife (9780698185623) (19 page)

Massey and Shaw rolled the ball back and forth and the cool air felt good. Fresh. The temperatures were more comfortable now outside during the day than at night. They'd been running nonstop since they landed more than a month ago and their op tempo was charging ahead. Intel gathered at the objectives was analyzed immediately and follow-on targets were identified and hit just as fast. Sometimes within hours. They'd hit a target at night and then have a follow-on target the same night heading back to the FOB. A vehicle interdiction during the daylight hours. Then they'd continue the cycle all over again the next night. Their ops had nearly doubled their days in-country. The machine was alive and working. They'd been busy.

Shaw told Massey he was tired.

“Me too,” Massey said. “Lot of blood. Lot of intel.”

He had the last of the Halloween cookies Penelope sent over in a tin beside him sitting in the dirt, and he threw Shaw one. It was a sugar-cookie ghost with black and white frosting. The ghost was black and its features white. It had teeth with little red blood blobs on the ends.

“Dark child, Mass. And when did ghosts get fangs?”

“Penelope is into scaring the shit out of herself now. She loves Halloween.”

“She's probably scaring the hell out of your brother, too. He'll think he's raising a psychopath.”

Massey laughed and nodded. He rolled the ball toward Shaw and ate some crumbs from the tin, squishing them on his thumb and sucking them off. It had been nearly a week and Penelope's cookies were still highly sought after. Massey took to hiding them under his bed after the men had devoured Mirna's cookies. Hagan was especially aggressive, eating nearly half the Halloween tin within the first two days. He'd been bugging Massey about when Penelope would send along more and Massey lied and told him it would be soon. Around Christmas, maybe. Hagan got impatient and asked for Penelope's address, so Massey gave him the address of an old girlfriend. Hagan hadn't gotten a response yet, but the men were all eagerly awaiting one.

“Up for heading over to the CASH again?”

Shaw took a bite out of the ghost's side. The light and fluffy base had turned hard and sharp, stale. He thought the frosting might have cut his lip.

“No, Mass. Again, the CASH isn't somewhere I like to hang out. What's with you medics? Morbid and bloodthirsty bastards.”

Massey threw what looked like another cookie at him, but it hit like a rock. “No, man. Candy.” Then he smiled real wide and wild. “I got a shit ton of it.”

•   •   •

T
hey carried plastic shopping bags full of Snickers, Reese's, Kit Kats, Hershey's, and a bunch of other brightly colored happy shit, and walked to the CASH the same as before—over the gravel and dirt, and across the various perimeters and checkpoints sectioning off the base.

“How exactly did you get all this sent to you?” Shaw asked. He felt the plastic lining of the bag straining under the weight of its contents. There must have been five pounds of candy inside.

“Well, it wasn't all sent to me. Exactly.”

“Exactly.
Exactly
meaning what?”

“Exactly meaning I might have gotten a couple smaller bags in the mail sent to me and then got inspired to find some more.” He winked at Shaw.

“I don't want to know. If I don't know I can't get burned.”

“Well, that's probably not true,” Massey said. “For starters, you're holding the hot merchandise. But I'll save you some grief and say its initial owners and nation of origin are classified. There. You can't be charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

“Fair. Don't go breaking your clearance for me.”

“Never. You're not worth it.”

The rickety front steps of the CASH had a few more nails in them and felt a little sturdier than before, but Shaw's stomach didn't. He felt his guts moving around. They entered the CASH and Massey nodded to the same blond guard as before and the guard nodded back. Then the guard nodded at Shaw and Shaw returned it and lifted the plastic bag. The guard smiled and eased the barrel of his rifle down to his belt. The pair made their way through the corridor and Shaw leaned toward Massey.

“Security sucks in here. A smile and a nod and you're in? We could be lugging live grenades and demolish this place.”

The sheets covering the doorways had been replaced with real wooden doors. There wasn't as much screaming as before, but low moans, muffled and steady like an air conditioner running in the summertime, were still audible from inside the rooms.

“We don't have grenades and Matty is security,” Massey said. “He doesn't suck. Matty knows me. Now us. If he didn't he'd throw that rifle in your face and knock out your damn teeth. He had the safety off and the barrel smiling at me the first time I came in.”

“Well, that's good. Good for Matty.”

Massey nodded and stopped in front of a doorway at the end of the hall. He entered the room and Shaw followed. Lines of beds spanned the entire floor. The crinkling of plastic bedsheets, a sniffle here and there, and their boots rubbing on the tile floor were the only noises. A kid coughed and it echoed across the entire ward. Small children sat upright and against pillows. Some were lying down, asleep, with covers pulled up to their chins. Others didn't have covers at all but rather white bandages stained black and red from their amputated arms and legs. The sheets looked like they might irritate the fresh bandages and wounds. Shaw hoped none of the kids were cold.

“The wards are separated by age,” Massey said. “These are the youngest.”

The room was full of dark hair and dark eyes. Bandages. The walls were painted gray and the sheets were a soft blue. Shaw counted ten beds on either side and only one of them was empty. A TV showed
Sesame Street
running on mute, subtitles rolling over the bottom of the screen. Some of the kids looked at them and others stared at the wall or watched their stumps. There was a young boy with half his hair shaved off bald and fresh stitches spanning the length of the bald spot on his head. He'd lost an arm above the elbow and was staring at where his hand must have been just days before. His eyes were complete glass and he had a little drool slipping onto his pillow from his mouth. They must have had him on some serious shit. Morphine or something heavier. Very slowly, he was wiggling what was left of his arm.

“Hi,” Massey said.

Massey held his hand up and waved it back and forth slowly. A little girl with white bandages on her arms and her lower half covered by a blanket sat propped up in a bed in front of him. She smiled a little, had a dimple on the right side of her face. She was missing some hair but cute, a really pretty little kid. She had some green in her eyes, same as Penelope. Massey dug into his bag and pulled out a big fistful of candy, set it by her hands. The girl watched the bright colors come out of the black bag and then she chirped back excitedly, like a little bird. She held the candy in her bandaged hands and ran her fingers over the wrappers. She probably liked all the colors, the sound of the plastic wrappers rubbing between her fingers. She smiled at Massey and then at Shaw.

They walked around the ward and stopped at a boy's bed. He propped himself on his side and smiled. He put out his hand and said, “Hi.” Shaw gave him some candy from the bag and then the boy nodded and said, “Hi,” again before putting the candy in his pillowcase. “It'll melt,” Shaw said. He pointed at the case and rubbed his fingers together, made a disgusted face. The boy nodded and said, “Hi,” again. Then he smoothed his pillowcase, the candy hidden beneath it, and Massey patted his bed and smiled, let him be. The boy was missing both of his legs.

Shaw and Massey made their way around the room for a long while. Some of the kids were scared or shy, so Shaw and Massey would just leave some candy under the pillows. Other kids tried to speak English. They said things like “Hi,” “Basketball,” and “Real Madrid.” One girl even said, “Snickers, please,” real soft and quiet
.
Most smiled or were probably too drugged up to decide on their reaction. Shaw liked being around all the kids. It was nice to see some happy faces in the depressing place, and he even made funny faces to bait smiles out of the ones who didn't warm up to them. It made him feel good. Then he thought about how both sides dropped bombs and he figured the kids had a right not to smile at them if they didn't feel like it.

When a nurse came in, Massey hid his bag behind his back, so Shaw did the same. They waved at her and she smiled and inserted an IV into a sleeping girl by the door, brushed the girl's hair, and then left. They gave out all the candy and put the empty bags in a trash can filled with needles and bloodied compresses and walked back in the failing light. Shaw was going to ask Massey if he ever brought Dalonna to the CASH, thinking that all the kids would make Dalonna happy, but when they left Shaw looked back and saw all the kids in the beds watching them go. Their bright smiles stood out sharply against their dark hair. Even the ones they couldn't get smiles out of watched them leave. The boy without legs who had propped himself up on his side and said “Hi” to them held a hand up, and Shaw felt good and like he might get sick at the same time. Seeing all the kids torn up would break Dalonna.

“Mass. Won't they get sick from all the candy?”

“Nah. They're blown up, not malnourished. The starving kids are in a separate area of the CASH.” He looked at the sky for a while and put his hands in his pockets. “They monitor that ward especially close. These kids just need to get used to living without their limbs. Some candy is small potatoes.”

Shaw thought that made sense and then asked about the kid they'd found chained to Tango1's floor. Massey said he was cleaning up the wards, resupplying some of the medical materials. He'd gotten his cot and room, and Massey said he seemed happy. Shaw thought he might like to see him.

“What was his name?”

Massey stopped walking and his eyes narrowed. He looked up at the sky. “You know what? I don't even know his name.” He laughed and shook his head.

“Do you think he'll get some fake teeth?”

“I don't know,” Massey said. “I hope so. But it's probably not a priority.”

They walked on a ways, and Shaw was enjoying the light breeze and the fading light, the quiet. He smelled dust and rain and it was nice.

“You know what?”

Shaw looked at him, then at the moon switching spots with the sun. “What's that?”

“People are messed up,” Massey said.

Shaw had just put in a chew. The juices were warm and rushing hard. He didn't say a thing.

Massey shook his head. “Cute kids. All blown to hell.”

Just then the wind kicked up and blew cold and Shaw wished he'd brought a jacket along. He hadn't, though, so he put his hands in his pockets and set them in deep, reaching for warmth.

•   •   •

T
hey didn't get spun up that night, so they watched feeds of other raids on the kill TVs in the TOC. Shaw watched Dom, the Belgian Malinois, run into a room before an assault team and then the screen flashed white. The team outside the door moved back with the blast—except for Stephens, who ran into the room. The teams radioed in a casualty and Shaw thought about the white flash and the pressure that moved the team backward. He knew Dom was gone. He thought about Patch then, how Patch used to sit next to him on hot days when he was a kid and pant and pant all day long. Patch liked to lick the salt off Shaw's knees, and Shaw would rub the crown of Patch's skull between his thumb and forefinger. Patch would fall asleep against his legs, stomach rising and falling quick. Then his grandma would come outside and they'd both pet him together. Shaw missed him, wanted to feel the soft white fur on his fingers.

The rest of the raid went well and they got their guy alive, but everyone was quiet in the war room after they got back. Dogs and their handlers were closer than most team members. They slept in the same beds, jumped out of planes together, and even showered together. Shaw and Massey sat against the lockers with Stephens after the teams got back. Stephens held one of Dom's tac vests in his lap and ran his fingertips over the bristles of the toothbrush he kept looped into the vest at all times. He brushed Dom's teeth three times a day, was hoping to get the Belgian Malinois to live twenty years. He was convinced that keeping the plaque from forming in Dom's teeth would keep the dog's arteries and intestines clean, assuring a longer life. He talked about it endlessly.

Stephens rifled through his pockets slowly and took out a bright green tennis ball. His eye sockets were puffy and his cheeks shined bright in the light. He spoke real soft, barely made a sound. “Can someone get rid of this for me?” He released the ball and it rolled under the lockers. Then he seemed to sink into the wall lockers, his upturned hand resting on the ground and his fingers extended. A single tear from each eye fell down his cheeks and disappeared in his beard.

Shaw grabbed the ball and walked out of the war room and put it in his tent. He figured he'd give it back to Stephens in a few weeks. He probably didn't want to let it go, just didn't want to have to look at it for a while.

•   •   •

T
he men gathered in rows and had a service outside for Dom that night. The sun was just setting and the sky was clear. Stephens had cut up some leather from one of Dom's collars and tied it off around his wrist. Shaw asked if he could have one, too, and Stephens brightened up and said he'd get working on it. After the service they got a 4 on their beepers and in a few minutes the briefing room was full of guys shifting in their seats. Stephens was there, even though he wouldn't be on the op. He had an Orioles cap set low on his face, only his beard visible below the brim, and Ohio sat beside him with his bandaged leg propped on a chair. He wouldn't be on the op, either, and he rested his hand on Stephens's shoulder. The CO stood in front of them and began the brief.