News From the Red Desert (41 page)

Major Horner's phone had been ringing all night and all morning. CENTCOM and the PA brass in the Pentagon had been on his case about the role the on-base reporters would be allowed to play in the covering the massacre. Though there appeared to be no other shooters, Horner recommended that the base commander declare a lockdown for six hours, in order to keep them in their tent, and get the message ready.

He had the elements of the press release in place:

Thirty-eight people have been shot and eighteen killed at close range by a foreign national of Afghan origin who was employed in a nutrition facility on the base. The shooter was heroically taken down by several bystanders.

The shooter is not known to have had any Taliban affiliations, but this point is being aggressively pursued. He used a weapon seized from an allied military force. The weapon was guarded. How the foreign national of Afghan origin managed to overpower the guard is being investigated. The initial evidence is that the guard resisted bravely. Further details will be released as the situation evolves.

That had gone back and forth by email nineteen times. CENTCOM PA was very reluctant to let Horner organize a press conference on an event of this magnitude, but General Jackson had been terse. “I plan to speak at 1400. Please be prepared.” Horner had asked Fred Shaw if he could get a copy of Jackson's speaking notes to review, and Shaw had simply said, “No, you can't.”

Horner had alerted his superiors about this and had been told that they had less influence with General Jackson than he did. Which meant this was all somehow on him. For blame was in the air now, seeking out the people to whom it would attach itself. It moved like a black cloud, coiling around first one subject, then the next, tasting them with a view to feasting. Blame would be attached to whoever the joker in Ramstein was who couldn't send the movies that had been ordered. It would attach to the unfortunate Jordanian platoon commander who had brashly taken his men to see that movie. And whose rifle was used to do the killing. It could attach to Major Horner for facilitating the film club. Notwithstanding the email from Jackson's office, telling him to assist in any way he could.

Blame would attach itself to Kellogg Brown and Root for hiring the boy in the first place. What was a minor doing working here, anyway? Who had done the security screening?

The people who fell with holes in them were just the start of it. Everyone involved was going to be injured by this.

But it would especially attach to General Jackson. He was the ranking commander in Afghanistan, and he had been on the base when it happened. Something had gone wrong. Something had become lax. Chaos had been invited into their midst.

Which was the problem with this war, all this laxity, everywhere. Hadn't anyone seen how soft these rear echelon motherfuckers were?

At the hospital, Anakopoulus had been given a ward bed after he had slept off his anaesthesia. By noon the next day his back was already sore from lying in it, and after the surgeon took out his chest tube he asked if he couldn't just go back to his extra-long cot in the warehouse. He was only taking ibuprofen for the pain. On any other day the surgeon would have said, Don't be ridiculous, your chest tube has only been out for an hour. But the doctor looked around at the bedlam in his hospital and said, “Promise me you'll come back if you feel short of breath.”

His guys brought him over a clean uniform. As he buttoned the shirt he looked around for Deirdre O'Malley. He couldn't see her. He recalled their conversation and searched his memory of it for evidence—some improbability, some fuzzy edge—that he had imagined or misremembered what she had said. But he hadn't. He knew it.

He stood up and tightened his belt. His guys offered to help him walk but he dismissed the offer. With each step, he felt a sharp pain where his ribs had been opened and he had to force himself not to wince. When he got to the hospital door and saw the truck waiting there, he was relieved.

Eventually, incredibly, Rashid had fallen asleep. That changed when the sergeant threw the bucket of ice water on him and hollered, “
Wake the fuck up!
” The terp beside him leaned in just as viciously, echoing him in Pashto.

When Rashid jolted awake, the pain in his now completely dislocated shoulders reached a searing crescendo. “What is it?” he managed to ask. The sergeant nodded at the terp to leave, as he wasn't needed, and he did. The sergeant leaned close to Rashid's ear, and said, “I'm going to ask you something and you could spare us both a great deal of bother by just telling me the truth. Did you radicalize Mohammed Hashto?”

“What?”

The sergeant put on a pair of bright blue latex surgical gloves. Then he put on black leather gloves over them. He put a yellow water-impermeable hospital gown over his uniform. Then he put on a pair of eye protectors. Universal blood and bodily fluid precautions were required, by regulation, when exposure was probable. They had all had the lectures by infection control experts about risk-mitigation in this work. Hepatitis B is endemic in this part of the world. The sergeant wasn't going to catch hep B for no good reason, that was for sure. First thing you lose is your “fit for deployment” designation. And after that, your career.

Rami Issay had not fallen asleep. When the door opened, he simply said, “I'll tell you anything I know,” in perfectly clear English. The terp sighed with disappointment and looked at the sergeant, then turned and left. The sergeant shut the door behind him. He was tired now and notwithstanding the hospital smock and glasses, he was splattered. Behind the mirror he was being watched. He sucked it up and got to it.

Later that afternoon General Jeremy Jackson visited Deirdre O'Malley in the hospital. “I heard about your press conference,” she said. “That was dramatic.”

“My resignation? It was coming, anyway. Better to get ahead of it.”

“You think you were going to take the fall for the shooting?”