TWENTY-SEVEN
I
opened my eyes. My surroundings were unfamiliar. I had no idea where I was or how I’d come to be there. The world was blissfully silent. I lay on the ground and looked up at the ceiling. The air was filled with swirling golden dust. I watched it writhe like floating snakes and realized that it was afternoon sunlight catching billions of particles hitching rides on the currents. It was beautiful. I lifted my hand through the cloud, but something was wrong. It sure as hell didn’t look like my hand; this one was black and red and streaked with white plaster and covered in small bleeding lacerations. Blood rimmed each fingernail. I wondered whose hand it was, poor bastard.
Then I realized the ground beneath my back was also not particularly comfortable. I’d awakened believing I was on a bed, but no bed I’d ever slept on had a mattress stuffed with what felt like broken bricks. I began to cough, but it was odd because I couldn’t hear the sound. And then it all rushed back—the crash, the Fijian, my burning boots, the man with his terrified family, the walls being shot away, the weight of Ambrose, Masters’s two-handed grip on the M9 and how it jumped with the recoil as she fired at…Shit!
I rolled over. My pistol was on the ground. I picked it up with the hand I now realized was mine. Then I stuck a finger in an ear and wiggled. It came out dripping blood. Ambrose lay across the room, spread-eagled on the ground. Was he dead, or just unconscious? Masters was covered in shattered bricks, but she was stirring. How long had I been out?
A slight movement caught my attention. Close by, two of the men in ski masks picked their way across the rubble like they were crossing oyster-covered rocks barefoot. The sun caught them as they hobbled over the rubble. One of them carried a shaft of pure gold. What the hell was that? They were headed for Ambrose. They lifted his head and the gold flashed in my eyes. Jesus H. Christ! No! I realized what that shaft was and what they intended to do with it. Slashing steel! What is it with these people and decapitation? Stupid fucking question. It was in the Qur’an, of course. I’d researched it after Afghanistan in an attempt to try to understand the enemy, and now the words swam in my consciousness:
Remember thy Lord inspired the angels: “I am with you: give firmness to the Believers. I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.” This because they contended against Allah and His Messenger. If any contend against Allah and His Messenger, Allah is strict in punishment.
Basically, if you can’t convert the infidel, it’s off with his head,
Alice in Wonderland
–fashion. I raised the M9, aimed at the guy closest to Ambrose, and began pumping the trigger. The pistol jumped. I heard no sound. Small puffs of masonry dust marked the strikes of the 9mm ball. My aim was off. I missed with the remaining eleven rounds. Shit. The man with the knife leapt up, no doubt seriously pissed—at least I think he was; I couldn’t see his face beneath the ski mask.
He came at me, knife raised high for a death strike. As he brought it down, I thrust up with half a brick clutched in each hand. I deflected the blade with one of them and continued with the other into his face. I felt something crunch beneath it, the gratifying vibration of skin, bone, and teeth giving way running through the brick and into my fingers. The hit stopped him for a moment, gave him something to think about. I followed this ancient karate brick-in-the-kisser maneuver with an elbow strike to the side of his jaw. He wobbled on his feet, but I held his wrist, the one connected to the blade, and twisted it around. Searing heat suddenly ripped through my arm, forcing me to break the grip. His buddy had shot me. The guy with the knife backed away from me, but he tripped and sprawled on the ground. His friend, the one who’d shot me, went to his aid, helping him to his feet. Then he leveled his rifle with his free hand and took a couple of halfhearted potshots in my direction as they backed out the way they came in. All but one of the rounds went wide. The one that didn’t slammed into the ceramic plate on the front of my flaks, knocking me over. I saw the insurgents turn and run. I rolled onto my side and kept them in sight through what was left of the back of the house. An old bullet-riddled sedan with two masked men in the front seat rolled into the square and skidded to a halt. Our assailants ran to it and dove in the back. The vehicle took off, the door still open. Something had spooked them.
I stumbled back to check on Ambrose. I said something, but I couldn’t hear my own words. Masters’s ears and nose were bleeding. She said something back, but I had no idea what. The air around us suddenly filled with choking, blinding dust, as if a hurricane had swept in. I looked up and saw the flickering edge of a silver-and-orange disc in the sky. It slid overhead and I recognized the shape of a Hughes Little Bird chopper, a wicked six-barrel minigun mounted off an out-board pod.
Masters was kneeling over the prostrate Ambrose and gave the thumbs-up sign. He looked dead; the only giveaway that he wasn’t was the trickle of fresh blood running from the coagulated mess on his forehead. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I wheeled, expecting the worst and ready for it. I looked into the clean-shaven face of a U.S. marine sergeant. His mouth moved. I heard nothing. He repeated it, the cords and blood vessels standing out in his neck. I just looked at him. He gave up yelling and saluted.
The squad’s medic ran to Ambrose and began checking him over. At the same time, a glint in the rubble caught my attention. I went over and picked up the object. It sure wasn’t mine. I checked Ambrose’s wrist. It wasn’t his, and I’d have noticed if Masters had been wearing one. It also couldn’t have belonged to the Iraqi householders. There was only one other possible answer. But how likely was it that a Muslim extremist would be wearing a Rolex Submariner wristwatch? And wouldn’t he be pissed when he discovered he’d left it behind? These things cost a fortune!
An hour later I was lying on a cot back at the 28th Combat Support Hospital. I wiggled my fingers and toes. All present and accounted for. Miraculous. The doctor, a captain, had finished sewing up the ripped skin under my arm where the round had nicked me, and was continuing his examination. More worrying to me was my hearing. It was coming back, but was still fuzzy. The doctor continued talking as he peered into my ear hole through some kind of device. “You could have been playing beer drums in a band called Damage.” At least, that’s what I thought he said.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“Paying for eardrum damage,” he said, more loudly the second time.
“Oh,” I said, nodding.
He swabbed the blood from my ears with some kind of solvent that felt cool on my skin. Alcohol? I wondered how the locals would feel about the consumption of a little medicinal booze. Fuck that, make it a lot of medicinal booze. The thought of throwing back half a bottle of single malt was pretty appealing, but I didn’t like my chances in this place.
“Headache?”
In fact, I did have a headache, a mild one, but I ignored it because I suddenly saw a bigger opportunity. I shook my head and said, “Toothache.”
“You’ve got a toothache?”
I nodded.
“Open wide.”
I did as I was asked. He bent over me, shone a pencil light in there, and had a look around. He took an instrument and lightly tapped the offending molar. I flinched like I’d been poked with a few thousand volts.
He shook his head and said loudly, “Looks bad. Impacted. Can’t do anything about that. You’re looking at a general.” I assumed he meant general anesthetic. “Too busy at the moment. We had a big truck bomb earlier.”
Yeah, I remembered.
“I can give you something for it to tide you over.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a blister pack of ibuprofen tablets. “Keep the pack,” he said. “We get free samples.”
Wonderful. I took four out immediately and dry-chewed them.
“Careful,” said the doctor. “Taking that many at once isn’t good for you.”
“Gee, I’d better be careful, then,” I said.
He gave me a look of strained patience and said, “Keep your sutures dry, and have that wound checked daily. It was a clean hole, but there’s still a chance of infection.”
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, doing up my shirt buttons. I ached all over. The local in my arm was wearing off and I was starting to feel like I’d been shot. My chest felt sore and tender thanks to the slug fired point-blank from the AK-47. But there was nothing broken and the cuts from the stone chips and wood splinters were superficial. Masters was in the room next door getting pretty much the identical once-over. She hadn’t been shot but she, too, was covered in cuts and bruises. No doubt about it, we’d been damn lucky. It turned out that the radio hadn’t worked. My message had been lost somewhere in the ionosphere. The Little Bird pilot had spotted the black smoke from the burning Toyota and had directed a nearby patrol to the location to investigate. Another couple of minutes alone with our attackers and Masters and I would have been meat on Captain Blood’s slab.
The captain said something I didn’t catch. He gave up trying and instead just indicated that I should get dressed. I sat up, feeling a lot older than my years, and swung my legs off the cot. I’d had time to think about our incident, or, should I say, ambush. There was nothing accidental about it. The MaxRisk pickup behind us had been scuttled, and everyone in it killed. We’d been center-punched moments later and shouldered off the road by a second truck. Split-second timing would have been required. Maybe we’d managed to get farther than our attackers had expected. We’d deprived the shooter behind the Barrett gun of a clear line of sight on our position, so enter the masked men. They’d been dressed to look like insurgents, but I didn’t believe they were. The question was, who were they? Again, the mysterious
they.
The Establishment?
The doctor gave me a nod to send me on my way. I loitered outside, waiting for Masters. She came out from behind one of several examination rooms partitioned by yellow plastic curtains. The small cuts on her face and arms had been swabbed with some kind of orange disinfectant. Only two nicks required stitches—one on her forehead, the other on her chin. There was still white dust and grit in her hair and small deposits in the fine laugh lines that curled from the corners of her eyes. She gave me a smile that said she was happy to see me. It was easy to return it.
Masters said, “How’s your hearing?”
“What?”
“I said, how’s your…Never mind.”
“I’m joking. I’m fine.”
Masters shook her head at me in a way that suggested I should grow the hell up.
“Let’s go check on Ambrose,” I said.
We eventually found him in a ward with twenty other soldiers classed as lightly wounded. We found him because he was making a hell of a noise, even loud enough for us hearing-impaired.
His chest was heavily bandaged and his broken arm had been placed in a temporary cast. A nurse was attempting to give him a shot, but Ambrose wasn’t keen on the idea.
“You know this man?” asked the large white woman with a round face and a little piggy snout. She was wearing plastic coveralls big enough to throw over an SUV.
“Yeah. Having trouble?” I asked.
“Yes. And I don’t have time for it. If he won’t take his medicine, he won’t get better. I’ll be back in five minutes, Mr. Ambrose. And then you
will
have your injection.”
“What is it?” I asked Ambrose when she was halfway out the door.
“I don’t know. She says it’s antibiotics. Could be anything. That’s the point.” He sat up in bed and threw his legs over the side. “I’ve got to get away from here.”
“Why? Don’t you feel safe?” asked Masters.
“Look around, ma’am. Where’s the security?” Ambrose was angry. He tried to stand. “You were there with me today. You tell me that wasn’t planned. Maybe I was right about today being the day. Hell, maybe they wanted to kill three birds with one stone. Did you think of that?”
Actually, I had thought of that.
Ambrose didn’t get halfway up before he had to sit down. “Can you pass my clothes?” he said when his head stopped spinning.
I took the bundle off the end of the bed and handed it over. Grit and sand rained onto the sheets.
“What are you going to do?” said Masters. “Just walk out of here?”
“Yeah, you got it. They’ve got no recovery facilities here. They’ll just pack me off to Germany or someplace, unless I die of causes unknown administered in the dead of night by that Goodyear blimp armed with her mystery hypodermic. No way, José. I’d rather take my chances out on the streets.”
I was dubious.
He saw my face and added, “There’s nothing the U.S. Army can do for me here that MaxRisk can’t, unless you count keeping me alive. In short—I’m out of here.”
Ambrose pulled up his pants with some difficulty. Masters gave him a hand with his shirt and boots. He stood, this time making it all the way up, sweating with the pain. Masters steadied him. “You sure about this?” she asked him.
He nodded, teeth gritted.
The nurse returned but busied herself with another patient. She didn’t notice us walk out behind her vast fast-food ass. “How do you plan to make it back to MaxRisk?” Masters asked Ambrose.
“Same way you did, ma’am. Get on a manifest. I’ve got a CAC card and I know a lot of the people here besides. No problem.”
We stood at the top of the stairs and looked out across the grounds to the concrete blocks bleached middle-aged gray by the sun. Ambrose had quickly regained his equilibrium—at least, he could walk. He was in a lot of pain, though, if the grimace etched on his face was any indication. After a moment, he said, “Look, thanks for saving my butt back there. I heard the fuckers were about to make a doorstop out of my head.”
“I keep thinking there are a whole lot of questions we should be asking you,” Masters said.
“I think you’ve got it all, ma’am.” Ambrose held out his left hand for Masters and me to shake, which we both did. Gently. “Give my regards to the folks back home. Oh, that’s right—they’s all dead.”