The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline (78 page)

I sighed. That poor country had a long way to go.

Our patrol was the first one back at the compound. Grant had confirmed that a food drop would be happening soon, so each Marine could have a one-minute shower with what was left from the water ration. Soon, there was an awful lot of naked flesh on display. I was glad I had a pair of sunglasses behind which to hide my blushes—or maybe it was my interest that I was hiding. I’d never used to pay much attention to that sort of thing, even though I lived by a beach. Huh, I blamed Sebastian.

I headed back to my room and started typing up notes and polishing a couple of articles that were almost ready to go. I was pleased with the photographs, too. The ones from the previous day were particularly dramatic, although looking at them brought back some of the knee-trembling terror that I’d felt.

After an hour of typing, I flipped shut the laptop lid, and sat outside to write an old-fashioned pen-and-paper letter to Sebastian. I was determined that if mail did arrive soon, he’d have a letter to open. I spent my time being creative: he said he wanted to get kinky with me, so I roughed out some ideas, to see if any of them were on his ‘to do’ list. It was a shame our time and space was so limited right now. I wanted to show him what a formerly-sexually-frustrated forty-year-old with a good vocabulary could imagine.

Sebastian’s patrol was the last to return to the compound. Even from a distance, I could see that his face was strained. He glanced over to where I was sitting, and shook his head imperceptibly.

A few minutes later he emerged from Grant’s makeshift office, and strode over to me.

“Captain Grant would like to see you, ma’am,” he said, formally.

I followed him across the compound, feeling anxious as he pressed his lips together in a hard line.

Grant’s office seemed gloomy after the punishing sunlight; he waved me to the only other chair in the room and Sebastian stood silently behind me.

“Ms. Venzi, your presence is causing some interest among the local population. Chief Hunter heard some talk while on patrol that concerned him.”

I glanced up at Sebastian who remained resolutely mute.

“And what does this talk say?” I prompted.

“At the moment it’s vague, but the news of having a woman with us will spread quickly now. We have a new cook and a new medic arriving in six days, so the heli will be putting down briefly. If you become a person of interest, as I think you will, you’ll be at risk and you’ll be putting my men at risk, too. I want you on that flight, Ms. Venzi.”

I felt like he’d punched me, and all the air left my lungs. But I understood, as well. He was making a strategic decision. He hadn’t tried to persuade or softball me; he just told it like it was.

“I see. Well, thank you for being so candid and explaining the situation to me, Captain Grant. I’ll ensure that I get as much work done as I can, and I’ll be ready to leave when you advise.”

The Captain looked relieved; perhaps he’d expected me to argue, or throw a hissy fit. I may have been a stupid woman who overslept on her first day embedded with his unit, but I wasn’t selfish enough to risk the lives of others. Especially not Sebastian’s.

The worst part was that I’d be leaving him behind. I’d always known that day would come, I just thought we’d have a bit longer first. He was right: we always seemed to be traveling in different directions.

I stood up, and Sebastian escorted me out of the Captain’s office.

“Sorry, baby,” he murmured.

“That’s okay,” I replied, quietly. “I don’t want to cause more problems out here. Besides, I can get some stories from Leatherneck, so the paper won’t be shortchanged.”

“If anything happened to you…” he began.

I interrupted him quickly. “I told you, Sebastian, I’m not going to take risks. If you care about me, you won’t either.”

“
If
I care about you?” he said angrily.

“You know what I mean—and keep your voice down.”

He scowled, and looked mutinous.

Great. Sulky Sebastian was back.

Reluctantly, he left me outside my room, and marched off to the other side of the compound where he threw angry glances at me until it was meal time.

I was just drowning my sorrows in some piss-weak coffee, when Lieutenant Crawley emerged from Grant’s subterranean office.

“Supply chopper on its way,” he announced, then picked out a platoon to retrieve the goodies.

A few minutes later, we all heard the distinctive thrum of the Black Hawk’s twin engines chewing up the air around it, and small parachutes began raining down.

Once the swag had been collected and relocated to the compound, everyone gathered around to sort out the supplies: ammunition, water and—thank you God—fresh rations. There was also a bag of mail which I volunteered to sort out, much to Captain Grant’s obvious surprise.

There weren’t as many letters as I’d expected. My two shadows, Ben and Larry, helped me do the sorting, and explained that any parcels from home would be held back until there was room (or spare weight) on the next heli drop.

When they weren’t looking, I casually slipped my letter to Sebastian into the pile. It didn’t take long to finish sorting, and it was easy to tell which of the guys were family men—they had the most letters, some obviously addressed by their kids.

As he’d said, Sebastian didn’t get many letters and that day, mine was the only one addressed to him.

The rest of the unit circled us like sharks, waiting for the moment they heard their name. I saw Sebastian’s surprise when Larry called out ‘Hunter’.

“You got mail, Chief,” and he waved the thin envelope at Sebastian.

Of course, I hadn’t written a return address, so that should have clued him in, but instead he just looked puzzled. I watched him as he scrolled down the first few lines of my scandalous letter. Then his eyes widened in shock, and a wicked grin crept across his face. He glanced up, and I winked at him.

He read through the whole letter, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the mud wall of the compound. Then he closed his eyes and let his head rock back: he was still smiling.

Yeah, think about those positions, Chief.

One of the other men, a young guy named Ross from Minneapolis, scrunched up his letter in disgust and dropped it in the dirt.

“What’s up man?” said Larry.

“Fucking ‘dear John’ letter,” he said bitterly. “She said she didn’t want to spoil my last few days of leave, so she thought she’d wait till I got out here to tell me she was seeing someone else. Bitch.”

He got some sympathetic looks. A lot of the men had been there. It could be hard to hold onto relationships in the military.

The sun had sunk behind the mountains and the air was beginning to cool, when there was a sudden flurry of activity.

“Incoming!” came the yell from the sangar.

Suddenly, men were flying everywhere, running for their body armor and weapons. I sprinted for my room, but tripped over an abandoned jacket, and went sprawling in the dust.

The first RPG exploded about 200 yards outside the compound. The noise was horrendous, and the plume of dirt rocketed 90 feet into the air.

I covered my head with my hands, and pushed my face into the loose dirt on the ground. When the dusty shower had subsided, I crawled on my hands and knees into my room, and pulled on my body armor and helmet in double-quick time. Then I grabbed my camera and nervously pointed it out of the tiny window, taking snap after snap of the Marines as they took their positions. Then the durg-durg of the heavy machine guns started.

Another RPG exploded, closer this time, and I dropped to the floor, counted to ten, and peered out of my window. After a minute of what seemed like organized chaos, bellows and shouts, silence rippled outwards.

My heart was thundering in my chest, and I realized my hands were shaking. I began to wonder if a nice, safe job in a bank might be a good career move.

Sebastian’s head suddenly appeared around my door, and I nearly yelled out in fright.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me,” I replied, rather breathlessly.

He nodded, and disappeared.

The Taliban had a new tactic: sleep deprivation. Intermittently throughout the night, they’d fire an RPG randomly toward us. None of them came close enough to cause concern, but it was successful at stopping us resting, not that sleeping in body armor was possible anyway—at least not until complete exhaustion had set in.

Sebastian didn’t have another chance to come near me again: I guessed he was in Grant’s office to interpret the insurgents’ radio chatter and thus help the gunners try to work out targets. At dawn, we were all gritty-eyed and pissed off as we stumbled into line to get breakfast.

I don’t know why, but an old Beatles song came into my head, and I started humming the opening bars of ‘I’m So Tired’—the lines that said his mind is on the blink because he hasn’t slept a wink. That was exactly how I felt.

The Marine behind me started singing the tune softy, and I turned around to smile at him and joined in. Then two more started with the harmony. Soon, about 20 burly Marines were singing out of tune and getting their groove on in the breakfast line. It wasn’t much, but it was damn funny—and we really needed to laugh.

Captain Grant appeared from his office, unshaven and with dark rings around his eyes, accompanied by Crawley and Sebastian. When Grant saw the kids from Glee getting funky to the Beatles, his face split with a huge grin. I didn’t even know the man had teeth. He gave me an ironic salute, and disappeared back into his den. Crawley laughed out loud, and Sebastian smiled at me proudly.

From that moment on, the men called me ‘Yoko’, and I laughed happily, seeing their pleasure in something so simple.

It was the last time I laughed for a very long time.

The patrols that day were kept short. Crawley and his team checked out the old marketplace, which seemed to have taken the brunt of most of the RPG activity; two others moved parallel to either side of the main road; Sebastian was gone the longest, disappearing into the foothills with Jankowski and a fast-moving foot patrol.

When they returned, long after everyone else had finished their evening meal, Sebastian looked hot, sweaty, and tired.

He smiled at me wearily, and went to debrief with Grant and Jankowski.

The kitchen reopened, handing out chili-flavored MREs to the dusty crew. Sebastian had just started eating, when Grant called him back into the office. He was in there nearly half-an-hour, and his abandoned food gone cold, when he suddenly re-emerged and headed my way, his face set and
grim.

“What is it? What’s happened?” I said, scared by the expression on his face.

“Grant wants to see you,” he said, ignoring the curious gazes from the other men.

I stood up stiffly, and followed him into the office.

“Please take a seat, Ms. Venzi,” said Grant, gently.

My heart rate accelerated.
What the hell was going on?

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you … I told you yesterday that Chief Hunter picked up some obtuse threats to you; well, I’m afraid it’s become much more direct. The Taliban have heard that you’re with us—and they’re viewing you as a prize kill.”

I was vaguely aware that Sebastian was scowling at Grant, probably because the information had been so candid, but my brain was in freefall.
They were targeting me?

“They’re aware of the value of publicity,” he said tiredly, “and I’m afraid earlier today, they killed another journalist—a woman—and Hunter has just had confirmed radio chatter that you’re a definite target. I’m calling in a heli to evacuate you back to Leatherneck as soon as possible. Ms. Venzi? Ms. Venzi?”

I looked up at him, stunned. “Who?”

“Excuse me?” he said, clearly puzzled.

“Who was the journalist they killed?”

He glanced over to Sebastian questioningly.

“Liz Ashton,” said Sebastian, his eyes soft with pity.

No. No no no no no no no.

I dropped my head into my hands.

“I’m sorry,” said Grant, uncomfortably. “Of course … you knew her.”

I nodded slowly. “She was my friend.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, “but we can’t risk our mission here and…”

He bit off what he was going to say, but it didn’t matter. I’d guessed that there was some special reason his unit had been sent to Now Zad, and a reason why he didn’t want me here in the first place. A remote part of my brain remembered that Sebastian had hinted that he’d be traveling to remote villages, out of touch for days or even weeks.

But I was going home.

I looked up into Grant’s face, recognizing that this wasn’t the first time he’d had to break this sort of news.

“How did she die?”

Grant looked away, and it was Sebastian who answered. “Sniper. She died instantly.”

I think Grant tried to say something else to me, but I didn’t hear him. I walked out of his office, dry-eyed, my throat aching, vaguely aware that Sebastian had started to reach out for me as I walked past him.