6
C-17 GLOBEMASTER,
ONE HUNDRED MILES WEST OF BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN
T
he Globemaster was a four-engine Air Force jet built for carrying capacity, not for comfort. Two hundred fifty soldiers sat packed like a tin of well-armed sardines in rows five across and benches on either side.
Wells was on the right aisle eight rows back. He’d come to Afghanistan on a flight like this years before, but the mood had been different. Better, to be precise. Back then, the war had been younger. Wells had landed with a unit arriving at Bagram for the first time. On this flight, the soldiers were heading back from their two-week midtour leaves. The ones who’d had good trips home missed their families and friends already. The ones who hadn’t were upset they’d blown their shot at freedom. All of them knew that they wouldn’t be leaving again until their tours were finished.
Mostly they wanted to catch up on sleep. Before takeoff, the soldier next to Wells tapped three tiny white pills from a bottle of generic drugstore ibuprofen. He had a teenager’s mustache, wispy and brown, and a teenager’s faith in the power of chemically induced happiness.
“Ativan,” he said, when he noticed Wells looking. “Girlfriend get ’em to me. Knock you right out. You don’t even dream.” He offered Wells the bottle.
“No, thanks.”
“Your loss. Wake me when it’s over. And if I slobber on you, don’t be afraid to stick an elbow
out.”
The soldier dry-swallowed the pills and closed his eyes as the engines spooled up. Ten minutes later, as they leveled off, he grunted, “What,” to no one and fell into a head-forward trance. Every so often, his thick pink tongue edged out of his mouth.
Wells closed his eyes. His years in Afghanistan and Pakistan had taught him patience, how to escape the world around him. As the jet winged east and the voices around him wound down, he thought about Anne.
They’d had mostly good months since his mission to Saudi Arabia. One night in late March, he’d made himself tell her what happened over there. They were walking their dog, Tonka, in the woods north of her house, first-growth New Hampshire forest that had never faced an ax. After months of cold, the night was unseasonably warm, shirtsleeve weather. Thick chunks of snow slid down the firs as the forest crackled awake from the winter. Wells spoke slowly, wanting to get every detail right. He even told Anne about the jihadi he’d shot in the back in Jeddah, probably the lowest moment in all his years in the field. She wrapped her arm in his and didn’t interrupt.
“Feels good to open your mouth, doesn’t it?” she said when he was finished. “And the world didn’t
end.”
“I’m sticking you with something you don’t deserve.”
“I’m glad to have
it.”
“Do you think I should go after them?”
“Saeed and Mansour?” The Saudi princes who had created the terrorist cell responsible for the mayhem Wells had tried to stop. They were near the top of the royal family, untouchable and living in luxury in Riyadh. “If you think you can get them and get away with it? Eight ball says
yes.”
Wells hadn’t expected that answer. Anne worked as a cop in North Conway. She was even-keeled and not inclined to vengeance. Unlike
him.
“What about the rule of law, all that good stuff?”
“Yes. All that. Under normal circumstances. This time, it’s you or nothing.”
They walked for a while, listening to branches crack under the snow.
“No one’s going to touch those guys for years,” Wells said eventually. “They’ve got too much protection. But eventually they’ll relax. Everyone does.”
She looked at him. “Almost everyone.”
* * *
THEY WENT HOME
and made love, and life fell into the best kind of groove for a while. Wells spent his days volunteering at an animal shelter in Conway. The shelter workers put down any dogs judged as a threat. Wells worked with the ones who had escaped the first culling, dogs who let themselves be petted even as they pulled back their lips to show their big yellow teeth. He soothed them in a low, reassuring voice and knelt beside them in their pens, waiting for them to relax.
A lot of them couldn’t be saved. There was Nick, a black pit bull with cigarette burns cratered across his belly, docile with men but uncontrollable around women. Jimmy, a one-eyed German shepherd who cowered hopelessly in a corner of his cage. Rabbit, a slobbery husky who seemed ready for adoption until he attacked a pug, tearing off half her ear before Wells pulled him away. As much cruelty as Wells had seen, he couldn’t understand the sheer wickedness of people who tortured animals for sport.
Even so, working with the dogs soothed him. He saw that the most vicious were the most frightened. He learned to retreat from their attacks without even raising his voice. And he saved a
few.
“I’m going soft in my old age,” he said to Anne one night, back from the shelter.
“I don’t think so.” She stretched her legs over his lap as they sat on the couch watching
Jersey Shore
. On-screen, orange-tinted women tore at one another’s shirts. An addiction to reality television might have been her greatest flaw. “We should go down there next summer,” she said, nodding at the television. “You could beat some sense into those morons.”
“Probably the worst idea you’ve ever
had.”
“Actually my ex reminds me of the Situation. My first husband. Though he’s considerably less charming than Sitch.”
“Which one is the Situation again?”
“Like you don’t know. And did you notice the hint I dropped? My
first
husband, John. Like maybe it’s time for a second.”
“Very subtle. I’m not sure I got it. Now that you’ve explained.” Wells turned off the television. “Would you believe me if I said I’m worried you might get hurt? I don’t mean emotionally either.”
“I’m a big girl. And a licensed peace officer in the state of New Hampshire.”
“I’ve always liked that expression.”
“Big girl?”
“Peace officer. Like you were hired by the city of peace. The opposite of a police officer is a criminal. So would the opposite of a peace officer be a war officer?”
“You’re avoiding the topic at hand, John.”
“Not avoiding it. Outrunning it with wit and wisdom.”
“You should know better than to rely on those.”
“And you know what happened to you-know-who.” Years before, Wells’s former fiancée, Jennifer Exley, had been wounded in an attempt on his life. “These guys, when they decide to come at you, they don’t care about collateral damage. Up here, it seems like a long way from that, but it’s
not.”
Anne was silent. Wells stood, looked out the window. The warm months were almost gone. The easy months. The oaks and maples had shed their leaves and were waiting for winter.
“I believe you when you say you’re worried about my safety,” she said. “But it’s my choice,
too.”
“Yes and
no.”
“Sooner or later, the excuses won’t matter. Even if they’re true. Why don’t you go see Evan, at least? You’ve got a lot to sort out and that’s a good place to start.”
The next day, Wells called Heather, told her he wanted to see his son. A week after that, he headed west to Montana. Now the wheel had swung again, and he was on this jet, bound for the war zone where he’d spent half his adult life.
He wondered if the job—not necessarily this job, but
the
job—would cost him Anne. Experience said yes. It had cost him everyone else. Though she was still cutting him slack, for now. When Wells told her what Duto wanted, her first words were, “When do you
go?”
He’d gone up from Washington to visit her for a night before flying out. In the morning she gave him a present, a neatly wrapped box about the size of a hardcover book. “Should I open it now or later?”
“Now. I want to be sure you’ll like
it.”
“I’ll like
it.”
In fact, Wells wasn’t very good at getting gifts. He was so self-contained that he wanted very little. Not that he insisted on living like a monk. He’d given away most of his money, but he still had plenty saved. And if he found something that he thought he would use, like a new motorcycle, he would buy it. But he had no interest in accumulating possessions for their own sake. Brand names and new clothes meant nothing to him. He didn’t want much, and what he wanted, he
had.
In other words, buying presents for him was a nightmare.
Anne spun her finger,
Stop stalling and open it.
Inside, Wells found a pair of aviator sunglasses, gold Ray-Bans. “They’re vintage. That means they’re
old.”
“They’re great. Thank you.” Wells put them on, went into the bathroom, and checked himself out. “Nice,” he said. “I look like the sidekick in an eighties action movie. The guy who gets killed a half hour
in.”
“I think they’re very Dirty Harry. You really like them?”
“I do.” He came back into the bedroom and picked her
up.
“They’re sexy.”
“You’re sexy.” He kissed her, chastely at first and then openmouthed. He laid her on the bed as Tonka grumbled and jumped off. She was wearing only a T-shirt and sweatpants.
She smirked. “I want you to leave them
on.”
“That’s kinda creepy.”
She ran her tongue across her upper lip, intentionally lewd. “Remember I’m from the generation that grew up with Internet porn.”
“I thought nice girls didn’t watch porn.”
“All girls watch porn.” She reached up, pulled him down onto the bed. “You’d better leave them
on.”
He left them
on.
* * *
THE JET EASED
into a slow descent. Then the overhead lights kicked on and the speakers crackled. “Captain Hawes here. Beauty sleep’s over. We’re about a hundred miles from Bagram. Buckle up, stow your gear, turn off anything with a battery. Should be on the ground in about twenty-five minutes. Though if you send a few bucks to the cockpit, I could be convinced to stay up here longer.”
The soldier next to Wells jerked awake. He was a specialist, an E-4. On his sleeve he wore a patch with a dark black horse’s head—the insignia for the 1st Cavalry Division, the famous 1st Cav, whose history dated to 1921. “I miss anything?”
“Nope. You’re with First
Cav?”
“Yeah, Second Battalion.
You?”
“I was a Ranger once upon a time. A while back. Then I worked at Langley for a while.”
“Now you’re a contractor? You guys usually fly commercial.”
“I get off on leg cramps and the smell of ten thousand farts. How’s business?”
“Ever been to Afghanistan before?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know. The problem with these guys we’re fighting is they like it, you know. After all these years they got a jones for it and they won’t ever stop. How it feels anyway. Only good thing is they’re lousy tactically. They’re not scared, but they can’t shoot straight, and half the bombs they make don’t go off. Otherwise more of us would be coming home in bags.”
“People have been fighting over these mountains for a long time.”
“I got six months left in my tour, and a year after that on my contract, and then I’m done. I thought I wanted to be a lifer, but one round is gonna be it. Lucky me, I only signed a four-year bid, I’ll only be twenty-two when I get out, so I can still do something else.”
“And how’s morale?”
“The PR is not the best time to
ask.”
“PR?”
“Parole Revoker. What we call these flights back from leave. That’s why you’re not hearing any hoo-ahs or singing or anything to get us chunked up. But, you know. Guys hang in. My sarge and loot aren’t too bad, so I can’t complain. And on my base, we live okay. Hot food, showers, laundry, free Internet at the MWR.” The Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Office.
“Not everybody’s got it so good.”
“Heck, no. The small outposts, firebases, it’s MREs, cold showers, no coms. They live like dogs. Every so often, you hear about a platoon that’s got real messed
up.”
Not exactly what Wells was here to investigate, but he was intrigued. “Messed up
how?”
“Drugs. Target practice on civvies. Ugliness. But it’s just rumors.”
“It always is. Till it’s real.”
“Anyway. I’m Howard Gordon. Specialist Gordon.” The guy extended a hand.
“John Wells.”
“John Wells. Why do I know that name?”
“I did something interesting once. A few years back.” Wells had been a celebrity after his first big mission. Since then, he’d kept his head down. Most civilians had forgotten him. Wells saw that the amnesia had spread to the military. At least the junior guys. Not that he minded. He didn’t have an ego. Anonymity worked to his advantage.
Okay, maybe he minded a little.
“That bomb—in New York—” Gordon said.
“Yeah. That was
me.”
“You don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”
“Somebody asked me to come check things
out.”
“You want my opinion?”
“Sure.”
“I say we bring in a pile of AKs, RPGs. They got plenty already, but let’s make sure everybody has one. And some bigger stuff, too. Then you know what we
do?”
“Tell
me.”
“Build a wall around the whole country, twenty feet high, concrete. Then we leave. We set up outside, watch the perimeter, make sure none of them get out. And we let ’em have at it. Because they will, man. If they don’t have us to kill they’ll just take turns popping each other. Like checkers, jump, jump, double jump, clearing out the board. Until there’s only one left. When we see that one guy, you know what we
do?”
“Kill
him?”
“Too easy. Let him have it. He earned it. He’s King Turd of Asscrackistan.”
“Asscrackistan.”
“Never heard anyone call it that?”
Wells shook his head.
“You will.”
* * *
THE JET CAME IN
hard and fast and stopped quickly, tossing Wells forward in his seat. A drawn-out sigh rose from the soldiers, air leaking from a punctured tire, not a groan but not a cheer.
“Welcome home,” the captain said. Specialist Gordon raised twin middle fingers to the front of the cabin. Wells wished he had room to stretch. His hamstrings felt especially tight. Anne was pushing him to take up yoga. He might have to give
in.