The Long Night

by Jessica Scott

  Tick stalked out from between two vehicles, looking none too pleased to be up several hours before the ass-crack of dawn.

  "Where the fuck is the second squad?" he barked. A huge wad of dip stuck out of his bottom lip.

  "No idea," Sam shouted over the din. "But Merrick needs to get here soon or we'll have to roll without him."

  Which was a horrible fucking idea, as horrible ideas went. It was a cardinal sin to move without a force big enough to secure itself. While the two-squad solution was less than ideal for the amount of area they were covering, it would be fucking suicide to roll with a single squad defending the TAC. They'd be writing for years at the Center for Lessons Learned about the catastrophic kill that took out 15–20 guys because they’d thought rolling out on time was more important than rolling out with enough men. Not exactly a comforting thought.

  "I'll get our commander to find his commander and figure out what the hell is going on," Tick shouted.

  Sam nodded and Tick stalked off. He almost felt sorry for Merrick if Tick got ahold of him. Tick was one mean son of a bitch when he got riled up, and Sam guessed he was about two notches down from fully pissed off.

  He rounded the trail vehicle in time to see Lewis slap a skinny kid, who Sam instantly recognized as the Bible-thumping kid from the plane. His red hair was shaggier than Sam remembered, and he looked like he hadn't slept since they’d landed in country a few days prior. Sam knew the feeling. His eyes were wide with fear, his mouth gaped open. Lewis grabbed the kid by his body armor and shook him, shouting something in his face.

  The kid looked one step away from pissing himself—if he hadn't already—but Sam didn't feel the least bit sorry for him. The commo guys who spent their entire careers on the base had this reaction all too frequently when they had to do their jobs outside the security of the concertina wire. Thankfully, there were more commo guys who loved life with the infantry and armor and were damn good at their jobs. He knew one sergeant first class who could jerry-rig an antenna with 550 cord, a gum wrapper, and a coat hanger.

  If the kid didn't pull himself together, Sam would leave him in the truck guarding the radio. If he did, the kid would learn something today—with luck, something valuable that didn't involve life or limb.

  Lewis shoved the kid toward one of the trucks. Sam did not interfere. He headed back up to his vehicle to do a comms check with Hellhound Main.

  "Hellhound Main, Hellhound Main, this is Reaper Two Six. How copy, over?"

  "Reaper Two Six, this is Hellhound Main. Roger out."

  Which meant he was coming in loud and clear. Good. Clear, uncluttered comms made him happy. It was a good omen. It was when missions started out with shitty comms that Sam got edgy and started saying his prayers. Bad comms were pretty high up on the list of Not Good Things. Far too often, static had choked off the call of "MEDEVAC follows." He swallowed, shoving down too many memories of bad comms and failed missions.

  He hooked the hand mic back into its rope and climbed out of the truck. He leaned up where Jinx was conducting weapons checks on the .50-cal.

  Jinx looked down at him with a wicked grin and a thumbs-up. Good. His guys didn't think this was anything other than a normal mission. Headlights rolled around the Jersey barriers and crept to a halt fifteen yards from Sam's vehicle. Relief prickled his skin even as his palms slicked with sweat.

  Merrick—the de facto NCOIC of the mission—had arrived.

  * * *

  "You're late."

  "Seeing how you and your team were supposed to meet us at Gate Two across base an hour ago, I'd say you were the one who was late," Merrick snapped.

  Behind him, Merrick's squad moved like shadows against the darkness. Thin, wiry shapes. Not a fat soldier anywhere on Merrick's squad. Not even a guy built like Lewis. Every one of his men was whip thin. He wondered if Merrick kept them that way on purpose.

  "We were never supposed to meet at Gate Two. We settled on this as the exit because it was on the opposite side of the city."

  "And the lookouts they've got watching the base won't notice anything different when the convoy leaves from this exit instead of the normal one."

  Sam bristled. "Take it up with the commanders. This is where my commander told me we're leaving from."

  Merrick stepped into Sam's space, close enough that Sam could smell the stale smoke on the other man's skin. It was a habit that was starting to get really fucking annoying. "Don't forget who is in charge of this mission, puppy," he hissed for Sam's ears only.

  Anger sucked the air from Sam's lungs but he bit back his sharp retort. It wouldn't do for the men to see him fighting with Merrick. They'd wonder what was going on. And then the rumors would start. He took a step back when all he really wanted to do was punch Merrick in the teeth.

  "So are we leaving?" Major Whitman strode up, a cigar hanging from one corner of his mouth. He was easily the oldest major in the brigade, and he tried to hide it by looking way too eager for the upcoming mission. Sam had had more than one conversation with him where he'd confessed to wanting to go back to a line unit and lead soldiers, but Sam didn't believe his bullshit. He wondered how this man—the man excited about rolling off the base and into probable enemy contact—had become the same man who would bitch about a stolen couch.

  He and Whitman didn't always see eye to eye on things, especially when Whitman's good idea fairies had Sam and his boys running a stupid mission to get their quotas up instead of caring about actual results from said missions. All so that some captain could say he ran x number of missions instead of what really mattered: ran x number of missions with y results.

  Results mattered. At least, Sam thought they did.

  Merrick straightened as Whitman approached. If Sam didn't know better, he'd have sworn Merrick had flinched away from Whitman. But that couldn't be right. Whitman was just a harmless pain in the ass. Merrick didn't strike Sam as the kind of guy who was intimidated by a gold oak leaf on someone's chest.

  "Yes, sir. We're finishing up checks and we'll be ready to roll," Sam said. "Can you have your guys double-check the commo guys, sir? The last time we did this, they forgot some widget or some shit and we had to jerry-rig the antenna."

  Whitman offered a mock salute, his jaw tensing in the shadows cast by the headlights from the rumbling Humvees. "Already done, chief. We're good."

  Sam glanced at Merrick. "We're ready to roll. You're taking the lead to advance on the objective?"

  Merrick nodded once and turned around, melting into the shadows toward his squad. It was more than a little creepy how he did that. His men reminded Sam of wolves. Sharp, hungry wolves coming up on the end of a long, hard winter. They only had a few days before they were all heading home. Sam tried not to be jealous. At the same time, he worried about how Merrick’s eagerness to leave would affect his team's interaction with the locals.

  Sam wondered if Merrick was ruthless and cold with the local nationals. He didn't give the impression of a man who would listen to a lot of excuses about why no one had reported the man who'd buried the last roadside bomb. Sam didn't have much compassion for the people who tried to blow him up on a regular basis. No, he wasn't a fan of the adult male population of Iraq, not by a long shot.

  But the women? Yeah, he pitied the women. And the kids. Something inside him threatened to unlock, and he shut it down with a fierce violence. Too much pity got people killed.

  He had no room for those thoughts as he locked and loaded his weapon and motioned for everyone to mount up. Merrick's trucks pulled in front of theirs and led the way out into the city. The convoy rolled out, heading toward the test fire pit. Something about the sound of the .50-cal going off over his head was beautiful, the reverb vibrating against his breastbone. It was the comforting sound of violent capability. The knowledge that if they needed to, they could unleash hell upon their enemies.

  He hoped they didn't need to.

  Theirs was not a clean job. It was a job that touched the most secure recesses of his soul. A
soul that ended up tainted with darkness no matter how much he tried to shield it from the ugliness around it. Sam's hands had blood on them, and the blood was unclean.

  He glanced down at the dirty green and leather gloves covering his hands as he lifted his weapon. The gloves did not protect him from the violence of his actions.

  He fired a few rounds out of the window of the Humvee. Satisfied that his weapon would work when he needed it, he waited for the call from Merrick that they were moving.

  They drove out of the protection of the Jersey barriers and concertina wire and guard posts. They rolled beyond the safety of the base and into the heart of the enemy's territory.

  Sweat slicked Sam’s palms in his gloves as he listened to the chatter on the radio. It warned them to watch the overpass as they wove beneath to make themselves more difficult to hit if some industrious soul was trying to throw something on them.

  He lived in mortal fear of the RKG-III, Russian grenades that penetrated armor like a hot knife through butter. Their Humvees offered no defense against any explosion, but RKGs were particularly deadly. Launched with a tiny parachute, they floated down to their targets' vulnerable roofs.

  He reached over and tugged on Jinx's leg, reminding him to duck at the overpass. The enemy had brought back a technique from Vietnam: a thin wire strung across an intersection or beneath a bridge.

  Instant decapitation. A horrific way to die. Even worse to clean up. Sam had no idea how the mortuary affairs guys did their jobs and stayed sane.

  Jinx crouched down behind the defilade until they were clear of the bridge.

  The patrol moved quickly, following a familiar route. It was only at the last minute that they diverted from the normal and darted into the neighborhood.

  The site occupation went down smooth, like a last shot of tequila. Merrick's squad emplaced the outer security while Sam's cleared the building. Up the stairs, room to empty room.

  For once, intel had been right. They didn't encounter any resistance as they cleared the old building. The next closest building—the one alleged to be an orphanage—was buttoned up tight, no lights, no signs of life. Sam hoped the intel was wrong, that it wasn't an orphanage. So far, it looked as empty as the shell of the building they were actively clearing. He'd given up on praying a long time ago, but he prayed that it stayed that way.

  The temporary TAC was cleared in under an hour. Sam emplaced the gunners on the roof, then went down to check the concertina wire while the commo guys lugged the heavy case holding the antenna onto the roof.

  "Hellhound Main, Hellhound Main, this is Reaper Two Six Delta." Jinx swore and slammed the mic against the radio.

  "That's probably not going to help." Sam leaned into the truck. "What's wrong?"

  "I can't raise the TOC on the net."

  "They don't have the antenna on the roof yet. The building is blocking you."

  Jinx shook his head. "That's not it, Sarn't Brown. We lost comms before we entered the neighborhood."

  "Show me." Jinx pulled out the map and pointed to the location, a hillside before they'd crossed the bridge and descended into the heart of the enemy, a location that should have had pristine communications.

  Sam frowned. "This isn't showing as a communications dead zone."

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you. It's really strange. We should have comms right now, but everything is coming in broken and unreadable."

  Unease prickled at the back of Sam’s neck. "It'll be fine once we get the antenna up on the roof."

  Jinx looked at him, his eyes filled with disbelief in the complete and total bullshit Sam had just fed him. Concern creased the pale skin beneath his eyes. "Sure, Sarn't Brown. Whatever you say."

  Sam gripped his shoulder. "It'll be fine. Just get back up on the guns. And don't forget to start the truck every hour to keep the radio from draining the batteries."

  "Roger that, Sarn't."

  Jinx climbed back up into the defilade.

  Sam tried to ignore the fear curdling like acid in his stomach.

  11

  "What the hell is that?"

  The skinny kid stopped what he was doing and turned. "It's a coffee pot, Sarn't."

  "A coffee pot," he repeated. Sam raised both eyebrows. It dawned on him that he didn't know the kid's name. He was a number on the mission. A butt to a seat. Not a name. Not a person. "And what generator are you going to use to power it?"

  The kid's ruddy cheeks flushed. "I don't know. Major Whitman said to bring it."

  Sam made up a few new creative ways to use profanity in a sentence. "Put that fucking coffee pot away until you've got the fucking radios working."

  The kid's eyes widened quickly. "But Sarn't, Major Whitman…"

  "I don't give a flying fuck what Major Whitman wants. Get the goddamned radios in system."

  "Roger, Sergeant." The kid nodded and dropped the silver bullet coffee pot on a nearby table. His weapon bounced where it was slung across his back. Sam was honestly surprised the kid was even still carrying it. He'd lost count of the times he'd found commo guys setting up comms with their weapons stacked neatly and completely ineffectively in a corner.

  He wondered where the kid had stashed his Bible. It felt wrong that he didn't know the kid's name. He shrugged off the feeling and headed up the narrow staircase, his shoulders nearly brushing each cement wall. He'd ask him in a little while. After the comms were up.

  "What the hell is taking so long?" Sam barked as he came onto the roof to see two guys struggling to get the thin whip antenna erected.

  Whitman slammed the hand mic against the radio. His face was a dark purple in the low light. "They forgot the connector."

  "What connector?" Sam asked. He flexed his fingers to avoid bunching them into a fist.

  "The connector that allows us to put these two hundred-foot cables together. We can't reach the truck without it."

  Sam flushed with cold rage. "Are you fucking kidding me? You brought a goddamned coffee pot but you didn't check for fucking connectors?"

  "Watch your mouth," Whitman snapped.

  Sam was pushing his luck, but he was too fucking pissed to care. He flicked the good angel off his shoulder. "What the hell are you going to do about this?"

  "I'm going to shit a connector, what the fuck do you think I'm going to do, Sergeant?" Whitman said. His use of Sam's rank was a cold reminder that Sam had crossed the line, a warning Sam ignored as the major continued. "You're going to move that truck to the bottom of this building so we can reach it with one cable instead of two."

  Sam's mouth fell open. For a moment, he contemplated nailing the fat old bastard in his fleshy cheek. Faith would be thrilled by his court-martial. Instead, he snapped his mouth closed, stalked to the edge of the building and peered over the edge, smothering the pitch in his stomach as he approached the brink.

  Still shrouded in darkness, a helo buzzed low overhead. It sounded more like a lawnmower than an instrument of airborne death. It distracted him, however briefly, from his fury. He glanced down the alley, briefly lit up by the lights overhead. Nothing but trash and shadows kept at bay by a lone vehicle.

  "There is no way we can move that vehicle. It opens a massive gap in our perimeter," Sam said. "You were supposed to check the comms equipment, sir."

  "And I said watch your fucking mouth, Sergeant. You'll move the fucking truck. Dismount the weapon and put the guard position down there. Problem solved."

  Sam bristled. "Then your fucking commo guys are going to be the ones manning that position," he snarled.

  "They're running the radios."

  "Which any monkey with thumbs can do. And obviously, they don't do their job well if they forget the fucking connector."

  Major Whitman glared, his jaw pulsing, his eyes lit with a terrible enmity that said Sam was in for it if they made it back to base. Pulling that truck back opened up a major hole in their perimeter. He hadn't been kidding about that. Whitman’s fists were bunched at his sides and for a brief moment, Sam tho
ught he was going to swing on him.

  A burst of rapid fire echoed down the alley, bouncing off the walls like the inside of a kettledrum. They both ducked at the same time. Sam crept to the edge of the roof and lowered his night vision goggles, trying to get a glimpse of the source of the gunfire in the darkness. Two men rushed past the end of the alley but did not turn toward the first position in the outer cordon. The guards didn't move or otherwise give away their location.

  "We can't move the truck," Sam said again, his voice calm.

  "Then we need to find a new location, because these comms aren't going up without that truck coming closer to the building, or we're not talking," Whitman said.

  Major Whitman knew his team had screwed up. They had made the entire mission vulnerable, and that grated on the old infantryman's nerves. He should be embarrassed, Sam thought. He should be goddamned ready to kill himself for screwing up something as basic as pre-combat checks.

  Sam had to move the truck. He swore viciously as he headed down the narrow staircase. A smell like burned sulfur seared his nostrils as he descended the cement stairs. Fear mixed with unease. Heat coated the back of his neck. He turned around, fully expecting to see someone behind him, watching him from the vantage point at the top of the staircase.

  But there was nothing but darkness leading to the roof. He was alone with the sounds of the distant battle. The primitive fear that something was coming slithered up his spine. And he could do nothing to stop it.