The Long Night

by Jessica Scott

  * * *

  "I don't like this," Jinx said, shooting a glance at the skinny kid from the commo team. His hand rested on the butt of his personal weapon, mirroring Sam's stance.

  "It won’t be the first time we've been in a shitty spot because of commo," Sam said.

  The skinny kid said nothing from his position in the prone. Flat on his belly behind a couple of cement blocks, he stared at the end of the alley, fear making his pale skin blanch almost translucent.

  Sam hadn't been kidding when he'd told Major Whitman that the commo guys would pull duty. He gave less than a damn about the fucking coffee pot being unmanned. He felt like smashing the damn thing every time he looked at it.

  "Yeah, I'll try to remember that if I'm pulling shrapnel out of my ass later," Jinx grumbled.

  Sam grinned and slapped him once on the back. "Quit bitching. They got the antenna up, we've got comms back to the base. We'll be out of here in a few hours."

  "Whatever you say, Sarn't Brown." Jinx hunkered down next to the commo kid.

  Sam stood and kicked the commo kid's boot.

  He twisted to look back at Sam. "Yes, Sergeant?"

  "No sleeping on guard duty," Sam said. "Take all your orders from Jinx."

  Sam had nicknamed him BK for Bible Kid. He was going to hell—either the one for sergeants who didn't take care of their soldiers, or the one for people who lost their faith. He wasn't sure which. But he couldn't bring himself to ask the kid his name.

  BK looked at him, his eyes dark spots in his pale face. "He's a private. I'm a specialist. I should be in charge."

  Sam wasn't in the mood to play nice. "I don't know whose dick you sucked to get promoted to specialist, but Jinx knows what he's doing. I'd just as soon not lose one of my guys because he took orders from you. Jinx is in charge."

  Sam turned and headed back down the alley, but not before he heard Jinx whisper something to the kid that sound strangely like assault. Which was why Jinx was a PFC in the first place. He might have assaulted an MP at the chow hall. And his commander might have been trying to get some ass off the MP commander. So Jinx might have taken an Article 15 so that his commander could score.

  Jinx took it on the chin, but that didn't mean he didn't rag on Captain Lehr relentlessly about taking his rank so he could get some ass.

  But the skinny kid clutching his Bible didn't need to know that. It would probably violate his moral code.

  Sam really needed to ask Bible Kid his name, but he couldn't summon the give-a-shit factor. He was just another face in the crowd.

  Sam walked the edge of the concertina wire, checking the sectors of fire for each guard position. Checking to make sure everyone had water and bullets. Once the sun came up, they'd be more vulnerable. They couldn't be running around trying to fill their CamelBaks in the middle of the morning.

  Their position was vulnerable. They were near an orphanage and too close to a mosque for Sam's comfort. He kept his eye on the mental prize: if the clearing operation succeeded in capturing the local bomb maker, it could drastically reduce the number of bombs both in their sector but also across the region.

  It was worth it. Sam knew it, and yet the creeping feeling of something being wrong stuck with him. He rounded the corner to see the cable that had caused such controversy running up the side of the building. The antenna stood out against the light grey of the morning skyline.

  His gaze drifted down to the empty vehicle at the bottom of the building.

  No one was in the vehicle.

  Swearing at the major, who was nestled safe in the building while his guys risked their asses to protect him, he cranked the truck to life. If it went too long without starting, the battery would die. When the plan had called for Jinx to man the big gun in the vehicle, that part of the comms plan had taken care of itself. Jinx would have never let the truck go too long without starting it.

  Now? Now he needed to stick a boot in that major's ass to make sure the truck got started every half hour or so while Sam made his rounds to keep checking on their perimeter. If not, the radios could drain that sucker and they'd be stuck towing the vehicle back, which was never a good idea. Nothing screamed “attack me” more than towing a downed vehicle. If the shit hit the fan from this mission, the enemy was going to be crawling all over the city looking for a fight.

  He remembered how, right after Sadr City blew up in ’04, a unit from the Cav had lost a platoon out in sector, and they'd moved heaven and earth to get them back. He'd rolled through the city about a week after they'd unleashed hell. Angry men had stood on the sides of the road, their eyes filled with hatred. Sam would never forget one man who glared at him and drew his finger across his own throat.

  He swallowed at the memory.

  A butcher had stared at him as he'd sliced a goat from neck to balls. Entrails poured out onto the blistering pavement, and still the butcher had stared at Sam. It had been the first time Sam had been sure he was going to die in this war.

  But he'd made it through that rotation and come back again and again and again. This was his fourth tour. He'd seen everything. Nothing surprised him anymore. That still didn't mean he wanted to limp back to base with a downed vehicle.

  He killed the engine and headed into the building. A flicker of light caught his eye and he peered toward the growing light, near the edge of the building that intel said was an orphanage. A shadow slid along the low wall, shapeless and sharp all at once.

  Sam gripped the butt of his weapon. His heart pounded in his throat. He waited, and then the shadow was gone.

  Wishing he'd gotten some damn sleep before he'd rolled onto the mission, he turned away and ducked into the bombed-out building. It smelled like dust and—coffee.

  He sprinted to the top floor. "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

  Major Whitman held his mug to his lips as the radio chatter filled the background with static, punctuated by radio calls between the main base and the forward element. Distant gunfire crackled in the early morning light as the operation began.

  And Major Whitman sipped his coffee.

  12

  "You're not hiding your emotions very well," Merrick said as Sam stalked onto the roof.

  Merrick was pretty much the last person Sam wanted to see, but it was either sit with Merrick on the guard post or go back downstairs and punch Whitman in the face.

  "The motherfucker better remember to start the truck," Sam muttered. He lowered himself with a muffled curse against the low concrete wall and cradled his weapon across his lap.

  The adhan echoed across the skyline, the morning call to prayer a sound that Sam had long ago learned to hate. It was so frequently followed by violence that tensing up was practically a conditioned response.

  He tapped his thumb against his thigh, waiting for the call to end. The last note echoed over the city, punctuated by a massive fireball that lit up the pre-dawn sky.

  "Holy shit!" Sam flinched and ducked below the wall. The concussion of the blast followed the flash a moment later and reverberated against his ribcage. For a moment, his lungs didn't work. Just a moment, and then the feeling passed.

  "Dump truck," Merrick said. "Probably six, seven thousand pounds of explosives."

  "Or we could hope it was the cache they were using for the IEDs."

  Merrick shrugged. "Could be."

  "It would be nice if it was," Sam said, a strange need to fill the silence eating at him. "Make this whole clusterfuck worth it."

  "It won't change anything," Merrick said, shifting to look out over the skyline.

  Sam said nothing for a long moment. Merrick was right. "I know."

  Nothing they did mattered. Even deeds cloaked in goodness and mercy backfired. Good men died when you acted and good men died when you did nothing. Sam knew that firsthand.

  "There was nothing you could do, you know."

  Sam glanced at him, fear clutching his throat. "About what?"

  Merrick didn't know. He couldn't. Only Lewis and Hale knew the
call that Sam had made, and they wouldn't betray him to a stranger.

  "The major bringing the coffee pot."

  Relief was cold on his skin.

  "I know," Sam said. "It's shocking that he's an infantryman."

  Merrick's grin was cold. Predatory. "Some men are more fit for life behind the lines of safety, directing others to do their evil for them."

  Sam's stomach rumbled and he took a pull off his CamelBak, hoping the water would assuage the ache in his belly. "And some of us are meant to live in the muck and grime."

  "Follow me." Merrick said the line from the infantry creed quietly.

  A communion forged in fire and blood. A bond made of more than shared time in combat. A bond forged of having spilt enemy blood and lost more of their own.

  "Yeah." Sam closed his eyes as the rapid fire of a machine gun echoed over the rooftops. A flight of doves cooed and took off in a flutter of sound.

  He let his mind drift for a moment, needing to close his eyes and rest. His thoughts drifted a thousand miles away, to his fiancée and their unborn baby. How had she gotten the dead sparrow out of the kitchen? He suddenly wanted to know very badly what she'd done. How she'd done it. Had she nearly vomited, like he almost had, or had she been able to scoop it up and toss it in the trash as if it were nothing more than an old soda bottle?

  "You've got someone special back home."

  Sam was surprised by the lack of the question in Merrick's words. He glanced at his watch, not wanting to talk about Faith in the dirt and dust and smell of burning sulfur.

  "I need to check on my guys and make sure the signal guys start the truck." He stood, his weapon bouncing against his thighs.

  He felt Merrick's gaze on him as he descended the stairs. The exchange unnerved him, primarily because he and Merrick weren't exactly chummy. Why the sudden desire to talk about home?

  Sam ran his hands along the walls, feeling the cold from the concrete penetrate his gloves. On the first floor below the roof, he found Hale checking on a few of the guys who'd taken up elevated positions above the alley where Jinx and the skinny kid with the Bible were stationed.

  "Everyone's set," Hale said, stepping back from the open window.

  "Any movement from the orphanage?"

  "Not even the flicker of a candle. It's more like a morgue," Hale said. "It's creepy as fuck. There should be kids, right?"

  Sam shrugged. "I would assume so. Who knows how things are done here."

  Hale stuffed a wad of dip in his mouth, then tucked the green Copenhagen can into a pocket on his lower leg. "Did the commo guys really bring a coffee pot?"

  Sam grunted, not wanting to pick that scab again so soon. Not when he'd just gotten over the urge to punch that fucking major on the face.

  "Sore subject?"

  "If I don't hear that truck start soon, someone's ass is going to be sore," Sam said mildly.

  Hale motioned and one of the new privates skittered down the stairs, his boots thumping in retreat. A moment later, the Humvee rumbled to life.

  "That's the major's responsibility," Sam said.

  "Yeah, well sue me. I'd just as soon not get stranded here because he's too busy drinking his orange mocha Frappuccino to remember to start the truck."

  Sam grinned. "Keep an ear on the comms. I want to know the second the order comes to get the fuck out of here."

  "That makes two of us. This whole mission feels wrong."

  Sam glanced at him sharply, surprised that Hale gave voice to the unease Sam felt. Of his two team leaders, Hale was more likely to question, to poke holes in the plan. Lewis was about as analytical as a UFC fighter doing heart surgery, but was able to see problems in the plan that were often glaringly obvious but tended to get written off as easy to mitigate.

  "A couple more hours at most. We should be back on the base by lunch if we're lucky."

  "Good, because shithead has already eaten his MRE."

  A cold rage gripped Sam's guts. "Who?"

  "The major and his crew of super geeks."

  "They already ate? Are you fucking kidding me?"

  "Yep." Hale rocked on his heels. "Here's hoping you're right and we're home by lunch."

  Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. What he really needed to do was hit something. It took everything he had to move down the stairs to the guard points outside the inner cordon instead of telling that fat fucking major what an idiot he was.

  * * *

  Sam did not do patience well. The sounds of the battle had shifted with the sun and echoed from a distant place across the river. Nothing had been as big as the earlier explosion, which felt like it had ripped out part of his guts.

  He wanted to know what that explosion had been. He hoped and prayed that it wasn't going to result in a ramp ceremony. Those tore at his soul and ripped up his insides. He felt raw for days after. He never slept well after one, either.

  But sleep was the least of his worries. As the battle shifted farther away, the communications that managed to come in were more broken up. Every so often, the truck would start, relieving Sam of at least the worry about whether they'd have to blow the vehicle in place or tow it back. Neither option would be on the table if they kept it running.

  Sam made his rounds, periodically checking on all his boys as the sun climbed higher in the sky. Merrick did the same, and they did not cross paths again. Sam avoided him on purpose. He didn't trust that skinny fucker, and he didn't really care if Merrick knew it.

  Merrick might have been in charge of the mission, but that only meant Sam was running on adrenaline and stress from checking behind everything they did. He didn't want Merrick’s or his boys' eagerness to go home to result in a sloppy mistake that got someone hurt.

  To him, Merrick's confidence seemed to border on arrogance, and Sam had been up close and personal with what arrogance could do in the middle of a firefight. It meant very bad things, and Sam was tired of very bad things.

  He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and really feel like he was home, instead of wishing for his leave to end so he could get back to the chaos and stink of war.

  He was walking back into the building as an Apache buzzed overhead when he was damn near mowed down by the skinny kid he'd put on guard with Jinx. The kid’s hands were wrapped around the silver bullet coffee pot.

  "What are you doing?" Sam asked.

  "They gave the call to break contact. We're packing up."

  "So the first thing you pack is your coffee pot?" Sam ground his teeth to avoid ripping the fucking coffee pot out of the kid's hands. "Start the truck before you make another trip for the coffee filters."

  "Roger, Sarn't." The kid scurried past and Sam waited for the rumble of the engine turning over.

  Instead, he heard a click that made his heart stop.

  He turned slowly back toward the truck.

  Panic tore across the kid's freckles as he flicked the ignition switch once more. Click. Click. His eyes were filled with fear as he dared to meet Sam's gaze.

  Red tinted the edge of Sam's vision. "Get the fuck out of my sight. Just fucking go."

  Sam pounded up the stairs, past the positions his men were still manning, and stalked onto the floor just below the roof. Lewis was adjusting the sight on his weapon perched on the ledge of the window as Whitman listened to instructions coming over the hand mic.

  Major Whitman looked at him, then keyed the mic.

  "Hellhound Main. This is Hellhound TAC." But the lights were out on the radio. The truck was dead, and so was their radio. Which meant either that Whitman was too stupid to realize the radio had died, or that—Sam didn't know what else. He didn't care, either.

  Sam waited for Whitman to drop the mic before he hit him. His gloved fist collided with Whitman’s meaty jowl, exploding spit and chewing tobacco from his cheek.

  Lewis pulled him off before Sam could hit the major again. "You stupid, ignorant prick. You and that fucking coffee pot just screwed us six ways from Sunday."

&n
bsp; Merrick stood in the doorway, but Sam didn't care. He didn't care that he was the junior guy. He didn't care that Merrick outranked him and had just seen him assault a commissioned officer.

  "What seems to be the problem here, gents?" Merrick said lightly.

  "That coffee pot drained the truck's batteries," Lewis said, because Sam was still too pissed off to talk in anything other than creative profanity.

  "Lovely. I hope the coffee was worth it," Merrick said. "Leave the vehicle."

  Major Whitman’s spit was flecked with blood. "We can't leave the vehicle. It's got sensitive items in it."

  "And we'll be sure to mention that your coffee pot was the reason we had to blow up one-point-six million dollars’ worth of equipment today," Sam said bitterly. "The initial plan was that we have to be at the rally point in thirty minutes after they call break contact. We're going to miss the link up with the patrol heading back to base."

  "You're not blowing up the damn truck," Major Whitman growled.

  "Fine, then you can stay with it until we can get a patrol coordinated to come out and properly recover it." Merrick's expression was merciless.

  Panic flashed over the major's fleshy face. "There's no way."

  Sam ignored him and turned to Merrick. "We have less than thirty minutes to be on the road."

  Merrick nodded. "I'll get my driver to let the battalion ops know we're blowing the vehicle."

  He slunk from the room like the wolf that he reminded Sam of, leaving Sam with Major Whitman and Lewis, who looked like he wasn't sure whether he was going to hold Sam back or join in.

  "You better hope that your stupidity doesn't get anyone killed," Sam said quietly.

  Then he went downstairs to figure out what he should salvage from the truck and what would be destroyed.

  13

  The thermite grenade was still burning when Merrick walked into the building.

  "Settle in, boys. We're not going anywhere."

  Sam leaned back from the window where he watched the wreckage of his truck smolder. They'd managed to push it into a wider space to avoid damage to any surrounding structures. Still, it hurt Sam's heart to burn his own truck.