by Weston Ochse
“Other side of the road. Five of them.”
The SUV had landed on the passenger side. The damage had occurred at the driver side rear tire. The damage seemed minimal, which was how it was sometimes. Boy Scout had seen MRAPs turned inside out by an IED and Toyota Corollas only flipped. The damage depended on so much. The depth of the IED. The components involved. The skill of the bomb maker.
McQueen was standing and firing over the hood.
Boy Scout crawled around toward the back, his legs not responding to his commands. He managed to find a position that would allow him to peer around the edge without putting himself in further danger. He could see the enemy’s position, but not a target. Then a head popped up and he put a round into it. Even blown up and shaken as he was, his marksmanship was still with him. He barely acknowledged the million rounds of ammunition he’d put down the end of a rifle, just knew that if it hadn’t been for all of those mindless days slogging through training venues in swamps, mountainsides, snow-covered forests, and desert moonscapes, he’d never have made that shot.
“Get ready,” McQueen yelled.
“For what?” Boy Scout yelled back. Feeling was beginning to return to his legs.
“Going to get Lore!”
Of course. “Ready!”
McQueen emptied his magazine in the area of greatest threat, then ran to where Lore lay.
Boy Scout took up the fire, sending three round bursts into the same area. Everything was working right up until the point his rifle jammed. A look of horror crossed his face and, in slow motion, he turned to see McQueen take three rounds in his side, then fall forward with Lore in his arms.
Boy Scout tore his gaze away from his friends and furiously cleared the weapon. Once he got the round out, he reseated the magazine, got a bullet in the chamber, and bent around the back of the SUV in time to see two men, faces wrapped with black and white checkered keffiyehs, stand and start across the road. Boy Scout fired, catching one and sending him spinning to the ground. But he missed the other.
Where was his marksmanship now?
He fell back just in time to see the enemy round the hood.
Boy Scout double-tapped him in the head.
With the blood returning to his legs, Boy Scout threw down his rifle and pulled his 9mm from the chest rig. He stood shakily, using his left hand to balance. Pain lanced down his left leg, but it somehow managed to support him. Something might be broken or twisted but he didn’t have time for triage. Another Taliban came around the front and Boy Scout shot him, too. Then Boy Scout felt a sledgehammer to his back. He stumbled forward. His vest took most of the damage, all but the force of a 7.62mm bullet traveling at seven hundred and fifteen meters per second. Boy Scout spun and dropped to a knee.
The enemy fired, but his aim was too high.
Boy Scout shot him in the groin three times. The man folded in on himself, shrieking.
Then Boy Scout stood and, screaming with rage, tore around the hood and across the road. A man, barely older than a boy, sat there, working frantically to correct a jam in his AK 47. He looked up, fear skyrocketing in his eyes.
Boy Scout screamed, “War is God!” Then he fired his pistol until all he could hear were clicks and still he squeezed the trigger, screaming in the silence of surviving.
Epilogue
THE SECONDARY TITLE for Blood Meridian was An Evening of Redness in the West. Boy Scout had wondered at the need for two titles and it hadn’t been until this moment that he’d figured out why the author had insisted on it. The first was the name of the book. The second was the warning. An Evening of Redness in the West had the same moral warning as the one that said Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here from Dante’s Inferno. If a book and a poem could have a warning, if a pillbox and a box of cereal could have warnings, then a goddamned godless place like Afghanistan should have warning signs at every corner.
The idea that Boy Scout had believed the Taliban had been the greatest threat they’d ever come up against was now laughable. The greatest threat wasn’t even the daeva or the dervishes. No, the greatest threat of all was war, a goddess he’d once embraced and thought to master. He thought he could have her the way he wanted. A regular Good Time Charlie, doing with her what he would, then divorcing her or moving onto something else. No one had told him what a fickle, stone cold bitch she could be, letting him believe everything might be over. War. Fucking war. If there was any place on earth were war was de rigueur, it was Afghanistan, and now Boy Scout and his team were its most recent victims.
He’d also come to the conclusion that they were never going to be free of the fear that one day they might wake up and be back in the cistern, piss and shit coating the water as they sat dreaming of someone dreaming their life was real. This was a new form of PTSD altogether. They weren’t affected by what they’d seen. They were worried that nothing was real. Were they even going to be able to make contacts, knowing that they might be gone in the wisp of a moment?
Then came the explosion.
Then the gunfight.
And then the truest pain of all.
So it was with his own pain firing down his left leg, carrying Lore’s dying body over his right shoulder, leaning into McQueen—who by all rights should be dead with as many bullets as he’d taken—they stumbled down the middle of a lonely road on the eastern edge of Afghanistan.
One foot after the other.
One mile at a time.
No one passed them.
No one saw them.
In fact, not one of them said a word.
Still, Boy Scout listened because he believed he could hear whispering. It was just on the edge of his hearing, like over the horizon, or right behind him. The sizzling of a faraway radio station right on the edge of his ken. Worry crept into his consciousness as he realized what it might be. Then they turned a corner and saw the American flag flying over the FOB Mitchum and the gate with and MRAP parked in front of it and a soldier staring down at crew served weapons, wearing a United States Army combat uniform with an American flag on his right shoulder.
Help was only moments away.
Maybe they might live after all.
Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all.
Maybe they could leave this forsaken place and never return.
Then the whispering began in earnest.
Acknowledgements
According to Erik Hage in his book Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion, Moby Dick is McCarthy’s favorite book. Although I hadn’t known this, it was of little surprise when I read it. Herman Melville’s famous treatise on the inability of man to overcome nature left a raw wound in my psyche when I first discovered it, shattering the idea that man could do anything and that heroes always won. Then came McCarthy carving the same human inequities into his own anti-pastoralism. And it’s all true. The inexhaustible qualities of nature far outstrip the abilities of any man or woman, even a team of men and women, to accomplish that which they must, which is the thematic element I attempted to capture in this book. So it is only right and honorable that I give thanks to Melville and McCarthy for their iconic contributions to literature and the idea that man will always be victim to nature, whether it be nature itself, the nature of man, or the nature of war. Thanks also to my first reader, editor and wife, fellow author Yvonne Navarro. Thanks to my agent, Cherry Weiner, and the good folks at Solaris, Jonathan Oliver, Michael Rowley, David Thomas Moore, Kate Coe, Rob Power, and Ben Smith. Thank you to Jaycee Martin and Jen Germain for language support. A shout out to my mate Rob Knight for being the first reader while you were in Afghanistan—how’s that for symmetry. Finally, I would like to thank all of the men and women who have spent all or part of the last sixteen years fighting in Afghanistan. It’s a hell of a place, isn’t it? I hope to God you never have to go back again.
About the Author
Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. H
is personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea.
A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series, SEAL Team 666, has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci-fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war.
Weston Ochse’s fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly.
Other titles by this author
The Task Force Ombra Series
Grunt Life
Grunt Traitor
Grunt Hero
Seal Team 666 Series
Seal Team 666
Age of Blood
Reign of Evil
Border Dog
The Afterblight Chronicles
Blood Ocean
Tomes of the Dead
Empire of Salt
Multiplex Fandango
Halfway House
FUBAR
THE INVASION IS OVER. THEY ARE ALREADY AMONGST US.
Benjamin Carter Mason died last night. Maybe he threw himself off a bridge into Los Angeles Harbor, or maybe he burned to death in a house fire in San Pedro; it doesn’t really matter. Today, Mason’s starting a new life. He’s back in boot camp, training for the only war left that matters a damn.
For years, their spies have been coming to Earth, learning our weaknesses. Our governments knew, but they did nothing—the prospect was too awful, the costs too high—and now, the horrifying and utterly inhuman Cray are laying waste to our cities. The human race is a heartbeat away from extinction. That is, unless Mason, and the other men and women of Task Force OMBRA, can do anything about it.
This is a time for heroes. For killers. For Grunts.
‘Weston Ochse writes hard-nosed fiction with more grit and imagination than most authors could ever hope to muster. When he turns his skills to tales of the military, the words sing with the truth of personal experience.’
Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind
‘SEAL Team 666 is like X-Files and Torchwood written by Tom Clancy: ingenious, creepy, and entertaining.’
Kevin J. Anderson on Seal Team 666
www.solarisbooks.com
When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own.
As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.
‘Starship Troopers meets Apocalypse Now – and they’ve put Kurtz in charge... An unmissable debut.’
Stephen Baxter
‘I love Yoon’s work! Full of battles and political intrigue, in a beautifully built far-future that manages to be human and alien at the same time.’
Ann Leckie
www.solarisbooks.com
LIFE AND DEATH ON THE WAVES
Kavika Kamalani is a Pali Boy, a post-plague heir to an ancient Hawai’ian warrior tradition that believes in overcoming death by embracing one’s fears and living large. His life on the Nomi No Toshi, the floating city, is turned upside down when one of his friends dies, harvested for his blood, and he sets out to find the killer.
Kidnapped himself and subjected to a terrifying transformation, Kavika must embrace the ultimate fear – death itself – if he, his loved ones, and the Pali Boys themselves are to survive.
“Weston is one of the best authors of our generation.”
– Brian Keene, author of Take the Long Way Home and City of the Dead
“Weston Ochse is a mercurial writer, one of those depressingly talented people who are good at whatever they turn their hand to.”
– Conrad Williams
www.abaddonbooks.com
