Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  Afterward, the gunman herded Green to the little stove then pushed down on his shoulder. Green sat. The second raider fingered his rifle, watching everything through the slits in his mask. The stocky one bent down behind Green. A strong-handed man, he jerked Green’s left ankle back and tied it to his left wrist, hobbling him but leaving his right hand free.

  The stocky man lifted a last skewer of mutton from the grill and pushed the meat off with dirty fingers. The chunks fell on the flattened grass in front of Green.

  This time Green ate. The men gave him bread, and offered him their plum brandy. He almost accepted it. But finally shook his head. When the last of the meat was gone, Green licked his fingers. Wanting more.

  In the gloaming of the little draw, the stocky man reached toward his comrade, straining to grasp the brandy bottle. And Green saw a flash of pale skin below the mask.

  A scar traced down the gunman’s neck, from below his ear into his collar.

  It was not the smartest thing Green ever did or said. But he was far beyond cool judgment. He spoke to the man on the other side of the stove, the one with the collapsible-stock AK.

  “Why’d you kill the girl, Frankie?”

  The jerk of the head confirmed it. Even Scarface understood English well enough to understand what had happened.

  After a moment, Frankie reached up and peeled off his mask. He ran his hand back over his liberated hair.

  “Fucking shit things anyway,” Frankie said.

  Scarface spoke rapidly. In a tone of alarm. But Frankie made a dismissive gesture.

  He looked at Green. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re going to kill you. You know that.”

  But Green refused to think about his own death. He kept his eyes on Frankie. “You sonofabitch. Why kill the girl?”

  Scarface pulled off his mask and shook his head hard. But he let Frankie do the talking.

  “What the fuck do you care? You have plans to marry her or something?” He laughed and said something in dialect to Scarface. Scarface laughed with the old Ford rumble Green remembered.

  “Look,” Frankie said, “this isn’t America. People here have values. You can’t just go slutting around in a village like that. That bitch was damaged goods.”

  “You said she was raped.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes in the glow of the stove. “And that’s supposed to make it all right?” He breathed out heavily, a killer’s sigh. “You’ll never understand. We have to purify our race. A woman who’s been raped … by those people … she doesn’t belong here anymore. Anyway, Daniela was nothing but a slut.”

  “She was one of your people, for God’s sake. She was educated. She could have helped you rebuild …”

  Frankie leaned on his gun. “She was a whore, man. Nobody around here’s going to marry a whore. And no whore’s going to teach our kids. Shit, she was even ready to go away with you last night. All you would’ve had to do was ask.” His eyes burned. “Do you know it’s a scientifically proven fact that every man who screws a woman leaves his trace in her, his mark? Then, when she has a baby, the baby’s got traces of all of them, of every one who’s been in her. That’s why those people rape. To infect our genes.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “It’s science,” Frankie said. “Science.”

  Green closed his eyes. He wished he had not eaten the mutton. “You’re sick,” he said. “You gang-rape one of your own people … put a bullet in her head … and that’s okay? That’s some kind of good deed? To keep the race pure? What fucking race? You’re all fucking the same, for Christ’s sake.”

  Frankie’s tone turned to disgust. “Don’t make some big drama out of it, man. She was a disgrace to our people. Our country’s going to be built on racial purity. Outsiders don’t understand. We can’t allow genetic pollution. None of their filth. And no Turk filth, either.” Frankie glanced at Scarface. “Look at Ivo here. He was her goddamned cousin, man. And he was all for blowing her fucking head off. He understands.”

  “You’re sick,” Green repeated.

  “Yeah? And you’re going to be dead.”

  In despair, Green spoke aloud to himself. “What … in the name of God … is this all about?”

  Frankie grinned. “Which God? Ours, or theirs?”

  “Nothing personal,” Frankie told him as they went down the trail in the darkness. Scarface walked point, weapon at the ready. Green followed. Frankie brought up the rear. A three-quarter moon lit the path where it broke out of the trees. The fields shone silver. Frankie spoke in a softened voice, as though listening for danger all the while. “You’re a sacrifice for a greater cause. You should be proud.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Frankie gave a snorting laugh. “Yeah, well. We owe you. I got to admit. Maybe we’ll put up a little monument to you somewhere when all this is over. ‘Major Jeff Green, who brought America into the war and rescued our people with his sacrifice.’ Kind of nice, when you think about it. I mean, what the fuck, man. Your death’s going to have meaning. Not like most of the poor suckers who get wasted around here.”

  “America won’t intervene because of one major.”

  “Oh, yeah?” They passed through another belt of low pines and a branch caught Green across the mouth. “Anyway,” Frankie went on, “it’s not just you. You’re just going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. All the atrocities and that shit. Those people have it coming. And your people know it. They just need a little push.”

  They marched down the mountainside. Green thought hard. His mind went too fast or too slow, but never just right. Ideas trotted by, then galloped off before he could harness them. And Sergeant Crawley was always with him. Crawley and the girl.

  “All this … even the mortars on your own village,” Green said. “It was all staged. To look like the other guys killed us, or kidnapped us, or whatever.”

  “Hey, first prize, Mr. Fucking Wizard.”

  “And you’re taking me across the border …” Green had trouble getting the next words out, “ … so … you can kill me on their side. So I’ll be found where the guilt will seem indisputable.”

  “Man, you should be on Jeopardy! or something. You know I miss American TV? Baywatch and shit. And, by the way, I appreciate your consideration. In not biting it back at the inn. We would have had to lug your dead ass over the mountain, which would have been a significant hassle. And the corpse wouldn’t have been nice and fresh for those UN fucks to find.”

  They passed along the high end of a meadow. The autumn night had a scent of rotting apples. Again, the smell of death made Green feel vividly alive.

  “And the head? Sergeant Crawley’s—”

  “It’ll turn up. We’ll be sure to let your people know.”

  Scarface dropped to one knee and readied his rifle. Frankie put a hand on Green’s shoulder and shoved him down. His voice was only a whisper now.

  “Fuck around, and you die right here.”

  But there was nothing. Only the mountain ghosts.

  They came down into a dead world and there was no more talking. The moon had passed its apogee, and the air was colder in the foothills than it had been on the mountainside. Fields of weeds paled with frost. Green put his pride on hold and asked if he could zip up his jacket. His hands were raw with the cold, but he knew he could do nothing about that. Frankie slapped him hard on the back of the head for opening his mouth, but whispered to Scarface to hold up for a minute. Instead of releasing Green’s hands from behind his back, Frankie closed up the jacket himself.

  “All comfy?” he asked. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  They came to the head of a cart track and Scarface consulted Frankie. Then they both nudged Green into the underbrush.

  He wondered how deep into the country they planned to take him before they killed him.

  “Got to stay off the roads,” Frankie said. “Lazy fuckers are all sleeping. They aren’t worth shit unless they got artillery behind them. But they drop mines all over the place.” />
  They skirted a farmhouse, and saw the sky through its burned-out windows. It truly was a dead place, with not even a stray dog. The weather had put down the insects. And if there were forest animals, they had learned to lie low. Black, burned-over patches scarred the fields in the moonlight.

  They crossed a stream by stepping on rocks. Ivo got a wet foot and started cursing. Frankie told him to shut up in the same tone he had used on Green.

  “I guess you’re some big deal?” Green said. “Local warlord, the big stud back from America.”

  “You shut the fuck up, too, smart guy. I told you.”

  “What have I got to lose?”

  Frankie’s head shook, silhouetted by the fading moonlight. “Man,” he whispered, “you really don’t understand shit, do you? I mean, really? You’ll be begging me. For just one more minute. Just five more seconds of life, man. Everybody does. Except the crazy ones. Like Daniela. The crazy ones know better.” He laughed, pleased at his vision. “But you. You remind me of this old guy. This doctor fuck. Thought that made him safe. He stayed behind in a clinic to take care of their wounded. Then he makes this big scene when we start waxing the fucks. All this big-shot, big-shit dignity of human life crap. I took that shitbird outside myself. And when he finally got it through his skull that all that education and what the fuck wasn’t going to save him, he starts begging. Like some little kid. ‘Please, don’t kill me yet. Oh, please, not yet. Just one more minute, just one more minute.’” Frankie gave Green a punch on the shoulder to get him moving again. “I bet that’s how you’ll be. You still think your fucking passport or the cavalry’s going to rescue you. But you’re already dead, pal.”

  Green got the sense that his captors knew the way, but not precisely. Darkness took its toll, and they seemed to wander for a while. He remembered his own confusion at Ranger camp, exhausted in the darkness, trying to follow an azimuth in the mountains of northern Georgia. And he recalled his pride in meaningless achievements. It really was nothing but vanity.

  There was no training in the world for this.

  The march led past a field of staggered crosses, slapped together from wood scraps. Each cross had two horizontals, the lower one wider.

  “We didn’t kill enough of them,” Frankie said.

  They came to a hamlet before dawn. The moon was down and the darkness had the texture of flannel. But you could still see that every structure had been destroyed. On both sides of the lane, broken walls rose and rubble narrowed the passage. The earth crunched underfoot.

  Frankie and Scarface had a discussion that turned into a spat. Green got the words “patrols” and “stay.” Abruptly, Scarface threw up his hands, giving in. Frankie turned to Green.

  “We’re going to hang here and check out some property. Find some little fixer-upper. See if we can get a good deal.”

  They went carefully behind the ruins, nervous of booby traps. They sent Green in front now, telling him where to go.

  The only structure that offered a decent hiding place was a barn. It stank, although the village must have been destroyed months, if not years, before. But the sky had begun to gray and it was time to go to ground.

  In order to avoid leaving traces outside, they took care of their needs at the back of a stall. Then Scarface tied Green to a post where the barn door opened, making no attempt to hide him from anyone who might come nosing inside. Scarface was in a surprisingly good mood, considering that he had spent all night walking through Indian country and had just lost an argument. He tried his bits of English on his captive.

  “Door open,” he said. “See American.” He cocked his fingers into a play pistol and put the index finger to Green’s temple. “Bang, bang.”

  “What’s he’s trying to say,” Frankie explained, “is that anybody comes around here, they bust in the door and they’re going to shoot anything they see alive. So they shoot your ass. And give us time to unload on them. That’s how this shit goes down.”

  “Then what?”

  “What?”

  “Then what happens? All the killing. Daniela. Me. All the others. What’s the point anymore? There’s a cease-fire down here. You’ve got your shitty little country. What more do you want?”

  “I want those people dead, man. All of them. They still have our land. It was ours for centuries. I want it back.” He made a whistling sound. “And you saw what they did to our people. That grave. Those people are savages. You can’t live with them.”

  It was Green’s turn to smile, to share what he had figured out. Maybe Frankie would kill him. But he would not die fooled.

  “Yesterday, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Like that. Women. Little babies. Those people are fucking animals.”

  “Except the bodies in that grave weren’t your people. Were they, Frankie? That’s why you were going at them with pickaxes, wrecking the evidence. You wanted to show us another mass grave, to pile it on. But you didn’t want us to look too hard. Because the corpses weren’t your people at all. And you knew where the grave was because you did the killing.”

  Scarface looked at Frankie. Frankie’s face had gone mean in the gray light.

  “Americans can’t understand,” he said at last, “what’s it’s like here. It’s kill or be killed. Them or you. There’s no choice.”

  “Women and children? That’s real hero’s work, Frankie.”

  “Women have babies. Babies grow up to kill you. Children don’t forget.”

  “So everything’s okay. Anything for the cause. Butcher people. Massacre your neighbors.” Green glanced back and forth in the murky light that filtered through the walls and the little window. “Destroy villages like this.”

  Frankie laughed. Green still did not get it.

  “This village? We didn’t do this, man. Those people did it for us.”

  Green looked at him. With a question on his face.

  Frankie put on an expression that pitied Green’s naivete. “This was a Muslim village, man. Nobody gives a shit about those scum. Me, I almost like them, in a way. ’Cause those people spend so much time and energy killing them. A bullet in a Turk’s head means one bullet less for mine.”

  Green leaned back against his post. Scarface said something to Frankie. Frankie nodded. Scarface stood up and drew a dirty rag from his back pocket.

  “Too much talk,” Frankie explained. “Got to be quiet now.”

  As Scarface approached him with the gag, Green said, “You’re wrong. This wasn’t a Muslim village. You can smell the pig shit.”

  Frankie laughed. Green’s was the funniest act of the season.

  “I didn’t say they were good Muslims,” Frankie told him.

  They did not wait for the twilight this time. The afternoon was falling golden through the window when Scarface kicked Green awake, tore off the gag, and untied his hands. Then Scarface pulled a heel of bread from his jacket pocket and dropped it in Green’s lap. Green was so dry he could hardly chew or swallow. But he tried not to waste a crumb. This time, he took a swig of the brandy when it was offered.

  “They’re lazy fuckers, those people,” Frankie explained. “They wrap up their patrols by the middle of the afternoon. Then they get fucking drunk. They have no culture. Just appetites, you know? They’re not Europeans. But at least it makes things easier for us.”

  They let Green go to the back of the stall alone.

  “Take a good one,” Frankie called. “’Cause it’s going to be your last. We just got time to get to the highway and take care of business before the UN trucks come back.” After a moment, he added, “They’re stupid, too. I hope those dickheads don’t just drive over your body and turn all this into a waste.”

  Scarface muttered and walked off. He opened the door and brilliant light poured into the barn.

  “He’s just checking if the coast is clear,” Frankie said. “Then it’s time for our walk.”

  The explosion shook the birdshit from the rafters of the barn. Frankie grabbed his rifle and took off, abandoning
Green. After a delay of a few seconds, the screams began.

  Green had never heard such an intensity of shock and pain in a human voice. Even the girl’s cries had not been as piercing.

  The window was set high, at the back of the barn. It was small. But Green thought he could fit through it. He was just pulling himself up to the sill, when he heard the voice behind him.

  Frankie had come back. “Get the fuck down. Get out here. Now.”

  The sunlight was hard as metal. Scarface lay on a pile of rubble. Thrown there. He had no legs.

  He was screaming and rocking, trying to tourniquet himself with a belt. The only words Green could decipher were “Help me, help me.”

  Scarface looked up from the shreds of meat and bone and rags where his legs had been. Looking at Frankie.

  Frankie stood there. Fingering his rifle.

  Scarface pleaded. He was nothing but a little pile of bloody meat. Sprawled on blown cinderblocks, broken beams, and masonry. The ultimate bed of nails.

  “You.” Frankie said, turning to Green. “Get down. Lie down.”

  Green stared at him.

  Quick as a boxer, Frankie slammed him on the shoulder with his weapon, then beat him across the back. The barrel cracked against a rib and the sight tore through Green’s jacket.

  “Get down, motherfucker. Lie down on your goddamned belly.”

  Green lay down. A couple of body-lengths away, Scarface shrieked and begged.

  “Spread out your arms and legs,” Frankie told Green. “Do it.”

  Green did it.

  “Now don’t move. Or you’re history.”

  Green understood more of what Scarface was saying now. The man was pleading with Frankie to make Green carry him back over the mountain, to help him stop the bleeding, to do something, anything …

  Frankie picked up a chunk of cinderblock.

  Green could just see Scarface’s eyes. The terror. The legless man scuttled and twisted, trying to bring his weapon around. But Frankie threw the cinderblock.

  It struck Scarface in the chest, stunning him for a moment.

  Frankie shoved his AK behind him, grabbing a rock with one hand and another piece of cinderblock with the other. He was quick.