Between Ghosts

by Garrett Leigh

  The convoy turned into one of the neighbourhoods Connor had earmarked for aid packages. Nat reached for the radio. “Stop here.”

  Rogers came on the line, gruff and annoyed. “Who died and put you in charge?”

  “Fuck off. Pull over.”

  Nat didn’t have to ask twice. The vehicles ahead stopped. Wedge followed suit as Nat looked in the rear-view mirror and found Connor’s gaze already on him. “Connor, you’re with me. Stay close. Do as you’re told.”

  The others piled out like a well-oiled machine, falling into position and flanking the vehicle.

  Nat pulled Connor behind him. “I mean it. Stay close.”

  If the rest of the crew thought it strange that Nat had taken Connor’s protection on himself, they said nothing. It wasn’t the time for debate; they had shit to do.

  They continued on foot, slow and steady, Bobs and Nat first, then Connor and Marc protected in the middle, with Wedge and Chris behind, following the Marines who knew the area already. Street by street, they moved forward, checking dark corners and quiet alleys. Looking under vehicles and behind abandoned boxes.

  The locals watched them with little reaction, clearly used to the intrusion of coalition soldiers, until they came to the market, packed with shoppers, men and women, old and young, who tracked the patrol’s advance as they neared the main square.

  Tension settled over Nat like a smog. Keep your men safe. He called the team—and Connor—closer, tighter, so they could hear him without the need for the radio. “Eyes open, boys. There’s something in the air.”

  “How can you tell?” Connor said. “I can’t see anything.”

  Behind Nat, Chris grunted. “That’s the point. It’s all too shiny down here.”

  “Shiny?”

  Connor sounded bemused, but any further explanation was interrupted by the approach of an elderly woman.

  “Dogs!” She spat on the ground. “Take your guns away. You killed my children!”

  Bobs intercepted her. He spoke the best Arabic and had a knack for spotting explosives concealed beneath chadors and burkas. “Excuse us, madam. We’re just passing through. We won’t disturb you for long.”

  The woman screeched something else too fast for Nat to make out. Bobs appeared foxed too. “Apologies, madam. Please, stay back and let us work. We won’t be long.”

  “Dogs! Bastards!” The woman struck Bobs with her stick.

  He cocked his weapon. “Get back!”

  Nat raised his too. None of them wanted to shoot an old woman, but they’d been stung by this distraction technique before—an irate old nana, or a distressed child, demanding their attention while they were ambushed.

  Fuck that. Nat tensed his trigger finger, ready to fire on whoever crossed him first—the old woman, or the teenaged boy behind her. Perhaps the girl fast approaching from the left. Kill or be—

  “Wait.” Connor stepped around Nat before he could stop him. “Something’s not right. She’s mixing her dialects. I don’t think she knows what she’s saying.”

  “Get back,” Nat growled. “She could be packing.”

  “I don’t think she is.” Connor resisted Nat’s hand on his arm. “She thinks you’re her son.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Bobs tossed the words over his shoulder. “I can’t pick up a bloody word.”

  “She’s lapsing into Levantine Arabic,” Connor said. “I think she’s from Syria.”

  Syrian, Iraqi . . . it made no bloody difference. Nat yanked Connor behind him. “Doesn’t matter who she thinks we are. Get back and let us work.”

  Get back and let me think clearly. The scar on Nat’s back tingled, like it always did when his mind whirled too fast. Remember what happens when you fuck shit up. Like he could ever forget.

  “Don’t shoot her, Nat. Please.”

  Fuck’s sake. Connor’s voice held a magic that had Nat lowering his, despite the younger woman still approaching and the teenaged boy who was nearly upon them. “Ask her where her family is.”

  “Jesus, Nat.” Bobs kept his weapon aimed, obviously not realising Nat had directed the question at Connor. “They’ll be shooting us before we get any sense out of her.”

  Connor stepped forward and said something. The woman paused in her tirade and turned a darkly curious gaze on Connor. He spoke again. Her expression softened, and Nat was sure she would’ve smiled if not for the abrupt arrival of the two youngsters who turned out to be the woman’s grandchildren.

  “Stop, stop. Don’t shoot.” The young man stepped in front of the old woman, speaking the Iraqi dialect Nat understood.

  The girl had reached Nat’s side too. “Please, don’t shoot, don’t shoot. My grandmother has dementia. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  Bobs finally lowered his weapon enough to jab it in the girl’s general direction. “Pat her down for us. If she’s not packing C-4 you can take her home.”

  It was a generous offer. Bobs didn’t often trust the rest of them to conduct a thorough body search, let alone a civilian who was barely more than a child.

  The girl pulled her grandmother’s robes tight to show Bobs there were no explosives concealed beneath.

  “Good,” he said. “Now you. Come here.”

  The girl ventured closer with her hands held up. Bobs sent her Nat’s way while he patted down the boy, leaving the others to watch the grandmother, who seemed to have forgotten all about them.

  “Do you always search the women?” Connor asked.

  Nat kept his eyes on the girl, patting her down as respectfully as he could without missing something that could get them killed. “Are you asking if we always search women, or if it’s me that does the searching?”

  Connor blinked. “Um, both?”

  “We search everyone,” Nat growled. “Now go stand somewhere safe and do as you’re damn told.”

  This time, Connor obeyed, leaving Nat with the girl. He suppressed a grimace. Despite his bluster for Connor’s benefit, searching women and girls ranked highly among his least favourite tasks. “Lift your arms,” he said to the girl. “Do as you’re told, and I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you?” The girl said the words with no malice and lifted her arms, turning under Nat’s instruction like she’d been searched a thousand times over.

  “I’ll be happy enough if you don’t blow me up.”

  “I could if I wanted to. I know how.”

  Nat didn’t doubt her for a second. A few years ago, he’d have found her words chilling. Now he felt little, aside from a sudden desire to persuade her to do more with her life. “What else do you know? You must have better things to do than plot my death? Do you go to school?”

  “When I can. I’m going to be a doctor.”

  Nat smiled. “Well, isn’t that something? You can change the world with plans like that.”

  “Not if you can’t keep the demons from the river.”

  The statement made no sense to Nat, but he’d run out of time. The girl was clean, and he needed to send her on her way before the crowd decided he’d had his hands on her for too long. He patted her shoulder and turned her back in the direction she’d come from. “Take your grandma home and keep her inside.”

  The girl frowned. “Pardon me?”

  Nat opened his mouth, but Connor spoke first—from a position far closer than Nat remembered sending him to—and repeated what Nat thought he’d said. The girl looked relieved and went on her way, taking the old woman and the boy with her. Nat glared at Connor. “What the fuck?”

  “You told her to plant her nana in the garden, mate. I think she thought you were telling her to bump her off.”

  Nat glowered some more. His Arabic was pretty good, but with a raft of languages to remember, there was plenty of room for fuckups—fuckups he didn’t want documented in Connor Regan’s bloody column.

  “Are we moving, or what?” Wedge said. “Don’t fancy staying still for long.”

  “Just a minute.”
Nat grabbed Connor’s arm and yanked him to one side, giving Wedge the nod to keep watch. “What the hell were you playing at?”

  Connor staggered a little. “What?”

  “You need to do as you’re told. It doesn’t matter what you hear or see. You follow orders, got it?”

  “Even if you’re about to shoot an old woman with Alzheimer’s?”

  “Especially if we’re about to shoot someone, ’cause chances are they’re trying to shoot us first.”

  “She didn’t have a gun.” Connor pulled his arm from Nat’s grip. “No one did.”

  “We didn’t know that. She could’ve been packing a robe full of C-4. Any one of them could.”

  “But they weren’t. Isn’t there a better way of engaging people before you resort to shooting them?”

  “Jesus, Regan!” Nat’s patience evaporated. “The situation on the ground is fucking irrelevant. Just do as you’re damn told or piss off home, got it?”

  Connor held up his hands. “Got it.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” Nat turned his back on Connor and directed his team to sweep the square while the Marines cleared the side streets of any loiterers. Most locals gave them a wide berth, but the ones who did engage seemed more at ease with Connor than the rest of them.

  Nat pondered that as they made their way back to the vehicles a few hours later. Connor had a way with the older folk who often knew the most. Could they use that to their advantage, if Connor was prepared to help them?

  No harm in asking.

  Nat touched base with Rogers at the front of the convoy, leaving the rest of the group to return to their vehicle and get ready to return to the palace.

  “Any good?” Rogers asked.

  Nat shrugged and retied his bootlace, aware of Connor a heartbeat behind him. “Not really. No one’s talking. You lot have scared ’em off.”

  “Nah, you just caught them on a quiet day. There’s normally more people about than there was today. Must be something on the telly.”

  Nat frowned. The packed square had felt far from quiet. Besides, a quiet day in the neighbourhood’s main market? Didn’t seem plausible, unless the locals knew—

  An explosion rocked the earth. Heat filled the air, and Nat’s vision turned white. And then silence . . . the kind of silence that came with death.

  He hit the ground, his helmet jammed at an awkward angle. Damn it. Nat shoved his helmet back on and tried to get up. A weight on his legs held him down. As the smoke cleared from his vision, he realised it was Connor, staring at him with wide, unseeing eyes, his body tangled around Nat’s in a painful embrace.

  The burning vehicles and shouts of the men around them faded to nothing, and Nat’s world narrowed to Connor and only Connor. Be okay. Please be okay. “Regan? Connor? You okay? Can you move?”

  The split second till Connor blinked and focused felt like a lifetime. Connor nodded slowly. “I think so . . . hurts . . . you’re . . . the shit outta me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fine,” Connor shouted. “Honest.”

  Nat detangled them and scrambled to his feet, hauling Connor with him. Reality set in. He released his death grip on Connor’s arms and took in the scene around them. They’d been down for mere moments, but he’d learned the hard way that was all it took for the world to change forever. The vehicle in front of them was completely destroyed, blown apart by the blast and burning fiercely. Nat smelled blood in the air. Fuck. Where were the others?

  He didn’t have to look far. Bobs and Wedge materialised from the chaos, unhurt, weapons raised.

  Wedge shouted something. Nat shook his head, pointing to his bleeding ear. “What?”

  “IEDs,” Wedge yelled. “Couple of vehicles gone at the back too. You two okay?”

  “Yeah. Marc and Chris?”

  “Gone forward as medics. Our vehicle got lucky. I sent them in to assess the casualties while we looked for you.”

  Nat tried to make his brain work faster. Wedge’s actions made sense. Marc was the team medic, but they were all trained enough to be of use in a drama. “We need to sweep for any fuckers waiting to pick us off. Connor, get down and don’t fucking move unless someone tries to shoot you.”

  Six

  Connor crept into Charlie-3’s room. All was quiet, bar Wedge’s heavy snoring, but he wasn’t naïve enough to think he could sneak in on ninja-vigilant SAS blokes undetected.

  On cue, Nat sat up. Connor stepped over him and continued to the balcony. He leaned on the stone and breathed in the balmy air that had cooled only slightly since nightfall. He felt numb. Had since an IED had blasted him into Nat’s arms and he’d come to his senses to the warmth of Nat’s blood dripping onto his arm.

  The consuming sensation of Nat’s embrace had lingered sweetly, only to evaporate when he’d seen the carnage the bomb had left behind: Fire, smoke, blood. Shattered earth and broken bodies. He’d boarded a plane in Brize Norton believing he’d prepared himself for the reality of war, but, fuck, he hadn’t had a clue. Men had died tonight, blown apart in a split second that would change their loved ones’ lives forever. Had James’s death been so instantaneous? It was hard to believe a man like James could leave this world so fast.

  “Connor?”

  Connor didn’t turn, and the hand that closed around his wrist a moment later felt oddly familiar.

  “You’re shaking, Regan. Everything okay?”

  “Don’t call me Regan.”

  “Sorry.” Nat inserted himself between Connor and the balcony railing. “What are you doing out here? It’s late. You should be resting.”

  Connor snorted. It was nearly dawn, and from what he’d seen so far, the palace, like any base, never truly slept. “You need your rest more than me.”

  “Yeah? How do you reckon on that?”

  It belatedly occurred to Connor how close Nat was, so close Connor was sure he felt the heat of Nat’s skin warming his bones. “Um . . . I heard Marc tell you to rest up until the morning?”

  “It is morning, and Marc ain’t my mother.”

  Connor grinned in spite of the disquiet lingering in his veins. Nat’s boyish belligerence undermined the blunt authority Connor had fast become used to, and made him look hardly a day more than eighteen. “How’s the ear?”

  Nat cocked his head to one side. “Feels like I’m stuck down a well with my head up my arse. It’ll pass, though I’ve perfed it so many times it’s a wonder I’m not stone-deaf.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “It’s nothing, mate.”

  Connor wasn’t convinced. Out in the field, the others had seemed as unconcerned with the blood oozing from Nat’s ear as they had been with their own cuts and scrapes, but Connor hadn’t missed Nat stumbling onto his bed, though before he could have said anything, an all-consuming urge to proverbially vomit the day’s events into his laptop had come over him, and he’d bolted from the room. “You look like hell.”

  “Fuckin’ charming.” Nat leaned back on the railing, putting some much-needed air between them; air Connor sucked in greedily but wished away in the same breath. “You talk to all the boys like that?”

  Boys. He knows. The realisation didn’t bother Connor as much as he thought it would. He’d pushed his sexuality aside when he’d immersed himself in the military world, sure he’d find no place for it, but denying Nat’s casual insinuation felt wrong. More than anything else he felt for Nat, he trusted him. “Haven’t had time to talk to boys much lately.”

  “Know the feeling.”

  “What?”

  Nat shrugged. “Fancy a walk?”

  Nat’s idea of a walk turned out to be climbing over the balcony and scaling a series of window ledges until they crawled onto a flat section of the palace roof. “By the wall,” Nat said. “Gotta be careful of snipers up here.”

  “Snipers?” Connor tried not to look over the edge. The palace felt pretty safe to him, but he’d noted the ominous boom of mortar fire while he’d been writing in a quiet corner of the
munitions store. “Sounds like we’re under siege.”

  “We are. The shit you can see most likely won’t hurt you. It’s everything else, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Nat shot Connor a dark look and gestured for him to sit close to the wall. “We didn’t see much action today. Getting into the city was easier than I thought. To be honest, I was expecting the IED long before we got to the market.”

  “I heard the route to the airport is the worst.”

  “You heard, eh? Well, you’re right. The airport supplies this base. If we lose that MSR, the insurgents could theoretically starve us out, like Leningrad or some shit.”

  “What about airdrops?” Connor said. “You can’t fly supplies in?”

  Nat shook his head. “Lost too many helis to risk it.”

  “What does that mean for you? Is the hunt for Behrouz off?”

  “Nah, just means we’ve got a lot to do on top of it. I’d kinda hoped we could bed in here while we made a little headway, but it’s not going to go down like that. We’re heading out this afternoon on an airport run, see what the score is.”

  “Can I come?”

  Nat smiled and tipped his head back to stare at the sky. “No chance. Don’t think I can handle getting you blown up twice in your first twenty-four hours in the field.”

  “You’re the boss.” Connor tore his eyes from Nat and gazed around their barren hideaway. “How do you know about this place already? Feels like another world up here.”

  “Got a nose for a port in a storm. There’s always one to be found if you look hard enough.”

  “Sounds like something my nan would say.”

  Nat kept his gaze on the sky. “You must’ve had one of those nans that liked her grandkids, then. Mine used to lock me under the stairs.”

  “Yeah?” Connor settled back against the wall. “Maybe we have more in common than we probably thought.”