Trapp tried to stanch the wound. It was no use. Even American body armor couldn’t withstand close-range rounds. The bullet was lodged in what was left of his heart. Trapp keened over the body, rocking McCarthy in his arms. He experienced the loss viscerally, like a severed limb. They were all part of one Corps, a single martial body. The rest of the squad formed a semicircle around them, weapons at the ready with tears streaking their grimy cheeks. Sinclair alone was stony-faced. He couldn’t afford to go there. He had to keep it together so the traitor and the coward wouldn’t ambush him again.
Before every offensive, Wolf recited the first half of Sun Tzu’s military creed. Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. He never recited the second half. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death. The mere mention of death hit too close to home. He felt personally responsible for the loss of McCarthy. He loved his squad with the same unfathomable intensity that he loved his own family. Technically his job was to keep them alive so they could kill others. Actually he fought to protect them. He kept his eyes and ears open, even as he mourned with his men. The living room was strewn with enemy corpses. A head count revealed that one of the insurgents had escaped up the stairway.
“Percy!” he barked. The whole squad flinched. “Secure the area.”
“Yessir.”
“Move out. McCarthy’s motherfucking murderer is upstairs.”
Wolf led the way. There were three closed doors off the upstairs hallway. Russian roulette. He stationed Trapp at the head of the stairs to watch their backs. McCarthy wasn’t there to do the honors, so Logan positioned himself outside the first door, flanked by Wolf and Sinclair. He broke the door down and they stampeded in, decimating knickknacks and throw pillows. Wolf flung open an armoire and they shredded somebody’s wardrobe. The veils were gaily colored. The dresses were stylish, a woman with impeccable taste. Sinclair thought he detected the faint scent of her clothes wafting through the smell of explosives. He was almost afraid to look. But no one was hiding in the armoire, which didn’t mean she wasn’t cowering in the next room or already dead, her limp arm stretched across a bloody floor.
“All clear!”
They repeated the drill in the next room, emptying multiple rounds into a box of toys and a whimsical canopied bed. Logan thought he spotted a muzzle poking between remnants of lace hanging by a thread. They renewed the attack, splintering the wood on all four bedposts until the canopy collapsed. Wolf pulled off the blankets, exposing a stuffed animal. Sinclair did a double take. Its furry little arm wasn’t draped across the sheets. Its hand didn’t reach out in supplication. Blood wasn’t everywhere.
They raced down the hallway to the third and last room. Logan prepared to kick in the door. Sinclair summoned his training. Wolf gave the signal. They stormed the room. Sinclair thought he saw a child in the corner of the bombpocked nursery. Delay and you get blown away. He spent his last breath looking over his shoulder at his buddies. They continued to charge without him, pumping round after round into the body of an abandoned doll. Wolf rushed to the window. The enemy, if there was one, had vanished.
In Memoriam
WILLIAM SINCLAIR
November 22, 1983, to April 9, 2004
Lance Corporal
Bronze Star
When they were boys they found a jackrabbit with a broken leg. Pete wanted to splint the leg and nurse it back to health. Sinclair said it would never survive anyway. He offered to wring its neck, but Pete said he shouldn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility. They’d better kill it together. Its neck was too scrawny for them both to get a decent grip. Though barely big enough to carry BB guns, their aim was true enough. On the count of three they put the poor thing out of its misery. Sinclair pronounced the death sentence with moral authority remarkable in a boy his age. Its time had come.
They fashioned a bier out of bark and processioned to the aspen grove. Wind had cleared a patch of earth where they sculpted a hole in the shape of the jackrabbit’s body. So it would be comfortable. They found a smooth round stone in a dry creek bed and placed it on the grave. To protect it from scavengers. To mark the spot so they could pay their respects. Pete was ready to recite the eulogy, but Sinclair said they needed another stone. There was one rabbit, but there were two of them. They returned to the creek bed. Two round stones mark the grave.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Page 21
