The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  Not too long after that, she decided to make another plan, namely about what to do when she got home, meaning home to Phoenix, even though she hadn’t lived there in ten years. She actually owned a condo near Fort Bragg, leased at the moment to an administrator on the base. When was that lease up? Soon, right? Hadn’t she timed it to coincide with her return, which would have been in . . . what? A month or two? She tried to organize time past and future in her mind, and was getting nowhere when she decided some music would be nice. LeAnne jabbed the radio’s on button. No tunes, no sound of any kind. She jabbed it again and again, harder and harder, until there was broken plastic all over the floor. But her mood soon recovered and, following Marci’s example, she started making her own music. She sang “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” “Redneck Woman,” “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” LeAnne and Jamie both liked country music, one of many little grace notes they had in common.

  “Hey, Sarge,” said Corporal Crannack, squeezed in next to her in the backseat of the Humvee, “how come all these people eat shit? Wouldn’t you expect at least one or two good ones, like just from the odds?”

  “What people are you talking about, Luke?” LeAnne said. She felt the front of her helmet, made sure the night-vision goggles were mounted in place.

  Corporal Crannack pointed to a bundled-up group standing around a trash-can fire by the side of the road, a pockmarked mudbrick wall behind them. The flames turned their faces red. LeAnne watched to see if any of them reached for a cell phone; none did. “These fuckin’ ragheads, Sarge.”

  “Language, Corporal,” said Jamie from the front seat.

  “Sorry, sir. These fuckin’ citizens.”

  Everyone—the driver, LeAnne, Crannack, and Jamie last—started laughing.

  “They don’t all eat shit,” LeAnne said. “Some do, some don’t. Just like us.”

  “Name one that don’t,” said Corporal Crannack.

  “There’s plenty, but how about Katie, for starters?” LeAnne could see her in the back of the RSOV, point vehicle in their convoy of five. She was sitting straight and still, and very small next to Lieutenant Skoll beside her. The moon, full and bright, made Katie look like she was made of stone. Way too bright, in LeAnne’s opinion, so bright the night-vision goggles would be nothing but useless baggage on this mission. Then a burned-out sedan suddenly appeared on the roadside, and she changed her mind about the NODs, and gave them another quick touch.

  “Katie’s not one of them,” Corporal Crannack said.

  “No?” said LeAnne. “She prays five times a day.”

  “I’ve never seen her.”

  “The women don’t pray in front of men.”

  “So you can’t see them with their asses up in the air? I’ll take American women every time.”

  “The feeling’s not mutual,” LeAnne said.

  More laughter. They left the town and rolled on through the too-bright night. Jamie handed out diagrams of the target area, a five-building walled compound three hundred yards behind an abandoned gas station. LeAnne had already gone over all the visuals three times. She closed her eyes, re-created the diagram in her mind, then checked to make sure she was right. Around then was when she found herself staring at the back of Jamie’s neck. Her mind wandered, wandered all the way out of Afghanistan and to a vision of her, Camp Roadmaster, Jamie. That wasn’t like her at all. She gave her head a quick shake, got herself back in order.

  “Sir?” she said. “Could we have a look at that photo one more time?”

  “Photo of the bad guy, Sergeant? Here you go.”

  Jamie passed the photo over his shoulder, his head not turning in her direction. LeAnne angled it toward the window—a glassless window at the moment, still awaiting replacement after a rollover—to better catch the moonlight. The bad guy, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, was entering a market stall, his face turned toward the camera in a way that struck her as sudden and alert. But she might have been wrong: the shadow of the stall’s tin roof fell across his eyes and forehead; the lower, better-lit half of his face was kind of pudgy, not a look you often saw in Afghan men.

  “Name of Wakil Razaq Salam,” Jamie said. “Graduate of some tech school in Pakistan. He travels around the country teaching IED construction.”

  “Fuck him with a cactus,” said Corporal Crannack. “Any chance he’s actually going to be in the target area, sir?”

  “According to intel.”

  “Is intel meaning Lieutenant Skoll? Sir?”

  LeAnne glanced at the RSOV up ahead. Lieutenant Skoll had his back to her, of course, but she was pretty sure from how he ducked his head that he was snacking on something, most likely the Jolly Ranchers some of the team carried for giving out to village children.

  “Lieutenant Skoll is the Humint officer attached to this unit, Corporal. Any problem with that?”

  “No, sir. No problems. Have no problems, make no problems—that’s the Crannack family motto.”

  “I like it,” Jamie said.

  “My momma made it up, sir.”

  “Sounds like an interesting lady.”

  “Oh, yeah. She did some stand-up back in the day.”

  “No shit.”

  “Like in comedy clubs, mostly in the Midwest. She had a routine about the invention of the dildo. Wanna hear it, sir?”

  “All in good time, Corporal.”

  “Is that positive or negative, sir?”

  “Can you explain to him, Sergeant?” Jamie said.

  “It means after we’re done with this mission,” LeAnne said.

  “Midnight Special, correct?” the corporal said.

  “Correct,” said LeAnne.

  “Cool name. Like a ginormous fuckin’ freight train, barrelin’ through to hell and gone.” He pounded his right fist into his left palm. “Bam!”

  LeAnne took another look at the photo of the IED teacher, Wakil Razaq Salam. His jeans were frayed at the cuffs, but in a fashionable way, forming a sort of fringe around the tops of his combat-style boots. She passed the photo to Corporal Crannack, lowered her NODs, scanned the road ahead. The abandoned gas station appeared, a squat dark square in a flat and featureless plain, all even bleaker than normal in night-vision green. From above came an approaching whap-whap-whap, and then another: air support moving in, right on schedule.

  “Bam!” said Corporal Crannack, one more time. The back of Jamie’s neck stiffened, just a bit, like he was having an unpleasant or unwelcome thought. LeAnne made a mental note to ask him about it the next time they were alone. Not here, but in Qatar, or Germany, or even back home. The driver cut the lights. All the drivers in the convoy cut their lights, excepting the driver of the Afghan army transport behind them, but finally he did, too. Teamwork was possible and not everyone ate shit. LeAnne felt a little surge of optimism. They were good to go.

  “Miss? Miss?” Rap rap, rap, rap. “Hey, miss—you all right?” Rap rap.

  Eye.

  LeAnne pulled herself up and out from a horrible mess of dreams, pulled herself up, out, and into a world that was just as bad, a world that was all about head pain and head pressure, the pressure that comes from a giant trying to twist off a stuck lid behind your crater.

  “Miss?” Rap rap: knuckles on a window. “You okay in there?”

  LeAnne saw nothing but glare. She felt around for the sunglasses, piecing together the facts of the situation. Like fact one: she was slumped across the front seat of her car. Fact two: she smelled real bad. And other facts, all negative. Her hand closed on the sunglasses. She jammed them on, discovering in the same motion that her patch was gone. She sat up, faced the driver’s-side window. A man in uniform stood outside. She turned the key, slid down the window.

  “What service are you in?” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t recognize the—”

  “The what?”

  By that time, LeAnne had taken in a few more details. She was parked off to the side of a two-lane
blacktop road in flat, dry country, no other vehicles in sight except for a black cruiser angled in front of her. The shield on the door read: New Mexico State Police.

  “Nothing,” LeAnne said. “I was about to say uniform, but now I won’t. I’m all right. Fine. Good.”

  “You been drinking?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Too many to count.” She had a thought. “Although actually I’ve left all that behind.”

  “You’re off drugs?”

  “Left them all at Walter Reed. My . . . departure could have been organized better.”

  “You’re talking about the military hospital?”

  “Correct.”

  “You a vet?”

  “Coming home.” She gazed past him.

  “From overseas?”

  “Afghanistan. Desert, but not like this. There are good deserts and bad.”

  “Where’s home?”

  A tough question. LeAnne attacked the problem, but right away her mind wanted to go somewhere else. “It’s possible I made a mistake, Officer.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “I’d better not say.”

  The trooper nodded. “I’ll need some ID.”

  “What if I tell you the mistake? The possible mistake. It’s about Katie.”

  “License and registration.”

  Possibility one involved opening the door real fast with the goal of knocking him aside or even down, followed by a quick exit and the application of a chokehold before he recovered his balance. Possibility two was much simpler: a direct punch to his windpipe, right through the open window. She went back and forth.

  “License and registration, please.”

  LeAnne, still making up her mind, found both in the glove box. She handed them over. He returned to the cruiser and started running the documents through his system. LeAnne fished around in the glove box some more, just in case her 9 millimeter was in there. No luck. Where was it? She searched her memory.

  “You are a marksman,” Katie said. “Or would markswoman be the word? Marksperson?”

  “No clue,” LeAnne said. They were drinking sodas back at the base, the night after the ceremonial opening of the Afghan and American Women’s Friendship Weaving Co-Op.

  “It will render my job more complex.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “But no worries. All within the job description, mate.”

  “Katie? How does me being a sharpshooter—which I’m not, by the way—make your job more complex?”

  “I hope I have not perturbed you.”

  “Nope,” LeAnne said. “But we’re a team, so I have to know.”

  Katie nodded. “It’s about the attitude of the women. In their eyes, you CSTs can never be the enemy, even though you’re soldiers. Why not? Because you are women first. But what you did today was manly in their eyes. So the situation is complicated now. Do you see?”

  “I’ll bake cookies the next time.”

  Katie laughed. “I wish I was an American woman.”

  “You do?”

  “Sometimes.” Katie poured more coffee for the two of them. She stirred sugar into her paper cup, watched the coffee swirl around. “I’m curious about one detail.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How did you know the bomber was a man?”

  “Simple,” said LeAnne. “All the women wore sandals or slippers. He was wearing these huge shitkickers.”

  “Shitkickers?” Katie laughed. “A new one on me. It doesn’t sound British. American most likely, perhaps with rural origins. Meaning combat boots, I take it?”

  “Just big boots in general.”

  “I’ll add that to my vocab,” Katie said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Crunch crunch: the sound of shitkickers on a gravel roadside. LeAnne awoke instantly, searched frantically for a weapon.

  “Okay, LeAnne, you’re all set.”

  What was this? She swung around to her left. The trooper was at the window. He seemed to be handing her something. For a moment she was confused; then she caught up and took her license and registration.

  “You can go,” the trooper said. “But no more naps by the side of the road. Never know who could happen along. It’s not safe.” He tapped the roof, a tap like a gunshot to her ears, coming out of nowhere. She winced and ducked, but he was already on his way back to the cruiser and didn’t see. He hitched up his gun belt, swung inside, and then just sat there.

  LeAnne started the Honda, pulled onto the road. He followed her for a mile or so, then turned onto an intersecting road, also two-lane blacktop, also deserted. LeAnne kept going, now on her own, watching for some sign to tell her where she was, but no signs appeared. She checked her watch, found she wasn’t wearing one, tried the clock on the dash instead. Zero eight thirty-five. Given that and the direction of the shadows, she realized she was pointed east. Eastbound in New Mexico: that was wrong. She slowed down—maybe not quite enough—and spun around in a U-ey, fishtailing, but not wildly, and not a problem since her dad had taught her how to gently steer a fishtailing car way back when she was ten or eleven, and got herself pointed the opposite way. It was all about not fighting the fish, instead just playing it until things settled down.

  “Thanks, Dad!” she said, adding after ten or twenty or thirty miles or so, “I sang in my chains like the sea.” Although possibly not aloud. She checked the dashboard clock. Zero eight thirty-five. What had it been before? Zero eight-oh-five? Zero eight fifteen? One or the other. She memorized zero eight thirty-five and drove until she got tired. Then she pulled off to the side of the road and went to sleep. The lid twister in her head relaxed his grip a little. That was nice. And so was the air. She felt and breathed the air in her sleep, nice western air, until it changed for the worst.

  The wind blew across the village, picking up the smell of sanitation practices from another time. The coalition team came in on the run, boxing the village in from three directions, the Afghans from the north, airborne from the south, and LeAnne and the rest of the special forces from the west, cutting off access to the track that led to the abandoned gas station and the only road out. Dogs didn’t bark because there were no dogs. Neither were there sentries, meaning the villagers believed they had no enemies, which was unlikely, or they were simply incompetent, also unlikely, or it was something else, which turned out often to be the case on this deployment. Soon from the south side came some shouting and a thud or two, and after that, figures in loose-fitting clothes got herded by figures in form-fitting clothes, the moonlight sometimes reflected in a pair of eyes and always shining on the breath clouds that rose from every mouth and melted in the sky.

  The women and children were all in one mudbrick house, whitewashed inside with a dark-red woven rug on the floor and rug-covered benches lining three walls. The only light came from a smoky kerosene lantern hanging from a ceiling hook. LeAnne stood in the doorway, weapon in hand but not raised, with Katie, unarmed, waiting slightly behind her.

  “How many you got, Sarge?” Corporal Crannack called from outside.

  Too many for such a small space: that was the answer. “Ten women, three kids, at least one baby,” LeAnne called back.

  “Supposed to be eleven women.”

  “We got ten. Go back and confirm, Corporal.”

  “On my way, Sarge.”

  LeAnne didn’t wait for confirmation. A female overcount could be bad; there was nothing to be feared from an undercount. She stepped forward and took off her helmet, the kind of thing no soldier would dream of doing in a situation like this, but essential to the CST purpose. She shook out her hair—just long enough to be shaken out—and smiled.

  “I’m an American soldier,” she said, “here to keep you and the children safe. Okay, Katie.”

  Katie moved up beside her and repeated the message in Pashto. The women unveiled themselves, all except for two in the back.

  LeAnne’s weapon rose an inch or two, almost by itsel
f. “Katie? What’s going on?”

  Katie pointed her finger at the two women who had kept their veils in place. She spoke to them in a tone that sounded harsh, irritated, and somehow upper class. The woman on the left bowed her head and replied in a low, hushed voice.

  “She says that they have horrible scars, too shameful for a visitor to see.”

  “No go,” LeAnne said. “I have to see.”

  Katie spoke again, louder than before and with angry gestures. The woman on the left slowly lowered her veil. After the briefest glance, LeAnne couldn’t look again. The woman’s face was an acid ruin, nothing normal except for one dark eye. Where the other eye should have been there was just a hole, kind of like a crater. Meanwhile, the other veiled woman had begun to whimper in a strange and desolate falsetto, terrified and terrifying at the same time. They both wore long burqas, but they didn’t quite cover their feet. LeAnne moved a step or two closer so she could check their footwear. Woven slippers on both of them; no combat boots.