Wynne's War

by Aaron Gwyn

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Wynne’s War

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2014 by Aaron Gwyn

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Gwyn, Aaron.

  Wynne’s war / Aaron Gwyn.

  pages cm

  “An Eamon Dolan Book.”

  ISBN 978-0-544-23027-9 (hardback)

  1. Afghan War, 2001– —Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.W96W98 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2013048434

  eISBN 978-0-544-23032-3

  v1.0514

  For the men in tan berets—

  MALA MALIS FACIMUS

  He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold. His own father said that no man who has not gone to war horseback can ever truly understand the horse and he said that he supposed he wished that this were not so but that it was so.

  —CORMAC MCCARTHY, All the Pretty Horses

  Wynne’s War

  HE SAW THE horse before the rest of his team and thumbed the selector on his rifle to SAFE. There were eight of them hunkered behind the row of HESCOs, eight Rangers in digital camo, black kneepads, and vests. Rifle rounds from the insurgents snapped against the wire mesh of the barricades, and he’d been watching, through a crack, the quadrangle of marketplace between him and the hostiles—sandstone, pottery, a dry concrete fountain—and then the horse emerged from behind the burnt husk of a Toyota and walked toward the center of the square. Left hind leg, left front leg. Right hind leg, right front leg. No hurry in its gait. No saddle or blanket. Just a bridle and a set of split leather reins. Russell had seen plenty of mules in this country, a disheveled pony, but never a creature such as this. It was a varnish roan, dark brown on its cheekbones, elbows, and hocks, and if it was startled by the noise of gunfire, it certainly didn’t show. The horse walked to the center of the quad and stopped. A hush descended over the square, and for several moments they didn’t take any fire. The men behind him were peeking over the barriers and examining the animal through their scopes. Fifty meters away, the horse snorted and stamped. It took a few more steps, ears pivoting left and right. Russell got his feet under him and rose to a crouch. His squad leader was a Texan named Cairns, and the man clapped a hand to Russell’s shoulder and gestured.

  “They’ll shoot that thing,” he told him. “You see if they don’t.”

  Russell shook his head. The sun sat on the edge of the horizon, and the sky was suffused with a warm crimson light. Stars were beginning to show. He couldn’t see a single cloud. It would have been a lovely evening but for the half-dozen men trying to kill them. He looked at the ground a moment and then he raised his rifle and stared through the scope. Caught in the center of his reticle, the horse looked to be about sixteen hands, and its conformation was very fine. He studied the horse’s face and then walked the gunsight down its neck and across its shoulders and back. It wasn’t a horse yet, just a year-and-a-half colt. How it got here and who it belonged to and why it had walked toward the shooting instead of away from it, Russell had no idea. He lowered the weapon slightly, blinked the dust out of his eyes, and then raised it to look again. He’d not gotten the scope to his eye when he heard the first shot.

  Just to the left of the crosshairs was a puff of gray talc where the round had struck, and he thought he could see the small cavity it had made, but he wasn’t really sure. The horse took several steps and then stopped and turned to look in his direction. Russell felt his pulse quicken. The scope mounted on his rifle was a Trijicon ACOG with a magnification level of four, and through it he could see the horse’s eyes. He could see its lashes. The horse seemed to be staring straight at him, and before he’d lowered his weapon he knew what he was going do, and if it didn’t get him killed, he couldn’t imagine what would.

  He glanced at Cairns.

  “What’d I tell you?” said the sergeant. “That’s how dumb they think we are.”

  Russell nodded. He slipped a hand in his pocket and touched the silver dollar, then unslung his rifle and propped it against the barrier. He had two grenades in the pouches of his chest rig, and he took these out and laid them alongside the rifle’s stock. He double-knotted the laces of his boots and then he unsnapped his chinstrap, took off the helmet, and set it on the ground upside down, placing the grenades inside. Cairns watched in confusion and then vague comprehension and then horror. The first words out of his mouth were, “Don’t you even think about it,” but it was already too late. Russell was around from behind the HESCOs, moving at a sprint.

  Later, he’d not remember the gunfire. There’d be plenty of it, but he’d never recall a single round. There would be the feel of dead September air on his cheeks, the packed earth against the soles of his boots: it seemed to muffle your footsteps as you ran. He’d remember the shouts of his teammates at the barricades behind him, Sergeant Cairns’s voice deeper and slightly louder than the rest. Russell had only lowered his head. The blank odor of desert surrounded him, and then, of a sudden, there was the scent of horseflesh, and the moment he smelled it, there was no team screaming for him to get down or insurgents firing their rifles on automatic. There was only him and the colt.

  The animal had turned to watch his approach and then shuffled sideways a few steps. Russell slowed several feet from the horse, wanting to hunker but knowing how the colt would respond. He stood straight as he could, face to face with the animal, and they began to rotate, the horse stepping to its right and Russell likewise stepping, like wrestlers circling for advantage. He extended a hand as slowly as he could, presented his palm, and began to make the clucking noises he’d first heard from his grandfather. “Whoa there,” Russell said, then gave the series of clucks, and the horse released a whinny and shook its head. The ground beneath their feet was a steel-colored powder, a few broken bits of sandstone, a few rusted metal shards. A half-demolished building stood two dozen meters away—ancient stone walls, baroque wooden shutters, a minaret. The horse backed toward it. Russell thought if he could back it completely behind the walls, he might get them out of the lane of fire.

  But he couldn’t get them out of the lane of fire. The horse continued to turn, angling them toward the square’s center, back into the open, and the sand popped at either side, craters erupting in the ground as the bullets struck and caromed back behind him. He reached for one of the reins and missed it, and he reached again and caught hold of the leather, doubled it around his left hand, and drew himself against the animal’s face. He figured the colt would try to jerk loose from his grip, but the colt just continued to circle, Russell tethered to the animal now, and he could see for the first time the terror swirling in the horse’s eye and he himself reflected, distorted as in a funhouse mirror.

  They kept turning, Russell trying to seize hold of the other rein so he could lead the animal down a side street, get it far enough from the fighting that it wouldn’t return. He was seventy-five meters from the nearest hostile, and he thought if the men who’d been firing at them were better marksmen, he and the colt would be dead already. He’d decided to release his grip on the
rein and try to swat the animal to get it moving, when something exploded behind him and he was lifted on a warm cushion of air and slammed against the horse’s side.

  When he came to, he was being dragged across the ground and his left arm felt like it had been jerked out of its socket and was numb to the shoulder. His vision was blurred and there was a loud ringing in his ears, and his entire body had the jangled sensation you get when you knock your elbow against a wall. There was the strong metallic taste of explosives in his mouth. His teeth hurt. He spat several times and then craned his neck to look behind him. The horse was walking sideways, its head cocked and its body crooked. It would take a few steps, tugging at Russell, and then stop and try to shake free of the rein. Russell could see the white of the animal’s teeth, lips pulled away from the bit and working furiously. He was dimly aware of shouting, and when he brought his palm to his face, it came away wet.

  The horse took another step, jerked its head, and a sharp electric pain traveled the length of Russell’s spine. He scrambled to his feet before he even had time to consider the action, and the horse immediately straightened itself and took off at a trot, Russell shuffling as quickly as he could, turning to run alongside the colt with his left arm still tethered to the rein. There was a stabbing behind his shoulder blade, and he reached with his right hand, grabbed a palmful of the animal’s mane, and heaved himself onto its back. He forgot the pain momentarily and let the astonishment of what he’d just done wash over him. He was in northern Iraq, seated on a magnificent roan, and when his vision cleared and the world righted itself, he saw he was moving toward the enemy at a gallop. He fumbled his right hand down and took hold of the bridle and began tugging, trying to turn the horse. He’d never ridden with body armor, and he had no pommel to lean against, no stirrups to keep himself upright. He thought at any moment he’d be thrown.

  But he wasn’t thrown. The horse sped slightly, and Russell flattened himself against the colt’s neck and held fast to the bridle. He began to hear the gunfire now—the only he’d ever recall from the incident—and the horse dropped to a canter and turned down an alley between two partially destroyed buildings, ancient and massive. They went to the next street over and across that to another alley and then to another beyond. They emerged into a courtyard where several Humvees sat, U.S. soldiers with rifles at the ready, and the horse slowed to a walk, brought them into the center of the convoy, and then came to a stop. Russell eased himself upright on the animal’s back. Stunned American faces stared at him from beneath their helmets. Iraqi interpreters watched cautiously, Iraqi policemen shaking their heads. Then a man walked toward him with a second-lieutenant’s patch on the Velcro strip above his sternum. He came to the horse’s left side and looked up at Russell.

  “Corporal,” he said.

  The ringing in his ears had receded to a low whine, and the word echoed twice. Russell cleared his throat to respond, but the rush of something came from down inside him. His last memory was the nicker of the animal as he collapsed against its neck.

  When Russell was released from the aid station ten days later, he dressed in the clean uniform laid out on a folding chair beside his bed, gathered his belongings into a small plastic bag, and made his way across base to his squad’s barracks, stepping carefully along the gravel walkways, his boots untied and the laces tucked behind the tongues. It hurt too much to bend over. His torso was an enormous bruise.

  He reached the Quonset hut, and when he stepped up the short cinder-block flight and into the building, the men were waiting for him in a semicircle around the door. Someone threw on the lights and a cheer went up, and there were hands slapping his back and sides. Russell tucked his elbows to try to protect his ribs, but the men left off, took him by either arm, and ushered him to his bunk. They fetched a laptop and placed it on his thighs. Cairns was standing there over him.

  “Man of the hour,” said the sergeant.

  “Yeah,” Russell said.

  A soldier they called Wheels—Russell’s battle-buddy and a Texan like Cairns—lifted his hand to quiet everyone. He was very short with a scar that went up his forehead, and pupils that quivered perpetually back and forth. Pale skin sunburned a bright red. Hair bleached almost white.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “if he’ll tell us how it feels.”

  Russell looked around at the expectant faces. He asked what was going on.

  Wheels bent over, palmed his knees, and stared at Russell. Then his brow went slack and he began to nod.

  “He doesn’t know,” Wheels told them, glancing at the others, then back at Russell. “You don’t even know.”

  “Know what?”

  Several of the men chuckled. Watching someone return from the infirmary with a concussion and bruised ribs was apparently very funny. He wondered where they’d gotten their hands on liquor.

  Wheels clutched him by the shoulders. “You’re famous, son.”

  “You’re drunk,” Russell said.

  The men had crowded behind him on the bed, positioning themselves so as to see the computer screen. YouTube was open on the browser, a rectangle of video and below it the caption “Soldier Rescues Arabian.” Wheels reached down and clicked a button, and the footage began to play—a man running along a street, the distorted chatter of gunfire. The camera followed the man until a horse appeared in the frame, and it took Russell a few moments to realize the person in the video was him.

  He sat there shaking his head. He asked where it was from.

  “Film crew on a balcony across the street,” Wheels told him. “BBC.”

  Russell watched as his image took one of the horse’s reins and then as he and the animal began to turn. He could see the puffs of dust kicked up by the insurgents’ rounds. He hadn’t recognized how close he’d come to getting shot.

  And then the blast of the RPG—the rocket’s vapor trail and the explosion that sent him crashing into the animal’s side—and then, briefly, a shot of him being dragged beside the horse. This was obscured by a building, and the camera searched left and right, and you could hear the cameraman asking where he’d gone. When the horse reemerged, Russell was on its back, and the camera tracked him until he went out of frame. There the video stopped.

  Wheels said, “Been playing it on the news every fifteen minutes.”

  “They did a thing on your granddad,” said a specialist named Bowen. “Guy on CNN.”

  “CNN,” said Wheels with contempt.

  “Talked about his being a Ranger, your granddad. World War Two. Talked about his training horses.”

  “Communist News Network,” said Wheels. “Fuck they know about horses?”

  Bowen studied the floor a moment. He was a goliath from South Boston and had dominated the New England Golden Gloves circuit before joining the army.

  “They had pictures,” he said, shrugging.

  “Everyone’s got pictures,” Wheels said.

  Russell ignored them. He clicked the button to replay the video, and when it was over he just sat.

  “That’s not an Arabian,” he finally said.

  “What’s that?” Wheels asked.

  “It’s not an Arabian,” Russell told him. “The caption says ‘Arabian.’ ‘Soldier Rescues Arabian.’ It’s an Appaloosa.”

  “Jesus,” said Wheels, “I want you to listen at him.”

  Cairns shook his head. He turned and made for the other end of the barracks.

  When the men tired of discussing the incident and went back to their evening routine—poker, e-mail, a few of them reading a series of novels in which the dead became animate and rose to feed on human flesh—Cairns came back around. He had very blue eyes, jet black hair, and his Texas accent gave his voice a strange authority. He pointed at the edge of Russell’s bunk.

  “You mind?”

  Russell was lying on his back with his hands at his sides, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. He opened one eye and squinted up at the man. He told him to be his guest.

  Cairns hitched
his pants and seated himself, turned toward Russell, crossed his left leg over his right, and sat with his fingers interlaced, cupping his knee.

  “You feeling good, Corporal? You feeling satisfied?”

  “I feel all right.”

  “Lord knows,” said Cairns, “we want our Rangers happy.”

  Russell stared at the man. He asked if there was something wrong.

  “Wrong?” said Cairns, affecting a theatrical look. “Why would anything be wrong?”

  The blood in Russell’s body seemed to slow. He’d known he was going to have to listen to this at some point, he just wasn’t sure when that point would be.

  “Let me ask you something,” said Cairns.

  Russell nodded.

  “What do you think the proceeds of your little stunt would’ve been if that grenade had gone off about ten meters closer?”

  “I don’t reckon I’d be laying here,” said Russell.

  “No, I don’t reckon you would, either. Fact, I reckon you’d be laying someplace else. Maybe half a dozen places.” Cairn’s face had gone red, and veins stood out on his neck. “Am I boring you, Corporal?”

  It wasn’t a question and Russell didn’t answer it.

  “You pull another maneuver like that, you’ll wish you’d deserted.”

  “Roger, Sergeant.”

  “I’ll see you charged with insubordination. I’ll see you in Leavenworth.”

  Russell lay very still. He could feel the headache coming on.

  “Are you a Section Eight?” Cairns asked. “If you’re a Section Eight, just tell me.”

  “I’m not a Section Eight, Sergeant.”

  “Why’d you do it? Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  Russell came up onto his left elbow, but that was as far as he got. The headache was very sharp, and the pain in his side was like needles and pins. He took a few moments and then he said, “I couldn’t watch them shoot the horse.”