by Aaron Gwyn
He moved the receiver away from his mouth and coughed into his shoulder. “Reckon it’ll be about the same.”
“Well,” she said.
“How’s everyone? How’s Buddy?”
“He’s fine,” she said. “We’re all fine. I had a cold all summer. I keep thinking I’ll get over it, but I don’t.”
“And Duncan,” he asked, bracing himself. “He doing all right?”
“What’s that, hon?”
“Duncan,” he said, more forcefully than he intended.
“Duncan,” she said. “He’s fine. We fed him this morning, and Buddy rode him night before last.”
“His leg about healed?”
“It’s healed real good. Dr. Keppel, when he looked at the x-rays, said he hadn’t seen anything like it. Especially not in a ten-year-old.”
“Is he favoring it?”
“A little. You’ve been on him a while, you’ll notice on the way back up to the barn. But not like it was. We rub all down the fetlock with that liniment. Buddy took the dressing off three weeks ago.”
“He put on weight?”
“Duncan or Buddy?”
“Duncan.”
“Oh, I think he maybe could’ve. Not bad, though.”
The two of them went quiet several moments. Then she asked when they’d let him come home.
“I don’t know,” Russell said. He tried to lean back in the office chair, but it wasn’t the kind that leaned. “I just got the new assignment. And I still got half a year left.”
“Can they keep you after that? I mean for longer?”
“They can if they get a mind to,” he told her, and was sorry as soon as he said it. He tried to think of something to soften it, but she was already talking.
“When do you leave on your new deal? Can you tell me?”
“I can say soon.”
“Soon?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well,” she said.
Then there was silence and Russell knew she’d pressed her palm against the receiver and started crying.
“Teresa?” he said.
He heard her clear her throat.
“Sweetie?” he said, and he felt as he often felt when he called home—that he was toxic somehow. He could infect.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, and there was a snuffling sound. “I promised I wouldn’t do you this way.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“I don’t know what my problem is,” she said brokenly. “You’re the one over there fighting.” He heard her blow her nose. “I’d swap places with you if I could. Don’t think that I wouldn’t.”
“I know you would,” he said. “And then I’d be the one blubbering.”
She released a short, tearful laugh.
“Yeah,” she said. “I s’pose there’s no getting round it.”
“No, ma’am,” he told her.
There wasn’t.
They turned in their rifles to the armory and were issued carbines with the shorter 11.5-inch barrel—commercial rifles from Bushmaster Arms. Wheels eyed his carbine from stock to muzzle and then lifted it off the foam-pillared lining of its case, racked the charging handle, and checked the chamber. He shouldered the weapon and drew a bead on an imaginary target against the cinder-block wall, sighting through the red dot with great intensity. He puffed his cheeks, pouted his lips, and made a short, plosive sound.
He glanced over at Russell, smiling crazily, and then his face quickly clouded and he looked back to the specialist working behind the armory’s plywood counter. The specialist was a fat, balding man whose pale eyes pointed in slightly different directions. Russell had been in here several times and he was never sure which eye to look at.
“These are ours?” Wheels asked him. “Just to take?”
The specialist gave a noncommittal shrug and pointed to a yellow sheet of paper where something had been itemized. He reached below the counter, hefted a cardboard box, sat it on the plywood surface, and pushed it toward the Rangers.
Two pairs of Merrell hiking boots were inside, one sized for Russell, the other for Wheels. Four pairs of North Face pants in a color the tags called “dune beige.” North Face fleece in gray and black. North Face thermal jackets. Long-sleeved T-shirts from REI. Nylon duty belts from a company that made equipment for firefighters and police. Cotton watch caps with the Nike logo in army green. Under Armour boxers and compression shirts and pairs of stay-dry socks.
They stood there pulling out the gear and measuring items of clothing against arms and legs, surprised by how accurate the fit.
Wheels looked at Russell. “People are going to think we’re Greenies,” he said.
“Delta Force,” said Russell.
“CIA,” Wheels said.
He took one of the caps and pulled it over his head.
“You’re going to need to sign,” the specialist said.
The Rangers looked at him. He’d pulled out another sheet of paper, bright green in color, and laid it on top of the yellow one. “I can’t do it for you.”
Russell stepped over and took up the pen, scrawled his signature on the line next to the man’s index finger, and then handed the pen to Wheels. Behind the counter were rows of two-by-four shelves that extended to the back of the building, shelves of rifles and ammunition and body armor, pinewood crates of C-4, pinewood boxes of grenades. Russell looked at the specialist—whose eyes were pointed one at him, one at Wheels—and he looked back to the shelves toward a lumber-board crate containing two dozen Claymore mines. They could propel steel balls into enemy soldiers out to one hundred meters. He picked up his new gear and turned toward the exit.
That evening they ate dinner in the mess tent—spaghetti and meatballs—and then walked along the compound’s outer walls, where they sat on the battlements that looked east toward the Tigris. Here, Russell listened to Wheels recite the details of his latest conspiracy and they made plans for if they were captured. Wheels had a dotted line tattooed around his neck, clavicle to clavicle, above which the crooked words CUT HERE had been inked in caps. He said he didn’t want his parents seeing him beheaded on Aljazeera, and Russell agreed it’d make for sorry programming.
“You’d shoot me, right?” Wheels asked. “If we got taken?”
“Might shoot you anyways,” Russell told him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Wheels said.
Then he said, “But seriously.”
“Seriously,” said Russell. “I’m thinking about shooting you now.”
This evening there was no such discussion. They watched the light reflect off the river’s surface and casual flocks of doves scatter and bunch. Cranes standing in the shoals. Wheels pulled a pack of Marlboros out of the chest pocket of his jacket, offered one to Russell like he always did, then placed the refused cigarette between his lips and thumbed open his Zippo. They’d been talking about Captain Wynne.
“When we were in Ramadi those first couple weeks—what was it: July of ’five?”
“June.”
“June,” Wheels said. “Medic there at the Rifles Base I got to be friends with—he’d treated him after his team was ambushed in Fallujah.”
Russell said, “The captain?”
“Yeah,” Wheels said.
“Where was I when you were making friends with medics?”
“Medic’s name was Walton,” said Wheels. “This ambush would’ve been during Second Fallujah, fall of ’four. Wynne’s team got in a bad way when they went in to help the marines.”
“Colonel mentioned this.”
Wheels nodded. “These scout snipers got boxed up, called for air support, but they got Special Forces instead. ’Parently, when the cavalry came, insurgents were waiting. Twelve guys in Wynne’s ODA, and they took six causalities. Wynne was one of them—shot through the chest—and he nearly bled out in the Black Hawk on the way back to base. This medic I’m telling you about, he was on that ride, helped Wynne’s medic who was trying to—”
“Wait,” said Rus
sell. “Which medic?”
“There’s Walton,” said Wheels, pointing the thumb of his right hand, “and then there’s Wynne’s medic”—pointing his index finger—“don’t know his name, his team’s medic—”
“Special Forces medic.”
“Correct. Special Forces medic.”
“Gotcha,” said Russell.
“Anyway, Walton said Wynne was circling the drain, and they were about to land at Blue Diamond when the chopper got strafed by machine-gun fire and they had to put down.
“So they get everyone off the helo and call for another. Pilot had them set up a casualty collection point, and they started to triage. This friend of mine—”
“Walton,” said Russell.
“Right—Walton—checks Wynne’s vitals and he can’t find a pulse. Figures the captain’s fucked the monkey and tries to move to the next guy, but captain’s medic won’t let him, says his man is still alive, so Walton goes back, checks the pulse, listens for a heartbeat, tells Wynne’s medic he’s sorry, Captain’s gone. Gets up to go to work on the next poor bastard.”
“Standard procedure,” said Russell.
“Standard,” Wheels said. “But when Walton stands up to move down the row, Captain’s medic grabs Walton, gets him in a chokehold. They start to tussle, and the pilot comes over and wants to know what the hell’s going on. ‘He’s trying to make me treat a dead man,’ Walton tells him, and Wynne’s medic says that he isn’t dead, and the two of them start going at it. Pilot gets them separated, squats down over Wynne, and puts his ear to the man’s chest. He looks up at both the medics, shakes his head, then turns back to close the captain’s eyes. That’s when Wynne spits in his face.”
“Damn,” said Russell.
“Damn is right,” Wheels said. “So they go to work on the captain, other Black Hawk comes in, gets him aboard, and six months later, he’s back in the field.”
Russell nodded. He squinted at the darkening sky.
“Good story,” he said.
“True story,” said Wheels. “Wynne got a Bronze Star and, according to what Walton told me, he starts catching the eye of the shot-callers back at Bragg.”
“That makes sense.”
“Well,” said Wheels, “up to then, he hadn’t. They just thought he was a test-taker. College boy. Supposibly, he’d been some sort of entrepreneur. Before he’d joined the army.”
“What kind of entrepreneur?”
“Don’t know what kind. Managed head funds or something.”
“Hedge funds.”
“Whatever,” Wheels said. “’Parently, when 9/11 happened, he goes into the army and joins SF. So, now they’re impressed with the man, is my point, and—this is all from Walton, you understand—they start giving him freer rein.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means he starts doing whatever the fuck he wants, is what it means, taking his ODA up in the mountains, tear-assing around.”
“Afghanistan?”
“Afghanistan,” said Wheels. “Gets the ass-puckerers no one wants, out there in the boonies hunting Talibs.”
Russell thought about all this for several moments. He exhaled slowly through his nose.
“This is the sumbitch they’ve chopped us to?”
“Yeah,” Wheels said.
Russell stared out at the river. Then he glanced back over at Wheels.
“You heard all this from a medic?”
“Yeah,” the man told him. “Walton.”
“How’d he know it? All the stuff after the helicopter.”
“I asked him the same question.”
“What’d he say?”
“Said in his line of work, he hears things.”
“Hears things.”
“Yeah.”
Russell considered it. “You believe him?”
Wheels said he believed the medic believed it.
Russell crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back against the sandstone wall. Then he shook his head and stood.
“We need to get you out of this,” he said.
“Get me out of what?” Wheels asked.
“This,” said Russell. “This mission.”
“You’re out of your cotton-pickin’ mind,” Wheels told him.
“You don’t want any part of it,” Russell said.
“Why don’t you let me decide what I don’t want any part of?”
“I not going to sit down at Mama Grimes’s dinner table and tell her how I got her son killed. Sit there sipping coffee: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am, he followed me off to Afghanistan because of a YouTube video.’”
Wheels sat smoking for several moments. Then he flicked away his cigarette, rose, and dusted the seat of his pants.
“My mom doesn’t even drink coffee,” he said.
He lay there after lights out, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep on his left side because of his shoulder, and he’d slept on his right so much that his arm had gone numb and started to prickle, electric sensations in the tips of his fingers. After a while, he rolled to the edge of the cot and sat with his head in his hands and his elbows braced against his knees. He couldn’t quit thinking about what Wheels had told him. Wynne’s former occupation. Wynne’s recovery. Wynne spitting into a pilot’s face to prove he was still alive.
He pulled on his new pants and slipped his feet into a pair of running shoes, tugged on a sweatshirt, fetched his pack from the head of his cot, and then went down the hall and into the room where the team kept its gear. He closed the door behind him, found the light switch, and set his pack on the bare concrete floor.
When he and Wheels had come in that evening, two warrant officers without nametapes or sleeve insignia were waiting. They confiscated the Rangers’ uniforms, their military-issue boots. They took Wheels’s cell phone and Russell’s GPS, then took their shaving kits and razors.
“How we supposed to shave?” Wheels asked.
“You aren’t,” said the taller of the two. “You’re both of you growing beards.”
“I’ve never been able to grow a beard,” Wheels told him.
“Work on it,” the man said.
This was fine with Russell, but when they were ordered to hand over their wallets and dog tags, he just stood there staring.
“C’mon,” said the shorter man. “You don’t need a driver’s license where you’re going. You can write your blood type on your boots.”
“You have tattoos?” asked the tall one. “Either of you?”
Russell didn’t, but Wheels had several—the dotted line around his neck, a Punisher skull on his shoulder—and the warrant officers made them strip to their Skivvies. The short man stepped up, gave Russell a once-over, and then unsnapped the ball chain from around his neck, took his dog tags, stepped over and began to study Wheels. When he saw the skull on Wheels’s shoulder, he motioned to his partner. The tall man came up and examined the tattoo, frowning.
“What do you think?” asked the short man.
“No unit marker,” said the tall one. He seemed to consider it for a moment, then looked at Wheels and shrugged.
“We’ll let you keep it.”
“I appreciate that,” Wheels said.
Lastly, the men took their rucks, handed them to a specialist waiting beside the barracks door, and set down two Maxpedition assault packs in their place.
Russell unzipped the front pouch and checked the water reservoir. He felt violated, but the pack was expensive-looking and filled almost to bulging.
He began, now, to go through it. Two quarts of water in his canteen and two bottles of iodine tablets. An E-tool on the right-hand side. A poncho in the middle outside pouch and a wet-weather top in the pouch on his left. Three pairs of socks and two brown T-shirts in the right outside pouch, and in the top, two range cards, a protractor, and a mosquito headnet. One hundred feet of paracord, another Nike watch cap, two wet-weather bags, a poncho, and an extra pair of gloves. He filled his CamelBak, fastened it in place, ran the hydration t
ube out of the hole in the fabric, and snapped it onto his shoulder strap. He discovered three snap links, a safety line, three more pairs of socks. He checked the CLS bag: an IV, Kerlix, surgical scissors, Israeli dressing, a roll of surgical tape, J-tube, scalpel, and three cravats. There were 360 rounds of 5.56 ammo in the ammo pouches he’d been given, twelve 30-round clips. An anglehead flashlight. Four DD batteries. He opened the cleaning kit for his new rifle—barrel rods, scraper tool, wrench, bore brushes, and CLP—and located a strobe light, four MREs, and lastly, four ChemLights—two red, two green. When he was finished, he secured the straps and buckles and then lifted the pack with one arm to weigh it. About fifty pounds, but a day’s march would make it feel twice that.
He reached down into his right pants pocket and pulled out the coin. It was an 1899 Liberty-head silver dollar, and it had belonged to his grandfather. Russell had found it just after the man’s death, attached to a belt buckle. He’d pried the coin from the buckle with the carbon scraper on his MultiTool, polished it with toothpaste, carried it through Jump School and Ranger School and now across the ocean. He had a game he played. Or you could call it a game. Before going into battle, Russell would pull the coin and flip it. Heads meant he would live, tails he wouldn’t, and if he got tails, he’d go three out of five. The most tails he’d ever flipped was two and he considered flipping the coin now but decided against it. He held it in his palm for several moments. Then he slid it back into his pocket and stepped outside.
There was a half-moon tonight, and he went along the gravel walkway between the aluminum trailers, turned the corner, and passed several more. He went back up the concrete steps of the call center, opened the door, and stepped inside.
The chairs in front of the computer terminals were now empty, but the same staff sergeant sat behind the sign-in desk reading the same fantasy novel. He glanced up at Russell, then nodded and went back to his book.
Russell walked over to the carrel where he’d spoken with his aunt earlier that afternoon. The computer was on, and he logged in and brought up a browser. He had an e-mail account he almost never checked and a Facebook page that a cousin had set up for him. He’d been on it exactly twice. He checked baseball scores, read through a horse blog he kept up with, then went to YouTube and typed in the words ranger horse. His video was the first to come up, and he muted the sound and watched it play through. Then he watched again, expanding the player to take up the whole screen. When the camera zoomed in on the colt, Russell paused the clip. The angle or the light or the distance had caused its coat to take a darker sheen, turned the browns to rust-colored splotches. The animal was stunning. It didn’t matter how many times he saw.
