by Aaron Gwyn
Down another trail—more bunkers, more trenches, an alcove where the platoon had set up their 120-millimeter mortar, lethal out to 7200 meters. Then along a short passageway that went underground, its walls braced by cinder block and two-by-fours, and out again into the noonday light, where they saw the valley on the other side of the mountain, this one to the east.
Kent said, “The captain has his camp down there. They’ll send someone to get you in the next couple days. We’re not allowed to go down there uninvited.”
“Captain Wynne?” asked Russell.
Kent nodded. He explained that the chief purpose of Firebase Dodge was to provide security for the Special Forces camp below.
As the lieutenant spoke, Wheels climbed up onto the sandstone wall and was standing on tiptoe, trying to see over the HESCO barriers and down into the valley. When Kent saw what he was doing, he said, “You’re not going to be able to see much. Not from up here.”
Wheels turned and looked back at him. “We can’t just walk on down?”
“Not without authorization, you can’t. They’ll send someone up. We’ve got a bunker you can use in the meantime.”
Wheels seemed to be considering all of this.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” he concluded.
The lieutenant shrugged. He said it was the way it was.
Russell cleared his throat. He asked if they got many women in camp.
Kent stared at him several moments with his brow furrowed. Then his face relaxed and he started nodding.
“Right,” he said. “The surgical team.”
“Yeah,” Russell said.
“We get a new team choppered in every few months. They’ll have female medics sometimes. RNs or whatever. Way we’re situated, we get casualties all the way from Bargi Matal. They’ll stabilize them here before shipping them out to Bagram. Or try to stabilize them, anyway.”
“I didn’t know if it was a regular thing,” said Russell.
“Wouldn’t call it ‘regular.’ It happens.”
They turned and looked over at Wheels. He was up on his tiptoes again, trying to see down into the valley.
They watched him several moments.
“I don’t see why we can’t just walk on down there,” he said.
They filled the days playing cards—poker mostly. They’d been assigned quarters in a cinder-block bunker that housed three other soldiers, and they spent their nights here, listening to wolves howl on the slopes about, Russell lying on the low canvas cot, each of its legs in coffee cans filled with kerosene as a defense against scorpions. He’d awaken before dawn each morning to find clusters of them floating in the thick amber liquid, some still alive and wriggling. You had to empty the cans every few days or they’d fill with the skeletons of the creatures. He’d heard men compare their sting to being stabbed with a carving fork. Only the pain didn’t diminish once the tines left your flesh. Like everything else in this country, it got worse with time.
This firebase, for instance. Aside from members of the surgical team and the handful of Afghan militia, Lieutenant Kent seemed to be the only soldier still in uniform. The only soldier in boots for that matter. The Green Berets remained in their camp on the other side of the mountain, and the Airborne platoon had been told, apparently, to pretend they didn’t exist. Russell had yet to set eyes on one. The angle was too steep to see into their camp from this hilltop fortress, and he figured that was precisely how the Green Berets wanted it. Or planned it, rather. Nothing Special Forces did happened by accident.
Up here it was all accident. Mishap. Confusion. In place of actual uniforms, these soldiers fought in shorts and sandals and sleeveless T-shirts, and the patches on their body armor—when they bothered to wear it—didn’t indicate blood type but asked “What Jesus would shoot?” or told you to “Rock out with your cock out” or broadcasted half a dozen other slogans that would get you written up on outposts farther west.
He was discussing it with Wheels over a game of pitch when he glanced up to see a man in tan fatigues come down the steps of their bunker. He had a khaki ball cap that he wore backward, and there was a bleached strip around his eyes in the shape of the sunglasses he’d just pushed onto his forehead. He had a great bushy growth of beard—brown and silver—and his hair touched his collar in back. There were no patches on his uniform other than blood type—O POS—no rank or unit insignia, no skill tabs or badges. He stood for a silent moment.
“I help you?” Wheels asked.
“I’m Billings,” the man said. “Assistant commander for Wynne’s team.” He gestured to their cots and told them to grab their gear.
Russell and Wheels fell to lacing their boots and filling their packs, but Billings had already turned and gone back up the steps. The two of them scrambled around, stowing their equipment, harnessing up.
“What would he be,” Wheels whispered, “warrant officer?”
“I believe so,” Russell said.
When they made it outside, Billings was leaning against a row of sandbags, surveying the camp with a thinly veiled disgust. Then he looked at the Rangers with a similar expression.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yessir,” they said in unison.
“Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he told them. “I apologize for not coming up to collect you sooner. We had half the team on recon.”
He turned, held shut one nostril with an index finger, and ejected a spray of mucus onto the dirt. He wiped his nose with the side of his hand and turned back to study the two of them. He asked if they were healthy, and Wheels told him they were.
“Well,” said Billings, turning to give the camp a last look, “there’s that.”
The camp below was a collection of beehive huts and adobe structures, and seen from a distance of several hundred meters it resembled a nineteenth-century pueblo from a movie set. It was nestled in these remote hills and sheltered by a trick of geography, cut off from roads and indigenous settlements, protected by the outpost on the mountain above. There were no HESCOs or trenches, no rolls of concertina wire. Russell didn’t see so much as a sandbag or defensive berm.
Hiking down the hillside, all he could make out were several of the larger buildings. But the next morning, he woke to a familiar smell in the predawn air, and he knew before he could confirm it with his eyes. He hurried into his clothes and then out of the adobe shelter, made his way across the compound in the early chill, and there on the camp’s northern side was the half-acre corral of split-rail fencing and a dozen or so horses waiting to be curried and fed.
He came forward like a man testing a new pair of eyes. Five of the horses were standing with heads over the corral’s top rail, four watching his approach, the other staring at something in the distance. Two roans, two paints, and a magnificent Arabian whose coat glistened in the faint morning light. Fog had settled several feet above the ground, and Russell waded through it, a luminous, waist-high mist that parted and twirled behind him as he passed. The horses watched. One of the paints lifted its nose to test the air. Russell could see the leather nostrils expand slightly and contract, and the animal gave a low whinny from deep inside its chest. A little two-year gelding. He reached out his palm and the horse stretched its neck to him, and Russell brushed his fingers through the rough hair beneath the horse’s jaw.
“Hey, fella,” he said.
The horse nuzzled his hand and snorted. Russell ran his palm down the horse’s neck. He could see, now, it wasn’t a gelding at all. She was a little filly.
“That’s a good horse,” he said.
He backed a few feet, climbed the fence, and threw a leg over the top rail, straddling it. He sat watching the horses on the other side of the corral, stepping about the bare-dirt enclosure. Several more paints, another roan. The mists were rising and evaporating in the gathering light. He turned and glanced toward the low building that served as a stable and felt something against his shoulder, a warm sweet breath moving across his arm.
Russell ran a hand ove
r the filly’s neck.
“You going to follow me around?” he asked the horse. “Is that how it’s going to be?”
The filly raised her nose. She blinked and Russell watched the long lashes flutter up and down.
“How long since you been rode?” he said. He braced his boots against the lowest rail of the fence and stood precariously, both hands on the horse’s neck, and then gradually leaning against her, seeing how much weight she would accept. The horse lifted her left front hoof and then lowered it.
Russell swung over the fence and stepped into the corral with the horse. He brushed his hands down the filly’s neck and spoke to her and then slid a palm over her back. The hide trembled slightly under his touch, that loose feel of flesh, then the muscles relaxing. He could feel the massive bellows of the horse’s lungs inflating and deflating, and he knew whoever had broken her had done a poor job of it. She’d likely have to be broken all over again if she was to accept a saddle. He placed both arms over the animal and, bouncing, heaved himself onto her back.
He had expected the animal to step about anxiously, but the only recognition she gave of bearing a rider was a brief snort and a slight toss of her head. Russell eased himself erect and sat there a moment watching the other horses in the corral, watching the day compose itself out of the scattering mists. He ran a hand back and forth across the filly’s neck and then squeezed his thighs and took a gentle grip of the mane, turned the horse, and began to walk her toward the center of the bare-dirt corral. The horse stepped smartly, responsive, and Russell talked to her and told her she was a good horse, she was doing very good. He pushed the animal up to a trot and circled the pen, the other horses beginning to shy, several moving back under the stable’s overhang. He made two circuits and then slowed the filly, tugging firmly on the mane, and walked her over to the fence. When he had her stopped, he reached down and patted the horse several times on the shoulder and then, shifting his weight, slung his right leg back over and dropped to the ground.
He stood there stroking the horse’s neck and talking to her. He’d forgotten for several moments exactly where he was.
When he walked through the doorway the first thing he saw was Wheels crouched on his cot like a surfboard and both hands out in front of him, palms uplifted as though he was motioning someone to stop. Russell stared at his friend a few moments. He asked him what was going on.
“Tarantula,” said Wheels.
“What?” asked Russell.
“Tarantula,” Wheels said.
Russell leaned against the doorjamb. An enormous black and brown spider was crossing the hut a few feet from their cots, making its way forward in a strange and unsettling rhythm. They’d had tarantulas on the ranch where he was raised, but those were barely the size of a coffee cup and cautious to the point of invisibility. Their survival depended on remaining unseen. Whatever this creature’s existence relied on, it clearly wasn’t concerned with being detected. Something about its movements appeared to even welcome attention. Russell watched it travel the packed-dirt floor of their quarters, trying to think of something to reassure his friend. He cleared his throat, but just as he did, the spider reached the adobe wall, squeezed itself into a crevice Russell had yet to notice, and was gone.
Wheels pointed toward the doorway.
“Yonder comes another,” he said.
Russell turned. A second spider, this one smaller than the first, was just entering the Quonset, making its way out of the morning light.
“I’ll be damned,” Russell said.
“It’s been that way for the last fifteen minutes,” Wheels told him.
Russell glanced at the man. He was still squatting atop the metal-and-canvas cot. Russell gestured at it.
“You’re going to split that thing wide open,” he said.
“Ain’t the cot I’m worried about.”
“It’ll be your head you’re worried about. Fall off and crack your damn skull.”
Wheels pointed back at the spider. It seemed to be following the other’s path, crawling across the dirt floor, then reaching the wall and pressing its fat body down into the crevice.
“They been coming in through the door and then down into that hole.” He pointed one hand toward the entrance and the other toward the crevice. “Come right in through there, go down right over there.”
“How many?” Russell asked.
“Fourteen,” said Wheels. “Counting that one.”
“Reckon there’s a nest in there?”
“I don’t know,” said Wheels, “and I don’t want to know.”
Russell cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “you want to get down off your rack and get something hot to eat, or you want to stay in here counting spiders?”
“Quicker, the better,” Wheels said.
They sat on Russell’s cot lacing up their boots. Two more tarantulas came in and disappeared under the cinder block. One of them Wheels didn’t notice, but when the second made its way into the hooch, he stood from the cot with one boot on and the other in a hand, his socked foot in the dirt. The corporal balanced on one leg and slipped his foot into the boot. Then he squared his cap on his head and stomped out of the bunker, trailing laces.
That afternoon, Russell followed Billings over to the stables, and the two of them stood with their arms crossed and a boot on the bottom rail of the corral. Ten horses were bunched on the other side, blowing and stamping, and two circled the pen at a slow trot. Several more were backed under the overhang of the aluminum-sided barn, staring out at them broodingly. The lieutenant glanced over at Russell and then back to the animals. He said they needed these horses broken before the spring thaw. He said they needed Russell to do it.
For a moment, Russell didn’t say anything. The last month of his life swirled and then began to sift neatly into place. He understood why he’d been brought here. Or part of it, anyway. A sick feeling entered his stomach, but it was quickly absorbed by something else. Elation. He felt drunk.
“You need the horses to ride?”
“We need to be able to ride them, and we need to be able to shoot around them without getting thrown.”
Russell turned and stared at the lieutenant for several seconds.
“You want them gunbroke?”
“If that’s what you call it,” the lieutenant said. “We don’t want them going crazy.”
“Gunbroke,” said Russell contemplatively.
“Can you not do that?”
“I can do it,” said Russell. “You mind if I ask you why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you’d want them that way.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” the lieutenant told him. He gestured to the corral with his chin. “We have nineteen horses here. We need fifteen our men can ride and that aren’t going to break their necks if they have to fire a rifle in the saddle. That clear enough?”
“It’s plenty clear, Lieutenant. It’s just—some of those horses you could put a saddle on right now and do pretty much whatever you want with, and some won’t ever be able to do much of anything. It’d help to know exactly what you’re wanting out of them.”
“Corporal.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“This isn’t a mission briefing.”
“Yessir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me. All you need to worry about is getting these horses to where we can ride them. Shoot off them if we need to. Nothing fancy. Turn left and right. Back up. Stop. This isn’t a rodeo.”
“What about your men?” Russell asked. “Have any of them even been in a saddle?”
“Ahead of yourself again, Corporal.”
“Roger that,” Russell said.
He stood for a moment. Then he asked the lieutenant how they’d managed to bring the horses into camp.
“Helicopter,” Billings said. “Flew them down from Camp Blessing. I don’t know where they were before that.”
“What,” Russell asked, “—on a Chinook?”
Billings nodded.
“I’d liked to’ve seen that,” said Russell.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Billings said.
When Wheels walked out to the corral sipping coffee, Russell had his elbows over the top rail of the pen, studying the horses. Wheels had seen Russell talking with the lieutenant, and he leaned against the corral there beside him.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“He wants these horses to where they can ride them.”
“Are any of them even saddlebroke?”
“Some,” Russell said. “He wants them gunbroke too.”
Wheels had been staring out at the horses. Now he stared at Russell.
“What in the hell for?”
“Wouldn’t tell me,” Russell said.
“You ever gunbreak a horse?”
“’Course not.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can do it.”
Wheels considered this for a few moments. He sipped his coffee and then tossed the remains on the dirt. Russell turned to him.
“What kind of rider are you?” he asked.
Wheels shrugged. “I ain’t Craig Cameron.”
“You said you had horses, right? On your farm?”
“Yeah,” Wheels told him, holding up the index and middle fingers of his right hand, “we had two horses. When they died, Papaw wouldn’t buy no more. I don’t think he could take seeing another one put down.”
Russell nodded. “But you can ride?” he said.
“’Course,” said Wheels. He gestured at the horse now rounding the pen—a chestnut with white stockings. “How many of them have been rode before?”
“No idea,” said Russell.
