“Dates?! How come you get the dates and I get the tree bark? Hand over one of those things.”
“Oh, no, sugar is the last thing you need right now. Makes your blood thick, slows the healing process. It’s for your own good that I devour these before you get to them.”
A squirrel monkey dropped down on Crumley’s shoulder from one of the overhead branches, took kindly to the dates being handed him.
Leon took one look at it and said, “You trained our dinner to follow us around?”
“Figured we’d be too damned tired at the end of the evening to go hunting, so yeah.”
Leon shook his head. “The way you treat the ones you love.”
Again the memory faded. Again, a fond memory meant to relieve the pain Leon felt at Crumley’s loss, just managed to make it worse. He supposed he was celebrating Crumley’s life the only way he knew how. On some level, the amplified pain and pleasure both that the memories triggered did seem to do him honor.
***
DeWitt dropped down beside Leon behind their makeshift cover. The hedgerow growing up at the base of the coconut trees wasn’t much, but it might just save them from getting killed by the plummeting coconuts by cushioning their fall. Their job was to stay alive long enough for a bullet to kill them, not to let nature cheat the enemy of the pleasure. “Okay, from their suppression fire, I’d say they’ve got a .50 caliber machine gun, and a couple howitzers. What have we got?”
“A pile of coconuts,” Leon said gesturing with his head to the pile. “They don’t stand a chance.”
DeWitt looked at the coconuts and laughed. “You’re my hero.”
Leon loaded up on the shelled coconuts, nothing but the hairy seeds left, stuffing them into his shirt. He ran out in front of DeWitt, providing cover. Tossing coconuts at the .50 caliber shooter, and each soldier that tried to take over for his knocked unconscious predecessor, until the last of them was taken out. He gestured for DeWitt to take point.
As DeWitt was running to take up position with the .50 caliber, Leon refocused his attention on the howitzers, taking the one shooter out first that was adjusting the howitzer’s sights for the .50 caliber. Tossing the coconut. That guy out of commission, he switched his attention to the other howitzer operator. But it was too late. Luckily for Leon, DeWitt peppered Howitzer Firer with the .50 caliber. Then he finished off the ones at the other howitzer that Leon had knocked out.
Leon picked up both howitzers and ran with them back to where they had the .50 caliber positioned. He heard DeWitt finishing off the .50 caliber shooters Leon had merely knocked out with the coconuts earlier with his hand gun.
Back at their new location, setting up the howitzers, DeWitt said, “So what do you think is next for us, if we survive this war, I mean?”
“You really need to find another drug dealer to hand out your adrenaline fixes, DeWitt. You’re making me feel bad for corrupting a minor.”
DeWitt laughed. “No, seriously. What do you think is next?”
Leon knew he had to give the kid something to keep him stoked. “Got an offer from corporate. They’ll be private, off-book wars. Nothing anyone can know about. Best part, we get our hands on tech nobody else even knows exists.”
“No, no, that won’t do. We can’t have better equipment than the bad guys. Just robs us of our underdog status.”
“It’s just a rumor, mind you, but there’s a chance we could be fighting dinosaurs in the Amazon rainforest.”
DeWitt gave him one of his wide-eyed, slack-jawed stares. “You’re my hero.”
“Now, can we finish this war first, please?”
“Yeah, yeah. The bastards are keeping me from my destiny. The nerve. I’ll kill them with my bare hands!” He charged into the field.
Leon shook his head. “Maybe you stoked the fire a little too much, Leon.” He picked up the .50 caliber from its perch. He’d never handheld one before, free of its mount. But there was a first time for everything. He charged after DeWitt giving him cover fire against the latest deployment of troops sent in to mop up this area. DeWitt was so busy strangling soldiers with his bare hands, Leon had to keep the other side from firing at him and at Leon at the same time. “One of these days your boys are going to be all grown up, Leon. And this will all be worth it.”
The memory faded as Leon wiped back more tears. He’d taken knives to the gut that were less painful than these flashbacks.
***
“Why’d he take so long to deploy?” Crumley said, looking up at DeWitt descending far too slowly on his parachute now that their position was blown.
“I don’t know, Crumley,” Leon said, giving him a dirty look. “You think it might be because you told him to grab everything but the kitchen sink?”
DeWitt was covered with grenade launchers, assault rifles, a few things it was hard to identify from this far way. “He’s a sitting duck up there,” Crumley crooned. “We better give him some cover fire.”
“And spoil all his fun? Don’t you dare.”
***
DeWitt took a look at the ground from his elevated position. It’d be at least a couple minutes before his parachute finished descending. Plenty of time to die a hundred times over. “Do you believe this?! I’m a sitting duck up here. No way I’m getting out of this. God, this is like the greatest day of my life.”
He took aim with one of the RPGs at the stream of bullets coming his way, discharging from the .50 caliber machine gun in a spray of sparks. The RPG took out the weapon and the soldier wielding it.
He got a load of the two howitzers being craned his direction. “Shit! Should probably have saved both RPGs for the howitzers.” He swung another RPG launcher into position, fired at the howitzer as it fired at him. Took it out. But he was out of RPGs and there was still another howitzer to contend with. He emptied his automatic rifles, one in each hand, on it. Kept taking out the shooters. But there were always more soldiers to replace them at the howitzer. It was getting so hot up by him courtesy of the exploding shells that he wanted to strip off his clothes. So he did. Everything but the weapons. In between firing the last of his clips at the howitzer.
Finally, he was down to his handgun. He was nearly on the ground. He managed to get three more bastards with the handgun before he touched down.
DeWitt gazed up at the canopy of his chute with the holes blasted in it as he disengaged it. Grabbed up his pants, his shirt, and his boots. Caught up with the rest of the guys still tucking away their parachutes. “Did you see that?!” he exclaimed. “I was the one duck in the shooting gallery! Best time of my life.”
Leon hugged him by bringing his head into his shoulder. “You’re one sick puppy, DeWitt, but you’re my sick puppy. Now, let’s get out of here.”
“What’s next, pappy?” DeWitt said to Leon. “Honestly, I can just feel the buzz fading.”
Leon shook his head slowly, bit and stretched his lips until they nearly disappeared. “I’ll do my best to keep up with you, DeWitt.”
“Well, that’s a little vague.” The rest of the team had gotten far enough away from them for DeWitt to feel emboldened leaning into him and whispering, “And what about that hi-tech war you keep promising me?”
“I think the guy’s scheduled to go on vacation in a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks! I’ll never make it. You gotta give me something, Leon. Some reason to live.”
“Of course, it’s just a rumor. But I hear we’ll be piloting these robots as tall as the trees that form the canopy of the Amazon basin. For our role in the Goliath-Bot wars.”
DeWitt looked at him like one of those bubble-eyed goldfish. Chuckles escaped from him like rapid-fire snorts. “You’re my hero!” He ran up ahead until he’d passed the guys up. “What the hell are the rest of you waiting for? We’ve got places to be, things to do.”
Crumley and the others just shook their heads, ignoring him and refusing to pick up the pace. They were all entirely used to DeWitt’s antics. “One war at a time, DeWitt,�
� Crumley said. “One war at a time.”
As DeWitt pulled ahead of them, Leon caught up with Crumley.
“You need to find that adrenaline junkie some healthy hobbies, like skydiving or rock climbing,” Crumley said.
“It may seem like that’s all he’s about. He’s probably even got himself convinced that’s all it’s about. But it’s really about hero worshipping me. And trying to live up to my example. Not sure why it’s such a big deal to him. Imagine I’ll get to the root of it eventually. Until then, it’s my sincere hope that all my boys grow up to be everything they’re meant to be.”
The memory of their engagement against the Bolivian warlords faded and Leon found himself wiping back more tears.
They were coming on stronger now, faster, the memories, starting to bury him alive the way the rocks had buried Crumley alive that time in Syria.
***
Leon and his men were spread out throughout the jungle, driving the enemy into a kill zone. They couldn’t see one another, but they were miked by way of their helmets. Ajax was doing what he did best, getting on everyone’s nerves worse than the enemy. Punctuating their gunfire with his latest standup routine.
“What’s the best part of sex with a transvestite?” he said over their party line. “Reaching around and pretending it went all the way through.”
The groans followed more predictably than a doctor hitting their knees with a mallet for the annual physical.
“What’s the difference between a joke and two dicks?” Ajax gave them a few seconds. Saw he wasn’t getting any takers, per the usual. “You can’t take a joke.”
Leon swore the tempo of their gunfire had picked up. Ajax had a way of getting the men to vent their frustration with him at the enemy.
“What’s black and screams?” Ajax said, laughing at his own joke on the party line. “Stevie Wonder answering the iron.”
“Could someone get this racist, sexist, homophobic mother fucker off the party line?” DeWitt said in Leon’s ear via the mike.
“Look who’s so sensitive all of a sudden,” Ajax said.
“I’m beginning to realize how he got his name,” Crumley said. “His mother must have spent his childhood washing his mouth out with soap.”
“How many cops does it take to push a black man down a stairwell?” Ajax continued undaunted. “None. He fell.”
“Seriously, Ajax, how did you survive this long?” Leon said. “You’ve got to be the most offensive redneck on the planet.”
“I think he’s KKK,” Crumley said.
“Nah.” Ajax sighed. “I mean, I tried it for a while. But they kicked me out. The black jokes played well. But the white jokes, not so much.”
“At least he’s an equal opportunity bigot,” Leon interjected. “Can’t take offense at someone who hates everybody equally.”
“Speak for yourself,” was the chorus coming over the party line.
They’d finally managed to corral their prey. It was open season on them now that they were caught in the crossfire of Leon and his men.
In the aftermath the crew closed in. The exploded organs and body parts hung over the shrubbery as if a special type of breadfruit plant had held on to its offerings until the pods burst.
“What did the leper say to the prostitute?” Ajax said, staring at the same sight they were. “Keep the tip.”
“Enough!” Leon barked. “A little respect for the dead. We’re sharing a moment of silence, in case you were wondering.”
Ajax held his tongue as long as he could. Maybe thirty seconds. “What’s the worst thing about getting your keys locked in your car outside an abortion clinic? Having to go in to ask for a coat hanger.”
The reaction was delayed. And then slowly, a waterfall of chuckling. “That’s so wrong,” Crumley said shaking his head slowly.
“Americans,” Ajax said. “No amount of violence bothers them.” He pointed to the body parts. “But God forbid someone be politically incorrect.”
“Oh, it bothers us,” Leon said, turning away from the kill zone and hiking back in the direction they came. The other men were joining him one after the other, depending on how long it took for them to finish off their silent prayers for the fallen, or whatever other ritual they were engaged in for bartering back a piece of their souls.
The troop was feeling pretty down. Leon could tell by the hung heads, the lethargic hiking, the silence, the inward stares. He supposed slaughtering a bunch of people who were just doing their jobs in the name of some far off distant corporation that could care less about them did that to a person.
Ajax, attempting to bring levity to the group in his own inimical way, determined to lighten the atmosphere, set about doing it the only way he knew how. “What’s the difference between a Catholic priest and acne? Acne doesn’t come on a boy’s face until he’s thirteen.”
They were starting to laugh at his jokes despite themselves. Suddenly the jests were appropriate because they spoke of a world so wrong it needed to be righted. It needed people like them to do what they were doing. And so that little massacre back there, in the proper context, wasn’t so bad.
Ajax would keep going with the wildly inappropriate jokes till someone beat the shit out of him. Leon wondered if that was what drove the behavior. Needing to be punished and hated by those closest to him so he wouldn’t have to hate and punish himself. Sort of like those people who committed suicide by proxy. It was just easier. “What’s worse than sucking a dozen raw oysters out of your grandmother’s pussy? Sucking out thirteen of them and realizing you only put in a dozen.”
More laughs. And with them, more tears this time. Tears they weren’t able to shed earlier over the dead men that they needed to shed. Suddenly, Ajax, the most disliked, unsavory character in their unit was their high shaman and priest. Exorcising demons better than a Catholic in The Exorcist. And that was why Leon supposed he hadn’t found some excuse to discharge his ass a long time ago. Why, despite praying the guy would eat a bullet in his sleep, he was secretively appreciative upon waking that he hadn’t. If Leon didn’t give him a sufficient outlet, he might very well take his own life. If he had a window to Ajax’s soul, it was a foggy one at best. All he could tell you was something just wasn’t entirely right there. And in his own way he was trying to crawl out of the slime and the gutter, same as the rest of them. They say the ones you can love least need it the most. Leon was tempted to get Ajax the tee shirt with that printed on it, but had desisted on more than one occasion.
“I was raping a woman the other night and she cried, ‘Please, think of the children!’ Kinky bitch.” Ajax didn’t get any laughs that time. The mood had changed yet again. He should probably have paid more attention.
“Have you heard the joke about the baby with AIDS? It never gets old.”
Leon turned at the sound of the groans coming from Ajax. They were climbing over the sloshing, squishing sounds of Leon’s marching. DeWitt was pounding on him. The men gathered around gave DeWitt a chance to get it out of his system, to get it out of all of their systems.
Eventually Leon peeled DeWitt off Ajax. “You really need to learn to read your audience better,” Leon said, helping him up.
“Did it ever occur to any of you assholes that I’m the sensitive one?” Ajax said, wiping the blood from his lips. “That maybe it takes me a little longer to get over a scene like the one back there than the rest of you?”
It hadn’t occurred to any of them, but he had a point. The men gave him a more affectionate slap on the back or push of the head as they brushed past him to resume their hike. “You just keep venting the only way you know how, buddy,” Crumley said, unwittingly hitting him on the back so hard he nearly sent Ajax to the ground. “We’re tough. We can take it.”
Ajax was crying. Leon figured he’d guessed right about him. At least partly. He needed to keep up with the offensive jokes until he got the beating of his life. And then and only then could he unleash the tidal wave of emotions he’d been holding back. S
trange coping mechanism. There’d be time enough to get to the bottom of it, no doubt.
The memory faded and Leon was surprised to find himself wiping back tears. He’d never been that close to Ajax. None of them had. Maybe they had been lying to themselves. Maybe keeping him at arm’s length was how they held on to their image of themselves as civilized, as something other than monsters. But maybe deep down, they understood him all too well.
***
It was nighttime and they’d broken off into twos to scrape the leeches off of one another. The fire in the center of the circle allowed them to see what the hell they were doing. They’d been marching through jungle all day, they were spent, and the leeches were sucking the last bit of life out of them. Leon wasn’t sure if he could remember which war this memory went with. A mission against one of the Columbian cartels? He did remember that they’d injected themselves with something to counteract the anticoagulants secreted by the leeches into their bloodstreams. They didn’t have enough bandages between them to be patching up the holes each leech left on them when removed, which would continue to bleed otherwise.
Ajax, stark naked, was seated on a tree stump and leaning forward slightly. “So, who taught you all those horrible jokes?” Leon said, stretching the skin with one hand in the vicinity of the leech. He slid the thin, credit-card-shaped strip of plastic each man carried with him for just this purpose under the sucker, and flicked the leech off Ajax’s bare back.
Ajax snorted. “My father. He had about ten for every one that I remember. No demographic was spared. I remember when I started dating, I was what, fifteen, sixteen, I started bringing home every minority he went after. Dated a black girl, and after that a Jewish girl, just so I could shove his bigotry in his face. He never curtailed the jokes, just dragged the ones out that fit the audience depending on whom I brought home. Dated some transvestites, some drag queens—there’s a difference in case you were wondering—some gay guys. I had three girlfriends at once during my Mormon phase. Made sure to woo every one of them in front of him, profess my undying love, even have raunchy sex on the couch with them right before his eyes just in case he thought I was bluffing.”
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 44
