by Myke Cole
They have such weapons? Ninip asked. They must give them to us!
I told you about teamwork, Schweitzer replied. These weapons take a pretty big team.
We made short work of this Jackrabbit. With these, we will make short work of nations.
“You swore to protect the American people,” Eldredge went on, “and that’s what you’re continuing to do. The Gemini Cell is born of magic and dedicated to understanding and curtailing it. Single Operators for now, but once we perfect it, I’m confident we can start running fire teams, just like you used to do. You’d like that?”
Schweitzer realized that he would like that. The thought of snapping back into the puzzle that only his expertise could complete appealed to him. Ninip scoffed. We need no team. We dispatched this supposed new nuke and thirty more besides.
Schweitzer ignored him, focused on Eldredge. “Sarah. Patrick.”
“I haven’t forgotten that part. Look, James, you know that developing intel takes time. You don’t just snap your fingers and come up with reliable sources. It takes time to put them in place, to cultivate them, to get them to produce. I promise you that we are making this a top priority.”
“Show,” Schweitzer said.
Eldredge looked confused. “Show you what?”
“Intel.”
“Jim, you’re an Operator. You get a targeting package. You don’t get the intel behind it.”
Schweitzer stepped forward, their forehead touching the glass lightly, the silver fire of their eyes boring into Eldredge’s. Slowly, he raised their shared fist, jerked a thumb at their chest.
“Not Operator.
“New nuke.”
CHAPTER XII
WALK OF SHAME
Sarah opened her eyes, taking in the bare expanse of the bedroom wall, off-white paint, tiny fingertip smudges where Patrick had touched it. In that brief moment of disorientation that comes on waking, she imagined that it had been an erotic dream, that the feel of Steve’s body against hers was a phantom, one she could shrug off, the byproduct of being horny, lonely, desperately needing to feel loved.
But she felt the familiar ache from the tops of her thighs to the bottom of her ribs. The gentle slope of the mattress that indicated a shared bed, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the heat of his body.
It wasn’t a dream. She’d betrayed Jim. Don’t be stupid. He’s dead. You have a can of his ashes on the kitchen counter. He’s dead, and you’re alive. He’d want you to move on, to take care of yourself.
But the feeling sat in the pit of her stomach, rising through her throat until tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Dead or alive, she’d betrayed him. She’d loved another man while her son slept less than fifty feet away.
Oh God, what if I’m pregnant?
Stop it. You’re so stressed-out, you’ve missed your period already. If, by some miracle, that happens, you’ll deal with it then.
She felt Steve stir and went rigid against the sheets. She couldn’t turn, couldn’t bear to see him. Please, just think I’m asleep. Just get up and go.
But Steve didn’t get up and go. She felt the mattress shift as he turned, threw an arm over her, tracing his fingers down her shoulder, gently cupping her breast. She felt his breath dust her shoulders, his lips brushing the nape of her neck, placing gentle, fleeting kisses there. Even without seeing him, she knew he was smiling.
She didn’t move, hoping against hope that he would think she slept, lose interest. A moment later she felt him stiffen, grind himself into her ass, press his body against the full length of her. This time, her body didn’t respond. She lay frozen, her mind desperately searching for a way to stop this, to reset the broken boundary. You’ll break his heart.
He’d said he loved her. In hindsight, she had been a fool not to notice it before. But she couldn’t let a moment of weakness and desperation turn into a commitment. She had to pull the Band-Aid off now.
She was still searching for a strategy when he noticed her stiffness, her failure to respond. He pushed back from her, propped himself up on an elbow. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t call me that,” she’d said before she could stop herself.
Now it was his turn to freeze, but only for a moment. She heard him throw the sheets back and get out of bed, felt his heavy tread on the floor as he came around to face her.
He was magnificently naked, the early-dawn light striped by the blinds across the scar on his chest, running into dozens more crisscrossing his body, a tale of battles going back years. He was slowly losing his arousal, his manhood dangling as he crouched down to eye level. He looked determined. He looked terrified. “What?”
She sat up, wrapping the sheets around herself, covering her nakedness. He looked grim at that.
“You know what. I won’t say you took advantage, Steve. It takes two to tango. But I was lonely and I was hurting and I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right.”
He reached for her, eyes going maudlin. “It was the rightest thing we’ve ever done. It was a long time coming.”
“No, Steve. We’re both fucked-up by this. We’re leaning on each other, and . . . things get confused when you do that.”
Angry now. “You’re not pulling that teenager shit with me. ‘Oh, I’m so confused!’ That went out in high school. We’re grown-ups.”
“I’m not saying I’m confused. I’m saying you are. You don’t love me, Steve.”
The anger condensed. “Don’t tell me how I feel. I love you and I love Patrick and I always have. I’d die for you.”
“Please don’t make this any harder than it is. Just go. I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to sort all this out.”
“And what the hell am I supposed to do while you’re sorting things out?”
“You just said we were grown-ups, Steve, figure it the fuck out.” His face fell, and she instantly regretted the words.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” she said. “I know . . . I know you feel differently. But like I said, it takes two to tango, and I don’t want to dance just now. Please understand that.”
“What about Patrick, huh? What are you going to say to him when I’m not here? When I stop coming around? He needs me, Sarah.”
Sudden anger spiked in her belly, rising up her spine until her scalp burned. “Patrick is four. We’re the adults. It’s our job to make responsible decisions. I make the decisions about what to say and what not to say. I decide what he knows and doesn’t know. It’s my job to take care of him. I’m his mother, his blood. You’re not.”
Steve stood, his body tensed, a storm cloud gathering behind his eyes. For a fleeting moment, Sarah wondered if he’d strike her. But he only stared, the rage yielding to sadness that showed in the cast of his eyes, the cut of his shoulders. He opened his mouth, said nothing, then stormed out to the living room, where she heard him gathering his clothing, discarded around the couch in their eagerness to get them off. As he did the belt on his jeans, she heard Patrick open the door to his room, heard the patter of his feet on the floor as he ran to embrace Steve’s leg.
She rose, sheet still wound around her, went to the doorway in time to see Steve kneeling, hugging Patrick to him, tears running down his face. “Hey, hey little guy. It’s fine. It’s okay.”
Patrick said nothing, face buried in Steve’s shirt. He knows he’s leaving. He’s already lost one man. Don’t do this to him. But she couldn’t let him stay. Someone had to be the grown-up. It’s what Jim would have done. He had the strength to make the hard calls, to do what was right even when it hurt.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “come to Mama.”
Patrick looked up, eyes wide, didn’t move.
Steve swallowed hard, disentangled Patrick’s arms, stood. “Go on, man. Go to your mother.”
Patrick gave him a long look, sniffed.
“It’s okay. I’ll be b
ack soon.” This last he directed to Sarah.
She took a step forward, and Patrick went to her, already crying.
Steve gave her a long last look and left, the door slamming shut with a bang that sounded strangely final.
She held Patrick for a long time, only aware that time had passed by the rhythm of his body changing as crying softened to whimpering and finally to sleep, his head resting against her shoulder, one small fist bunched, knuckle in his mouth.
She came back to herself then, her stomach feeling hollow, an ache of panic and sadness in the small of her back. Did I do the right thing? Should I have let him stay? But any way she turned the question over in her head, she came back to the same answer. It was wrong. She didn’t love Steve, not the way he needed her to. It wasn’t right.
She carried Patrick gently back to his room and laid him in his bed. She knew she should keep him up, try to engage him, the doc had said that constant sleep was a sign of depression, that he had to be made to fight it. But she didn’t have the energy. She needed to sit and think now.
A few of her effects had been salvaged from the wreckage of her old apartment, among them an old bottle of her favorite bourbon, in its customary place on top of the refrigerator. She snatched it up, grabbed a dirty glass out of the sink, and poured herself a generous helping. She sat sipping it, warm and caustic and tasting strangely different at this early hour, as if the light of dawn had flavored the liquor somehow.
She looked at her reflection in the brown liquid. Even with the fun-house distortion, she could still see the dark half-moons under her eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks. She looked hard. She looked mean.
She thought of Patrick, nestled against Steve’s chest, sobbing.
The anger flared again. Goddamn you, Jim. Everything was going so well. Why did you have to die? She knew that wasn’t true, remembered the tongue-lashing she’d given him on their last night together. But it didn’t matter. Time, distance, and drama had erased the bad memory, leaving only Jim the saint, handsome protector, father, and lover. Oh God, how she missed him.
For a moment, her strength failed, the misery doubling her over until her head rested in her hands, palms pressing into her eyes until her vision became a kaleidoscope of shimmering brown-black arcs, merging and overlapping.
She pressed harder, sinking into the dull pain in the back of her eyes, her head clearing, some of the misery and panic abating. The lines in her vision continued to aggregate until they became a uniform blackness, silent and blessedly devoid of anything. She floated there, as she had in her dream, grateful for the chance to simply exist, to occupy a space where crisis didn’t dog her, where no one depended on her.
In her college days, she’d studied abroad in Tokyo, three months sweltering in that beehive of a city during the hottest summer on record. The oppressive heat had stifled all efforts to paint, and her professor had taken pity on her, taken her to a mountain temple, high up where the air was cooler. There, he’d taught her zazen, a seated meditation that he said would help her reach inward, find the art inside. She didn’t know if it helped the art, but the cool air was nice, and she did a fair bit of good work up there.
Later, she’d discovered the lotus position, and sat in it daily, thinking of that tall mountain, the pine tops waving in the breeze below. She wasn’t sure if it did anything, but it was a pleasant break from sitting at her easel.
In her mind, she assumed the position now, floating in that blackness. Like in my dream.
And as in her dream, she felt the wind pick up, only it didn’t howl now, it brushed her cheek gently, as it had on that mountaintop all those years ago. She looked down, and the pine tops waved below her, only now instead of needles, they were covered with rose petals, wafting the gentle smell of her perfume upward. The tallest trees snaked a line above the rest, leading inexorably outward and upward.
To Jim. She knew it.
In her dream, the wind had insisted. But now it seemed content to let her contemplate the path, make her own decisions.
She let her eyes wander along it, watching the rose pines wave. She could feel Jim’s outline, somewhere at the other end of a walk she didn’t have the energy to make, even in her mind. Oh, Jim, you bastard. I’ll get past this. I’ll get over you eventually.
But I don’t want to.
And with that, she took her hands away from her eyes, and the blackness began to recede into swirling colors as the world poured back in. And for a moment, as she sat blinking in the light, she heard a faint echo. A tremor. An unshakable certainty that, as she’d reached out along that path, he’d reached back.
Jim was alive. She was absolutely sure of it.
She shook her head, flopped back on the couch. Ridiculous. Worse than ridiculous, desperate. Just because she wanted a thing didn’t make it so. She couldn’t wish her late husband back to life. Jim was dead, and that was that. She had to accept that, no matter what wishful visions she had.
But you never saw the body.
There is no body. Jim’s ashes are in that can on your counter.
She stood, turned. The can sat where Steve had left it, the curved surface reflecting the growing light as dawn came on in earnest. She walked over to it, hesitated, clasped it. What were you expecting, for it to pop open and Jim to come out?
She lifted it. It felt so light, almost empty. How could Jim’s huge, solid body be reduced to this? She shook it, heard the ash and a few larger fragments rattling around inside. That couldn’t be all of him, no way. Maybe they lost most of him. Maybe they just gave you a ceremonial amount.
But the certainty stayed with her. This wasn’t Jim. This couldn’t be Jim.
Jim was alive.
Maybe she was going crazy, but she didn’t care. It wouldn’t hurt to check. The tragedy couldn’t be compounded. She had nothing to lose.
She snatched up a scissor from the kitchen, headed to the hall closet.
The navy had used the mutual assistance fund to rent this extended-stay suite. When they’d first moved her here, she’d been in a daze, unable to do anything for herself. Steve had seen to the salvage of her effects, making sure to retrieve her paintings and art supplies, all of which were bundled into the bedroom closet. After that, he’d rifled through what else he thought she’d need, some cookware, the china they’d gotten for their wedding.
The laundry bag, packed full.
She threw open the closet door, found the thin, black bag and yanked it open, digging frantically. At last she found what she sought, pulling out the bedsheet.
You didn’t get to live a SEAL’s life without picking up some nervous habits. Jim was a clean freak. He never went anywhere without a small pack of wet wipes. When they’d taken Patrick to DC, he’d used a paper towel to grasp the poles in the metro. He’d have done the same to touch doorknobs if Sarah hadn’t challenged him to face his pathos.
But he hated it.
So she indulged him a bit. And every time they made love, when she rose to use the bathroom, he stripped and changed the sheets, damp with their sweat, her juices, his seed.
She stared at the black sheet, the white smudge plain as day. She knelt, cut out a generous perimeter around it, stuffed it in her pocket.
Crazy. Fine. Jim was crazy with his paper towels. It didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t stop him from being a god of war. She could be crazy, too, could allow herself this one small thing.
She thought of Steve’s body pressed against her, his sighs in her ear. I will make this right, Jim. I will find out what happened to you.
Patrick was still groggy as she dressed him, fell promptly back asleep on her shoulder as she went to the counter, snatched up the can of ashes, cradling it in her armpit like an expensive porcelain vase, and headed for the door.
CHAPTER XIII
ONE GOOD THING
Whatever powers Ninip granted Schweitzer, keeping track of
time wasn’t one. They stood naked in the center of the refrigerated cell. The armorer had come and collected his cast-off armor earlier, left shaking his head at the damage to something he apparently prized.
Schweitzer realized with an internal smirk that he should have asked for a watch.
He didn’t need to sleep. Didn’t need to eat.
There was nothing to do.
So, he asked Ninip, what’d you like to do on weekends?
The jinn didn’t see the humor, but Schweitzer felt his shifting emotions, sullen anger, sadness, predatory hypervigilance.
Asking about Ninip’s son had apparently hit the jinn where it hurt. Schweitzer hadn’t meant to. He had his own dead to remember. Sarah, Patrick.
Peter.
He realized with a start that he hadn’t thought of his brother since he’d died. He’d . . . he’d forgotten him. Schweitzer felt his spiritual stomach clench in amazement. He’d carried Peter’s memory with him on every op he’d run since he’d first gotten the word.
He’d pictured Peter alongside him, a ghosted outline of how he’d looked in the last photo the networks had shown of him, tall and broad-shouldered, chin dimpled like a cartoon superhero. Pete had worn his hair long, his beard a bird’s nest the military allowed only to special operators. Schweitzer had been afforded the same luxury once he pinned on, but he’d kept to uniform regulations, in part to sketch some boundary between himself and his brother. After Pete died, Schweitzer had stopped shaving.
Images began to flash in his mind. Master Chief Green shouting at him as he low crawled in the Coronado sands, telling him he wasn’t as good as his brother, that he shamed that legacy. Peter punching the qualification pin into his chest, the short stab of metal and the feel of hot blood trickling behind his blouse, then sweeping him into his arms. The crush of his strength, beard scratching at his cheek, the smell of sea salt and the Skoal he perennially chewed. Navy smells.
Pete pushing him back to arm’s length. Proud of you, bro.
