“Can you call him?”
He shook his head. “No phone out there. He's barely got running water,” Crank said and laughed. “But, I'll tell you what. I'll take a ride out, see what I see.”
I smiled, feeling a depth of gratitude that surprised me. “Thank you, Crank.”
“I can't promise he'll come home. I'll do my best to make him see the light, but I can't guarantee anything.”
I nodded. “I know. We can try. That's about all we can do.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Damian
Five years ago
“It's hotter than fresh pig shit,” Crank said.
I grinned. “Smells about the same out here too.”
Our squad was heading for a small village where ANA was doing a search of the local village and we were tasked with providing overwatch. I figured it was nothing more than a wild goose chase—these things usually were. But we'd been ordered to check it out. The village itself was on one of the countless unmarked caravan paths that criss-crossed these mountains. We had to dismount from the Humvees and hump our way up the final couple hundred feet of mountain path by foot with a section of ANA guys high out of their minds on opium and weed. Just another day in Afghanistan.
“Man, this sucks,” Crank complained. “Why are we even out here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Crank. I just work here.”
“Doesn't make it suck any less, Lance Corporal.”
“Roger that.” I laughed.
Both the air and the land around us had its own exotic yet familiar sort of beauty. These mountains could’ve been Colorado Springs as far as I was concerned were it not for the endless field of scarlet red poppies in the distance. If it weren’t for the Taliban trying to shoot us any time we went on patrol, you could totally carve out a sick path on a snowboard.
“Look alive, devil dogs,” Sergeant Fox ordered. “Our AO is up ahead. Complacency kills.”
Our squad marched into the village behind the ANA with our terp in tow. Nobody was really expecting much of anything. We certainly didn't expect to see any action. Just a few quick questions and we’ll be on our way.
The villagers looked at us with suspicious eyes as we marched in. The regular people had suffered greatly during this war at the hands of both the Taliban and the U.S. military. I'd seen more death and destruction than I had ever wanted to see—and things only seemed to be getting worse.
We broke into groups of two and headed out behind the ANA guys as they went door to door, asking for the elders of the village. . We'd done it a thousand times,. It was about as exciting as watching flies fuck.
Usually, children would watch us from the windows and doorways of their homes, their faces unreadable. My favorite part about this whole country were the kids. They were the only ones who ever really smiled at us. I felt bad for them more than I did for the adults, but there was nothing more I could do about it.
“Something seem off to you?” Crank asked idly.
I looked around and didn't see anything out of place. “No, not really. Why? What's up?”
He shrugged. “No kids.”
“Maybe they’re out with the goats?” I laughed and nudged his shoulder.
Crank shook his head. “I don’t like it, there’s always—”
Crank never finished the sentence when an explosion rocked the ground beneath our feet. I spun around in time to see a massive fireball billowing into the sky followed by a cloud of thick, black smoke.
Chaos erupted immediately after the echo of the blast faded away. The air was suddenly filled with screams, shouts—and gunfire. Clouds of smoke rolled through the center of the village, and my Marines were trying to determine the direction of fire. Up ahead, I caught a glimpse of something moving in the ridges. Then the unmistakable flash of muzzle fire from a Dushka.
“Contact front!” I shouted. “MG on that ridge! Get some cover!”
I yelled at our terp—who was looking like he was on the verge of running away himself—to tell the ANA to get to higher elevation and provide covering fire. He complied, but it took a few moment of hesitation.. My fellow Marines fired back towards the source of the fire, pouring lead into the distant mountains. But we were still too exposed.
“Jenkins, Hawke, take up position in that forward firing position on the second floor!” Sarge yelled at us. “Barton! McKenzie! Cover them!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Jenkins went ahead of me, bounding for the stairs as Barton and McKenzie’s machine guns opened up. Bullets snapped over our heads as Jenkins rounded the top of the staircase. That was when another explosion rocked out from within and hurled his body across the air in a burst of dust, blood, and smoke.
“Jenkins is down!” I shouted as I searched for another firing position. That was when I heard a familiar whistling sound.
Mortars. The fucking Taliban were shelling us. This was a goddamn ambush!
Explosions filled the air, knocking the wind out of us with each boom. I looked back at Sergeant Fox for my orders but he wasn’t there anymore. Just a pair of boots and the twisted broken barrel of his M4.
“Lance Coporal!” McKenzie shouted at me. “What the fuck do we do, sir!”
We had no entrenched positions, and we sure as shit didn’t have any fire support. This was an ambush and we walked right into it. To stay here was to die. There was only one thing to do.
“Fall back, Marines!” I shouted. “Rally on the Humvees!”
By the time we got back to the Humvees, it was clear that we’d taken a mauling. The ANA guys were dead, and so were Sarge and Jenkins. “Get the CO on the horn.” I said. We had to report the losses and call for fire support to raze the village, even if the bad guys already left.
I turned to the terp and asked him if he knew about the ambush. He didn’t answer. I asked him again—more forcefully this time and telling him we’ll be turning him over to an MP if he doesn’t comply.
But once again, he said nothing.
“Big fuckin' surprise,” Crank muttered.
”This fucker knew, sir!” McKenzie raised his gun at the terp. “This piece of shit Hajji knew we were walking into an ambush and he didn’t fucking tell us.”
“Stand down, McKenzie,” I said. “That’s not on us to decide.”
“The hell it ain’t,” McKenzie stepped forward, a malevolent look on his face.
“I said stand down, Private!” I ordered.
“With all due respect, sir. Fuck you!” he snapped.
“Watch your mouth, devil!” Crank said, stepping up beside me. “Consider this your one and only warning. Now square your fucking shit and shut your mouth.”
McKenzie got right up in my face, our noses inches apart. “Are you seriously going to let this fucking Hajji fuck get away with killing two of ours.” There was a brief second before he spat out. “Lance Corporal, sir.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer the question when the sound of gunfire erupted behind me. I turned around to find Barton—that fucking boot—tears streaming down his face, pumping round after round into the terp all while shouting “Get some! You fucking Hajji motherfucking fuck! Get some!”
Blood sprayed into the air with each thud of the bullet. A scarlet pool was spreading out beneath the body, soaking the earth.
When Barton ran out of ammo, he kept pulling the trigger anyway, screaming in frustration until Crank finally pulled him away. The rest of us—even McKenzie—stood staring in silent horror at the sight of the crumpled bloody body. Dead. Gone. All in the blink of an eye.
Chapter Thirty
Damian
That memory rolled through my mind on an endless loop as I sat on the cabin porch drinking a beer. After leaving Cara's place, I'd gotten some supplies and headed up to an old family cabin nestled away in the woods. It was secluded – no neighbors around for miles – and it was quiet. It was a place a man could sit and think.
And knowing that my head wasn't even close to being on straight, I need
ed some time to sit and think.
I'd spent the last few days hiking through the woods. Reading. And of course, sitting out on the deck, watching the sun go down and drinking a lot of beer. Sometimes, self-medicating was the best way – or at least, the only way – to deal with the demons screaming inside my skull.
What had happened with the Fantasmas that night – what Mills had done – had brought all kinds of nasty memories rushing back to the surface of my mind. And the state of mind that had left me in wasn't pretty.
Watching Mills gun down the Fantasmas that night was almost exactly like watching Barton gun down our terp in Afghanistan. The end result was the same – death. Unnecessary death.
Overall, I'd enjoyed my time in the military. I'd enjoyed that sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. I hadn't always enjoyed the things I saw or the things I did, but that was life. You weren't going to enjoy everything, every single minute of the day. But I'd never felt as at home as I had among my brothers in arms.
Which was why, upon rotating home and out of the service, I'd gravitated to a group like the Kings. I had no family to speak of and found myself missing belonging to a group. I'd briefly considered going back to the military but rejected the idea almost as quickly. I loved the camaraderie, but the violence and bloodshed – sometimes completely unnecessary – came to be too much. Far too much.
The wounds of war had left deep scars that I was still grappling with. I'd done a decent enough job of coping, but the scene at the barn with Mills and the Fantasmas had ripped the scab right off that wound all over again.
I had just finished my beer when I heard the unmistakable sound of a bike coming down the long dirt lane that ran from the highway to my front porch. I sighed and shook my head. Apparently, I wasn't entitled to some peace and solitude. At least, not for long, anyway.
Crank's bike roared into the dirt driveway in front of my porch. I gave him a nod and a small smile. Of all the people to come down that road, Crank was the least objectionable to me. Not that I wanted him – or anybody – up at the cabin right then, but what was I gonna do?
“You're a hard man to find,” Crank said.
He walked up onto the porch and dropped down into the chair beside me. I pulled another beer out of the cooler and handed it to him. He twisted off the top, gave me a small nod, and took a long pull.
“Not hard enough, apparently,” I said.
“You're not answering your phone.”
“Notice that, did you?”
“Yeah, a few people have, actually.”
I took a drink of my beer and looked out at the forest in front of me. The sunlight streamed through the trees, and I could see birds flitting from one branch to the next. It was peaceful. Tranquil. It was my little slice of sanity.
“Didn't much feel like talking to anybody,” I said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
I nodded and took another pull of my beer. “Not to sound like an asshole—”
“But you're about to sound like an asshole anyway.” He laughed.
I grinned and nodded. “Yeah, probably. But what are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “I was worried about you. Thought I'd come and check in.”
“I'm fine. I'm good. Just takin' a little time to relax. Unwind.”
“Yeah, that's bullshit, brother,” he said. “We both know it. But I wanted to give you a little time. A little space.”
“And I appreciate that.”
He looked over at me with an earnest look in his eyes. “This isn't Afghanistan, man.”
“You think I don't know that?”
“Do you?” he asked. “Because from where I'm sittin’, it's looking an awful lot like you're blaming yourself for what happened over there – and in that barn. Again.”
I felt that familiar, heavy weight of guilt settling down around my shoulders once again. It was a weight that I'd been carrying for years – one that I'd grown accustomed to. In fact, I was so used to it, I wasn't sure what it felt like to not have it on me.
And that weight never got lighter. It only ever got heavier as one thing after another was added to the pile of guilt that was as part of me as my arms were.
“What happened in that barn is no more your fault than what happened over in the shit was, man,” Crank said.
I gave him a rueful little laugh. “Yeah, actually it was. It was all my fault. There and here.”
“How do you figure?”
I looked over at him, the expression on my face that of a parent explaining the obvious to their child. But I did my best to not snap at Crank – none of how I was feeling was his fault. Not at all. And though it would have been easy to do, I was doing my best to avoid lashing out.
“Over there – I was in charge that day,” I said.
“Yeah, for all of two minutes after we found out the Lieutenant had been killed. Two damn minutes, man.”
“Still, I was squad leader. I should have been in control,” I said, images of that day flashing through my mind. “I should have anticipated something like that happening. I knew Barton was all kinds of fucked up and yet, I didn't put him on the bench. I left in him the game. And the kid snapped. No matter how you slice it, that's on me. All of those deaths are on me.”
Crank shook his head. “That's bullshit,” he replied. “And if you were in your right mind, you'd be able to see that freely.”
“You call it bullshit, I call it truth. I should have anticipated. I didn't.”
He sighed. “And the barn? How is that your fault?”
“Because that was my plan. We wanted to draw Mendoza out, so we used Cara as bait. Obviously, it worked. I just didn't anticipate that Mills was going to do what he did.”
“Who could have anticipated him going full on psycho like that?” Crank asked. “Nobody saw that coming. Me included. Does that make it my fault?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. You weren't the one who put that all into motion to begin with. That was me.”
“The point is that you didn't know Mills was going to go off any more than you knew Barton did,” he said. “None of this is your fault, bro. None of it. And sitting up here in your fortress of solitude getting shitfaced and strapping on even more guilt than you’re already carrying isn't doing you any favors.”
I shrugged. “Not supposed to. I'm just trying to figure out how to get past it all. How to cope with everything that happened.”
Crank drained the last of his bottle and tossed into the trashcan. “Maybe you need to lean on somebody.”
I shook my head. “Told you already, shrinks aren't for me, man.”
“Not talking about a shrink.”
“Then who are you talking about?”
Crank looked over at me – this time, it was his turn to speak as if explaining the obvious to a clueless child.
“You have a good woman who cares a lot about you,” he said. “She's worried sick about you, brother.”
I sighed. Cara. I felt bad for everything I'd put her through. Felt bad for everything I'd gotten her mixed up in. She'd been trying to live a quiet, peaceful life with her son and I came through like a wrecking ball and upended everything.
Yeah, just another log on the bonfire of guilt burning away in my soul.
“I've put her through enough,” I said. “I don't want to keep draggin' her into our shit.”
“She wants to be there,” he replied. “By your side. For whatever reason, she cares about your stupid, stubborn ass.”
I sighed again as I thought about her. I'd been trying to keep her at an arm's distance and keep myself from getting too attached to her. But there was something about her – and that boy of hers – that kept drawing me back in. As I thought about her, I realized that I cared about the both of them more than I cared to admit.
But the truth of the matter was that I felt good when I was with them. I felt happy. Complete. When I was with them, I was able to leave a lot of my normal cares and worries behind. I was able to just live and think in
the moment. I could just be me – and that was enough. That was okay.
I didn't want to be selfish or bring those influences into her life that she'd worked so hard to keep Austin away from – so I stayed away. I didn't want to let myself get too close to her for fear of being hurt myself.
However, hearing Crank say that she cared about me – that changed things in my head. At least, a little bit. It sent a small spark of hope shooting through me, igniting something in my chest – and I could feel a light growing in the darkness of my heart.
TANGLED WITH THE BIKER_Bad Devils MC Page 34
