Flicker, flare, gone.
Love, understanding, happiness.
He thinks, as he will always think, I can bring you close: an image, our time—but he will not and cannot do it, because it is too much to bear, her closeness, now that she is gone. I can remember, he tells himself, but he won’t.
Why would he want to keep telling himself their story when it felt better, saner, to have no story at all?
Mom, it’s late, he said that quiet unholy night, go to bed. And he kissed her cheek and she went to her room and he kissed her again on Christmas Day under the mistletoe and he kissed her after they finished dancing at the American Legion on New Year’s Eve and then once more the following day when she dropped him at the airport in Missoula, a free and independent woman, his mother, her beloved eldest son like his own beloved father, off somewhere in the hinterlands of the world when in her loneliness she most desired their company and they most desired a higher cause, which she both acknowledged and despised with a buried impotent fury.
Back inside the Wall at Fayetteville he reported for duty and was told that the lieutenant colonel wanted a word with him and there in his office was McCall, half-hidden at his desk, the poor bastard barricaded behind dung heaps of paperwork. The lieutenant colonel scratched his brush cut and selected a folder from one of the mounds, using it to fan the air. Top, he said, a salutation Burnette hadn’t heard in ages. With apologies for a nonsensical policy now defunct, the colonel informed him that his original pre-Delta selection rank had been restored. That ain’t the end of it, said Lieutenant Colonel McCall. Burn, you still want to go mustang?
Yes, sir.
The major shuffled the dung heap and extracted another document that had him shaking his head. Man, Burnette, your file is one fucked-up bitch, I have to say. This piece of paper here tells me your direct commission as a captain has continued to mature. Your entire career path has been highly unorthodox, wouldn’t you say?
I’d say so, sir.
Want to try to explain it?
I can’t, sir.
I have the orders right here to put you in school—the Command and General Staff College out at Fort Leavenworth. Yes or no, partner. Choose your poison. You’re eligible for a bump up the ranks.
School sounds pretty good, sir, said Burnette.
And so that winter of ’99 he found himself in Kansas, sitting in Bell Hall, the schoolhouse at Leavenworth, scheduled for promotion to major off a special, never published list of candidates, a zebra dropped into the horse show, learning how to write operations orders to scale for a battalion or brigade, his classmates and especially his instructors mostly people who look down and see the top of their stomachs, guys with more degrees than a thermometer. For a while Leavenworth seemed like the right choice to Burnette, an idyllic respite from the regimens of killing (practice, practice, practice) and the adrenaline stream of the field, the blood drama, the screech of chaos and precision, the eerie calm, the hideous thrill. The classroom was a powerful antidote to his season on the warpath, a dismount into a restorative interlude, breaking the bad habit of not thinking beyond the absoluteness of the moment, not thinking deeper, deep enough to separate his life from its lethal existence before it became impossible to have a life beyond war that amounted to much. But after a few months, alone at night in his rented room, the episodes of doubt began—he was being shown an army he had never truly seen, the one worried about PowerPoint presentations, fonts on slides, men who can’t climb the stairs without being out of breath. His workouts became fiendish as the classes struck him as increasingly worthless.
And it was there at the college that spring, after a heated morning’s seminar in international humanitarian policy (topic: war as philanthropy), that he was pulled aside by an adjutant as he left the classroom and told that the head of the department wished to see him. In line with his scholastic immunity, he hadn’t been paged or summoned to action in months, nor had he had any contact with Steven Chambers since the undersecretary’s heartless dismissal in the Landstuhl chapel. When everything’s that fucked up you don’t ask questions, you walk away, you don’t look back, you move on, you forget because forgetting is the only positive thing you can do. He took the stairs to the third floor, his footsteps echoing on the tiles past the long line of doors on both sides of the hallway, the length of a football field. He reported to the secretary in the front room of the administrative section, who gestured toward an inner door. He knocked and walked in; the colonel, bland as any civilian dean, stood away from his desk, forgoing a salute, waiting to greet him with a handshake. Burnette, he said, do you own a suit and tie? I mean a black suit, wool, formal? And a tie? Not any old hippie tie with flowers and polka dots.
No sir. Just a blazer.
All right then, said the colonel. When you leave here my adjutant will take you to the clothier in Kansas City.
Got it. What’s up, sir?
You’re on a Title 22 request for the next four days, he said, and Burnette, with a look of perplexity, admitted he couldn’t recall ever hearing mention of Title 22.
It’s State Department, said the colonel. They requested you, specifically. There’s a funeral in Europe. They’ve asked that you head up the security detail for our people.
Why would they do that? State operates its own muscle-heads, sir.
What’s the problem, Burnette?
Why me? Is there some reason?
I can tell you what I know, said the colonel. One, we’re talking the Balkans. Two, State has received credible threats on the life of one of its dignitaries. Three, you seem to be acquainted with the chief of the host country’s security service, some general named Vasich.
Vasich? A Croatian?
Yes, said the colonel. I think that’s right.
With all respect, Colonel. Please advise State I’m unavailable for the assignment.
Not going to happen, Burnette. Given the possibility of your refusal, my orders are to ask you to pick up the phone on my desk and dial the number I read out to you.
Who am I calling, sir?
The Pentagon.
Who am I speaking to?
I can’t tell you that, son, because I don’t know. You getting the picture here?
He dialed the number, whoever picked up asked his name and rank and transferred the call to another person who asked again for Burnette to identify himself and he was transferred once more to a secure line and after a moment’s clicking someone answered saying, Ev, how the hell are you? How’s school? and he played along, answering politely, letting the guy talk, recognizing the voice but unable to place it until the voice said, We miss you out there on the links, buddy, and Eville said Ben? This is Ben, right? What’s this all about?
You got a few minutes? asked Ben sardonically and Burnette said I don’t know, sir, but Ben kept talking and Burnette tried to explain his reluctance to participate in the mission but didn’t get very far. Ben euphemistically described the undersecretary’s medical crisis, and then mentioned The Hague, ongoing investigations, potential legal complications. If Steve starts running his mouth, shoot him, said Ben, letting the silence on the line resonate before amending his directive. Hey, Ev, I’m joking, but you get the point. And one more thing. This guy from The Hague snooping around, an American lawyer. I think you might know him.
Everything settled? asked the colonel.
Oh, man, said Burnette. Fuck me, sir. Yes, sir.
Then the adjutant was there to take him downtown and then to his apartment and then to the airport for a flight to Andrews where he boarded a plane with Scarecrow and the team at sundown for a sunrise landing in Zagreb, Vasich a lone sentinel on the wet tarmac, dressed in winter-blue camo fatigues, a brass star pinned to each epaulette, bareheaded, his baldness aglow with pluvial mist, greeting Burnette with a bear hug and a happy growl, My fuck
ing brother, ready to begin the advance work, two days hence, for the funeral of Davor Starevica, a man the general described to the Americans as the father of Croatian independence.
He was also very close to Kovacevic, your undersecretary. Chambers, I mean, said Vasich. Not the father but I think stepfather, godfather. It’s not so clear. And how is he? I hear he is not so well.
Yeah, said Burnette, sleepwalking, helping the squad load their footlockers and garment bags into a panel truck. So I’m told.
The threats were manifold, generic, longstanding, and, to an undeterminable extent, an in-house ploy, the forthcoming state funeral and its high density of VIPs generating a widespread crackdown on dissidents and undesirables—Muslims and occasional Serbs—throughout the Croatian capital, roundups and detentions, interrogations and deportations and a small discreet selection of disappearances, a choreography of internal security that Burnette and his team mostly observed from the sidelines at the headquarters of the intelligence service. This was the Balkans, not Scandinavia. No one forgets when you hurt their feelings, said Vasich, we are very sensitive, ha-ha. Here, the children are born already with enemies.
But we are accustomed to it, said Vasich, and with Chambers, who knows? He was very involved with things at the beginning of the war, he was very helpful with our leadership, he and Davor, you would always see them together, okay, so we Croatians love him, he is one of us, but the mujos, they dream to take his head off. But this is not a problem. The situation is normal, okay? and Burnette said, If that’s the case, I don’t understand why we’re here, and Vasich threw his meaty arm across the American’s shoulder and confided, I think maybe to babysit. I also think something serious. I think Kovacevic wants to send a message, to warn somebody not to fuck with him. Who? asked Burnette. The Hague? but Vasich shrugged and said, Perhaps. Or maybe someone in Washington, I don’t know. Okay, said Burnette. Next question: Who gets through the door? Three hundred, said Vasich. By invitation. The public was free to gather outside the cathedral and along the route. Okay, said Burnette. Anybody credentialed from ICTY? No, said Vasich, The Hague is not so interested in us. They are not serious people. They take little fish and leave the whale. The lawyers, they like this game. They come like bugs to crawl on our suffering. You have someone in mind? Yeah, said Burnette, let’s run his name, and they walked down the hall to another office to pull up the database for an aggregated master list. Type in Thomas Harrington, said Burnette to the technician, and they watched the screen switch to the roster for international media and then isolate ITN and there was Tom, with the film crew, identified as a consultant.
Hey, look, said Vasich. Your man. He is from the tribunal? Yeah, said Burnette, and Vasich said we can detain this guy or put him on a plane or pull down his pants, what would you like? and Burnette said, Nothing.
Exiting the building Scarecrow pulled Eville aside on the street and said, I smell it, bro. What’s the deal? You pulling more of that voodoo wool over my eyes? And Burnette said, I smell it too, Crow, but it’s not coming from me.
The Croats came for them at dawn the morning of the second day, grabbing the D-boys out of their safe house for a rehearsal, starting at the presidential palace, where Davor Starevica’s body lay in state. Check it out, Burn, said Scarecrow as they ascended the spruce-lined drive to the modernist palace known upon its completion in 1964 as Tito’s Villa, I was expecting a castle or something, some medieval vampire shit. Next, familiarizing themselves with the route the cortege would follow to the cathedral, the rooftop positions Spank and Tilly would share with Vasich’s marskmen; last, a brief step out at the Mirogoj cemetery, a graveyard memorable for its sheer beauty, its ivied arcades and pruned shrubbery and domed chapels and tiled promenades and statuary more like a museum attached to a royal garden, a groundsman pointing down a pebbled path ahead to a black canopy erected among a grove of headstones. Do you want to see? asked one of the Croats. Nope, this is good, said Burnette.
At each venue Vasich’s liaisons introduced them to an ever widening circle of counterparts composing the mechanism of the event, then they were back at the Ministry of the Interior, having their photographs taken for full-clearance IDs, linking them up with the ministry’s commo network, trying to memorize faces of bad guys pulled up on the counterterrorism section’s computer screens. After lunch, one of Vasich’s drivers ran Burnette and Scarecrow back out to the airport to collect the advance man from the State Department’s own protection detail, an aging former US marshal twenty years their senior, dressed like a Texan, unsubtle and agitated, miffed to be reporting to a pair of army hotshots who had usurped his authority. No offense meant, said the bland-faced gunslinger from State. What do you know that I don’t? What the eff are you doing here? No offense taken, said Burnette, just give me the skinny, sir, and we’ll bring you up to speed and show you around. First stop the US embassy, where tempers flared. I suppose you never heard of us, Scarecrow smart-assed the senior political officer, because we’re like fairies. We only exist in a higher realm. The other possibility is we were never here. Deputies placed calls to the States, inquiries were made, egos chastened by denials of access. The ambassador dictated a memo to his staff—Stay out of it.
For Burnette, the read-in had yet to include the actual size or identities of the American delegation. Vasich supplied a preliminary list—the ambassador, the DCM, the station chief, the defense attaché, a Seventh Group colonel working with the UN peacekeepers, a visiting congressman—but no one could verify who the last-minute out-of-towners might be, if any, save for the undersecretary, whose inattendance, Burnette had learned from Vasich, would precipitate a scandal of mysterious proportions. Burnette’s focus had been grapple-hooked to Chambers and he assumed that State’s own security handmaidens had the broader responsibility. The issue was clarified immediately, however, as he and Tex sat down together to begin to orchestrate the next day’s schedule and reality surfaced inside the scaffolding of logistics.
Transportation staging at embassy motor pool: 0600. Coordinate police escort: 0630. Airport arrival: 0725. Flight ETA (from Brussels): 0740. Roger that, said Burnette. Why two vehicles? How many people are in the box? Are we dividing VIPS and security? I’m not comfortable with that. Me plus one will be glued to the undersecretary. My other two guys are on the roof. Anything beyond that, it’s your call. Tell me what you have, he said, and he was told. Got it, said Burnette, I’ll take you over to meet Vasich and his people and then I’ll see you here in the morning. They gathered up their notes to leave. Hey, Burnette, said the man from State, I appreciate that you’re not trying to step on my toes. Come clean with me, partner. What are we walking into here? I figure you and your gladiators wouldn’t be on deck without some kind of shit storm on somebody’s radar.
You keep not believing me when I tell you I don’t know, Burnette said equably. But I have an opinion—you want to hear it? Trust this general, Vasich. In this city tomorrow dogs don’t bark without his permission. I think we’re looking at clear skies.
0500. The liaison knocked on their door, dusted with snowflakes, bringing a thermos of hot sweet coffee and a towel-covered basket of cheese pierogies, still warm from his mother’s oven. They rotated into the tiny bathroom, taking turns murdering its space with odious fumes after the previous night’s strange grub and the hard-drinking excesses spurred by Vasich and his capos, slivovitz, a brutal Slavic protocol of toasting, fraternity and liberty, of course, then a litany of battles in towns and villages that might as well have been on the moon, then vengeance and retribution and its teary oaths. They took turns showering and meticulously trimmed their facial hair to revised standards, swiped deodorant under their arms, and began to suit up in layers of comfort and discomfort, lightweight thermal underwear first and then an array of strap-ons—weapons, commo units, body armor—laughing with locker room insults, Scarecrow and Burnette donning their formal wear, Crow, you look like the undertaker himself; Hey, du
des, check out Burn, the dude can’t tie a tie, Tilly and Spank spared a similar ribbing, dressing in street clothes and parkas and watch caps, their rifles cased like electric guitars.
Then out into the metropolitan darkness to the waiting van, footlockers and all, the urban air windless with a furnace smell of sulfur and the winter mothball smell of crones and bitter diesel exhaust and the flurries falling straight to the pavement and melting. At the back gates of the embassy, the marine guards mirrored the underside of the van and checked passes and identification and cleared the vehicle through the maze of concrete blast barriers to deliver Burnette and Scarecrow and turn around and back out again, continuing on with Spank and Tilly. Tex awaited them with a nose drip and hacking cough and balled handkerchief, shivering in a trench coat, stoically miserable, unable to muster a collegial smile.
Which one you want? he asked, gesturing toward the two black armored 4x4 SUV limos parked on the apron, adorned with tiny American flags. Both the embassy and Vasich had offered to supply drivers but the head count wasn’t going to work and Burnette was against the idea anyway, agreeing only to valets at the drop-off points. Let’s fire ’em up and get those heaters going, said Scarecrow, I’m freezing my ’nads. I almost forgot, said State, reaching into his coat pocket for a folded note. The PAO asked me to give you this, and Burnette glanced at the message scribbled on the paper, crumpling the note in his hand. What’s what? Scarecrow said and Burnette told him it was a request from ITN television to interview the undersecretary after the funeral. Ain’t going to happen, said Ev. Out on the street, the police escort assembled without fanfare, two teeny cartoonish squad cars mounted with disco lights, four motorcycles ridden by faceless androids, and they were off to the airport across the gray city, the sunrise offering its inhabitants little more than spreading gloom.
They stamped their cold feet to take out the numbness, watching the Gulfstream land and taxi toward the general aviation terminal and stop in front of the idling motorcade. The D-boys’s brains switched from hibernate to operational, a visceral zone of total concentration and reflex, the Oakley sunglasses coming out of their breast pockets, flicked open like switchblades and slipped over their eyes. The hatch opened, the stairway unfolded, and a black-suited fellow appeared and then a second, clean-cut civilian versions of Burnette and Scarecrow. Those are mine, said the Texan. Two of three. The undersecretary appeared next, beaming with affability, a hand raised in salutation, looking beyond his welcoming entourage into the middle distance to broadcast benevolence and affection to an imaginary crowd, the gesture merely premature, given the scarved and gloved throngs ahead and their reciprocal adoration. Behind him came a disheveled giant with a scornful grimace, his impatience nearly pushing Chambers down the steps. That’s Holbrooke, said Tex. The famously abrasive special envoy, Holbrooke, the wizard of peace, grand ringmaster of the Balkans’s fragile accords, clearly unwilling to put to rest a contretemps with his diplomatic colleague, interrupted but not ended by their arrival, something they got into in Brussels, at the NATO summit’s deliberations on Kosovo.
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