Her Heart and the Friend Command

by M. L. Buchman

  “I still don’t know.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  They sat in silence long enough for Sergey to finally relax with a sigh.

  “Doesn’t like me much.”

  “You never gave me a reason to,” which Liza decided was just the truth. She never had, though she was definitely learning to respect the man he’d grown into.

  “Murdering your dog. Guess not.” Liza could hear the hard knot of pain and self-recrimination in Conway’s voice.

  “He was dead already.”

  Conway glared at the ceiling. He’d rested his HK416 rifle butt down between his legs and draped his hands over the protrusion of the foregrip handle. “You saying that you tossed a dead dog in front of my car for the fun of it? I saw him walking.”

  Liza could feel that awful day coming back over her. Rex had slowed down the few days prior. He’d been old, but still enjoying his play and his food, then suddenly he didn’t anymore. It had been everything she could do to not weep after the diagnosis as she walked him home. “One last walk to say goodbye.” They’d spend one last night together in her bed then she’d have to put him down in the morning. And then…

  “He was a dead dog walking,” her voice sounded like a croaking frog, but she held it together. She certainly wasn’t going to lose it in front of Garret Conway of all people. Or on a mission. She distracted herself by telling him about the blindness, deafness, and finally cancer. And not just a little, but riddling his body. “Sometimes I think he stepped in front of your car on purpose, just to spare me having to hold his paw while they injected him.”

  Now Garret was looking down at her, “He was sick? I didn’t know.”

  She could only nod and look down at her hand buried deep in Sergey’s fur.

  After a long silence—that she couldn’t look up from—she could feel him turn to study the ceiling once more. “Well, ain’t that some news. You never said.”

  “The shock, Garret. It was so big. You hit him less than five minutes after I staggered out of the vet’s office. I wasn’t ready to lose him. Not slowly, not fast. Dad gave him to me when I was five. I have almost no memories prior to him. Then he was gone. It was a blessing in disguise. But I sure wasn’t ready to talk about it that day. And afterwards…” all she could do was shrug. “We never spoke much in school.”

  She heard a soft thump, then another, and looked up to see him banging the back of his head against the stone wall.

  “What?”

  “You and that dog changed my life.”

  “No we didn’t.” It was a ridiculous idea.

  Then he looked over at her. The deep brown of his eyes so close that she couldn’t look away. They’d been almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and now they were nearly nose-to-nose.

  “Trust me,” his voice went soft and low. “You and he absolutely did.”

  8

  And Garret couldn’t believe he’d just confessed such a thing. Keep it professional. Yeah, too late for that. He was a Unit operator, not a throwback, useless-shit of a self-absorbed testosterone-laden… But he still couldn’t believe he’d told her.

  And the apology that he’d rehearsed a thousand times in his head, but never found a way to say through the rest of senior year, he couldn’t manage now either.

  He wanted to look away, he needed to look away. But there she was, looking at him with those wide blue eyes the color of a summer sky and he couldn’t move. He’d often hung out at the piers along the Patapsco River, waiting for his dad and watching that sky. She was like the only good part of home.

  “How did my dog change your life?”

  “Not just your dog.”

  Sergey looked up suddenly, inspecting her rather than him. Then Garret noticed her white-knuckled hand buried in his ruff.

  “Um, you may want to ease up on your dog there.”

  At that, she finally looked away and he felt as if he’d been released from some sort of hypnosis ray. She eased her death grip and apologized to the dog. Sergey inspected him with curiosity, but no longer animosity.

  Then Minnow looked back up at him and he was trapped again by the eyes that were windows right down into her.

  “How is it you’re still single, Minnow?” Not a question he had ever thought he’d be asking.

  She shrugged. “Why?”

  “You—” he stumbled to a halt. “I—” really need to shut the hell up. “You—” he tried again. “Shit!” he gave up trying and went back to beating his head against the stone wall. Why couldn’t the terrorist bastards just show up already? He’d take ‘em down. Maybe get a lead on some arms supplier. Interrupt and destroy a big weapons delivery. He knew how to do those. How to talk to Liza Minot was obviously beyond him.

  “Garret, you can’t just say something like that and not explain it. How did my poor old dog change your life?”

  Well, at least she was back to that topic. He had some chance of explaining that without screwing up.

  “Because I could never run like you.” Or perhaps he couldn’t help screwing up around her. Giving up, he explained himself.

  9

  Liza could only watch Garret with amazement.

  He explained his failed attempts to make the track-and-field team to get her attention. Her attention. She was a nobody, just a better than average student who had learned how to run and throw so that she could keep up with her older brothers. She been outfielder at home softball games by seven and pitcher by nine. Though after several “slobber ball” complaints, she’d had to teach Rex that if he wanted to sit on the mound with her, he wasn’t allowed to chase softballs. Tennis balls, of course, were fair game. He was a major disruption when neighborhood games of stick ball had spilled out onto the hot summer streets.

  “Your dog…”

  Liza finally realized that Garret didn’t even know Rex’s name, so she told him.

  “Thanks. Killing Rex made me give up on you. No way you were ever going to talk to the guy who murdered your dog.”

  “But it wasn’t—”

  “So you tell me now. I’m still not so sure. Anyway. I knew what I had to do. Even just to live with myself, I was going to have to get truly good at something.”

  “And you chose the toughest team in the entire military.”

  He nodded, “And I chose the toughest team in the entire military. Made it too.”

  She could hear the pride in his voice. Except he was a guy, so it was more like self-satisfaction. Now that he’d made it, of course he’d made it. As if any past doubts (and past failings) had been erased by his actual success.

  And maybe they had.

  “You’re not the Garret Conway I knew in school.”

  “I’m hoping that’s a good thing.”

  She didn’t know how to answer, because she wasn’t sure what the question was any more. He’d held some kind of a ludicrous torch for her, which had driven him into Delta. Yet, at the same time, he’d given up that torch, and thrown himself completely into becoming a truly superior soldier.

  Somehow she and Rex had changed a man’s life. And knowing that brought back all the grief she had shut down so hard all those years ago. She missed Rex all over again like a hole in her heart. Yet his final act had been to change a man’s life for the better. And again she wondered if it had been conscious. Or some weird doggie sense of what was needed? It would be just too unlikely if it was merely coincidence.

  Her head was whirling and she wondered if she was going to lose the Maple Pork Sausage Patty with Pepper and Onions MRE that had been her breakfast hours ago.

  “I’m going to go and check on things,” Garret leveraged himself to his feet. But before he stepped away, he rested his hand on her shoulder for just a moment. “It’s good to see you, Minnow.” Then he was across the room checking nothing in particular that she could see.

  10

  They came at moonset. The darkest part of the Afghan night.

  Mutt and Jeff had a brief debate over which of them heard the vehicles first
. The trucks were coming from the Afghanistan side, so the targets must be the Pakis—this time. Did this bombmaker service both sides? Probably not. He struck Garret as more the fanatic type.

  Three Toyota pickups. Most of the traffic to the Friendship Gate was by foot, bicycle, and burro-drawn carts. The motorized traffic was almost entirely massive trucks. There were the NATO and US supply trucks carrying exactly the labeled load limit. These were accompanied by heavily armed patrols to deter anyone attaching an explosive charge to them. The other trucks were just as big, but loaded ludicrously beyond anything the rigs had ever been designed for. Loose hay, bags of grain or rice, stacks upon stacks of bricks, anything—all piled so high that it was a miracle the trucks didn’t tip over every time they hit a pothole. These were driven with reckless abandon and had been a staple of the region since forever.

  Small Toyotas were good utility trucks, but they were fantastic field vehicles for roving military. Tough, reliable, four-wheel drive, and able to carry a heavy load. Not armored, but cheap and plentiful.

  Mutt and Jeff were both on rooftops now. They reported that two of the three were loaded to past the limits beneath heavy tarps. It was the middle vehicle that was worrisome. Someone had mounted a DShK Russian heavy machine gun on its bed. Its round could punch through an inch of armor. If that’s what they had in the open, it meant the men in the cabs would have plenty of automatic weapons.

  He yanked the Afghani to his feet and pulled his gag.

  “You will say the code words, and you will say them properly.”

  When the man started to protest, Garret yanked his sidearm and rammed the barrel up under the man’s jaw.

  “Pohidal?”

  He decided to take the man’s wide eyes as a yes that he “understood.”

  Until Minnow called out to him, “The woman said that her husband is very stubborn.”

  “Shit!” He didn’t have time for this. Garret swung his sidearm aside, then smashed it back against the man’s temple. He dropped like a brick.

  Minnow helped him drag the man back into a safe spot where the other two women were tied behind the truck engine block.

  BB were front and back on the roof of this long arm of the warehouse’s V-shape, ready to fire from above or drop down if needed.

  His snipers were on opposing rooftops for maximum coverage—one across the main street, the other looking down from the next block back.

  That left him, Minnow, and her dog in the equipment bay itself. Bad planning, but his need to keep her close had gotten them here and it was too late to change their plan. Especially as his goal was to keep some of the bad guys alive long enough to get more information about the supply chain.

  He crossed to where she was watching the back door from the same protected corner that held their three hostages.

  “You keep low and you stay alive, hear?”

  She nodded then, after a long pause, “You, too.”

  No time to think about what that pause might mean.

  11

  Liza was thinking about that pause and wondering where it had come from. It was more than something she’d wish for a fellow soldier. She wanted Garret to…what?

  Garret—funny how Conway just wouldn’t stick anymore—made it a half dozen paces away before he stopped as if he’d been shot. He spun to face her before rushing back. For half a moment she thought he might be coming to kiss her. What reaction that might call for died before it had a chance to be considered as he brushed by her.

  “Help me get this guy stripped!” He whipped out a knife and sliced the Afghani’s bonds.

  “Get undressed,” she told him, because she knew what he was after. She took over removing the unconscious man’s clothes. Garret was far more powerfully built, but clothes here were loose to fend off the heat. She had all of the man’s clothes off and had re-lashed his wrists in case he woke, before turning to offer the clothes to Garret.

  Down to his socks and boxers, he was very much not the boy she remembered. Muscle rippled over him with every gesture. His job hadn’t left him untouched. A long knife scar across his ribs. A bullet wound through one thigh. A spattering of scars that could only come from being caught by a cloud of shrapnel. None of that showed on his face or hands, but his body could only belong to a warrior.

  Garret dressed quickly and she did her best not to blush as she helped him, pulling up his partug (the blousy pants) and leaving him to figure out how to tie it tightly across his flat stomach while she re-laced his boots. The khet over his head, then she was buttoning the cuffs while he tried to settle the draping shirt so that it fell cleanly to his knees.

  They kept bumping together in awkward and surprising ways. He couldn’t wear his military vest, but the Afghani’s vest of brown linen fell past his hips and she was soon ducked under the edge of it to lash Garret’s knife’s scabbard around one thigh, reaching between his legs to do the lacing.

  “A hundred meters,” she echoed Mutt’s report for him because he’d had to shed his radio to get the pillbox kufi hat to sit properly on his head.

  She worked her way up his body, tucking sidearms, spare magazines, and grenades where she could. With each oddly intimate contact she became more and more aware of him. When she finished straightening his collar, he’d made a mess of it, it left her hands holding the narrow collar close about his throat.

  Liza leaned in and kissed him for luck. Kissed him for welcoming her in and not holding their past against her. To thank him for giving Rex a merciful death. And to thank him for the man he’d become.

  Before he could really respond, she pulled back.

  “Fifty meters,” she took away his HK416 that instinct had returned to his hands and stuffed an AK-47 into them.

  Then she turned him to face the front door.

  “Go!” She slapped him on the ass to send him on his way, then she hunkered down in her hiding spot beside Sergey and tried not to laugh at her presumption and his surprise.

  “Ready,” she whispered to her dog. In moments he was standing and in full alert mode. Nothing would be catching them by surprise.

  There were two piles of junk in the back of the long warehouse bay. She shooed Sergey over behind one pile, while she crouched in front of the unconscious man and the two bound women.

  Before she could take another breath, Garret had stuck his head out through the black plastic and called out into the night, “Tsook?”

  12

  Garret felt he did a passable job of explaining that his “good friend” was home sick and had sent him in the man’s place.

  “Yes, poor Hukam,” the man’s wife was suddenly beside him.

  Even with things happening so fast, Minnow had remembered that the woman was unhappy about the explosives delivery. And now here she was helping him.

  “Something he ate,” she continued. “It must have come from Pakistan.”

  In covering his surprise, he glanced away…and spotted his own HK416 in Liza’s hands where she peeked around the engine block. It was aimed at the back of the woman’s head and Hukam’s wife must know it. Okay, maybe she had a couple of reasons to be so cooperative.

  Garret turned back and wondered how long the ruse might hold up. Not very long.

  “Come. We must hurry. Unload so that you may begin the long drive back. I hope the journey was not too hard.”

  The leader kept his weapon on Garret, but seemed to agree with the urgency. “You stand aside. We will unload.” And he waved the first pickup to back in.

  Garret moved to the side wall and was pleased to see that Liza was out of sight, except for a dog tail. Thankfully Sergey wasn’t wagging it, but rather standing stock still. Hopefully no one would notice.

  Impossible to still think of her as Minnow after that kiss. If she’d wanted him more alert than he’d ever been in his life, she’d figured out how to get him there. Every nuance of that kiss was implanted on his nervous system which was now running at the full-adrenaline setting. He didn’t have time to wonder
if there was more to that kiss than making sure he was on point, but it had sure as hell worked.

  “See?” He tried to distract the leader—and ignore the AK-47 pointed at his gut. “See? We have the car ready.” A glance revealed that the incoming supplies were mostly C-4. This was no diesel fuel and fertilizer operation. A lot of money had gone into this effort and they’d stumbled on it because of Liza and her dog.

  And the quantity! This many close-packed bricks of C-4 could take down a Parliament building or a Presidential Palace.

  A part of him babbled on as if he was extremely proud of his work. Another wished he knew what the hell his team was doing—the lack of radio contact was making him crazy.

  Garret tried to keep between the leader and the exposed length of Sergey’s tail while the second truck was being unloaded.

  13

  If Garret didn’t move soon, Liza was going to shoot him.

  She squatted behind the engine block with the prisoners, which gave her one good line of sight. She’d positioned Sergey near the back door behind the stack of old metal and seats so that the only thing showing past the pile of the truck’s fenders was his camera. The two different angles gave her an excellent view of the whole bay—except for Garret being constantly in the way.

  Because she was the only one with any idea of what was going on inside the warehouse, she’d become the operation’s leader. The fact that she was wholly unqualified didn’t seem to matter to the others.

  And she couldn’t exactly argue, not without being overheard.

  So she was answering tactical questions with one tap for yes and two for no.

  No, the trucks weren’t unloaded yet.

  Yes, that really was Garret in the white khet partug with the brown vest.