Wynne's War (33 page)

“No way he waltzed anywhere,” Russell said.

“Why do you say that?” Fisk asked.

“It just ain't no way. He and Ox—”

Serra said, “Sergeant Boyle?”

“Sergeant Boyle,” said Russell, nodding. “I doubt four of us could've gotten it back up the tunnel, much less down the side of that mountain, and there was only the captain and Ox and Sergeant Bixby.” He looked back and forth at the pictures. “I don't know what else—”

Then the hairs on the back of his neck rose and a chill ran up his spine. Something welled up inside him, and he began suddenly to laugh. It was excruciating, but he couldn't stop. He gripped the photographs in his left hand and the bed rail in his right.

“What is it?” Fisk said.

Serra said, “Corporal, what the hell?”

“He blew it,” Russell said, tears beginning to run from his eyes.

“Blew what?” Fisk asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The gold,” said Russell. “He blew it all to hell.”

Fisk and Serra looked at each other. The major told him to explain himself.

“Me and Wheels heard an explosion, but we didn't know what it was. We were down the trail a few klicks, and we thought maybe it was mortars, but it didn't sound like mortars, and we—” He broke off and started coughing. His stomach felt like it was on fire.

“This doesn't make any sense,” Fisk said.

“Makes perfect sense,” said Russell. “He wanted to keep it out of the Talibs' hands. He couldn't get it out, so he went with the next best option.”

“I don't buy it,” said Fisk.

“Buy it or don't buy it,” Russell told him, chuckling.

Serra said, “What—C-4?”

“Sure,” Russell said.

“He had enough to do that?”

“Had more than enough,” said Russell. “Just what Sergeant Perkins carried could've blown that cave. And there were crates of demo stacked yay high. Artillery shells. They could've brought down the whole mountain. That's why your photo's all wrong.”

Fisk looked ill. The blood had drained from his face.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You're saying that the captain, instead of moving a chest full of Afghan treasure that was worth mill—that was basically
priceless
—you're saying he wired it with C-4 and blew it up?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying.”

“You don't think it's a lot more likely that they got it out?”

“Nope,” said Russell. “I think it's a lot more likely that he blew it the fuck up.”

“It's lunacy,” Fisk said.

Russell shook his head. “Did you not have any idea who it was you sent?”

Fisk sat for several moments studying his lap. Then he looked up at Russell. The nauseated expression had turned to fury. He said, “Corporal, you're being awfully cavalier about this.”

“I don't even know what that word means,” Russell told him.

“It means this operation was of vital importance to our coalition. It was meant to—”

“Well, which one is it?” Russell said.

Fisk just stared. “Which one is what?”

“When you thought the captain ran off with your gold, the operation was ‘illegal,' but now that he blew it up, it's of ‘vital importance'?”

“Listen, you hayseed. Do you have any idea the kind of shitstorm that's about to hit? We've got a Special Forces officer unaccounted for and the better part of an ODA missing or dead. Not to mention the whole reason for this clusterfuck is, according to your expert opinion, blown to smithereens.”

Russell looked at Major Serra, lifted a finger, and pointed at Fisk.

“Can you get him the hell away from me?”

“Corporal,” said Fisk, “I don't think you realize what's—”

“Mr. Fisk,” said Serra, “I'd like for you to wait outside.”

Fisk turned and stared at the major. He opened his mouth to speak. Then his lips tightened into a small red button, and he rose soundlessly from his chair and walked across the room. He turned at the door and studied the two of them. Then he opened it and went out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“What's his deal?” Russell said.

“His deal,” said Serra, “is he's an asshole.”

“Are you for real about the promotion?”

Serra nodded. “How much time you have left?”

“On my contract?”

“Your contract,” Serra said.

Russell did some calculations, but his back hurt and his head was foggy and he was likely doing them wrong.

“I would've been stop-lossed sometime in March. I'd need to sign on for another go.”

“Then you sign on for another go,” Serra said.

Russell pointed down at his legs, as though that was where he was wounded. “Depends on all this.”

“No, it doesn't.”

Russell felt his brow crinkle. Even that hurt.

“I mean,” said Serra, “you wouldn't exactly be running and gunning.”

Russell asked what exactly he'd be doing.

“Training for us.”

“What—” said Russell, “Fifth Group?”

The major nodded.

“What would I be training?”

“Horses,” Serra told him. “We'd like to implement the model you helped establish.”

“Model,” Russell said.

Serra nodded.

“I can't see this was much of a model for anything.”

“We disagree,” Serra said. “Regardless of what our friends at the Agency might think. I think that what we're really looking at is an operation that was flawed in its execution, but conceptually speaking, it was very sound. Think about it for a second.”

“I done thought about it,” Russell said. He realized he'd yet to call him “sir.”

The man said, “You're looking at a way of transporting our operators across some pretty impossible terrain. You don't have to worry about engines or mechanical parts or even mechanics. You don't have to worry about fuel. Or gasoline, anyway. You're able to maintain noise discipline. You can carry more equipment than you ever could on an ATV. And there's a psychological effect on the locals. They're way more likely to be sympathetic. They know horses. They use horses. It's our gear and technology they don't understand.”

“I heard all of this before,” Russell said.

The major sat there looking at him, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he stood and squared the beret on his head and extended his hand. Russell wasn't sure, at first, what he was doing. Then he lifted his own hand and took the major's, and the major gave it a gentle pump.

“Think about it,” said Serra. “You get back stateside, we'll drop your SF packet and you head up to Fort Campbell.”

He released Russell's hand, then walked across the room, opened the door, and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind him.

Russell lay there for several moments. He'd heard folks talk about the fog of war, the uncertainty of combat, but they didn't seem to understand that there was something beyond the confusion, out beyond the gray, occasions where the universe narrowed to black and white, to either/or, and the equations you solved were zero-sum. Recognizing those occasions was the real challenge, and Russell thought that, for the captain, such choices came down to principles or people. That day in the cave, Wynne had picked the former, Russell the latter. Run the scenario a thousand times, they'd end up making the exact same selection.

At the time, all Russell had been able to think about was Wheels, and the captain was a thing that had finally been unmasked. Now that he knew Wynne had blown the gold, Russell felt differently. He didn't want to like this man, but he couldn't help admiring him—his purity, his drive—and then the gray reached and tugged at him, and he was back inside the fog. He still blamed the captain for Wheels's death, but he knew the principle Wynne fought for was noble. Furthermore, in that final moment, Wynne had let him go.

Russell lay there. His back hurt, but he wasn't thinking about his back. He was thinking about the captain, his blue eyes burning, that smile playing across his lips as though the world turned on its axis because he'd given it a push. And through the pain, he felt once again the pull of this man, a gravity strong as any planet. He closed his eyes and tried to shove him away. Drew a breath and released it. When he opened his eyes, the captain was still with him, another ghost to carry through his days. Russell reached over, took the plastic handle off the rail, and pushed the button.

He waited several moments.

Then he pushed it again.

 

Russell was in the hospital at Ramstein Airbase for the rest of April, and then two weeks into May, walking in the shallow end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, lifting three-pound weights while balancing on a Swiss ball, lying prone on a low table while a German masseuse kneaded the muscles at either side of the surgical site. The scar, when he glanced in a mirror, was still a bright jagged red. You wouldn't think surgeons would make so uneven an incision. And after the exercises, after the massage, lying on ice packs, staring at the ceiling, home another lifetime away and the war still very close.

His final week on base, he limped down to the building's Internet café. He wore black sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt with
ARMY
printed in black across the chest, and he carried a cane in his left hand. They'd dug into his right hip to get a bone graft for the fusion, and the pain was very sharp. The doctors said he wouldn't need the cane forever, but he certainly needed it now, every step its own separate struggle. There was a guard behind a table at the call center, but the man didn't ask for Russell's ID, just looked at his face, looked at his cane, and nodded him through. He went to the nearest computer terminal, sat, and brought up a browser. The person before him had been on Facebook, and Russell typed in his e-mail address and password. Then he sat several moments, staring at the screen.

He had 3,342 friend requests and another 2,000-and-some-odd updates. He scrolled and clicked, trying to figure out how to deactivate his account, but it was completely beyond him, and he ended up logging out and bringing up CNN's homepage. Didn't care about the headlines, just wanted to make Facebook go away. He couldn't remember why he'd wanted to get online in the first place and was about to close the browser and get up when he went to akologin.us.army.mil, slid his CAC/PIV into the card reader, and signed in.

There were the standard government e-mails he used to read and delete and now didn't bother reading at all, several spam messages that had managed to make it through the server, an e-mail from a “Sergeant Dime,” another from “B. Stafford Storm,” and then three in a row from [email protected] The first was titled “Testing” and the second “Is This You?” and when he opened them they both read: “This is Sara. E-mail back so I know this is the right address.” Russell felt his throat tighten and his pulse begin to race, and when he clicked on the last e-mail, there was a longer message. It read:

 

Elijah,

I don't know if you're going to get this, but I decided to write it anyway. I wrote a couple of times before—maybe you don't do e-mail? I have to say, you don't seem like the e-mail type. I'm not either. (This is an exception, so feel special, okay?) If you get this, please send something back pretty soon, because I don't know how long this address will be good for. I'm guessing not long.

They kicked me out—you might've already heard. That little incident with the Xanax and the loony bin that I thought my aunt was able to “fix?” Well, not so much. “The wheels of justice grind slow in this big green machine, but they do grind.” (A warrant officer actually told me that. He outta be in pictures). The MPs arrested me at Kandahar Airfield last month, week after you left with your guys. They didn't tell me what the charges were until we'd landed at JFK. “Lying on my application,” they said. I thought they were too desperate to worry about that kind of thing, but turns out they're just desperate enough. Go figure. They were threatening to bring charges, but my aunt (same one who was supposed to have “fixed” my situation to begin with) has a good attorney, so I ended up with a dishonorable discharge instead.

So now I'm back in Reno. Living here in this apartment with my mother, working at the Panera down the street. “Would you like an apple or a baguette as your side?” That's my life now. I thought with my time over there I might be able to get my old job at the hospital, but the dishonorable discharge put the kibosh on that. I'm thinking about going back to school for my RN. Not a lot of motivation these days, though, so I don't really know.

Geez. I didn't mean to go off on a thing, but it looks like I went off on a thing. You're the one in a war, and here I am trying to depress you, apparently. It's actually not that bad (that's what I tell myself). At least I don't have any Xanax.

Joking, of course.

I have TONS!!!

That was another joke. (Would you like a baguette with that?)

I actually went out for a run after writing that last sentence. Nothing I've said so far is what I wanted to say. Trying to build up the courage, I suppose, but it's not working. So I'll just go ahead and come out with it. You probably won't get this anyway. And I'll confess to having had a post-run glass of wine.

Meeting you, Elijah, and spending time together, and our talks, and that one night that I'm not going to say any more about . . . I can't quit thinking about all of that. I know I'm being such a girl right now, but . . . I actually can't think of any way to finish that sentence. BUT. That says it all.