Wynne's War (9 page)

“That feeling all right to you?” he asked her.

The horse snorted a jet of vapor into the cool mountain air. Russell chucked her up to a slow walk, and they went round the corral, Russell talking the entire time, stopping the horse, starting her, turning to retrace her path. In five minutes he had her trotting, and in five more he'd pushed her up to a canter, circled twice, and then dropped back to a trot, bouncing with the two-beat gait. Wheels watched him give the slightest tug on the reins, the slightest pressure with his boots. He seemed to will her every movement. He seemed to control her with his thighs. He sat perfectly straight, with his eyes forward and his chin up, moving the filly so her hooves printed half-moons in the corral's soft dirt. Then he began to slow the horse. He slowed her and walked her to the center of the pen, turned her twice, three times, and then brought her to a halt. The men on either side of Wheels grinned, and one of them chuckled and shook his head.

Wheels leaned over and spat.

“You can put that horse's feet anywhere you want, can't you?”

“They're my feet,” Russell said.

 

Russell started on the next horse two days later, an Akhal-Teke, one of the oldest surviving breeds, only thirty-five hundred of them in the world. The stallion was golden from the tip of its nose to the last hair on its tail—seventeen hands, its conformation flawless. A stunning horse, perfect and powerful, but a horse half wild and restless in its blood and about an inch away from being a predator. Which meant he'd been made that way: no horse got there on his own. Russell decided to work him very slowly, a little each day. He went on to the Arabian—gentle as you had the right to expect an animal to be—and then he started another of the paints, leading him about the round corral and then going to work with the long line and the flag.

By the afternoon of his fourth day, he was back to working the Akhal-Teke. The corral was lined along one side with his audience of Green Berets, five of them, and all of Wynne's team currently in camp, with the exception of Billings. Wheels stood to one side, like the sorcerer's apprentice, arms crossed, nodding sagely when Russell did something that seemed to bring the horse along. You didn't whip the horse. You did nothing to hurt him. You brought only discipline, and discipline done right was an art form in itself. You had to be an artist. You made the wrong thing feel like work for the horse and the right thing feel like relief. Wrong thing difficult, right thing easy. Wrong thing pressure, right thing release.

The stallion would trot in the afternoon light with the sun glowing along his caramel coat, a metallic look to it, a burnished metal gloss. Bronze-stockinged rear feet and bronze-stockinged front. A white strip down his nose. Gold spangles across his back, darker golden coins on his flanks. He circled the corral blowing, shaking his head, Russell talking to him, the soldiers watching from behind the rail.

“You got a damn bronc on your hands,” said Wheels.

Russell leaned over and spat. He held out a hand for Wheels to pass him his flag, and the horse backed nervously several feet. He stood eyeing Russell. Then he sprang suddenly forward and gnashed at him with his teeth.

Russell saw it unfold as if in slow motion—the horse lunging forward and his neck stretching out, head stretching, the muscles striated beneath the golden coat and his mouth hinged open, the perfectly white teeth parted like the jaws on a trap and then closing with a dull, wet snap as Russell ducked and slid to his right, slipping the way a boxer might dodge his opponent's jab.

“Christ Jesus!” Wheels shouted, and the others were calling out, murmuring. The stallion turned and came about to face Russell, but Russell had already backed against the corral, thrown one leg over, and straddled it. He studied the horse several moments where he stood in the sunlight with his tail swishing.

Russell pointed to the stallion. He looked over at Wheels and Pike and the other Green Berets alongside the corral. “Nobody rides this horse but me.”

“Don't think you have to worry about that,” Pike said, and the men all laughed.

All but Russell. He was staring at the horse. He told Wheels to bring him the Kimblewick bit from the stable.

“Did I say
bronc
?” Wheels asked. “I meant
alligator.
”

“Bring me the Kimble,” Russell said.

Wheels shrugged, took his boot off the lower bar of the corral panel, and went toward the stable. Russell was eyeing the stallion and rubbing the palm of one hand back and forth along his jaw.

“That thing could've bitten your face off,” one of the men told him.

Russell nodded.

“What are you going to do?” another asked.

Russell shook his head. A horse would lick its lips when it was learning, but this horse didn't lick its lips at all. He glanced over and saw Wheels coming from the stable with the Kimblewick in hand. It was a kind of curb bit, though most didn't consider it a curb, or not a traditional curb. If you had a slotted Kimble, you could apply leverage to the horse's mouth, get him to pay attention. That all depended on whether or not you could get it into the horse's mouth. Even then, it would only help when the horse was saddled and the rider was seated upon it.

Wheels walked around and handed him the bit, and Russell sat holding it by the D-rings and working the joint. He'd have to attach it to the reins and the halter, remove the halter already on the stallion, work the new halter over the horse's head, and get him to accept the Kimble. It wouldn't keep him from biting, and it certainly wouldn't keep him from kicking. He imagined the horse on it back legs, reared to full height, hoofs pawing the air. He pushed that image away.

By early evening, he'd managed to get the old halter off, the new halter on, the Kimblewick in place. They'd saddled the stallion, and it stood now on the far side of the corral, head down, left ear twitching. The muscles along the horse's shoulder would flex and release, flex and release. Russell walked to the edge of the corral and leaned his flag stick against the panel, paying out the long line as he went, never taking his eyes from the horse. Wheels watched him as he approached the stallion and brushed a hand under the horse's chin, down his throat, stepping to the horse's left side, rubbing the horse's neck, telling him it was okay. The horse didn't look okay. He looked like something about to explode. Russell didn't seem to notice. He stood there talking to the stallion. Then he placed his left boot in the stirrup, grabbed the horn in his left hand, the cantle in his right, and lifted himself alongside the stallion, leaning slightly over him, standing in the stirrup one-footed. The horse began instantly to sidle and then to turn, Russell still talking calmly.

Wheels watched. Horse and man looked to be involved in an intricate dance—Russell perched along the animal's left side, clucking softly with his tongue, the stallion tossing its head and turning, tossing its head and turning, rotating in wider and wider circles, dust rising from its hooves in the late-evening light. Then, just as quickly as the horse had started moving, it stopped. Stopped and stood motionless, the dust passing eastward through the corral, fleeing the sunset in a red drift of smoke. Russell waited several moments for the animal to settle. The air had a sharp edge to it. A bird called. He nodded several times, threw his right leg over, found the stirrup on that side, and lowered himself into the saddle. He leaned forward and took up the reins and then reached down to pat the horse's neck.

“Good boy,” he said.

He'd just gotten out the words when the stallion bucked. It came without warning, front and rear legs coming suddenly together, and then the rear legs shooting out behind, kicking, turning somehow, Russell trying to lean forward and straighten himself along the horse's neck, lower his center of gravity, the stallion spinning faster, resembling for the briefest of moments a figure skater, corkscrewing, man and horse beginning to blur. And then winding out of this eddy, slowing, the two of them separate again, distinct, Russell still astride the animal, teeth clenched, reining the stallion and pulling him to the left, the horse taking wider steps now, head down, the soldiers along the rail watching as men will watch a fight—wide-eyed, astonished—something of reverence in the air, a ritual activated in the blood, and all the while Russell looking as if he was about to be thrown and yet directing the stallion's movements with a squeeze of the thighs, a tug of the reins.

When he straightened the animal and put him forward, the horse was moving at a canter, loping the corral counterclockwise with Russell bouncing in the saddle and snapping back on the reins, jiggling them. The stallion shook his massive head and blew but began to go slower, dropped to a trot, and then down to a walk. Russell was telling him “good,” he was a “good horse,” but the stallion's eyes were crazed with fear, and Wheels watched Russell make another pass around the corral and then make another. He circled a third time and then reined more sharply, and the stallion walked to the center of the corral and stopped. The temperature had dropped, and steam rose from the animal's coat like something that might catch fire. He swished his tail and snorted vapor into the evening air. Then he just stood.

There were several moments of silence. You could hear the bellows of the horse's lungs as he drew a breath and released it, drew a breath and released it, drew a breath and released it—imitation of a locomotive idling. Someone cleared his throat. Then the men began to applaud.

Russell looked up at the clapping figures. Several shook their heads, and one placed a thumb and pinky in the corners of his mouth and gave a shrill whistle. The stallion lifted its head. Russell glanced along the row and saw Wheels nodding his approval. Beside him was the woman from the surgical team they'd first encountered on the helicopter flying in. She was standing there with her arms crossed and a strange look on her face. Russell climbed down from the horse, walked him to the other side of the corral, and passed the reins to the Afghan groom who'd been standing there. The man touched his forehead with the tips of his fingers and bowed his head slightly, and Russell returned the gesture.

When he made it over to where the woman was standing, the men had dispersed and Wheels was moving down toward the mess tent with two of the Green Berets, striding between the massive soldiers, gesticulating wildly. Russell walked up and blotted the sweat from beneath his eyes with the back of his shirtsleeve. He asked how she was doing.

She looked over at the Afghan groom, leading the stallion toward the stable. She looked back at Russell.

“Horses,” she said, as though she'd stepped into a dream.

Russell nodded.

“This is why you're here?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She stood there, her eyes very green in the failing light. She wore makeup. Not much. Some eyeliner and mascara and whatever it was women put on their cheeks. Her features were very delicate, very fine, and there seemed to be some struggle in them, her eyebrows knotted, a look of enormous concentration on her face. Then the muscles relaxed and she extended her hand.

“I'm Sara,” she told him.

“Elijah,” he said, taking her hand. It was small and smooth, a little cold.

She said, “I didn't even know we used horses.”

Russell couldn't decide if this was a question. He asked how he could help her.

She crossed her arms to her chest and seemed to shiver slightly.

“I was supposed to bring antibiotics down to Sergeant Bixby,” she told him, “but they told me he's out.”

Russell nodded. He said he was surprised she was still in camp.

“They keep saying they're going to send us back to Kabul, but you know that tune.”

“Hurry up and wait.”

“Hurry up and wait,” she said.

He studied her a moment. A shapely figure, porcelain-pale. A little fragile looking. Like a doll.

The hell with it, he decided.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her. “Would you like something to eat?”

She seemed to give the question serious consideration. She said she'd take coffee if they had it.

“We have it,” said Russell, and they started down the path, dusk falling all around them and their breath fogging in the cold.

 

Sara and Russell sat at one of the picnic tables inside the large canvas tent, while the Green Berets conversed in a steady hum around them, sounds of meat sizzling in the background. There was a cook in camp whose sole duty was to prepare meals for these men, but the team's junior weapons sergeant—a lean and beardless Latino named Rosa—manned the grill at suppertime, cooking steaks, sausage, burgers. He made the best burgers Russell had ever eaten. Tonight he'd prepared teriyaki chicken, and he moved around the room spooning the contents of a cast-iron skillet onto paper plates, standing over the men in his University of Arizona ball cap and a camouflage apron with
LIVE BY CHANCE, LOVE BY CHOICE, KILL BY PROFESSION
emblazoned on the front. He was a sniper by trade but in another life could easily have been a chef. He came over to Russell and Sara's table, filled their plates, and then stood like a waiter about to inquire if they needed anything else. Two mornings ago, Russell had watched the man group ten rounds in the tennis ball–sized circle of a paper target at 620 meters, lying in the dirt with his eye to the scope, pacing the shots about a second apart.

“Bon appétit,” he said.

They sat a moment. Sara asked where he'd learned to do all of that with a horse.

“My granddad.”

She smiled and shook her head. It was the first time he'd seen her smile, and his throat went suddenly tight. She stabbed at the chicken on her plate, brought a bite to her mouth, and blew.

“You do that every day?” she asked.

“Not
every
day,” he said. “I been doing it the last few days because they need horses and most of these hadn't even been rode.”