Knife (9780698185623) (11 page)

Massey and Slausen led the boy over the ground to the exfil, their arms around his shoulders. They gave him an extra pair of socks and he trampled over the earth with the baggy, too-big socks flapping on the ground like a second set of feet. He had Hagan's top wrapped around his shoulders and his ribs were sharp and cast jagged shadows on his stomach in the moonlight. He had a Snickers bar in his hand, not yet open.

Hagan walked next to Shaw and gestured to the boy.

“What'll they do with him?”

“I don't know. Hopefully find somewhere and someone for him.”

Hagan nodded. “Chained to the floor to shit all over himself.”

“Yeah. Fucked up.”

Shaw looked around. The night was as beautiful and quiet as it had been when the birds first left them. He watched Slausen and Massey walk the boy over the uneven ground. He'd seen the same look in that boy's eyes when rabbits got their legs caught in the steel traps his grandpa used to protect their garden. He'd stopped eating the rabbit stew he loved as a boy after a certain age.

“You think he knows he can eat that?” Hagan asked.

“Eat what?”

“The Snickers.”

“Probably, Hog.”

Hagan nodded and looked south. “Man. I could sure as hell eat that. I'm starving.”

“Why don't you ask him for it?”

“Really?”

“No, of course not. Get a hold of yourself, you animal.”

“Man,” Hagan said. “Chained to the floor. Poor kid.”

The teams all took a knee and waited for the birds. Shaw looked back at the compound, at the bodies they'd left outside. The six corpses lay next to one another like firewood or cigarettes in a pack. The operators left them so anyone who cared could bury them in the morning. They tried to be mindful of local custom, even in death. When the birds started touching down, a team huddled around the boy and Slausen and Massey took the boy's hands and lifted him into the cabin. He didn't look comfortable, the big metal collar around his neck weighing his head down, but he wasn't fighting back, either. He sat between Slausen and Massey and they put their big arms around his young shoulders. The boy nearly disappeared between them, he was so small. Eventually he propped his elbows on their thighs. He held the Snickers bar rigid, propped straight up on his knee like a trophy.

•   •   •

T
he birds flew through black clouds of burning trash on their way back to the FOB. Shaw's nostrils burned and he felt a stinging heat in his throat. Those dark clouds were what the government reps talked about if the men ever got sick and were owed government compensation. They were probably breathing in their own deaths.

The birds touched down on the tarmac and the muffled chuckles and drumming of snuff cans filled the air as they whined and shut down. It wouldn't be light for another couple hours, they could still get spun up for follow-ons, but everything felt quiet and light despite all the noise. Peaceful. The guys walked slow and calm and Shaw let his shoulders sag and relax under the weight of his kit. Massey and Slausen took the boy off the tarmac and around the gravel barrier separating the dirt from the airfield. Then they disappeared behind the concrete blast walls. Back at the war room, Hagan took off his helmet. The pads left indented rows of honeycombs in his blond hair. Dalonna kissed the picture of his girls and sat down on his footstool with his kit and helmet still on. He let out a deep breath. Cooke set his weapon in his locker and took off his helmet and kit.

“Good shooting,” Cooke said. He stretched to the floor, touched his toes. Shaw took off his helmet and placed it in his locker. He took off his kit and let his head rest against the wooden locker.

“I would've been aiming at kneecaps if I'd seen that kid,” Hagan said.

“Hell, that would've just wasted rounds,” Cooke said. “None of 'em are breathing anymore.”

Hagan unwrapped some tape he had coiled around his knees. “You guys hear the kid screaming?”

Dalonna shook his head. He glanced at the pictures he'd put up of his little girls.

“I heard someone screaming when we breached,” Shaw said. “I heard Mike and Ohio shooting and then some screams.”

“That was a death scream,” Hagan said. “Sounded like an old woman getting beaten to death with a stick or a club.”

Cooke took off his kneepads and tossed them in his locker. “Well, he was gonna get blown up in a market or police station, and we came in and killed everyone around him. So that sounds about right. And a stick or a club, Hog?” Cooke unlaced his boots and rested his elbows on his knees. “Colorful. Very precise.”

Hagan shrugged and they were all quiet for a while, taking off their equipment piece by piece. Shaw sat on his footstool and grabbed an empty bottle from under his locker and put in a big chaw. He let his head rest against the wooden walls of the locker and started feeling the sweat in his bottoms getting cold and wrinkling the skin of his ass and legs.

Hagan got to his feet, stretched his arms above his head, and clapped his hands. “Well, all right. AAR in ten or fifteen. I'm gonna go take a shit.”

Cooke said he'd join him, and the two ran out of the war room together.

Shaw disassembled his weapon and started cleaning the bolt and upper receiver of the rifle with a bore brush, Q-tips, and some CLP. Dalonna stayed in the war room with him and neither one said anything. Dalonna was holding a full mag in his hands and unloading and reloading the rounds.

“Donna. You all right?”

“Yeah.”

Dalonna answered quickly, glancing at Shaw and then back down at the mag. He kept nodding, even though neither one of them said anything after that, like he was listening to his own private music.

“Okay.”

Shaw left him alone. Seeing a kid all messed up like that on his first mission of the hop probably wasn't the best thing for him. Take the kid out of the equation and it would've been business as usual. Shaw looked at Dalonna's girls taped on the wall. The gap-toothed smiles and Cheetos lipstick. Guys came into the war room quietly or talking privately among themselves, and they exchanged hellos and head nods. Some guys made their way to the briefing room or the TOC, still holding their weapons and all kitted up. Most grabbed coffee or spitters and ate energy bars. Shaw finished cleaning the bolt and set it on a clean rag. Dalonna kept his head toward the floor. Shaw wondered if he'd fallen asleep. He watched him, moved his head around to see if he could see his eyes. Then Dalonna looked right at him.

“Fuck it,” Dalonna said. He got up off his footstool and left the war room.

Massey came in as Dalonna was leaving.

“What's up, Donna?”

Massey watched Dalonna leave and then he shrugged. He turned to Shaw with his hands on his hips and stretched his back.

“The doc up at the CASH said the kid probably has Down's. But he's not sure.”

“Isn't that something he should know right away or not, being a doc and all?” Shaw asked.

Massey shrugged. “Not sure.”

“The kid looked comfortable around you and Slausen.”

Massey smiled. “Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Probably not. I don't think he knew what to make of any of it, to be honest. Pretty fucked, huh?”

“Yeah, it is. What'll happen to him?”

Shaw grabbed the upper receiver and ran a bore brush through the barrel. The black, ashy carbon pushed out of the barrel onto the white swab came from rounds that killed a man. He thought about that for a second. Then he looked at the swab, thought of the kid in the chains, and let the swab fall to the floor.

“No idea,” Massey said. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “The doc I left him with said there isn't any kind of orphan system in operation or anything around here that can guarantee his safety. And finding any relatives is unlikely. If he has any.” He looked at his hands. “Is that the kid's blood?” He spit on his hands and rubbed them on his pants and shook his head. “Sick. I told the doc they should see if they can't fix him up with a job serving food or something around one of the bases. Give him a job he can do. That'd keep him alive for a lot longer than sending him out on the street would.”

“That's a good idea,” Shaw said.

“Yeah, it is. Be a hell of a lot better than the job he was chained to the floor for, anyhow.”

Shaw put his weapon back together and cleared it. The bolt slid smooth and the metal sang.

“You ready for the AAR?” Massey asked.

Shaw nodded.

“That motherfucker was gonna strap a bomb to that kid and blow him up,” Massey said. He raised his eyebrows and looked Shaw in the eyes. “And that kid would've walked out into a market just happy to get away from those guys. No idea what he was wearing.” Massey nodded to himself and then slapped his hands on his kit, took it off, and put it back in his locker. “Let's go to the AAR and then throw some weights around.”

•   •   •

T
hey had their after-action review in the TOC. Guys wore baseball hats, T-shirts, and sandals while the kill TVs showed live footage of other raids. Some of the men had their boots and kits off, while others were still all kitted up and weapons slung. Ready to go back into the dark. Guys held coffee and spitters in one hand and printouts in the other. Shaw was breaking in a Cardinals hat for Massey. With the playoffs running full blast, Massey was getting superstitious and wanted Shaw to rub as much dirt and CLP on the cap as possible. He didn't say why and it was starting to stink. Shaw felt like a wrench monkey.

Their CO was hands-off during planning and execution, but the AARs were his property. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed. He spoke fast.

“Describe the layouts of the first and second floors.”

“What did you have to avoid on your movements?”

“What did the rooms smell like?”

“Were they hot or cold?”

“What kind of metals did you find? Anything you hadn't seen before?”

“What would you change?”

“What surprised you?”

It was a debrief, not an interrogation, and the teams would answer in as much detail as possible. Shaw could almost see the information taking the CO inside the objective as his eyes widened, the nuts and bolts of his brain moving overtime. Putting puzzle pieces together and saving others for later. Everyone, everything, had patterns and trends that could lead to the next target. So the men tried to describe a smell as closer to a tulip than a rose if it would spark a trend and a follow-on raid. A shade of brown more Hershey's than Godiva. After his questions, the CO leaned back, relaxed, and they discussed strengths of the raid and lessons learned. They agreed that the strengths of the raid were the speed and precision of violence, and minimizing their time on the objective. They agreed that the surprise afforded by walking in instead of roping onto the roof or landing right outside the compound outweighed the risks of being compromised on the infil and taking casualties. They didn't mind the walk. The men inside were armed and likely to shoot it out if they had heard the birds approaching.

The CO rubbed the tops of his knees with his hands.

“Good shooting. Good movement.”

He nodded to himself and looked toward the kill TVs flanking the walls, at the other raids and possible targets.

“No follow-ons tonight,” he said, watching the screens. “Get some sleep.”

He looked like he could've used some.

The operators got to the war room and changed the batteries in their NODs and lasers. They emptied stale water from their reservoirs and filled them up again with fresh new bottles. They reloaded mags and adjusted their kits and then left for their tents. Outside, the sun would soon be up. The Intel teams would dissect the files and tech devices while the men who took them off the objective slept. The next targets would be waiting for them when they woke.

The machine was up and rolling.

•   •   •

H
agan pointed his horseshoe at Cooke in the sunlight.

“You know what I like about you, Cooke? You just suck. You know that? Literally suck and are the worst at everything in the whole world. Don't know what the weather will be like in the next week or two, but one thing's for sure. Cooke's gonna keep on sucking.”

Hagan let his horseshoe fly. It missed the stake.

Cooke laughed and pointed his horseshoe at Hagan.

“Hog, listen carefully.” He aimed the horseshoe at the stake and spit at his feet. “Your single greatest accomplishment in life,” he said, letting the shoe fly, “is being a sometimes invalid whose mouth makes him a genuine all-the-time one.” He ringed the stake. “Now bend over real nice like your mother.”

Hagan stood upright with his hands on his hips. “What the hell is an invalid?”

“Look it up,” Cooke said. He gestured with his fingers for Hagan to turn around.

“I will look it up,” Hagan said. Then he flicked Cooke off and dropped his pants. Cooke rubbed his boot in the dirt and kicked Hagan in the ass.

Dalonna laughed, squinting in the bright sunlight. “Hog, why do you keep offering your ass up so much? You're worth at least double what he's paying you.”

Hagan turned around to face Dalonna, his pants at his ankles. Then he flicked him off and turned back around to let Cooke kick the other cheek as they had agreed.

It was late in the afternoon, still hot though the sun was getting lower. Dalonna seemed to have cheered up from the night before, and they'd eaten and lifted as a team after getting a few hours of sleep. Shaw had gotten up before the others. He grabbed his ruck and walked around the FOB for a while. Birds flew overhead every now and again and the
salat al-'asr
echoed throughout speakers from the mosques. Even though the air seemed to be on fire and the dirt was blowing in his face, it still felt good to move around.

They got a 4 while Hagan had his ass hanging out of his pants. Cooke was ready to give him another boot and both he and Hagan paused mid-kick and looked at the beepers clipped onto their belts. Shaw looked at his and so did Dalonna. Massey had marked that he was at the CASH, so he'd be making his way over shortly. Hagan stood up. He pulled up his pants and tightened a fake tie, lifted his chin and put on a snooty face.