Red, Hot & Blue 09 - A Prince Among Men (3 page)

Amid the sea of waving limbs, Vicki raised her hand higher.

“Yes, Ms. Vanover.”

Pleased the prime minister knew her name, Vicki rose from her seat. “Thank you, Prime Minister. The tangible and measurable progress, such as advances in the transportation infrastructure, education and healthcare is commendable. But what will Britain do to further secure the rights of Afghan women who continue to be mistreated within a culture that accepts and condones such abominable treatment of its females?”

“The advancements and continued efforts that you just commended, Ms. Vanover, are the very things which will further the rights of women, as well as of all Afghan citizens. Mr. Feld. Your question?”

And with that, Vicki’s question was dismissed. It was exactly what she had expected—a non-answer, which was precisely why Vicki was traveling to Afghanistan herself.

He fielded a few more questions about everything from troop levels, to NATO, to the final question about the situation of a journalist being held by the Afghan government for circulating blasphemous materials, which was when his press secretary stepped forward, poised to end the press conference. The prime minister very briefly answered that the matter of the journalist was being handled by the Afghan judicial system, which did nothing to calm Vicki’s fears, and then he was bustled out of the room.

Journalists being held by the Afghan government. Vicki was left to wonder what the hell she had gotten herself into by pushing so hard to go there.

Mel reappeared next to her. His familiar presence had Vicki feeling a little better. “I forgot to give you my satellite cellie number,” he said, smiling.

She glanced down at the business card Mel had dug out of his cargo vest pocket and handed to her. She sighed. “Am I doing the right thing, Mel? Going there, I mean.”

He squatted down, bringing him eye-level with her as she sat. His head wobbled back and forth in a maybe-yes, maybe-no kind of motion which made Vicki even more nervous.

“You having doubts, love?”

“It’s just that journalist who’s being held on bogus charges…”

Vicki didn’t need to finish the thought for Mel to understand. He asked, “You said you’d be at Kandahar Air Field?”

”Yes.” She nodded.

“That region is still heavy in landmines and warlords, but if you stay within the fences of KAF, you should be safe enough, love.”

Landmines and warlords.

The fear must have shown on her face, because Mel covered her hand with his. “Like I said, stay safely within the fences at KAF, listen to what the Army tells you to do, and you’ll be fine.”

Vicki sighed. It was good advice. The problem was, she had a feeling the real story, the one she wanted to tell, could not be found within the fences. Vicki wanted that story, no matter what.

There had been one constant in Ryan’s life while growing up. Even if as an Army brat he’d had more first days in a new school than any of his non-military cousins. Even though he had so many new bedrooms his posters had no corners from being repeatedly hung up and taken down again. Through it all there had always been the “Field of Poppies”.

Of course, it hadn’t been the real painting. The original one was by Claude Monet and hung in some museum somewhere, but the framed print was his mother’s favorite possession. Even when some pieces of furniture had to be sold because the new base housing they were moving into was smaller than the old, the colorful print still came with them, carefully wrapped in plastic bubbles so the frame wouldn’t get nicked during the move. Whether they had been living in the States or outside the continental US, it had always hung in a place of honor where his mother would often gaze at it. Her personal piece of home no matter where in the world they happened to be.

Ryan’s gaze swept the expanse of brightly colored blooms now, only this was no Monet. This was Afghanistan during the yearly poppy harvest, and every one of the seemingly innocuous flowers may as well have been an RPG, recoilless rifle, or parts for an IED, because that’s exactly what they would turn into—weapons used to kill American soldiers.

Like it or not, that was just the way things were in today’s post-Taliban Afghanistan. Poppies turned into drugs, illegal drugs that when sold supplied the baddies with money, money that funded terrorism.

After his tour here, poppies and thoughts about his mother’s painting would be ruined for him forever. At that moment, Ryan hated the Taliban for mutilating one of the most comforting memories of his childhood and home.

He hated them even more for the fact they had innocents harvesting the blooms—locals comprised of the very old, the very young, men, women and children. They were all trying to survive in the face of the failure of their own non-drug-related crops due to the extreme weather in the region that year. Through his scope, Ryan could see them out there right now, far in the distance. Because of that, simply bombing the area, wiping out both the drug crop and the workers, was out of the question.

The much-needed local wheat and almond crop had failed miserably this year, but the poppies were still going strong. Didn’t it just figure? The only bright side was that with everyone, both the locals and the bad guys, busy picking and transporting flowers for heroin production, enemy contact during the harvest had been nearly non-existent. That was one thing to be grateful for. During his years in the service, Ryan had learned to take what he could get.

With a sigh, he turned helplessly away from the horrible, beautiful view.

Ryan saw Walker, a soldier in his unit, come to relieve him. His patrol was finally at an end. For today, at least. A shower, a meal—most likely meat patty—and a short sleep before going out to help with some of the construction work on one of the new buildings all sounded pretty good to Ryan right about now, even the meat patty.

On his way back to his living area, Ryan spotted Black and Moraches, two more of the guys from his squad, out on the makeshift volleyball court. As the new and still fairly white volleyball they’d gotten as a donation from the States popped high into the air, Ryan heard shouts in both English and Pashto, the local language, as various players called the play. His troops were trying to teach the Afghani Army guys, who resided with them at base, the game of volleyball. Luckily, the phrase, “I got it” translated fairly easily between Pashto and English.

Ryan smiled. Multinational volleyball. That alone would probably go much farther toward establishing friendly diplomatic relations with the locals of the region than all the government’s official efforts, but wasn’t that always the way?

Besides, a little bit of diversion such as playing volleyball went a long way to raise troop morale and break up this very long deployment. It felt a bit too much like that movie Groundhog Day. Each and every day seemed essentially the same as the last, while at the same time being different. It was enough to really mess with a man’s head if he didn’t watch out.

While considering that the Groundhog Day analogy might be a good theme for his next blog entry, Ryan opened the door to his sleeping hut. It had grown a bit more crowded within the tiny space since Wally had moved in with him and Hawk after the collapse of his living quarters. Privacy was an even rarer commodity now, so Ryan was not at all surprised to find at least one of his roomies in residence when he stepped into the dimly lit hut.

“Hi there, Hawk.”

His squad leader nodded in his direction, not even looking up from the papers in his hand. “Hey, Pettit. How was the patrol? Any action?”

“Nah. It was as quiet out there as Afghanistan during the poppy harvest,” Ryan joked.

As he stripped off his weapons, Ryan watched Hawk crack a small smile and nod at the truth of what he’d just voiced.

“Anything exciting happen here?” Ryan fully expected the answer to be a no given the game he’d seen. If something had happened, the guys wouldn’t be out there spiking the volleyball.

“Yes, unfortunately.” Finally, his staff sergeant looked up from the paperwork in his hand. “We had a mail call.”

With a flick of his wrist, Hawk sent an envelope flying in Ryan’s direction.

While he wondered why mail call was an unfortunate event in Hawk’s opinion, Ryan grabbed the sailing envelope in mid-air and glanced quickly down at the return address. It was from his pseudo-girlfriend back at the garrison in Germany. He’d read that later. He’d share his hut and his stuff, but Gretchen was the one thing Ryan was definitely not going to share with his roomies.

Ryan turned his attention back to Hawk’s inexplicably unhappy face. “Yeah, I thought I heard Lou’s chopper coming in with the mail while I was out on patrol.”

Lou’s sporadic mail deliveries from Bagram were usually cause for excitement, so why was Hawk frowning? Ryan debated whether he should risk asking.

“Oh yeah, you heard Lou’s bird, all right. Take a look at what Emily sent me.”

A magazine came flying in Ryan’s direction, and he had to use both hands to catch it and not rip the glossy colored pages. Ryan turned it right side up and frowned at the cover. It appeared innocent enough, nothing for Hawk to look so pissed about.

“Open it to the place she marked.” Hawk didn’t seem any happier as he watched Ryan flip through the pages.

Though he tried not to, Ryan started laughing the moment he found the page in question. It was one of the Army recruiting ads that Hawk had recently been photographed for, much to the unwilling model’s embarrassment. This one was a full-page advertisement for the US Army. Hawk’s head was nearly life sized, and in living color to boot.

The opportunity to tease his roomie was too good to pass up. “I don’t know what your problem is, Hawk. You’re a natural. In fact, you look very sexy.”

Holding the page up to face toward Hawk, Ryan waggled his eyebrows, his smile so wide his face would start to hurt soon if he didn’t control himself.

“Yeah, yeah. Get it all out of your system now, Pettit, because I don’t want to hear a word about it again after this.”

With a final chuckle, Ryan took one last look, shut the magazine and handed it back to his leader. “Are you going to show it to Wally?” Ryan pushed Hawk’s patience one step farther, just for fun.

“No.”

He watched Hawk shove the magazine under his bedding. Normal men hid their contraband porn under the mattress. Hawk hid his modeling photos. It was the most amusement Ryan’d had in all his time here.

“And that’s not even the worst of what happened while you were gone,” Hawk continued, his features still screwed up, showing just how unhappy he was.

Ryan raised a brow as he considered that. Something that was worse, in Hawk’s opinion, than his magazine ads? What the hell could that be? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

Hawk finally ended the suspense. “I’ve got to go to frigging KAF again.”

“Again? Why?”

“Same damn reason as before. I have to pick up some Afghanis from finance.”

It wasn’t Afghani people Hawk would be transporting from the finance department located at Kandahar Air Field, but rather Afghani dollars. The money would purchase from the locals things their forward operating base needed but couldn’t easily get from the States—mainly building supplies and labor, but more importantly, it would stimulate the still-struggling Afghanistan economy.

Hawk had been on this journey for the same purpose before. Transportation delays had left him cooling his heels way too much for a man of Hawk’s take-charge demeanor, which meant Ryan’s leader was an extremely unhappy camper by the time he’d finally returned. And when Hawk wasn’t happy, no one was happy.

“You going alone again like last time?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, which is good actually. Wasting one man’s time is better than wasting two. There’s too much to be done here to have more than one of us gone for that length of time.”

In Ryan’s humble opinion, this was another case of what the hell? Why was the Army having Hawk travel alone all the way from Kandahar while carrying hundreds of thousands of Afghani dollars? Sure, the exchange rate was like fifty Afghanis to one American dollar, but still…

But it wasn’t for Ryan to question. What was that line from that famous poem? Something to the effect of “theirs was not to wonder why, theirs was but to do and die.” The author, Tennyson, definitely knew something about life in the Army.

“When do you leave?”

Hawk snorted out a laugh. “Whenever transport arrives.”

Ryan let out a laugh of his own. Where they were, the ETA of a transport could encompass anywhere from five minutes to five days. “You wanna brief me now on anything in particular you want done while you’re gone?”

Ryan would rather eat, shower and read his letter from Gretchen, but he had to at least ask his leader if he needed him.

“Nah. I’ve got to talk to a few of the higher ups first. I’ll catch up with you later.” Hawk rose from his bunk, grabbed his helmet and headed for the door.

“Okay. Later.”

Although Hawk’s leaving would help the crowding situation a bit, there was still Wally’s impending presence to contend with, so Ryan tore into the envelope from Gretchen while he had a chance to do so in private. Then, after reading his mail, Ryan could maybe relieve in the shower some of the built-up pressure caused by his online flirtations with Vicki V. Sounded like a damn good plan to him.

Sitting on his own thin mattress, Ryan unfolded the carefully creased pages. A bit disappointed there were no photos, he was still looking forward to what she had to say. English might be her second language, but when it came to the language of love, so to speak, Gretchen did all right for herself.

Dear Ryan,

I do not know how I am to tell you this but…

He stopped reading as the words uh oh careened into his brain.

It wasn’t like they were in love. Hell, they weren’t even really dating. They’d only hooked up for a bit before he left Germany, and then they had exchanged a few letters and emails in the months he’d been in Afghanistan. But still, no man wanted to get a Dear John letter while deployed, no matter how casual the relationship. It sucked. Big time. He knew that now firsthand.