The Sandbox (24 page)

74

Tap, tap, tap.
I look up from the dishes I’m scrubbing with a ragged puck of steel wool. Tap, tap, tap. What the hell is that? Foss is out front busing dishes. I spin around. The captain stands in the back doorway, the one we keep open for the breeze that never comes. There’s no need to use an oven back here: the kitchen is the oven. The captain shakes up a smoke from a brand-new pack and points outside with his chin. I follow. A knot of dread ties up my intestines. The cellophane wrapper from his cigarettes flits past my face, caressing me on the cheek as it goes by.

“Sorry about your tent, bud. Tough luck. And your pal.”

“Right,” I say, “luck.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. The secret door. You didn’t really expect Blankenship to believe that, did you? And marking it with a cigarette butt?” He clucks his tongue at me like a kindergarten teacher. “Even if it was true, that’s pretty half-assed, to say the least. And to think I was considering you for Intel training.”

There’s nothing to say to this.

“I hope you didn’t lose our little item when the hand grenade hit. Those boxes are pretty solid, but I don’t think it’d survive a direct hit.”

“Rocket-propelled grenade, sir.”

“Whatever,” he says, exhaling smoke with his words. “So?”

“What are you talking about, sir?”

“Don’t be dense, Private. The lockbox you located for me.” He laughs quietly, almost to himself. “The lieutenant’s just about shit himself with worry. He’s accused me of taking it ten times now.”

“You did, sir.”

“No, Private.” He points his cigarette at me. “
You
did. And you’ll do well to remember that, especially the way things stand vis-à-vis you and Blanky. Now tell me what happened after that grenade hit.”

“I didn’t keep the box in my tent, sir. I told you. So when the rocket hit, it was somewhere else, safe.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good. That’s very fucking good.” He digs a hole in the sand with the toe of his boot and spits into it. “If it’s not in your burned-up tent, then where the hell is it? Because I’ve checked. It’s not where you said it would be. I hope for your sake you’ve—”

“I moved it.”

The afternoon sun is low in the sky. A small breeze ruffles the legs of my fatigues and makes the long purple shadow of the mess tent shudder. I shade my eyes and look around. Rankin should be here soon, and I’m hoping the captain will finish this quickly.

“Well, how about you take me out to the new spot now?” He kicks sand into his spit hole and looks over at me. “A helicopter is coming in sometime tomorrow or the next day, depending on the weather, to take me back to HQ. The box is coming with me. I’ll risk it from here on.”

I take him out to the small grove of date palms that grow in a muddy seep behind the ruined old fort. Baba told me once that this was a true oasis, the main reason the fort was built here in the first place, but the spring has clogged with sand after years of neglect. No one cares about it any longer. And soon it will be hidden again. It is the only natural shade on the base. Six trees grow in a circle around a muddy puddle. They arch slightly to the west, like unstrung bows. The tree furthest from the spring appears to have died. Its dry branches rattle like insect wings when the wind blows. Dead fronds crunch beneath our boots. I spot the bleach bottle and stop.

“Right under the bottle, sir,” I say, nudging it with my foot.

“How deep?”

“Just a few inches.”

“Stand in front of me. Block the view from the parade ground.”

The captain takes one last drag on his cigarette and tosses it away. More than half of it is left. This waste irritates me. I stand at parade rest. A Humvee skitters across the sand in the far northeast corner of the base.

“Vehicle,” I say.

He glances around quickly and then kneels and digs, fast, frantic strokes. He looks like a dog, throwing out dirt through its hind legs. He digs deeper and deeper. Could I have buried it this far down? No. A new worry arises, worse than the first.

“Sir,” I say, “it wasn’t that deep.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have found it already.”

“Then get down here and dig, Goddamn it.”

I kneel beside him and dig. We excavate a five-by-three foot area. The lockbox simply isn’t here. The captain’s digging becomes faster, wilder; sand goes flying everywhere. I see something in his eyes. Just a quick flash and it’s gone, but I see it all the same. A couple of months in Six Zone and you’ll know that look for the rest of your life.

Fear.

So the captain has a Lopez of his own. Instead of gloating about it, this realization worries me. No matter what happens with that lockbox, it will be bad. If this deal goes south, what’s going to be the result? I heard a rumor when I was back in the States about a remote forward operating base like the Corn Cob or maybe a coalition operating post, somewhere up in the northern mountains. It just up and vanished like the Lost Colony in North Carolina. A convoy of supply trucks came in and found the place deserted. They’d had radio contact with the base that morning, but when they arrived, nothing. Not a trace of anyone, anywhere. Food on the tables, Stars and Stripes waving on its pole, clothes folded neatly in their lockers, weapons and ammo still locked up in the dump. No bodies, and no sign of a fight. And I seem to recall there was some mention of MI in that story too, just a hint of it.

When the captain finally stops digging, sweat has soaked through his uniform in large circles beneath each arm. His cheeks are coated with sand. Dust cakes the rims of his nostrils. He blows out a breath, brushes the dirt off his hands.

“What the fuck did you do with it?” He pants between the words.

“It was here last night.”

“Don’t dick me around, Private. I can make you wish you’d never been born.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sir. I told you, I moved it last night.”

“Did you see anyone? Did anyone see you?”

“The only person I saw was the mechanic, Cox, but he couldn’t have seen me. I went down on my belly as soon as I heard him and kept flat until he went into his tent. And anyway, we can’t ask him about—” The words die in my mouth.

“What? We can’t what?” He scratches his cheek, leaving behind a smudge of yellow dirt.

“Cox died last night.”

The captain stares at me for a very long moment.

“Who else could have seen you?” he says, finally.

I don’t know. Maybe somebody else who was lying flat. Someone who followed me. My brain is broken. Foss?

“Think, Goddamn it.” The captain doesn’t have enough breath to shout. It comes out as an angry wheeze.

“The last person I saw before Cox was Foss.”

“That fat fuck in the kitchen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You keep digging.” The captain points to the ground, as though I might have forgotten.

“What if someone asks what I’m—”

“Refer them to me.” He jogs toward the kitchen. After a few steps, he turns. “If you’ve lost that box, son, understand this—I will be the one to personally nail your balls to the wall.”

I am well and truly fucked.

75

Ahmed leans in
the back doorway of the garage and smokes the stubby butt of a cigar. Probably picked up one of Guzman’s castoffs. His yellow-checked scarf is wrapped around his face. Each time he takes a drag, he pulls it down an inch and then exhales through the cloth. He’s scrounged up a pair of old Wayfarer sunglasses with scratched lenses. When he sees me, he blows a long stream of smoke from his nostrils and smiles. Wait until tonight, I tell myself.

“You lose your keys, Private Toby?” he asks.

I walk past on my way to the mess tent. My throat sticks shut each time I swallow. I have a demon of a headache and I’m in no mood for banter with this creepy fucker. He must spot something in my expression because he stands up straight.

“What?” I say, my voice hoarse.

“You dig and so I am thinking maybe Private Toby he drop his keys. You want, I can help.”

“No, Ahmed,” I say, “I got my keys right here.” I pull them out and jangle them. The sun catches the metal and throws off sparks.

“Ah,” he says, trying to French-inhale through his scarf, “that is good. You find the buried thing.”

I grunt and walk on by. Suddenly, something shitty occurs to me.

“What did you just say, Ahmed?”

Ahmed smiles. I step closer. A dusty-looking Durrant is reflected in each lens of his glasses. I notice that this Durrant looks pretty pissed- off. Homicidal, in fact. I give smiling a try. The reflections show a spectacular failure.

“You find your buried thing.” He fidgets with his inch of cigar, rolls it between his fingers. He looks like he wonders whether or not he should regret this last comment.

“How’d you know we buried something there?”

“I see you dig.” He shrugs.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “You ever do any digging out there, Ahmed?”

“I do nothing to you. Why you say I bad to the sirs? What I do?”

“Next time you fire an RPG,” I tell him, quietly, trying to control myself, “you better not miss.”

Ten yards away, I realize I’m holding my breath again, and I let it out. What an irritating habit. Sometimes I find myself doing it even when there’s nothing wrong. I wonder if I’ll keep doing this when I go home, holding my breath until it feels like my head will burst. Stop, I tell myself, angry to discover I’m following this train of thought. It chugged past, and I stepped right on board. You have to police your head, Durrant. You can’t let trash like this collect. This is not the time to worry about it. You’ll have plenty of time when you get home. One task at a time. One Goddamn task at a time. Just before I reach the end of the motor pool, Ahmed says my name. I’m so caught up in berating myself that I turn without thinking. He flashes me an ugly grin.

“I know about your girl, Private Toby.” He stretches out the vowel sound of the E after B. In his mouth, my name sounds like a dirty word. “The little brown bird you play with. You make nest for her in factory, yes?”

“What are you saying, Ahmed? Cough it out.” I grit my teeth and sprint toward him. “You want, I can help you get it out with my Gerber knife.”

Fast, much faster than I’d ever have believed possible, Ahmed is gone. He runs into the garage and out some rear door. I give chase. Blood pounds at the back of my eyeballs. Adrenaline makes my tongue taste like I’ve been sucking on a nickel. I’m going to get that fucker, and when I do, I’m going to make him show me the door and then I’ll—and then I’ll nothing. He’s gone.

The complex chain of half-collapsed rooms behind the motor pool is a dangerous place to run blind. There are plenty of dark corners, bad spots to be surprised in. I stand in the doorway and peer down the murky hallway. Somewhere up ahead, the soles of his shoes flap against the stone floor. The dust is scuffed and smeared here. This is the way he went. I could follow him if I wanted. The question is whether it’s worth it. I chew my lip. Somewhere in the dark, Ahmed coughs. Loud theatrical coughs. He
wants
me to chase him.

I’m struck by a sudden fear: he’s going after Herman. We can’t let him leave the base. We’ve got to get him tonight.

76

“You ain’t still
going on about that kid in the factory, are you? Don’t pay no attention to Ahmed’s bullshit, man. He just heard you talking about it somewhere and wants to freak you out. That’s all, D. If you get all worked up about this thing, then he’s playing you. He’ll be getting what he wants. You won’t be thinking straight. See?” Rankin barely looks at me while he talks. Occasionally his eyes gaze over in my direction, but they never settle anywhere for long. His mind is somewhere else. Laid out on his new bunk in the trailer are two 9-mm Glocks and a .38 revolver.

“Sure, right,” I say, “forget about Herm—”

Rankin looks me full in the face for the first time and frowns.

“—the kid, I mean.” I shrug. “The point is, I think Ahmed’s going to rabbit on us. You’re right. You’re right. He’s trying to distract me. I think he wants for me to go out and check on her, so I’ll lose sight of what he’s up to. That’s why I’m telling you this. We can’t let him leave the base. I don’t think he’s coming back after this. We’re almost positive those are his guys up in the Noses, so—”

“Hey, see? You’re getting worked up. Stay frosty,” Rankin says, patting the bunk beside him. “Sit down. Level out. You got to get yourself correct before we move on him tonight. Check this out.”

Rankin pulls a roll of duct tape and two sixteen-ounce plastic Coke bottles out of his duffle. I sit down on the bed beside him. He puts the barrel of one of the 9-mms into the bottle and tapes it tight. He whistles an old Public Enemy song as he works, sometimes singing under his breath about how we shouldn’t believe the hype. I can see that this thing he’s building pleases him. His lips are a tight line broken only by a cigarette, but he smiles at me with his eyes. He’s already prepared the bottles in some way, washed and stuffed them with something, maybe punctured them. When he’s done taping the barrel up, he hands the Glock over to me and starts on the next one.

“Doesn’t really work so well on this snubnose .38. Barrel’s too short. We’ll just have to save this to use as a last resort if things get hairy.”

“What the hell is this?” I ask, setting the gun between us. With the bottle taped onto the barrel, it looks silly and harmless. Something a kid might whip together in his garage on a dull day in July.

“Ghetto silencer.”

“Does it really work?”

“Shit, yeah. It’s not as good as a fitted steel compressor, but it’ll keep the noise down,” Rankin says, jiggling the bottle on the second gun to check if it’s tight enough.

“You never lived in the ghetto,” I protest.

“I saw it in a movie. Then tried it out on my own.”

We laugh.

“But it works,” he says.

“I thought we were going to put him in a cell.”

“We are, D. We are. But as my meemaw always told me—” Rankin puts a high waver into his voice, hunches his shoulders, and looks up from under his eyebrows with a suspicious squint. “—don’t get caught with your pants down if you ain’t got on clean drawers.”

I laugh again. “I have no idea what the hell that means. You just made that up.”

“I ain’t joking, D. What I’m saying, you got to take precautions. I thought you were a Boy Scout. Be prepared, baby.”

“Where in the hell did you get this mean little bastard from?” I heft the revolver in my hand, then offer it to him, grip first.

“Good old .38 Special.” He knocks it open and checks the load before flipping it shut.

“Nice.”

“Bought it right outside the gate of the base we stayed at when we first come here. In the capital. They were selling all manner of shit. Smutty DVDs. Chronic. Said it was chronic anyway. Smelled like oregano. I didn’t try it.”

“It’s weird I’ve never seen this before,” I say.

“I keep it buried next to a support beam over in the cement factory.” He winks.

“So, I’ve been thinking. What if Ahmed tries to rabbit on us during the day? Before we can catch him. Maybe tries to slip out through the gate on the sly. If he makes a run for it in broad daylight, how are we going to stop him? Hell, he may
already
be gone.” I peel a strip of dead skin off my chapped lower lip with my teeth. “What if he got away after he ducked into the old fort?”

“Don’t sweat it, D.” He punches me lightly on the arm. “Nevada’s got sentry duty until 1800. I told Salis to keep an eye out, too. He’s pulling duty in the tower near where you said the door is. I’m telling you, D. It’s cool. We’ve got the man covered. You put big bad Rankin on the job and Goddamn if it don’t get done.”

“Now you sound like Nevada.” I give him a curious look. “What happened there? Since the bugout, you two have been pretty cozy.”

“Yeah, well, we rectified our shit up there on the mountain. He was grateful for the heads-up about the poison stew.” Rankin sniffs and holds out his hands in a gesture that says, what else could I do? He nods and sniffs again. “And I realized I was being kind of tough on the boy. Something he said brought me up hard and made me think.”

“What’s that?”

“While we’re running back to the Humvees, Nevada says to me, see, ‘I ain’t all that bad for a boy who grew up eating government cheese.’”

I laugh at this but cut it short when I see Rankin’s reaction. “Government cheese?” I ask.

“Families on assistance used to get these big wheels of government cheese. Pretty good, actually. When I was a kid, I had a friend from school that grew up rough. I was small, too small to really see the difference money made. I must of been about five or six. When I told Meemaw about that cheese, told her we should get some next time we’re over at the store making groceries, her face got all pinched. ‘I don’t want you playing over there any more, you hear me?’ That’s all she said. Not that I couldn’t play with him. Just, not over
there.
Even when you’re five, you know when something rubs the adults wrong. So I figured something was wrong with the boy. After that, I stayed away from him. And for the longest time, I thought it had something to do with eating cheese. Like that made a person nasty.” He laughs and digs around in the duffel bag until he finds a roll of blue friction tape.

I hold out my hands and he chucks it over. He knows I have a thing about wrapping my grip. My hands sweat. “So, what then? Him saying that made you think about your friend?”

“Yeah, well, it came to me I was doing wrong by Nevada. I tried to think what it was that made me start hating him to begin with, and I couldn’t remember what it was. I just didn’t like him.”

“That happens to everybody, Rankin. Bad chemistry.”

“Nah, D. I couldn’t see past the gangbanger attitude Nevada throws around. I should of known better, because that’s exactly what it is—it’s just a front. And we all got one.”

“True,” I say.

“All of a sudden, while we’re running for our lives, I see it for what it is. I ain’t got no reason to hate him like that.”

“Yeah,” I say, because I can’t think of anything better.

Rankin nods, but I can see his thoughts have raced on without me. I’m not even sure he heard me. He picks at a scab on his cracked upper lip. From the expression on his face, I imagine he’s back in Sandfly, his old neighborhood in Savannah, sitting with his meemaw on the porch. We work quietly for about five minutes, the only sound in the room the tearing of tape, and then suddenly Rankin comes back from Sandfly with a message. He puts down the 9-mm and looks at me.

“Watching how Nevada acted when the shit came down on us got me to thinking about it differently. Up there on the mountain, we were just two black men fighting for our lives. And I was thinking, why can’t I take this with me when I come back down from the mountain?” He experiments with a smile, but what forms is closer to a wince, like he accidentally pressed too hard on a bruise. “Why hold on to all the old bullshit? You know?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I think I do.

“Mmm-hmm,” Rankin says, but his eyes look bleary and distant. He’s gone off again to some other place.

“But what I don’t get about this new thing of yours with Nevada is the shaved heads.” I pick up a sock and make like I’m polishing his head with it. “What’s that all about?”

“Hey, get that nasty thing off me. Damn, man, your feet be smelling like old cheese. Shit.”

“So how come?”

“It’s just a thing, man. Something people used to do back when he was a kid in New Orleans after two guys settled a beef without killing each other.”

“Sounds like blood brothers. Is it a gangbang thing? A cellblock thing?”

“Something like that.” He picks up the sock and pops it at me. “Ain’t nothing but a haircut. Don’t make a case out of it. You want, you can shave yours too.”

Outside the trailer window, someone whistles three quick chirps and thumps on the wall of the trailer. This must be the sign Rankin has been waiting for, because he’s up off the bed before I can turn to look for the source of the sound. He goes over and lifts the blinds just a crack. I stand. Damn, I think, he’s really taken this thing over. But I don’t mind. Rankin has always had a better head for details and logistics. I may be good at coming up with the occasional plan, but he’s better at working out the kinks and putting it into action. He flashes a victory sign at the person outside. Another three whistles and a slap. Rankin smiles at the sunlight pouring in and lets the blinds slide to the sill with a whoosh and thump.

“You’re right, D. He’s having a go at the front gate. You stay here. We don’t want him to know you’re on to him.”

“Sure,” I say, somewhat disappointed.

Rankin slips the revolver under his shirt into the back of his waistband. He smoothes down his missing hair, gives me a salute, and opens the door. Just as he’s stepping into the hall, he thinks of something. He spins around and smiles.

“You’re my partner, right?” He speaks quickly, the words bumping into each other.

“Yeah,” I say; “fuck, yeah. More family than family, right?”

“Don’t let this shit with Nevada mess with you, then.” He gives me a funny smile, shy almost. “The mope’s got a right to look up to the man who saved his life, don’t he?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Then how ’bout we let Baldy Joe play with the big boys this once.” He absently checks the position of his gun. “It don’t change nothing.”

“Nah, man,” I say, embarrassed now, but grateful too, “I didn’t mean—”

“Well, shit, then.” He steps forward and makes a fist. “Let’s us bring this motherfucker down.”

We knock fists. He spins on a heel and leaves so quick, his smile hangs in the hallway for a second. The front door slams behind him. In the front room, I sit on the beat-up old couch. A framed picture of the president hangs above two battered folding chairs. All the officers’ trailers must come with these things. The president and I exchange smiles.

“How do you like your war now, Mr. President?”

He doesn’t answer. I’m not sure he’s listening.