Between Here and the Horizon (16 page)

“Excuse me, Ophelia. It was a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure I’ll find you again before Rose drinks too much and kicks everyone out later.” He gave me a small smile and hurried off without even casting a look in Sully’s direction.

“Why do you have to be so rude?” I hissed.
 

“To Michael? Psshhhh.” Sully knocked back another deep draught of his beer, draining nearly half the bottle. “I wasn’t rude to him.”

“You were. And you’re rude to me. You’re rude to everyone. Every time you open your mouth, you can’t help yourself. You have to be caustic or unkind to whoever happens to be standing in your direct line of fire.”

“Point of fact, that isn’t true,” Sully said, scowling. “I’m nice to some people.”

“
Who
?”

Sully rose up on his tiptoes, scanning the room, and then he pointed. “There. The redhead with the white shirt on? I plan on being
very
nice to her later.”

The redhead in question turned just as Sully pointed her out, as though she knew someone was talking about her. She saw Sully looking over and her cheeks flushed bright red. I got the feeling she and Sully had spent a lot of quality time together in the past. “You’re a pig. A grade A pig,” I informed him.
 

“Why? Because I plan on showing my girlfriend a good time?”

“She is
not
your girlfriend, Sully Fletcher.”

“Oh? And how are you so sure?”

“Because no woman could tolerate your attitude long enough to ever fall into a relationship with you.”

“Bullshit. You know she’s not my girlfriend because you’ve asked around.”
 

Now it was my turn for my cheeks to turn crimson. I
had
asked around, subtly or so I’d thought. Cara, Jerry’s daughter; Oliver, the guy who brought the papers in the morning; Jillian, Rose’s friend, who sometimes dropped her off at the house: I’d asked them all delicate, indirect questions about Sully’s personal life that I hadn’t thought were all that obvious. I hadn’t asked because I was interested. God, no. I’d asked back when I thought the man standing in front of me might be capable of taking care of Amie and Connor. I’d wanted to make sure they were entering a safe and stable environment, the same way Sheryl had with me.
 

Sully was still looking at me, a lopsided, roguish smile spreading rapidly across his face, and I had the overwhelming urge to scream.

“You’re delusional if you think I’m interested in you, Sully James Fletcher. I’d rather become a Carmelite nun and never speak to another soul again for as long as I live than tangle myself up in any of your crap.”

Sully’s smile evaporated so quickly it almost happened between heartbeats. “Don’t do that. Do
not
call me that.”

“Call you what?”

“By my full name. You might have read Magda’s journal, you might know all of my personal shit, but you don’t get to talk to me like you know me. Like you’re fucking
scolding
me.” He made a guttural, angry sound low in his throat. He went to put his beer bottle down, then changed his mind, gripping onto it tighter. He lifted his free hand and pointed his index finger in my face.
 
“The sooner you leave The Causeway, Lang, the better. For you. For me. For those kids. And when you go, make sure you take that damn journal with you, too. Toss it overboard and let the sea have it. I never want to see it again.”

The crowd of people behind Sully parted as if they were used to his stormy exits from conversations and they’d learned a long time ago to get out of the way as quickly as possible. He charged toward the door, shoulders locked and tense, and I caught sight of Rose on the other side of the room, a deflated expression etched into her face. Sully didn’t say goodbye to her, or to anyone else for that matter. He disappeared out of the front door, leaving it yawning wide open, and he vanished into the night.
 

I felt like rushing to the door and screaming after him, telling him I
hadn’t
read Magda’s journal, had no interest in reading it, but even the thought of expending that much energy on him exhausted me.

“Wow. He’s so…
tormented
,” a voice next to me sighed. Holly, in her Slipknot t-shirt, looked like she’d just fallen in love, and fallen hard at that. “He’s just like Heathcliffe. So romantic.”

I gave a sidelong look, shaking my head. “Have you read Wuthering Heights, Holly? Heathcliffe was a cold, controlling, miserable bastard. There was nothing romantic about him at all.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Afghanistan
 

2009

Sully

“Eight days. We’ve lost eight of our guys in eight days. That’s a guy a day. A guy with a family and loved ones back home. What the fuck are we doing here, man? Why the fuck are we fighting this war? It’s none of our damned business, anyway. We should be back at home, taking care of our own. We ain’t accomplishin’ nothin’. Dirt in our eyes. Dirt in our boots, under our damned fingernails. Nothing but dirt and mayhem all damned day long. Tell me…when is it gonna be done? When will it be
enough
? When the fuck can we go home, that’s what
I
want to know.” Rogers stabbed the sharp end of his throwing knife into the sole of his boot, squinting at the point where steel met rubber. No one said anything.
 

It was dark. The night out here in the desert was a lot like it was back on the island—very little light pollution meant stars for days. Stars, thick and clustered, brilliant and white for as far as the eye could see. The black mantle of the sky was different, too. Richer. Deeper somehow, like you could reach your hand into it, feel the texture of it against your fingertips, encompassing you.
 

Three clicks to the west, or there about, an orange flash popped against the shadow of the horizon, briefly throwing a ragged, broken skyline into view.
 

Kandahar.

Over there, in the torn out heart of the city, three of the units from our base were locked in a skirmish with local Taliban fighters. The insurgents had pinned them inside a building and were doggedly trying to get inside, to kill whoever they could find through the sights of the M4s they’d stolen from one of our envoys a little over a month ago.
 

Sound carried so well out here. A rattle of gunfire echoed over the scrubby plain between the hollow at the base of the hill where we were sitting, awaiting orders, and the outskirts of the city, reminding me of the Chinese firecrackers Ronan and I used to play with when we were kids. He was out there somewhere, on the other side of the city, waiting with his men just like I was, looking up at the same stars, probably bored out of his head. No doubt one of his guys was pissing and moaning, too. There was one in every unit these days, it seemed. Someone who finally wasn’t afraid to say what everyone else was thinking: why the fuck were we out here, playing cat and mouse games, theoretically protecting a country of people who didn’t even fucking want us here?

“Oil. It’s all about the oil,” Rogers hissed under his breath.
 

“Dumbass, it ain’t about the oil,” Daniels snapped back. “They ain’t got no oil in Afghanistan.”

“Then why? Why the fuck would the government of the United States of America waste billions of dollars coming out here? Huh? You tell me that, ’cause seems to me like this don’t make a lick of sense.”

“They sent us out here ’cause these motherfuckers attacked us, you fucking reject. What were they supposed to do? Isn’t that why you joined up in the first place?”

Rogers chose not to answer that. We should all have been waiting in silence for our orders to come in over the radio, but there was no point trying to kill this kind of talk once it got started. “S’why I joined up,” Daniels continued. “Collins and the captain, too. Ain’t that right, Captain?”

Last thing I wanted was to get drawn into the same existential “why are we even here?” argument that had already been the root cause of so many wars and genocides throughout the span of human history. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, leaning as much as I could against my rifle, stock planted in the ground, trying not to wince as the blood flowed more freely through my stiff joints. When it looked like the men weren’t going to continue on their banter without me, I cleared my throat and gave them what they needed to hear.

“Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die.” No one said a word. “You guys never heard of Tennyson?” I asked.
 

“No, sir,”

“Nope.”

“Wa’n’t he some kind of Victorian faggot?”

“No, he wasn’t
some kind of Victorian faggot
.” These guys had my back at every turn. They were my brothers, fierce and loyal to the end, but sometimes I just wanted to strangle them. “He was a
poet
.”

“That’s what I meant.”

I ignored the comment. “Tennyson wrote a poem called ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ It was about men going into war and dying. And that line, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die, basically sums up this whole thing. It’s not our job to ask questions. It’s not our job to revolt, or doubt the upper chain of command. It’s our
job
to do as we’re told and do it well. And if that means we go out and we die, a guy every day, five guys every day, ten…then that’s what we do.
And we keep our mouths shut
.”

Did I believe this? Absolutely fucking not. But admitting that to the guys would be fatal. They’d lose what little faith they had left in the idea of hierarchy and chaos would ensue.
 

Three more months. Three more months of this, and I’d be on a plane back to the States. Back to Magda. I’d given enough. Lost enough. Watched enough men die. No more tours for me. Three was plenty; it was time to go home.
 

More gunfire. More explosions in the distance. The long, whining sound of an RPG missile seeking its target. The men all flinched instinctively when the missile landed. The ground rumbled beneath us. A ball of fire leapt up at the sky, orange and white and angry, and someone sucked in a breath through their teeth.
 

Our orders finally came in
: Stick to the outskirts of the city. Clear the buildings on the southern side near the markets. Interview everyone. Arrest anyone who looks suspicious. Search for weapons.
 

Disappointment ran high.
 

“Why aren’t we coming up behind those bastards? Fucking them hard in the ass?”

“We’re the closest unit, Captain. It doesn’t make any sense.”

I picked up my gun and got to my feet. “Like I said, gentlemen. Ours is not to reason why…”

At least four or five of them finished off the quote for me, groaning out the words, “Ours is but to do and die.”
 

Hours whipped by fast enough for the sun to climb over the lip of the horizon. The ruined city’s buildings were a rats’ nest of Taliban fighters and families supporting the fighters, hiding them from us, hiding their guns and their food, and any other supplies they could stockpile. We hammered on doors, and kicked over rocks. Anyone who resisted or looked suspicious had their wrists zip tied behind their backs and were escorted back to the base in the back of a Humvee.
 

The gunfire never ceased. The ground continued to shake.
 

Must have been sometime after seven when the news was radioed through: the three units stuck inside the old, bombed out hospital were safe. Not a man had been lost. Rogers seemed almost disappointed.
 

“Captain! Captain Fletcher!” Out of the smoke and the dust choking the early morning air, a young private emerged like a ghost, his rifle, slung over his shoulder, bouncing up and down as he ran through the stacks of rubble and twisted prongs of steel. “Captain Fletcher, sir, you’re needed.” He was panting, gasping for breath. “It’s…it’s your brother, sir. The other Captain Fletcher.”

A lead weight dropped through me, pulling at my insides, making my head reel. Fuck. Ronan. Ronan was hurt. Ronan was dead. Ronan had been captured, and was about to be executed on national television. A thousand gut-churning possibilities raced through me simultaneously. “What is it? What’s happened, Private? Spit it out, for fuck’s sake.” I was close to slapping him.
 

“He’s sick, sir. Or at least we think he is.”

“How? How is he
sick
?”

“He’s just sitting on the floor. He won’t get up. It’s like…like he can’t hear us or something. We took the building back. We killed nearly every single one of those bastards. We were celebrating, cheering and whatever, and that’s when Simmons saw Captain Fletcher fall. He thought he’d been shot, but…there’s nothing wrong with him as far as we can see. He’s just…
lying
there.”

“Have you radioed it in?”

The private shook his head. “No, sir. We knew you were on mission. We thought we’d better, y’know…come find you first.”
 

“Right. Thank you.” Definitely not the protocol Ronan’s unit should have followed, but I was glad they hadn’t called in medics. The reason they’d held off was obvious; Ronan was in shock. Shock was one of those things. You could snap out of it in a heartbeat, like nothing had ever happened, or it could cripple you for the rest of your life. Either way, there was nothing a medic could do that I couldn’t at the moment. “Take me to him.” And then, to my own men, I said, “Head back to base. Go eat. I’ll be back in a moment. If anyone asks, I came back with you, okay?” As one, the guys all nodded. Even Rogers.
 

Fifteen minutes later, my shirt pulled up over my mouth to filter out the dust as I ran, the private led me to Ronan. He was sitting up, back leaned against the skeleton of a burned-out Jeep, and his face was splattered with blood. Hands, too. Uniform soaked. It was everywhere. He looked like some crazed serial killer, drunk from the high of the kill.
 

I sank down into a crouch in front of him, placing my hands on his shoulders. “Jesus, man. You’re a mess.” I tried to smile, but it felt wrong, like I was probably grimacing instead.