Good Day In Hell (13 page)

“Keller, Jackson L.,” Keller croaked automatically. “Sergeant, serial number—”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the man shouted. A Humvee painted like the desert squealed to a stop beside the armored car. Another man leaped out, dressed in desert camo. He wore the bar of a first lieutenant on his shoulder. He immediately began screaming at the helmeted man. “Dawkins,” he shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You stop to take a piss or something? God damn it, you get your ass back on that LAV and fucking—” He stopped as he really noticed Keller for the first time. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled.

Dawkins answered for him. “He was standin’ here in the middle of the road,” he said.

“My Bradley took a missile,” he said. “We got separated—”

“A missile?” the lieutenant said, instantly alert. “Where?”

Keller gestured vaguely toward the desert. “Out there,” he said. “They’re all dead.” He figured at that point it was okay to put his hands down.

The lieutenant seemed uncertain for a moment. Then he turned to Dawkins. “Get him on one of the five-tons,” he hollered. “And get fucking moving!”

He looks pretty bad off, Ell-tee,” Dawkins said. “Maybe we should—”

“We’ll find him a corpsman,” the lieutenant said. “Later. Right now get him some water. I’m not falling behind!” He turned and stalked back to the Humvee.

Dawkins looked at Keller and shrugged. “Come on,” he said.

A line of huge ugly trucks was backing up behind the armored car. At Dawkins’s shouted instruction, Keller was pulled up into the back of one.

The men along the benches lining the open cargo bay eyed him suspiciously as a couple of them shoved over to let him sit down. Suspicious looks turned hostile as the already cramped quarters got even fuller with the addition of Keller’s bulk.
The men were dressed in the tan and brown “chocolate chip” camos, but their uniforms seemed plainer, less ornamented with patches and emblems than the ones he was used to.

“Who the fuck are you?” a voice said. It was a question Keller realized he was going to have to get used to.

“Keller,” he said. “First Cav.”

There was a stir of disbelieving laughter. “Damn, Army,” a voice beside him said. “You a long way from home.”

Keller turned. The man beside him was holding out his canteen. There was a smile on his dark-brown face. “You look like you could use a drink.” Keller took the canteen.

“Thanks,” he said. He tipped the canteen up. The water hitting the back of his parched throat felt like life flowing back into him. It took everything Keller had in him not to drain the canteen to the bottom. He tried to hand it back, but the black man waved him off. “Naw, man” he said, “I got plenty. Have a drink on the U.S. Marine Corps.”

“Thanks,” Keller said as he drank again.

The marine extended a hand. “Cyrus Johnson,” he said.

Keller took it. “Jack Keller.”

“So what happened to you, homes?” Johnson said. “You look like shit.”

“My squad got lost,” Keller said. “We got hit.”

There was another murmur. “By what?” someone said. The men in the truck looked at him eagerly, hungry for information like any grunt.

“Helicopter,” Keller said. “I heard the rotors.” The men looked at each other. With no Iraqi air power left to speak of, that could mean only one thing. They looked at Keller, then looked away. Keller looked at Johnson. He was shaking his head sadly. “Boy,” he said, “you got some bad motherfuckin’ luck.”

Keller heard another voice. Marie was speaking. “That was work,” she said. “I’ve got to get back. Someone’s shot up a church … Jack, what’s wrong?” He couldn’t answer.

No one spoke to him after Johnson’s pronouncement of evil fortune. No one met his eyes. It was as if they were afraid Keller’s bad luck might rub off on them. One of the marines had brought a boom box which he laid across his lap. He was playing Led Zeppelin. The grinding rhythms of “When the Levee Breaks” echoed through the confines of the truck. The marine with the box was rocking back and forth, his eyes closed, mouthing the words. “Goin’ down,” the lead singer wailed over a blues guitar that sounded like it came from some dark haunted hillside at the edge of the world. “Goin’ down, goin’ down now…”

“Damn, Franklin,” Johnson complained. “Turn that weird-ass white-boy shit off. Play some jams, man.”

The guy with the boom box opened his eyes. He gave Johnson a loopy, unfocused grin. “Come on, homeboy,” he said in a Jersey accent. “This is some serious battle music.” Johnson just shook his head disgustedly.

Eventually, the truck came to a halt with a clashing and grinding of gears. “All right, you people,” a voice bawled. “Un-ass that thing. Come on, Marines! Move! Move! Move!” Keller dismounted the truck with the rest of them. As they moved off together, Johnson gently took Keller by the shoulder.

“You best stay here, Army,” he said. “You ain’t even got a weapon.”

Keller looked down in embarrassment at his empty hands. His weapon was back in his destroyed vehicle.

“He can use mine,” a voice said. Keller looked up to see a tall lanky marine standing a few feet away. He had a strange-looking long-barreled rifle with a scope slung over his shoulder. He was holding out an M-16. “I’ll be on the 40,” he said, gesturing with his chin at the sniper rifle on his shoulder, “and frankly, I’m tired of carryin’ both these motherfuckers.”

“Thanks,” Keller said as he took the M-16. The sniper just nodded.

They all moved out together. Their objective was a low earth berm a few hundred yards away. There seemed to be no activity behind it, but they deployed by the book, fanning out and going prone. Keller flopped down beside the sniper and his spotter. They were scanning the berm through their respective scopes.

“I reckon nobody’s home,” said the sniper, but he kept his scope moving. The spotter grunted in agreement, but he kept searching as well. Squads moved toward the fortification in perfect synchronization, one pausing to cover the one advancing, then switching roles to advance while the other one covered. Nothing came from the berm. Finally, a lone marine crested the ridge. He paused for a moment, then straightened up and waved back to the rest.

“Fuck,” the sniper said, standing up and spitting off to one side. “This shit is gettin’ tedious.”

The marines walked up to the berm in small groups, their former tension gone. Keller walked to the crest of the low earthwork and stopped.

The Iraqis had apparently been marching to their position when they were caught in the open by whatever barrage or bomb had found them. They had barely had time to even try to run. They were tossed about in untidy rows, some scattered, some piled one on top of another. Some had landed face-up, what was left of their features contorted in a silent scream of terror. Others had no faces, no heads. Some bodies were without limbs, some limbs without bodies. The marines and Keller stood silently regarding the killing field.

“Fuckin’A,” the sniper said with satisfaction.

“Get some,” the spotter agreed.

Johnson clambered up on the berm beside them. “Da-yum,” was all he said.

Keller felt numb. He looked down inside of himself to try to find some emotion. He felt like there should be some kind of reaction to the deaths of so many men, both his own and the men before him who had died in so much terror. There was nothing, and it bothered Keller, but only vaguely. Then he did feel something, like a slight faraway throbbing in his head. It quickly got louder, more insistent. Keller realized that it was coming from outside and he turned.

A pair of slender deadly shapes was slicing through the air some two hundred feet above ground. The steady thudding was the sound of the helicopter’s rotors beating the air. It was then that Keller felt something for the first time.

Rage.

A red curtain seemed to drop across his vision. He howled like an avenging angel and raised the M-16. He began firing blindly at the helicopters, the report of the rifle pounding in his ears like the blood that was throbbing behind his temples. The marines were screaming him, then he was on the ground. Someone was on top of him, struggling for the M-16. He felt an arm across his face and bit down savagely. There was a curse of pain, then his face seemed to explode in bright light, then darkness…

“Jack?” he heard Marie’s voice. “Jack, what’s the— Oh my God!”

He felt a sudden sharp pain in his hand and looked down. He had gripped the water glass so tightly that it had shattered. Blood flowed from a laceration on his palm. He stared uncomprehendingly at it for a moment before Marie was grabbing his hand and pressing a wad of gauze against the flowing wound.

“Jack,” she said frantically. “Jack, please talk to me. What’s wrong?”

He took the gauze from her and pressed it down to stop the flow of blood. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I went away for a second.”

“I noticed,” she said. “You scared me to death. Your eyes…Jack, you had a flashback, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “I’m okay,” he said.

“That picture,” Marie said. “On the TV…”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I’m fine now. Really. What happened?”

“Some lunatic shot up a church out in the country. A lot of people are dead.”

“They think it was terrorists?” he asked. She shook her head. “No one knows,” she said. “But everybody’s going nuts. They’re calling everybody to duty in case it is.”

“Okay,” he said. “I understand if you’ve got to…”

“I can’t leave you like this, Jack,” she said.

“I said I’m fine,” he insisted.

“Bullshit, you’re not fine!” she yelled. “This is me, Jack. The one who just made love with you. Remember? Don’t keep playing this cowboy shit with me!”

He didn’t answer.

“At least let me call somebody,” she said in a softer voice. “Let me call Angela. Or Lucas.”

He pulled the blood-soaked gauze away from his palm. “It doesn’t look like this is going to need stitches.”

Marie stood up. “Fine,” she said wearily. “Everything’s just peachy. I’m okay, you’re okay. Jesus.” She stalked off into the bedroom.

Keller got a fresh wad of gauze and began bandaging his hand. After a few minutes, Marie came out. She was carrying her suitcase. She walked over to him, bent down, and kissed him. She broke the kiss and looked into his eyes. “If you want to talk, I mean really want to talk, call me,” she said softly.

“I will,” he said. “Be careful.”

She straightened up and picked up the suitcase. “Yeah,” she said. “You too.” She walked to the door. She stopped with her hand on the knob. “I really do love you, Jack,” she said. “I wish you really believed that.”

“I do,” he said. “I do believe it.”

She shook her head. “No you don’t,” she said. “If you did, you’d let me in. You’d let me help you.”

“Marie,” he said, but she opened the door and walked out. Keller sat there for a long time, watching the flickering images on the TV without seeing them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Time for scene two,” Roy said.

The bright yellow and green neon lights of the diner outshone all the others in the small cluster of buildings that huddled by the secluded off-ramp. The others were dark, lit only by the cold sickly orange light of halogen street lamps. The diner, though, lit the night with a radiance that could be seen from the highway. Even at this late hour, the place was crowded. Cars and pickups were nosed into the spaces in front, and Stan could see down one side of the building to the back, where the dark shapes of eighteen-wheelers loomed. Several were still idling, their engines huffing and grumbling like slumbering pachyderms so the drivers could catch a nap in the sleeper with the heat on.

“No cops?” Laurel said. “Usually there’s cops, a late-night place like this.”

“No,” Roy said. “The cops go down two exits to the Denny’s. They get free food there. This cheap bastard just gives ‘em coffee.”

“You really scoped this all out,” Stan said.

Roy didn’t answer. “Ready?” he said to Laurel.

She grinned at him, adjusting her wig so that it sat more evenly on her head. “Rock and roll, baby.” She turned to Stan. “You want us to pick you up anything to go?”

Stan realized his stomach was growling. Then he realized she was joking. “Yeah, get me something,” he jibed back. “A doughnut. Maybe a Danish.”

“Just be ready to roll,” Roy growled. He slid out of the passenger seat, cradling the M-14 in his arms. Laurel followed. Stan watched them go inside. There was a brief pause, then Stan saw bright flashes, one coming quickly after the other. He heard the muffled pop-pop-pop of the shots and saw a bright red liquid spray in a fan-shaped pattern across a front window. Another window blew out as a stray sprayed a glittering carpet of shattered glass onto the concrete walk by the door. Through the empty window frame, Stan could more clearly hear the screams and curses from inside. His heart was racing with excitement. He could see Laurel’s face in his mind. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted…

The gunfire stopped. There was a brief silence broken only by the muttering of the big trucks. Stan imagined Laurel inside with the little camera phone, recording their handiwork. In a few moments, she and Roy came running out of the building. Roy turned to fire once more as they reached the van. Laurel tumbled into the passenger seat. She tossed something wrapped in a napkin to Stan. “Here,” she said. She was panting with exertion and excitement.