Into Darkness (29 page)

The sound from the surrounding MRI machine switched from a constant whir to a series of clunks. During his first time in an MRI machine, after a bad parachute landing in the pine forests of Louisiana, he’d thought the clunking noise meant the machine had broken. Now he knew the machine was nearly finished scanning his skull.

He hated the tightness of the MRI, hated the off-white confines that reminded him of the interior of a coffin. If that insurgent had thrown a fragmentation grenade over that wall, instead of a flash bang, he would be in a body bag right now. He’d had close calls from this deployment and the last: a bullet that snapped past his face, an IED that went off seconds too soon or too late, mortar rounds that landed close enough to pop his eardrums with the concussion.

Each time he’d focused on his men and reacted to the threat as an infantry officer. But this last close call was different. When he’d seen the flash bang at his feet, his thoughts had been of his wife and daughters. He couldn’t stop thinking of them since he’d regained consciousness, but the hospital forbade him from calling home. All the Green Zone was in a communications blackout until the families of the wounded from a late-night rocket attack were notified.

The machine stopped clunking. The whir traced a hidden orbit behind his cocoon from his left ear to the right. What had the rear-detachment commander told his wife? That he was in a coma? A vegetative state? Was she planning her future as the wife of a complete cripple? She wouldn’t tell the girls anything until she had a complete understanding of his injuries; she’d maintain a lie that everything was just fine with Daddy and would hate every moment of it.

“Why is this taking so long?” Shelton asked. There was no response from the technician in the adjoining room. The machine wound down and was silent. The MRI sled slowly returned him to the exam room. The room was kept dark to avoid aggravating his light-sensitive eyes, a symptom of what the doctors called either a concussion or traumatic brain injury. The technician was gone from his post behind the glass in the next room.

Shelton pushed himself from the machine and patted the floor with his feet until he found his hospital-issued slippers. He made his way to the barest sliver of light marking the only door into the examination room. There had to be a civilian contractor floating around the hospital with a cell phone. He had to call his wife—regulations and standard operating procedure be damned.

The light in the hallway sent a spike of pain through both eyes. He flung his forearm over his face until his eyes could adjust; the other hand groped for a wall to support him. He waited a full minute before testing his eyes with more and more light.

“I can see your ass,” someone said.

Shelton swiped at the back of his smock and grabbed the loose halves together. Ritter sat next to the exam room, a clipboard on his lap.

“Eric? What’re you doing here? No, what happened out there? Are my men all right? Wait, if you’re here, then who’s in charge at my patrol base?”

Ritter glanced at the clipboard. “Your chart says ‘diminished mental acuity,’ an over diagnosis by my guess. Maybe the doctor just doesn’t know you like I do.”

“Answer me before I feed you that clipboard!”

“Your men, all of them, made it back to Dragon without any injuries. I imagine your able executive officer, Lieutenant Park, can handle things until you return. I’m here to handle the secret squirrel side of things, which I’ll fill you in on when we’re someplace else.” Ritter reached to his side and placed a hand on a full shopping bag atop a cardboard box.

“I have a shiny new uniform; a pair of boots in your size; and a bird back to the patrol base, leaving in two hours. Do you want a ride?”

“The doctors haven’t cleared—”

“You got off lucky with a concussion, and do you really care what the doctors think?”

Shelton looked from the darkened exam room to the uniform at Ritter’s side. “Do you have a cell phone too?”

“No, but you don’t need to call home. Thanks to the fog of war, your injury wasn’t reported as due to enemy action, so there’s no report for the rear detachment to give to Mary. It also means no Purple Heart, which I don’t think you’d mind. One is enough, right?” Ritter stood and put the clipboard back in the plastic case next to the door.

“How in the world did…did you screw with the system?”

“What, me? I’d never.” Ritter’s face froze in mock surprise. “You stay here any longer, and your escape from Nurse Ratchet will be that much harder.”

“The docs will freak when they find out I’m gone,” Shelton said as he looked into the plastic bag; sweat-stained Velcro patches from his old uniform sat atop a pristine set of ACUs. Missing out on further medical care took a backseat to protecting his wife and family from bad news.

“If they want you back that badly, they can come out to Dragon and get you. You hungry?” Ritter asked.

“We thought al-Qaeda would try to screw with the extraction, but the two Apaches hovering over the landing zone might have made them think twice,” Ritter said as he took a bite of pepperoni pizza. He and Shelton sat at a picnic table outside the entrance to the main post exchange, the largest outpost for American commercial goods in the Green Zone. Aluminum shacks offering the finest in American fast food lined the path to the PX. Members of all four uniformed services meandered between the comfort food stations, their uniforms clean and their bodies soft from a war spent in a cubicle.

Shelton’s newly purchased sunglasses, courtesy of the nearby PX, lessened most of the pain from the sunlight. Ritter hated sunglasses; they made reading people harder.

Ritter hadn’t told Shelton the entire truth of what happened in Owesat. He’d left out his heart-to-heart with the Saudi financier, evidence of Abu Ahmet’s insurgent past, and how he’d ended three lives. He kept the details of the killings to himself, not because Shelton would disapprove, but because of the Fobbits that surrounded them.

Ironically, the vast majority of those in uniform would never experience combat, and an even smaller percentage of those who did would kill another person by will or by accident. For those who supported the fight far from the front lines or deep within a concrete fortress, killing was as alien as trying to converse in a dead language. In Ritter’s experience, it was best not to speak of kills around the uninitiated. Someone might overhear the details, decide some arcane portion of the rules of engagement or laws of war were violated, and sic the Inspector General on him. He didn’t need any outside interference, not when they were on Mukhtar’s scent.

“How did you like your time as a company commander?” Shelton said, still working through a double-patty burger with a stale bun.

“Making all the decisions in the midst of a crisis isn’t as much fun as the commercials make it out to be. We can go back to our old dynamic, if that’s OK with you,” Ritter said.

“Wait. Was there anything useful on that laptop? The one Nesbitt found in the bathroom?”

“No, the tech guys couldn’t get anything out of it,” Ritter lied.

“The detainee? He useful?”

“I don’t know what happened to him after the two of you left. I’ll check with Davis and see if she has anything,” he lied again.

“Jesus, so the only thing we got out of that—that came out of the whole trip—was me getting my bell rung and
maybe
some intelligence?”

Ritter took a swig from a soda masquerading as a Diet Coke. “There are drones over that al-Qaeda village bombing anything that moves. I heard a rumor that the new brigade operations officer is planning another major muscle movement in our sector”—which was an understatement. Shannon would arrange a clearing operation in the next two days that would flush Mukhtar out into the open. Shelton would learn the details when he needed them.

“New brigade operations officer?”

“Yeah, Lieutenant Colonel Reynolds got reassigned to some logistics unit in Kuwait that handles port-a-shitters. Something about detainee abuse,” Ritter added with a shrug.

Ritter closed the cardboard case on his mostly eaten pizza. He’d never thought the truth would be worse than lying. “The PR blurb is that we dropped into al-Qaeda’s backyard and gave them a bloody nose. That’s something. Battalion can still spin it as an operational success and an intelligence failure.” Ritter smiled and regarded his old friend, a man he trusted with his life. Shelton was just a mark now, someone he had to play like a fiddle to keep his true agenda on track. A small part of Ritter’s soul railed against the betrayal, but it was nothing more than an afterthought. His heart was cold; the darkness of his soul needed no comfort.

Ritter and Shelton disembarked from the Black Hawk helicopter and made their way toward the company headquarters. A trio of grim faces—Kovalenko, Young, and Park—were waiting for them beyond the T-wall barrier. Shelton waved Ritter past; Ritter kept on without breaking his stride. Shelton could handle whatever company business was waiting for him.

As he walked to his room, the base struck Ritter as being oddly muted. He still wore the same uniform from the raid, and it stank from incessant use. He’d left a fresh uniform waiting on a hanger. Life on this patrol base meant body odor was a constant companion, but a new set of clothes would make him feel like something out of
GQ
magazine.

He rounded the corner past the company headquarters and saw yellow tape zigzagging across his door, proclaiming
Police Line—Do Not Cross
. He came to a stop at the door, which was ajar. His fingertips infiltrated past the tape and gave the door a push. The door creaked open a few inches, and the strong smell of bleach came out to greet him.

“Sir, you do not want to go in there,” Private Thomas said behind him.

“Care to bring me up to speed?”

Thomas scratched the side of his nose, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Doc Porter, he…His wife sent him divorce papers. He found them on his bunk when we all got back from the mission. He didn’t say a word to anyone—swear to God. Then he took his rifle into your room and killed himself.”

Ritter said nothing as he ran his hand down the yellow tape, the plastic crackling. Ritter reviewed all the time he and Porter had spent together in Owesat. Had he missed some sign? Porter had been anxious to get back home, but nothing had hinted at a fundamental problem. Ritter considered whether he had been too focused on the enemy to miss someone so vulnerable right under his nose.

“I must be losing my touch,” Ritter said.

“Sir?”

“Are the investigators done? All my gear is in there.” Combat had scoured Ritter of sympathy and empathy. The dead could be mourned at the appropriate time, and Porter’s suicide didn’t override other concerns. Ritter finally took a good look at Thomas, his pale face drawn with grief, and immediately regretted what he’d said. He should show some sympathy in front of Thomas.

“We moved everything out that we could and put it in the lieutenant’s room. Some of the stuff had to go to the burn pit—it was a real mess. That uniform you had hanging up—I’m sorry, sir, but it didn’t make it.” Thomas shuffled his feet in the sand.

Ritter sighed. “Thank you, Thomas. I appreciate the help.”

The lieutenant’s room was not a step-up in living conditions from where the rest of the company lived. Little-used cots lined a small bedroom, with duffel bags and plastic trunks near each bunk. Hooks lined the wall at head height, a legacy of the last Iraqi occupants.

Ritter found most of his equipment piled on a cot, his spare pair of boots underneath. Tiny, red dots of blood speckled the upper third of his duffel bag. Ritter bent over and looked at the dots, which had streaks from where someone had attempted to wipe them away. There was a strong smell of something sweet mixed with blood. He waved the air just above his duffel toward his nose; his bag wasn’t the source of the odor.

He rolled his duffel bag over, searching for the source of the scent. His bag was otherwise clean. He pawed through his large backpack. Nothing. The smell grew stronger as he went to his knees to check his boots. He looked at the sole of his right boot, expecting to find it stained red. Nothing. He lifted his left boot and found the source of the smell when he sniffed the opening. Something rolled from the toe to the heel of the boot and stopped with a squish.

Ritter held the boot at arm’s length and carried it from his new room to the burn pit. The pit, a slit trench dug out by a long-ago visit from an engineer’s backhoe, maintained a slow burn on the outer edge of the patrol base. Its low glow and seeping smoke were like a fissure into Hades.

Ritter upended his boot over the burn pit. A pinkish lump of brain matter fell out. It landed on the blackened remnants of the uniform he’d had hanging in his former room. He regarded his contaminated boot for a moment, then tossed it into the burn pit too.

His thoughts of Porter turned to anger. Suicide always struck him as the coward’s escape. Instead of dealing with a divorce, Porter had decided to opt out of life. Now Dragon Company was short a critical medic, and Porter may have damned the next man who got hit. The rest of the company would spend their days wondering if they could have done something to save Porter. The loss of a uniform and one good boot irked Ritter. The damage Porter’s suicide had caused the company infuriated him.

Young sat in the mess hall; he hadn’t had a drag from the burning cigarette clasped between two fingers. A small trail of ashes marked the flame’s progress down the cigarette’s length. An uneaten meal and a small stack of army forms bearing Porter’s name were on the table before him along with the divorce decree.

Ritter sat across from him, his mixed vegetables and pork chops steaming. Young did nothing to acknowledge his arrival. Ritter put his knife to a pork chop, then set his plastic cutlery to the side. He spun the pile of forms around and started reading.

“It’s a bitch, ain’t it, sir? I almost got him to sign his benefits back to his mother. Life insurance, death gratuity, and all the rest. That whore of a wife of his will get it all, seeing as they’re still technically married. His mother lives in some trailer park in…Vacaville? Hell, I don’t know where that is.” Young snuffed his cigarette in his applesauce.

“It’s in California, up north.” Ritter flipped through the forms until he found Porter’s signature. He pulled a pen from his sleeve and traced over the signature a few times before writing out his own version on a bare patch of his cardboard food tray.

“What’re you doing?” Young asked.

“There’s always a lag with paper work when we’re so far from the flagpole. We can have his benefits changed to his mother before mortuary affairs and the adjutant’s minions process everything.” Ritter signed Porter’s name a final time on the mess tray before pulling out the benefits form.

“Sir.” Young sat up in his chair and looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Sir, forging a signature is a felony.”

Ritter shrugged, then signed the form. “Seeing as how Porter’s wife wasn’t all that interested in being married to Porter...” He signed the divorce paper work. “So this doesn’t bother me.”

“Sir, I…I mean.” Young continued stammering as Ritter returned the completed forms to a manila folder.

“Porter signed the forms before he killed himself. That’s all there is to it. The paper work will process in record time thanks to a well-placed phone call to the right people, and Porter’s mother will get the flag at his funeral. Or we Charlie-Mike as Big Army intends, and his wife will blow the money on—if rumor is correct—cocaine and the latest model Mustang convertible. Which way do you want to go?” He slid the folder across the table to Young.

Young leaned away from the packet as if it had a repulsing force.

“When it comes down to doing what’s right or what’s legal, I’ll choose whichever will help me sleep better at night. Besides, if this is the worst thing I do today, then I made out pretty good on the deal. How about you, Sergeant Young? What’s right, or what’s legal? I’ll back your call.” Ritter went back to his meal as he waited for Young’s answer.

Young lowered his fingertips to rest on the folder. “You’ll take care of everything?” Ritter nodded as he gnawed on a bite of pork chop. Young flattened his hand on the folder and slid both from the table.

“We never had this conversation, right, sir?” Young said.

“What conversation?” Ritter tore open his single-serving carrot cake dessert.

Chaplain Kroh caught Ritter as he left the mess hall.

“Son, you have a moment?” the chaplain asked.

“Sir, what’re you doing down here?”

“Standard procedure with traumatic events. I would have been here right after the kidnappings, but there wasn’t a spot available on any bird for non-mission-essential personnel like me.” The chaplain’s grandfatherly smile had a most disarming quality.

“I’ve been talking with some of the boys who were with you in Owesat. They told me what you did and how thankful they were for your bravery and leadership. Good work.”

“Oh,” Ritter flushed. “That’s good to know.”

“They told me about the killings. Do you want to talk about that?”

Ritter glanced around the chaplain, looking for an escape route. “Not really,” he said.

“Men can’t kill like that without experience, and that experience comes at a cost to your soul. We both know this.” The chaplain placed a hand on Ritter’s shoulder, his eyes resting on the knife at Ritter’s waist.

Ritter stepped back and turned to walk away. He got two steps before the chaplain said, “Your knife has an inscription reading, ‘Cry Havoc,’ doesn’t it? I know because I used to have one. I bet the same man gave it to us both.” Ritter didn’t turn around. His hand went to his knife, which bore the inscription the chaplain had suspected.

“I know the path that you’re on. I walked it for far too long. I had to turn to the cloth to save my soul, and I don’t want you to take another step. There is only an abyss waiting for you.”

Ritter turned around and said, “What happened in Owesat was an odyssey. Some came out of it better than others.” If the chaplain knew Caliban’s word, then they could talk. He didn’t put it beyond Shannon to plant a second operative in the brigade headquarters. He waited for the countersign that never came.

The chaplain frowned and shook his head. “I don’t have the words anymore.”

Ritter wanted to talk to the chaplain, a man he knew was capable of only kindness and compassion. Ritter had choked down all the lies, killings, and compromises to what little integrity he had left, and in that moment it all threatened to boil over with the one man who could understand what he was going through.

His hand clutched his dagger with white-knuckle tightness. The chaplain bore no weapon, as his profession demanded. There was no evidence of the companionship he claimed to have. Ritter’s paranoia overcame his desire for solace. He’s a plant from some other agency opposed to our methods, he thought. Someone mentioned the inscription to him, and he’s using it as a way to get to me, he thought.

“I’m sorry, Chaplain, but we have nothing to discuss.” He turned and walked into the darkness, regretting every step.

The next morning, Shelton mashed the palms of his hands into his temples and turned away from the sunlight lancing over the top of the T-wall barrier and straight into his eyeballs. He knew his head wasn’t splitting open, but it sure felt like it was. He took another 800 mg Motrin tablet from a plastic baggie and crushed it between his teeth before washing it down with a swig from an unmarked bottle of water. He wasn’t sure how many he’d taken since waking up; part of him was afraid to count.

He and Ritter stood next to a sand table of Dragon’s sector. The cardboard boxes of MREs depicted the main roads, and blue yarn represented the Euphrates and major canals. Recycled care packages marked out the major buildings and villages. The sand table wouldn’t win any awards for aesthetics, but it served its purpose.

“We’re not giving him enough time,” he said to Ritter. He looked toward the sunset and the shadows stretching across the ground. Ritter had coached him on the normal flow of an Arabic conversation, but a typical Iraqi gabfest would last into the night. Idiomatic English never translated well, but there had to be some way to convey “daylight’s burning” to Abu Ahmet.

The engine of the M113 at the front gate growled to life, then propelled the vehicle forward with a belch of black smoke. Abu Ahmet’s black BMW rolled into the patrol base.

“You’re not giving him enough credit,” Ritter said. His gaze locked on the three empty water bottles, half-filled with sand, representing the Russian power plant. Ritter’s hands and arms tensed as Abu Ahmet, wearing a pure-white
dishdasha
and an empty pistol holster, approached them with open arms.

“
My friends! I heard you kicked the piss out of al-Qaeda in Owesat
.” Abu Ahmet shook Shelton’s hand. Ritter fought the urge to pull out his pistol and shoot Abu Ahmet in the gut. Ritter kept a smile on his face as he leaned toward Abu Ahmet and kissed the air on either side of his cheeks.

“
That was nothing compared to what we have planned
,” Ritter said.

Abu Ahmet nodded sagely as he circled the sand table. He knelt next to the red yarn circling the market in Rasheed, where Abu Ahmet had cemented the blood feud with al-Qaeda by shooting Charba in the face.

“Abu Ahmet, thanks for coming on such short notice,” Shelton said. Ritter translated Shelton’s words for Abu Ahmet as the company commander spoke. “At dawn, we attack al-Qaeda and drive them out. My brigade will launch attacks at all known al-Qaeda strong points from Latafiya to Rasheed, but we need your help.

“I don’t have enough men to attack Rasheed and this compound”—he pointed a laser pointer to the compound where Mukhtar had clipped off Khalil’s ear—“which is one of the places Mukhtar calls home.”