The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (55 page)

Cathy came down to the door, brought Nut with her. Out on the street she approached the boy and offered him the leash.

‘You want to walk with us?’

The boy nodded, hesitated.

‘Go on.’

He ran with the dog in a half-jog, then stopped at the corner and waited for her to catch up. When she caught up he crossed the road, then ran ahead another half-block. She wondered what stopped the boy from taking the dog and disappearing. But the dog sat at the kerb, and the boy sank to his knees to hug it.

‘I don’t know your name.’

The boy set his arms about Nut’s neck and kissed it.

‘My name is Cathy.’

The boy didn’t speak until they returned to the apartment.

‘What’s his name again?’

‘Nut. My husband named him. It’s his dog really.’ She didn’t want to explain that the dog only had one testicle.

‘Nut.’

‘What did you call him?’

The boy shrugged and walked away, and Cathy realized it didn’t matter, whatever name he had chosen was irrelevant. The boy turned the corner on Greenleaf and did not look back.

✩

The men returned from Kuwait in army fatigues. Samuels had tied his jacket about his waist. As soon as the vehicle stopped he stepped out and walked stroppily to his cabin. When Rem asked what the problem was, Santo told him not to ask.

Pakosta, happily gave an explanation. The training wasn’t what they had expected. On arrival at the camp they’d waited almost the entire day before they were hustled through an improvised assault course. At the end of this, at something like two in the morning, they were handed automatic rifles with live rounds.

‘Only Sammy mustn’t have heard the part about live rounds. Because the first thing he did was sling the gun to his hip and blast a round over the camp.’

Rem turned to the cabin to look for Samuels.

Santo corrected him. ‘No, he didn’t. He shot a couple of rounds into the desert.’

‘My version’s better.’

‘He shot one round . . .’

‘. . . took off a camel’s head, went postal, emptied the rounds into thirteen NCRs . . .’

‘Did no such thing.’

‘Left the camp looking like a high school.’

Rem held up his hand and asked Santo for the story.

‘We were doing this simulation where you go into a mock-up of an Iraqi village.’

‘It wasn’t a mock-up. It was an actual village. And we were in Kuwait.’

Santo held his hand over Pakosta’s mouth. ‘He’s right. At some point in history it was an actual
Kuwaiti
village. Anyhow, he didn’t have his gun on safety. That’s all he did. No big thing.’

‘And?’

‘And the instructor took it off him, said if he couldn’t look after his weapon then he couldn’t have one.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s the story. No one was shot, no camels were hurt.’

Pakosta wrested himself free from Santo and asked what the time was, then held up his wrist with a half-mocking flourish. ‘Oh, look, I forgot.’

‘That’s the other calamity.’ Santo pointed at the watch on Pakosta’s wrist. ‘Pakosta now has a fake Rolex.’

‘It’s not fake.’ Pakosta held up his wrist. ‘You know it.’

‘The only way you can tell is if you smash it open. They have a number etched under the seal. It’s the only way you can tell for sure.’

‘It’s real. I’m telling you. Gen-u-ine.’ Pakosta slipped his wrist behind his back.

In private Santo caught Rem up on the details of the weekend. ‘Samuels didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t have gone, just about shat himself every time a gun went off. Maybe he had some other idea about what he was doing there. Once the instructor took notice of him, he just wouldn’t leave him alone. To be honest, it was embarrassing.’

‘And Howell? You spend much time with him?’

‘Howell?’ Santo looked ready to say something but backed away. ‘Let’s just say he’s not your usual bureaucrat.’

The expected convoy didn’t arrive the next morning. After dawn Rem drove to the camp entrance, but even with Santo’s binoculars he couldn’t see any problem, and wasn’t sure in any case what he expected to see. No timetable, orders, or instructions had come through about the regularity of the convoys and their deliveries, so he decided to think nothing of it. Santo thought otherwise and encouraged Rem to call Southern-CIPA to see if there was a problem.

‘We’d hear soon enough if something wasn’t right.’

Santo wasn’t convinced. There could be a convoy in trouble, people being held to ransom, the trucks themselves stolen, damaged, or burned. Heads being severed. There was no telling what could go wrong.

‘We need to prepare. We should protect ourselves, be ready.’

Rem didn’t want to argue, but Santo insisted. ‘They sent guns, right? For this very purpose. We need to get ourselves ready. We’re exposed, completely vulnerable. This is what they trained us for.’

‘No guns. There’s nothing to be concerned about.’

‘
Yet.
’

‘There’s no delivery today, that’s all.’

Rem said he was going to call his wife, an excuse to be alone. In truth he didn’t want Santo’s company. Santo was fine, he supposed, although he couldn’t understand his fretting over the convoy, just as he didn’t understand his automatic distrust of the translator.

He wrote notes on what he wanted to tell Geezler: news on the training, the translator, nothing of particular urgency.

Rem was woken at noon by the sound of gunfire. He sat up, immediately sweating, believing himself to be back at the section base in Amrah. Recognizing his surroundings brought fresh fears: Santo was right, they were vulnerable, and he immediately regretted not distributing the guns. The shots were close.

As soon as he was on his feet he realized that the gunfire was too regular, and in the spaces between he could hear Pakosta laughing. There was no shouting, nothing to indicate trouble, and he guessed that the guns had been unpacked against his direct instruction.

He found Samuels and Chimeno idling at the back of the Quonset. Santo stood by an open crate giving instruction to Pakosta and Clark who lay side by side on their stomachs. Each man dressed in military drab. Each man armed. Pakosta took aim and fired. The dirt tufted far in the distance. They stopped when they noticed Rem.

‘We needed the flares,’ Santo explained, ‘something to start the pits, they’re all packed together.’ Then, as Rem did not reply, ‘I didn’t see any harm.’

Rem drew the gum he was chewing between his teeth and bit down and decided not to react. He wouldn’t say a goddamned thing.

‘They’ve had training. I’ve given the basic safety instructions. We were just about to finish.’

Rem nodded.

Pakosta looked to Santo. ‘We only just started?’

Santo began to dismantle his weapon. ‘Disarm the weapon and put it away.’

Pakosta stretched out in the dirt, belly down, eye to the sight. Santo set his boot on the small of Pakosta’s back. ‘I said, put the weapon away.’

This was – Rem couldn’t decide – insubordination? While he was in charge, his position was, at best, merely supervisory. They held no rank, had no formal organization. He had little authority. His best decision lay in practical monitoring: managing the weapons and not the men.

Santo began his defence as they packed the guns away. ‘What’s the problem? They’re no use if they don’t know how to handle them.’

‘Supplies are limited.’

‘They need to practise.’

‘And what if there’s an accident?’

‘What if we’re attacked?’

‘An accident. You’re ready for the consequences?’

‘That’s more of a reason for them to train. They have two hours’ experience on a firing range, they have certificates saying they know what they’re doing. They need to practise. Not everyone is Fatboy.’

Rem didn’t appreciate the reference. He looked Santo up and down. ‘You’re wearing a military uniform.’

Santo tried a different approach. ‘We have no security. No one will protect us. If something happens they aren’t going to send anyone. It’s not going to happen. We burn shit. And what’s the point in having guns if we can’t use them? What was the point in going to Kuwait if they can’t practise? I can train them so they know what they’re doing.’ Santo stopped, folded his arms. ‘These men aren’t stupid. They know what’s going on out there.’

Sutler: Pizza City

thekills.co.uk/sutler

Watts: How Santo Can’t Get a Date

thekills.co.uk/watts

✩

Cathy’s hostility to her customers didn’t go unnoticed: how she leaned over the rheumy Mrs Dempsey with her hands on her hips as if the woman was stupid as well as deaf. She lost her patience counting out change, waiting, then scanning coupons. Couldn’t focus. Took breaks which became longer and more frequent. Maggie waved a pack of cigarettes and brought her onto the loading dock.

‘You have to be nicer.’

‘Nicer?’

‘Kinder.’

‘Kinder
and
nicer. Let me see?’ Cathy narrowed her eyes as she inhaled. ‘You know? I’m fresh out.’

Maggie allowed the idea to sink in.

‘Oh, come on.’ Cathy tried to laugh. ‘I mean, seriously. Don’t they get to you? Their stupid questions when everything is so obvious.’

‘I mean you. I mean you have to be nicer to yourself.’

‘To myself? This is crazy talk.’ Cathy looked for a place to put out her cigarette, then paused. ‘It’s just a bad day. That’s all it is. I shouldn’t be smoking.’

‘It’s not just today. You know that. You’re too hard on yourself. You need to talk to someone.’

‘You’re saying I need help?’

‘No.’ Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Yes. But not like that. You need to talk with someone who knows what you’re going through. Someone who has a better idea. You’re on your own here.’

Cathy leaned back against the wall, arms folded. ‘There isn’t anything to say. There isn’t anyone to talk to.’ After a while she appeared to soften and allowed her shoulders to drop. ‘You know what I got yesterday? I got an email, one of those round robins – I’m not even sure what you’d call it. I don’t know how she found me, but she sent this email to all of the wives who have husbands or partners out in al-
Narnia
, maybe even some of the parents.’ She took up the offer of another cigarette. ‘I don’t know. It just seems so
dumb
. All she talked about was her kids and how much they missed their daddy, and how blessed she was . . .’

‘Blessed?’

‘I know. Everything is a blessing. All this praying, and Jesus, and – I don’t know, just all of this shit about how everything has a purpose, about being happy that today was a good day. She has a child in hospital and she writes to strangers about being blessed. It wasn’t enough to delete the message, I had to print it out so I could throw it away.’

Both women paused as the loading-bay doors opened. Outside a van reversed into the dock. Cathy murmured that they should get back.

‘Why don’t you write to her?’

‘I don’t want my business to be on their minds. I don’t want anyone to pray for me, or Rem. I don’t need their Jesus, and I don’t want to know about their lives. I didn’t ask to hear any of this. I don’t want it in my head.’

‘And that’s what she’s doing?’

‘That’s exactly what she’s doing.’

As the truck reversed it cut out the daylight and Cathy and Maggie retreated to the storeroom doors.

‘She’s just the same as you.’ Cathy dropped her cigarette and stepped on it. ‘I don’t see the difference, actually. I mean, sure. Maybe you’re right. Maybe everyone should just leave you alone. Maybe all you need is some new batteries in that Jack Rabbit of yours.’

Cathy logged online and waited for messages to download. The dog sat outside, tied to a bike rail. Once she was done with the library, she decided, she’d take a longer walk, maybe down to Loyola along the lake. The inbox remained empty. With no word from Rem and no other business to distract her she returned to the round robin and clicked ‘reply to all’.

Cathy began typing unsure of what to say, except, she wasn’t going to ask anyone to pray.

She read the email before sending it, unsure what she expected back.

✩

Rem counted the traffic through the morning. Forty-eight: Kia, Renault, Daewoo, Toyota, Hyundai. The first vehicles he’d seen on the road since his arrival. Among them, the occasional Mercedes and BMW, all battered and distressed.

He returned to the cabins to see Pakosta exercising, still wearing the military drab trousers. The sun turning the sweat on his back to silver. The exercises, determined, structured, weren’t anything Rem had seen before. Rem found Watts and asked him to contact Markland.

As Watts made the call Rem returned to the road with Santo, and found it empty.

‘No one drives in the day. Too exposed.’ Santo stood with his arms folded. ‘How many?’

‘Forty-eight. Domestic traffic.’ Rem turned back to face the camp. ‘No one knows we’re here, but as soon as those fires are lit the smoke will tell everyone.’

He attempted to reach Geezler, a little surprised not to have heard from him after his promise to find out more information about Paul Howell.

Within an hour of contacting Markland, Watts had an answer. He found Rem in his cabin. The intersection between Highway 80 and Route 567 had been hit – an IED. A convoy, intended for Kuwait, had headed right back to Amrah.

Rem ate while he considered the news. The air-con unit in pieces about the small cabin. His hands black with grime. The air grotty with heat.