Wynne's War (30 page)

He backed across the floor, watching the tunnel's entrance, weapon shouldered and his flashlight casting its circle across the rock. His breath came to him in ragged gasps.

He passed the body of Sergeant Perkins. His light illuminated the brass of a dozen shell casings. Blood dried on the slick stone floor.

He moved several more meters.

Inhaled and exhaled.

Then he turned and ran.

 

When Russell made it back to Wheels, the sky was shading into evening and clouds trailed toward the mountains to the east. Russell knelt there beside his friend, studying the entry wound on his thigh, studying the flesh on either side of the tourniquet. He looked at him and said, “The captain's gone completely batshit.”

Wheels said, “You're just figuring that out?”

He told Wheels about the gold, but Wheels just nodded, as if it didn't surprise him in the least.

“Can you walk?” asked Russell.

“I ain't tried,” Wheels said.

Russell squatted there a moment. He told Wheels he'd be right back, rose and went across the clearing, and then down to where the horses were tied. He walked over to Fella, tethered to the picket line by her lead. When he ran a hand over the horse's neck, her skin rippled like water.

“It's all right,” he told her.

He heard Rosa fire his rifle from the hillside above, and then the noise of automatic weapons came from the distance. He waited for Rosa's answering shot, but the shot never came.

He walked through the trees, threading his way back to the clearing. Wheels was leaning against a poplar and holding his left foot a few inches off the ground, his jaw clenched and his teeth gritted together.

“Can you ride?” Russell asked him.

“'Course,” said Wheels, and then he placed his foot against the earth and his eyes rolled into his head, and Russell thought Wheels was going to faint. He went over and steadied him, then bent to study the wounds. A clear serum was leaking from them.

“I think they got Sergeant Rosa,” said Wheels.

“I think they did, too,” Russell said.

“What do you want to do?”

“How about we skedaddle?”

“Captain ain't going to like that,” said Wheels.

“Captain can kiss my Sooner ass,” Russell said.

He went back to where the horses were tethered, untied Fella, mounted her, and then rode over to the other picket line and untied Wheels's horse. The stallion was nervous, but he led just fine, and Russell walked them up through the trees and back into the clearing. He rode over beside Wheels and then he brought both horses to a stop and swung down from the saddle.

They managed to get Wheels to the horse, and he took the horn in one hand and the cantle in the other and tried to pull himself up. He turned back and looked at Russell.

“I'm going to need a little boost,” he said.

Russell nodded. He interlaced his fingers, made a stirrup of his hands, bent, and slid them underneath Wheels's left boot heel.

“Count of three,” said Russell. “One. Two. Three.”

Russell was bent from the waist, and he jerked up, lifting Wheels's boot. He felt Wheels rising and then he felt something give way in his back, and a white hot pain shot down his legs. Then Wheels was in the saddle and Russell staggered and leaned against a tree. He thought for a moment he'd been shot.

Wheels was asking if he was all right. Russell didn't answer. He staggered to his horse, put his foot in the stirrup, and swung himself up. When he got seated in the saddle, he knew something was very wrong, and he bit down so hard he was afraid he'd crack a tooth. His entire lower back felt as if the bones had been sucked out and stuffed with cotton, and a sharp electric pain was traveling down his legs, an ice cream headache in the nerves.

Russell flipped the reins and put the horse forward, and they went across the clearing, through the trees, past the other horses, past the captain's perfect stallion, gunshots ringing out behind them as they chucked up and went riding down the trail.

 

 

 

 

T
HEY RODE UNTIL
just after dark, the horses stepping along the trail between the high sandstone walls. Every hoof fall and bounce in the saddle sent the pain shooting down the backs of Russell's legs, and he tried to lean forward to take the weight from his spine, but if he was going to ride, he was stuck with it. Wheels had begun to drift in the saddle, and when they stopped in a sycamore grove a few hundred yards from the trail, his leg started bleeding again and Russell couldn't get it to stop.

Russell climbed down from Fella and leaned against her several moments. He could feel the horse's heartbeat syncing with his own, his own with the horse's, and he tried to decide how he'd get Wheels out of the saddle. Then he tried to figure out how he'd get him back on it when it was time to move on. He stepped back and looked at his horse. She had bent her neck and was cropping tufts of grass. He petted her several seconds.

“Let's get you some water,” he said.

When he walked over to Wheels, his friend's eyes were closed and Russell thought he'd passed out. He was about to place his palm on Wheels's thigh, when he said, “What do we got to eat?”

“You hungry?”

“Starving,” Wheels said.

“Let's get you down.”

“How you want to do it?”

“I'm open to suggestions,” Russell told him, and Wheels sat there, staring at the ground like it was something he'd build a bridge to. He looked at Russell.

“We're about a pair.”

“Yeah,” said Russell.

“How's your back?”

“Hurts,” Russell said.

“What do you reckon you did to it?”

Russell didn't know.

“What if I just climb down on the right side here, sort of use you for balance.”

“Can you do it that way?” Russell asked.

“Yeah,” said Wheels. “I think.”

It ended up being much easier than he thought, and Russell helped Wheels down and then a few feet over into the trees, and they made their camp, Russell spreading their saddle blankets and sleeping bags and then going back to the horses for their MREs.

When he ducked under the limbs, Wheels was seated against the trunk of a sycamore with his leg crooked up, studying the wound. He looked over and saw Russell.

“What are your thoughts on a campfire?” he asked.

“I wouldn't risk it,” said Russell, and Wheels said that was probably for the best.

He walked down to a stream and found a cloudy pool into which he sunk his canteen. He squatted there watching the moon reflect off the water's surface and then he lifted the canteen and stood. He thought the odds were against them living through the night.

They sat mixing creek water into their MRE packets—beef ravioli, potato cheddar soup, cocoa beverage powder—stirring the concoctions into various pastes and slimes. Russell had treated the water with purification tablets, strained it through a T-shirt, and still the mixtures tasted foul. They ate every bite and then ran their fingers along the inside of the packages and licked them clean. They'd decided to make a third meal and split it between them when an immense explosion echoed down the valley and a low rumble shook the ground. Flocks of birds went scattering from the trees. They sat frozen with their hearts hammering.

“The fuck was that?” Wheels said.

Russell's mouth was full of chocolate pudding. He swallowed painfully and stared up at the stars.

“Artillery?” said Wheels.

“Wasn't artillery,” Russell told him. “We'd have heard the round.”

“Then what was it?”

Russell shook his head.

“Should we get out of here?”

“Probably.”

“Are we?”

Russell thought about it for several moments. Then he said if something was going to get them, it would have to get them.

 

When Russell woke the next morning in the gray light before dawn, Wheels was sitting up against the tree, eating another MRE. Russell brightened when he saw him seated like that, but when Wheels passed him the canteen he'd been drinking from, his hand felt like he'd just removed it from a fire; Russell set the canteen aside and pressed the back of his hand against his friend's forehead.

“You've got a fever,” he told him.

“Tell me something I don't know,” Wheels said.

They were on the trail all day long. Around noon, Russell's back began to hurt so badly that he removed everything from his Molle pouches and stowed the various items in his saddlebags. Then he began to strip off the body armor. The vest weighed just under thirty pounds, and he felt lighter after dropping it, but not much. Wheels, sick as he was with blood loss and fever, turned in the saddle and looked back toward the sound of Russell's IBA hitting the dirt. He stared at Russell a moment.

“You're bulletproof now?” he asked.

Russell didn't answer, and after a while Wheels faced forward and they rode on.

That evening, they made camp in a narrow draw beneath an overhang in the rock, and it began to sprinkle and then to rain. Russell was lying face-up on his sleeping bag when the drops started, and he watched them slant in the twilight. His back was to the point that he had to breathe very shallowly in order to stand it. The electricity pulsed down the backs of his legs, and the toes of his right foot were completely numb. He had two fentanyl lollipops in his kit, but he was saving them, he didn't know for what. He rolled to his side, made it to his feet, and walked over to where he had the horses hobbled, removed the poncho from his saddlebags, and then went to get Wheels's. When he came back, the man's fever was gone but his breath was very shallow and he stared at Russell as if from some great distance. His eyes had calmed and the pupils were motionless.

“Don't you even think about it,” Russell said. “You hear me, Brett?”

Wheels gestured down at his leg. The bandage was soaked through with blood.

“Only got so much of that in me,” he said.

“You stay with me,” said Russell. “Don't leave me out here like this.”

Wheels shook his head, closed his eyes for several moments. Then he wet his lips again and looked up at Russell.

“They're going to ask you about him. Tell them the truth.”

“Tell them yourself,” said Russell.

“Promise me something,” Wheels said.

Russell nodded.

“Don't try and take a bullet for the man.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Russell.

“Yeah, you do. When they ask about him, you tell them everything you saw. Tell all of it. Don't leave nothing out. Don't try and make him look no better than what he is.”

“You don't need to worry about me making him look good,” said Russell. “I get the chance, I'm going to give somebody an earful.”

“Just tell them the truth,” said Wheels.

“When have you known me not to?”

“That's what I'm saying,” Wheels said. “Don't start now. Don't try and cover for the man. I don't care that he was a Ranger.”

“He ain't no Ranger to me,” Russell said.

Wheels smiled.

“Good,” he said. “That's good.” He reached and patted Russell on the arm. “Now quit bugging me and let me sleep.”

 

Russell prayed that night. He couldn't remember the last time he had. He always pictured God as some amalgam of his grandfather and an old face in the sky, and he lay on his back staring up at the sandstone overhang, asking that they make it out alive. He said he didn't want to die out here and he didn't want his friend to die, and he asked that he'd be able to see Sara again, and he asked for a good night's rest. He thought of praying for his back, but he figured he'd already asked enough of God, and he drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of rain against the rocks and the snuffling of the horses.

When he awoke, the sun was already up and the sky had cleared, and it had turned cool and his breath fogged. His sleeping bag was wet, and he rose stiffly and stretched and then went to check on Wheels.

The man had propped himself up in the night, leaning back against the rock, knees pulled to his chest. His eyes were open and he was very still, and Russell knew before he even checked his pulse. He walked out onto the trail and stood there in the morning light. Birds were chirping from the trees and the stream alongside the trail was swollen with water, and Russell stood with his face in his hands, the sobs coming to him in spasms.

 

He was back on the trail before noon, Wheels's horse tethered to Fella and his friend doubled over the saddle, wrists bound to ankles and the body wrapped in the man's blankets and tied at either end. The day had grown warm in the space of several hours, and Russell went along the trail, his back in agony and his mind numb as his feet. He didn't care whether or not he made it, but he did care about the horses. He was traveling the same path they'd taken to the compound, but he didn't recall the terrain. He found himself talking to Wheels. It didn't occur to him that this was strange.