Sam wiped his tears away.
He finally caught himself, embarrassed at his show of emotion. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the sand. It was dark. He was exhausted. The firefight and chase up the hill after the enemy soldiers had left him hot and breathless.
The three enemy soldiers about seven hundred feet away from him were dead, he was certain of that, and it bothered him that, unlike U.S. soldiers, their bodies would lie there for days before someone came to claim them—if someone ever did. The air around him still smelled like burnt gunpowder, but he knew it was only the barrel of his carbine. Looking down from the small bluff, he studied the desert below where, minutes before, the firefight had taken place.
The night was cool. Fall was coming on; even in the desert there was some relief. The wind blew from the south, humid and biting with tiny bits of sand.
He was dressed in full battle gear: Kevlar™ helmet, goggles, flak jacket and vest, desert cammies, leather gloves and boots. His weapon, a short-barreled Mk. 48 mod. 0 gas-powered, air-cooled, belt-fed machine gun, was strapped loosely around him, and he had pushed it to his back. The barrel was warm, too warm to be accurate any longer (seven hundred rounds a minute could scorch a barrel in short order), and he wished he had another barrel to change it out. But it probably didn’t matter—all the bad guys were gone or dead. The sky overhead was as bright and clear as only the remote desert sky could be. And it was quiet. Very quiet.
He turned and listened to the wind, then pulled out the tube for the flexible pack of water strapped to his back and took a long drink.
* * *
Bono walked toward Sam through the darkness, coming to a stop right in front of him. “Looks like you got ’em,” the lieutenant said, nodding to the three dead men up the hill.
Sam grunted as he brushed the backs of his hands across his cheeks. Had Bono seen him crying, heard his childish sobs? He took a long draw of breath and shuddered in the dark.
Bono turned and sat down beside him. “You OK?’ he asked.
Sam nodded slowly. “It’s all cool, man.”
“It’s OK,” Bono answered, putting his arm around Sam’s back. “It’s OK. You’re OK. No big thing. It comes and goes.”
Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.
The two men sat in silence, the great desert all around them.
“Good work,” Bono said, nodding up the hill again. “I’m glad you got them.”
Sam drank again. “I don’t know, hearing the guy laughing as he ran away. Something about it made me snap.”
“Yeah. Makes you sick, some guy getting his kicks shooting another man in the face. Somebody else ponying out after the bad guys. We need discipline on the fire teams.”
Sam nodded and pulled his night-vision goggles down to cover his eyes.
The sound of the AirEvac helicopter filled the darkness as it landed beside the dusty road. “Who got it?” Sam asked, remembering their men who’d been hit.
“Viskosky,” Bono answered.
“Is he going to be OK?”
“Tore his femur. Ripped the artery out. Lost a bathtub full of blood.”
“Anyone else?”
Bono was quiet and Sam braced himself.
“A couple other minor hits. Nothing serious.” He hesitated another moment. “Hastings was the guy who took it in the face,” he finally said.
Sam shook his head and swore.
Bono nodded toward the hilltop. “That last guy, ol’ smiley there, hid himself near the road. Shot Hastings from point-blank range right in the face.”
Sam nodded sadly. “I saw that,” he said. His emotions were under control now, pushed back deep inside him where it was all comfortable. “Will Viskosky be OK?” he asked.
Bono watched the helicopter landing in the distance, its enormous rotors blowing up swirling vortices of sand in the landing lights. “He’s going to make it. But it hurt him. I like him. He’s a good guy. I guess he’s going home.”
Sam grabbed a fistful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, then lifted his eyes and looked up at the sky. “We all are,” he announced. “They’re pulling us back.”
Bono didn’t answer for a moment. “No surprise there,” he finally said.
“Yeah, it’s been kind of strange, the past couple days. I mean, here we are, pretending nothing happened. A nuke goes off in Gaza. A nuke goes off in D.C. Half of Iran gets hit. Yet for the past week, we keep soldiering on as if nothing’s changed. Keep up our patrols, keep shooting at the bad guys, keep talking to the locals, trying to turn them into friends, when everyone knows it’s all heading south. Another fireball is coming, there’s no doubt about that. The U.S. can’t take a nuke on D.C. and not retaliate.”
Sam fell silent. The south wind kept blowing bits of sand against his face. “It’s going to get ugly,” he murmured, talking to himself more than to Bono.
An orange-red moon broke out behind a small band of high clouds. Looking at it, Sam continued his observations. “Everything we do now is POF. Protection of Forces. Protect our own guys. That’s all anyone is even thinking about anymore. The locals are getting restless and so are the troops. No one wants to state the obvious, but we all understand. Things are going to change. None of these people are our friends any longer. They know what’s coming, they just don’t know when or where. We move here, they move there, but none of it matters. Our mission here is over. We’ve got to get out before it all comes crashing down.”
Bono cleared his throat. “So what now?” he asked.
Sam shook his head sadly. “I don’t know where they’ll send us, but for a while we’re heading back to the States.”
Silence for a moment. “We’re going home?”
“Soon as we can get airlift and transportation.”
“What will we do then?”
“Wait and see, I guess.” Sam pulled his flexible tube from his chest strap and took a long drink, then stood up and extended a hand toward Bono. “Let’s get back to our men.”