The door swung a hundred eighty degrees and smacked sharply against the plywood wall on which it was mounted. Corelli, the straight-arrow kid from the night before, literally leaped from the stool on which he’d been sitting, back partly turned to the door, writing a letter. The stool went tripping into a corner as Corelli launched himself up and backward, turning in midair and smacking into the wall, his face confusion and terror, his arms up protectively.
“Are you gonna break my balls!?” Black shouted at the kid.
Corelli, back to the wall, flinched and jumped, all at once.
“What? No, sir, I—”
Black, planted in the threshold, stalked into the tiny room.
“Because if you’re gonna pull the same B.S. these other two did,” he said loudly, “just tell me now so I can go back to the FOB and write all three of you up for obstructing and you can explain yourselves to the court-martial.”
The kid looked even more frightened at hearing the word court-martial than he had at Black bursting into his room like a bomb going off.
“Sir!” he cried, baffled. “No, I’m—I’m not . . . What?”
Black pointed at the upturned stool.
“Sit.”
Corelli scurried and stood it up and got his butt in it.
Black sat down on the edge of his bunk, facing him. He pointed at the soldier’s chest.
“Are you going to talk to me,” he said sternly, “or are you going to waste my time like your buddies?”
“No, sir,” Corelli stammered. “I mean, yes, sir, I will talk to you. I’m not going to waste your time.”
The kid looked pale. Black squinted at him for a few seconds, marveling at how young the slight soldier looked. The taut skin on his small neck, Black was fairly sure, had never been shaved.
“I met you last night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know what a fifteen-six is?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Do you know what this one is about?”
“I think so, sir,” Corelli said nervously, rubbing his hand through blond stubble atop his head.
“Why do you think so?”
“Because I knew I was gonna get in trouble over that warning shot, sir.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
Corelli looked confused.
“But I’m being investigated, right, sir?”
Black sighed. Soldiers.
“It’s not you, specifically. I’m just talking to everyone so we can write down what happened.”
“But I was the shooter, sir.”
So the kid did want to talk.
“Okay,” said Black, cooling. “I mean, why don’t we just start at the beginning.”
He pulled out his notebook and a pen, taking a moment to look around Corelli’s little room.
It was the most spartan of the three. Little bookshelf with a Bible and some paperbacks. Photographs from back home tacked to the wall. Parents, it looked like, and an adoring little sister maybe. Corelli in civilian clothes posing in a line of wholesome-looking teenagers, arms linked across shoulders, waterfall in the background. Camping trip with a church group from the look of it.
A tinny little boom box sat on a top shelf in the corner, emitting some kind of bombastic 1970s-era art rock opus. Gongs and wind chimes mingled with meandering synthesizers and nature sounds. Didn’t seem like the kid’s speed.
“Michael A. Corelli, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Black sped through the formalities, which even he was losing patience for. He tossed the notebook aside and sat back against the wall.
“Okay,” he said to Corelli. “Tell it.”
The kid ran it down. It was pretty much just like Brydon had told it, to the extent he had been willing to tell it.
They’d been down in the village to find the chief, after Miller shot the goat in the fog the night before. They wanted him to identify the owner so they could make amends, but while the meeting was still going on inside his house more and more local guys from town started showing up. They weren’t happy, and they were yelling stuff at the joes pulling security.
“What were they saying?” Black asked.
“I don’t know, sir. Danny was inside the chief’s house.”
“How long’s Danny been with the unit?”
“Long as I’ve been here, sir.”
The gongs and wind chimes on the boom box had given way to pretentiously complex Look-at-me-play electric guitar lines.
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Anyway, I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but they weren’t happy, and they were starting to get in our faces.”
“Where were you guys at that point?”
“We were in the middle of the town, sort of in the town square I guess. It’s basically just dirt and grass with homes around it. We were spread out, facing outward, pulling security while the others were inside.”
“Caine and Merrick were in with the chief?”
“Sergeant Caine was outside supervising us, sir.”
“Where was Lieutenant Pistone?”
“He wasn’t on that patrol, sir.”
Figures.
“It was just Sergeant Merrick in the chief’s house, sir,” Corelli went on, “and the captain.”
“Captain?”
“There was a captain I didn’t know along with us that day, sir. We met him at his helicopter down at the river.”
The Civil Affairs officer whose report had triggered the 15-6 investigation.
“Okay,” Black said.
“So there were a lot of these guys from the town by that point. Some of them were young, and some of them were the older guys.”
“All right.”
“And there was this group of younger guys that was close to where I was standing. And, like, they sort of started crowding me. Like, they’re yelling at me and I don’t know what they’re saying but they’re mad, and I got the feeling that one of them, the guy who was kind of the leader, was about to grab for my weapon.”
“What made you think that?”
“I just had that feeling, sir. You know?”
“Okay.”
“I mean,” said Corelli, “I’ve been in more than one of these Afghani towns, sir, and you can tell when something is about to go bad.”
“I understand.”
“And I’m telling you, sir, this was about to go bad. And these guys sort of pressed in on me and I just could tell, I just knew that this guy was about to grab for my weapon.”
The drums had fallen in full force alongside the guitar lines, and a “singer” who appeared to know only how to howl and yowl in the highest registers had joined the fray. Something about honeydew and rivers.
“Was your weapon attached to you?”
“Yes, sir. I had it on the D-ring like usual.”
“So what then?”
“So right at that moment when I sort of knew that was about to happen, I took about two steps backward to clear myself from the Afghani guys and I raised my weapon over their heads and I put three rounds into the wall of one of the mud houses off the square behind where they were standing.”
Black frowned.
“Where was Sergeant Caine at that point?”
“He was on the other side of the square, sir.”
“Why didn’t you wait for him to tell you what to do?”
Corelli shook his head: Not that kind of situation.
“It was just one of those split-second things, sir,” he said. “He was probably seventy-five or a hundred meters away, and I mean, he could see me and I could see him, but I would have had to shout and get his attention just to communicate. Or use my radio, which would have taken even longer. I didn’t think I could wait, sir, and I didn’t want to shoot the guys.”
“Were they aimed shots?”
Corelli nodded vigorously.
“Absolutely, sir. I found the closest solid target behind where they were standing. I’ve got a magnification sight on my rifle and I could see exactly where the rounds were hitting the wall. I know I didn’t put any into the window.”
“You ever been in a civilian-type situation like this in Afghanistan before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you never had to fire warning shots before?”
“Um, no, sir,” said Corelli. “Not in any of the previous civilian-type situations I’ve been in with this platoon.”
The interminable song seemed to be reaching some kind of climax. It sounded as though the entire set of drums and gongs and cymbals and wind chimes had been hurled down a stairwell and powderized in a wood chipper at the bottom. The singer wailed like he was being sucked into a black hole. It was awful.
Black tried to focus.
“Uh, why didn’t you shoot into the air?”
Corelli looked at him funny for a moment.
“Well, ’cause they’ll come down again, sir. I mean, we can’t just shoot crazy in the air like Iraqis do after soccer games and stuff.”
“Fair enough.”
Black felt foolish. He was having a hard time concentrating on his questions. He was distracted by the lyrics to the song, which apparently wasn’t done yet after all.
A thousand years have come and gone
He looked at Corelli, who was looking at the floor.
“I guess I was a little jumpy, sir.”
“Why were you jumpy?”
“Because the town had been so mad, sir.”
Black thought a moment, squeezing his thoughts between the singer’s yowling about the sky stopping or something.
“Why did you say you knew you’d be in trouble before?”
Corelli cleared his throat.
“When we got back from the patrol the lieutenant told me I would probably be in trouble if there was ever an investigation.”
The guy wouldn’t stop about the frozen sky.
“He mentioned an investigation?”
“That was the term he used, sir.”
Black quietly congratulated himself on correctly deducing from a mere photograph the sort of petty and ineffectual leader the absent Pistone must have been.
“Why do you think the town guys were so mad?” he asked.
Corelli looked up at Black, hesitating.
“I don’t think that’s a question I can answer, sir.”
Now the singer wanted the world to end.
“Why not?”
Or for morning to come. Hard to say.
“Um,” Corelli hesitated. “Sergeant Merrick told me not to, uh, speculate on anything that I don’t have direct knowledge of, sir.”
“I thought you said that someone’s goat had gotten killed the night before.”
“Yes, sir,” said Corelli. “It did, sir. I just, I mean, I’m not supposed to assume that I know what’s in their head at a particular time, sir.”
Praying for the light
“All I know about that day specifically,” Corelli went on, “is that a goat got killed the night before . . .”
Prison of the lost . . .
“. . . and the guys in the town were mad when we were there the next day. I can’t say what—”
Xanadu.
Black startled to attention.
Xaaaaaaaaaa-naaaaaaaa-dooooooo . . .
“What’s this?” he demanded.
“Huh?”
“What’s this?” Black asked again.
Corelli looked at him blankly.
“What’s what, sir?”
“This.”
Black thumbed at the CD player.
“The music?” Corelli asked. “The Wizard gave it to me.”
He looked at Black, brow furrowed.
“It’s kind of cool, right, sir?”
“What’s ‘Xanadu’?” Black asked.
“Sir?”
“In the song.”
Corelli shook his head.
“It’s just the song, I think, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Wizard said it’s from a poem, I think, sir.”
“What poem?”
Corelli shrugged.
“Some Wizard poem, sir. He reads a lot of crazy stuff.”
“Huh.”
Corelli appeared to remember something.
“He said ‘Xanadu is what comes before the end of the world,’ whatever that means. I think it’s just the song, sir.”
Black shook his head and refocused on the interview. The singer, who now seemed depressed, rolled on.
Corelli explained how the warning shots succeeded in backing off the little group of guys that were hassling him, and startled the rest of the crowd. Caine took over at that point, and the chief came out of his house with Merrick and the visiting captain and calmed everybody down.
“What happened then?”
“At that point, we beat feet and went home, sir,” explained Corelli. “We especially didn’t want to push it with the town that particular day, so we just got out and came back here.”
Black thought back over the interview. The singer, who was howling again in anguish over some sort of existential tragedy, made it difficult to do so clearly.
“Okay,” he said. “I think that’s it. Are you willing to write it all down in a sworn statement later so I can take that back with me to the FOB?”
Corelli looked at him earnestly.
“Anything you ask me about,” he said with his strange formality, “is what I can put in a sworn statement, sir.”
“Okay,” Black said breezily. “Is that it, or is there anything else to add?”
Corelli was still looking at him.
“That is everything I have to say about that day, sir.”
Black thanked him for his time and apologized for startling him before.
“I’m okay with surprises, sir.”
Odd kid. Black left him to his letter-writing.
The endless art rock song still hadn’t exhausted itself. The guitar line was back, circling around on itself over and over as he stepped out into the hallway with relief.
—
Black poked his head into the guard shack and proffered the pack of smokes.
“And how, sir.”
He came in and they all lit up. They shot the breeze and watched the fog come in again.
“You guys got Internet here?” Black asked.
“C’mon, sir,” said the first soldier, dragging. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, I figured maybe a satellite connection or something.”
The kid just shook his head, exhaling.
“Ain’t no satellite to talk to from here, sir,” he said.
He thumbed upward, indicating the steep mountainsides rising above them.
“No line of sight.”
Black nodded.
“Ain’t no M.W.R. ever been up this valley,” the soldier declared, “or ever gonna be up this valley, sir.”
That stood for Morale, Welfare, and Recreation, which was the Army term for the makeshift little recreation centers you found on every FOB—Ping-Pong, TV, board games, Internet—and for all Army initiatives taken in the name of M, W, and R, like getting satellite uplinks to remote posts so joes could check in back home.
“Who’s Danny trying to pick up on his antenna?”
“Danny,” the kid scoffed. “Danny’s crazy, sir. Freaking ’terp. Thinks he’s gonna get his hajji music all the way up here.”
He shook his head again.
“No point,” he said. “No one to listen to, no one to talk to.”
The other one, the mustachioed Bosch, nodded slightly.
“Only way we’re ever gonna send an e-mail,” the soldier finished, “is for them to hurry and get us the fuck outta this bitch.”
“How long you guys got left?” Black asked.
The soldier made a How the hell am I supposed to know? gesture.
“Hell, we ain’t even supposed to be here now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this post ain’t even supposed to be here, sir. Supposed to be closed.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“The L.T. told us,” the soldier answered.
“Pistone?”
The kid nodded.
“Came back from the FOB one time and said that Battalion told him this place was scheduled to be shut down. COP Heavenly too.”
The soldier hocked up a deep wad from his throat and spat it through the window.
“Said it’s part of a ‘strategic realignment’ or some bullshit. I don’t remember what he called it, but the point is, we’re retreating. Giving up on this fucking valley.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yep, sir,” the soldier said. “This base is abandoned. We just ain’t abandoned it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Assets got diverted. They were all ready to move us out and dismantle this place and then at the last minute Brigade said they needed all the engineer equipment and the backhaul trucks and all that for some big fight they were having in another valley. So they said, ‘Sit tight, we’ll be back for you soon.’”
“How long ago was that?”
“Three months.”
“What?!”
“That’s right, L.T. Three months and we ain’t heard shit.”
He spat again.
“Not even ‘We haven’t forgotten about you.’ Fucking radio silence.”
One of the worst sins in the Army, Black had always thought, was leaders failing to pass information down to their lowest subordinates. Too many people seemed to think that hoarding information, then doling it out like pieces of Halloween candy, made you a strong leader.
He wondered at what point in the chain of command, from the sergeants who directly supervised these guys all the way up to the colonel in charge of their battalion, the communication had broken down.
“But of course we can’t just hunker down like smart people and ride it out,” the kid said, agitated. “We gotta ‘Keep On With The Mission.’ We gotta keep going out on the trail, go on our goddamn patrols, fucking clear out Sniper Town every other day, cruise the town, get shot half the time, so . . . what? Maybe someday we interdict some fucking hajji wannabe suicide bomber? Like they don’t know any other goddamn way around this valley.”
After his speech he seemed to calm himself. He took a long drag, killing the last of the smoke.
“Welcome to the land of the lost, sir. We are a platoon without a purpose.”
“When was your unit in Iraq?” Black asked out of nowhere.
The kid looked at him, startled.
“How’d you know that, L.T.?”
“‘Hajji,’” Black offered.
It was a holdover term more common to Iraq. In Afghanistan you’d hear “muj,” for mujahideen. Among other things.
“Oh-three,” the soldier answered.
Black nodded.
“Hey, sir,” the kid said. “Hajji is hajji, whatever shitty country he lives in. We go there, we go here, we go all around the world and hajji’s always the same. He lives in shit and lets it go to shit, and we keep coming around like we’re gonna fucking fix it for him.”
Bosch watched his friend rant while allowing smoke to fan upward from his mouth.
“Hajji don’t surf,” he deadpanned.
The first soldier snorted a single laugh and flipped the butt out the window.
“So here we are, sir,” he said. “Remember us when they remember us, I guess.”
That hung in the air for a bit.
“Heck,” the soldier said unconvincingly, “maybe they won’t hit us anymore because they know we’re leaving.”
Black said nothing. Bosch just looked at his friend with something between exasperation and pity.
“How long since you guys got back to the FOB?” Black asked.
“Shit,” the first soldier spat. “Whattaya say, Bosch? Like, two months?”
Bosch tipped a jutting chin upward in a barely perceptible nod.
“Even that,” the soldier went on, “was bullshit. That wasn’t no trip back to the FOB. Kept us locked down in the barracks there, practically. Did laundry, which was a joke ’cause our shit’s gonna be all nasty in a week anyway. Took us over to chow in a group. Thought they were gonna march us over there in formation like basic training. Same for the PX and the Internet café. Didn’t get to get out or do shit. Then twenty-four hours later, it’s ‘Back on the trucks’ and we came back up here.”
“How come?”
“Ask our leadership, sir. Wanted us to ‘stay focused’ or some bullshit. FOB Omaha may as well be stateside. I couldn’t find my way around that place to save my life. Couldn’t even tell you what freaking units are there.”
The fog was all the way in and slowly rising again.
“What’s ‘Xanadu’?” Black asked.
“What’s what?”
“Xanadu.”
The soldier looked at him blankly. Black looked at Bosch, who shook his head.
“Never mind.”
Black took a last drag on his cigarette.
“I’m not supposed to be here either,” he said.
The soldier seemed confused.
“What, like, here at Vega, sir?”
“No. Up here in this guard post.”
“Oh.”
Black tossed his smoke out the window and turned to go. Bosch spoke up.
“Guess we got something in common, then, L.T.”
He stopped and looked. Bosch had turned back to his weapon.
Black stepped out into the night. Danny was there at the far corner of the roof again, wrestling uselessly with his antenna.