Brydon shrank in his seat next to the burly sergeant.
“Hey,” Black answered, looking around the group.
The assembled soldiers had lapsed into an uncomfortable silence without being sure exactly why. Guys exchanged awkward glances.
Except Shannon, who wore his habitual sneer, and Caine, who watched Black with a blank expression on his face.
“Everyone beat it,” Caine said. “Gotta talk to the L.T.”
The soldiers from the guard shack hesitated, then rose to go. Shannon elbowed the two with him, sending them toward the exit. Brydon squirmed in his seat.
“Yeah,” Black said, looking at Brydon. “Everyone beat it.”
Brydon rose, scowling at the ground, and went with the others. Only Shannon, Caine, and Black remained.
“Pull up a chair, sir,” Caine said, his face still blank.
Shannon was standing near the edge of the slab, behind the chair where Black had been sitting before. Beyond him, the night.
Black stepped forward to a chair at the head of the semicircle instead. He sat, keeping his eyes on Caine, with Shannon’s towering figure in his peripheral vision. He placed his useless rifle across his knees, pointing to the left, with one hand resting on it, and waited for Caine to speak.
Caine took his time lighting up a smoke for himself.
“I’m glad you told me where you were going, sir,” he said through an idle cloud. “I was getting worried down there.”
Black watched the sergeant carefully, his mind racing.
Don’t do it.
“Yeah, well, I’m fine,” he responded. “But I’m glad you came up here.”
“Oh yeah?”
You have to.
“Yeah,” said Black. “I was hoping you could do me a favor when you go back down to Vega.”
Off to his right he thought he saw Shannon smirk. Caine carefully maintained his empty expression.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I was hoping you could check my room for me.”
Caine showed confusion in spite of himself.
“Yeah, I must have left it unlocked when I went to talk to Sergeant Merrick about Danny yesterday,” Black said, watching Caine’s eyes carefully. “Someone was in there.”
There it was. See it?
“Maybe you could check and make sure I didn’t leave it unlocked again,” he went on, glancing at Shannon, who was looking at Caine.
Caine said nothing.
“Anyway,” Black said nonchalantly, turning back to Caine. “It’s a good thing I checked all my stuff before I came up here.”
Caine’s cigarette dangled, momentarily forgotten. Shannon looked from Caine to Black and back again.
“Hey, Shannon,” Black said, eyes locked with Caine’s. “Why don’t you beat it too?”
“Yeah,” Caine said slowly. “Beat it.”
Shannon gave a last look at Caine and stumped off toward the boulders. He worked his hulking frame down through them with effort, and was gone.
There was no one left on the slab but Black and Caine and the untended fire, which was working its way down to embers. The smell made Black think of camping.
Caine took a long, theatrical pull on his smoke and exhaled slowly, his hardened eyes fixed on Black the whole time.
“Wonder if you’re lyin’,” he said idly, his gaze drifting down to Black’s rifle. “Or who gave you the parts if you ain’t.”
“Cut the crap,” Black said. “What’s this, your mob boss impersonation?”
Caine shook his head in mock sadness.
“Told you not to come up here, L.T.,” he said. “Tryin’ to help you out.”
“Where’s Traynor?”
Caine’s eyes rose from Black’s rifle to his face.
“Wonder what else you’re lyin’ about,” he said quietly.
“Where’s Traynor? Why’d you tell me you didn’t know him?”
“There is no Traynor,” Caine answered. “He’s dead.”
“No he’s not. He just went on leave and came back a few weeks ago.”
Caine couldn’t conceal his surprise at that.
“Who,” he asked, “told you that, Lieutenant?”
Careful.
Black swallowed.
“I’m an S-1 POG, remember?”
POG—“pogue”—was for Person Other than Grunt, a fighting soldier’s term for those who did noncombat jobs.
He pressed the bluff.
“You think we don’t have unit rosters down on Omaha?”
Caine’s eyes narrowed as the gears turned. Black knew where the sergeant’s thoughts were headed.
Stop.
“You lied about Traynor getting killed here,” Black said, piling on. “Merrick may believe that bullshit, but I don’t. Where is he? What did you do to him?”
Caine looked Black from top to bottom, seething. His bulk filled his chair, rippling forearms draped over the straining fabric arms, and for a moment Black thought he might spring from it.
Instead he flipped his cigarette at the fire, admiring the opposite rock wall.
“You’re reaching,” he announced with some satisfaction. “You don’t know shit.”
He turned to Black.
“And you’re bluffing,” he said, his eyes cold.
“Bullshit,” Black spat. “You don’t know what I know and don’t know.”
“Who told you about Traynor?”
Stop.
“You lied about the day you took Vega,” Black pressed. “I know that. Why’d you leave out the drugs? Why’d you lie about who you were fighting that day? What have you got going on that you don’t want me to—”
“I fucking told you, Lieutenant!” Caine snapped, nearly shouting. “I told you I was trying to help you, and I still a—”
The ledge shook with the sound of an explosion from below. Caine and Black both jumped up from their chairs. Caine went first, practically leaping through the opening in the boulders. Black followed him down through the network of steps and ladders, to the level where the radio shack sat.
Several soldiers were there in the shadows, looking down into the night with goggles and night scopes. Shannon was pounding up the stairs from the level below.
“What happened?” Caine demanded.
Bosch was there, leaning on a wooden rail, peering downward through a rifle scope. He wore only a T-shirt underneath his body armor, ropy arms bare and tensed.
Shannon started to shout something, but Bosch cut in.
“Thought I saw three guys with rifles,” he said blandly, scanning left and right.
Shannon looked at him in surprise.
“What guys?” Caine demanded.
“Don’t know,” replied Bosch in a bored voice, eye to the scope. “Musta been wrong, or they scattered when I tossed the grenade.”
He lowered his rifle and turned to the assembled crowd. Shannon peered at him in scowled confusion.
“Or I got ’em,” Bosch mused as though pondering the weather.
He scrawled a finger back and forth across his mustache. His eyes briefly met Black’s.
“Probably should check it out in the morning,” he concluded with a shrug.
Black looked from Bosch to Shannon and back to Bosch, who raised a palm in a mock calming gesture.
“Relax, L.T.,” he said. “Ain’t the end of the world.”
Heavy steps stomped down the stairs above them.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Merrick, sweating from the climb back up and over the mountain, emerged from the darkness above them.
“Who’s lobbing grenades?”
“Bosch,” said Caine, looking at Bosch skeptically, “said he thought he saw someone down there.”
Merrick noted Caine’s presence with surprise.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
Caine shrugged.
“Came to check on the L.T.”
“What?”
Caine was all innocence.
“I knew you had your business to do, and the L.T. don’t know his way around up here and we’re sorta responsible for him, so I figured I’d come up and look after him.”
Merrick looked squinty-eyed at Caine.
“Anyway,” Caine went on, “you find anything out about Danny?”
Merrick brushed off the question.
“How did you know the lieutenant was up here?”
Caine looked at Black in the shadowy light. For a moment Black thought he was going to say it.
“Just figured,” he said, shrugging again, his eyes locked with Black’s. “He wasn’t at the COP, and everyone’s trying to find Danny, so I just figured.”
“Yeah, well don’t just figure,” Merrick said brusquely. “Get back to Vega where you’re supposed to be.”
In the dim light Black imagined Caine reddening, being dressed down like that in front of a bunch of joes. Caine opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Finally, he put his hands up.
“Hey, no sweat,” he said. “Just tryin’ to help.”
“Yeah, well, go help at the COP where you’re supposed to be fucking helping.”
That one, Black thought, must’ve burned.
“Take Brydon and Shannon with you,” Merrick directed. “And stop wandering around by yourself.”
“Hey, roger that,” Caine muttered, turning to the stairs. “You the man.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Merrick said to his back, grinding it in. “I’m the man.”
“I’m coming,” said Black out of nowhere.
Caine and Shannon turned. Everyone else did too.
“What?” said Merrick.
He looked at Black with furrowed brow. Black held his eyes for a long moment.
“I’m going with them,” he declared, shrugging as though it were the obvious thing to do.
“I need to talk to you, sir.”
“Later,” Black replied.
He turned back to Caine and Shannon, who regarded him with unconcealed surprise.
Thanks, Bosch.
“Let’s go back to Vega,” he said.
—
They walked the entire way down, nearly two hours, in silence. Black walked in the middle of the line, with Shannon’s looming figure behind him. Brydon walked ahead of him, and Caine led at the front. The only words came toward the end when Caine radioed ahead to alert Vega they were approaching.
It was still dark when they came in through the gate to the puzzled look of the soldier on duty there. They crossed the courtyard, where Caine turned to Brydon.
“Go check on the wounded from yesterday,” he said.
“Roger,” Brydon mumbled and went off, stealing a last look at Black.
“Go get some chow or something,” Caine said to Shannon.
Shannon paused a moment, regarding Caine, before lumbering away. That left Black and Caine standing in the courtyard facing each other.
“Guess you probably oughtta go see about your business too,” Black said to Caine.
Caine said nothing.
“Thanks for the lift back here,” Black added.
He stood motionless, staring blankly at the sergeant, who stared back with barely concealed rage. Finally, without a word to Black, Caine turned and stalked off toward the complex.
Black watched him go as he himself ambled nonchalantly toward the passageway which he knew would take him to Bay Two. As soon as Caine had disappeared from sight, he broke into a run.