When the operators got back to the FOB, news of the raid was already streaming through the international news outlets. Video of the streets and bodies all torn to hell flooded the different broadcasts. Crowds were rioting and burning American flags, holding the Koran up and spitting in reporters’ microphones. The teams gathered in the TOC for the AAR and watched the news feeds, looking at the streets they’d been on hours before through the eyes of Al Jazeera, the BBC, and CNN. A reporter held up a teddy bear and talked about possible civilian casualties. One of the techs watching the raid in the TOC pointed at the bear. “Ten bucks they placed that in the street after we left,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. And civvies don’t tote weapons. What the hell, CNN?”
During the AAR, guys watching the raid on monitors back in the TOC told the teams people were running toward the compound like water rushing into a sewer. People were hopping rooftops and sprinting from storefronts and alleyways carrying AKs and RPGs, anything that threw fire. People came forward in waves and the men dropped them all as long as they carried weapons. Men or women, it didn’t matter. Their CO looked gaunt and exhausted. He held a cup of coffee in his hand during the meeting and it shook gently during the whole brief. He looked like he hadn’t heard a single word the teams had said. He kept rubbing his forehead, running his hands through his hair, and nodding along even after they’d stopped talking.
The whole squadron was put off the green for a week so command could sift through the blowback and decide how much to release to the public. The phones would be locked down and the men’s families would see all the news broadcasts and think about the calls that weren’t coming, and the smart ones would connect the dots. The two governments would posture with each other and make demands and accept political apologies in public, exchange partial truths and come to commonsense understandings in private.
While they were off the green, the men lifted and ate and shot at the range. They read books and watched feeds from other countries and targets. The news broadcasted reports on the raid for days and the men pointed out discrepancies during meals and between sets. Some tallies had hundreds of deaths while others had them as low as forty-six. After the AAR, they came up with eighty-three. But the birds couldn’t verify the kills like the men could. Regardless of the reports, a lot of people weren’t breathing anymore. The guys felt confident they didn’t drop anyone who didn’t have a weapon and Shaw knew he didn’t, but the men still didn’t paint the mission a success. They didn’t find a single device, let alone a single FAM. The family men in the squadrons took the news reports calling them murderers of children especially hard. They ran until they puked and wore their hats down low on their faces.
Shaw dreamt for a few nights about the woman he and Hagan flex-cuffed, and decided he didn’t need the sleep bad enough. He packed his ruck and walked around during the day and night, logging more than a hundred miles during the week. He would watch the clouds pass and blot out the sky and let the wind bat his beard. In one of the dreams Hagan used the knife to slit the woman’s throat when she lifted her chin. It was a bloody mess. In another, her face was covered by her chador and then she ripped it off and it was Shaw’s grandma. She smiled at him with bloody teeth.
He and Massey had a catch every day. They talked about the raid and others that had passed and about Penelope. The leather struck leather for hours in the sun. It felt good. Like home and childhood. One afternoon Shaw was wearing one of Massey’s Cardinals hats for him again and Massey told him not to mess with the brim.
“You told me you wanted me to break it in.”
“Break it in, yeah. Not fuck it up.”
Shaw gave the brim a tug and Massey winced.
“How’re you a Cardinals fan and a Bears fan?” Shaw asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well. You’re from Illinois. So you got the Bears, I’ll give you that. But what about the Cardinals. Why not the Cubs or the Sox?”
“We’re closer to Saint Louis than Chicago.”
“Then why aren’t you a Rams fan?”
“The Rams were in L.A. when I grew up,” Massey said. “Plus, I don’t like the AL and I’m not a martyr, so being a Cubs fan is a definite no-go.”
“Got it.”
“You giving me shit about my teams? You’ve got the Vikings and the Twins. Don’t get me started on hockey. You couldn’t even hold on to your damn team. Or basketball. You don’t want me to get started on basketball.”
“We’ve got rivers and lakes and Mother Earth. You can keep the Cards and the Bears.”
Massey laughed.
They were really hitting the leather well. The sun was starting to dip and Shaw felt good. He went into his chest pocket, took out the envelope holding his grandma’s necklace.
“Do you think Penelope would like this?”
He held it up by its silver chain. It looked beautiful in the light. Every shade of blue was crisp and clear, the lines of white thin and pure like silk or diamond threads. The sun cast its blue mass in the dirt. It even made the dirt look nice.
“That was your grandma’s.”
Massey wasn’t asking. Every man in the squadron had probably seen Shaw’s grandma wearing it in the picture taped to the locker. She was beautiful for her age and the necklace hinted at royalty. Guys passing by might have thought Shaw was related to some foreign queen or duchess.
Shaw nodded.
“Why would you want to give it away?”
“Not so much wanting to give it away as hoping it would get better use than sitting inside one of my pockets,” Shaw said. “My kit’ll crush it.”
“Penelope would love it. You’re sure?”
Shaw nodded. He was. “Just give it to her in person. I want to hear about how excited she is. And I don’t trust the damn mail.”
“You’ve been wearing it under your kit?”
Shaw nodded.
“In the envelope?”
Shaw nodded. He walked over to Massey, put the necklace in the envelope, and handed it to him. Massey held the envelope up in his hand.
“Must’ve brought you some luck,” Massey said. “That blast should’ve killed you and Donna. And I won’t put it in the mail. Maybe it’ll bring me some luck, too.” He put the envelope in his cargo pocket and closed the flap.
They threw the ball over the dirt for hours, stopped talking for a while. The only sound the ball striking mitts and the birds that flew overhead. Then their arms got sore and they forgot about it in time. Shaw hadn’t had a catch that long in his whole life. He felt weightless. Then Massey spoke.
“You think we’re killing more than we’re making?”
“What? Who?”
“Terrorists. Al-Ayeelaa. Bomb makers. HVTs. Resident dickheads. Whoever.”
Shaw caught the ball and ran his fingers over the stained off-white leather. “I hope so. We’re killing a lot.”
Massey nodded to himself. “I think I’m glad I’m getting out. The war’s changing.”
“Changing how?”
“Drones. Kid suicide bombers. Al-Ayeelaa. No one wants to shoot it out anymore. We’re barely going after key guys anymore because we already killed them. UBL. Zarqawi. Saddam and his sons. No one even knows the structure of the damn cell. Nothing but wannabe dons and kid lieutenants left and we’re wasting them before they get big.”
“You want to let them get big? You don’t have to be big to blow people apart.”
Massey nodded for a while and then threw the ball back. “I got six of them the other day, Shaw. How many of them were innocent? We got what, eighty-three?”
It had gotten cold out. They could see their breaths rising in front of them.
“Angles and opportunities, Mass. And you didn’t hit anyone that wasn’t trying to hit you. Did you see anyone get hit without a weapon?”
Massey spat on the ground and caught the ball. He shook his head. Then he was quiet for a while. The ball smacked the leather for a few more throws, neither one of them saying much of anything. “But that was a lot of people. We didn’t get any of the Pikes. They weren’t even there. No computers. No phones. Nothing.”
“Yeah, they must’ve ducked out after popping hot,” Shaw said.
Massey looked at the sky and shrugged. “Or they were never there.”
The clouds were moving fast and disappearing over the mountains, tiny teeth of the earth in the distance. Massey fired the ball. It hit the meat of Shaw’s palm, stung hard.
“You ever feel like a murderer?”
Shaw dropped his glove to his thigh. “That’s a hell of a question, Mass.”
Massey shrugged.
Shaw thought about it and rifled the ball back at him. He tried to make it hurt. Massey didn’t let on, but Shaw thought it marked his palm pretty good.
“Probably not. Maybe. No. No. We kill people, but that doesn’t mean they were murdered. You hold a weapon, you can only be killed. Not murdered.”
Massey let his hands fall to his sides. “That boy in the pass wasn’t holding shit. And that little girl in the poppy fields? Whenever I see Penelope I see that little girl. Smell those damn poppies. Hell, I can’t hold Penelope’s hand without feeling the hand of that little girl. I’m fucked if I ever have a daughter.”
Shaw thought of their last deployment, the night their team hit a river hamlet in a field of white and pink poppies and three squirters fled the objective. Two men had weapons and a woman looked to be strapped with a device, so the team took them all out. Shaw walked up to the bodies with Hagan, Cooke, Massey, and Dalonna, and they began checking the dead. Then there was an animal shriek, a high squeal coming from the dirt that sounded like a fawn Shaw had hit with his grandpa’s truck when he was learning to drive—the fawn’s legs had gotten all wrapped up in the Ford’s axle like a barber pole. Shaw rolled over the dead woman and there was a little girl lying trapped beneath her. The woman had been carrying the little girl like a backpack. The girl was wailing and pulling at the dead woman’s black hair and Massey freed her from the corpse and walked her back to the house while the team finished searching the bodies. They found out the woman was the girl’s mother and one of the dead HVTs the father, so they had orphaned her. Shaw watched the little girl standing at kneepad height, holding Massey’s hand while he walked her away from her parents. She had leaves and little poppy petals in her tangled black hair and she kept looking back at her mom and dad lying dead at Shaw’s feet. In Shaw’s dreams, her cries had turned to laughter.
Shaw had a big dip in and it was getting stale, not settling right. His stomach started fighting back. He spat it out and ran his tongue over the stray flecks, gathered them together and started spitting them out in bursts. He shook his head.
“I hope he was a lookout, maybe for those two guys Mike put down the night before. If that’s the case, then it was operational security and just part of the knife.”
“And if he wasn’t a lookout?” Massey asked.
“Then yeah, I think we could’ve murdered him. But I gave the call and it’s on me, then. And that girl—” He shook his head. He saw her eyes and her face with the poppy petals in her hair. Always. He saw Massey holding her hand and walking her back to her home while he searched the mother and father. Always would. “She was a mistake. We shouldn’t have killed her mom.”
Massey caught the ball and took off his glove and rubbed the ball between his hands. “A mistake.”
“Yeah. A mistake. A bad one.”
Massey nodded to himself and tossed the ball back. “Hell of a mistake. She doesn’t have parents anymore.” He rested his glove under his armpit and rubbed his hands together again. “My hands are sore. And I think we murdered her.”
“We didn’t do anything. I gave the damn order and Hagan took the shot. It’s on me. And if it happened once or twice it doesn’t mean it’s a habit or an identity. Who we are.”
Massey smiled at him and nodded. He held his glove out like a serving platter. “I’m worn out, I guess. Over the war. And one of us would’ve taken that shot with or without you saying so. You’re a good shit, Dutch,” he said. “Not sleeping for shit, though, huh?”
“You watching me sleep?”
Massey laughed. “Nah, I’m not that creepy. Eyes and ears, you know?” He walked to Shaw and slapped him on the back. “Part of the job.”
Shaw spat and rubbed his beard. Then he took off his hat and rubbed his eyes.
“There’s no shame in it, Dutch. Hell, we all sleep like crap.”
• • •
Everyone was losing it being off the green. The teams walked around the compound loaded up with hundreds of pounds of gear and shot on the range until trigger fingers blistered over and popped. If the days were theirs to do as they pleased, they spent the nights together watching feeds from other raids as if it were required. Hagan decided it was okay to start whacking off in the tent, so he just put a blanket over himself and pretended no one else was there, grabbed a Playboy or a Hustler and went to town on himself. Dalonna told him he was disgusting and Hagan just called him a prude and started asking for pictures of Mirna before he propped up his whack tent. Dalonna picked his battles, though. He didn’t split Hagan’s lip or mash up his guts. He waited.
Then the last night they were off the green he got Massey, Cooke, and Shaw to leave the tent when Hagan said he was too tired to shoot, ruck, or lift. Dalonna told the three of them to wait outside the tent and then he ran off to the other tents and rounded up the other teams. Somehow nearly twenty guys crept into the tent without Hagan hearing them. Sure enough, Hagan was huddled under a blanket, his hairy white ass sticking out bare and naked in a gap of the cloth. The blanket was rocking back and forth and a dim bulb of light was visible through the blanket. The men could hear the crinkle of magazine pages being turned. Dalonna slapped Hagan’s bare ass and Hagan let out a high yip and they all grabbed ahold of his arms and legs. They carried him out into the night screaming and ass naked, his hard-on slapping his thighs and belly. Then they taped him to the railing of one of the shitters and his hard-on drooped in the cold air like a limp flag on a dead wind.
Dalonna called their CO and told him Hagan wanted to speak with him, said he didn’t look right. It was Shaw’s idea. He was sure every CO worried about their guys and suicides, so they hid behind the shitters. They watched their CO come stomping out of the TOC, his long hair blowing behind him on the wind. He walked with a purpose, quick steps and shoulders tight. Then he saw Hagan and his shoulders dropped, his feet started slipping out from beneath him. He was laughing so hard he had to sit in the dirt. He pulled out a camera from one of his pockets and took a few shots, then hollered for them to “come cut this filthy Hog loose!”
So they did.
And everyone seemed to feel a little better after that.
• • •
Stag1 had no known ties to al-Ayeelaa, but Intel flagged him the entire week the city raid was jamming the airwaves and the squadron was off the green. One of the Pike phones monitored after the failed raid popped briefly at his house and then died off. Stag1 lived in a small two-story house with a red clay roof sitting at the end of a long dirt path lined by trees on either side. It looked like a desert home in Nevada or Arizona. There was an iron gate cutting off the front of his house from the road and a large man-made wall spanning the other three sides of the compound. A child could slip through the posts of the gate and the wall could be hopped with a decent effort. It was a perimeter meant to slow down and control visitors, not necessarily avoid them. A lone tree stood inside the walls a few feet back from the gate and there was a tire swing hanging from a branch in the front yard.
Every weekday Stag1 would get picked up by a silver piece-of-shit van and take the same route into town. The drive crossed two major roads and numerous improvised ones. Altogether, about an hour’s drive. He made a few stops in the bazaars every now and again to inspect melons and other fruits and run his hands through clothes he never bought. Then his driver would take him on a circuit of the neighborhoods. He’d stop off at different buildings for different lengths of time on no particular schedule and in no particular order. He visited his mosque regularly during the three prayer periods in which he wasn’t at home, but after those he could be anywhere at any time. A local intelligence source on the ground let Intel know the drop-off points were cafés known to attract the occasional warlord and cell leader, but these instances were rare and the shops were mostly full of youths too young to fight and village elders discussing community issues. He visited families in the neighborhood, and everywhere he went people came outside to meet him and welcome him into their homes. None of these families were known to operate in cells, but they were mostly academics and business owners, people of influence. That was interesting.
Besides the cafés and friendly homes, he would stop in on his cousins and their children and then his silver piece-of-shit van would drop him off at home, and if it wasn’t the weekend, he’d do the circuit all over again the next day. One time his van stopped on the side of the road and the driver got out to check a tire and Stag1 joined him, put a hand on the driver’s back, and then they both got back in the van and carried on. Stag1 had gotten on his knees to check under the car with his driver.
He was from Oman and wore a white turban and a dark sport coat over a white salwar kameez. He’d take off the coat before entering the mosque but leave it on during his errands and neighborhood visits. He was a father of four and hadn’t gotten his hands bloody directly since the jihad with the Soviets during the 1980s. He led a band of valley locals from the NWFP then and would shift allegiances with every new paycheck. He was known to be courageous and ruthless, and remembered for always having a cigarette in his mouth. He would switch sides at will but prohibited his followers from doing so. He demanded loyalty from his followers and would cut off the right arm and left leg of defectors so they wouldn’t have an intact side for the rest of their lives. He also had a change-of-heart life story primed for the movies. The year the war ended, his wife got pregnant and he decided he didn’t want to vie for control of the country. Instead, he decided to test a war friendship that promised a safer life over the border and he began construction work. He was smart and lucky. All the other warlords who stayed in the fray jockeying for political position would be dead within six years.
Without a formal education he learned on the job and developed a good reputation, started making a living off small government projects that turned into larger ones. Then the American war started and, oddly enough, he came back. Left his new life behind and moved his whole family to a war zone. Intel figured a man versed in putting up structures would probably be equally knowledgeable about bringing them down, so they kept tabs on him for years with cooperation from local intelligence networks. It was odd to move a family into a place where a war was pushing most of the peaceful population away.
He was clean by all accounts, never associating with known cell leaders or members, but once Intel noticed he’d been in-country for years and hadn’t built anything, they got suspicious and started following the people he met with. Sources on the ground couldn’t confirm a specific occupation for him other than some kind of consultant, and then his nephew turned up dead in a mountain ambush with another squadron and Intel decided to start monitoring the dead man’s house. Stag1 never visited the place after the death, even though it was a known home of a relative in the neighborhood and grieving was a formality. Not to mention a familial and neighborly responsibility. He continued visiting other families and neighbors as he normally would but avoided the nephew’s house. Intel didn’t see that as so normal. Add in the Pike phone popping hot right after the raid and Intel decided it might be wise to pick him up and ask him some questions. So the teams got the 4 early on a Saturday night.
They debated whether they should take his van on one of the lesser-traveled roads or in his home, knowing his family would be there. The CO sat in front of them with his elbows on his knees. His hands were clasped and resting on his chin. It looked like he was praying.
“We want to talk to him. The van brings another FAM into the picture and groupthink leads to aggression. We don’t want to put holes in him if we can help it.”
“And us being in his own home wouldn’t lead to aggression?” Cooke said.
“Maybe,” the CO said. “Or maybe he’s smart and would play the game to keep his family safe.” He looked around at the circle of men. Shaw was picking dirt out of his fingernails. “He might not have a lot of fight left in him after the eighties. Plus he’s smart enough to still be alive. Maybe he’s moved past the gangster phase and embraced the provider role—likes being a daddy. We’re just going to talk with him.”
“I don’t know,” Cooke said. “Someone comes into my home, I’m fighting. We can scare him out on the road all alone.”
Everyone was quiet for a while, shifting their legs over their knees and cracking knuckles and necks. Then Hagan spoke up.
“The last interdiction didn’t go too well, Cooke.”
They agreed to take Stag1 at home.
• • •
The teams erected tape layouts of Stag1’s home on the gravel outside the war room and ran tape drills over and over and over again until they knew the layout in their feet and could turn the corners on step counts in their sleep. Intel hired a second-degree source to approach the home and see if she could get inside selling herbal remedies, but the wife didn’t bite. The source got to the front door, though, and reported lots of walls and blind corners leading to a stairwell. The teams marked those off on the tape layouts. Along with Stag1 and his wife, there would likely be at least two young boys at waist height—neither at FAM status yet—and a girl of roughly ten years of age. His oldest daughter was in her twenties and off in Europe at university.
They’d head in slow and smooth, hope for a silent breach and push in carefully. Two assault teams would enter the house and they upped their perimeter teams to three to keep as much attention away from the house as possible. The CO told them to expect the 1 at around 2300 hours, so they checked weapons and batteries, topped off water, and then settled in to wait. Dalonna went off to the phones and Cooke said he was going to rub one out. Massey and Hagan and Shaw sat on the concrete roof of the war room.
It was cold out but clear, so they grabbed jackets, winter caps, and gloves and watched the sun set. They rubbed their hands together and blew into their palms and packed their lips full to the brim, got a good juice flowing. The sky was on fire among the full clouds. Vapor trails from fast-movers crisscrossed the sky and oranges and pinks painted the horizon and swallowed all the blue that was left. It was beautiful.
“Sky’s pretty,” Hagan said. He spat over the lip of the roof. “Too bad the rest of the country is such shit.”
Shaw looked at the sky and thought of the palm trees they flew over on the banks of the rivers to the south. The ancient ruins half swallowed by sand and the royal palaces with their deep green marble walkways. The gold-domed blue mosques that caught the sun and winked back into the sky. They seemed to fly over postcards at times.
“It’s not shit, Hog,” Massey said. “Dumbass cell leaders and pricks just crap all over it and then we come over and piss on it some more and then everyone wonders why it’s such a shit country. It’s not. You could get some Manhattan contractors out here and they’d get hard-ons looking at all these cliffs. They could blast the holy shit out of these rocks, throw up some stockbroker towers, and then call their cousins over in Aspen. You’d have another Dubai surrounded by world-class ski resorts. Thousand-dollar whores would be running around with their executive pimps for long weekends. This isn’t a country. It’s a place full of people that wipe their asses with the land for God, oil, or country—whatever the fuck—and wonder why it stinks so bad. The land is beautiful. We’re shit.” He shook his head. “I’d want to be buried in a country this beautiful.”
Hagan stared at Massey, his eyes wide and his mouth open. Dip was falling out of his lip.
Shaw laughed at Hagan and shrugged. “You’ve offended him, Hog.”
“Damn, Mass,” Hagan said. “You want to be buried here?”
Massey smiled and shook his head. He threw some pebbles off the roof. “Hell, no. This country is a shithole. I’m speaking out of my ass. Sky’s beautiful, though. You’re right about that.”
Shaw laughed again, and Hagan sat with his eyebrows raised to his hairline. Hagan seemed to sink into the concrete a little bit and he was quiet for a while. They watched the sky fade to black, and when the stars came out he spoke up.
“I guess you’re right. It’s not all bad. I wouldn’t mind bringing my wife here one day.” Then he ran his hand through the air. “When all this is over.”
Massey and Shaw looked at each other and then back at Hagan. He had a small smile on his lips and cradled his head with one hand, kept the other on top of his stomach, like he was watching a football game back home. Shaw looked at Massey. He was laughing quietly, doing his best to hold it in and not break Hagan’s peace.
Shaw smiled. “You got a wife you’re keeping from us, Hog?”
“Not yet,” Hagan said. He kept his eyes to the sky, away from Shaw and Massey and the war below. “One day, though. Yeah.”
Shaw nodded and smiled, and Massey clapped Hagan on the shoulder. Then they watched the stars and satellites trade places and dance around the sky until they got the 1.
• • •
They strapped on their kits just after 2300 hours and grabbed their weapons and helmets and walked outside. The heaters of the war room gave way to the hard, cold ground and the sky was clear. Their breaths fogged before them, rose like clouds. Fast-movers screeched above on their bomb runs and the wind bit at the skin exposed beneath Shaw’s beard and above his top and kit. His beard was thick and he was glad for it.
“Closing the damn doors,” Hagan yelled. “We’re sure as shit closing the damn doors.”
No one countered him, so they were all probably freezing. They sat in the Black Hawks while the birds spun up, then they clipped in and shut the doors and the birds carried them away. The Black Hawk was the taxicab of the American wars. Larger than a Little Bird but smaller than a Chinook, it was dependable and everywhere. It fought the strong crosswinds and the machinery groaned and whined as they flew on. The operators sat on the floor of the cabin with their legs cramped against the closed doors. They had to get creative to keep their boots out of one another’s nuts, but eventually they settled in and waited for their legs and asses to go numb. They did soon enough. Hagan took out a pack of peanut M&M’s and they passed them around and tried to find the ones they dropped in the dark. A low green glow from the gunners’ NODs lit the cabin and a red light flashed every now and again and Shaw thought of the holidays he had growing up in Minnesota. They were flying high and opened the doors on the Five mikes out call. The cold air rushed in and hit hard. Hagan yelled out that he should’ve brought long underwear.
“Your nuts would freeze to your legs,” Cooke yelled. “Stop being a pussy.”
They all had a laugh and got some warmth, and hands got busy finding straps and snaps, checking weapons and seals on equipment. Shaw took off his helmet and put on a balaclava and then strapped up again. The other guys followed suit and let their legs dangle in the air. The wind blew Shaw’s legs toward the tail of the bird and he could see small mounds of homes and scattered huts pass below them like moguls on a ski hill. Stag1’s city was to the east, its lights scattered and twinkling soft on the horizon. It looked like a ski resort during Christmastime. Shaw could make out trees here and there without leaves, and they banked sharp to the north and then the pilots radioed in Three mikes out. Shaw put in a big chaw to get some nicotine and warmth flowing and gave one to Cooke. Then he cracked his neck and tried to loosen his shoulders. He looked past his boots and saw aviation fluid frozen to the underside of the bird, in front of the rotor. He thought of Stag1 and how he was probably sleeping in bed all warm next to his wife. Then he thought about how he was freezing and cold, and it made him feel old. He tried to scoot back and get his feet on the lip of the bird. Too much splatter and his bottoms would freeze.
The birds dropped them off three klicks northwest of the compound. They had a ridgeline of small hills leading to mountains at their backs and Stag1’s compound to their front. There were open fields, dirt roads, and goat trails on either side of the walk and a stray compound or two in the distance and dark. They started their walk in staggered teams spanning the open fields. Shaw flexed and wiggled his fingers for a few minutes until his hands started to feel warm, then he stopped to keep from sweating. They painted the earth green and there was nothing but runoff from small pockets of snow blown into the air. The ground was mostly frozen over and it crunched under each step, the harvested blades of wheatgrass run down to icy stubs. It felt like walking on gravel or rocks.
Mines were all over fields like this. The teams avoided mounds of earth and stuck to lower elevations in the ground to bypass them. Shaw kept his eyes toward the location of the compound and tried not to think of getting his legs blown into his stomach or having his nuts torn off and splattered all over the frozen stubs and shrubs. Every hop they heard of a guy from another squadron or team who stepped on a mine and lost a leg or, if the mine was big enough, everything. They hadn’t heard about any on the hop yet, so they might’ve been due. Shaw’s footfalls felt clumsy and heavy.
“Mound to the left,” Cooke said over the comms. He circled it with his laser and radioed back to the perimeter teams to watch it on their approach. It looked like a knee-high mound of animal shit.
The outline of the compound was starting to break through a staggered line of trees on the horizon that would eventually form the natural walls of the dirt path leading right up to the target house. Shaw had stopped thinking about his own nuts getting blown off and had moved on to wondering what kind of a life Hagan would live without his—he’d probably kill himself—when he saw the compound and started thinking of Stag1. He wondered if he was deep in the peaceful sleep of the innocent or wide-awake, moving from room to room throughout his house with his finger on the trigger. Searching for points of entry or ghosts from his past like Shaw imagined himself doing down the line. Intel had watched him for nearly a week and still couldn’t get a full picture of the man. He fought in the region in the 1980s against the Soviets, and then he left it all to go into construction just to come back in another decade during another war. He seemed respected in the community and liked, not necessarily feared, but the two weren’t far off. He didn’t live in a mud hut hidden in the brush or a cave in the mountains but in a decent-sized stone compound set back from a dirt road and flanked by a half-assed perimeter. If he wanted to be in hiding, he didn’t seem to know, or care, that he wasn’t. None of it made any sense to Shaw.
Panther1 moving into position came over the comms, and then the other perimeter teams radioed in the same. Shaw and his team took a knee a couple hundred meters from the compound and let the perimeter elements settle in on their flanks. It was cold on the ground and the wind blew so hard he had to lean in to it. He painted the rooftop of the compound, ran his laser over its corners and blind spots, while the other guys did the same. The house, built of stone the color of sand, glowed green in the night. Panther1 radioed in that they were set and 2 and 3 followed suit.
Then the assault teams assembled their ladders and Shaw radioed in that they were approaching the wall. Mike’s team split off to take the other side of the wall and their footfalls and the bangers and mags shifting on their kits seemed loud, but the wind picking up off the flat fields kept them quiet.
Dalonna put the ladder at the base of the wall, climbed it, and hopped over. Hagan, Cooke, and Massey followed him and then Shaw mounted the rungs last. The wall seemed ancient and was made of sunbaked bricks. It seemed odd and out of place, connected to the modern metal gate—a clash of cultures. Dust flaked and loosed from the foundation where the ladder was set against it, and Shaw rubbed the wall and came away with dust on the fingertips of his gloves. It was soft and grainy. He climbed and jumped into the courtyard and saw a tire swing hanging from the tree and rocking gently on the wind.
The perimeter teams lit up the windows and walls of the house and the assault teams approached the door. Shaw set up closest to the door on the left side and Mike mirrored his movements on the right, his team snaking behind him down the wall. Ohio was on his first mission back after getting shot, and he stood behind Mike, staring at the doorknob. He probably shouldn’t have been out yet, but his fingers danced up and down the barrel of his rifle. He seemed eager.
Shaw ran his hands around the door frame, looking for wires and anything out of place. The wood door looked old and felt heavy and cold, but the lock mechanism was brass, shining and looking new. He didn’t see or feel anything that made him think the door would blow and take them all out.
“Pick it,” he whispered over the comms.
Hagan came to the door and took out his pick kit and got surgical on the lock. His big hands moved gracefully and light. Oddly enough, he was the best pick among them, bear paws and all. He let go of the lock and gave Shaw a thumbs-up. Then he put one hand on the knob and braced another on the door between the mechanism and the door frame. He whispered over the comms, “Breaching.” Then he turned the knob and opened the door.
Nothing blew, so they flowed into the house, slow and smooth like honey out of a water glass. Moonlight came through the few windows in the landing and cast barred shadows of the window guards onto the carpets and tabletops. Mike and his team took the first floor and Shaw and his team toed their way up the stairs. A floorboard creaked when Shaw hit the first step and his boot sank a little into the carpeted stairs. He smelled nutmeg and warmth and a recently extinguished fire. He picked his way carefully up the stairs, sticking to the perimeter of the steps so they wouldn’t groan. He saw thin cracks and streaks in the bare walls and then hit the landing. Four doorways split off from the hallway, two on either side. He broke off right, into the first doorway, with Hagan on his hip. The door was ajar. He nudged it open with his elbow and Stag1 was sitting on the edge of his bed, fully clothed, shoes on his feet. He had the window cracked and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and he watched Hagan and Shaw enter. Smoke trails snaked out the window. The room was small and drafty, and the tobacco smelled stale and harsh. Hagan walked slowly around the other side of the bed and lit up the man’s wife and the rest of the room with his laser, checking under the bed and around the small dresser. Then he looked out the window and back at the wife.
Shaw turned on his tac light and lit up Stag1. He sat upright, rigid like a statue. He kept his eyes on Shaw, though away from the light. He was looking at Shaw’s kneepads, and his shoulders rose and fell as if he was taking a relieved breath. No one said anything for a while and then he brought his hand up slowly to his mouth, a bracelet visible on his wrist. He grabbed the cigarette and brought it down to his knees. He blew the smoke at Shaw in a long stream and it hit Shaw’s pants and rose up into his face. Then he shrugged, nodded, and patted his sleeping wife on the side. He tightened the covers around her and then opened his hands.
“I should stand, no?”
Shaw didn’t say anything and neither did Hagan. They nodded. Stag1 stood and offered his wrists. Hagan cuffed his hands in front and then checked his arms and legs, the pockets of his pants.
“Cigarettes and a lighter,” Stag1 said.
Hagan took a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and a black lighter. They walked him out of the room and he didn’t resist when Shaw put his hand on Stag1’s shoulder to lead him down the stairs.
“My wife,” Stag1 said, leaning toward Shaw. “She’s a hard sleeper.” Then he smiled. “I am not.”
Shaw smelled the tobacco strong on his breath and figured he must’ve been smoking for hours, probably his whole life. They brought him to the landing and he looked past them, toward the children’s rooms, then he nodded and walked down the stairs. Shaw expected the stairs to blow beneath them, but they stayed steady below their feet. They walked out of the house and all the teams trickled out of the home and into the fields and they started walking Stag1 to the exfil.
“Did you close my door?” Stag1 asked.
The words rolled out of him slow and proper, like he was reading a translation he didn’t trust. Hagan told him they always closed them on their way out and Stag1 laughed and looked up at the sky.
“I’ve never been on a helicopter.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked at Shaw. Then he looked around at all the teams spread out along the fields walking to the exfil.
“So many of you.”
Then it was quiet for a while and Shaw could hear only the ground crunching below their feet. He saw the birds approaching before he could hear them and they took a knee and waited for them to land so they could load up.
“There are mines in these fields,” Stag1 said.
He jutted his chin out and looked around the land. His breath sent up a screen of white. The birds dipped their rotors and started to land, whipping up the frozen earth and sending hard pellets of ice and dirt into the air. He smiled at Shaw.
“Boom.”
• • •
They handed Stag1 over to Intel once they touched down on the tarmac. Shaw was glad for it. Leaving an objective, most of their pickups were either in body bags or pissing on themselves, probably thinking they were going to get thrown out of the birds or shot in the back of the head. But Stag1 just sat cross-legged like royalty next to them. He didn’t seem to mind rubbing shoulders with the men who had taken him, even fell asleep and leaned in to Hagan. Hagan nudged him back to the middle and Stag1 woke up and said, “Sorry,” real loud. His warm breath flooded the cabin and his stale tobacco breath spread throughout. In the dark cabin he would smile every now and again and Shaw thought his teeth were brighter than the stars, brighter than any he’d ever seen.
Shaw walked back to the war room with Hagan.
“He was talkative,” Hagan said.
“Yeah, he was. You think his wife was really asleep?”
Hagan shrugged. They spat on the tarmac and watched Intel walk Stag1 over to a set of huts sheltered by blast walls. “She didn’t open her eyes. And her breathing seemed steady under the sheets.”
Shaw nodded.
“Dude was waiting for us.”
“Seemed like it,” Shaw said. “Didn’t particularly care for that.”
“Me either. Gave me the creeps.”
The tarmac died off and their boots hit the gravel.
“Did Dalonna and Cooke find the kids?”
“Yeah,” Shaw said. “They were all asleep. The girl in her own bed and the two boys in one together.”
“And the last room?”
“Empty. Some toys for the kids and a small bench with some shoes underneath, but that was it. They didn’t find anything.”
Hagan threw his chaw on the gravel and then took out his pouch and set a new one in his cheek. It looked like it might burst through the skin. “The house smelled good. The wife, too.”
“Yeah to the house, and how do you know about the wife?”
Hagan shrugged. “Smelled like flowers. Lilac or some shit. You didn’t smell it?”
Shaw shook his head and laughed. “Guess I don’t have the nose for it. I didn’t peg you for a botanist, Hog.”
Hagan was quiet and they walked on awhile before he spoke up. “What the hell is a botanist?”
Shaw laughed again. “Someone who studies plants and flowers.”
Hagan smiled. “No weaknesses. I love fucking flowers.”
• • •
Intel handled Stag1 for a few days and the teams got briefed on the findings.
The first few nights he was very cooperative—smiling and talking a lot, looking the interrogators in the eye and speaking about his time during the jihad in the eighties and about the new life he made as a father and a construction contractor. He said the city was a peaceful one and that cells hadn’t operated in or around it after they attracted drone strikes and bomb runs years before. Talking about his wife and kids lit him up. He was talking about all the good he was planning on doing once government contracts to rebuild the country started getting offered out. After the wars were over, of course.
After the second and third nights without sleep he started getting more reserved and less talkative. Irritable. The interrogators said they felt a façade shifting in him. Conversation steered toward how his family was carrying on in his absence. Intel told him they hadn’t seen anyone visit, nor had his wife left the house, and he started getting frustrated, going on about how he hadn’t done anything wrong and the jihad of the eighties was carried out in line with sharia law. The interrogators let him know they didn’t give a shit about the jihad, even thanked him for helping them win the Cold War. Then they let him think about why he might have been in a dark wooden shack for the last few days if it wasn’t about that. They let him get flustered for a while and honored his request to pray whenever he asked to. He decided not to speak to them for a day or two and they were okay with that. After he broke his silence they offered to take him home, but only if he told them why he hadn’t been visiting the wife of his nephew after he’d died in the ambush.
“Then he broke,” the CO told the teams assembled before him. He set images on a table in front of the men. “Stag1 admitted that while he’s been waiting for the government contracts he’s answered questions from cell leaders every now and again. He said they pay him for ‘structural knowledge’ and that he doesn’t know what they do with the knowledge after speaking with him.” He laid a picture of Scar1 and Scar3 on the table and photos of a few others the teams hadn’t taken on yet.
“Specify ‘structural knowledge,’ sir?” Cooke asked.
The CO nodded.
“Points of weakness within compounds. Vulnerable points most likely to collapse an entire structure with concentrated explosives.”
“A boom consultant,” Dalonna said. “And he said he didn’t know what they did with the information after that. Did they press him to take a guess?”
The CO smiled.
“I’m sure they had some colorful photos, probably with some children in them, to show him. We know of at least one or two bombings Scar1 orchestrated, so I’m sure they showed him pictures from those. Let Stag1 know what his expertise really bought.”
He paused and then brought out another picture of a compound set among a small cluster of buildings following an arced ridgeline. It sat at the base of a hill that gave way to the same mountain range where they had killed the boy. The small group of buildings formed a ring around the compound and the compound sat like the pupil of the village eye.
“Stag1 said the last person he spoke to about ‘structural knowledge’ lived here,” the CO said. He pointed to the large compound. “He said it was four to five weeks ago. We’re going to monitor it for a couple days and see if we should pay a visit. We’ll put up tape drills and be off the green until further notice in case we get reason for a 1.”
Hagan spoke up.
“They letting Stag1 go, sir?”
“I think they might hold on to him for a little while longer.”
They all nodded and the CO left. Shaw and Cooke gathered the images and went outside to set up the tape.
• • •
The next few days were so sunny they could hardly see the white tape laid out on the gravel outside the war room. They moved through the drills constantly, stepping lightly around the imaginary doorways, cabinets, and dressers they knew they would have to avoid. Shaw and Massey visited the CASH again and saw their bomb boy. He had recovered well. He smiled wide despite the missing teeth, and his black hair shined bright in the light. He clung to his mop tighter than the Snickers bar they had given him. It seemed to anchor him to the floor. They went into the children’s bay and there was a whole new set of kids with new injuries that would leave behind new scars. Shaw and Massey didn’t have a lot of candy to give out so mainly provided high fives and smiles. Shaw even hugged a little one just before they left.
“I’ll have a bunch of Christmas cookies sent over,” Massey said, when they were walking out. “Maybe Penelope can write the kids some letters or something.”
“That’s a good idea,” Shaw said. He wondered if he knew anyone who could bake worth a shit, but he didn’t.
The teams watched the pupil compound on the monitors in the TOC when they weren’t shooting, working out, or running tape drills. Intel identified the target of the pupil compound as Iris1. He seemed to be the leader of the group occupying the dwellings, because he was followed the most and people always ran off after speaking with him. Intel thought Iris1 might be a Syrian transplant who hopped the border during the early years of the war after spending time in Africa and Southeast Asia, dodging international sanctions for his involvement in smaller bombings during the early 1990s. But they weren’t entirely sure. He wore glasses under a large turban and had a mass of gangly hair spilling out of it like a ball cap set on top of a permed Afro. If he was the Syrian transplant, he didn’t have any known children even though he had at least four known wives. His infertility was something rival cells and international watch groups liked to play up, so he countered by calling his followers his sons and targeting embassies and the children of other cell leaders. Intel got excited and wondered if he might be the leader of al-Ayeelaa, given the sensitivity of his infertility. A man who couldn’t conceive might call his cell his family.
Intel monitored Stag1’s house for the entire week he was being interrogated. They let the teams know that the home hadn’t received any visitors, nor had the family left since they took him. They monitored the phone lines and didn’t notice any irregular activity. The Iris1 compound, however, had been active constantly since they began monitoring it. Intel watched FAMs running hurriedly around the smaller structures and carrying things into the larger pupil. The pupil seemed to function as a life source for the revolving structures in its orbit. Men with rifles strapped to their backs brought supplies, cases, and munitions to and from the pupil to the surrounding structures, and everyone seemed to settle in the larger compound during the nights. Jeeps would be loaded up and roll over the hills and disappear into the mountains and plains behind the hill. Intel chalked up the activity and remote location to a likely cell training ground or supply center, so Shaw added tape layouts of the smaller structures around the pupil they already had on the gravel. It seemed more likely that they would make a move on the compound.
They were running out of gravel.
• • •
They got a 4 the day before Thanksgiving. They walked through the sunlight to the war room and their CO stood in front of images of Iris1 and the pupil compound at the base of the ridgeline.
“We’re moving on this tonight. They’re staging for something and we’re not going to let them ambush some coalition convoy and blow them all to hell or set up cells across the border and infiltrate any more cities.”
The teams talked about the hill that sat as a backdrop for the structures and how on the earlier op the Scar3 intelligence had directed them to the empty village with the nest of tunnels leading into the mountains. The CO nodded and answered eagerly.
“We’ll put teams around likely exit points behind the hills and send breach and assault teams through any tunnels we find on the village side. We’re not letting anyone slip away.”
“Conventional-force add-ons?” Cooke asked.
“Yes. They’ll set up blocking positions behind the hill and try to catch anything we flush into the mountains.”
Hagan raised his hand. “Sir, why not just bomb the hell out of them?”
The CO sucked air between his teeth. “We could, but we don’t know exactly who we’re hitting yet. We need a positive ID on any bodies and if we send in drones there will be nothing but rags and blood on the rocks.”
Hagan shrugged. “Lucky ducks.”
The assault would be carried out with six teams from the two squadrons, thirty men. Shaw’s and Mike’s teams drew duties for clearing the pupil compound and the small shacks. They would move on and help the remaining teams breach any tunnel entry points they might find in the hillsides afterward. They agreed to hit the pupil and the smaller shacks simultaneously to maximize surprise.
While they were waiting to get spun up Intel told them they had released Stag1. Apparently he’d put on a good show during the days since he spoke about Iris1—crying and offering information readily—and they figured he was significantly scared shitless. They wanted to release him while he was still scared of them but before he started channeling his frustrations into anger that would lead to blowback. Revenge. They figured he’d be more willing to cooperate in the future if his fear hadn’t had time to calcify into hate. They planned on watching him and keeping tabs on his movements.
• • •
The teams sat in the war room long after the sun set. They’d take the Black Hawks out to the ridgeline and start their infil a few clicks from the group of structures, then walk in to maximize surprise. Intel gave them briefings every hour. They reported a gathering of five to ten men in the pupil compound and mentioned smoke trailing from its roof for hours. For days, actually. The teams taped down their banger and frag pins and loaded mags, topped off water, and checked batteries and NODs. Then they sat in their kits as a group on the floor and waited.
“Big knockers or booty?” Dalonna asked after a while.
Hagan lit up.
“Both. Real men don’t have to choose.”
Everyone laughed.
“Bullet or bomb?” Dalonna asked.
They all answered bullet in unison.
“Catch a round in the nuts or lose both arms or legs?” Dalonna asked.
“Take my legs,” Hagan said.
“Screw that,” Cooke cut in. “Take my nuts. Intercourse is overrated.”
Massey looked at Dalonna.
“If the beans are out, is the frank still good?”
“Sure,” Dalonna said. “Why not?”
“Then take my nuts, too,” Massey said. “I want my arms and legs.”
“What have you guys got against your nuts?” Hagan said. He put a hand on his crotch like it had been burned.
Cooke shrugged and looked at the ceiling. “Guess we don’t love nuts as much as you do, Hog.”
Hagan flicked him off and threw a granola bar at him and they all laughed.
Dalonna leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Win the lottery or peace in the Middle East?”
They were all quiet and busy making colorful, confused faces. Hagan looked like he had lost something on the floor and Dalonna was smiling wide. He seemed to be getting off on his own private genius.
“What’s the trade-off, Donna?” Shaw asked.
Dalonna waited. He laughed and turned up his palms. “Either way, we won’t have to work.”
Everyone smiled.
“Nice,” Shaw said.
They all answered Lottery one by one.
Dalonna himself took the longest to answer. He looked at the picture of his kids on his locker after he did. “Hell, the lottery, I guess. What else would I do?”
• • •
The 1 beeped through around 2200 hours and they all got to their feet, relaxed and loose. Nobody’s nuts got stomped or mashed in a flailing mass of limbs and no one had to pop diet pills to stay awake. They were ready. They racked their weapons and stretched to the floor and squatted in place. Shaw raised his knees to his chest and had Hagan crack his neck.
“Shaw, could you really go on without your nuts?”
Shaw told him he could.
“Crazy, man,” Hagan said. “Y’all aren’t right.”
Shaw patted him on the back and they walked into the dark. The birds were all spun up and waiting for them on the tarmac when they got to the airfield. The operators grabbed their seats and waited to be carried away.
Flying to the objective, Shaw had his NODs down. A bright beam of green light split the clouds and dropped to the earth a few klicks out on the horizon. It looked like a green rope anchoring the sky to the earth. They flew on and after a minute or two a large white flash erupted where the green rope hit the ground. Whatever lay at the bottom end of the green rope had just been blown away. The empty plains below them swallowed the sound of the explosion and Shaw thought of the follow-on team, just like them, being sent in to survey the damage. He imagined them stepping over the skeleton of the compound and finding their target all blown to hell—an arm here and a leg and piece of torso there. Then he imagined them finding the target sitting peacefully in his bed with a smile on his face, small rivers of blood draining out of his nose, mouth, and ears—the runoff of his organs blown out inside him. Then he thought maybe the target wasn’t even home, maybe his kids and wife were there instead. Maybe one of the kids had a buddy sleeping over. Then the green light shut off from the bird circling thousands of feet above and the sky was all black again. He tried to find the birds approaching the blast sight in the distance and the dark, looked for the team just like them flying through the night, not sure of what they’d find on the ground. He saw a flicker here and there and thought he had the strobe pinned down, but the stars were too thick to see anything else.
Five mikes out came over the comms, and Shaw gave up on trying to find the bird. He cracked his knuckles, then his neck, and rolled his shoulders back and then forward. He shook out one leg into the open air, and then the other. He breathed out and then opened his pouch and took out a big chaw. He wanted a real jaw buster for some reason, so he got a golf ball–sized wad and set it in his cheek. Hagan hit him on the arm and gave him a thumbs-up. Shaw handed him his pouch and Hagan grabbed a huge chaw and couldn’t fit it in his mouth, so the flecks caught in the air and blew into the sky, disappearing in the dark.
“Did you see that hit?” Shaw yelled over the noise of the bird.
“What hit?” Hagan yelled back.
Shaw thought of the long green rope and the white flash.
“Some house just got blown away over there.”
Shaw pointed toward the horizon.
Hagan shook his head. “I was sleeping.”
Shaw nodded and Hagan started pressing his rifle in front of him and above his head.
“Getting the blood moving,” Hagan yelled.
Shaw gave him a thumbs-up and then the birds dropped them into an opening a few klicks from the Iris1 compound. They took a knee and let the birds blow the snow into their faces, and then the birds lifted off and left them and it seemed like the whole world got put on mute.
The walk was nice. They had to look out for deep holes of snow, but only an inch or two covered most of the walk. The sloping earth gave way to mountains to the west and boulders as big as cars were strewn every few meters. The land made for poor farming so they got to walk between some trees. Shaw smelled pine and sap and the stars seemed to watch over them quietly. They could’ve been buddies on a hunting trip back home in Minnesota.
Shaw always remembered reading about Vietcong and Japanese snipers gathering food and ammunition and tying themselves into the nests of tall trees. It had stuck with him as a boy. Patrols would wade through the rice paddies and beachheads with their eyes and weapons to the front, only to get one between the eyes from the trees they walked under. Then flamethrowers would come in and burn everything down. As the teams made their way to the compound and the wind blew, Shaw would feel a cool breath on his neck and wonder if it was the first kiss of a bullet coming down from the trees. It made him shiver.
The smaller structures blended in well with the arced ridgeline covered in snow, but the smoke coming from the pupil compound in the middle of the structures did not. Whoever was in the building wasn’t thinking about keeping their necks from getting slit but rather their nuts from freezing. The perimeter teams radioed in that they were breaking off and setting up around the flanks of the buildings. They would post up along the ridgeline and start looking for tunnels as soon as the teams started knocking down doors. They’d take care of anyone squirted out of the warmth.
When they were a couple hundred meters from the first few dwellings, Shaw radioed in that they were making their approach. The pupil compound sat above the others by at least a full story, but it was smaller than he thought it would be. Made of stone or dried mud, the second story sat above the small, wooden shedlike structures like a top hat. The sheds were even smaller—some entirely covered in snow. Mike’s team got parallel to Shaw and they started their walk. The perimeter teams spread out around the compound and hugged the ridgeline, looking for tunnels. Shaw looked up and saw the strobe of a Spooky circling thousands of feet above. From the aircraft watching them on surveillance, the men must have looked like the expanding head of a firework just after it bursts.
A shed not tall enough for a grown man to stand upright in was the first structure on their movement. It didn’t have a door, so Shaw just painted the inside, found it empty except for a shovel and a bucket, and they continued to the pupil. The ground between the structures was dirt beaten flat into hard-top by the weather and treads from the jeeps and pickups that disappeared over the hills. Snow was beaten down into the ground, and sparse patches of dead grass sprang out every couple feet like weeds through pavement. The air felt damp and everything smelled like wet wool and smoke.
They lined up to the left of the pupil’s door and Shaw stepped into the doorway and ran his hands over the frame. There was a padlock the size of a man’s hand on the door, holding a clasp lock shut. The door was flimsy and seemed out of place against the hard foundation.
“Hard charge,” he whispered into the comms.
Mike came over the comms from one of the smaller structures to their right.
“We got three doors at head height,” he said. “They’re all padlocked. They look like a storage shed we could clear with a flashlight. Maybe we should breach the pupil all together and handle the sheds afterward. Advise.”
That made sense. The pupil was far larger and Shaw could use Mike’s team. Shaw looked at the clasp lock shut before him and thought about the shed he’d breached before. There wasn’t a door on it, let alone a lock, and it was a genuine shed. Nothing but a shovel and a bucket inside. If the other sheds were that small it would be pointless to breach the pupil alone. But Mike said he had three head-height doors padlocked alongside one another. They sounded bigger than the shed Shaw had cleared.
“I’ll come over and take a look,” Shaw said.
Shaw stepped back from the door and looked at the height of the pupil. It seemed smaller now that he was standing in front of it. If it was smaller than they’d assumed from the satellite footage, then the sheds must be even smaller. If they were as small as the shed he had first breached, then they would all breach the pupil together and have the perimeter teams check the sheds. No matter how long they studied layouts, they always had to adapt to the situation on the ground. He looked toward the sheds surrounding the large structure and paused, almost told Mike to just come on over with his team and get on the other side of the wall. Instead he looked behind him and motioned to the door.
“Hog,” he whispered. “We’re blowing it. Get the charge set up and we’ll blow it when I get back.”
Hagan gave a thumbs-up and Shaw made his way over to Mike’s team.
• • •
When the investigation into the bombing mentioned a pressure plate, Shaw knew that wasn’t right. At least not if the plate functioned properly. He would’ve been blown apart before he even got a chance to finish checking the door frame for wires. It had to have been detonated by remote. The bomb was placed directly under the doorway like a welcome mat, only a few feet below the earth. The investigating teams insisted that a pressure plate could have been used, maybe Shaw had simply missed stepping on it, but once they reviewed the footage and saw him standing on top of the threshold they dismissed the possibility. They agreed that someone must have been waiting in the woods or on the ridgeline—maybe in one of the small sheds—and blown the thing by remote.
In the ambush sprung immediately after the blast from a few of the smaller shacks, the perimeter teams wiped out the nine fighters within seconds. Then a team found and entered a tunnel carved into the rock and killed Iris1 shortly after the other nine were killed. He was sitting on an ammo crate with a handheld radio, an AK-47, and two bodyguards. None of the bodies had a trigger device on them, but that didn’t mean they didn’t blow the device that killed Massey, Hagan, Cooke, and Dalonna. The teams might just not have found it. Or maybe they did and it was dialed from one of the eight phones the SSE teams picked up. Either way the bomb blew.
Shaw was told by those watching the monitors that he was blown into the shed with the three small padlocked doors along with Mike and Ohio, but he couldn’t remember it. The rest of their team was blown behind the shed and across the fields, a few meters between each man, like leaves that had fallen from the same branch of a tree on a strong wind. The bomb completely destroyed six of the small shacks and nearly collapsed every other structure around the pupil. The pupil itself was sheared down the middle, the half housing the doorway leveled to a pile of stone and the other half knocked over completely and resting on its side. From above, it looked like someone had cut the building down the middle with a giant knife, smashing the doorway side into rubble and leaving the other half neatly resting on the ground relatively intact, as if the two sides might one day be reconnected in the middle.
There was nothing to find of Hagan. He was in front of the door, directly on top of the bomb when it blew, and they couldn’t tell if his body parts were any of the small bits of tissue, fatigues, and blood stuck in the rubble or blown into the walls of the surrounding structures. He was nothing but vapor and mist. Massey was last in line and they actually found the part of his torso with his dog tags zippered into the pockets, so they could identify him. He had the agate necklace in his cargo pocket and it was blown to dust. There was nothing left of it. There were pieces of arms and legs found under and between the rubble but nothing recognizable on sight. DNA matches were used to identify Dalonna and Cooke based off the small bits of flesh found somewhat intact—part of a hand or foot, a section of jaw with a couple teeth still in place—but that was it. Shaw never had the nerve to ask, but he heard of a hunk of wrist found with a pink yarn bracelet wrapped around the flesh. He never found out if it was true or not, and hoped not to.