20.

SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN

Thirteen kilometers north of base.

ALEK CLOSED AN EYE and looked down the barrel of the gun.

He was somewhere in the middle of Afghanistan, hiding in a dried-out ravine, aiming at an enemy tank.

He kept quiet, kept his breathing shallow behind the rifle, and prepared to fire a four-inch armor-piercing incendiary round at three thousand feet per second, right into a tank driver.

This was no airsoft gun. Alek had grown up since the days fighting in the yard with Spencer, and so had his toys. This could kill a person. This could kill a vehicle. His head was canted to the right, cheek against the cheek piece, left eye closed, right eye against the scope. The spotter threw a veil over him for camouflage and then ranged the tank. “I’ve got five hundred fifty—I’ve got six hundred meters out.”

Alek thumbed the dial, adjusting the minute of angle and nudging the barrel up to account for the inches of drop across that distance as gravity pulled on the bullet.

“I’ve got twenty-seven,” he whispered to the other shooter. “You got it?”

Six hundred meters was easily within range, but every second he waited the chances of staying hidden got worse. Time to get on with it.

He adjusted the rifle barrel. The tank was off center and he had a better angle at the front, so he was aiming for the driver’s cabin, trying to put the round right through the driver’s slit from a third of a mile out. If he missed it by a millimeter he’d still kill the driver, but if he hit his mark he’d take chance out of it entirely, make the armor piercing redundant; the round would go right through the slit, through the driver, across the cabin, into the other flank, and probably out the other side. The driver wouldn’t stand a chance. If an insurgent happened to be standing on the other side of the tank, he wouldn’t stand a chance either. A .50 caliber armor-piercing incendiary round would cut him in half.

The other shooter was aiming for the rear. The engine block. He would shoot the round through the tank’s engine while Alek killed the driver—you take out the legs and the brain at the same time. But if one fired before the other was ready, they’d give up their position without disabling the tank, and then hell would be unleashed on them.

It only worked if the boys were in sync.

Alek flicked the safety off just as on the other side of the tank and out of his line of sight, three children ran up to the tank and began playing next to it.

“Scorpion to Base,” Alek radioed, “ready to fire, requesting permission.”

“Base to Scorpion, permission granted, fire when ready.”

Alek dropped his finger off the trigger guard and put his finger on the trigger.

BASE WAS THREE HUMVEES parked at an elevated position a half mile back—a half mile over which Alek had to drag the thirty-pound antitank sniper rifle, five feet long with the barrel, so damn cumbersome he almost didn’t notice an unexploded mortar right in his path. Who knew how long it had been there, waiting to take him out, end things right then and there. Thank God, or chance, or whatever, for putting that little rock right in the one place it had to be to send him stumbling off his path so that his foot planted next to the mortar, instead of right on top of it.

Now he lay, finger on the trigger, waiting only for the other shooter to get his range dialed in so they could both shoot at the same time. But time was of the essence. They had to shoot fast, before they got spotted.

Behind the tank and out of sight, the children continued playing quietly.

Alek was impatient. “You got it?” They needed to fire soon. Even if they hadn’t already been seen, a tank stayed in one position only so long. He brushed his finger over the trigger.

The other shooter got locked in, and the spotter took over. “I have control, countdown from five, four . . .”

On “one” both shooters would fire, but Alek’s round wouldn’t have an engine block to stop it. It would go right through the tank and kill a child, maybe three children.

“Three, two . . .”

“Base to Scorpion! Base to Scorpion! That’s a negative, negative, Scorpion! Hold fire, we’re seeing kids back there!”

Alek caught his breath and dropped his finger off the trigger. He’d come within a hair of shooting.

“They’re playing behind the tank, hold fire. I repeat, both teams hold fire!” The radio clicked off, then clicked back on. “Guys, we’ve got trouble. Team Alpha, Team Bravo, we’re starting to get some attention.”

Another pause. This was becoming a shit show.

“Base to both teams, we’re surrounded up here.” Alek looked up at his spotter, who was frowning. “Both teams, both teams, stand by for E and E.”

Alek radioed back. “Scorpion to Base, what’s up back there?”

“Base to Scorpion! Base to both teams! Throw smoke and go!”

Normal “escape and evade” was to back up slowly and discreetly to avoid being seen, but whatever the hell was happening back there was serious enough that they were being told to give up their positions, to get up and run. Alek pulled the pin and heaved a grenade out of the ravine, a puff of smoke shot up and hung for a moment giving at least a semblance of cover, and he humped the rifle up to his shoulder and started running as fast as he could back to the Humvees.

Up on the knoll, villagers had surrounded the vehicle; they just kept coming, circling, the crowd growing and surrounding them and the NCOs didn’t know who was friendly and who might not be, but they just kept coming, like children of the corn, so the NCOs started yelling, “Let’s go, guys, time to go!”

The first truck pulled out, then the second. Alek was pulling security on the third truck, so once the other two had gone he threw the sniper rifle in the back, jumped in, and then the last vehicle pulled out, throwing up a cloud of dust so the villagers disappeared in the rearview.

Then it was quiet. “Strange,” the soldier riding shotgun said, “no beggars on our tail. Guess they’re not following today.”

Yeah, Alek thought, that is strange.

Another voice on the radio, the team leader. “All right, gentlemen, let’s pull off here and do a sensitive items check.” They’d egressed so quickly they didn’t have a chance to make sure they hadn’t left any gear behind, so they pulled to the side of the road and opened the back gates on the Humvees to count it all up. Alek began looking through his truck.

A chill ran through him.

“Shit, where’s my ruck? Where’s my fucking ruck?”

Suddenly it was obvious why the villagers who’d seemed so intent on confronting them had simply let them go: they had what they wanted. They’d dropped the gate and grabbed Alek’s rucksack as the Humvee pulled out.

This was bad. This was very bad. Alek did a quick recounting: the ruck had high-caliber ammunition; it had—shit, it had a GPS with classified military technology. His officer in charge would get demoted for this. This was military technology being compromised and potentially falling into enemy hands, and suddenly what had been a live-fire sniper training drill, shooting at the abandoned burnt-out carcass of a Soviet-era tank, was becoming a very real crisis.

“Okay, no one bugged-out faster than we did,” the section leader said, “so let’s focus on the vehicles first.” Vehicles move the fastest, so if they could make sure no one was driving out of the village with the stolen bag, they had at least a chance of tracking it down before the bag and its classified contents made it to some Taliban outpost.

They piled back into the Humvees and drove back toward the village, cutting off vehicles along the way, dragging drivers out, searching bodies, searching trunks. Alek was mortified that he was the reason people’s jobs were at risk, and angry at the locals for stealing his rucksack, but at the same time, he was having fun. We never get to do this, go out and search vehicles. He was grateful for the action, the excitement, which came as a relief.

The reality was, his mission in Afghanistan had been until this day, extremely quiet. It was boring. His unit provided security for a base special forces used, so other guys went out and saw action while Alek and his friends were just glorified babysitters. He followed local staff around to make sure they didn’t steal toilet paper when they cleaned the bathroom, he sat in the watchtower on his best days, wishing something exciting would happen to him. Alek woke up every day and he didn’t go to war; he went to work. He clocked in, did nothing, clocked out. His life at war was as mundane as it had been back in the States. More so, and with fewer menu options. His only diversion, before the ten-day sniper training, was going down to the MWR to do laundry or lift weights, and mostly, to chat with Spencer online about the trip he was going to take when he got done with his tour.

“Tour,” that was a funny word. Here he was stationary. He would only start a real “tour” when he left.

NONE OF THE VEHICLES had Alek’s rucksack. Could one have snuck by, or gone a different route?

Now he was nervous, but still excited. He was part of solving a real crisis; he just wished he hadn’t caused it. They zigzagged back down the road until they were pulling into the village they’d left, and they knew, by process of elimination, that the bag was either long gone, carried miles away on some road they didn’t know about, or it was here, in this village. The team initiated a KLE, a key leader engagement, which translated to basically “talk with the important guy,” but they were antsy. The villagers had been acting strange, not outright hostile, but suspicious, and Alek’s team wasn’t sure whom they might be harboring, whom they might be loyal to, behind those blank, appraising stares.

“Skarlatos, you take the turret. I’m going to take the terp so we can talk to these folks and see what we can find out.” Alek had left his normal rifle at base because this was a sniper drill, so he hung the M107 over the turret, feeling a little ridiculous with so much firepower against apparently unarmed people, at such close range. He was a mall cop with a bazooka. He was still a little embarrassed for having put his team in this position, but he’d been desperate for a release, desperate for all that pent-up adrenaline. He looked through his scope and when he saw a man coming toward his NCO with the rucksack, Alek readied himself for the man to pull out a weapon.

The villagers bartered to give the ruck back, asking that the soldiers leave the villagers a field knife and some spent shell casings. They were asking for the team’s trash. Alek’s NCO agreed, and as he carried Alek’s bag back to the Humvees, Alek said a little prayer, asking that nothing would be missing.

He opened it and looked in.

“All there?” The section leader watched him closely. The bag had been dumped out and repacked; he knew that because nothing was in the same place, so he was at first uncertain whether anything had been taken. As he rifled through it to the bottom, he saw that, in fact, something had been. It wasn’t all there. The villagers had repacked the bag, but they’d clearly lightened its load. Another pang of anxiety shot through him. What would he say happened? He’d have to admit he lost a GPS, classified technology, let it fall into someone else’s possession; maybe he’d be discharged, or even worse, his seniors would be discharged . . . But sitting at the bottom of the pack, the GPS was still there.

They gave it back?

Who knows how much they could have sold that for. He was relieved. Then almost puzzled. A villager could earn a year’s wages selling that; why’d they give it back?

They’d returned his ammo too. Couldn’t they use that?

All they’d taken, now that he could see all the contents clearly, was a scope-tightening wrench, the water from his CamelBak—but they’d returned the CamelBak itself—and a hat with his name on it.

Someone in that village was running around the desert with SKARLATOS written on their head.

Someone had a sense of humor.

ALEK RETURNED TO BASE feeling good. He hadn’t had the chance to shoot at even a pretend enemy in a tank, or a real enemy in the village, but by chance he’d had a few bonus hours of action, of freedom, and his worst fears had been averted. He was a little embarrassed, but everyone in the team agreed to keep quiet about his lost rucksack.

By the end of the next day, everyone on base knew. The special forces guys who got to go out and see real action ribbed him for it: Alek’s first contact with the enemy was getting fleeced by unarmed villagers. Alek laughed along with them; it was all in good fun, but it felt like being the little brother. Forced to stay home while the real men went out to play ball.

Not that there was much action anyway. Afghanistan wasn’t where the world’s attention was anymore. Now the real bad guys were ISIS, and there weren’t very many of them in Afghanistan. Jihadists going to fight in Syria, or to be trained there; the passage of extremists through Turkey.

Which was funny when he thought about it. His grandfather was Greek, but he was born in a part of Greece that was, back then, under Ottoman rule. Turkish rule, in other words. So his grandfather was born in Turkey, and now Turkey was the gateway to jihad. Not that his grandfather was an extremist; his name had been Sokratis, after all. “Socrates,” just like the philosopher.

Although he was a resistance fighter. A guerilla. He was an insurgent, and here Alek was, trying to fight an insurgency.

But that was just it. He wasn’t really fighting at all. He wanted to be a soldier, but instead he was a housekeeper. Before he’d left for his deployment, his mom came up to Oregon to say goodbye, and she’d made a big thing out of how she’d felt a sense of fear about him going to war. She’d been ill with it, she said, but then God spoke to her. “He told me that something very exciting’s going to happen to you, Alek, and I can’t wait to see it. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for you.”

God was wrong. Or Heidi misheard him, because there was no excitement. Nothing happened. Nothing besides one drill that went awry. The war in Afghanistan was winding down, and the only real missions available were gobbled up by the special forces guys. They were the ones who got to fight what was left of the war. They were the ones who got to kill bad guys. Alek followed janitors around.