Chapter Thirty-Six
Maisa watched Sam. She knew that asking about Afghanistan was going to sink her deeper emotionally with this man.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe for once she should stop thinking so much and just let things happen. That was kind of hard for her, actually. She was the type who liked lots of control, lots of information. Except what if she simply couldn’t control this thing between them?
It was a scary thought.
And still she wanted to know what had happened to Sam in Afghanistan—even if it meant taking their relationship a step further. What made him look so haunted when she’d found that photo. Why she’d known, deep in her bones, that he’d needed to be comforted this afternoon after he’d killed that mafiya thug. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the two weren’t linked at all and had nothing to do with his stint in the army.
Oh, damn it. Forget all her reasons and reasonings. She just wanted to know.
Wanted to know Sam.
Her hand, laying on his chest, clenched at the thought, and Sam, who hadn’t said anything this whole time, she realized now, covered it with his own.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, and his voice was dead flat.
Well, that was intimidating, but it wasn’t like she was easily scared away or anything. She raised her head to look him in the eye. “I want to know if you killed anyone over there.”
He blinked, maybe at her terrible bluntness. “Yes.”
She laid her head back down on his shoulder so she could hear his heartbeat and know that he’d survived whatever had happened. “Tell me.”
His hand tightened for a moment over hers and she wondered if he’d resist her.
Then he sighed. “It was a long time ago, May.”
She kept silent, waiting.
“There were five of us,” he began at last. “Well, five that went out. We were part of a larger unit, stationed in one of those valleys over there, but just five were sent to a little village, really just a bunch of huts. There were rumors that the Taliban had a cache of arms buried there.” He brushed his free hand through his hair. “You have to understand. We would go looking for arms or insurgents and most of the time we’d just be scaring farmers—old men, women at home. People trying to go about their daily lives in a war zone. Usually we never found anything and ended up being screamed at by housewives.”
She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady, because she knew the time he was talking about was different.
“There was Zippy and Enrico, Frisbee and King, and me. I was in charge because I had rank as a lieutenant. It was my mission.”
He paused and she could hear him swallow.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“There was a farmhouse and a little corral with some goats, a few chickens, and a cow—an old, bony thing. A little boy came out to meet us. He knew ‘Hi’ and ‘Okay,’ and that was all of his English. I gave him a pack of gum. He followed us and we went to look at the outbuildings—really a bunch of sheds. Nothing there. Didn’t expect any different.”
He took another breath, slow and shaky.
“Enrico had been bitching about his feet all day—we’d had to hike forty-five minutes to get to that place—and he sat down to pull off his boots. They shot him with one boot off. Turned out there were Taliban in the farmhouse—I don’t know if they were holed up there or if we’d surprised them or what—but they started shooting. Enrico was dead. Zippy got hit in the hip. Frisbee and King dragged him into one of the sheds while I radioed for help.”
He stopped and she waited, but he didn’t say anything more.
When she raised her face she saw that his eyes were wet. She swallowed, shocked. “Sam…”
“They all died. That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?” His words were hostile, but his tone continued flat. “The shed wasn’t worth a damn as cover—bullets went right through it. Frisbee was shot in the neck and died pretty much instantly. King was hit in the jaw. But Zippy, well, Zippy bled out. I put pressure on the wound, but it just kept on bleeding and it was too high for a tourniquet. Took him two hours.”
“How did you survive?” She’d never tell him, but she was happy—fiercely happy—that he had lived, even if his friends had not.
She felt him shrug. “Dumb luck, mostly. There really wasn’t a good reason I made it out and not them. We were all trained well, all experienced soldiers. They got shot. I didn’t.”
His grip had loosened as he talked and she turned her hand taking his thumb between her fingers, rubbing it. He had callouses at the first knuckle and at the base.
“It got close to nightfall, and I figured they’d rush me when it got dark and I’d be gone, too, because there wasn’t anywhere to go. I could try hiding in the hills, but it wasn’t like it was my home turf—and in the dark? Nope. I was ready for it, too. Made my peace. Was going to make it damn hard for them if nothing else, and what do you think but backup arrived?” He inhaled and his voice got hard and she heard something in it she’d never heard from Sam: sarcasm. “Took out everyone in the farmhouse, probably the kid as well, and there I was not even a scratch on me and my CO thumping me on the back, telling me what a great job I’d done. Why, that farmhouse and the half-dozen Taliban were instrumental to the war. Turned out there wasn’t any cache of arms, though. And in another month we left that valley. For all I know the Taliban took it back over.”
He sounded… he sounded almost defeated, and that was just wrong. Sam West wasn’t a man to be defeated.
She raised her head and kissed him on the jaw. “You did the job you were given, shitty as it was, you know that, right?”
His mouth twisted. “My CO, know what else he told me?”
“He said sometimes you had to sacrifice to win.” He turned his head to look her in the eye. “Sounds pretty vague, doesn’t it? Sacrifice? But the sacrifice he was talking about was specific: it was Zippy and Enrico, Frisbee and King. It was their lives I sacrificed, not some abstraction.”
“But it wasn’t your fault. You were ordered—”
“May.” He cut her off ruthlessly, his voice brooking no dissent. “They were under my command.”
She stared at him helplessly. What could she say to a man who’d lost his men, his friends, and believed it was his fault because he’d led them?
“Sam, you did what you had to.”
“I know.” He turned to her, his expression resolute. “And I’m doing what I have to now. Doc says that you have to be willing to sacrifice a man in order to win, but he’s wrong. Dead wrong. You sacrifice one of your own and the game’s lost already, ’cause your people are what the whole damn game is about in the end. I’m not sacrificing anyone else ever again.”