One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan
is charged with pain and alarm. Even Spinelli reacts, hunching over the side of his bunk wistfully.
“I miss him already, sir.” Gunnar McGee folds his cards, his baby face as earnest as Charlie Brown’s. Beside him, Lassiter gestures to Noah and smacks Gunnar in the arm, as if he’s said the wrong thing. But Gunnar stands firm. “It’s true. John’s the heartbeat of this platoon. Was, I mean.”
The men glance nervously at John’s brother, but Noah continues cleaning his rifle, ramming the rod down the barrel methodically, as if there is some therapeutic value in the ritual.
“Sorry, man,” Gunnar says.
Noah nods but doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Specialist Stanton,” the lieutenant begins, then clarifies, “Specialist Noah Stanton…you’ll be dispatched stateside just as soon as you’ve been debriefed. Corporal Brown, I’ll want a full report from you, as well.”
“Yes, sir,” Emjay responds, a thorny branch spiraling through his chest at the prospect of recounting the incident to his commanding officers. Part of him wants to let it all come spilling out, even as he is sickened at the prospect of reliving the event.
“And any other personnel who witnessed anything in the warehouse incident that might be helpful to our investigation should report to me. That is all.” Chenowith steps toward Noah. “Sorry for your loss,” he says, and though his voice is brusque, Emjay thinks it’s probably the kindest act of Chenowith’s sorry life.
“Sir,” Noah answers, trancelike.
The day’s events rush through Emjay’s mind like a rip cord, and he cranes his neck, writhing uncomfortably. It was a nightmare day for him, but it had to be a horror show for Noah, who’s the medic for their platoon. Christ, he was already outside the warehouse, stitching up a gash on Spinelli’s leg, when he sees his own brother hauled out of the warehouse, bloody and fading fast. That must have smacked him hard, the moment of realization that the man dying on that stretcher was his own brother. At least Noah wasn’t in the warehouse when John went down, but the sting of seeing his brother carried out, the sudden knowledge that he was unconscious, bleeding out, almost dead, the fact that Noah couldn’t save him even after the guys had carried John out of the warehouse and into the stark sunlight…
It’s all fucked up.
Somebody should have gotten to Noah Stanton first, pulled him aside, got him out of the way so he wouldn’t have to live with that image of his dying brother stuck in his head.
And Noah’s immediate reaction—the curses, growling at the other guys to stay back. The tears in his eyes. So fucking humiliating, in front of the other men. And now Chenowith telling Noah he can’t head home for the funeral until he gets grilled by the higher-ups.
“Unbelievable,” Doc says, bringing Hilliard’s cardboard box of licorice over to Noah, who shakes his head. “You should be in Kuwait already, buddy. On a flight to Frankfurt, out of here. And the COs are going to hold you back for debriefing? That sucks.” Doc, their platoon leader, doesn’t usually talk against the brass that way.
Shows you how out of control it all is, Emjay thinks. Noah’s own brother was killed and they still won’t let him go. As Lassiter always says, The only way out of Iraq is in a body bag.
“Here’s a news flash for you.” Lassiter lowers his cards beneath his homely face, those big ears and a nose like a carrot. Emjay has chalked it up to Lassiter’s insistence that everything is bigger in Texas. “The army sucks.”
“Amen to that,” Doc says, extending the licorice toward Spinelli, who peels one out and lies down again with the strand balanced on his chest. Odd bird, that Spinelli.
“Where’re the goddamned peanuts?” Hilliard digs into the care package from home, causing bags of bubble gum and chips to squeeze out and topple to the dusty floor. Hilliard likes his treats, and since Camp Despair is nearly fifty miles away from the small PX in Baghdad, he’s got to rely on packages from home. “She sends me Jelly Bellies, but no peanuts?”
“Are those the jelly beans from the Harry Potter movies?” Gunnar McGee asks. He’s the only guy called by his first name, as the guys in the platoon enjoy the irony of a soldier whose name is Gunnar. “They taste like vomit and snot and poop and shit?”
Lassiter smacks Gunnar’s shoulder with the back of one hand. “Idiot! Shit and poop are the same damned thing.”
“Is that the kind?” Gunnar’s eyes twinkle at the prospect of a taste of home, even if it is a foul taste.
“I don’t know.” Antoine Hilliard tosses a handful of foil packets to Gunnar. “Take ’em. Like I need to be popping jelly beans in the desert. I married the goddamned Easter Bunny.”
Normally the men would laugh over a wisecrack like that, but the airless room is void of humor. Emjay sits on his cot and watches unobtrusively through his dark sunglasses as Noah sets his rifle aside and turns his attention to a pair of combat boots, which he begins to unlace. There’s a dark stain on the side that extends over the toe of the boot. Blood, most likely. John’s blood? It’s possible, though with Noah’s medical assignment, it could be any number of things.
Still…as Noah rubs polish into the black leather, Emjay fights off a sickening chill at the thought of one brother cleaning off the blood of another. It seems to make this war too small and personal, and way too close. Beside the boots Noah has laid out his belongings—ammo, desert fatigues, a few canned rations and books, skivvies, and equipment like his rifle, a gas mask, and an NOD, a night operation device, goggles that clip over your helmet.
“You getting everything in line for the trip back home?” Emjay asks Noah, who nods over one boot.
Emjay shoots a look to the cot behind him, where John used to sleep. The floor beneath the metal frame is bare. John’s gear is gone.
“Hey, what happened to John’s stuff?” Emjay shouts to the room at large.
“Whaddaya think? Chenowith,” Lassiter says, venom on his tongue.
Lieutenant Chenowith, a West Point graduate, views the army differently than these enlisted soldiers, many of whom came to this career by default. Lassiter worked in a shoe store, Gunnar McGee mowed lawns, Hilliard drove a beer truck till he fucked that up by getting a DUI. Most of the guys in the platoon are here because they have no direction and they need to get out of debt, while Chenowith’s direction has always been to rise up the ranks in the U.S. Army, just like his old man, who was some hotshot in another war.
“The lieutenant confiscated all of John’s gear,” Doc explains. “Pending investigation. He wouldn’t even let Noah here go through and take out some personal items for John’s wife.”
“Goddamned army,” Hilliard grumbles over a mouthful of licorice. “They fuckin’ own you, even when you’re dead.”
Unresponsive, Noah briskly swipes a stiff brush over the toe of one boot.
Weary to the bone, Emjay shakes his head and stares at the NOD lined up with Noah’s stuff. What the hell happened to his today? Last time he used the night operation device it was working just fine, but today when he lowered the equipment over his eyes, he saw nothing—just blackness. He’d been complaining about it to John when the first shot rang out in the dark warehouse.
Now he kicks himself for not having working equipment. If the device had worked, he would have seen the shooter. Maybe he would have seen the gunman taking aim, closing in on John. Maybe, he might have saved John’s life.
His heartbeat picks up, thumping in his ears as he pictures the scene. After the two shots, Emjay had grabbed John’s NOD and soaked up everything around them. That was when he saw the soldier—one of them—walking away.
A goddamned soldier.
But John must have seen the guy. That’s why he was yelling that he was a friendly, that he was John Stanton, U.S. Army. John knew who shot him, and it wasn’t some Iraqi insurgent.