One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Had the raid of the warehouse been a staged mission? A way for Lieutenant Chenowith to get rid of John so that the media would stop dogging his platoon?

      Crazy theories from a crazy man, but Emjay can’t think who else would have wanted to kill John. He removes his helmet and presses two fingers into each temple. Wish I had an NOD in that warehouse, a way to see the shooter.

      Who was it? One of you?

      Did one of you fuck with my NOD? Screw it up so I wouldn’t see your face when you took out my friend?

      His eyes obscured by shades, Emjay studies the faces of the men in quarters. Hard to believe it could be one of your own. Noah and John are brothers, and Doc played football with John back in college, so those three are pretty tight. Antoine Hilliard isn’t the aggressive type. He’s been goldbricking the army since they got here, claiming a back injury so he could stay behind the wire to do paperwork—until a mortar round came through and took out an Alpha Company soldier while he was asleep in quarters. But Hilliard, he and John got on okay. Gunnar McGee is too much of a pansy, which leaves Lassiter, who was obviously jealous of John’s popularity. It could have been Lassiter, but Emjay would have trouble buying that, given Lassiter’s lack of follow-through. The guy is a big talker, but Emjay suspects he’s all talk.

      So who else was in that dark warehouse? Who hated John that much?

      Emjay removes his helmet and sits down on the edge of his cot. There will be no sleep for tonight. No rest. No escape.

      “Just a tip, Brown,” Doc says, one blue eye squinting in half a wink. “You can lose the shades at night. Especially in this pit.”

      Emjay stows his helmet and flak jacket but makes no move to remove his sunglasses. “Didn’t you know?” he says as he leans back on his bunk, hands crossed over his chest like a corpse. “I’m legally blind.”

      Doc and the guys chuckle for a moment, but their attention quickly shifts to the poker game. Hilliard is munching through a can of macadamia nuts as Noah Stanton methodically laces his combat boots.

      Through the dark shield of his shades, Emjay watches them all. It’s a damn shame the sunglasses can’t cover everything, can’t hide the shaking of his hands or the sour pucker of lips on the verge of sobbing. If only he could be alone, walk into the cocoon of nightfall, the dark wrapping around him like a forgiving blanket. You never get to be alone in the army. In that way, it’s like a prison.

      He misses the privacy of home, the freedom to fly out the door and walk the farm, any time of the day or night, without getting his ass shot at. Sometimes he walked to the back acres of the farm, past the chicken coops, the thicket and the pond, night opening to him like a dark blossom. Walking to get away from his old man, to escape the arguments, the drunken fits, the smell of the stale beer and chicken shit and malice. Truth was, nobody enjoyed culling dead chicks or sucking in the СКАЧАТЬ