One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

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СКАЧАТЬ one hell for another. Only, this new nightmare was bigger and more twisted than anything he could have imagined.

      Without turning his head, Emjay can see Noah Stanton pulling on his boots. He doesn’t bother to lace them, but strides out of the bungalow without his helmet or flak jacket or rifle, defying regulations.

      “What the hell’s he doing?” Lassiter asks, scowling toward the slamming door.

      “Living dangerously,” Gunnar agrees, “but, really, what are the chances? Taking down two brothers in one day? Odds are against it, I’d say.”

      “Sometimes grief will make a person act recklessly.” Doc picks up his helmet and removes the gold medal he keeps tucked into the camouflage mesh for good luck. It’s a replica of a Purple Heart he got in Afghanistan, and Doc’s so proud of it he wears it like a fishing hook in his hat, even when they go out on missions. Doc’s sort of a dick that way. “And I have to say, I get it. I still can’t believe he’s gone. Goddamned sniper. Goddamn them all.”

      Emjay’s mouth goes dry as silence pervades the room. Usually he resents Doc’s declarations of pop psychology—the nuggets of mental health tips Doc tosses off each day in his role as what the army calls field counselor, which they all know means head shrinker. But this time Doc seems sincere, and rightly so. Before he was Dr. Charles Jump, Doc played football with John back in college. This had to cut deep, even for a cat like Doc. They were old friends, but then John was a friend to everyone. He was that kind of guy.

      Doc goes to a calendar on the wall, grimaces at the breathtaking photo of a huge potato-head rock in the surf, and marks off a square with a felt pen. “One more down,” he says, and for a moment Emjay thinks he’s referring to a man down instead of a day to mark off on the calendar.

      “You gonna take on the calendar now?” Lassiter asks.

      “Guess I’ll have to,” Doc says, capping the pen.

      John was the one who had hung the calendar with photos of the Pacific Northwest on the wall, the one who’d kept their spirits up, counting down the days until their deployment ended, crunching the numbers in countless different ways. Three months is ninety-one days. Less than a dollar in pennies. Less than eight dozen eggs for the son of a chicken farmer like Emjay.

      Spinelli rolls up one pant leg and lifts a fat bandage to press at a raw cut underneath.

      “You get that sewn up?” Doc asks.

      “Noah gave me two stitches,” he says flatly. When Spinelli fell outside the building and sliced into his knee, he’d been sure it was a serious injury. “Look at all that blood,” Spinelli had said, awed by his gruesome knee. “You’ll probably have to medevac me to Germany.”

      “I don’t think so,” Noah answered solemnly as he pressed gauze to the wound. “See? It’s deep enough for stitches, but no tendon damage. I can sew you up right here, if you want.”

      Chenowith tipped his head to the side, obviously put out by Spinelli’s latest injury. “All right, okay. We’ll pull you two from the operation.”

      Which left Doc partnering with Hilliard, who couldn’t tell his ass from his elbow under the best of circumstances.

      Now Emjay bites into the licorice strand and wonders what it all adds up to. It must be the eighth time he’s gone through the details of this day, but he can’t seem to piece it together.

      “I’d love to take down the bastard that got John,” Gunnar says, extending one arm and pretending to stare through the scope of a rifle. “I wish they’d let me go out of the wire and track him down. I would.”

      “Who the hell did fire at him?” Hilliard asks, his jaw working on a handful of nuts. “Did anybody ever find the sniper?”

      “Hell, no.” Lassiter reaches toward Hilliard and grabs some macadamia nuts for himself. “Alpha Company searched the perimeters after it happened, never located the insurgent. But let me ask you, Hilliard, did you see us nabbing the sniper? Where the hell were you, anyway?”

      “I guarded the door, like Doc told me to do,” Hilliard says defensively. “You know I don’t want to be doing that crap.”

      “Yeah, we know, Hillbilly,” Lassiter says. The platoon is well aware of Hilliard’s reticence to do the patrols.

      Hilliard stops chewing. “You gotta wonder, what the hell were we doing in that warehouse in the first place?”

      “The mission objective was to detain suspected insurgents and search for rocket-propelled grenades,” Doc says succinctly. Sometimes he acts as if he’s keeping everyone in line, though Emjay thinks it’s mostly an act. Without rank, nobody gives a shit.

      “Anybody find RPGs?” Gunnar asks.

      Lassiter shakes his head. “Chenowith said there were reports of insurgents taking back some buildings in the warehouse district.” He wipes his palms against each other, brushing off salt. “I’d love to know how we got that intelligence. From the goddamned sniper, probably. And some officer believed it, some boss with his head up his ass.”

      For once, Emjay suspects Lassiter’s got something right.

      Chapter 3

      Fort Lewis

       Jim Stanton

      He is going to be late for work.

      Checking for cars, Jim Stanton jogs across the street and onto a path that cuts through a densely treed park bordering the army base.

      You cannot report for duty late in the army without repercussions, and this fact has been so ingrained in Jim in the fifty or so years since he entered West Point that he still feels guilty calling in a bit late now that he has retired and moved over to the civilian side of the armed services.

      “No worries,” Teresa told him when he called in to the office at I-Corps, the elite Army Division here in Fort Lewis where he now taught at the Joint Readiness Training Center. “A retirement job,” Sharice called it, knowing that he’d go stir-crazy if he totally detached from the military after thirty-some years with Uncle Sam.

      “Wait…” Teresa paused, and he heard her shuffling through some papers. “Your classes don’t even meet until this afternoon? Easy does it, Jim. You don’t need to come in this morning if it’s not convenient.”

      He resisted the urge to accuse her of colluding with his doctor and assured her he would be there, his voice tight from lack of sleep. The damned dream was back, and though he spent the night fighting it, the pattern persisted: He would fall asleep, fall victim to the dream, wake up in a panic, then spend the next few hours trying to relax and clear his head. By the time he finally fell asleep, the sun would be rising, a spiteful orange ball bouncing in through the tall round window of the master bedroom.

      The goddamned dream.

      It had returned, a monster scuttling out of hibernation and roaring in the night.

      He lengthens his stride, trying not to favor his left leg as he cuts off to the right on the path that turns into the woods. As he jogs, he is vigilant, his eyes darting quickly from side to side, watching for movement in the trees. The slightest movement of a branch, the smallest jangle of leaves СКАЧАТЬ