The two soldiers laughed again.
“Langley?” Andrew said. “The guy who came up with ‘put it up the little tramp’s ass?’” Apparently Langley was a veritable fount of such colorful phrases.
“Yeah. Grant Langley. He was A squadron’s leader. Hand-picked by Prendick. They all were.”
“Santoro’s always been pissed off about that,” Turner told Andrew, leaning forward and speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Said he didn’t deserve it. She was just jealous, if you ask me.”
“He got sent home a month or so ago along with the rest of his squad. Captain Peterson, too. They all came down with Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” LaFollette shook his head, looking somber. “That’s some nasty ass shit.”
Rocky Mountain spotted fever? Andrew thought in surprise. That’s the big secret about what happened to Lieutenant Carter, the guy who had my room before me? Everyone else had, to that point, seemed so tight-lipped about Carter and his whereabouts, that he found himself nearly disappointed with the banality of the truth. The forests all around them were teeming with deer ticks. Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease and other ailments transmitted through their bites should have been considered both a common enough concern and unextraordinary risk.
“Hey, man.” Turner walked around the table toward Andrew, slipping an iPhone off a carrying clip on his waistband. “You ever here of a camel spider?”
“Oh, yeah, show him,” LaFollette said, grinning.
“Camel spider?” Andrew shook his head.
“They’re all over the place in Iraq,” Turner said.
“Nasty fuckers,” LaFollette added. “Bigger than your hand. Seriously. And they can run up to like thirty miles an hour. When they bite you, it can rot the skin and shit, clear down to the bone.”
“Jesus,” Andrew remarked, brows raised.
“Here, look. I’ve got a video saved of one.” Turner pivoted so Andrew could see his iPhone screen. “Langley sent it to me back when the internet was working. Said he’d shot it over in Baghdad, about six weeks before he left. That’s him right there.”
In the video, a young man stood in extreme close-up, grinning broadly as he addressed the camera. His hair was shorn in the close-cropped style of an active-duty soldier, and he wore desert-grade military fatigues.
“I’m sending a little care package home,” he said. He had heavy brows that hung low over his eyes, lending them a slitted, nearly predatory appearance. “Check it out.”
The camera panned down as he flapped his hand in directive, showing a large box on a table top. Wrapped in brown paper, it looked indeed like something that might be shipped. Except for the enormous, wriggling creature pinned beneath the intersecting lines of tautly bound packing rope wrapped around the box.
“Holy shit,” Andrew whispered, leaning closer.
“It’s something else, huh?” Turner grinned.
“What is it?” Andrew asked.
“We told you, man, it’s a camel spider,” LaFollette said with a laugh.
The thing sort of looked like a spider. But it appeared to have five pairs of legs, not four, all of which flapped and flailed as it struggled to escape the ropes. It took Andrew a moment to realize these weren’t an extra set of legs, but the creature’s palpi, which were sort of like antennae or mandibles in other similar arachnid species.
“They say these fuckers can scream like a bitch,” Langley said, off-camera. “Well, boys and girls, we’re going to find out if that’s true.”
“Here it comes.” LaFollette sounded giddy with excitement as he jabbed his elbow into Andrew’s arm. “Watch, man. This is the best part.”
Although he remained out of view, his hand came on-screen, his fingers curled around the hilt of a large knife. “You going to scream for us?” he asked the thrashing animal in a taunting, sing-song sort of voice. “Huh, you little fucker? You going to scream for me?”
The spider didn’t scream as Langley used the knife to cut off its legs one by one, then its large mandibles, then pieces of its abdomen segment by segment. It struggled beneath the ropes, until at last falling still, and then the camera panned back up to show Langley’s face, his mouth still stretched into a broad grin.
“I guess that answers that, huh?” he asked the camera. Drawing the knife blade to his mouth, he licked it, then smacked his lips together. “Mmmm.”
“So what do you think?” Turner asked Andrew as the video stopped.
“That’s some sick shit,” Andrew replied.
Turner and LaFollette laughed.
“You showed him that stupid video, didn’t you?” Santoro said as she re-entered the rec room. When she saw Turner putting his iPhone away, she scowled.
“Come on, Santoro.” Turner rolled his eyes. “We’re just having a little fun.”
“Some fun.” She snatched her cue stick in hand and scowled at them. “Come on, Turner. It’s your turn.”
When the game was over, Santoro having sank the eight in the side pocket to secure the win, she beamed brightly and offered her fist to Andrew, just as O’Malley had earlier to her. “Good job, partner.”
Stunned by this warm turn in her reception, he knocked his knuckles against hers, as he’d seen O’Malley do. “Not bad for a civilian, huh?”
She laughed. Turning to LaFollette and Turner, she held out her hand expectantly. “Alright, Privates,” she said. “Ante up.”
“Ante? You mean we were playing for money?” Andrew asked, glad now that he hadn’t known this from the start, considering all of his available cash remained water-logged and probably mildewing on his bed upstairs.
“Not really,” Santoro said, as LaFollette and Turner dug around in their pockets, fishing out loose change. “For Cokes out of the machine.”
The PFCs continued playing pool while Santoro and Andrew sat together on a couch across the room, each of them holding an ice-cold plastic bottle of Coca-Cola.
“Cheers.” Santoro tapped her bottle into his in a toast, then took a sip.
“Cheers,” Andrew replied, doing likewise. She was being nice to him now and he found he didn’t mind. There was something to be said for having earned his way onto Dani Santoro’s good side.
After a moment in which she took a long drink from her Coke, she glanced at him. “Sorry for earlier. The camel spider thing. LaFollette and Turner were just messing with you.”
“Yeah, I figured as much.”
“All that stuff’s bullshit and they know it. Hell, Turner’s never even been to Iraq. His tour was in Afghanistan. Camel spiders are harmless. I mean, they’ll bite you, sure, but they’re not poisonous. And that’s why they tell you to shake out your boots in the morning, your sleeping bags every night when you’re over there.” She shook her head, took another sip, then glanced at him. “So did they tell you I was jealous of Langley? Mad because Prendick put him in charge of some so-called elite training squad?”
“Well, I…” Andrew cut his eyes toward the pool table, then down at the bottle in his hands.
“I was pissed about that. Grant Langley’s a sadistic creep. He likes to pick fights with people he thought were weak.”
Andrew wondered if that had included Santoro, if only because she was a woman.
“He didn’t deserve to get seniority over that squad, not when there are at least a dozen other non-comms in this unit more qualified and capable than he is any day of the week. But apparently, Major Prendick didn’t agree.”
Andrew studied her for a moment, then said carefully, “Doesn’t sound like you care much for him, either.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know him much to say.” Taking a quick swig of soda, she added, “I’m not too impressed with him so far, if that’s what you mean.”