The noise outside had awoken her two hours later. She groaned as she crawled out of the sleeping bag, every injury aching anew. She pushed aside the tent flap to discover her guard was gone.
In the small clearing in the center of the camp, Murphy lay sprawled on the ground. She darted out and knelt down next to him, staring in horror at his bloody face. When Xerxes had said that Murphy would talk, she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the menace underlying the words. Now, confronted by the bloody evidence of the Macedonian’s handiwork, she could no longer avoid it.
She turned to face Xerxes. “Torture.”
Xerxes shook his head. “He fell.”
“Right.”
He took two steps toward her and reached out one hand for her shoulder. She flinched back. An expression of disappointment and regret flashed across his face, to be immediately replaced by something colder. “I had thought more of you. Think this through. If we had truly resorted to torture, would I bring you here? Give you the opportunity to talk to him, to see what we’d done.” He shook his head.
“I can talk to him?” she asked cautiously.
“Go ahead.” Xerxes looked sullen now. “Ask him what happened.”
She knelt down beside the battered figure stretched out on the cot and touched his shoulder gently. Murphy groaned, then his eyes opened, staring out in the distance unfocused.
“Murphy? Can you hear me?” she asked.
He groaned again then tried to speak.
“Water,” Pamela snapped. Xerxes filled a plastic cup with water and handed it to her. She leaned over the cot and tried to prop him up while she held the cup to his mouth. He was just barely conscious enough to try to help her guide the cup. He sucked down two noisy gulps then paused to take a breath.
“More?” she asked. He nodded, his expression already clearly more focused. He levered himself up into a sitting position and took the cup with shaky hands. As he drank the second cup of water by himself, his eyes refocused and found Xerxes standing quietly in the corner. Murphy stared at her impassively as he slowly drained the cup.
“What happened to you?” Pamela asked after he declined more water.
“They caught me trying to depart their hospitality,” he said, his face still expressionless. “A couple of guards were trying to drag me back to camp. I wasn’t too wild about the idea.”
“They beat you?” she said, still not looking at Xerxes.
He shook his head reluctantly. “No. I tripped. Once I was down, one got handcuffs on me. Then the rest of them showed up and hog-tied me for the trip back. I got in a couple of licks though — kicked one guy in the face pretty hard.”
“And broke his jaw,” Xerxes said, speaking for the first time.
“Too bad,” Murphy said, no trace of remorse in his voice.
“And you,” Xerxes continued, crossing the room to tower over the Marine pilot. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m just peachy, thanks.”
“Good. Fit enough for a little hike?”
“Probably.” Murphy’s eyes were guarded now, as though he were trying to decide whether to admit it. “If the ribs hold up.”
“What’s wrong with your ribs?” Pamela asked. She reached out as though to examine him, and he flinched back.
“Cracked a couple in the ejection, maybe. Might be just a strain. It’s no big deal,” he said reluctantly. She got the impression that little would be more distasteful to him than admitting physical weakness.
“Good. You’ll let me know if they get too uncomfortable, then,” Xerxes said. “I’m sure we can arrange other transportation for you.”
She stood, feeling the pain in her knees as she did so. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere else. I thought you would have learned by now not to bother asking that sort of question.”
“I always ask questions.”
“I don’t always answer them.”
For a moment, it was as though they were the only two people in the room. Murphy was forgotten as their eyes locked and something more passed between them than just a simple question for information and a refusal to give it. Finally, Pamela looked away.
“There’s likely to be another strike,” Xerxes said finally. “We’re moving camp.”
“You’ve got pretty good intell,” Murphy said. Xerxes didn’t answer.
Moving camp. Pamela glanced at Murphy and knew immediately why he’d minimized his injuries. Movement meant a degree of disorder, and maybe another chance to escape. He’d take that opportunity any time it presented itself, no matter how small the odds for success, no matter how many beatings they administered.
Just like the Marines would be back to get him. That was one of the primary tenets of their brotherhood, that no Marine left another.
So Xerxes was right. They’d be back, both to finish what the earlier strike had started and to look for Murphy.
And to kill as many of the rebel Macedonians as they could in the process.
So where does that leave me? Rooting for Murphy or for the Macedonians? Every time she thought she finally had the answer, some new angle or perspective upset her carefully reasoned approach to the question. Now, staring at the two faces so much alike, both grim, haggard and determined, she knew what her only choice could be.
A sense of peace descended on her, coupled with not a little sadness. The comfort of righteousness, the strength one found fighting for a cause would forever be denied to her. She thought of Xerxes’s charge that she would never know what it was to lose friends in battle because she chose no sides.
But he’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t that she had no side — it was that they were all hers. The Macedonians, the Greeks, the Americans…despite her nationality, each death was one that mattered to her as a person, as the story of how the war affected that individual. She was denied the luxury of seeing the other side as inhuman, faceless creatures. To her, and to the other men and women who brought the rest of the world to each conflict, each warring faction was composed of human beings. They mattered. They had to. Because only when she could show that side of war to the rest of the world would the civilized nations bring enough pressure to bear on the combatants to stop the bloodshed.
That was her role as a reporter. To bring the facts to the world, to force the international community to intervene. And if she had to have a side to claim as her own, then let it be that one — the side of peace.
Xerxes must have seen something odd in her expression. He stepped away from her to the door of the hut and barked out an order, his voice harsher than she’d heard before. Running footsteps answered him, then a sound like early summer thunder far away.
No. Not thunder. Fear surged through her, shattering the peace that understanding had brought her.
Not thunder at all. Bombers.
Thor dipped the nose of the Hornet down slightly for the barest moment, exposing more of the ground under him to view. Not that he really needed a visual, not following in the path of the Tomcats, not with his own HUD indicating he was on course, on time. And especially not with the streamer of smoke and fire billowing up to his left, evidence of the deadly accuracy of the Tomahawk attack on a fuel and weapons dump. No, visual contact with the ground was simply a final confirmation of what he already knew — that they were dead on in their ingress run.
“Five seconds,” Tomcat Lead warned. “Hold your positions and don’t screw up the egress. Break left if you get hit. SAR and Special Forces are only one mike out.”
Thor waited for Two to acknowledge, then said, “Three.” His wingman followed with, “Four.”
“Alright. Let’s give them hell.” Tomcat Lead began his descent, falling away in a graceful arc, his wingman dropping in slightly to the left and behind him. Thor counted off three seconds, then followed them down.