Doc made no protest, which meant assent, which was just piling on top of all the strange things the Nightstalkers were going through.
Moms pointed in the direction that Scout had gone. “We cover her ass. I want over-watch on her twenty-four/seven. Got it?”
“Got it,” Nada and Doc and Kirk said.
Moms looked at Roland. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
“You look funny,” Roland said when Scout came in the door.
They’d sent her home, Kirk providing security, and now she was back. The team was geared back up, everyone much more comfortable in their cammies and body armor and combat vests.
Scout was geared up in her own way. Wearing boots and a little helmet and white pants and was so unlike the girl who’d rang their doorbell not long ago. But she still had blue hair.
She jerked a thumb at Kirk, who was hovering over her shoulder. “He says I can’t go.”
“Go where?” Nada asked.
“Duuuhhh,” Scout said, twirling about. “I need to exercise Comanche. I haven’t seen him since you guys dropped in. He’s probably going nuts.”
“Comanche?” Roland looked up from adjusting the trigger pressure on his MK-23 for the umpteenth time. “Why’d you name him that? Did you know that’s the name of the horse that survived Custer’s Last Stand? Captain Myles Keogh’s horse?”
“Duh.” Scout started humming “Gary Owen.”
Roland shook his head. “You are one weird little girl.”
“How do you know about Comanche?” Scout asked.
Once more the room fell silent, because Roland was exhibiting intellectual prowess, which was like Eagle throwing the hatchet. Dangerous.
“Myles Keogh was a distant relative on my mother’s side of the family, the wild Irish side,” Roland said.
“You have a not-wild side?” Scout asked, and Roland gave a hint of a smile, which was like a slab breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf.
Roland continued. “We didn’t have much in my family, but we had this big Bible and in it were all these names and Keogh was there. From fighting in Ireland to Italy to the Civil War to dying with Custer. He was a warrior.”
“His horse was the only survivor,” Scout said. “I thought that was pretty cool. He was wounded and all, but they took care of him.”
“Well,” Roland said, military tactics and history being an area he actually spent brainpower on, “technically people have the whole Little Bighorn thing kind of wrong. The Seventh Cavalry was not entirely wiped out. Just half. Just the guys in the companies following Custer. Reno and Benteen held their ground.”
“Most Medals of Honor ever given out for a single battle went to the men who crawled down to get water for the wounded,” Moms said without looking up from the laptop, earning her a look from Roland that no one else could interpret. She went back to typing in the report for the Great Water Battle.
“How the hell do you know this stuff?” Nada asked Scout. “Most people don’t even know where Little Bighorn is.”
Roland thumped the table. “Bet she got a hippo — hippo-whatever as big as Eagle’s.”
“Hippocampus,” Kirk said.
“I have all the books,” Scout said. “And my dad took me there when I was twelve. My mom was, well, she was off at the time. It was soooo not what I thought, but it soooo made sense when I got out of the car and saw it.”
“How do you mean?” Nada asked.
“Well,” Scout said, “all the pictures and paintings are so wrong. It looks flat. The battlefield. Two-D. But when you get there you see it’s all valleys and hills and rolling land. Three-D. You could hide Lady Gaga and her entire crew out there.”
“Yeah,” Nada said. “Cover and concealment. Critical to any battle. We had some shitholes in the ’Stan that—”
“No cursing,” Moms said, still typing, and Nada’s jaw flapped down.
“Why did Custer fascinate you?” Kirk asked.
Scout twirled her crop. “I guess I wonder what it would be like to have to follow him, follow his orders with no choice. Be one of his soldiers and they knew it was going to be bad and that he didn’t care about them because he had his own agenda. I don’t like the idea of not having a choice, of having no control over your own life. I just don’t understand how those guys did that — follow orders and just go and die?”
Moms stopped typing and everyone got quiet.
“Oh! Sorry.” Scout stopped twirling her crop and for once was still.
“I don’t think they thought they were going to die,” Kirk said. “Soldiers have hope. You gotta have hope or you can’t do the mission.”
“Sometimes they don’t,” Moms said, surprising everyone. “At Cold Harbor, the only battle Grant ever admitted he screwed up, there was a soldier who wrote in his diary: June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed. Not much hope there.”
Roland stood abruptly, dropping the gun to the table, parts spewing everywhere. “It might not be the Medal of Honor, but Moms was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. I’d follow her anywhere, hope or no hope. She saved my life.”
Moms shook her head, ignoring the looks everyone was giving her, and knew Roland had said it as much for Scout’s benefit as anything else. “No personal stuff, guys. Roland, you drive Scout to the stables and watch over her. Like you’d watch over me.”
Roland picked up the MK-23 parts and had it reassembled in fourteen seconds. “Yes, ma’am.”
Roland and Scout came back twenty minutes later. Scout was pale and her lips were as blue as her hair. Her face was streaked with tears. Roland was literally twitching, gun in hand but shaking his head over and over.
“I didn’t kill him,” Roland said. “I didn’t kill him.”
Nada ran across the room and grabbed Scout, pulling her in tight to his chest, up against his body armor, his magazines and his grenades. Scout melted in his arms and he held her from collapsing on the floor. “What happened?” he asked, looking at Roland, who had the crazed look in his eyes of combat.
“I didn’t kill him,” Roland repeated.
“Good,” Moms said, walking over. She put a comforting hand on Roland’s shoulder. “Who didn’t you kill?”
Nada realized it. “There’s a Firefly in Comanche?”
Roland nodded, getting control. “The guy who runs the stables was hurt bad. I got him out. The horse damn near got us. Took out doors. Just kept kicking at us. I pulled the guy out. He got broke ribs, smashed jaw, but he’s alive. Said the horse just went nuts. He was lying there dying for a day after he got hurt. Support got him now. He’ll be okay. I didn’t kill the horse. I didn’t. I shoulda. I screwed up Protocol.”
“Please, please,” Scout said between sobs into Nada’s body armor. “You can’t kill him. I’d die if you killed him.”
Nada looked down at the rag of a girl in his arms, her sobs wracking through both of them. “We won’t.” He easily lifted Scout up and her head rested on his shoulder.
“Swear?” Scout said.
“Protocol,” Moms said. “We have Protocol. Containment. We have—” Then she stopped speaking, seeing the look in Nada’s eyes.
Nada held Scout with one arm and patted her on the head with the other.
“Ouch!” Scout said in her misery. “Curling iron.”
“Sorry.” Nada gently lowered her and she looked up with tear-filled eyes.
“We might have to hurt him,” Nada said, “but we won’t kill him.” Nada had snot on his combat vest from Scout. “It’s going to be okay.”
“The government will buy you a new horse,” Doc said. “Support is already rebuilding the Lindsays’ pool.”
Scout got even more upset. “Comanche isn’t a pool! I don’t want a new horse. I want Comanche!”