Before the last pieces of the helicopters rained back to the earth, the crack of small arms fire echoed through the valley.
Henry leaned into the scope and scanned the opposite hillside. Figures clad in white darted between trees.
“Movement,” Henry said, keeping his voice just above a whisper. Controlled.
“Taking contact,” Carlos said. “Who the fuck is shooting?”
“Muzzle flashes. Two o’clock, opposite slope. Not our guys.”
The enemy. But the enemy is us this time. Our own troops, guys I might have passed by on base or shot a game of pool with. Men better trained and equipped than any enemy he’d faced.
In Afghanistan, Henry had learned to put certain things from his mind in the midst of combat. When someone is trying to kill you, you shoot back. On his first deployment he’d found that combat is chaos and death and there is no room for philosophy when the rounds are smacking the dirt. Afterward, yes. But in the moment, you try to survive and you do what you have to do. The first time his team got hit with a Taliban ambush, he’d been riding in an open-top Humvee, one vehicle back from the lead, when an IED rocked the vehicle thirty yards ahead. Henry was riding shotgun, his SAW, or squad assault weapon, pointed out the window.
“Ambush!” shouted the driver.
Another explosion, this one behind them, tore through the air. The narrow street was lined by two-story homes, and from the alleys and windows, small arms fire erupted. An RPG fired from a rooftop narrowly missed the Humvee Henry was exiting. He hunkered down next to the right front tire, firing at the muzzle flashes and shadows. The five-vehicle convoy was pinned down in a kill zone, a carefully orchestrated attack. From the backseat, Corporal Christie was on the radio calling for air support.
Private Birch, a pimple-faced kid from West Virginia, hammered at the rooftops with the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the Humvee. The lead vehicle was burning, and Henry saw two Rangers dragging wounded men out of the inferno.
Under their current rules of engagement (ROE), the Rangers were only allowed to fire if fired upon and were not permitted to engage civilians. In theory, this made sense, but in practice, the lines were blurry. Henry would discover throughout his experience in Afghanistan that the Taliban and al-Qaeda did not follow any rules.
Henry ran toward the burning Humvee to help his fellow Rangers. Rounds smacked into the yellow-brown wall to his left as he ran. One of the Rangers ahead, Sergeant Pratt, fell as he was dragging another man by his armpits. The .50 kept pounding the enemy positions and the thirty-yard dash was the longest run Henry had ever experienced as time seemed to stretch out and make no sense. He was aware of the smell of propellant and smoke and fuel.
He was about ten yards from the wounded men when a woman in a bright blue robe, face covered with a burka, stepped from the shadows. She was only thirty or forty feet away, and beside her was a child dressed in rags, maybe ten or eleven years old; she held the boy’s wrist.
Later, Henry would try to recall the exact sequence of events, putting them together in his mind like puzzle pieces strewn over a floor jumbled and nonsensical. He was pretty sure he had seen the trigger device in her hand.
He turned, slowing his pace, acting on muscle memory and reflex. The SAW bucked, peppering the woman in blue and knocking her from her feet. Somehow, the boy was unharmed, and he disappeared into the shadows.
Henry made it to the Humvee, and then Cobra attack helicopters swept in, strafing the rooftops and buildings with 20mm cannons and missiles. The cannon fire made a deep, vibrating feeling in Henry’s chest, a terrible and wonderful thing. The enemy fighters ceased the attack, many of them killed, and others melting into the town.
Henry learned the woman he had killed was wearing a vest armed with explosives and ball bearings. He was fairly certain the trigger in her hand made him shoot her. He still dreamed about it, and sometimes there was a gray cord with a red button in her hand and sometimes there wasn’t and in the worst of the nightmares, the kid got knocked off his feet too.
His actions earned him a medal and the respect of his fellow Rangers. If he had not shot that woman, the blast and shrapnel would have wiped out every one of the soldiers from the lead Humvee, along with him. Sometimes the enemy doesn’t look like the enemy.
The soldiers coming down the slope now didn’t look like the enemy, either. But there was no time to debate ethics and morality. They were here to kill Henry and his fellow Wolves, and Henry was going to shoot back.
KEY WEST, FLORIDA
Suzanne Wilkins shivered with the wind, although it was not cold. The bow slapped the water and salt spray splashed her face and rivulets of ocean streamed down her cheeks. Bart eased back on the throttle as he came to the line of boats waiting to enter the channel. Shallow flats stretched off for miles where the water was only inches deep, covering sandbars and turtle grass. The cold came from inside her, not from the wind or the ocean.
Hundreds of pleasure craft streamed into the channel, creating a snaking traffic jam. Cell phone service was down, and they had no means of communication other than the radio. Bart cycled through the channels. On the emergency station, a Coast Guard message informed boaters to clear the waterways. Martial law was in effect. On other channels, captains chattered, voices raw and tight. There were wild stories of boats attacked by military vessels, pirates, and bombs going off in Miami. More fighter jets screamed off the coast, low to the deck.
Suzanne was afraid. Is Taylor all right? Are roving groups of criminals kicking in doors and burning houses? Did the nanny abandon Taylor to go be with her family in Miami? Suzanne’s fear was the primal terror of the mother huddled by a fire in the wilderness, with the rustling of bears and wolves skulking in the night, circling and hungry, heard but not seen. Her fear was worse, perhaps, because she was not with her child. She could not protect her. The trepidation of the abyss, dark and uncertain, pressed against her soul.
“Take the helm,” Bart said. He reached beneath the console, removed a Glock from its hard-shell, foam-lined case. He stuffed the 9mm into the elastic waist of his swim trunks and pulled his Hawaiian shirt over the weapon. He moved up to the bow, scanning back and forth, hands on his hips.
Suzanne stepped behind the center console. The Blue Mistress III chugged along at idle speed. The no-wake zones ahead were there for a reason, and apparently the captains were obeying the posted signs. Suzanne fought the urge to zip around the other boats, but she knew she would only run aground on the flats. The wait was maddening.
They were behind a sixty-foot yacht, and at the stern a group of gray-haired men surrounded by young women were drinking and laughing. “Margaritaville” blared from the speakers for the tenth time. The men seemed oblivious, having a party and unwilling to allow the world to impinge upon their fun.
Behind the Mistress, a sleek red cigarette boat rumbled dangerously close to the stern. A pair of coeds lounged topless on the bow. Behind the cockpit, Suzanne saw a hairy guy with gold chains, beefy and tanned and radiating arrogance and impatience. The clown in a BMW who tailgates and cuts in and out of traffic, speeding ahead only to stop at the next red light, and then gets angry because you pull up ahead of him in the next lane.
Suzanne gestured at the guy to back off. He responded by flipping her off with both hands. She turned back to the wheel in disgust.