“It will take coordination,” Ranjhani said. “And we are so few.”
McKeon glanced up at the Dear Leader, who thankfully was still watching the spectacle of his might and power. “We are few,” he agreed. “But we have help.”
“If that same help does not murder us,” Ranjhani said.
“I will advise him you have it so he can make the necessary acquisitions.” McKeon felt an electric jolt at the possibilities.
“Very well,” Ranjhani said. “There is something else, but I will tell you about it in person.” He ended the call without another word.
McKeon was used to such abrupt behavior from his friend, especially when he was excited. He returned the phone to his pocket, glad to keep the conversation short. The president of North Korea had decided to look up at that very moment and now stared down from the row above with a dyspeptic frown.
If the Dear Leader had known what McKeon had been talking about, or the havoc he was about to unleash on the United States, that frown would have been a smile — and McKeon would have been given a better seat.
First Sergeant Rick Bedford hung plastic reading glasses on the collar of a gray ARMY T-shirt and tossed the tattered copy of Sports Illustrated on the seat next to him. He tried to force a pleasant smile as he sat down in the worn barber chair. With high cheekbones and a thick mustache to match his dark hair, he was a known smiler among his men, but the days, weeks, and months in Afghanistan, so far away from his wife, had started to pile up on him. It was easy to see why the Russians always looked so angry during the ’80s.
“Where’s Aina today?” He did his best to grin at the girl who stood wide-eyed behind the barber chair, holding a pair of scissors. She looked so young, from Kyrgyzstan like most of the other barbers. He wondered why she was cutting hair and not in school.
“Aina has taken ill,” the girl said. Her command of English was excellent — probably what got her the job. “My name is Macha. I have not work here for some months, but they call me back because it is so busy. Everyone wants a haircut before they go home to their sweethearts.”
“That is so, Macha.” Rick Bedford sighed, closing his eyes. “Gotta look nice for our sweethearts.”
“You have been in Afghanistan for some time?”
“Long enough.” Bedford knew better than to talk specifics with the hired help. But rather than go secret squirrel, he usually tried to joke his way out of such conversations. “I’ll have to throw a handful of dirt in my sheets when I get home just to be able to go to sleep.”
Macha gave a strained laugh, yammering on about the weather, the dirt, even the horrible Bagram traffic. He could feel her hand tremble as she clipped his hair. She’d probably gap him up something terrible, just in time to go home and see Marta.
“Aina is very pretty, no?” the girl said, adjusting Bedford’s head with both hands. “You know her well over these months, I suppose.”
“She was a good barber, that’s all.” Bedford shrugged. He didn’t have any particular loyalty toward Aina. She just knew how to cut his hair. Some of the soldiers managed to hook up with the Kyrgyz women who worked in many of the service jobs on base. Even absent General Order #1, which prohibited such intimate behavior, Bedford wanted no part of such an affair. He’d lived and worked in this hellhole for nearly a year with his only thought to get back home to his wife. The fact that she was the sheriff’s daughter and a very accurate shot had only a little to do with his fidelity.
“Ah, you work with the Desert Rats,” the girl said, coming to a realization. Her scissors snipped away around his ears. “You all go home tomorrow.”
Bedford groaned. It wasn’t a question. She already knew. He made a mental note to remind his guys about Operational Security. Flagrant disregard for op sec could give the enemy enough intelligence to plant an improvised explosive or set up a sniper. Even so, Bedford found himself in a forgiving mood. The thought of returning home made him feel ten pounds lighter. Images of Marta flooded his mind.
“Tomorrow,” Bedford whispered without thinking. He stifled a yawn. Hell, almost everyone was going home. They shouldn’t talk about it, but by now, it was national news.
“Good for you,” the barber said. “You should be home tomorrow night.”
“Takes a bit longer than that.” Bedford chuckled. Aina had never bothered him with such small talk.
“Still, you are going,” the woman said. In her exuberance, she nicked him with her scissors.
He brought a hand to his ear and came back with a drop of blood.
“Please forgive me,” the girl said, eyes down, glistening with tears. “It is nothing but a tiny scratch, I assure you.”
Sergeant Bedford took a deep breath, biting his tongue. But, if he was anything, he was a nice guy. “Patient to a fault,” his last performance rating had said. He just wanted to get home in one piece and see his wife before some overzealous barber cut his head off.
“It’s all right,” he said. “A little scratch won’t kill me.”
“It is done,” Ali said, pressing the cell phone to his ear. A fierce wind blew down from the Hindu Kush, whipping the black beard across his face and pressing loose robes against his body.
“Excellent,” Ranjhani said. “I will alert the others.”
It took two days from the time they left Bagram for the members of Bedford’s U.S. Army Reserve Civil Affairs 405th Battalion to plant their boots back on U.S. soil in Fort Dix, New Jersey — where they spent the better part of a week filling out paperwork and talking to shrinks. Military brass conducted mandatory training to assist returning war-fighters in their demobilization and reentry into civilian life — even going so far as to give a class on remembering to kiss their wife before trying for any other “end state.”
First Sergeant Bedford and members of his reserve unit made it out at the head of their group and boarded a military hop to Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas late Saturday evening — nearly a week after they’d left Afghanistan.
Two weeks before they returned to the United States, Sergeant R. J. Howard’s wife had told him during a pouty Skype session that she’d decided to split the sheets in favor of a fellow professor at Southern Utah State. The young sergeant had bought a brand-new Ford F250 on the Internet that same night in an effort to salve his wounds.
Understandably, Howard was in no great rush to get back to Cedar City and decided to stop off and visit a sister in Kanab. Bedford hitched a ride with him.
Both men were feeling achy by the time they picked up the truck at the dealership in Las Vegas early Sunday morning but chalked it up to jet lag and deployment fatigue.
Seven days after his C-130 had gone wheels-up from the hellhole of Afghanistan, Rick Bedford found himself standing on the familiar concrete front porch of his modest red brick house — the thing that contained all he’d been missing and fighting for over the last year. His throat hurt and his butt was sore from endless hours of sitting, but he was home.
Marta answered the door, blond hair loose around her shoulders. It was just the way he liked it, but after a year’s separation, he wouldn’t have cared if she wore a Mohawk. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Her neck flushed red over the collar of a white blouse when she saw him. Her jeans were tight, oh boy were they tight. Red lips parted and hung there a moment before she spoke.
“I thought you weren’t coming home for another day…” She fanned her face with an open hand in a futile attempt to keep from crying. “The girls went to Kendra’s after church. They’re doing homework over there.”