Chapter 36
brODIE WASN’T SURE HOW LONG he lay there, staring at this awful vision. Eventually he managed to get himself on his feet. He began walking aimlessly.
He listened to the crunch of his footsteps, the sloshing of the half-full water bottle in his jacket pocket, his breathing, the crickets.
The world was empty, and he was alone, and he kept feeling like the ground was pulling away into the dark, the edge of the earth was approaching, and he’d walk right off and keep going toward oblivion.
He looked down at his feet. Still on land. Make sure they stay that way. You can’t fly or float, idiot. But you can fall three hundred feet to your death, and that would be embarrassing.
“Scott.”
It was Taylor, approaching from about twenty yards away.
He said, “Hi.”
“Did you find your spirit animal yet?”
“I think I stepped on it.”
She laughed. A hearty, honest laugh. As she got closer, he saw her dark suit and hair were covered in desert dust. Her eyes were wide and vibrant. “It’s beautiful, Scott. It’s so beautiful.”
“Where’s Greer?”
“He went to his tent a while ago. It was getting too much for him.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know.” She walked up to him. “Maybe I need to sit.”
They both sat down in the sand, close together, facing each other. A warm breeze drifted across the flat terrain, rustling the desert scrub, blowing drifts of sand like low waves rolling against the earth.
He watched her. He watched her watching him.
He had no idea how long they sat like that.
But it felt like there were new things to discover in her face.
Her pupils were wide, and in the brown rings of her irises he saw for the first time subtle flecks of gold.
Had they always been there? Was he seeing something real?
The brilliant sky wheeled behind her. He wondered what she was thinking.
He noticed her lips curl in a little upturned smile, and he smiled back. She laughed. He laughed. She asked, “What the hell are we doing up here, Scott?”
“Our job.”
She kept laughing. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Think of it like this. We’re doing this instead of sleeping. It’s a waking dream.”
Taylor nodded. “Right. I like that.” Then she said, “I’m lying down.”
She lay on her back, then patted the ground next to her, and Brodie joined her. She took his hand and held it tight. “So we don’t float away.”
“Good idea.”
They watched the stars awhile. Taylor said, “I wish we had music.”
“I’ll sing.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
They watched the sky. At some point Taylor rolled toward him and put her arm across his chest. “Is this okay?”
“Sure.”
They lay there, two people who had intertwined their lives and fates far more than Scott Brodie had ever fully acknowledged. He felt the weight of her arm across his body, her fingers clutching his chest, her other hand squeezing his. He felt her warm breath against his chin.
He and Maggie Taylor had experienced a couple of close calls during their difficult assignments together, alcohol-fueled moments, half conceived and flushed with desire. Whatever this was now, it was different, it was true to who they were and what they were together.
He felt her squeeze his hand tighter.
So we don’t float away.
Then she adjusted her arm, and he heard the crinkle of plastic from his jacket pocket. The ugliest sound in the world.
Taylor felt around over his jacket. “What is that?”
Had he forgotten? Or had he wanted to forget? “Something I dug up. Ames had marked it with a willow branch next to a pond.”
She sat up and looked at him. “Are you serious? What is it?”
He had a sudden doubt, then felt in his breast pocket for it. It was there. He sat up and pulled out the plastic bag, then removed the thumb drive and held it up.
Taylor looked at it. “Oh my God. This could be… We have to get back.”
“Now?”
“Yes.” She got to her feet, then Brodie did as well. “This can’t wait. We need to find Tom.”
Maggie Taylor looked, well, mildly insane. Eyes wide and full of intensity. It was like her usual mania, but cranked way up.
Brodie said to her, “Good luck, if you’re expecting me to be your Sherpa.”
Taylor looked around, then called out, “Tom!”
No answer.
Then Scott Brodie did what people had been doing since the dawn of man and looked to the stars. He found the Big Dipper, and from there Polaris, the North Star. He turned to his left and said to Taylor, “This way.”
They walked side by side and Brodie kept checking his feet to make sure he wasn’t about to walk off a ledge. He was coming down, but not enough to trust his senses.
Taylor, for her part, had consumed about the same amount of tea as Brodie, but given her much smaller frame she was probably feeling it more, and would for longer. And Tom Greer, wherever he was, would be completely zonked.
They walked in a silence for a minute, keeping a quick pace.
Then Taylor said, “Last time I took these, I was a different person. Hadn’t felt heartbreak, hadn’t seen war.
I was a little worried what my mind might do to me now.
After everything I’ve seen, you know? But it’s actually…
healing.” She looked around. “Being out here helps. It can be good to feel small. What about you?”
Brodie didn’t answer right away. He thought about all he’d seen up here, both what was real and what wasn’t. All the beauty and the brutality. As if it was all one thing, like there was no difference between horror and awe. In fact, that seemed to sum up his feelings about the tin men pretty well.
But what he found himself saying aloud was: “I’m feeling anger, Taylor. We have a job to do here, but I’m starting to think we have another job too, just like Ames did. I’m thinking about those buried weapons. I’m thinking about digging them up.”
Taylor did not respond.
Brodie saw the mesa’s western edge about fifty yards ahead. He looked around and spotted a small artificial light a little to the south. As they approached the light, they saw it was a battery-powered lantern, sitting in front of Greer’s tent.
Greer was standing near the lantern, and a little too close to the edge.
Brodie didn’t want to startle the guy, so he called out while they were still a good distance away.
Greer turned and stared at them, and Brodie realized the man was completely naked.
As they got closer, Brodie said, “It’s a little cold for that, Tom.”
Greer replied, “Feels good.”
Brodie asked Taylor, “What do you think?”
“I think it’s against Army regs.”
Brodie said to Greer, “Cover up your privates, Private. We’re leaving.”
“No.”
“I insist.”
Greer did not respond.
They had to get this guy out of there. “Listen to me, Tom. We have reason to believe that your platoonmates are in danger. We need to get back to base. Whatever this is, it’s not over.”
Tom Greer stood there, his hog hanging out and the desert breeze blowing on his bare skin. He looked out at the black night. In the distance was Camp Hayden, its streetlamps creating an island of light in the endless dark, glowing white like an apparition. The man repeated, “It’s not over.”
“That’s right.”
“And I need to put my clothes on.”
“Also correct.”
Greer turned to him. “I can’t run from this, can I?”
Brodie shook his head. “The fight isn’t over, soldier.”
Greer looked at the edge of the mesa. “I’m not sure I’m good to climb down.”
“I’ll help you.”
He looked at Brodie curiously. “Are you sober?”
“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
“What?”
“Get dressed and leave your gear. We need to move.”
The man got dressed, and Taylor gathered their weapons and ammo. As the most sober of the bunch, Brodie decided to carry both pistols and Greer’s knife. He outfitted Greer with a headlamp he’d found in the man’s pack.
They took it slow down the path, Brodie in the lead, followed by Greer, then Taylor. The path was only about four feet wide, so they hugged the side of the mountain.
Brodie turned around and saw Greer focused intently on his feet, lit by the circle of light thrown by his headlamp.
He took each step carefully and deliberately, as if his life depended on it, because it did.
Brodie was close enough that if Greer tripped, Brodie might be able to catch him.
Or the young man would send them both on the express route down the mountain.
We’re not preparing for a war. We’re already in one.
Greer’s words. And in war you wager your life, and you sometimes take stupid risks, and you tell yourself along the way that it’s all worth it for something bigger.
Brodie glanced at Taylor, who seemed like she wanted to be going faster. Instead of eyeing her footing she kept looking out in the direction of Camp Hayden.
In a few minutes they made it to the bottom, and Brodie made Greer turn off his headlamp. “We don’t want to broadcast our approach.”
They picked their way across the dark desert, cutting southwest until they could see the lights of Camp Hayden on the southern edge of the low hills.
Along the way, Greer kept having to stop and rest. He wouldn’t say why, but Brodie thought he understood, based on his very recent experience—Greer was tapped into his subconscious and his instincts, and as they inched closer to Camp Hayden every alarm bell in the guy’s brain was blaring.
Get away get away. Anywhere but there.
But to the man’s credit, he kept pushing forward. Because there was another imperative inside of him, the soldier’s instinct to run toward danger, not away from it.
Greer began walking faster as Camp Hayden came more clearly into view, and he got ahead of Brodie and Taylor.
Taylor said, “He’s still tripping.”
“What about you?”
“I’m settling down.” She looked at the bright lights of Camp Hayden up ahead, and the figure of Tom Greer in silhouette, walking unsteadily toward the camp. She said, “I feel like we’re crawling back into a viper’s nest, Scott. Why are we doing that?”
“Because it’s where the truth is.”