Knife (9780698185623) (24 page)

The birds dropped them off three klicks northwest of the compound. They had a ridgeline of small hills leading to mountains at their backs and Stag1's compound to their front. There were open fields, dirt roads, and goat trails on either side of the walk and a stray compound or two in the distance and dark. They started their walk in staggered teams spanning the open fields. Shaw flexed and wiggled his fingers for a few minutes until his hands started to feel warm, then he stopped to keep from sweating. They painted the earth green and there was nothing but runoff from small pockets of snow blown into the air. The ground was mostly frozen over and it crunched under each step, the harvested blades of wheatgrass run down to icy stubs. It felt like walking on gravel or rocks.

Mines were all over fields like this. The teams avoided mounds of earth and stuck to lower elevations in the ground to bypass them. Shaw kept his eyes toward the location of the compound and tried not to think of getting his legs blown into his stomach or having his nuts torn off and splattered all over the frozen stubs and shrubs. Every hop they heard of a guy from another squadron or team who stepped on a mine and lost a leg or, if the mine was big enough, everything. They hadn't heard about any on the hop yet, so they might've been due. Shaw's footfalls felt clumsy and heavy.

“Mound to the left,” Cooke said over the comms. He circled it with his laser and radioed back to the perimeter teams to watch it on their approach. It looked like a knee-high mound of animal shit.

The outline of the compound was starting to break through a staggered line of trees on the horizon that would eventually form the natural walls of the dirt path leading right up to the target house. Shaw had stopped thinking about his own nuts getting blown off and had moved on to wondering what kind of a life Hagan would live without his—he'd probably kill himself—when he saw the compound and started thinking of Stag1. He wondered if he was deep in the peaceful sleep of the innocent or wide-awake, moving from room to room throughout his house with his finger on the trigger. Searching for points of entry or ghosts from his past like Shaw imagined himself doing down the line. Intel had watched him for nearly a week and still couldn't get a full picture of the man. He fought in the region in the 1980s against the Soviets, and then he left it all to go into construction just to come back in another decade during another war. He seemed respected in the community and liked, not necessarily feared, but the two weren't far off. He didn't live in a mud hut hidden in the brush or a cave in the mountains but in a decent-sized stone compound set back from a dirt road and flanked by a half-assed perimeter. If he wanted to be in hiding, he didn't seem to know, or care, that he wasn't. None of it made any sense to Shaw.

Panther1 moving into position
came over the comms, and then the other perimeter teams radioed in the same. Shaw and his team took a knee a couple hundred meters from the compound and let the perimeter elements settle in on their flanks. It was cold on the ground and the wind blew so hard he had to lean in to it. He painted the rooftop of the compound, ran his laser over its corners and blind spots, while the other guys did the same. The house, built of stone the color of sand, glowed green in the night. Panther1 radioed in that they were set and 2 and 3 followed suit.

Then the assault teams assembled their ladders and Shaw radioed in that they were approaching the wall. Mike's team split off to take the other side of the wall and their footfalls and the bangers and mags shifting on their kits seemed loud, but the wind picking up off the flat fields kept them quiet.

Dalonna put the ladder at the base of the wall, climbed it, and hopped over. Hagan, Cooke, and Massey followed him and then Shaw mounted the rungs last. The wall seemed ancient and was made of sunbaked bricks. It seemed odd and out of place, connected to the modern metal gate—a clash of cultures. Dust flaked and loosed from the foundation where the ladder was set against it, and Shaw rubbed the wall and came away with dust on the fingertips of his gloves. It was soft and grainy. He climbed and jumped into the courtyard and saw a tire swing hanging from the tree and rocking gently on the wind.

The perimeter teams lit up the windows and walls of the house and the assault teams approached the door. Shaw set up closest to the door on the left side and Mike mirrored his movements on the right, his team snaking behind him down the wall. Ohio was on his first mission back after getting shot, and he stood behind Mike, staring at the doorknob. He probably shouldn't have been out yet, but his fingers danced up and down the barrel of his rifle. He seemed eager.

Shaw ran his hands around the door frame, looking for wires and anything out of place. The wood door looked old and felt heavy and cold, but the lock mechanism was brass, shining and looking new. He didn't see or feel anything that made him think the door would blow and take them all out.

“Pick it,” he whispered over the comms.

Hagan came to the door and took out his pick kit and got surgical on the lock. His big hands moved gracefully and light. Oddly enough, he was the best pick among them, bear paws and all. He let go of the lock and gave Shaw a thumbs-up. Then he put one hand on the knob and braced another on the door between the mechanism and the door frame. He whispered over the comms, “Breaching.” Then he turned the knob and opened the door.

Nothing blew, so they flowed into the house, slow and smooth like honey out of a water glass. Moonlight came through the few windows in the landing and cast barred shadows of the window guards onto the carpets and tabletops. Mike and his team took the first floor and Shaw and his team toed their way up the stairs. A floorboard creaked when Shaw hit the first step and his boot sank a little into the carpeted stairs. He smelled nutmeg and warmth and a recently extinguished fire. He picked his way carefully up the stairs, sticking to the perimeter of the steps so they wouldn't groan. He saw thin cracks and streaks in the bare walls and then hit the landing. Four doorways split off from the hallway, two on either side. He broke off right, into the first doorway, with Hagan on his hip. The door was ajar. He nudged it open with his elbow and Stag1 was sitting on the edge of his bed, fully clothed, shoes on his feet. He had the window cracked and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and he watched Hagan and Shaw enter. Smoke trails snaked out the window. The room was small and drafty, and the tobacco smelled stale and harsh. Hagan walked slowly around the other side of the bed and lit up the man's wife and the rest of the room with his laser, checking under the bed and around the small dresser. Then he looked out the window and back at the wife.

Shaw turned on his tac light and lit up Stag1. He sat upright, rigid like a statue. He kept his eyes on Shaw, though away from the light. He was looking at Shaw's kneepads, and his shoulders rose and fell as if he was taking a relieved breath. No one said anything for a while and then he brought his hand up slowly to his mouth, a bracelet visible on his wrist. He grabbed the cigarette and brought it down to his knees. He blew the smoke at Shaw in a long stream and it hit Shaw's pants and rose up into his face. Then he shrugged, nodded, and patted his sleeping wife on the side. He tightened the covers around her and then opened his hands.

“I should stand, no?”

Shaw didn't say anything and neither did Hagan. They nodded. Stag1 stood and offered his wrists. Hagan cuffed his hands in front and then checked his arms and legs, the pockets of his pants.

“Cigarettes and a lighter,” Stag1 said.

Hagan took a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and a black lighter. They walked him out of the room and he didn't resist when Shaw put his hand on Stag1's shoulder to lead him down the stairs.

“My wife,” Stag1 said, leaning toward Shaw. “She's a hard sleeper.” Then he smiled. “I am not.”

Shaw smelled the tobacco strong on his breath and figured he must've been smoking for hours, probably his whole life. They brought him to the landing and he looked past them, toward the children's rooms, then he nodded and walked down the stairs. Shaw expected the stairs to blow beneath them, but they stayed steady below their feet. They walked out of the house and all the teams trickled out of the home and into the fields and they started walking Stag1 to the exfil.

“Did you close my door?” Stag1 asked.

The words rolled out of him slow and proper, like he was reading a translation he didn't trust. Hagan told him they always closed them on their way out and Stag1 laughed and looked up at the sky.

“I've never been on a helicopter.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at Shaw. Then he looked around at all the teams spread out along the fields walking to the exfil.

“So many of you.”

Then it was quiet for a while and Shaw could hear only the ground crunching below their feet. He saw the birds approaching before he could hear them and they took a knee and waited for them to land so they could load up.

“There are mines in these fields,” Stag1 said.

He jutted his chin out and looked around the land. His breath sent up a screen of white. The birds dipped their rotors and started to land, whipping up the frozen earth and sending hard pellets of ice and dirt into the air. He smiled at Shaw.

“Boom.”

•   •   •

T
hey handed Stag1 over to Intel once they touched down on the tarmac. Shaw was glad for it. Leaving an objective, most of their pickups were either in body bags or pissing on themselves, probably thinking they were going to get thrown out of the birds or shot in the back of the head. But Stag1 just sat cross-legged like royalty next to them. He didn't seem to mind rubbing shoulders with the men who had taken him, even fell asleep and leaned in to Hagan. Hagan nudged him back to the middle and Stag1 woke up and said, “Sorry,” real loud. His warm breath flooded the cabin and his stale tobacco breath spread throughout. In the dark cabin he would smile every now and again and Shaw thought his teeth were brighter than the stars, brighter than any he'd ever seen.

Shaw walked back to the war room with Hagan.

“He was talkative,” Hagan said.

“Yeah, he was. You think his wife was really asleep?”

Hagan shrugged. They spat on the tarmac and watched Intel walk Stag1 over to a set of huts sheltered by blast walls. “She didn't open her eyes. And her breathing seemed steady under the sheets.”

Shaw nodded.

“Dude was waiting for us.”

“Seemed like it,” Shaw said. “Didn't particularly care for that.”

“Me either. Gave me the creeps.”

The tarmac died off and their boots hit the gravel.

“Did Dalonna and Cooke find the kids?”

“Yeah,” Shaw said. “They were all asleep. The girl in her own bed and the two boys in one together.”

“And the last room?”

“Empty. Some toys for the kids and a small bench with some shoes underneath, but that was it. They didn't find anything.”

Hagan threw his chaw on the gravel and then took out his pouch and set a new one in his cheek. It looked like it might burst through the skin. “The house smelled good. The wife, too.”

“Yeah to the house, and how do you know about the wife?”

Hagan shrugged. “Smelled like flowers. Lilac or some shit. You didn't smell it?”

Shaw shook his head and laughed. “Guess I don't have the nose for it. I didn't peg you for a botanist, Hog.”

Hagan was quiet and they walked on awhile before he spoke up. “What the hell is a botanist?”

Shaw laughed again. “Someone who studies plants and flowers.”

Hagan smiled. “No weaknesses. I love fucking flowers.”

•   •   •

I
ntel handled Stag1 for a few days and the teams got briefed on the findings.

The first few nights he was very cooperative—smiling and talking a lot, looking the interrogators in the eye and speaking about his time during the jihad in the eighties and about the new life he made as a father and a construction contractor. He said the city was a peaceful one and that cells hadn't operated in or around it after they attracted drone strikes and bomb runs years before. Talking about his wife and kids lit him up. He was talking about all the good he was planning on doing once government contracts to rebuild the country started getting offered out. After the wars were over, of course.

After the second and third nights without sleep he started getting more reserved and less talkative. Irritable. The interrogators said they felt a façade shifting in him. Conversation steered toward how his family was carrying on in his absence. Intel told him they hadn't seen anyone visit, nor had his wife left the house, and he started getting frustrated, going on about how he hadn't done anything wrong and the jihad of the eighties was carried out in line with sharia law. The interrogators let him know they didn't give a shit about the jihad, even thanked him for helping them win the Cold War. Then they let him think about why he might have been in a dark wooden shack for the last few days if it wasn't about that. They let him get flustered for a while and honored his request to pray whenever he asked to. He decided not to speak to them for a day or two and they were okay with that. After he broke his silence they offered to take him home, but only if he told them why he hadn't been visiting the wife of his nephew after he'd died in the ambush.

“Then he broke,” the CO told the teams assembled before him. He set images on a table in front of the men. “Stag1 admitted that while he's been waiting for the government contracts he's answered questions from cell leaders every now and again. He said they pay him for ‘structural knowledge' and that he doesn't know what they do with the knowledge after speaking with him.” He laid a picture of Scar1 and Scar3 on the table and photos of a few others the teams hadn't taken on yet.

“Specify ‘structural knowledge,' sir?” Cooke asked.