Knife (9780698185623) (5 page)

Massey handed him one of his personal essays for admission, written in pencil. The script looked like crusted blood under the headlamp. Massey wrote in harsh strokes, nearly stabbing through the pages, but he could write well. The prompt was a funny one. It made Shaw laugh.
Describe a
time of difficulty and how you overcame it.

“What? It sucks, doesn't it? It felt like bullshit on the paper.”

“No, you're good,” Shaw said. “The question is funny.”

Massey frowned and shook his head, looked at his lap. He was writing about applying tourniquets to arterial wounds, having a guy die under his care. Shaw could imagine the graduate student or crusty academic salt tasked with reading Massey's essays. They would try to determine how well someone like him would do in a biology lab.
Tourniquet application, sure—but how would he do in an academic environment?
Could he handle the pressure?

“You need to clarify what you're trying to say here,” Shaw said.

He gave Massey the essay, pointed at a paragraph that needed some clarifying. Massey took the papers and stared at the words.

“You told them about tying off guys.” Shaw raised his eyebrows and tried not to laugh. “What about those experiences would enhance a classroom?”

Massey stared at the pages. “I don't know, man. Enhance? That kind of thing doesn't enhance shit. A guy died.”

“Exactly. Mass, you'll get in. They'll probably beg you to come. Just try to explain how the experience affected you. Tell them about death. They want to know about leadership, problem solving, and worldly experiences. You've got more of that in what you leave behind in the shitter than the person reading your essay.” Shaw looked at him and winked. “Just don't say that to them.”

•   •   •

T
he fuzzy red bulbs of distant headlamps kept Shaw awake long after Massey put his essays away and went to sleep. The lights went out one by one until hours later they were all gone. Then the bird was just cold and dark. It felt like being in a tomb. Shaw imagined his grandma lying alone in the cool Minnesota earth. It made him sad and he wished he'd taken the pills. Every now and again guys passed his face on the way to the shitters and he could feel a slight brush of wind and a little warmth as they walked by. They each carried their own scent. Waxed tobacco pouches. Sun-bleached tops and bottoms. Shampooed beards.

Shaw grabbed Massey's essays from the pack and was going over them again under the red light of his headlamp when Bear walked by, grabbing his crotch on his way to the shitter. He carried his own toilet paper and patted Shaw on the shoulder with the roll. Bear was a graceful sniper, a gum chewer, and unlike an actual bear in every way except for his hair. He was thin and short, with dark features. With jet-black hair and eyes to match, he grew his hair and beard so long it was hard to tell where his beard ended and the hair on his head began. He could close his eyes and blend into the dark. He was good-looking, but it was hard to tell through the mop of hair that was his face.

Bear walked out of the shitter after a few minutes and tapped Shaw again on the shoulder with the toilet paper. Then he walked away, tossing the roll in his hand, and dropped the roll on Mike's face. Bear walked on, laughing loud after Mike failed to wake up. Mike was Slausen's team leader. He was tall, thick and veiny, and wore the Alaska state flag next to the American one on his kit. His auburn beard was overpowered by a mustache with long, wispy hairs running away from the rest on the far ends. They looked like black licorice tails in the dark cabin of the aircraft. He was older than most of the guys in the teams, had three kids out of high school already. Ohio was sleeping next to Mike on the floor. He would take over the team if Mike went down. Ohio was shorter than Mike but broader in the shoulders. He bypassed the squadron beard, opting instead for a mustache darker than oil and thicker than a candy bar. He played lacrosse in college on the East Coast, an Ivy League—Princeton or Cornell, it was said—and had a young daughter he didn't see much. His ex-wife sent him pictures of his daughter every few months and his locker in the pit was a collage of his daughter's school pictures. She was a pretty girl, with dark black hair like her father, and was almost at the age when she'd change from being cute to being beautiful and making her dad worry.

Coughs interrupted the steady drone of the bird as it made its way over the Atlantic. If Shaw could forget where he was it might've sounded like a lawn mower running in the summertime. He could almost see his grandpa coughing out flecks of tobacco that had loosed from his cigar among the rivets, screws, and tiles of the bird's cabin. In reality, there were ten operators on that bird and thirty more on another three just like it flying through the dark and the clouds. They were the knife of the military, expressly used to hunt down and eliminate terrorist networks throughout the world. And they'd all be out in the night soon enough, doing their best to kill the right people. And the right people were asleep in their beds while those who would bring them their deaths flew over the ocean. The men and women would soon be waking up next to their husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. They'd stretch and share a kiss before brushing their teeth. Or maybe they'd already been up for hours with the sun, connecting circuits to car bombs or packing lunches for their children on their way to school. Some of them were probably standing in their kitchens, in their bathrobes, holding cups of coffee and blowing steam away from their mouths. Planning explosions on the dark walls of their homes and organizing dinner the same. Some would be innocent and might wonder if the war had finally reached the apex that would necessitate a move to another country. Perhaps they could move in with family or loved ones who would provide refuge from the car bombs, assassinations, and Western raids that usually got their targets but sometimes didn't. A little boy would rise from his bed in a remote mountain pass, and one of his uncles would do the same outside a crowded city before pushing his kids on a tire swing in their front yard.

Shaw lay awake in the dark long after putting away the essay and turning off his headlamp, his arms a bed for his head. He thought of the people they'd be after during the night and wondered if they were thinking of him. Then he thought of the little girl from the poppy fields. He could see her face lit by the moon in the steel divots of the ceiling. The steel cables running along the length of the cabin seemed like silver trails of tears if he looked at them from a certain angle. He opened two packets of pills, chewed them to powder, and swallowed them dry. When his hands and thighs got heavy and his head felt thick, he hoped if there were others like that little girl out there in the dark that they'd run.

Because the men were coming.

•   •   •

T
he C-17s refueled in the air, and hours later a dip in the trajectory startled the men awake. Shaw found half a ball of chaw sitting wet against his neck, the other half still loose-leafed in his cheek. Dom was awake and sitting across the aisle from him, panting with his thick pink tongue hanging half a foot from his mouth. He dipped his long brown snout to the floor and nosed a tennis ball toward Shaw. Stephens, the Belgian Malinois's handler, smiled through his red beard and stroked the smooth crown of buff fur between Dom's ears.

“Might want to roll that back,” Stephens said. “He's grumpy after a nap.”

Dom's eyes widened as Shaw reached toward the ball; then Dom lowered onto his haunches, his forepaws resting in a dignified stance of patience. His long white teeth glistened eerily in the light of the red headlamps turning on here and there as men awoke and prepared to land. Shaw rolled the ball back and Dom snatched it in his jaws. He moved into a sitting position and nosed the ball back at Shaw.

“Steph,” Shaw said. “I'm exhausted. Call the Dominator off. He's just going to get mad at me for underperforming and bite my ass for insulting him.”

Stephens laughed and patted the dog on the side. “Down, Dom.”

Dom dropped to his stomach, forepaws stretched out toward Shaw as before, and rested his snout on the floor. He watched the ball with dark, alert eyes, and when Shaw nudged it back with his boot he snatched the ball in his jaws, dropped it by his paws, and rested his snout on it.

The small white lights lining the floor of the cabin illuminated guys getting to their feet, waking others, and settling into seats. Metal clips snapped and echoed throughout the bird and everyone buckled in the same as they had some twenty hours before. The landing gear descended and a lawless smell filled the bird. A mix of tire fires, sunbaked animal shit, and burnt trash bit at their noses. Some guys smiled as the stench settled in and others coughed. Voices welcomed it in the dark.

There it is, boys.

Shitty stench for a shittier country.

Freedom isn't free,
a voice giggled through the Ambien runoff.

Then it's not worth it,
another answered.

It was a smell of warning. As long as the men smelled it they could never fully relax. Men had gotten blown up in chow halls and checkpoints and shot while instructing locals in counterinsurgency tactics. CIA agents had gotten blown up by their own sources. In this part of the earth, the world was on fire.

“Every time,” Massey said, shaking his head. “It's been the same damn smell for almost a decade. How do people live in this shit?”

“Birth shit,” Hagan yelled across the aisle. He was all excited, the whites of his eyes gleaming and glassed after the Ambien.

“Bird shit?”

“No. You deaf? I said it smells like birth shit.”

The entire cabin looked at Hagan. The air itself seemed to switch from a smell of warning to one of confusion.

“Haven't you ever been in the delivery room and seen the women crap while giving birth?” Hagan asked.

None of the men said anything for a long time. Eyes widened and lips strained against rows of teeth waiting to unleash deep laughs from tired throats. Hagan raised his eyebrows and spread his palms.

“Jesus, Hog,” Massey whispered.

Shaw looked at Dalonna, thinking that having had two kids with a third on the way, he might be able to lend an opinion on the matter. Dalonna stared at Hagan, his mouth open a little. He shook his head real slow. It appeared any personal opinion or experience he was keeping as such.

“Donna, you know what I'm talking about.” Hagan looked at him with his hands open. “Tell 'em about it. They poop when they push, right?”

Shaw put his head in his hands, ran his fingers through his hair. The way Hagan said
poop
made him sound like a middle-school kid explaining his potty mouth to one of his teachers. Dalonna stared at Hagan and ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. He took his time, wet his lips. Then he put his hands on his knees.

“Hog. Do not. Sit next. To me. On. The. Bird. Back. You degenerate.”

The bird seemed to shake with all the laughter as it approached the runway. Cooke had his eyes closed, a wide smile on his face, and Slausen grinned through whatever he'd popped that'd taken him away from everyone, undoubtedly harder than the Ambien did for everyone else. Slausen's eyes were half shut and he drawled slowly through the drugs, giggling quietly to himself. “A mess of a man,” he said. “That's you, Hog. Big ole messy Hog.”

“I saw it on TV,” Hagan said, his arms spread wide, preaching or begging. “No shit.” His voice had started loud but seemed to lower with each word. “Swear to God.”

The wheels touched down and the screeching breaks drowned out all the laughter. Hagan's face was red, his features shrunken and strained. It looked like he'd bitten an especially tart lemon. The sudden bump of rubber meeting earth after dancing weightless on the clouds for so long made the bird groan and shudder. The engines hissed and whined and everything got loud. It seemed like the plane might explode.

“I know you've seen it, Donna,” Hagan said, slow and quiet, almost to himself. “I know it.”

The bird rolled to a stop near an empty hangar and the ramp lowered, the men's laughter draining out into the humid morning air. It was just before 0400 hours and the heat had already found its way into the cabin. Daylight wouldn't break for another hour or two, but sweat already pooled at the base of Shaw's neck. Forklifts unloaded the pallets first and the men followed. Shaw picked up the neck pillow, wrapped it around his neck, and walked down the ramp and grabbed his hop bag from the pallets sitting outside the bird. The hot wind stung and the air was thick. Hagan walked down the runway, rubbing his crotch over and over again. He couldn't seem to find a comfortable place for his balls to rest in the heat. His voice followed the men to the hangar. He hadn't given up, rarely did.

“It was on a nature . . . science channel, or some crap. A documentary, maybe. PBS?”

Shaw walked ahead of the others. He couldn't hear a rebuttal, but he imagined heads shaking and guys spitting. Dust leapt from their boots and clouded at their knees, laughter the only thing more prevalent in the air than the heat.

Dim ceiling lights lit the hangar, making the land and dark airfield surrounding it disappear. It looked religious. Like God, if there was one, might be lighting their way and theirs alone. The engines of fast-movers heading out for nighttime bomb runs screeched above the hangar in the dark and Shaw watched the blue-and-orange rings of their engines leaving the ground and burning the sky. It looked like the Devil, if there was one, had come to earth and left his eyes behind. The fast-movers could be a relief, the screeches comforting to those surrounded on a hillside, outmatched and outgunned. They could blanket bombs for miles and split the world in half. The men started gathering in the hangar and set their bags on the concrete slabs. They craned their necks to the fading stars and watched the trails of jet fuel burn up in the sky, listening to the aircrafts shrieking like wraiths.