The Valley (39 page)

O
nly one other visitor came in the days before Black was discharged from Charlie Med.

He came in wordlessly and sat down on a stool, facing Black. He put his hands in his lap and smiled at Black serenely, onyx eyes shining behind his spectacles.

He sat like that a full minute, just looking.

Finally Black let out an exasperated breath.

“What is this?” he asked. “You're gonna put the whammy on me?”

His visitor said nothing.

“Okay, fine. Don't talk. You don't have to. You can sit there smiling and listen.”

His visitor just kept smiling.

“You screwed up,” Black said, to no discernible reaction.

He waited a moment and went on.

“You left me your signed confession.”

His visitor blinked once but otherwise sat rock still.

“I know why you carried it with you,” Black pressed. “It's your goddamned talisman.”

“I want it.”

The soft voice startled him. It made his skin crawl.

“Fuck you,” Black said sharply. “You won't have it, and you won't find it.”

He looked at the pale hands, clasped gently in his visitor's lap. Then up at his eyes.

“I know who you are,” Black said. “You're a damned legend in the Valley.”

The eyes beamed and burned, examining Black.

Black leaned forward.

“I know you by name.”

The smile was gone, giving way to an unnameable expression. His visitor leaned forward as well, his face close to Black's, his eyes searching the air as though he were listening very closely for something, and spoke a single word, hardly more than a whisper.

“Try.”

He sat back, and the beatific smile returned. He rose, placing a small metal object on the side table, shining eyes on Black.

Pistone left quietly, without another word.

Black picked it up. It was a metal dog tag reading WILLIAM BRYDON.

T
here were camps for when you were going in, and camps for when you were coming out. You'd go through one at the beginning of a deployment, the other at the end of one.

They were basically the same place. Sprawling tracts of land in the Kuwaiti desert, cordoned off with walls, inside each one a momentary city of tents and temporary buildings and trailer-sized mock-ups of fast-food joints and prefab Americana, with gravel poured among the spaces.

The difference was that one type of camp was filled with people contemplating their mortality while they waited for word that it was their unit's turn to move forward to Iraq or Afghanistan. The other was filled with people enjoying the pleasant surprise of being still alive and wondering what to do with the rest of their lives.

This one was the camp for people coming out. It was a place to spend a couple days eating free chow, showering, visiting the telephone bank or Internet café, and staring out at the desert as you waited to be called for the flight home. Most of the people on this camp were on their way from Iraq, which suited him just fine.

Few paid him much notice. This was a place of jostling anonymity where many traveled alone, and where as a rule no one's business was anyone's business. No one except the proprietors of this particular camp's Green Beans Coffee trailer noticed that he had been roaming its avenues and byways for three weeks and change, which was much longer than the usual stay.

He hung a towel over the bar of his bunk, the lower one at the far end of a long row. It was one of the standard grab-a-rack units they sent you to when you arrived at the camp.

The morning sun was already high as he emerged. He padded along in loafers, backpack slung over one shoulder, across the gravel toward what he thought of as the town square.

Up the steps to the coffee trailer, hello to the Green Beans guys, this crew from Bangladesh, then back out again with a steaming cup and across the way to the U.S.O. tent. He pulled open the door and paused just inside, as he always did, to give his eyes time to adjust to the dark. No boots or shoes allowed; you left them in cubbies just inside the entrance and went in your socks.

On the outside the Camp Alabama U.S.O. tent was your usual stark-white half-pipe semi-permanent FOB tent, maybe fifty feet high and a hundred long. On the inside was a bit of dimly lit deployment genius.

Table lamps sprawled next to leather couches across the carpeted floor. Soft cubby areas and carpeted platforms were built against the walls; soldiers snored away. In the center a raised platform housed a self-serve café with coffee and water, ringed by a black iron railing with streetlamps casting pools of light on the tables.

One far corner of the building was cordoned off with cubicle walls creating a miniature movie theater. Another contained banks of computer terminals. He took his coffee and headed for these.

He found a terminal situated such that his back would be to the corner and slumped down into the chair, dropping his pack to the floor by his feet and cracking his coffee lid open to take some of the scald off of it. He logged in and waited for his e-mail to bring him that morning's entry in a running correspondence.

Re: RE: re: re: re: re: Stuff

Why didn't you tell Sergeant Merrick about Billy?

He put the lid back on his cup and typed.

Billy didn't deserve that.

He sipped his coffee and stared at the screen.

He knew what it was to be a ghost. Let his ghost rest where it belongs.

He sent the message and cracked his knuckles. He knew his correspondent was waiting, on the other side of the planet and many hours away, for his message and would write back. While he waited he reached into his backpack and came out with a paperback novel about a part-time Israeli assassin with too much baggage who just wants to quit and spend his time restoring the paintings of Christian Renaissance masters.

The reply came back a couple minutes later.

You don't believe in ghosts. At least you don't think you do.

Do you really think it's your place to decide whether his parents deserve the truth? Didn't you tell me once that
you
deserved the truth regardless of what it was? Isn't that what you said to Dad?

His little sister had stopped seeming so little a long time ago. He stared at the screen deciding what to say in response when a follow-up message came in.

Sorry. Don't answer that.

[Hold on, getting more coffee.]

Following her lead, he went and warmed up his own coffee at the streetlamp café and came back to see what else she had sent.

Do you really think Private Corelli might still be alive?

He hit REPLY and typed one sentence.

I will find out.

He hit SEND and went back to his book. In this installment of the Israeli spy's adventures, he had managed to befriend a pope.

The mail flashed a reply.

Try to rest first, okay BB? The people who can look are looking.

“BB” stood for “big brother.” He hit REPLY.

I sent him out there.

He didn't know what else to say, so he sent it. The reply came quickly.

Okay, BB, signing off for tonight. I wish you would talk to somebody else (I know, not my business) but I'm glad you're telling me at least.

Are you sure you should be talking about this stuff over email?

—LS

“Little sister.” He punched a quick response.

No one's listening. Have a good night.

—BB

He closed his e-mail and sat staring out at the dimly humming tent. In the movie theater enclosure next door a high-performance motorcycle screamed through the fourth or fifth installment of an action series featuring endless road chases and improbable kung fu.

He closed the novel and tossed it back into his backpack. He rose and took several steps toward the door before stopping, shaking his head at himself irritably.

His baby sister, he decided, not for the first time, was too wise for her own good.

He trudged back to the terminal, pack sloughing to the floor again, and went back online to his e-mail folder.

The old message was still in his inbox. The one from before he ever went to Vega.

He stared at the message for a long time before opening the folder where he kept his saved e-mail drafts. When he was recuperating at Charlie Med, he'd had Cousins wheel him to the S-1 shop so he could get on the computer and cancel the e-mail he'd set to automatically send if he hadn't returned from COP Vega in ten days. The draft was still in the folder.

He read it over, then took the mouse and highlighted most of it. He hit DELETE and started typing from scratch.

I did get your note. I am safe. I've been away, but I should have told you before I went.

He punched a couple of ENTERs and typed

There is a lot to tell.

Then deleted it. Instead he typed

Don't read too much into dreams.

He hit SEND, logged off, and slung his backpack.

He fetched his shoes and trudged across the camp to the chow hall. After he ate, he went back to the Green Beans for a fresh coffee and settled in for an afternoon with his book on the deck outside.

He was only a few pages in when he heard the puckish voice behind him.

“Mediocrates, I presume.”

It was the name his friend from Officer Candidate School had called him in the e-mail before he left Omaha for the Valley. The smartass. Camp Alabama was the last place on Earth Black would have expected to hear his voice. For a moment he thought he must be mistaken.

But when he turned and saw the figure of the Monk, clean-shaven and grinning wryly in civilian clothes, he knew he hadn't been mistaken at all.

Danny stood with him, looking sheepish.

T
hey both had coffees in their hands. Black gawked. His friend looked at him expectantly.

“So?” he said, holding palm and cup to the sky. “May we?”

His actual name, Black knew, was Pyne. He hadn't used it much since O.C.S.

Pyne put on a horrible French accent.

“Mais oui?”

He went back to his own voice.

“Or what?”

Dumbfounded, Black nodded. The two men stepped forward, Danny cradling his cup as he shrank into the seat farthest from Black.

“Hello, L.T.,” he mumbled, eyes to the floor.

“Nice one, by the way, in the e-mail,” Pyne cracked as he toed a metal chair out for himself. “‘Lord of the Files.' I get it. Well played, you.”

He made himself comfortable.

“So, how long you planning to hide out from the world?”

He looked around the gravel concourse with its lash-up shops and low-rent vendors.

“I mean, this is some fine living,” he said appreciatively. “Don't get me wrong. But seriously.”

He sipped his coffee and burned his lips.

“Corelli,” Black stated flatly.

This sobered his friend, who shook his head grimly.

Black stared at the tabletop.

“I'm on it,” Pyne said quietly.

Black watched the steam rise from his coffee.

“You know I would have been there in a heartbeat,” Pyne said, “if . . .”

“Yeah.”

Black said nothing else. Pyne shrugged off the moment, taking up his scalding coffee and changing the subject.

“Thanks for not blowing my cover,” he said brightly. “That was smooth.”

Black nodded glumly.

“And for not shooting me,” Pyne went on, blowing over the top of his cup. “Not so smooth.”

“I
did
shoot you. My rifle didn't shoot you.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

“How'd you rig it for yourself to hide out here anyway?” Pyne asked, appraising their surroundings.

“‘On my way home,'” Black said, making morose quotes in the air.

Pyne, squinching his face over his coffee, looked up and cocked his head.

“One of the benefits of being a paper-pusher,” Black said. “How'd you find me here?”

“One of the benefits of being me,” his friend said from behind his cup, eyebrows raised mischievously.

Black waited to see if there was anything more forthcoming, but Pyne just shook his head.

“You don't want to see the sausages get made.”

He took a careful sip and opened his mouth to speak. Black held up a finger and turned to Danny, who seemed to think his coffee cup was big enough to hide all of him.

“Danny,” he said. “I know.”

Danny hung his head miserably.

“I am shame, L.T. I swear it I don't know Sergeant Caine's . . . business was . . . was the middle of this.”

Pyne nodded quietly and sipped.

“I only translate for him one time,” Danny went on. “He takes me to the main grower, big guy, and has me make the business, for him to tell the others. After that Caine never told me nothing and I don't see it.”

“What did he say he'd do if you didn't help?”

“Kill.”

Black nodded.

“It wasn't your fault, Danny. You saved my life.”

“A-
hem,
” Pyne said.

Black looked at him quizzically.

“You're welcome,” Pyne said generously. “Saving your ass on another Land Nav course again.”

Black squinted at the two of them.

“Danny, so you're . . .”

He drifted off.

“Nah,” Pyne cut in. “Not formally.”

He swirled his cup.

“Danny helped me keep tabs on what those eleven-bravo boneheads were up to in my valley.”

Eleven-Bravo was the Army's job classification for an infantryman. “
My
” was Pyne's classification for anyplace he saw fit to ply his wares.

“It was Danny that told me something was going on at the COP. I mean, something besides your Sergeant Caine's amateur drug lord impersonation.”

Black's eyes widened.

“Yeah, I knew about that nonsense,” his friend said blandly. “I let that play out for a bit.”

Black goggled.

“You let it
play out?
”

Pyne shrugged.

“He was making himself part of the natural food chain of the valley, and for a time it was . . .”

He circled a hand in the air.

“Nondisruptive to my activities.”

Black just gawked, speechless.

“And then, later on,” Pyne went on casually, “things were, uh . . .”

He swirled his cup again.

“Disrupted.”

He sat back and shook his head, remembering.

“First time I felt like people genuinely hated me there,” he said distantly.

Everyone considered that.

“After the night of that fire I was freaking radioactive. Even Merak shut me down.”

“Merak?”

“Darreh Sin chief.”

“That's his name?”

“You didn't know his name?”

“Caine never told me.”

Pyne shook his head contemptuously.

“You were working him?” Black asked.

“Duh,” Pyne replied. “Obviously.”

“Did you tell him about the wall?”

Pyne looked to Danny for signs of recognition.

“Why?” he said blankly.

“After I showed him the heroin brick—”

Pyne rolled his eyes.

“—he said he would kill us all to the end of the world.”

“Damn,” his friend said sarcastically. “Stone-cold.”

He swigged eagerly, finally happy with the temperature.

“Anyway,” he said. “Yeah, after the fire that place went straight sideways on me.”

He eyed Black.

“That's when I knew Americans fucked something up and somebody had to figure out what.”

Black nodded and sipped his own.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I can see . . .”

He caught the meaning in Pyne's casual words.

“Wait, what's that supposed to mean?”

Pyne smiled into his cup.

“Hey, Danny,” he said. “Wanna meet me back at the hootch before chow?”

Danny nodded and turned to Black.

“I see you, L.T.”

He rose and left. Black turned to his friend.

“You initiated the investigation.”

Pyne shook his head.

“I just reached out to, uh, some friends in the Civil Affairs community.”

“The water project.”

Pyne shrugged.

“Maybe Merak opens up a little.”

“Which he did.”

Pyne pinched the air in his fingers.

“Teeny little crack. But somebody needed to blow it open.”

“You made the fifteen-six happen.”

Pyne shook his head again.

“Not the fifteen-six itself,” he said, appreciating the beauty of the thing. “That happened all on its own after Merak complained about the freaking goats.”

Black stared at him.

“You got me put on it!”

His friend looked off at the horizon with an innocent-cherub expression.

Black gawked.

“You think this is funny?” he blurted out, too loudly. “People are dead!”

Pyne looked left and right to see if Black had drawn anyone's attention. He leaned across the table, turning serious.

“No,” he said tersely. “I don't think it's funny. I'm not a fan of closet psycho freaks going for a little free play in my own geostrategically significant piece of backyard. I needed that unfucked.”

“So you just
picked
me?”

Pyne leaned back and shrugged again.

“I knew you were located at FOB Omaha. Who did you want me to pick?”

“Anybody!”

Pyne looked insulted.

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.

“It's supposed to be random!”

“
‘It's supposed to be random!'
” Pyne mocked. “The siren song of Army mediocrity.”

“So you
hacked
it?”

Pyne smiled, sipping.

“We've got good hackers,” he said with evident pride.

“You had no right!”

Pyne grew annoyed, leaning in again.

“Don't wuss out on me,” he said sharply, jabbing the tabletop with a finger. “Have you noticed you're a soldier in a war? Soldiers get picked arbitrarily for shitty missions all the time, including missions where people get killed. Including missions where people are
guaranteed
to get killed.”

He leaned back in his chair, calming.

“This shitty mission happened to be yours.”

Black realized his jaw was literally hanging open.

“You're not in my chain of command!” he practically shouted.

Pyne rolled his eyes.

“Oh,
that's
your objection?” he said languidly. “That your arbitrary assignment didn't come from your Colonel Goldenhair? Excuse me, but when you swore your commissioning oath there wasn't anything in there about you being guaranteed not to get random assignments from God-knows-who.”

Black just spluttered, speechless. Pyne frowned at him dismissively.

“I mean, it's not like I sent you out there all alone,” he said, exasperated. “You
knew
I had my eye on you the whole time.”

“What? No I didn't!”

Pyne crinkled his brow.

“What'd you think the note with the coordinates and the freek was for?”

“I didn't open that note until after Danny disappeared and Caine was trying to kill me!”

Pyne was flabbergasted.

“Why not?!”

“I thought it was a love note like you said!”

His friend's mouth hung open, then closed. Then formed itself into a pinched, suppressed smile.

“When was the last time I had a girl?” he said, trying not to laugh.

“I don't know!” Black shot back. “I never see you!”

“When I
do
have a girl, since when do I write her love notes with freaking
hearts
on them?”

Black stewed.

“Speaking of which,” his friend added. “You talk about way too much stuff on your personal e-mail.”

Black looked up in surprise, then reddened. Pyne waved him off.

“There's more interesting dirt on the ground outside this coffee shop.”

Black scowled and sulked.

“I'm sorry, man,” his friend said, still grinning but softening. “I just thought when you saw me at Vega my cryptic-handshake-and-significant-look routine made it pretty obvious.”

Black sighed, deflated.

“You know I wouldn't leave you out there flapping,” Pyne said, mildly wounded. “That's why I had people keeping an eye on you.”

“What?”

“Well, Danny had your back as much as he could . . .”

Black realized.

“Bosch.”

The graffiti. Taking the heat on himself when Shannon threw the grenade.

Pyne nodded.

“Seemed like a good kid, for certain purposes,” he said, growing somber. “We might've been interested in him.”

Black looked at him but nothing more was offered. He sank back into memory.

Bosch. All the guys at the O.P.

Something occurred to him. He looked at Pyne narrow-eyed.

“What do you know about Traynor?”

“O.P. or guy?”

“Guy.”

“Still working on him too.”

“Still
working
on him?”

“Yeah, of course. You think I was going to leave it to your Sergeant Caine to try to . . .”

He trailed off as he saw the look of incomprehension on Black's face.

“Never mind.”

“What?” Black pressed.

“Don't worry about it,” his friend said blankly. “This part's sort of out of your lane.”

Black fished in his pocket and slapped Jason Traynor's ID on the table.

“Screw my lane.”

Pyne eyed the card and looked around furtively. He crossed his arms, sighed, and pointed at the table.

“
They
gave me that.”

“Who?”

“Duh. The people who took Jason.”

“
Took
him?”

“Yeah.”

“He's alive.”

“Not officially.”

Black screwed up his brow.

“What people?”

“Complicated.”

“Was Caine there?”

Pyne shrugged.

“Don't know about that. I didn't meet that dude until I found out he was kinda double-working me.”

“Double-
working
you?”

“Yeah, like, working all the growers and all his other contacts to try to find out what happened to Traynor and get him back.”

Black's jaw was hanging open again.

“Anyway,” Pyne went on casually. “
That
was disruptive to my activities.”

Black's head spun.

“What did you do?”

Pyne took up his cooling cup.

“Went and met him and gave him the I.D. card and told him his boy was alive, and we're working on it, and stop making so much noise.”

He peered down into it.

“I don't think he did stop, though. He was pretty shook up about the kid.”

He sipped and reflected.

“Think that's why he was stockpiling cash,” he mused. “Trying to get a big enough bounty stacked up that Valley dudes would have an incentive—”

His tilted cup hovered in front of his face.

“—I mean a
real
incentive, like, fuck-your-daughter-murder-your-cousin incentive, to find out where Traynor was.”

He shook his head sadly and downed the last of his coffee.

“Dude was desperate.”

Black could only think of one thing to say.

“Who the hell
are
you guys?”

The Monk looked around the town square, milling with people.

“We should walk.”