Her breath trembles as she voices a word I swore was out of my vocabulary. “Marriage.”
I blink. “Not funny.”
I jerk my chin at Walker and we start to make our way to our contact. That’s when he stops cold at her fluent Arabic. It’s a language I’ve been picking up, but still am nowhere as good as him. He whispers, “She said, ‘If I marry one of you, I can leave. Escape. I can live. I have no time left.”
“Walker, man, now you’re?—“
He leans forward so only I can hear him. “She saw who set fire to the butcher shop.”
“The alley seemed to constrict around me. All I felt was oppression. Heat. Dust. Walker was married and we needed this to be legal to getFasa into the U.S. There I was sucking all the oxygen from a place that had no damn air as I made a decision I didn’t have the capacity to make.”
Keene speaks quietly. “War makes us all fearless.”
Caleb inserts, “And foolish.”
“Trust me, that day, I earned a medal for being both.” I drag a hand down my face. “We married two hours later.”
My first marriage had more dignity than this one does, I think woodenly. It isn’t a chapel or a mosque. Nor in any place that resembled grandeur or ritual. It’s the back of a mobile army hospital unit carved out of a half-demolished building. Someone hung a white sheet to divide the space. One side holdsthe healing wounded soldiers. The side I’m on is being used to sacrifice one. The disparity is not lost on me.
The unit’s Chaplin performs the ceremony. I repeat my vows stiffly, feeling the surreal weight of each word. Fasa keeps her eyes downcast until I sign the final line. Once everything was complete, she whispers, “Thank you, soldier.”
“I was too stunned to realize her voice sounded more like grief than gratitude. I should’ve noticed that. Should’ve wondered why relief didn’t bloom across her face. But I was fully locked in my savior complex and working out logistics.”
“What kind of logistics?” Colby asked.
“To trade my marriage for the information she could give us.”
“What did she do during that time?” His voice is hard, but I understand why. He’s been in a similar situation as mine.
“For two days, Fasa stayed near the compound while we prepared for extraction. Kept quiet, didn’t cause trouble. She watched me almost constantly with eyes that made me think I’d done something noble.” I let my head fall back on my shoulders.“Looking back, I understand she was studying me. Looking for weakness. Waiting for her chance.”
“To do what, Uncle Charlie?” Jon’s voice rips through the air.
“So, how’s married life treating you?”
“Fuck you, Walker,” I growl.
It’s the second night of my “newly wedded bliss,” and we’re stationed near the outer band of tents. We received information from Fasa, through the interpreter, that someone is going to try to steal a shipment of medical supplies from camp tonight.
I drag a hand across my forehead expecting it to come away damp, but it’s dry. Reaching for my canteen, I take a drink before offering it to Waker as he downs some of the same piss warm water to quench his thirst. “Think we’ll ever get used to the hot?”
“I hope not.” He hands my canister back to me. Capping it off, I wish for the miracle of ice. “This is the kind of hot that makes you think you’re doomed to wind up sizzling in a frying pan next to some Spam.”
Snickering, he tells me, “I have to take a leak.”
“Thanks for sharing. Might I suggest the quality accommodations behind our Humvee?”
“Don’t want to see the size of my dick?”
“Don’t want to feel bad for your wife if I do,” I retort.
We both laugh as he wanders off, humming beneath his breath. Unlatching my helmet, I let my scalp breathe.
That’s when I feel it.
The cold shift of air. The impending sense of death’s arrival.
Only, instead of it arriving with a flash and a bang, it’s a shuffle of sand. I turn just in time to catch the glint of metal in the faint moonlight that’s slashing upward. Likely aiming for my throat, it slashes across my shoulder, sending raging fire down my arm instead.
