Dove signals me a few minutes later. Yes—take out the targets. But don’t do it right now. Wait twenty-five minutes, unless Ugly Fuck moves out of range (in which case, we shoot and make a messy, risky withdraw).
The twenty-five-minute delay before taking out HVTs is almost unheard of. The reason for it: due to the planned—and now canceled—early withdraw McVay called about, the guys at base aren’t ready and waiting in a chopper. So—take out the HVTs in twenty. Backup will, by that time, be twenty minutes away. Not ideal, I think, but not the worst. And then I realize, “Holy fuck.”
I told Breck if Dove got the order to not eliminate Ugly Fuck immediately, I would let him—Breck—know within thirty minutes. Instead, I’ve been lying here thinking about my brothers.
By the time my gaffe is realized, Breck’s already a third of the way to Bluebell, about to give Blue the order to fire more than half an hour before our backup is in place.
I realize this and I tell Dove. We start to head toward Bluebell.
Right about the time Dove and I near Bluebell and Breck, the camel crew starts moving. Breck is right by Bluebell. They decide to aim for Ugly Fuck—and Bluebell hits him. The camel caravan scatters.
Not five minutes lat
er, as we scramble for the withdraw point, fire starts coming down from the upper ridge of the mountain. Taliban militia from another village. Fuck, they got here fast.
By the time our withdraw chopper sets down in a small field on the back side of the peak, the four of us are surrounded on all fucking sides.
Bluebell takes a bullet to the shoulder, but he doesn’t let that stop him from taking out a dozen Taliban fighters. Breck gets pinged in the calf and catches some shrapnel in his left forearm, but he never goes light on the trigger either. Dove covers us all and takes out probably fifteen of the fighters on the high ground. I take out another dozen or more before we manage to crest the ridge. At the center of the field in front of us is a bird: a beautiful Black Hawk that is a welcome sight to all of us.
I’m in the rear—it’s only fair, since I fucked up this gig—so when one fucker rises from the dead to spray the field with bullets, my brother Operators have already made it to the bird.
I hit the ground, waiting for Breck, who’s on a drop rope, to cover me. That’s how I get hit in the back. The bullet gets me in the liver.
I’m stabilized at base and flown to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany.
I don’t remember much, but according to Breck later, I ask about my brothers every time my eyes are open.
In the Landstuhl ICU twelve hours later, I wake for the first time after surgery.
“My brother. Which one?”
Breck’s eyes go red and wet, and through the veil of sedatives, I feel something sharp.
He tells me Lyon died the eighteenth. Unexpected. All the chemo they gave him fucked his heart up.
Breck lifts my IV-laden arm and wraps his hand around it. He leans down and puts his forehead on the mattress, still holding my arm.
Lying there in Landstuhl, watching my best friend’s bowed head with blurry eyes, I remember why I failed to get to Breck before he left to give the okay to Bluebell.
I was thinking of my brothers.
The mission went wrong because the call that came summoning us back to base—triggered by the call that informed the base my brother died—got me distracted, worrying about my brother. Worrying about my brother got me shot.
Breck tells me the funeral is the twenty-first. Being shot keeps me from getting there in time.
I try to wrap my head around the fucked up circularity of fate.
I tell no one—certainly not Breck, who brings me fast food and spends hours laughing his ass off as I play Assassins’ Creed doped up on opiates—but for the first time in my life, I use pain like a salve.
Action and consequence. Isn’t that life?
I should have fought harder to get back stateside. I should have seen Ly. I should be there now with Kelly.
I embrace the gunshot as my punishment.
When, a week later, I’m discharged back to Afghanistan because our guys are getting their asses handed to them by the angry Taliban, I fight like I never have before. For Lyon. For me.
Blood drips down the backdrop of my dreams.