Deadline

“A yes-or-no will do.”

“Don’t make me hurt and embarrass you.”

“So that’s a yes.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You were only working an angle. Getting to us to get your story.”

After a beat, he bobbed his head once.

She held his stare for a long moment, then said softly, “You’re lying, Dawson.”

“You’ve repeatedly accused me of doing just that.”

“And you’ve vehemently denied it. You’ll never make me believe otherwise now.”

“Oh, yeah? Bet I can. You want to know how far I’ll go to get a story? I’ll tell you. But you may want to sit down first.”

She backed into a chair and sat.

His motions were angry and abrupt as he began to pace the width of the bed. “I had gotten some good material in Afghanistan. The stories had generated a lot of hype, notice. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. The real nitty-gritty.

“So I talked some army brass into letting me go to a combat outpost near the Pakistani border. A dark base. When the sun goes down, it’s dark until it comes up again. No lights. To move from building to building, personnel walk around with red flashlights. That kind of place. High alert twenty-four/seven.

“Stationed there was this platoon. They were set apart. Not much interaction with other service members. Tough guys. Small, wiry, lean and buff. When they weren’t on a mission, they worked out. Wrestled with each other. Everything they did was very physical, combative, and they did everything together. Like a wolf pack of trained fighters.

“They were great subject matter, what I’d been hoping for. I wanted to live with them, get to know them, learn what they were about. What made them good soldiers? Were they patriots? Or were they ruffians looking for a fight, and this was the best—or worst—to be found?

“They liked me but couldn’t understand why I was there when I could be somewhere else, anywhere else in the world, where there were women and booze, movie theaters, bars, normal life. I impressed upon them that the creature-comfort sacrifices were worth the story I would come away with.

“I slept in their barracks, talked smack with them, played poker. I couldn’t accompany them on their missions, because those involved finding enemy targets and taking them out.

“They’d be gone for days at a time and would return dirty, tired, hungry for hot meals, but always pumped. Mission accomplished. One less terrorist in the world. They’d talk. And talk. Eager to tell me about the most recent firefight. Talking over one another, outdoing one another with the foul language. ‘Get this down, Dawson.’ ‘You can quote me on this.’ ‘Don’t believe his bullshit. You want to know how it went down, talk to me.’ I’d won their confidence. They wanted me to tell their story.”

He stopped pacing and sat down on the end of the bed, facing her. “Then in May, they went out and were gone for longer than usual. The brass wouldn’t tell me anything. I didn’t expect them to. The mission was classified, of course, but this time there was a palpable tension behind the secrecy. With good reason, I found out later.

“An America chopper had crashed. The two pilots were injured, but they’d survived. The area had seen a lot of action, and the fighting was too hot for the pilots to be immediately rescued by air.

“Near the crash site was a village. One of those built into the mountain face. Most of the dwellings are caves. The people are tribal, steeped in their traditions and religion, for the most part shut off from the rest of the world. But the villagers harbored the pilots. My platoon was sent there to provide protection until a rescue could be planned.

“But Afghani rebels with Taliban ties got wind of it and reached the village ahead of the platoon. They killed the two pilots execution-style, then began punishing the villagers for sheltering them.

“For days the platoon, who’d had to take up a position on a lower plateau, hammered them relentlessly, but they were dug in deep. And when they did come out from cover, it was to kill a civilian where our guys could do nothing except watch helplessly. They murdered them singly, sometimes two or three at a time. The lucky ones, they shot. Some weren’t let off that easily. Old men. Kids. Women, who were…” He paused to clear his throat. “What they did to them is unspeakable.

“Our guys finally got air support and stormed the place, but it was literally an uphill and bloody battle. They took out a few of the enemy, but many got away. The carnage they found in the village was unimaginable.”

He spread his knees wide and stared at the serviceable but ugly carpet between his boots. “When they returned to the outpost, they were whipped. Casualties had been heavy. Six men dead. Five seriously wounded. Those were helicoptered to the hospital at Bagram. One of them died en route. The rest of them took these losses hard.

“In the barracks the mood wasn’t boisterous. No one was pumped. They didn’t joke or swap insults or play grab-ass. They didn’t talk except when necessary. They barely made eye contact with each other. They had see

n the ugliest face of war, and it had changed them. They’d had an up-close-and-personal experience with it, and it wasn’t glorious.

“That was going to be the hook for my story. What happens to the warrior when war ceases to be noble and deteriorates into savagery? Not especially an original theme, but I figured I could write it with fresh insight. If I could get them to talk about the experience.”

He continued to stare at the floor. “Gradually, with some gentle prodding, a few of them began to open up to me. They told me that some of the villagers had been used as human shields. They were having a hard time dealing with the fact that it was actually their bullets that had ripped apart the bodies of grandmothers, boys, girls barely past puberty, a woman heavy with pregnancy.”

He stopped speaking, and for a moment, Amelia believed he was finished. When he resumed, his voice was husky and uneven.