THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (39 page)

But he was not, he was in this shit-hole.

At Bagram Marty would have had an audience, with supervisors and ranking agents doing cheer-leading. His praises would have been sung. And the talk would have moved on to him bringing
Carnival Girl
home, with the tanks showing empty and the wind plucking at her as she touched down. He was a goddamn hero but no one was around to tell him.

The wind battered at the tent's sides. The sand came in between the flaps and the ground sheet, and the roof billowed. A solitary beer, given him by George, was half hidden on the chair by his clothes, which were hitched on the back. Marty hadn't pulled the can's ring.

The last thing he'd heard from Oscar Golf was a demand for

'soonest' information on potential damage to the port-side wing-tip of
Carnival Girl
in the touch-down. There had been no hero-gram out of Langley, no congratulation from goddamn Gonsalves, nothing. He had staggered out of the Ground Control, had been close to spilling himself on to the sand at the foot of the trailer steps, and George had given him the beer, which hadn't come from an icebox.

George had gone off in the jeep to tow the bird off the runway. Lizzy-Jo had been slumped, dead to the world, over her end of the workbench. He should have slept, but he could not. Again and again, searing in his mind, he saw the lurch of the platform when the first Hellfire went away from
Carnival Girl,
the ball of fire going down, and the camels breaking their line of march, then the cloud - and the second missile going into that cloud. Could not sleep.

The tent's entrance flap was lifted back. The wind came in behind her. The sand spewed round her, spraying on to his legs and body, and over his face.

She dropped the flap.

She sat on the bed. Her hips, in the tight short trousers, were against his knees. He could have covered himself, could have reached for the boxers or his singlet, but he did not. Too tired, too dead, too cheated to care. The bed bent under her weight.

'That's a fine sight,' Lizzy-Jo said, and winked. 'Might frighten a girl in the Carolinas - but not a New Yorker.'

She had not buttoned up her blouse. Her hand rested on the hairs of his chest.

'Did you sleep?'

'No. Tried to, didn't.'

'You want the news?'

Her fingers pulled at the hairs, teased them.

'What's the news?'

'You look like you need a lift-up . . .'

For months, Marty had worked with Lizzy-Jo, had shared a workbench with her. She'd been good, he was raw. The guys said, at Bagram, that she was assigned to mind him. Half the pilots at Bagram would have given a month's pay to work alongside Lizzy-Jo. He'd wondered often enough whether she'd complained about being put with him because he was new and given the dirty work, hadn't been an Air Force flier, had acne and fat-lensed glasses. He didn't know her - knew about Rick, who sold insurance, and about Clara, who was watched over by Rick's parents during the working day, knew about a marriage that had died, knew about her dedication .. . and nothing of her.

' Langley says that flight out of Shaybah was of the highest quality technical achievement, that it was pressed home in the most adverse conditions, that the video record of the flight and the missile firing will be used for training programmes in the future. It's what Langley said.'

He felt the blood pound in his cheeks.

She was bent over him, her breasts hanging close to his chest where her fingers played in the hairs. 'And Gonsalves came through from Riyadh. He said he was proud of us. If you'd stayed around in the trailer you'd have heard what he said.'

He blushed, felt like a kid. It was like when his high-school grades had come through - and he'd thought he'd flunked when he hadn't.

'I'd say it's party time.'

She leaned over him, reaching for the can. He did not know her, did not know what she felt for him . . . and her finger was into the ring and tugging it. The beer's foam sprayed over him, ran on his belly. She tilted the can for him to drink and the beer spilled from his mouth as he swallowed. He thought he'd drunk half the can, then she put it down. She licked the warm beer off his chest, took the hairs in her mouth, then her tongue was on his stomach.

'You good to party?'

Marty nodded, closed his eyes. She kicked off her flip-flops and wriggled out of the tight short trousers. Her face was serious, set -

like the business was important - as she stood and pulled down her panties, then her weight was on him. The condom had been in her pocket, and she ripped the wrapping off with her teeth and peeled it over him.

He turned his head away so that he could not see her face . . . and he did not know why, what she needed from him, whether she had done it like this with the insurance salesman. The sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and on to him, oiled them and fastened them together. The last time had been with a girl at Nellis, from the management of the base canteen, and she'd had thicker spectacles than him and had weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds.

She'd hoped he'd marry her. Then he'd gone to Bagram and she'd never written.

He had
killed.
The reward for him, for killing, was to get laid twice in a half-hour. Maybe she had done it many times at Bagram, in her own prefabricated quarters or in a pilot's, but it did not matter to him. He gloried in the feel of her and squeezed deeper inside her the second time. He heard her shallow cries and the pace of her breathing, and he hung on to her as if in fear that it would finish. He did not see into her eyes, did not know her. He pushed his hips against hers. At the last moment, he yelled out, gasped, and sobbed his thanks to her. She squealed . .. He wondered how many of the technical guys or Maintenance heard her, if George did. He could go no deeper. His nails gouged her back and the sweat came off her and was in his mouth and he tasted the salt of it, with the beer.

Lizzy-Jo took the second one off him, knotted it, dropped it beside the bed.

She kissed his cheek, like she was his aunt.

She knelt on the bed over him and her head was cocked up. 'You know what's different?'

Marty panted, 'You and me, us? That was fantastic, it was—'

'You dumb ass,' she said, sharp. She showed no passion. Her face was the same, serious and set, as it had been when she'd zoomed the camera for the freeze-frame and when she'd launched. 'It's the wind.'

'I don't hear any wind.'

'You fool. That's what's different.'

He looked at the sides of the tent, then at its roof. The tent shook in the wind but not like it might collapse. He heard the sing of the wind but no longer its scream. She had her panties back on, was dragging up her short tight trousers and slipping on her blouse. The wind was down. Now it was not carrying sand under the flaps and on to the groundsheet. She bent over him and he tried to kiss her, but her face turned away and she only reached down to pick up the two knotted condoms, which went into her pocket. . . He did not understand anything of her. 'Why did you come here, to me?'

'I thought we deserved a party - didn't we?'

She went out through the flap and it dropped back. Marty kicked himself off the bed. He dressed slowly. A clean shirt, boxers and T-shirt from his bag, and the old jeans. His mother and father, up in the cabin overlooking Santa Barbara, had never asked him whether he had a girlfriend, seemed to expect that one day he'd turn up with one; he didn't know how they'd feel about a woman like Lizzy-Jo. He wrote to them once a month, was due to, but he would not tell them about his party. He drank the rest of the beer, stale and flat, and s;plashed water on his face. He did not go for a shower, did not want to take the smell of her off him.

Outside the tent, the sun hit him.

A small windsock flew from a pole on the far side of the satellite-dish trailer; it was out but not rigid.

A little knot of men worked around the port-side wing of
Carnival
Girl,
and George and Lizzy-Jo blocked his view of the forward fuselage. He walked towards them. George faced him, stepped aside and made a mock bow of respect. It was black on the white of the fuselage. Marty gazed at the skull and the cross-bones under it, clenched his fist and raised it above his head. It was a confirmed kill.

Marty felt on top of the world.

She said impassively, like she'd shared nothing with him, 'We're going back up tomorrow. You look like you need some sleep. Take-off an hour before dawn. Get over the strike site, get a damage assessment, then go after any of the bastards we missed. Got it?'

Alive, the body had been thin. Dead, it was swollen and grotesque.

When they stopped in the dusk, as the sun sank, they did the burying before taking the share of water.

There were no stones for them to make a cairn to cover Fahd's corpse. Rashid, Ghaffur and Caleb scooped away sand with their fists, used their nails to dig, and made the hole. Hosni said the prayers.

With their feet, they pushed the sand back over him, covered what remained of his head.

After the sand had taken him, the stench of the body stayed with them. Caleb thought it clung to his robe. Then they drank their water, a quarter of a mug each, and moved on.

The wind only flapped their clothes, did not rip them. He knew the growing danger. They were hunted. The boy sat rigid and upright on his camel, rode and listened. The darkness settled on them, and the cool came.

Hosni said, 'I asked you - do you hate enough?'

Caleb whispered his answer. 'I told you, it has not changed -1 hate enough.'

'Without hate you will fail.'

'I have the hate. First there was excitement, then there was pride.

After the pride came the hate.'

'Explain to me.'

'When I went to Landi Khotal with my friends, everything was strange, was colour, was new. I was tested, then I was chosen. I had never known, where I came from, that excitement. I passed through the training camps, I was accepted into the 055 Brigade, I was made a squad leader. Of course there was pride - I had never been trained or accepted, had never led before. In the camps, X-Ray and Delta, there were two choices, two roads. I could have surrendered, as many have done, and submitted, or I could have fought them and hated them.'

'Where you come from, is there no love of that place?'

'None. All my love is for the family that I go back to at the end of this journey.'

The chuckle was low, choking, beside him. 'Bravely said. What would be your future if you had not gone to the wedding at Landi Khotal?'

'I would never have known excitement, pride and hate,' Caleb said simply, and quietly. 'I would be dead, and without love. I would have nothing. I would be choked to death by boredom . . . That I am alive is because I believe in the love of the family - you and Fahd, even Tommy, and the love of the people who helped me to reach you, and the love of those who wait for us.'

'Great trust is put in you, and what you can achieve.'

Caleb said, 'I hope not to fail that trust.'

'Tell me, those who were your friends, back at your old home, if you have achieved what we ask of you, what will they say of you?'

'They would not understand - they live without living, without love.'

'If they were to spit on your name?'

'They are forgotten, they are dead. I would not care.'

He felt the thin, bony hand touch his thigh. It seemed to crawl up it, then found his fist on the reins. It was held tight, as in a vice. This was his friend, not the boys from school or the kids on the canal towpath or the men in the garage. This was his family, not his mother. He lifted his fist. He kissed Hosni's hand.

'It is wrong,' Caleb said. 'We have to change.'

He challenged the guide.

Through the dawn, the thought had formed in his mind, as they had started out again, and in the morning's first hours. When the sun was high, convinced that Rashid was wrong, he had pushed the exhausted Beautiful One forward, faster. They had been in a long line, the guide far in front and the boy far to the back. He had come to the guide's shoulder. The Beautiful One stumbled from the effort.

'It is wrong because we make too big a target. We have to change.'

He spoke in the language he had learned from the Arabs in the 055

Brigade - what he had learned when they laughed and when they shouted in anger and when they cried in fear. He had been with them in good times, and in the hell when the bombers had been over them.

'We have to believe that it fired, then was recalled because of the wind. The wind has gone. We have to believe it will return to search for us.'

He could not have counted how many days it was since the great storm and the girl, and since Tommy had gone down into the sand.

In all of those days it was the first time he had ridden at the head of the caravan, been beside the guide.

'If we are so spread out we make it easier for them, for the camera, to see one man or one camel, than to see us all.'

The desert had changed, the formations were now small hills of reddened sand. Some were twice his height as he rode the Beautiful One. Here, the wind had made perfect circles of the hills, and between them were the flat areas where sand had been scraped away.

But the formation of the caravan had concerned him. In all the days, uncounted, he had not thought to challenge the guide.

'We have to close up, be tight together. We have to make the smallest target possible. We have to make it hard for them.'

Now the guide turned. He had not spoken, had not used his rein to slow his camel. His face was a loose, uncut beard, thin lips that were dried and cracked, a strong, jutted nose, narrowed eyes that gleamed, and the deep cuts of the lines at his forehead. He was a man to fear. At his waist was the curved sheath and the dulled worn handle of his knife. Close to his hands, which held the camel reins, fastened to his saddle, was the rifle. The brightness shone in his eyes.

'If they go over us, they have five chances of seeing us, or six. We should make it one chance only.'