The Valley (14 page)

H
e sat down on the bunk, irritated.

Merrick, obviously, was the man around Vega. He was the ranking guy, and despite Caine's talk about he and Merrick “splitting” the duty, Merrick was clearly the dude. Caine worked for him, period. He wondered what Merrick would have thought of the other sergeant's bluster about “my” soldiers.

Black thought he knew Merrick's type. He could recognize a sergeant who was just not going to make his peace with having an officer in his hair, ever. The officer could be the most squared-away guy on the planet, but the sergeant was never going to see it, because at the end of the day that young officer had the authority to tell the old sergeant what to do, and that was just too much.

Merrick was going to be a pain, start to finish, no matter how painless Black tried to make it for everyone.

Great.

Sergeants and their pride. For Caine's part, Black figured he had definitely set up the chow hall encounter that way on purpose, to undermine Black in front of soldiers he might have to question.

Caine knew Merrick, and he knew that Merrick would blow his top when he found out about Black and the 15-6. There was no reason for him to wait until the next morning, in the chow hall, in the presence of both Black and a bunch of joes, for him to drop the bomb on Merrick. In fact it was improper for him to wait so long to tell the senior guy that there was a visiting officer in his post.

Either he was dumb, or he thought Black was dumb, or both.

He set his rifle in the corner and stretched out on the bunk, trying to shake the same uncomfortable feeling of being in someone else's living space. His jaw still hurt from where Caine punched it the night before. He pulled his book out and started reading, pausing periodically to stare at the ceiling.

After a while he realized he hadn't gotten chow when he went to meet Merrick. He was hungry. He rose and gathered up his rifle, slinging it over his back, and headed for the door, happy to get out of Lieutenant Pistone's strange hootch.

He stopped at the funny restroom closet and took note of the vast field of Chuck Norris–themed graffiti scrawled all over the walls inside. In keeping with venerable tradition, most of it drew upon the martial artist's grave reputation (WHEN THE BOOGYMAN GOES TO SLEEP, HE CHECKS UNDER THE BED FOR CHUCK NORRIS), improbable powers (CHUCK NORRIS IS SO FAST HE CAN RUN AROUND THE WORLD AND PUNCH HIMSELF IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD), and fearsome prowess in all things.

Directly in the center, in large print, was what appeared to be the original item.

CHUCK NORRIS SHAT HERE

AND SHIT WAS NEVER THE SAME

He browsed some of the other entries, appreciating soldiers' endless, often vulgar creativity. He was still smiling over a clever one (CHUCK NORRIS CAN LEAVE A MESSAGE BEFORE THE BEEP) as he pushed open the door and nearly ran into two young soldiers walking down the narrow corridor. They had seen him grinning.

“Something funny, there, sir?” asked one.

Black didn't miss a beat.

“Just Chuck.”

“Oh, you a fan of Chuck, sir?”

He had the air of the smartass about him.

“Who isn't?”

The kid smirked at his buddy.

“Just thought maybe you officers were too fancy for Chuck, sir.”

Black put his hands in his pockets and turned to go.

“‘Chuck Norris is so badass,'” he said, making one up on the fly, “‘he can even kick the fancy out of an officer.'”

It took the two soldiers a silent, goggle-eyed moment to process just how lame Black's attempt at humor was. But only a moment.

They both erupted in astonished laughter.

“Damn, you all right, L.T.!” called one as Black headed off down the hallway.

“Hooah, sir!” called the other with mock enthusiasm.

Their voices faded behind him, one of them musing aloud about a white officer named Black.

“Take it where you can get it, bro!” he heard the other one laugh.

He made his winding way back to the chow hall, which he'd expected to be empty at this time of day. It wasn't.

Several soldiers around a table looked up as he entered, their conversation immediately lapsing into silence. They stared at him blankly, dark circles under their eyes as they watched him cross to the food station. As had all young soldiers once he'd passed the age of twenty-five, these ones looked like they were fourteen years old.

He said nothing and went about his business. Gradually conversation picked up again, in quieter tones.

He had expected these guys to be living on M.R.E.s pretty much year-round. There were cartons of them stacked in the corner, but at least for a couple days after a supply run it looked like they could scrape together something approaching food. The outpost must have had a minor ability to keep things refrigerated. A generator-powered chest freezer or something somewhere. Not too bad.

The grub wasn't anything to write home about. Cooler cases filled with cold cuts and bags of spongy white bread, with an open box of mustard and mayo packets off to the side.

But it wasn't M.R.E.s. The joes at the table chomped their limp sandwiches greedily.

Black grabbed a paper plate from a stack and started fixing himself a baloney with mustard on Wonder. He heard the door slap shut.

Someone came up next to him and grabbed a plate. He felt himself being examined sidelong.

“Afternoon, L.T.”

He looked up long enough to see a soldier he didn't recognize. The kid looked as skinny and haggard as the rest of them.

“Hey.”

He looked down and recommenced squeezing half-filled mustard packets onto meat folds. The soldier did the same.

He felt himself being examined again. He raised his head suddenly and looked the kid in the eye.

“What?” he asked sharply.

“Uh, sorry, sir,” the soldier said, flustered. “Um, nothing, sir. I was just, um—”

Black gave him an
Out with it, then!
look.

“Sir, sorry if this isn't my business, but . . . weren't you the, uh, the guy that—”

“No.”

Black went back to his cold cuts. The soldier realized their brief conversation was done.

“Oh, okay. Uh, sorry, sir.”

“No problem.”

Black took his plate and sought out the table closest to where the gaggle of joes was chatting. He sat down with his back to them. Their mumbled talk got even quieter.

You're a pain in the ass.

He finished his food quickly and went back to Pistone's spartan quarters. He lay on the bunk and read his book. He made a quiet decision while he did so.

Four o'clock came and went. Caine didn't show.

He didn't mind. He didn't want to bombard guys the minute they came off shift anyway.

At about four forty-five, he finally heard Caine's knock on the door. He rose and grabbed a little green hardcover notebook from the side table, just like the one Merrick had had in the chow hall. Five by eight inches, standard government issue, fits in the cargo pocket of a uniform. Mandatory equipment for officers and senior sergeants. He shoved the thing in his trousers, crossed to the door, and opened it.

Merrick.

Black let his surprise show on his face. Merrick saw.

“Expecting someone, Lieutenant?”

Merrick looked down at him with what Black could only describe as unconcealed contempt.

Annoyed at himself, Black ignored the comment and stepped into the hallway. Merrick set off immediately, forcing Black to step quickly to catch up.

“No, I'm not leaving my second to take you to talk to my soldiers,” he said, answering a question Black hadn't asked.

He left a perceptible emphasis on “
my.
”

“If you're going to waste their time with bullshit, they hear it from me.”

Black again said nothing. They went down a different set of passageways and breezeways and bits of sky than Black had seen the night before. He was increasingly impressed with how much there was to the place.

They turned a corner and made their way down a corridor made of temporary blast walls on one side and an exterior wall of the building on the other, with metal sheeting for a roof. They arrived at a square stone opening fitted with a homemade wooden door. The door read:

BAY TWO
HELLRAISERS

Inside was your classic soldiers' deployment rabbit warren. You started with a large empty room in an occupied building. Some kind of big space, preferably with a high ceiling. You got a whole lot of wood sheets and two-by-fours and turned the soldiers and their sergeants loose on the place with saws, hammers, and nails. Within a couple days it was transformed into dozens of individual living spaces.

None of them had roofs because there'd be no ventilation otherwise. The electricity situation, a creeping-vine chaos of extension cords, power strips, and amateur splices, was an inevitable and ongoing flout to the niceties of the fire code.

But every joe had his own space and his own door. It might be the size of a closet, but it was his. On deployment, that was no small thing.

The bay was lit by a couple of large overhead fixtures set fifteen feet above them in the ceiling. Merrick started briskly down the first narrow passage.

He stopped in front of a door. Many of them were written or painted or stenciled on, but this one was blank. He stopped just past it and turned to face Black.

“Brydon,” he said, motioning curtly to the door with his head.

Black stepped up and knocked.

“Yeah,” came a gravelly voice from within.

Black pushed the door open and stepped through. Merrick stepped in after him. Black turned around immediately and stepped back out again.

This time he waited, forcing Merrick to step out after him. As soon as he did, Black turned on his heel and took several steps up the passage, away from the open door. He turned and waited for Merrick to catch up.

“What are you doing?” Black asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I talk to the guys alone.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I'm the investigator, and you're their superior,” Black said matter-of-factly. “You don't go into the interview.”

Merrick shook his head.

“That's not how you do it,” he said, angering. “What is this bullshit?”

“Like hell it's not,” Black answered coolly. “You ever been around a fifteen-six before?”

Merrick did not like that one bit. He stepped in close and spoke tersely.

“Yeah,
Lieutenant
,
I've seen a fucking fifteen-six before. Have
you?
That's not how you fucking do it. I stay with my guys.”

In for a penny . . .

“Yeah, well, if you saw a fifteen-six like that,” Black shot back, “then you saw someone doing it wrong. You ever read the regulation,
Sergeant?
”

From the look on his face he was pretty sure Merrick would like to hit him. He pressed.

“I go in alone. That's how you do it. You want to stop me, stop me. I'll sit in Lieutenant Pistone's hootch and read my book all week and go home and say I got obstructed, and then you can deal with a field-grade officer up here in your business.”

Merrick seethed downward at him.

“Or you can let me do
my
business,” Black finished, “and go home and you can forget all about me and this fifteen-six.”

He waited. Behind his anger, Merrick appeared to be thinking things through. Given his experience and obvious intelligence, it occurred to Black that he might actually have read the regulation.

The sergeant turned on his heel and stomped down the hall to Brydon's blank door.

“Hey, fuckhead!”

“Yeah,” came the same voice in the same even tone.

“The
lieutenant
here has some questions for you,” Merrick said in clipped tones into the doorway. “He has come all the way from Colonel Gayley's bullshit unit to conduct a fifteen-six investigation.”

“Roger,” drawled the voice, sounding bored.

“You will answer his questions accurately. You will
not
fucking speculate on any information that you do not have specific personal knowledge of. If the lieutenant takes more than thirty minutes of your time”—he turned to look at Black—“you will report it to me afterwards.”

“Roger.”

“And try not to cast any fucking spells on him. He's only a lieutenant.”

“Roger.”

Merrick turned to Black.

“That is Shannon's door over there,” he said irritably, pointing down the hallway. “Corelli's is the last one around the corner.”

He stalked away down the hallway in the direction he'd pointed.

Black watched Merrick knock heavily on the door he'd identified as Shannon's.

Can't believe he bought that,
he was thinking as he stepped into the Wizard's room.

A
picture was coming into focus.

The kid's room was tiny. Maybe eight feet by five feet. The centerpiece of the place, on the wall directly opposite him, was a large and rumpled tapestry of black nylon. An upright five-pointed star sprawled across it in white silk screen, points extending just beyond the arc of a circle, making it look almost but not quite like a pentagram. In front of the star, his back to the viewer, was a man, naked, feet planted defensively, palms raised before him protectively, reeling back against whatever looming power lurked within the giant star.

On another wall was tacked a page torn from a magazine, a fantastical painting of a city perched atop an improbable mountain which tapered inward at its lower latitudes until the whole thing rested on a thin spear of rock. The rest of the wallspace was occupied by hand drawings on pieces of white paper, crowding one another in themed bunches like billslips on a RENT NOW bulletin board. One corner featured beefy creatures thumping huge mallets and lithe elvish archers astride perfect steeds. In another were many pictures of unicorns, in many possible universes. He wasn't a bad artist.

Reclining on the bunk in a tan Army T-shirt beneath the tapestry, eyeing Black over the top of a book with a journeying gaggle of swordsmen and sorcerers on its cover, was Brydon himself. The Wizard.

He was a dumpy sort of kid. Acne scars marked his wide face, and he looked like, but for the physical fitness ensured by his tromping up and down high-altitude mountains all the time, he would be pretty pudgy. He didn't exactly seem sociable.

His eyes were hooded, his hair a scrubby in-between of brown and blond. It was startlingly long even for a deployed soldier deep in the mountains and far from the FOB. There was no skin visible on the sides, and Black figured he probably had two and a half inches on top. A bona fide “shock.”

Brydon must've been some kinda good soldier, or some kinda weird, to be allowed to get away with that. Black wondered how many real friends he had in the platoon.

There was a little three-legged half stool in the corner.

“Can I sit?” Black asked.

“Sure.”

Brydon was in a half-sitting position against his pillow and didn't move.

Black sat, pulling his little green Army notebook out of his pocket and setting it, closed, on a side table. He leaned back against the plywood wall, noticing for the first time a tattoo on Brydon's right upper arm. A shield with two Latin words inscribed across its front: VAE VICTIS.

He didn't recognize the unit logo. His eyes moved back up to Brydon's face.

“I'm Black,” he said, even though the kid could obviously read his name tape. “You know what a fifteen-six is?”

“Not except what Sergeant Merrick said.”

Brydon spoke in an uninterested drawl that Black couldn't place. Midwestern Nonspecific.

“Right,” Black went on. “So, like he said, it's an investigation that I got assigned to do. It's the lowest-level investigation in the Army.”

He put his hands up in a calming sort of gesture.

“I'm not an M.P. or anything, and you're not in trouble.”

“Then why am I being investigated?”

This was the part Black hated about doing a 15-6. There was no way to really explain, to the satisfaction of the cynical and reasonably distrustful mind of a soldier, that he was being “investigated” but didn't really have to worry. Soldiers always worried, with good cause. In their immortal motto, learned over and over the hard way: Shit Rolls Downhill.

“It's not you specifically,” he explained. “I need to talk to a bunch of guys. I gotta talk to some of the other guys in the platoon, and I have to talk to Sergeant Merrick, and Sergeant Caine . . .”

“So the platoon's being investigated.”

“Kind of. Not really. It's not—”

He wanted to say,
It's not an INVESTIGATION-investigation,
but he knew how stupid that sounded.

“It's not the kind of investigation where . . .”

He trailed off.

“Look,” he said finally, flustered. “I've had to do these before. I just talk to soldiers and get some facts about something that happened, and write it down and it gets filed and then usually that's the last anybody ever hears from anybody about it. All right?”

He knew a look of total distrust on a soldier's face when he saw it.

“Facts about what that happened?”

Black grabbed his book.

“Why don't we just start at the basic stuff,” he said, then caught himself. “Sorry. Do you have any questions before we get going?”

“Like what?”

“Nothing in particular. Just if you wanted to know anything about how it works.”

Brydon shook his head. He sat up from his pillows a little bit.

“Sort of figured you'd be a captain or something,” he said.

From his two previous 15-6 assignments, Black was used to the usual slights and minor insubordinations of combat soldiers who are both annoyed at being interrogated and scared of being told they'd done something wrong when they were just trying to do stuff right. He ignored it.

“Your full name is Billy Brydon.”

“Yeah.”

“Specialist.”

“Yeah.”

It was one rank below the lowest sergeant grade. Some soldiers floated there for years without ever getting their stripes. Some didn't want them.

“You're a medic.”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you been in Sergeant Merrick's platoon?”

“Who wants to know?”

So the kid was gonna be a pain regardless.

“It's just basic admin data. Just background.”

Brydon looked at him skeptically.

“Three months.”

“Before that?”

“Stateside. Different unit.”

Black asked him all the usual. Where he went to basic training, when his service commitment was up. He could tell the kid's mind wasn't on the answers. He just wanted Black to get to it, so he could find out what he was gonna get rung up for.

Black closed the notebook and set it down on the side table. Whatever Brydon told him he would have to write down later anyway on a standard sworn statement form.

He flipped his chin at Brydon's tattoo.

“What's that?”

Brydon looked down at it involuntarily.

“‘Vae Victis,'” he mumbled. “It means—”

“‘Woe to the vanquished,'” Black cut in, finishing his sentence for him.

“How'd you know that?” Brydon demanded, startled.

Black shrugged.

“Doesn't matter,” he replied. “Where'd you get the tattoo?”

“Doesn't matter,” Brydon retorted, still eyeing Black like he thought he was about to get mugged.

Black let it go. Time to get back on track.

“Okay,” he said. “So the main thing I need to ask about is something that happened on the twenty-third of last month. It was a Wednesday. . . .”

He could see the kid searching his memory banks but could tell it was useless. Dates and days of the week were pretty pointless in a place like Vega.

Brydon looked at him blankly, shaking his head.

“Don't worry about it. So, from the paperwork I got before I came up here, it sounds like your squad was on a patrol that day.”

“Okay.”

“And Corelli was there, and Shannon was there, and Sergeant Caine and Lieutenant Pistone.”

“Okay.”

Brydon was sitting up on his bunk now, arms around his knees, looking at Black intently. He spoke almost defiantly, as though egging Black on.
Go ahead and tell me what the Army says I did.
He was tense. Shit rolls downhill.

“I guess,” Black said, “the people in the village were upset.”

“All right.”

“And it's hard to tell, but it sounds like they were upset because one of the old guys in town had his goat get killed the night before.”

There was a long moment while Brydon recalled the day Black was talking about. His face hardened as the memory locked into focus, and he looked at Black incredulously.

“You're here about
that
?!
”

“Well, no,” Black said, flustered again. “I mean, not really. It's not really the goat. It's about . . .”

You used to be able to talk to joes.

“Look,” he went on, recovering. “I know this whole thing seems really dumb. It
is
dumb. But the Army does fifteen-sixes for all kinds of things nowadays, even the smallest stuff. This is just the one I got assigned to do. Like I said, you're not in trouble or anything. It's just getting the basic facts and putting them on paper and then I go on my way.”

He had seen enough looks of disgust directed at himself to recognize one now.

“So why don't we just knock it out,” Black said. “All right?”

Brydon didn't say anything. He just glared at Black as though he had decided something fundamental and final about Black's worth as a human being.

“So do you know if that's right? If the guy's goat got killed?”

“Yeah,” said Brydon, allowing his voice to drip with contempt for the entire exercise. “The guy's goat got killed.”

“You were there the night before?”

“Yeah, I was there the night before.”

“What happened?”

“Sounds like you already know, L.T.,” he said, impatiently.

“Humor me.”

“The guy's goat got killed.”

Black gave him a
Come on
look.

The kid sighed noisily and shook his head. He spoke in one annoyed spurt.

“We were on a patrol outside the town and it was dark and foggy and somebody's goat was wandering off his property and Miller, who's an idiot, got spooked and thought it was the freaking bogeyman or something and shot it and the goat got killed. Okay?”

“Okay,” Black said patiently. “What about the next day?”

Brydon looked at him and shrugged as though the question, or questioner, was dense.

“We took a patrol down to the town to find out whose goat it was.”

“And there was a crowd of people there?”

“Yes,” he said tersely.

“What were they doing?”

“Standing there being pissed off.”

“Why?”

“Sergeant Merrick told me not to speculate on anything I don't have knowledge of, so I don't know.”

“I won't write it down, and you don't have to write it down,” Black said, trying to be patient. “Just off the record, I'm wondering if you could tell why they were upset.”

“Probably because Miller killed the goat, right?” Brydon retorted, as though Black were slow. “Goat equals livelihood, right?”

“Did someone fire a warning shot to disperse the crowd?”

“Yes,” Brydon sighed.

“Who?”

“Corelli.”

“Did anyone get injured?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So you didn't treat anyone for anything on scene?”

Brydon looked at him like he was the world's dumbest dummy.

“I think I just said that, sir.”

“Why did Corelli fire the warning shot?”

“You'd have to ask Corelli.”

The rest of the interview went like that. Brydon didn't become any less impatient or any less difficult. Black wrapped it up pretty quickly. He figured he could talk to the kid the next day for any more details and a sworn statement.

He closed with his usual lawyerly, open-ended question.

“Okay, that should do it pretty much. Is there anything else you want to add or tell me?”

“Like what?”

Black reminded himself to be patient.

“It's just a standard question to make sure I got everything.”

Brydon looked him in the eye.

“It sounds like you are on top of everything, sir.”

He leaned back on his pillows, signaling the close of any kind of cooperative interview.

Black thanked him and took his notebook and left the Wizard's room.

Weirdo.

Most soldiers are at least a little bit relieved when the subject matter of a dreaded 15-6 turns out to be some trivial thing that no one's going to get in trouble for. Some are mad at having their time wasted. Brydon mostly seemed annoyed by the pointlessness, the typical mediocre bureaucracy of the whole thing.

Black had to respect that a little.

He headed down the hallway to the door Merrick had told him belonged to Shannon. He knocked. After a very long silence a heavy voice said, “Enter.”

He opened.

The room was standard-issue meathead. Heavy-metal posters and jugs of workout powder. An Xbox video game system sat on a shelf beneath a small and beat-up monitor. The place was roughly the same layout as Brydon's room, but on the wall where the strange tapestry had been hanging was instead a large picture of an overlit blonde with oiled balloon breasts reclining naked on the hood of a pickup truck for some reason.

Beneath her, sprawled two-legged in a chair in a straining T-shirt with his feet up on a side table playing the Xbox, was Shannon. His room was as tiny as the Wizard's. He just took up more of it.

He was something comfortably over six feet, broad, blond, iron-jawed, and sunburnt. As with Brydon, a tattoo stretched across the horizon of a bare bicep—a knife bursting through a flaming garland with the letters XLIV on its blade. He didn't look up from the game or pause his playing in the slightest.

“Corporal Shannon?”

Pause.

“Mm,” came the low rumble.

“I'm Lieutenant Black.”

Nothing.

“Did Sergeant Merrick tell you why I'm here?”

“Yup.”

Thumbs working the buttons wildly. Hails of automatic gunfire over the monitor's speakers.

“Can I sit?”

There was a little half stool against the wall like the one in the Wizard's room.

“Whatever.”

Something exploded on-screen.