Back in the here and now, though, there was nothing especially screwy to get worked up about. The slender Iraqi in the coin-gray suit behind the wheel of the Cressida was merely slow, not suspicious, fumbling for his documents with his wife beside him, two kids in the back.
It was that lack of zip, though, that upset the Chevy Blazer right behind. The driver started hammering his horn, five blasts, ten-it only upset the slowpoke father more, his wife in her hijāb headscarf craning around to squint into the headlight glare. Then the Blazer surged up and out, jockeying forward to squeeze past the Cressida, nudging the bumper and flattening Salgado against the driver-side door.
Godo charged into the SUV’s path and shouldered his sixteen. Chavous fired off an air burst from the Humvee’s.50cal, tracers flaring into the ash-brown sky in a hypnotic arc, landing somewhere near the camel. Godo called out, “Whoa the fuck, asshole,” and the Blazer finally lurched to a stop, kicking up a shower of pebbled dust. Turning his face away, he saw the same emaciated dog, closer now, trembling beside the Hummer’s rear wheel. He resisted an impulse to reach down to his crotch and dig at his itch, at the same time feeling something unclick along his spine, a shimmer of pent-up rage shooting through him and he had to check the safety on his weapon, fearing he might fire out of pure gall. He hacked up an egg-size clot of crusty air, spat, checked again to be sure Chavous had him covered, then eased toward the Blazer’s driver-side door, shouting, “The fuck you thinking, shit dick?”
The driver cranked down his window: older cat, maybe fifty, wire-gray hair, probably police back home, maybe a vet, eyes a bloodshot brown, mustache and sideburns straight out of Death Wish. “Got a convoy out at Akashat, they’re a squad short. Thing’s gotta move in an hour. Let us through.”
“Akashat? You’re heading the wrong way.”
“We got another man to pick up. Come on. Serious. We got exactly no time to waste.”
Oh boo the fuck hoo, Godo thought, fighting a sudden twitch in his eye. Somewhere in the distance a chopper rotored over the city, invisible in the swirling dust and russet sky. Behind him the dog made a thin mewling sound. “Back the fuck up to where you were or you’ll spend the whole damn day here.”
Salgado, jacked up from almost getting run over, blistered the Cressida’s driver with obscenities, like it was all his fault.
The Blazer’s wheelman said to Godo, “Look-”
“You jumped the goddamn line.”
“You hear me? There’s a convoy, ready to move-”
“Access cards and permits.” Godo shot out his hand, glancing past the driver at the others. The guy in the passenger seat looked half in the bag, sunglasses staring straight ahead, weapon clenched between his knees. Behind him sat the rest of the team, three men abreast in the backseat, equally hungover from the general slump and cast of their eyes, every one of them dressed in the same contractor drag, like there was a store out there somewhere in the desert where they all got outfitted.
Gunny Benedict duck-walked forward to calm Salgado down and provide a forward presence. A gust of keening wind sugared everything in grit.
“Listen.” The Blazer driver leaned forward, like it was the distance between them causing the trouble. “Time window’s closing here.”
In a moment of insomniac, rage-laced weirdness, Godo pictured the man growing a snout. “You with Harmon Stern?”
The driver’s jaw tightened. The bloodshot eyes turned hard. “What’s your problem?”
Good as a yes, Godo thought. “Access cards and permits.”
“Look. You know who we are.”
“Fuck I do. Access-”
“We’re on the same side, damn it.”
Godo glanced away, like the guy wasn’t worth eye contact, spotting that same dog edging ever closer, nosing the ground for garbage, then he coughed up another wad of dust-choked phlegm. For a second he thought he saw a flurry of black-winged bats veering in crazy arcs in the dawn-lit east. He blinked-nothing there. The dog, though, was real, he felt pretty sure of that. “Cards and weapon permits, every man in the vehicle. Now.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
Godo couldn’t help himself, he laughed. “Coming from you?”
Salgado had the Cressida driver out of the car now, opening his trunk. Gunny Benedict spotted a pedestrian trekking forward from the hazy darkness, past the other vehicles in the queue, a strangely tall and awkward woman in a black abaya, her head and face wrapped in a white niqaab, only her eyes uncovered.
The Blazer driver, trying to regroup, ventured a buddy-up smile. “Okay, you win. But there’s no need for this hassle, okay?” He nodded toward the front bumper. “How about you write down the plate number, we’ll be outta your hair.”
It was galling, the crap they thought you’d swallow. “How about you shit backwards on this attitude you got and do like I told you.” The aggression was camouflage, he was trembling from adrenalin. Above and beyond the contractor’s bullshit there was something about the walk-up bothering him, putting him on edge-plus the wastrel dog. For just a second he caught Gunny Benedict’s dusty blue eyes as he glanced over his shoulder, first at Salgado, then Godo, checking his men, taking care.
Do your job, Godo thought, another over-the-shoulder glance at Chavous then turning back to the Blazer. “My man there on the.50cal? He’ll send a few live ones through your windshield you try to move, so you’re going no place till you comply-we clear? Now cards and permits, I’m not asking again.”
The driver cocked his head around, tracking Gunny Benedict advancing toward the odd-looking woman, ordering her to stop. Godo felt it stronger now, still not knowing why. His whole body felt like an antenna for the willies. He thought of shouting something but didn’t want to come off half-cocked. Gunny knew his business.
The driver said, “That your team leader there?”
Godo snapped back. “You don’t get to choose who you deal with, asshole.”
The guy laughed, slapped the arm of the hunched man beside him. Back to Godo: “Touch a nerve there, did I, Poncho? Your sergeant know what a wound-up little girl you are?”
“What my sergeant knows, Elmer, is I need to see your fucking access cards and-” In the corner of his eye, Godo saw the gawky woman slip past Benedict, reaching inside the black abaya one-handed. The slinking dog began to bark.
“Know what?” The driver jammed the Blazer in gear. “I’m calling your bluff, hotshot.”
At the sound of the engaged transmission Godo snapped. “That’s it, faggot. Out of the fucking vehicle.” He pulled open the Blazer’s door with the dog’s barking growing louder, fiercer, just as a man’s pitched cry broke from behind the woman’s veiclass="underline" “Inshallah!”
Two weeks later, the doctors in Landstuhl would tell him that simple thing-yanking back the door-probably saved his life. They’d also tell him that Gunnery Sergeant Raymond Benedict, among several others, marines and civilians both, didn’t make it. It was up to Godo to imagine the details. And he’d been doing that, while pretty much trying not to, ever since.
GODO COULDN’T SAY IT WAS RELIEF HE FELT, OR IF IT WAS, RELIEF AT what exactly. Exorcising the demon, maybe, whatever the hell that meant. Relief he’d gotten through the story without sniveling like a bitch. He’d never said any of that out loud before, not that he could remember and he doubted he’d forget such a thing. Maybe in the ward at Landstuhl, when the morphine made him daffy. In the cold moonlight Happy’s face looked a little less grimly calculating, a little more accepting. Godo tried to tell himself that wasn’t pity. He wouldn’t take pity, not from Happy, not from anybody.