Things were all right the first few days, but then one of them, Sergeant Falcone, thought they should move on. Find some civilian clothes, grow their hair and beards, and head north. He had two supporters, but the rest disagreed. He said he wanted to take some supplies, weapons, and ammo, and leave the group. A lieutenant by the name of Guernsey, who had been in charge up to that point, said the men were free to leave, but they would not be taking any gear or weapons with them. Or food.
The next day, as they sat in an office building arguing over what they should do, one of them heard the unmistakable drone of Humvees approaching. All conversation stopped. They fell back on their training and took up defensive positions in separate rooms, close to the windows on the upper floors so they would have the high ground.
Then the Humvees came down the street along with a couple of civilian vehicles, all occupied by men in combat fatigues. They stopped and got out, moving like professionals, like Special Forces types. There was a girl with them, probably someone they rescued.
The lieutenant told everyone to stay low and quiet. There was a chance these people did not know about them. It could just be a coincidence. Hold your fire until I say otherwise.
Briggs did not know why the man who shot Blake, a sergeant named Prater, decided to open fire against orders. He had always been trigger happy, and sometimes had trouble keeping his cool in combat. He was his squad’s designated marksman, armed with an M-110, a high-powered semi-automatic sniper rifle.
I put myself in his place, staring through the crosshairs, heart racing, finger taking in the slack on the trigger, and then, out of nowhere, CRACK. A moment of shock, and then the realization that he had squeezed too hard. An accident.
But at that point, there was no turning back. The people in the streets returned fire, so the other deserters opened up on them. From then on, it was all yelling and fire and confusion and explosions. Lieutenant Guernsey had the presence of mind to send three men to take the civilian cars they had hidden in a garage nearby and cut off our escape route to the north. Those would be the cars I fired a grenade at, killing one of the soldiers.
I understood why Guernsey did it. He did not want us revealing their location to anyone if we escaped. Cold, but logical. Thankfully for us, it did not work. We got away, and they were left spitting, cursing, and trying to figure out what to do next.
In the aftermath of the fight, only eight of the original eleven deserters were left. The man who had shot Blake was one of the casualties. I took a small measure of comfort in that. The other two were the man I blasted with a grenade and Lieutenant Guernsey. The lieutenant caught a burst from our SAW that stitched him from neck to abdomen, killing him before he hit the ground. I did not know if it was me or Mike that killed him. Could have been either one of us. It did not matter. He was dead. That was the important thing.
After we escaped, the deserters knew they could not stay in Boise City. Sergeant Falcone took over and they headed north for Colorado Springs. True to his plan, they ditched their uniforms and tactical gear, searched around until they found serviceable civilian weapons, and set about the task of blending in.
“So let’s do the math here,” I said to Tyrel. “We killed three of them in Boise City, leaving eight. I killed five of them in the Springs, and there’s one more in that cabin over there who won’t live to see another day. That makes nine dead. They started out with eleven.”
Tyrel looked at me. “Two left.”
I drew my knife and walked into the cabin.
Briggs looked resigned. He knew he would not leave this room alive.
“There’s something I forgot to ask you about,” I said.
He did not look up. “What?”
“I’ve only accounted for nine of your group. Where are the other two?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know where they are, and that’s the truth. They didn’t like the Springs, didn’t want to take a civilian job, and left a couple of weeks after we got here. I haven’t heard from them since.”
“What if I don’t believe you?”
He turned his face up, eyes tired, empty, and devoid of fear. “You can torture me all you want. I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”
Sometimes, you know the truth when you hear it. I let out a sigh, shook my head, and drew my pistol.
Briggs said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your friend, and I’m sorry about your father. It shouldn’t have happened, none of it.” He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He swallowed once and said, “Tell me, what did your father look like?”
I described him. Briggs wiped his good hand across his face, chains rattling. I watched tears fall down his cheeks. “I think it was me. In fact I’m sure it was.”
My face went cold. “What are you saying?”
“I’m the one who shot your father. He was firing at the far end of the building after he launched that grenade that took out Prater, the sharpshooter. Your father was too far back from cover, so I got a bead on him and fired a burst. I saw him flinch, saw the pain on his face. He was a tough man, though. He kept fighting. So like I said, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Without a word, I raised the gun and squeezed the trigger until the slide locked open on an empty chamber.
*****
As the wagon creaked down the mountain on a switchback trail, I thought about Briggs, and his lieutenant, and Prater, and all the men I had killed in my life. Not even twenty years old yet and I had already racked up a body count to make a combat infantryman blush.
I began to doubt my actions. The cold fingers of regret slipped slowly into my chest, recriminations whispering in my ear. There had not been a lot of thinking involved except for how I was going to kill them. I did not take time to question my motives or the justice of my actions. From everything I had learned by talking to Briggs, the fight that killed Blake and Dad was nothing more than a misunderstanding that got horrifically out of hand. One man made a mistake, and it sent bloody ripples flowing outward across the great ocean of time and consequence. And now, all but two of them were dead.
Only at this moment, when it was too late, did I realize that Tyrel had been right. Revenge had availed me nothing. The deaths of those men would not return my lost family to me. I felt no satisfaction, no comfort, no sense of closure. Nothing had changed except a few more people who might have gone on to do good things with their lives were gone from the world. People who, when I thought about it, might not really have deserved to die.
I thought about when I first met Ryan Martin at that shitty bar in the refugee district. How when I told him I was looking for a friend and was disappointed Martin was not him, he offered a few comforting words, a pat on the shoulder. Physical contact and a sincere offering of sympathy for a stranger. Could a man capable of basic human goodness, even such a small gesture of it, really be irredeemable? Despite what he had done, what he had been a part of, I began to think perhaps not.
I knew, then, I would not pursue the last two deserters. There was no point. The man who killed my father was dead, and so was the man who killed Blake. That was enough. I had done too much killing, and I wanted no more of it.
I had hoped that seeing this thing through would put an end to this chapter of my existence, a chapter awash with grief and loss, and let me move on. But life does not happen in chapters. It happens in long, seemingly endless verses, like an epic poem, something Homer or Dante would have written. Maybe that is why their work remains compelling so long after their deaths. It has an undefinable resonance that we all understand instinctively, if not intellectually.
The first time I took another person’s life, when those two men attacked Lauren, I felt like I had crossed a line. There were people who had never killed, and people who had, and I was now one of the latter. And there was no going back. But then time passed, and I rationalized things, and I knew there had been no choice. My mind puzzled over the permutations of alternate courses I could have taken, and I decided I had done the best I could. Any other path would have resulted in further injury or death to both myself and Lauren. I did what I had to do.