Billy Summers

He goes back to the house for his Mac Pro and that can of Coke. He sets them on the card table in the summerhouse. With the door wide open, the light is good. He sits in one of the folding chairs gingerly at first, but it seems solid enough. He boots up his story and scrolls down to where Taco was handing the squad bullhorn to Fareed, their terp. He’s about to pick up where he left off when Merton Richter interrupted him, then notices there’s a picture on the wall. He gets up for a closer look, because it’s in the far corner – weird place for a painting – and the morning light doesn’t quite reach there. It appears to show a bunch of hedges that have been clipped into animal shapes. There’s a dog on the left, a couple of rabbits on the right, two lions in the middle, and what might be a bull behind the lions. Or maybe it’s supposed to be a rhinoceros. It’s a poorly executed thing, the greens of the animals too violent, and the artist has for some reason plinked a dab of red in the lions’ eyes to give them a devilish aspect. Billy takes the painting down and turns it to face the wall. He knows that if he doesn’t his eyes will be continually drawn to it. Not because it’s good but because it isn’t.

He cracks the can of Coke, takes a long swallow, and gets going.

4

‘Come on, you guys,’ Taco said. ‘Let’s get some.’ He handed Fareed the bullhorn that had GOOD MORNING VIETNAM on the side and told him to give the house the usual loudhail, which came down to come out now and you come out on your feet, come out later and you’ll be in a body bag. Fareed did it and nobody came out. That was usually our cue to go in after chanting We are Darkhorse, of course of course, but this time Taco told Fareed to give it to them again. Fareed shot him a questioning look but did as he was told. Still nothing. Tac told him to go one more time.

‘What’s up with you?’ Donk asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Taco said. ‘Just feels wrong somehow. I don’t like the fucking balcony running around the dome, for one thing. You see it?’ We saw it, all right. It had a low cement railing. ‘There could be muj behind it, all crouched down.’ He saw us looking at him. ‘No, I’m not freaking out, but it feels hinky.’

Fareed was halfway through his spiel when Captain Hurst, the new company commander, came by, standing up in an open Jeep, legs spread like he thought he was George S. Fucking Patton Esquire. On the other side of the street from him were three apartment buildings, two finished and one half-built, all spray painted with a big C, meaning they had been cleared. Well, supposedly. Hurst was green, and maybe not aware that sometimes the hajis crept back, and through even bad optics his head would look as big as a Halloween pumpkin.

‘What are you waiting for, Sergeant?’ he bawled. ‘Daylight’s wastin’! Clear that fucking hacienda!’

‘Sir, yes, sir!’ Taco said. ‘Just giving them one more chance to come out alive.’

‘Don’t bother!’ Captain Hurst shouted, and on he sped.

‘The dingbat has spoken,’ Bigfoot Lopez said.

‘All right,’ Taco said. ‘Hands in the huddle.’

We grouped in tight, the Hot Eight that used to be the Hot Nine. Taco, Din-Din, Klew, Donk, Bigfoot, Johnny Capps, Pillroller with his medical bag of tricks. And me. I saw us as if I was outside myself. It happened to me that way sometimes.

I remember sporadic gunfire. A grenade went off somewhere behind us in Block Kilo, that low crump sound, and an RPG banged somewhere up ahead, maybe in Block Papa. I remember hearing a helo off in the distance. I remember some idiot blowing a whistle, fweet-fweet-fweet, Christ knows why. I remember how hot it was, the sweat cutting clean trails down our dirty faces. And the kids up the street, always the kids in their rock n rap T-shirts, ignoring the gunfire and the explosions like they didn’t exist, bent over their scabbed knees and picking up spent shell casings to be reloaded and redistributed to the fighters. I remember feeling for the baby shoe on my belt loop and not finding it.

Our hands all together for the last time. I think Taco felt it. I sure did. Maybe they all did, I don’t know. I remember their faces. I remember the smell of Johnny’s English Leather. He put on a little every day, rationing it out, his own private lucky charm. I remember him once saying to me that no man could die smelling like a gentleman, God wouldn’t let it happen.

‘Give it to me, kids,’ Taco said, so we did. Stupid, childish – like so many things in war are stupid and childish – but it pumped us up. And maybe if there were muj waiting for us in that big domed house it gave them a moment’s pause, time to look at each other and wonder what the fuck they were doing and why they were probably going to die for some elderly half-senile imam’s idea of God.

‘We are Darkhorse, of course of course! We are Darkhorse, of course of course!’