EndWar

He set his teeth and squeezed the trigger of his carbine, striking the legs of the Russian to his far right, bringing that man down, though he could still recover and fire.

Yet before McAllen knew what was happening, Palladino’s sniper rifle boomed once, blasting the head off one Russian, boomed again, tore off the shoulder of another. McAllen continued sweeping across the last three guys, dropping all of them.

Not a second after he did that, Gutierrez cut into them from above with his SAW.

McAllen exploited the moment to burst up from his position and charge toward the Russians attacking Jonesy’s position. He already had a grenade loaded in his carbine’s attached launcher, so he let it fly. Just as the grenade hit the mud and exploded, McAllen hit the deck himself, bringing up the rifle and raking their line with fire.

Suddenly, out of the smoke, came a lone Russian, blood pouring from his neck, his helmet gone. He screamed something at McAllen and swung his rifle around.

The roar of their Black Hawk was deafening now, the rotor wash suddenly hitting them, knocking the Russian back. As the enemy soldier lost his balance, one of the helicopter’s door gunners opened up on him, and he jerked involuntarily before hitting the ground.

Since the valley was far too dense for the chopper’s pilot to land, the bird continued to wheel overhead, door gunners cutting apart the tree line, giving the remaining Russians something to think about.

McAllen got to his feet and jogged past the dead troops to where Jonesy was lying on his gut.

Unmoving.

McAllen ripped off his mask and dropped to his knees, shaking his assistant. Then he ripped off Jonesy’s mask and rolled the man over, seeing that he’d been shot in the face and neck.

McAllen rose, and all the anger and frustration suddenly funneled into his arms and legs. He hoisted Jonesy over his back in a fireman’s carry and staggered away from the downed plane toward the hill. Friskis ran to meet him. “They got Jonesy,” was all McAllen could say.

He told himself over and over that it didn’t matter that the mission was a decoy and that they’d been pawns in a little game of deception. It didn’t matter. It was a Marine Corps operation and Jonesy had done his job, as they all had.

But his mind raced with the what-ifs and with the names of the people he could hold responsible. If higher knew that the mission was a decoy, then why did they risk the lives of highly trained Marine Corps operators? Couldn’t they have played wait and see or just attacked from the air? They probably wanted the decoy to look perfect, right down to the bogus rescue mission on the ground.

McAllen was left with only one hope: that Jonesy had died for something meaningful. Something important.

FIVE

Team Sergeant Nathan Vatz had Colonel Pavel Doletskaya strapped to an inclined board, his head lowered to about forty-five degrees. He’d wrapped cellophane over the colonel’s face, allowing just a small gap for him to breathe.

Vatz picked up the hose and released some pressure, allowing a steady stream of water to flow over the colonel’s head. Most prisoners lasted a handful of seconds, until the gag reflex kicked in, along with the fear of drowning; but the colonel didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

And this went on for more than two minutes until Vatz got so frustrated with the man that he threw away the hose, ripped off the cellophane, and screamed, “What’s in your head that’s so important? What do you know?”

The colonel’s eyes widened. “What’s in my head? The real question is what’s in your head. And the answer is me.”

“If I can’t kill you, they will. You need to die.”

“Nathan, please. I know exactly who you are. I know that you joined the Army because you were bullied all through school, that you somehow wanted to get revenge on them, to prove to them that you were more than just a punching bag. You thought you could be a man.”

“Not true.”

“Why did you kill your father?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You killed him when you joined the Army. Murdered him. Because he knew, deep down, the war was coming. And he loved his son. But you killed him.”

“No!” Vatz beat a fist into his palm.

“And now you are alone. The diabetes took him. The alcohol took your mother. And I took all your friends, your brothers in arms. You’re the only one left. Why were you spared? Do you think it’s fate?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m just having another nightmare about how much I want to kill you.”

“Would that make you feel better?”

With a gasp and shudder, Vatz sat up in his bunk. He looked at his hands, which were still balled into fists.

Then he glanced up, out the window of his barracks. It was a beautiful morning, a cloudless sky sweeping over Fort Lewis, Washington.