onions, but probably disappointing in several other respects, too-and blow-by-blow descriptions of two Seinfeld episodes he’d watched.
Tom was wearing nothing but a T-shirt on top in a room that was set in the mid-sixties at best. It reminded me of what our shrink, Dr. Baraniq, had said, that Tom avoided any sensation of heat because it reminded him of the war.
“I don’t care about witnesses,” he said, motioning to my file. “I just want this over.”
Dr. Baraniq had also complained to me yesterday that he’d spent an entire day with Tom without gaining any insight whatsoever. My expert was going to be left with nothing more than a hypothesis of what might have happened.
“It’s going to be over soon, Tom. Whether you look at this witness list or not. Don’t you want it to be over in a way that we win?”
Tom did what he always did, avoiding eye contact and wiggling his fingers and licking his lips with violent tongue thrusts. The skin around his mouth was chapped so badly that he vaguely resembled Heath Ledger as the Joker.
“I’m not gonna win,” he said.
“We can win, Tom. Just-”
“Don’t wanna.”
“You don’t wanna what? You don’t wanna win?”
Tom looked up at the ceiling and smiled. Then he started laughing. First time I’d seen that emotion from him. Dr. Baraniq had said inappropriate emotional reactions were a symptom of disorganized schizophrenia.
“Win? Win? How’m I supposed to win?”
“You win,” I said, “by showing that you were suffering from your illness when you shot that woman.”
Tom shook his head furiously. “That’s not… that’s not… winning. No, no, no.” He got up from his seat and started walking toward the door.
“What is winning to you?” I called out. “Tom-”
“There’s no winning. I can’t win.” He stood facing the wall, his head shaking more quickly with each passing minute. “I can’t… It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t go away.”
“Hey,” I said.
Just like that, Tom dropped to the floor and began mumbling to himself. The words were inaudible but delivered with violence, with anguish.
“Tom,” I said.
But he wasn’t listening. He rocked back and forth on the floor, lost within himself.
A guard entered the room and looked at me with a question.
“Go ahead,” I said, and sighed. Tom was gone for now. He was probably gone for good.
I had to find a way to help him. But I couldn’t do it without him helping me first.
When I got back out to the registration desk, they handed me my cell phone. I saw three messages from the cell phone of Joel Lightner. When I got out of the elevator, I dialed him up.
“I found something,” he said to me, breathless. “Get ready to be happy.”
17
Take the house, they tell you. It doesn’t matter what happened last week. It doesn’t matter what happened to your best friend. Take the house, they tell you, so you do it.
It was a tip, you hear, but last week was a tip, too-a bogus one, a setup. Three Rangers and two Marines blown up within thirty seconds of entering.
That’s what you’re thinking as you’re standing outside the house. It’s just past two in the morning, but you aren’t thinking about how tired you are. You aren’t thinking about how lonely you are. You aren’t thinking about how hot you are, the thickness of the desert air, the burden of the forty pounds of gear you’re wearing. You aren’t thinking about the questions you have about your mission, this whole fucking quandary.
You’re thinking only about that door, and what’s behind it.
You look to your left, to your lieutenant. Lew looks more like a robot than a human in his combat fatigues and night-vision goggles and gear, bracing the M-14 rifle. But he is a human being, and you know his heart is hammering against his chest the same as yours.
The call comes, and you follow Lew through the front door with a rush. There is a back door, too, and simultaneously your team has entered from that direction as well. You call out your orders, but there is nobody in the front room, a parlor room with a couch and two chairs and an overhead light that looks like a cheap lamp upside down and suspended from the ceiling.
The smell of tobacco smoke is fresh. A cigarette still burns on the small table in front of the couch, smoke lingering in the thick air. You look at Lew. He sees the cigarette, too.
Only moments ago, somebody was sitting right here on this couch.
Gunfire erupts from the back of the house. Lew breaks down the hallway to the right. First door is a bathroom. You follow him in. Secure. Nobody here. Lew slaps your chest and points to the tub of the shower. You would have missed it, but not Lew. A nylon strap protruding from the bottom of the shower basin. Lew tells you to hold security on the bathroom. He approaches the bathtub cautiously, shuffle step by shuffle step. He reaches his hand inside the tub and in one motion yanks on the strap and jumps as far away as he can, awaiting an explosion.
No explosion, but a large section of the basin lies askew in the tub. A hidden door to a hidden bunker.
They wait a beat before Lew pulls again on the loose piece, yanking it free and clear of the exposed hole, a near-perfect square. You crane your neck and barely make out the outline of a swinging ladder before gunfire erupts through the hole. Instinctively, as Lew jumps back, as bullets bounce off the tiled walls, you aim the M-14 toward the square hole and open fire.
The initial gunplay dissipates. Lew tosses a grenade down the hole, and you both retreat into the hallway as it detonates. You call for help, and several Rangers come down the hall. You recall the initial gunfire in the rear of the house and, vaguely, the commotion, but your attention has been focused on this bathroom. When you look back into the bathroom, you see that Lew is already halfway into the hole.
It’s a ladder of rope, the rungs uneven. Your foot slips through at one point and you almost fall headfirst. You right yourself and ultimately climb down about ten feet to soft footing, maybe cinder. It is dark, but your night-vision goggles show, very nearly up ahead, two tunnels, left and right.
“Put it down!” you hear Lew shout. “Drop it! I said put it down! Put it down!”
You start running, thinking the noise is coming from the right tunnel.
“Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon right now! Put down your weapon!”
Automatic gunfire, a short burst and awful silence. Your heart pounding so fiercely that your vision is spotty, the fear so thick in your throat you can’t speak, you make a decisive right turn into the tunnel, your M-14 raised and ready Lew is bent over, on his knees. For a moment you think he’s been hit, lower torso probably “I told you to put it down! I told you… I told you to put it down. Why didn’t you…”
Your eyes predominantly focused forward, you peek down and see in Lew’s arms a tiny face. You see a tiny arm, a tiny open hand. On the cinder below, you see what appears to be a water pistol, a toy weapon.
Gunfire scrapes the walls a few feet in front of you. The tunnel has a slight angle so they don’t have a straight shot. You fire back to let them know what’s coming if they advance.
“Lew!” you yell. “Lieutenant!”
It comes again, gunfire spraying the wall closer still as they advance. You and several other Rangers who have joined you open fire in return. Smoke and dust fill the enclosed space, rendering your night-vision goggles of little use.
Lew doesn’t move throughout the cross fire, cradling the young girl in his arms, rocking her, speaking into her ear.
“We’re getting the fuck out of here!” calls your company commander. “Move out! Move!”
“Lieutenant!” you call. “Lieutenant Stoller! Tom! ”
