Evan nudged at Fields. 'C'mon, buddy, we've got to move.' He pushed at Fields's shoulder again and the man's body slumped all the way to the side on the ground, the front of his shirt soaked in red. Another burst of machine-gun fire shattered the air directly behind him, and Evan turned and saw that it was his own #3 Humvee, Nolan on the roof, coming around in the street and running its own screen between the buildings to cover him.
But he had three men down here at the #1 Humvee, and three more in #2. He could only guess at Reese's condition. Perhaps he'd only been wounded. He'd have to get around the Humvee here to check that out. And then still there were Koshi, Jefferson, and Levy, over in #2. He'd have to order Nolan and Onofrio to help him load the dead and wounded into the backseat and cargo area of the one working Humvee. He couldn't leave his men out here in the street.
It wasn't possible that he'd lost so many of them in so short a time.
And then his own Humvee pulled up, the back door open, Onofrio behind the wheel, frantically gesturing that he should jump aboard, screaming at him although Evan could barely hear him. It was his only chance, their only chance.
But here was Fields right at his side, bleeding to death if not already dead. There was no option but to try to get him in the car first.
'There's no time!' Nolan yelled down from the roof at Onofrio. 'Keep driving! Go! Go! Go!' He fired a short volley up into the rooflines. 'Move!'
It seemed like Nolan was urging-ordering!-Onofrio to save themselves and abandon Evan with the rest of the men. But his driver slowed the vehicle as it came abreast of Evan, looked over in panic and desperation, reached out a hand across the seat.
Nolan yelled from the roof. 'Leave 'em, leave 'em, there's no time! They're gone!'
The Humvee stopped now, and Onofrio leaned over further and pushed open the passenger door, his hand outstretched. Evan reached around, trying to get ahold of Fields to pull him along. Getting a purchase on his squadmate's sleeve, Evan was halfway to his feet, his own free hand out to Onofrio's, when, deep in his bowels, he felt again the low hum of another incoming RPG.
It was the last thing he felt for eleven days.
PART TWO. 2003-2004
9
From Ron Nolan's perspective, there was just no benefit to staying in Iraq and talking about it.
The inquiry into the incident looked like it was going to be a tricky thing. Onofrio was the only witness left in the immediate aftermath, and Nolan believed that his testimony wouldn't be harmful. Onofrio had been busy driving and wouldn't have had a clue about whether the following car was in fact stationary when Nolan had opened fire on it. But the word from the street, the result of Jack Allstrong's reaching out to the local Iraqi and U.S. military cops, had already filtered back about what had actually happened, and there was a reasonable chance that Nolan would be arrested.
The good news was that the Abu Ghraib scandal had just surfaced, and every American remotely connected to law enforcement in Iraq had been assigned to that investigation. Even Major Charles Tucker, that pain-in-the-ass bean-counter who'd been constantly in their shit about money, found himself reassigned to that scandal.
But in spite of that, and though he knew that jurisdictional issues were problematic at best in Iraq, especially when they involved contractors accused of criminal activity such as, in this case, murder, Nolan was unwilling to risk his own arrest. You never knew what could happen then. The CPA might decide to use him as an example for other trigger-happy contractors, or give him to the Iraqi prosecutors, both nonstarters from Nolan's point of view.
In fact, Nolan didn't feel particularly bad about what he'd actually done-hey, you're in a war, shit happens. The dumbasses should've stopped sooner, or better yet, stayed off the street entirely. What the hell were they thinking? If he had it to do over again, he'd do the very same thing, rules of engagement or no. And although he did very much regret the loss of life among his own convoy, again this was just another turd in the gigantic shitpile that was this war. Who could have predicted such a massive local retaliation for such a small, localized event? And then again, how was he supposed to know that this particular Mohammed Raghead, the father who'd stupidly driven his whole family into the killing radius of Nolan's Humvee, was in fact Jahlil al-Palawi, a major tribal leader and the most influential Shiite in the Masbah neighborhood?
Anyway, clearly the intelligent thing to do was for Nolan to blow Dodge until this incident blended into the chaos of all the other ones that were happening somewhere in the country just about every day. In a few months, Nolan could always come back with Allstrong or with another security outfit and pick up where he'd left off. In the meanwhile, Jack Allstrong certainly didn't want an army of investigators coming into BIAP without his say-so. Who knows what they'd see that they didn't like, and report back to the CPA?
So within a week of the incident, Nolan was back in Redwood City. After negotiations with Jack Allstrong that consisted of a couple of glasses of Glenfiddich each, the company chose to construe his departure as caused by an act of God, which meant it would honor his contract for a six-month hitch at full pay. And with some of this apparently inexhaustible supply of money, Nolan put a down payment on a modern and elegant furnished townhouse near the sylvan border between Redwood City and Woodside. Still employed by Allstrong, he was the company's chief Bay Area recruiter of ex-military personnel. He knew the kind of people Jack Allstrong needed over in Iraq and he generally knew where to find them.
Tara Wheatley was surprised to see Nolan back so soon. She'd spent the weeks he was gone coming to grips with her nagging sense of guilt. Which was, she told herself, ridiculous. She was an adult who could make her own decisions, and she and Evan had been broken up for months. She hadn't betrayed anybody. She was moving on in her life. She'd finally gotten around to reading the last four of Evan's letters, but after the night when she had invited Nolan back to her apartment, she couldn't make herself get around to writing back to him.
What was she supposed to say?
No. She wasn't going to write that letter, not now, not ever.
And Evan, of course, never wrote to her again either.
Ron Nolan was a strong, powerful, attractive older guy and if her life wasn't going to work out with Evan, and it clearly wasn't, then with his charm, experience, confidence, and-admit it-money, Nolan would at the very least be able to help her get over her first love. She could use a simple, uncomplicated relationship until the next real one came along.
As if there'd ever be another one as real as Evan.
Nolan never saw the need to tell her about the ambush at Masbah, what had happened to Evan, or the role that Nolan himself had played in it all. As far as Tara knew, Nolan had voluntarily made the decision to come home, possibly even as a result of some of their discussions about the morality of the war. Explaining it to her, he had kept it all, as his old English teacher used to say, vague enough to be true.
