The Polish non-com narrowed his eyes and dipped his head in acknowledgement.
Milosz pointed to a younger, black-haired youth and spoke in a rapid garble of Polish. Melton had the impression he was repeating what he’d just said. The young commando shrugged, conceding a point.
‘So what about you, Sergeant? No theories for you?’
Milosz smiled sadly. ‘It is like you say. People groping through the dark, grasping at this and that, trying to explain what cannot be understood. My question, I ask it of people because it tells me how they are now. Whether they will get through or not.’
‘You think people will “get through” based on whether they believe in conspiracy theories, or magic, or the will of God?’
‘No. People will survive this because of luck. If you have no food to eat, no warmth in the deep of winter, it doesn’t matter whether you think little green men or Mohammed broke your world. You will still die frozen and hungry. But if you have enough to eat, just enough, and if you have some shelter and safety – again, just enough – then maybe your living or dying might have something to do with whether you fall to madness and superstition, or whether you hold on to your rationality.’
A small, indulgent grin sketched itself onto Melton’s weathered features. ‘You’re a materialist, then? Of the dialectic school? I thought Poland was done with all that.’
‘Yes, I am a material thinker, like my father, a mathematician. And you are no boxhead, Melton.’
‘It’s foolish to assume that just because somebody puts on a uniform and takes orders, they turn off their brains. You didn’t.’
‘Excellent,’ beamed Milosz. ‘It is good to talk like this, Melton. So much of soldiering is crudity and ugliness, yes? But there is more to the profession of arms, and to life itself. We soldier so our children won’t. For us, guns; for them, books and easier lives.’
Melton gestured helplessly. ‘I never had any kids. Gotta say I’m real happy about that now.’
He didn’t look back over at the Marine lance corporal as he spoke. She was still talking about her daughter in North Dakota. Someone came over, checked the man on the cot, took his pulse. The orderly then pulled a blanket over the man’s head and made a note on the clipboard, but the lance corporal didn’t notice.
‘But if I had,’ he continued, ‘and they hadn’t disappeared, I don’t know that they’d be looking at an easier life than I had.’
‘Not now, no,’ conceded the Pole.
Three trucks pulled up at the vast hangar bay doors and soon able-bodied troopers began unloading more litters from their rear cabins. Corpsmen and a few nurses appeared and hurried over to help, but otherwise there was no appreciable reaction to their arrival. Men still sat and talked in low voices in their own small, closed groups. Country-and-western crooners still clashed with speed-metal shrieks and hardcore rap from dozens of portable stereos. Listless card games of hearts and spades continued without pause. The
‘And what now for you guys, Sergeant? Home to your families?’
Milosz nodded, but there was a severity to his expression that belied any sense of release or deliverance. A couple of the other Poles appeared just as sombre.
‘Home, yes. We hope.’ He waved his hands in the air, a concession of helplessness. ‘If we have not been forgotten. Or abandoned. Or lost… But we may not see our families even if we do get home. There will be much work to be done. Our sort of work.’
‘Fighting.’
‘Of course. You have seen what happens when things go bad, Melton. In Polish history, there is much fighting – Russians, Germans. Who knows who will come now? Maybe Tartars and Ottomans again. Once, even the Swedes invaded. I doubt they would again. They are a soft people now. But not everyone is soft, no? The jihadi pigs I am fighting in Afghanistan, they are crazy men, but hard. The Iraqis – not so hard, but bad, and led badly. Weak men are often the cruellest. And Russia, a sick place, but still peopled with ruthless commissars and tyrants. This Putin, watch him. He is an iron fist hanging over all of us.
‘So yes, Melton, fighting. Always fighting. Fighting big, between states, and small, between people for little things. Food, water – basic things. My brother, I spoke to him for three minutes on American phone yesterday. Nothing he has to eat for two days. Just some dried crackers and a little tinned food for his children. Nothing in market. It is like communism again. And now, with the poison clouds, no harvests, I think.’
His men were nodding, and Melton wondered about their grasp of English. If he recalled correctly, GROM operators had to have a working knowledge of at least two languages other than Polish. He supposed there was a fair chance all of these men did speak English with some fluency, given the anglophone nature of the Coalition. And doubtless this was a topic that had been chewed down to the gristle among them. He wished he had taken notes, or recorded the sergeant’s lament. He was sure he could sell a story based solely on snatches of interviews taken with the men in this hangar, or with those men and women with whom he’d travelled to get here. An old, nearly burnt-out spark flickered somewhere inside him and he reached inside his jacket pocket, searching for the Sony digital recorder he kept there. It was gone, but he had a pen and a notebook that he had lifted off someone’s desk over the course of his journey from Kuwait. His writing hand was uninjured, but holding the pad in his heavily bandaged left hand was awkward.
He looked at the lance corporal by the Arabic Coke machine.
Melton raised an eyebrow at Milosz and asked, ‘Would you mind? I don’t have any of my gear. My newspaper is gone, but I’m still a reporter. I shouldn’t be sitting here on my ass feeling sorry for myself – I should be telling stories. Your stories. Would you mind?’
‘Of course not!’ the sergeant cried out, holding his arms wide. ‘I am always interesting in hearing myself talk. And these, my poor little bastards, they have no choice – they have to listen. Why should they suffer alone? Yes, Melton, of course you can tell my stories. Where should I start? With our attack on the Mukarayin Dam? Yes, that was us. We flooded Baghdad. Everyone thinks it was Green Berets, pah, Hollywood pussies! It was GROM.’
