Salgado, jacked up from almost getting run over, blistered the Cressida’s driver with obscenities, like it was all his fault.
The Blazer’s wheelman said to Godo, “Look-”
“You jumped the goddamn line.”
“You hear me? There’s a convoy, ready to move-”
“Access cards and permits.” Godo shot out his hand, glancing past the driver at the others. The guy in the passenger seat looked half in the bag, sunglasses staring straight ahead, weapon clenched between his knees. Behind him sat the rest of the team, three men abreast in the backseat, equally hungover from the general slump and cast of their eyes, every one of them dressed in the same contractor drag, like there was a store out there somewhere in the desert where they all got outfitted.
Gunny Benedict duck-walked forward to calm Salgado down and provide a forward presence. A gust of keening wind sugared everything in grit.
“Listen.” The Blazer driver leaned forward, like it was the distance between them causing the trouble. “Time window’s closing here.”
In a moment of insomniac, rage-laced weirdness, Godo pictured the man growing a snout. “You with Harmon Stern?”
The driver’s jaw tightened. The bloodshot eyes turned hard. “What’s your problem?”
Good as a yes, Godo thought. “Access cards and permits.”
“Look. You know who we are.”
“Fuck I do. Access-”
“We’re on the same side, damn it.”
Godo glanced away, like the guy wasn’t worth eye contact, spotting that same dog edging ever closer, nosing the ground for garbage, then he coughed up another wad of dust-choked phlegm. For a second he thought he saw a flurry of black-winged bats veering in crazy arcs in the dawn-lit east. He blinked-nothing there. The dog, though, was real, he felt pretty sure of that. “Cards and weapon permits, every man in the vehicle. Now.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
Godo couldn’t help himself, he laughed. “Coming from you?”
Salgado had the Cressida driver out of the car now, opening his trunk. Gunny Benedict spotted a pedestrian trekking forward from the hazy darkness, past the other vehicles in the queue, a strangely tall and awkward woman in a black
The Blazer driver, trying to regroup, ventured a buddy-up smile. “Okay, you win. But there’s no need for this hassle, okay?” He nodded toward the front bumper. “How about you write down the plate number, we’ll be outta your hair.”
It was galling, the crap they thought you’d swallow. “How about you shit backwards on this attitude you got and do like I told you.” The aggression was camouflage, he was trembling from adrenalin. Above and beyond the contractor’s bullshit there was something about the walk-up bothering him, putting him on edge-plus the wastrel dog. For just a second he caught Gunny Benedict’s dusty blue eyes as he glanced over his shoulder, first at Salgado, then Godo, checking his men, taking care.
Do your job, Godo thought, another over-the-shoulder glance at Chavous then turning back to the Blazer. “My man there on the.50cal? He’ll send a few live ones through your windshield you try to move, so you’re going no place till you comply-we clear? Now cards and permits, I’m not asking again.”
The driver cocked his head around, tracking Gunny Benedict advancing toward the odd-looking woman, ordering her to stop. Godo felt it stronger now, still not knowing why. His whole body felt like an antenna for the willies. He thought of shouting something but didn’t want to come off half-cocked. Gunny knew his business.
The driver said, “That your team leader there?”
Godo snapped back. “You don’t get to choose who you deal with, asshole.”
The guy laughed, slapped the arm of the hunched man beside him. Back to Godo: “Touch a nerve there, did I, Poncho? Your sergeant know what a wound-up little girl you are?”
“What my sergeant knows, Elmer, is I need to see your fucking access cards and-” In the corner of his eye, Godo saw the gawky woman slip past Benedict, reaching inside the black
“Know what?” The driver jammed the Blazer in gear. “I’m calling your bluff, hotshot.”
At the sound of the engaged transmission Godo snapped. “That’s it, faggot. Out of the fucking vehicle.” He pulled open the Blazer’s door with the dog’s barking growing louder, fiercer, just as a man’s pitched cry broke from behind the woman’s veil:
Two weeks later, the doctors in Landstuhl would tell him that simple thing-yanking back the door-probably saved his life. They’d also tell him that Gunnery Sergeant Raymond Benedict, among several others, marines and civilians both, didn’t make it. It was up to Godo to imagine the details. And he’d been doing that, while pretty much trying not to, ever since.
GODO COULDN’T SAY IT WAS RELIEF HE FELT, OR IF IT WAS, RELIEF AT what exactly. Exorcising the demon, maybe, whatever the hell that meant. Relief he’d gotten through the story without sniveling like a bitch. He’d never said any of that out loud before, not that he could remember and he doubted he’d forget such a thing. Maybe in the ward at Landstuhl, when the morphine made him daffy. In the cold moonlight Happy’s face looked a little less grimly calculating, a little more accepting. Godo tried to tell himself that wasn’t pity. He wouldn’t take pity, not from Happy, not from anybody.
“You blame yourself.”
Godo shivered. “Minute I felt something wrong, you know? I shoulda lit that fucker up.”
“You do that over there? Wax women?”
“He wasn’t no woman, Hap, that’s the-”
“You didn’t know that, is my point.”
“No. No. Some level, I knew. It was
“You guessed, Godo. You suspected. And you take out a woman on a bad guess, think of the shit you’da been in.”
Godo shook his head helplessly, miserably. “You’re not getting it.”
“You’re letting hindsight fuck with you. Time don’t work like that.”
“Wow. That’s deep.”
“Go ahead and mock, asshole. I’m trying to help you.”
“I got locked in, you know? The crap between me and that damn driver.” Godo looked up into the night sky, the fat clouds, the spray of stars. “So fucking like me.”
“No, what’s like you? Letting it eat at you like this. There’s nothing you coulda done. I know you wish there was but…” Happy let his voice trail off suggestively, the silence into which all wishes vanish. “Sure as shit no way you can change it now.”
“Stop fucking telling me that.”
“I’ll stop when you look me in the eye, convince me you’ve got this shit squared away. I told you, I’m gonna need you tomorrow. You’re the one I gotta rely on. Tell me I can do that.”
Godo felt chilled to the bone. “There’s something else,” he murmured.
“Like what?”
“I’m not saying I can explain it, but more and more I picture this guy, this Snell, I see his face in that Blazer- backseat, passenger side. I swear to God it was him.”
Happy didn’t say anything at first, just pulled his cigarettes from his back pocket, tapped one out, crouched over to light up, then glanced toward the house. The kerosene lantern Efraim had brought back flickered in the living room where everyone was gathered, its waxy light shuddering along the bare walls. “Don’t take this wrong, okay? But you been through what you been through, your mind is gonna fuck you up. It’s gonna want to explain what can’t get explained. Try to make sense of the crazy bullshit. All right? But it ain’t the guy. You’re making it up.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know this, okay? You go in there tomorrow thinking what we gotta get done has anything to do with what happened back there-I’m sorry man, I get it, this sergeant who bit it, he meant something to you, it’s totally fucked what happened-but you go in there with this on your mind, we’re all screwed. You can’t make it right. You sure as
