Lowering the map, Remington looked at the man.
Abu held his gaze fearfully. He licked his lips again. “Please, Captain, I swear in Allah’s name that I am only telling you the truth.”
After waiting a beat, Remington said, “I believe you.”
Relief flooded through Abu. He almost collapsed in the chair. “Thank you, Captain. You will not regret this.”
“No,” Remington said. “I won’t regret it.” He pocketed the map, holstered his pistol, and walked away from the man. “Hardin.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Make certain I don’t regret this.” Remington thought his voice sounded cold and distant and alien even in his own ears.
“Yes, sir.”
Silhouetted by the electric torch behind him, Remington saw the long black shadows on the stone wall in front of him, saw the shadow of the man seated in the chair and Hardin’s shadow as he stepped forward with his assault rifle ready. In that instant, Abu must have realized that he was the only one outside of the Rangers who knew Remington was planning to target the Syrian fuel depot. He traded with the Syrians. Releasing him was out of the question. How could Remington trust the man to keep his silence?
“No! Captain! Please! I beg you! Cap—”
A quick burst of gunfire hammered Remington’s ears as he started up the wooden steps. The muzzle flash momentarily erased the shadows on the wall to his left, even as the bullets permanently erased Abu Alam. When the shadows returned, the dead man’s shadow was missing. Only the shadow of the empty chair stood between the Rangers.
“Thank you, Corporal,” Remington said without turning around.
“Yes, sir,” Hardin said.
“Stay here until we make arrangements to get rid of the body.”
“Yes, sir.”
Outside the burned-out husk of the building, Remington slid his sunglasses back on. He tried to control the nausea that squirmed through his stomach, but he failed. The image of Abu’s shadow getting eradicated by the muzzle flash from the M-4A1 bounced around inside his skull like a pinball. Sour bile tainted the back of Remington’s throat. He managed to hold off the worst of it until he reached the alley; then he bent forward and threw up.
The gut-churning purging left him weak, shaking, and lightheaded, but the feeling soon passed. He hadn’t wanted Hardin to see that reaction in him. The sickness over one more meaningless death was a weakness in himself, and Remington hated it. But he’d had no other course of action. He had to hold the city. The Joint Chiefs had trapped him into taking the steps he had.
During his years as an officer, he’d seen men die horrific deaths. He had found their bodies after violent passings. But he had never so coldbloodedly ordered an execution. There had been times when he’d had a chance to take a person alive, and he’d given orders not to risk his men, but he’d never had a man killed who had been so defenseless.
This time, though, he’d walked into that cellar knowing he was going to leave a dead man behind. He hadn’t thought it would bother him. He had told himself that it wouldn’t. He was only doing what he had to do, and he expected himself to do it.
The life lost in that cellar could save the lives of dozens—maybe hundreds—of the men in his command. He forced himself to remember that. He wasn’t a murderer. He was a man in command accepting the responsibility of that command. An officer who accepted the burden of keeping his men alive and able to fight. Abu had to die so that his men had a chance to live.
And also so that he had a chance to win with the losing hand he’d been dealt by the powers that be. In the game of war, losers died. Winners lived and got to fight another day. And they had a chance at glory. Captain Cal Remington didn’t intend to blow his chance.
His stomach spasmed again but nothing came up. He felt certain there was nothing left to lose. He cursed his weakness. It wasn’t like he’d had a choice in whether or not to kill Abu. The Joint Chiefs had pushed him into killing. They’d sat back on their duffs and played war games, sacrificing his unit because they were afraid to risk what they were ordering the Rangers to put on the line every minute of every hour of every day that the 75th occupied the city.
He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, then turned and walked back toward the waiting RSOV out of sight around the corner. A quick scan of the street showed him no one was around to witness his loss of control.
He thought about Corporal Dean Hardin waiting down in the cellar so patiently with the dead man. Hardin didn’t act like killing the man had meant anything to him, hadn’t even flinched when Remington had told him it would be necessary.
There was still, Remington knew, a huge difference between himself and Hardin, but the Ranger captain didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He only knew that the difference existed.
Remington was glad he had men in his command like Hardin, men who would see every nasty job done that needed doing and wouldn’t hesitate about getting it done. Goose and men like him—which most of the Rangers tended to be with their sense of fair play and honor, even on terror-ravaged battlefields fighting enemies fueled by insane rage and selfish fear—wouldn’t do what Hardin had done.
Of course, the upside of that was that Remington would never have to worry that Goose or those men would start up an illegal enterprise that might come up and bite their captain on his nether regions.
