This war was only happening because of technology created far away from here. But happening it was. And if they advanced, especially if they managed to take Aden, a port located on a twenty-mile-long chokepoint for a huge portion of the world’s oil shipments, there’d be a global commerce crisis, a spike in oil prices, and disaster for pretty much every country in the world except for poor, decrepit oil producers like Russia and Venezuela. Which meant, even here, what he was doing was related to the security of his home country. In the modern world, everything is related to everything.
After his shift, he went to his apartment just as the sun was rising, and he called home. It was around nine, Bogotá time, and after a discussion of how Valencia was getting along, they reverted to the usual argument.
“Why can’t you get a contract here?” She meant a contract working in Colombia. With his old colleagues who’d driven him out, or with Americans, working for interests that were often aligned with, but not the same as, the interests of his country.
“Maybe I should have stayed in,” he said. “Dared them to pass me over.”
She sighed. “You would have been passed over.” Sofia had talked to the wives. She knew. “But if you talk to Colonel Carlosama—”
“I won’t live on his charity.”
And that was that. He wanted to tell her about his work, about the wedding party, about Jeffie’s comment on the strangeness of their work, but of course he couldn’t. He asked her about her day, about the women who had remained friends with her, and the women who no longer wanted to see her, and how predictable it all was. How Sofia had, in fact, predicted it. Who were true friends, who were not. As she spoke, he longed to be with her, to be able to touch her, see her in real life, not through a screen. It was a longing deeper than any he’d felt during the many long stretches away from her back in Colombia, and he wondered where it came from. He shook it off. This kind of work would not just set him and Sofia up financially. It would allow them to secure something for their daughter as well. If she really did want to go into human rights, well, that work wouldn’t pay. But the money he made here could go into making that lifestyle a possibility for her.
After the call, he remembered Jeffie’s invitation and walked to the American’s apartment. Jeffie opened the door, and inside it was just him and an open bottle of bourbon. Harsh light came from the windows, which looked out onto drab brown nothingness that stretched in all directions from where they lived, at an air base in the Emirates’ deep south, a region of the country known as the Empty Quarter. It was an apt name. Juan Pablo immediately regretted coming.
“Guess what I found out.” Jeffie slurred the words as he poured an enormous amount of bourbon into a plastic cup. The room was disorganized. Bed unmade. Papers strewn across a coffee table. An open book with a cracked spine dropped pages-down on the floor.
“I won’t stay long,” Juan Pablo said. He looked at the book. An Army at Dawn. The cover showed a line of soldiers walking across a scrubby hillside.
“You know the Aden screwup?”
The Aden screwup was when a couple of American mercenaries tried to place a shrapnel-laced bomb in the offices of a local political party, Islah, but instead got into a firefight and alerted the whole neighborhood. The thing had been further confirmation to Juan Pablo that using ground forces here for sensitive missions in Yemen was a nonstarter. They just weren’t good enough. Even though, supposedly, the American mercenaries were all top quality, a Green Beret, a SEAL, and a CIA Ground Branch guy.
“Turns out the SEAL in the group,” Jeffie said, “well, he left the service after shooting a recruit. Training accident. Left the guy crippled. Now he’s here, fucking our shit up and making twenty-five thousand dollars a month.”
Juan Pablo sipped the bourbon. It was sweet, and burned pleasantly.
“Old Crow, General Grant’s favorite.” Jeffie pointed at the bottle the whiskey had come from. “Sit down, sit down.”
He motioned to a chair positioned toward the window, facing the sun that hung over the empty landscape. Juan Pablo sat, his eyes narrowing against the glare.
“How many guys here got some story like that?” Jeffie said. “Not like, shot a guy, but . . . something must have gone wrong for most of us. From SEAL Team Six to an Emirati kill squad in Yemen—it’s probably not how he thought his life would go.”
Juan Pablo didn’t like where the conversation was going. “Are you about to tell me your past?” he said.
Jeffie shot back the Old Crow and winced as it went down. Then he shivered like a dog shaking off water, and poured more into his cup. “No dark past. I just went bankrupt,” he said. He put a hand in the air. “Kid brother had some issues. Of a medical variety. Well, sort of. Complicated.” Without asking, he reached over and poured even more whiskey into Juan Pablo’s cup. Juan Pablo figured there were at least four shots sitting in there now. He had no intention of staying here long enough to drink it all. But he sipped.
“Right before the end of shift, they intercepted some chatter,” Jeffie continued. “Turns out the bomb that went stray killed one of Badr al-Dien’s nephews.”
Badr al-Dien was a Houthi commander. Not exactly a high-value target, but high enough. “I used to work with an American who’d tell me it is better to be lucky than be good.”
“Lucky, yeah.”
