Shock of War

them shoot us as spies?”

“You’re the one that screwed this all up,” answered Zeus. He began to seethe. “You snapped. You’re an asshole.”

“Don’t call me an asshole.”

“You are. You’ve always been an asshole. At school. At the com — ”

Zeus stopped midsentence, ducking back as Christian threw a haymaker in his direction. Failing to connect, Christian crumbled as his ankle gave way under the weight of his swing.

“Asshole,” said Zeus. “Proves my point.”

Christian began pounding the ground. Zeus, disgusted, shook his head. Then he realized his companion was crying.

“I am an asshole,” Christian sobbed. “I screwed everything up. I’m a wimp. I’m no good. I’m useless.”

All true, thought Zeus. But this was one hell of a time for such a revelation.

He squeezed his fingers against the corner of his temple. They were coming apart — Christian obviously, but he was, too. He already had. The fatigue of the last few days, the stress of the mission, and then the danger behind the lines: they’d reached their breaking point.

God, was it this easy to crack?

Zeus had heard dozens of lectures about battle stress and fatigue and posttraumatic stress, but in every story, the flash point had come after real duress: guys being shelled for hours on end, or marching through jungles for days, getting bombed by their own planes.

What the hell had he been through? One mission.

Actually, several. And getting to Hainan Island had been an ordeal in and of itself. But still, it shouldn’t have been enough to break him.

It wasn’t. He was a goddamn, well-trained soldier, for Christ’s sake — a freakin’ major.; a MAY-JOR, not some skinny pimple-faced skateboarder tossed into his first firefight without a weapon or a radio.

Goddamn.

“Pull yourself together,” he said, addressing himself as much as Christian. “We gotta get our butts out of here.”

Christian didn’t answer. But his back stopped heaving, and he slowly rose from the ground.

“We’ll hide in one of the trucks, and go as far as he takes us,” Zeus said. “Come on.”

He walked back to the line of trucks. He decided it would be better to hide in one of the smaller vehicles, since they wouldn’t have to worry about opening the rear door. But the cargo area of the first truck was jammed tight with canisters that appeared from the colors to be acetylene and oxygen, and there was no room except on the top of them. The second was only half full: some furniture and boxes were secured in the front, leaving a good space on the bed. The truck was a flatbed with sides made of wooden staves, covered by a canvas tarp. Lying on his belly, Zeus could see off the sides as well as the rear, while from the distance he figured he would look like one of the furled rugs poking between the cab and the boxes.

“Say nothing,” he whispered to Christian as he slid into the back.

Christian, head hanging down, complied.

* * *

A week before, Zeus would have enjoyed seeing Win Christian crumble. The truth was, he hated the son of a bitch with a passion. He’d been an obnoxious, holier-than-thou type at West Point, and had gotten worse as time went on. Most recently, he had been Zeus’s main antagonist at the Red Dragon computerized war simulations, cocky and full of himself before the simulations, brimming with unjustified overconfidence. Cutting him down in the sims — Zeus had won every confrontation — had been the highlight of his posting.

But now Zeus only felt disgust at himself, not Christian. Because, if the truth be told, he suddenly felt just as weak. He should have stopped Christian from going nuts back at the airport. That was his responsibility, wasn’t it? He’d known Christian was getting edgy. He could make excuses, explanations — he was damned tired himself — but what did they matter? They were where they were because he hadn’t done anything to fix it.

Kill a civilian?

That was murder, pure and simple. Even if they were at war, it was wrong. Wrong. He had been trained, taught, better than that.

Much better. Zeus had served as a captain in Special Forces. He’d seen combat, real combat; not as much as a lot of other guys, including most of the men he’d led, but enough to have been tested and survived. And now he was falling apart without anyone even firing at him.

The truck rocked on its springs. Zeus turned back to Christian, ready to punch him for moving. Then he realized it was the driver in the cab. He’d woken up.

Zeus put up his finger and held it to his lips. Christian nodded.

They waited for a minute or two, lying silently on the bed of the truck. Finally, Zeus realized that the man had gone back to sleep. He curled back and put his face close to Christian’s ear.

“We have to just be patient,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll get out of this.”

One of the tractor-trailers ahead of them rumbled to life. The motor was loud, and the vibrations from the tailpipe so strong that the bottom of their truck rattled.

Zeus squirreled himself around, trying to make himself more comfortable. He also took the gun from his belt, keeping it ready in his hand.

He didn’t want to kill civilians. But if it came down to it, if it was him or them, what would he do?

He’d always thought kill-or-be-killed was an easy question. But now he wasn’t sure. Was survival more important, or surviving as a moral man?

If you believed in eternity, if you believed in God and heaven, then surely being a moral man was more important.

But hell, he was Catholic. He could always confess his sins.

The irreverence struck him as funny, and it was all he could do to keep himself from laughing.

There was more shifting in the cab. The truck started. Its muffler was shot, and the whole vehicle vibrated with the engine’s loud, uneven rumble.

The truck backed up slightly, then eased out onto the highway.

Zeus tried to quiet his mind. The jumbled emotions were due mostly to fatigue. He could get out of this — he would get out of this. All he had to do was keep his head.

They had driven for about twenty minutes when the truck began to slow down, then pulled off to the side. Zeus pushed himself tight against the boxes, holding his breath. He felt the gun in his hand.

Zeus caught a glimpse of the driver as he got out and went around the back of the truck, continuing into the nearby field. He was taking a leak.

Now’s our chance.

Zeus slipped quietly along the truck bed, and climbed down. Glancing back, he saw Christian’s eyes open, watching him. He motioned with his hands: Stay there. Quiet. Then he ran around to the front of the truck.

Zeus still had the gun in his right hand. He took it in his left, then quietly opened the driver’s side door. But as he started to climb up into the cab, he saw that the keys weren’t in the ignition.

Cursing to himself, he slipped down and gently closed the cab door. He took a deep breath, then another.

Come on, he told himself. Get to it.

Zeus slipped along the front of the truck, hiding behind the hood. He couldn’t see the driver. It made more sense to wait for him to come back, but Zeus’s adrenaline was rising. The urge to go and grab him was irresistible. He started to rise — and was startled to see the driver just turning the corner of the truck, not three feet away.

Zeus threw himself forward, striking the man awkwardly with his left fist. Had the driver been less surprised