Fowler didn’t like the plan. They were looking at only a few huts, but even so, they could be walking into an ambush. The Taliban didn’t usually set up attacks inside villages, but there was a first time for everything.
“You steady, Private?” Rodriguez said.
“Like a rock.”
“Good.” Rodriguez walked toward the Afghan man in quick, confident steps. “Quicker you show us around, quicker we’re done.”
The other two Afghans tried to follow, but Young lifted his rifle fractionally and they stepped back. When Rodriguez and Roman were out of earshot, Fowler stepped toward Young.
“Coleman, I’m sure I’ve seen that guy before. At a checkpoint.”
“Like Rodriguez said, they all look alike.”
“They don’t all have a scar like that.”
“More than you think.”
“I can’t believe we’ve still got three months left. I can’t do it.”
“You can. You will. And come home a hero.”
“Hero.”
“That’s what they call us, isn’t it?”
A hundred yards ahead, the scarred man pulled open a gate. Rodriguez and Roman followed him inside. The way they were moving bothered Fowler. Rodriguez might be a dickwad, but he was a good soldier, always vigilant. Now he seemed relaxed. As if he were certain that nothing inside the gate would threaten. Fowler had the strange feeling that this patrol had been a sham, its only purpose to get Rodriguez to that compound. He watched the gate close and wondered why.
2
The house at the end of the flagstone driveway was wide and brick and faced west toward the Bitterroot Mountains. It had two chimneys and a three-car garage. It looked… in truth, it looked like a nice place to live. Like it had a den filled with books that had actually been read and a refrigerator stuffed with leafy green vegetables. John Wells hadn’t gotten inside and he was already feeling defensive.
Though the flagstone was a bit much.
Wells rolled up the driveway, which turned to asphalt beside the house. A thickly padded pillar supported a regulation-size basketball backboard. A teenage boy faced the hoop. He dribbled the ball between his hands like a three-card-monte dealer hiding an ace. He was maybe six-foot-two and, despite the cool fall air, wore only knee- length white shorts and a blue Boise State T-shirt. As Wells drove up the flagstone, the kid stepped back and launched a fadeaway jumper. It traced an easy arc and dropped through the net.
Wells parked his rental Kia a few feet from the boy and grabbed the bouquet of orchids and lilies he’d bought in downtown Missoula. He didn’t want to open the door, but after a couple seconds he forced himself out.
The boy kept dribbling, skittering the ball between his legs. He was still growing into his body. His chest was flat, but his calves and forearms were thick with muscle. He had Wells’s deep brown eyes and solid nose, and his hair was long and straight and pulled back in a ponytail. He launched another fadeaway jumper, this one just short. Wells collected the rebound.
“You must be Evan.”
“I must be.”
“I’m John.” Wells stepped in for a hug, but the boy took a quick half step back and extended a hand.
“Nice to meet you.” Evan spoke softly, his words clipped flat. No hint of emotion. He sounded like a state trooper talking to a driver he’d pulled over for speeding. Without affect, the psychiatrists said. Though not without effect. Wells watched his son watching him. He supposed he’d earned that voice.
“Practicing your jumper.”
“Actually working on my dunks.”
“Right.”
Evan cocked his head at the flowers. “Those for me? I’m more into roses as a rule.”
“Noted.”
Evan dribbled twice, threw up a fadeaway. This time the ball clanged off the front of the rim and bounced at Wells, who laid the flowers on the ground and corralled it.
“Coach tried to get me interested in ninth grade, but football was more my game,” Wells said. “Now I wish I’d listened to him. All those hits add up. I still feel some of them.” Though Wells was lying. He wouldn’t have traded football for anything. He’d loved the sport’s raw power, its velocity and contact. War without death.
He spun the basketball in his hands, dribbled once, flung up a jumper. The ball bounced off the back rim. Evan grabbed it and tucked it under his arm, an oddly adult gesture, as if he were in charge and Wells the teenager. His self-possession impressed Wells.
“You should probably tell my mom you’re here.”
“Sure.” Wells turned to the house as Heather — his ex-wife — opened the door. Her hair, once a light honey brown, was streaked with gray and cut short, just above her shoulders. She and Wells had divorced barely a year after Evan was born, when Wells left them to go undercover in Afghanistan and infiltrate al-Qaeda for the first time. These were the prehistoric days before September 11. Wells had seen Heather only once since. Now he crossed the driveway and the stairs and hugged her. She hesitated and then reached for him and stretched her arms around his back. She was tiny, half his size. “You look great,” he said.
“You lie.”
“Never.”
“Fairly often, I suspect. But come on in anyway.”
“What about…” Wells nodded at the side of the house, where Evan was once again shooting jumpers.
“Let him be. He’ll come in on his own once he sees us talking.”
SHE LED HIM THROUGH a house that was as handsome as Wells had imagined from the outside. The American dream alive and well in three dimensions. The pictures stung the most. Heather had remarried, a lawyer named Howard. They had two children, George and Victoria — Wells had looked up their names this morning. Family photos covered every wall. Victoria playing soccer. Evan spinning a basketball on his index finger. George standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. The five of them somewhere in Mexico or Central America, standing on a ruin, grinning.
Wells knew that the photos weren’t for him. They’d been up long before he arrived. But he couldn’t help feeling they were meant as an object lesson, a reminder of the life he’d traded away. Though he was probably fooling himself. Probably this life had never been open to him.
“They’re beautiful. All of them.”
“Thank you.”
“And they get along?”
“You know, they’re kids, they fight, but the fact that Evan has a different dad, that’s never part of it. At least as far as I know.”
“That’s great.”
Heather put Wells’s flowers in a glass pitcher and they sat at a marble-topped island in the kitchen. She didn’t ask whether he wanted anything to drink or eat, a reminder that he wasn’t truly welcome.
“Howard’s not around? Or the kids?”
