--my turn to get shot.
The
random odds were in place: Routine patrol, low probability of contact, my first
time driving in ages, the AV popped a bolt on the undercarriage, everyone
privately freaked for a second before I pulled over so I could check it, woods
on all sides but that was normal, myself the first out and turning to bend over
and then I saw a spark off the door of the AV, didn't even register the sound
of a single gunshot, didn't feel the bullet pierce me somewhere in the gut,
pass clean through and ricochet while everyone snapped to, as the ground suddenly
turned into soggy bread, knees all wobbly and a sloppy collapse against the AV
and onto the ground, oddly concerned about keeping blood off the vehicle.
"You'll
be fine, MK."
Caf
not one to bullshit me. If I was dying he'd tell me I was toasted. And if I was
dying he would've left me there, out in the open, but he dragged me behind the
cover of the AV and then ran off where the rest of the guys were headed, into a
clump of woods where some Chinese had set up what was probably a hasty ambush
given how abrupt we had showed on the scene. The last thing the Chinese were
expecting were the ambushed fools running into the woods as the aggressors,
turning cat-and-mouse into cat-and-bears, all of the Chinese halfway up in
trees without a good way down, 716ers down in the brush, wiping them out. It
must've been late enough in the game for them to know us, know we didn't have
the air support to light up the whole damn forest in a bonafide American
pyrotechnic spectacular.
I
could see most of it from looking underneath the AV. I thought about my
recurring fear about taking cover behind a vehicle, since there's always that
gap between the lower chassis and the ground, and a good-enough crackshot could
shoot you in the feet and render you gimp. I was flat on my back, and
aforementioned crackshot could've popped me in my grape-jelly brain.
No
one was around to say anything. They were all in the woods. I had the bum luck
to be on the ambush side of the lead vehicle. But I had the good fortune to
take one in the abdomen and not my skull or anywhere respiration took place.
Bleeding
out on the ground and set on fixing myself up. The memory of classes that were
so boring, kind of shrugging off that whole This Will Save Your Life Someday
warning and, hell, I was in the business of doing just that. I managed to slide
back, reached the rear AV door, pulled it open, grabbed the medkit in the
recessed panel.
Gunshots
still to my left, past the vehicle, in the scrub.
Too
occupied to consider myself Forgotten. Feeling the entry and exit wounds, a
hand sticky with living, pulsing blood. Going through all the mental tricks of
delaying shock. Caf was right, I wasn't dying, but I was going cold, and I was
bleeding too much, and dirt and grit was getting into the wound. No time to be picky,
at least the bullet was in and out, nothing to yank free from a mess of
entrails. Stabbing myself with a local anesthetic until I couldn't feel my
waist. Then swabbing away the blood, my chin tucked into my chest to look at
what I was doing as I dug the needle into the area near the wound, crap sutures
they'd have to rip out anyway. But no dice I'd go rigid and blue in goddamn
China. Fixed up enough, tying the bandage as tight as uncomfortably possibly,
hearing the gunshots wind down, waves of panic spiking and receding when no one
was coming back, like maybe The Claw won.
And
then 716 back, the full count. My first real realization why the Regs thought
we were assholes, or how a total lack of visible compassion can give off the
wrong idea. Not like I was expecting any bedside manner. It's just that when
they came back, Caf and Gremlin shoved me into the back of the AV like I was
dead weight, and a few argued over who would drive like they were kids pushing
and shoving over who got to push the elevator button. No chatter heading back,
same as always, but I must've been projecting something, no one looking at me,
like I was already a corpse. It was only much later, years later, that I
realized they were all upset because one of Their Own was hit and might have to
sit out a few missions to recover, same as the bummer vibe I felt whenever
someone else had their turn to get stung and sit on the bench for the next few
ops.
The
long, bumpy ride back to FOB Whatever. The numbness de-numbing, the immediate
sharp pain of the first few minutes after a gunshot wound replaced by a dull
pain; everyone says they prefer dull pains, well, go and get yourself shot and
you'll change your tune. Like having something hungry inside you, an animal
gnawing on your innards, close enough to the medical reality of it, a neat hole
punched through a few organs.
Finally
inside the wire, diverted to the giant medical compound. Pointman, driving, had
a mumbled, muffled conversation with a Reg E-boy who pulled duty logging
arrivals and wouldn't let us in. Pointman seemed to get pissy and irate and
confused, and then he pulled out fast and I was still in the back, not a single
eye on me, my bandages getting wetter from a loose suture, Help, I'm Bleeding.
We
crawled only a hundred yards. Full stop. The electrical engines shut down. The
back hatch of the AV opened. The other AV was parked behind, all four peering
out, the only sign of human-fucking-empathy they could muster, checking to see
if I'd gone from grey to that blue-grey of certain death.
A
squat, small structure I'd never seen before. Unmarked. A guy in camo-scrubs
came out with a gurney as Caf and Gremlin hoisted me up. Supine, looking up at
that thoughtless sky. Craning my neck up, being wheeled backward, the Unit
assembled there, a tableau of the remaining eight boys in black. I lifted a
hand, a feeble I'm Okay gesture. Some returned it.
Past
double doors and into a windowless rectangle that looked like an abandoned
barracks moreso than anything medical. Another camo-scrubs guy showed and
helped transfer me onto a bed. They rattled off medical jargon and rolled me
onto my side, took off the bandages, the sting of fresh air.
"You
sew yourself up?"
"Yeah."
"Can
tell. Zigzagged all over the place. It'll hold for now before we poke around
inside and glue you shut. Clean entry and exit at first blush. Just gonna give
you a shot to kill off any possible infection. You scared of needles?"
"I
just got shot. The fuck should I be afraid of a needle?" in that
unguarded, hostile tone you only reserve for strangers under a very particular
type of duress.
"In
that case…"
Digging
through the cart nearby, pulling out a needle the size of the serial killer's
knife, trying to keep my cool, some prank, ha ha, but he filled it up.
"This'll
sting a little. Ready?"
A
stiff nod. The other guy tensed his hold, ready for me to buck.
"One.
Two--"
And
then that old trick, stabbing before the three. Grit teeth, still debris in my
mouth, sand or dirt or tree pollen. Feeling whatever was injected spreading
like a liquid cancer, bloodier than blood, an organism inside me unfolding like
an origami crane into plain paper.
"Stay
on your side. We'll get you some pillows."
And
they disappeared. Me at the front of the ward, staring at a blank wall with, I
suddenly realized, my pants around my ankles but my black shirt hid everything.
Pulling up my pants, unbuttoned, suddenly too drugdrunk to feel if I was
blocking the wound. I heard the guys go outside.
"Hey."
Couldn't
turn around. Looked up at the convex mirror and saw another black-uniformed
figure at the far end of the ward.
"Hey,"
he repeated.
"Hey."
"What's
your Unit?"
"What?"
"I'm
512," he said.
My
initial silence. The shock of the gunshot and the shock of something that for
years seemed a cosmic impossibility, like in the whole of the Forces there was
just one Unit, capital-U, and one number, Seven Six--
"Come
on, man. It's just a number. They only bring us Unit guys in here to get
patched up."
He
had a bandage around his head. No blood. Probably banged on the back of the AV
from a too-fast exit, something we had all done at one point, which ranged from
a stinging forehead to a giant bruise to a mild concussion.
"716.
Unit 716."
I
managed to sort of roll over and looked at him with my eyes and not through the
curved mirror. I wasn't that seasoned myself, only seventeen or eighteen, can't
give an exact figure, but the kid looked fifteen and it seemed the most
ridiculous thing in the world, his uniform, his rifle propped next to him,
trying to rationalize that when I was that age in the Unit I didn't look nearly
that green.
"What's
your name?"
Reticence.
"Come
on, man. Codename."
"Meridien
K."
"Cool.
What's it mean?"
I
suddenly didn't know and kind of let a long string of vowels pass between my
lips and then, "What about you?"
"Southpaw."
The
kid gave a minor laugh and I knew an explanation was incoming.
"And
I'm not even left-handed!" he said.
Southpaw
reclined in his bed.
"Fuck
this place, man. I can't leave until I pass their cognitive sobriety test, and
my guys are out running the border, stirring up shit. That's what I signed on
for. Not getting locked down when I bump my head."
Relative
truth and, "Yeah."
"You
get shot? I've been shot. Sucks."
Didn't
even have to say anything.
"Hey
Southpaw."
"Yeah?"
"You
see any other Units?"
"Sure.
Here and there. There are usually two per FOBs. Sometimes more in Camps, too.
But all pretty inconspicuous."
I
had more years on Southpaw but I took his intel at face value.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah.
There's, I think, uh, 106, and 988, and, oh yeah, 303. I don't think there's
any logic to the numbers. That is, there aren't nine-hundred eighty-eight
Units."
"Where'd
you train?" I asked.
"Well…"
"Come
on. I ran the EOP in either western Illinois or Iowa," and my voice
slipped out like I was talking in my sleep.
"All
right, all right. About an hour east of Portland."
"Huh.
What do you guys usually run? Movement to contact? Mapping satjams? Good ol'
sabotage?"
"Yep.
Mostly MTC which leads to, well, pretty much everything else," said
Southpaw.
Lull.
The bedsprings disagreed with each movement.
"Hey,
uh, Mer--"
"Meridien
K."
"How
about a joke, Meridien K?"
"Okay."
Southpaw
sprang from his bed and came over, got six inches from my face, dead-eye
serious, and for a second I thought I was about to get shived.
"You…"
said Southpaw, a whisper that had that low growl of rabid dogs. "You… ever
kill a man?"
The
outer layer of steel was permanently glazed on my eyes, though a cruel shiver
went along my whole axis, maybe the pain jump in my torso. And then Southpaw
gave up the scaryface, all teeth and sudden laughs, and as he went back to his
bed and jumped onto the mattress, I got the non-joke and had my own smile,
"got it" as well as anyone can under the circumstances.
"Hey
Southpaw."
"Yeah?"
"Two
necrophiles are sitting in a bar. One says to the other, 'I could go for a cold
one.'"
And
Southpaw with maniac laughter.
"I'm
stealing that. It's mine now."
"Take
it. Share it."
And
then that temporary joviality dimmed as my body deliberately began to shut
down.
That
normal loudquiet of the FOB: AVs rolling, distant shouts, marching, cadence,
all prepping for something that, collectively, would be bigger than any of us,
bigger than all the FOBs across the border, the Camps, the Air Bases, bigger
than the whole war and--
"How
old are you, Southpaw?"
"Old
enough," with a bit of menace that wasn't menacing at all.
I
laughed.
"The
fuck's so funny?"
"Nothing.
That sounds like something I would've said when I was your age," I said to
Southpaw.
(Chapter 34 coming Wednesday, February 1, 2012.)
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