“Coop!” McKenzie said, wiping her eyes as he stepped from behind the camo net.
Abruptly she was hugging him. “Oh Jesus Coop, I am so fucking sorry.”
Coop went rigid. His heart hit an irregular pulse as she cried against the dusty shoulder of his gear, and he watched in surprise as his own arms floated up to return the embrace. He felt a slackening of his nerves. Since October the guilt had coiled and grown in his intestines. But now the secret had been taken from him. McKenzie knew.
“It’s fucking unfair,” McKenzie said.
Coop pulled her closer, getting dust all over her clean clothes and showered skin. He shivered with the notion that somehow, even knowing what he’d done, McKenzie was still able to like him.
“They told you everything?” he said.
“Just that it happened yesterday. I’m so, so sorry.”
Coop fell back from her, shook his head. “Yesterday? Wait.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and McKenzie’s tear-streaked face assumed a sudden panic.
“Oh, god…oh god,” she said, and looked around the tented yard as if seeking cover.
“Hey,” Coop said, his fingers tightening on her arms. “McKenzie.”
“I can’t, I can’t…” She shook her head. “Oh, fuck, Coop, you need to talk to the chaplain. Go inside, please.”
“What did you hear? Are they here for me?”
A creak. Both of them turned toward the unhinging of the TOC’s back door. Standing on the deck was one of the junior clerks, taking in the scene with a raised eyebrow. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Wait,” said McKenzie. “Private, go back inside.” She turned her eyes back to Coop, said again with a frantic whisper: “The chaplain. Talk to him.”
“Corporal,” the clerk continued, impatiently, “Captain told me to give you the heads-up. That engineer whose wife got killed, he’s on his way over.”
“Get the fuck back inside!” said McKenzie. But her eyes stayed on Coop.
Coop started blinking. First at the clerk, then at McKenzie. He didn’t understand.
“Hooah,” muttered the clerk, and banged back into the operations center.
“What did you say?” Coop managed. He was trying to follow these impressions down a new, darkened path. Everything was starting to buzz, and Coop turned his back on McKenzie. He put his hands on his helmet. There was a moment of pure relief, the thrill of amnesty. Then came the acid, gushing up from his bowels in a caustic wave. Coop bent forward and spit up his stomach on the gravel. He sank forward and stayed there until he was lifted away.
* * *
—
Coop sat alone in the commander’s office, a bottle of water shaking in his hand. The office had a single small window, shaded by sandbags, and a fluorescent light bolted to the ceiling. A large map of Afghanistan bristled with pushpins. Captain White’s only other wall decorations were a Celtic cross soldered from bullet shells and concertina wire, and a hand-painted plaque that read BE POLITE. BE PROFESSIONAL. BUT HAVE A PLAN TO KILL EVERYONE YOU MEET.
On the captain’s desk was a short stack of folders held down by a glass paperweight. Trapped inside the glass was a rearing camel spider. Coop tried counting the tiny hairs on the spider’s legs. Then he looked back at the map, avoiding the gaze of the chaplain, who sat across from him, his face a crinkled frown.
“It was a real mess-up,” the chaplain said, “you finding out the way you did.”
Coop risked a look into the chaplain’s gray eyes and instantly shifted his gaze away. In these early minutes of grief he was beginning to learn there were consequences for allowing his mind to stray.
“I won’t presume to know your sufferings, right now,” the chaplain continued. “But son, I need to ask, are you a person of faith? Because you’re being tested very seriously.”
Coop yawned. He couldn’t help it; he needed to flex his jaw, as if some suffocating thing was crawling up from his throat.
“Now listen, we’re gonna get you home, Cooper. Captain’s already talking to Brigade. Give you a break, you can go to the funeral, sort some things out.”
Finally, this got Coop’s attention. Going home.
“There’s just one hang-up, Specialist, so bear with me. Do you remember signing your wife up with DEERS?”
The chaplain went on to explain there had been some bureaucratic confusion. The emergency Red Cross message had clearly identified the late Katherine Bellante as Coop’s wife, married in the state of North Carolina, but the Defense Enrollment system didn’t have Kay registered as Coop’s dependent. Until they could get things sorted, Brigade wouldn’t be able to cut orders for emergency leave.
“I’ve already talked with your commander, and what we’re gonna do is get you to K2 while we sort this out, so you can be on the first plane home. Okay, Coop? You listening?”
Coop stood up. His helmet rolled from his lap and hit the floor with a bony crack. He left his rifle leaning against the wall and walked out of the captain’s room and into the TOC’s main chamber, past the computer clickers and map scanners and book counters, outside across the empty road and into the city of tents. Coop unbuckled his Kevlar armor, let it slump off his back. His body trembled with nervous energy.
Overhead came a volley of cackling birds. Coop tracked them as they flew west to hunt the desert floor.
Then, suddenly, he could smell her. Dandelions and bug spray, the perfume of Kay’s body, this smell of home rising up from the crust of the desert. All he had to do was go to her. Behind him Coop heard footsteps, the slow crunch of gravel. Someone scooped up his vest. He ignored them and followed Kay’s smell through rows of giant Conex containers. She was there somewhere, hiding.
He went faster now, running over rubber cables and humming air units. Onto the airfield and across the tarmac, where Chinooks lay like upended windmills, and beyond, to a short stretch of scrub grass and windblown litter. Wading through the grass Coop collected a tangle of plastic fibers around one leg, trailing like unspooled innards. He stopped by the final boundary between camp and desert, a high fence of coiled razors. She was out there, Coop felt, just past the concertina, her scent drifting up from the pores of the desert. All he needed to do was hurdle the wire, slice his palms, find her in the hollow of sand beneath a red-painted rock.
Coop started toward the wire. Behind him came a quick murmur of boots.
His collar tightened and he was tugged backward, strangled, the smell of his wife flashing like gasoline as Coop toppled backward into the grabbing hands, riding them toward the ground. He saw it was Greely flailing underneath him, and with a growl Coop put a forearm across the private’s neck. Abruptly the earth slammed into his back. Gravity had turned on him, and now a hunched mass straddled his chest, stealing the air from his lungs. Coop growled and stabbed his hands into Anaya’s belly, trying to wriggle away. One leg kicked free and he hooked it around Anaya’s neck. But the sergeant keeled sideways with cunning momentum, pivoting in the hard scratch, and Coop had barely drawn breath before a new force filled the space under his chin.