Page 30 of What is Found

He didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”

“What I said. I’m not sure I’d have told you either.Maybe not for the same reasons, but you know what they say about secrets.”

He did raise his eyes then. “I don’t believe you.”

“Suit yourself. I mean, if you enjoy beating yourself around the head and neck because you’re used to it…h-hey, be my guest.” Davila subsided a moment then said, “You need to get rid of that monkey on your back, John. You could’ve told Hank to take a hike, and you didn’t. You didn’t back down when Parviz pulled his weapon. You didn’t freak out. You didn’t go looking to someone else for a decision. You let the thingplayout. That’s what’s important here and I don’t give a damn if you don’t believe me…but I might have done the same thing.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“There you go again.” Davila paused, pulled in a hitching breath, and said, “Listen, we’re close. If you’d told me earlier, we’d be somewhere on that pass or headed back to Du-Dushanbe.”

“We’d still have our bat phones. You wouldn’t be wounded.”

“Oh, bull.” Davila scrubbed his words away with an impatient gesture. “You don’t know. What happened, happened. What matters is what we do now with the cards we’ve been dealt. You’re as good as any soldier on any team I ever served with. We get to the border and you…” Davila sipped air, let it go, drew in another short breath. “You keep going.”

“In case you haven’t been read in, I’m neck-deepin a retrievalnowbecause I didexactlythat to Roni backthen.”

“Not what I heard. Captain Keller was?—”

“And you heard wrong.” Shucking his sleeping bag, he stood. “Listen, can we not talk about this anymore? Let’s see how you are in the morning, okay? I’m going out. I want to search Parviz’s van again, anyway.”

“You can’t run from this. This is the end of the road for me, John. Just because you don’t want to listen…” Davila took another wincing inhale. “Doesn’t change anything.”

“Fine, then it doesn’t,” he said, taking the distance to the door in two long strides. He spared a quick glance at the boy, who only regarded him with a dark and unreadable gaze. “I don’t think Matvey will be a problem. Not much he can do with the zip-ties still on, but don’t fall asleep. In fact, get up and move a bit. Last thing we need is for you to get pneumonia from lying around.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Davila said. “But take a weapon, John.”

“For what, forwhat?” A red-hot bolt of fury fired his chest, and he was reminded, all of a sudden, of the rage quaking in his father’s voice as he headed for the gun range:I want to see those damn ragheads try to takemeon.

I am not my father.His hands balled, the skin white over his knuckles.I am not like him. My brother was, but I’m not, I never could be.

God, he needed to get out of here before he did something violent, before he tried bashing a hole through a metal wall with his fist.

“There’s no one here butus,Davila.”Snatching up a flashlight, he shrugged into an empty pack. “So, what do I need protection from, huh?Snowflakes?”

Turning, he flung himself from their shelter and into the storm.

THIS IS REALITY, GREG

NOVEMBER 2023

CHAPTER 1

Davila is nuts.

Outside, he fetched his ice crampons from where he’d left them just outside the door. He was so angry his gloved hands shook, and the crampons slithered from his grasp to the icy walk with a cheery metallic jingle.Damn, damn, damn.For a split second, he thought about just kicking the things into the pool steaming quietly in the darkness to his right.

Stop.Instead, he gathered them up again and carefully toed in first the right boot and then the left.

No way I’m leaving him. That’s just crazy, he thought, cinching the crampons down tight.Just flat-out nuts.

And yet…A prickle at the back of his mind, the almost tangible sense of one thin talon on a gnarled green forefinger working its way through a chink in a door he resolutely kept bolted and locked up.Andyet he would do the same to you, John. If you couldn’t go on…

No.He pushed back on that malicious imp of self-doubt.No, Davila wouldn’t.Oh, Davila wouldsacrificefor Helen; he might even lay down his life for her. But a choice betweenmaybesaving Helen or leaving a comrade to die more likely than not, or—even crazier—leave him and hope he made his way to help…would Davila choose a hope over a certainty?

Never.

Except, maybe…

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