Page 75 of Royal Guard

“We’re swallowed up by it. The light goes out like someone hit a switch. You can see maybe a foot in front of your face, but that’s if you dare open your eyes. As soon as you open them, even a crack, the wind rams sand into your eyeballs, cramming it up under your lids. So you screw your eyes tight shut, but you still can’t breathe. The air’s full of this dust, finer than the sand. It’s like the air is solid: even if you catch some that isn’t sand, it’s this choking, heavy stuff that fills your lungs and turns to mud as soon as it gets wet: you cough on it, gag on it: your mouth is so dry that you can’t talk or swallow.”

“We somehow manage to stagger back to the house. For a while we just shelter there, coughing, eyes streaming. But we can hear the militia calling to each other and it’s getting closer. They’re coming, using the sandstorm as cover. Baker puts his hand on my shoulder and says we have to go back out there.”

“We get scarves tied around our mouths so we can kind of breathe. We don’t have goggles or anything sowe can barely open our eyes. But we have to protect the other two. So we go out there, back-to-back, and start shooting at anything that moves. I manage to get three more of them, over the next half hour or so, but I’m almost out of ammo. I turn to Baker to see if he can spare a few rounds... and he’s not there. I look around, but he’s just...gone.I holler for him, but he doesn’t answer, or if he does I can’t hear him over the goddamn wind. I don’t know if he’s lost, or if the militia took him, or if he’s shot and dying. He could be three feet away and I wouldn’t even see him.”

“So I do the only thing I can do. I put my head down and walk, in the last direction I saw him, and pray I’m going the right way. There are no landmarks, nothing, so I could be walking right towards the militia, for all I know. I keep hollering for him: I know it’s going to bring them right to me, but it’s the only thing I can think of. The wind’s getting even stronger, it’s blasting sand at me and it feels like my skin’s being flayed off. I keep staggering forward, hollering, and then—” I sucked in my breath. “One of the militia fighters comes running out of the dust. I don’t see him until he’s right on top of me. I snap my gun up, put one in his chest and then my gun clicks empty. He’s so close, he whacks into me as he falls and takes us both to the ground. I’m lying there under him, trying to roll him off me, and I recognize the gun he’s gripping: it’s one of ours. The bastard’s taken Baker’s gun. I finally manage to get him off me, tear off the scarf that’s over his face. I’m going to ask him where Baker is, before he dies—”

I felt my eyes go hot. My voice fractured. “Only itisBaker.”

Kristina gave a moan of raw horror.

“I lay him on his back and try and find the wound, praying I just clipped him, but—” I shook my head, the bitterness rising in me like vomit. “But it’s agreat shot.Best I ever made.”I took a breath, but it turned into a sob. “Right in the heart. And he just lies there, blood soaking through his uniform, looking up at me with...shock.Shock and hurt, that I could have done this to him. And then he dies. Not a hero, not fighting the enemy: shot by his best friend.”

Kristina didn’t make a sound. She just laid her head on my chest, slid her arms as far around my chest as they’d go and hugged herself to me as tight as she possibly could. After several minutes, she spoke, her voice like silken glass, cooling my mind. “Garrett... it wasn’t your fault.”

I’d told myself that a million times, over the years. But you can’t convince yourself of something like that. Someone else has to do it. Someone you trust.

I looked down and she looked up. Her eyes were shining in the moonlight, but her gaze was as steely as if she was commanding her army. I’d always trusted her and I trusted her now.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated.

And for the first time, I believed it. I drew in a breath of cold, clean Lakovian air and it felt like my lungs properly filled, free of dust, for the first time in years.

I wrapped her in my arms and kissed the top of her head, then she tilted her head back and I kissed her long and sweet. I felt...lighter,as if something had been crushing me down all that time. I held her close as I finished my story.

“I grab his body and throw him over my shoulder because no way am I leaving him there. I try to retracemy steps. When I eventually find the house, Martinez is dead. Felton’s trying to hold off the militia on his own, but one of them picks him off just as I get there. Everybody’s dead. Everybody except me.”

“I run into the house and lay Baker’s body down on the table, next to Martinez. The militia are coming through the windows, the door... they’re everywhere. I make it into the back room, which is a dead end. I slam the door behind me but I know they’ll follow me in, any second. There’s no place to hide, all there is is an old stone fireplace, but I hunker down and get inside it. I don’t know why: I’m dead as soon as they come through the door. Instinct, I guess. I’m not thinking straight: all I can see is Baker’s face, over and over again.”

“Seconds go by and nothing happens. I realize they don’t know I’m out of ammo. They think I’m going to shoot them as soon as they come through the door. I can hear them muttering to each other about what to do. Then the door opens for a second and a grenade comes through. I remember closing my eyes and a flash and then... nothing.”

“When I come to, I’m in pain like I’ve never known and I can barely breathe. There’s stuff on me, crushing my chest, and I can’t move. Eventually I manage to get one arm free and dig some of it away from my face.”

“I’m in the corner of the room still, but the roof and half the wall has come down on top of me. The stars are out so I know I’ve been unconscious for hours. The militia are gone. I figure they looked at the pile of rubble and thought I must be dead.”

“I almostamdead. Leg’s broken. Ribs feel like a sackful of broken glass and every time I move, my head hurts so bad I almost pass out. But I’m alive.Then I see Baker’s body and I don’t want to be.”

“I sit there for a while trying to figure out what to do. And eventually I just do what I’ve been trained to do. I figure it’s about sixty miles to the border. I gather up what little water, ammo and rations we had left between us, make a splint from a piece of wood and some belts, and I limp out of there. When I put my foot down for the first time, I think I’m going to throw up from the pain. But then I figure, if I don’t make it out of there, there’ll be no one to tell anyone what happened. And I want answers. I want to know why they didn’t come get us.”

“It takes me the best part of three days. By the end of it, I’m sunburned, almost dead from thirst and my leg’s infected. A US patrol finds me just over the border and gets me to a hospital and I spend a few days delirious before anyone can get any sense out of me. Then the brass haul me in. At first, I don’t understand why they’re mad.”

My voice turned bitter. “See, we weren’t supposed to be in Iran. When our plane went over the border, we violated about a thousand international treaties. When we got into a firefight with the militia, it became a political nightmare. The politicians in Washington wouldn’t authorize a rescue op: it would have meant telling the Iranians we were there. Easier—cleaner—to just let us die.”

“And then it gets worse because the military whitewash the whole thing. They get some special ops guys to recover the bodies a few days later, and they burn the wreckage of the plane until there’s no evidence left that it’s American. Then they tell me what the story’s going to be: our plane went down onthisside of the border and the others were killed onimpact.”

“And then the fuckers discharge me, and make it damn clear that if I say a word to anyone, they’ll say I murdered Baker and put me in a cell. I’m shipped home with my leg still in a cast and my ribs taped up: no money, no future, no idea what to do.”

I glanced down. Kristina was staring up at me, mouth a gaping black “O.” She understood where my anger came from, now. Understood how I’d lost all faith in being loyal to anything... until she’d given me something to fight for again.

“There’s one thing I have to do,” I told her. “I visit Baker’s widow, look her in the eyes and tell her what happened. I’m ready for her to slap me, to scream at me: hell, there’s a part of me that’s hoping she’ll kill me. But she doesn’t. She just nods and says she understands and that it wasn’t my fault: all the right things. But there’s this look in her eyes, just like Baker got:why? Why would you do this?And I get out of there. She tries to call me back, but I keep walking.”

“I go home to Texas but I don’t know what to do with myself. Ever since school, I always had the military. Always had amission.Now there’s too much time to think... to remember. And I’ve started having flashbacks.”

“I try to get a job. Go to interview after interview. But as soon as they find out I’m a veteran, they get nervous. They think I’ll get uppity with them because I used to have a rank, and now I’m a civilian.” I gave a bitter laugh. “They don’t get that I followed orders, not gave them. I’mgoodwith following orders.”

Kristina nodded sadly.

“And the flashbacks: that’s even more of a problem. They’re not allowed to ask about PTSD andstuff, but…” I felt the anger rising inside my chest. “But they don’t have to, you know? They just say something likeit must have been tough, over there.And they see me go tense and theyknow.And I want to scream at them, look, it comes back to me sometimes, but most of the time I’mokay!But I can’t tell them what happened. Can’t find the words. So they think I’m some psycho who’s going to bring a gun to work and start shooting. No one’ll hire me.”

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