Chapter 23
Kabul, Afghanistan
Four Days After the Blast
A void in the shape of David’s smile hovered in the center of Kris.
The act of breathing took too much effort. Inhaling, letting his cells fill with life-giving oxygen, was agonizing. The pain of living, the anguish of carrying on.
He couldn’t see. His eyes were unfocused, his mind’s eye fixed on the memory of a burned-black body in the bottom of a trunk, silhouetted through billowing smoke.
He didn’t know how he was still living. Wasn’t it impossible to live without a heart? How then was he still walking, still breathing? Shouldn’t the freedom of death come for him? Shouldn’t he be gone already? Shouldn’t he be waking in David’s arms, somewhere where they could finally be together?
Why was he still living? He didn’t want to be alive, not now, not after that. Not after seeing what lay beneath the smoke.
He deserved to die. He deserved to die a thousand times. All the thousands of lives lost on September 11. And more. Add in the loss of life in Iraq. The civilians killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And David.
He deserved to die for all of them, over and over again. Like Prometheus, he should be chained to a rock and devoured, day in and day out, for the foolish hubris of thinking he could change anything at all, make any difference in the world.
Everything he’d done, everything he’d tried to do, had only brought death. Death and ruin.
David…
He bowed his head. He couldn’t cry, not anymore. Every tear he’d ever cried in the length of his life had been wept already, spilled down his cheeks and into rivers that ran through his fingers. His wails had unset his broken ribs, his screams had made one of his bones puncture his lung. Ryan had to carry him out of the command center, restrain him, pin him against a wall as he shrieked like he’d been torn in two.
He had. Half his soul had just been ripped out of him.
Wherever you are, be happy. Be with your father. Find the peace you longed for in this world. I’m so sorry you met me. I’m sorry you loved me. I’m sorry I killed you.
“Caldera?” Somewhere, far away, someone was trying to speak to him. He heard the voice like it was coming from a dream, warbling and distant, like a megaphone underwater.
It had been four days since he’d seen through the smoke. Four days since the mosque had blown as the team was trying to escape, a remote detonator set off by someone on the outside. The drones hadn’t seen any cars speeding away from the village. Someone nearby, someone watching.
The rubble had buried the team for three hours, until a second QRF team dispatched from the base was able to dig through and extract the soldiers. Four were seriously injured. The Pakistanis were outraged, telling the world of the Americans’ violation of their borders and of the destruction of the mosque. No matter how many times they said it had been blown by al-Qaeda, the public believed the Americans had detonated it. Protests raged in front of the US Embassies in Islamabad and Kabul.
The last man the team had shot inside the mosque, in the room with the burning car, was a young man the locals had identified as Farrohk. He’d been shot twenty-one times, destroying a videotape he’d carried in his jacket, over his chest. The mosque falling down on him had crushed the tape further, destroying most of it. Portions were recovered, inches of film that could be restored and viewed.
David’s trial. His crimes against Islam, against Allah, read aloud by Al Jabal.
All in all, the recovered tape was a little under two minutes, but it was two minutes of the end of David’s life.
Kris watched it and puked, wailed.
Farrohk was probably supposed to take the video to be uploaded to the internet. He was probably supposed to escape, the analysts said. But since he hadn’t, and the Americans had recovered it, the tape would never see the light of day. David’s last moments wouldn’t be broadcast for all to see, for some to gloat over. His memory, at least, would find peace.
There would be no peace for Kris. Never, ever again.
“Caldera?” Again, the voice.
Ryan. Ryan was trying to talk to him. Kris focused, trying to draw back to the world. It was like plunging into a river, diving headlong from a cliff. Reality rushed at him, ice-cold and shocking.
Everything was real. Everything he feared was right there.
David was gone.
“Kris…” Ryan sighed and scrubbed both hands over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He’d been in Kabul for three days. Ryan had dragged him back to the CIA station and put him in the embassy hospital. After a day, he was discharged and put in embassy quarters. He’d been left, abandoned, since. Until Ryan’s summons to the CIA station, and to the station chief’s office.
Ryan spoke stiffly, chewing on his words. “I have to formally censure you for this. This… entire thing,” he sighed. “The Hamid operation has blown up in our faces. Congress has already started an inquiry. The director has launched his own internal investigation. Everything is pointing one direction.” He stared.
“It’s all my fault,” Kris breathed. “All of it.”
“They’re going to focus on the planning, the prep. How much you vetted Hamid. How much you knew and didn’t know, and how much you assumed.”
“You were there, Ryan,” Kris breathed. “We knew next to nothing.”
Ryan looked away.
“We all wanted it so badly,” he whispered again. “We were starving for this. Desperate for it to work. Everyone was. Not just me.”
David’s fears, his words of caution, came back to Kris. You were right. You were always right.
“I am relieving you of your command,” Ryan choked out. “And you’re being removed from the counterterrorism division. Immediately.”
“What?” Counterterrorism was everything he’d ever done. Everything he knew. He and David had dedicated their lives to the fight. David had been taken from him by the men he hunted. No, he had to stay. He had to continue the fight. Avenge David. At the end of the day, what else did he have left?
There was nothing else. No hope, no home, no love. His heart was gone, shredded, turned in on itself until it was a black hole. All he had left was vengeance. “CT is my life. It’s everything I do, everything I know!”
“Everything you know got fourteen people killed, and more seriously injured.”
He flinched. Gritted his teeth. “Fire me then.” Maybe he’d do it himself. Disappear into the wilds like a bandit of old, like the Punisher, like an action hero or a comic book hero. Or he’d join a gun slinging contractor, blood for hire, and take out his rage through licensed murder.
Or he’d go home and eat a bullet, sitting on the porch that was David’s dream.
Ryan glared. “We can’t fire you,” he spat. “But Goddamn, if I could.” He shook his head. “You’ve been a Goddamn shitshow since the first moment you stepped foot in Afghanistan. Always overstepping your boundaries, mixing yourself up where you don’t belong. You were never supposed to be here. Never supposed to be a base commander. Never supposed to be in charge of anything. You should have just taken the hint and slinked away, years ago.”
Kris’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”
“The CIA doesn’t need people like you.”
Oh. It all clicked. “You mean faggots? Gays. Say it. Say it to my face. You don’t want the gays in your boys’ club.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that. I mean bleeding hearts who just want to understand everything. Who want to sit down with our enemy and try to work something out. Who think that we’re not in this fight for the life of our civilization. Our way of life.”
“You don’t have any fucking idea what I think. You reduce the world to black and white and call it a day. You refuse to see the shades of gray, the impossible choices that billions of people have to face. How people pick the best of the worst and hope they survive the night. That everyone just wants to survive.”
“You’re so fucking naïve,” Ryan spat.
“And you’ve never actually looked at the world. Never understood it, not once!”
“I didn’t get sucked into a delusion of Islamic grandeur!” Ryan shouted. “You fell for Haddad, and Haddad’s been on a fucking roller coaster for a decade! Ever since nine-eleven, he’s been unstable! Unbalanced. His sympathies, and his loyalty, have been in question.”
“How dare you!” Kris leaped to his feet. The chair he sat in flew backward. “David has only ever been one hundred percent loyal to everyone! He’s done everything, absolutely everything, anyone has ever asked!”
“Sit down. We’re not through here.”
What was the worst that could happen if he just lunged at Ryan? Wrapped his hands around Ryan’s throat until he begged for mercy? Until he gasped and choked and the last thing he saw was Kris’s face?
He grabbed his chair and sat, slowly.
“As I said. You’ve been removed from your command and you’re no longer a part of the CT division. I’ve been given the authority to reassign you within the CIA. I’ve placed you in the Special Activities Division. You’ll begin your training in six weeks, after a month on the bricks.”
Kris threw his head back and howled. SAD. The paramilitary arm of the CIA. Men who had hated Kris his entire life, who resented him commanding them. Carl had been SAD. Ryan had, too.
“You want me to quit on my own, don’t you? Wash out of SAD training and disappear. You think I can’t cut it there, and so you can get rid of me without having to dirty your hands with a civil rights lawsuit. ’Cause you know you can’t fire a gay.”
“There’s more than enough blood on your hands to fire you. But you seem to have a few friends left in the agency. I know you won’t cut it. I know you’ll fail. And nothing will make me happier than seeing you get cashiered from this agency and spend the rest of your days knowing what a fucking failure you actually are.”
“Fuck you, Ryan. What’s going to happen to you? You losing your command?”
“You were in charge of this, Caldera. Didn’t you say a minute ago this was all your fault?”
It was, he knew it was, all of it, from the moment the planes had hit the towers until he saw David’s body in the trunk. But damn it, he wasn’t going down alone. Not for this. “Your hands are just as bloody as mine.”
Ryan stared. He folded his hands on his desktop. Looked beyond Kris, eyes boring holes into the back wall of his office. “Haddad’s body has been ID’d.”
Kris recoiled, as if shot, as if his heart had been struck with a sledgehammer.
“His remains were too burned for DNA analysis. They used some kind of accelerant. The car, the body, everything, was ash by the time they were able to recover his remains. But there was enough DNA in the rubble to make a determination.”
“Fuck you,” Kris hissed. “You’re just going to say that to me? Throw that in my face? That’s my husband you’re talking about.”
“Your husband’s remains have been sent to his legal next of kin,” Ryan spat, his voice choking.
“I am his legal next of kin.”
“No, Caldera, you’re not. How many times were you told that your marriage didn’t mean anything in the US? Or to the CIA? Just because you had someone give you shared quarters doesn’t mean the law changes for you. Haddad and you aren’t married. Not to the CIA, not to the United States government!”
He hadn’t thought he could feel worse than he did, spying the blackened pieces of the love of his life through the billowing smoke. He had thought that was rock bottom, the very end. There was no further he could fall, no abyss he could plummet into, for he’d reached the end of all things. There was nothing more that could be ripped away from him. His heart and soul were gone.
Hearing Ryan tell him his husband, what was left of David, didn’t belong to him plowed through the bottom of his black hole. Like a plug had been pulled, he felt himself slipping away.
“David is my husband.” His voice shook. “His body, his memories. His life. Belong with me.”
Ryan kept looking beyond Kris. “Haddad’s remains have already been transported back to the United States. His mother, his legal next of kin, retrieved his body from Dover Air Force base yesterday. In accordance with Islamic burial practices, she requested an immediate repatriation of his remains and a next-day burial. Her wishes were granted. He’s most likely already in the ground.”
His soul plunged again as the bottom fell out of his very precarious grip on the world. “You have no right—”
“No, you have no rights. Not to him. Not anymore.”
He stood and spun, closing his eyes. The world was upending, tumbling like a car crash, like a speeding train heading for catastrophe. He tried to walk, tried to flee Ryan’s office.
One step, and he collapsed. He gasped. It came out like a wail, a shriek. He screamed again, and again. “You can’t!” he hollered. Tears and snot and spit puddled beneath him. “You can’t do this!”
“It’s already done.” Ryan whispered. “You’re on the next flight out of here. Thirty days’ suspension from duty. You’ll report to headquarters for reassignment when your suspension is over. Unless you resign first.”
Footsteps, Ryan rising from his desk. Padding toward him. Hovering above him. Kris couldn’t look up. Couldn’t stand to see the smug superiority in Ryan’s eyes, the sick victory he knew was there.
“It would have been easier if you’d died with everyone else,” Ryan choked out. “You would have been a hero, instead of the one we’re all blaming.” He strode to his office door. Hesitated. “Take the time you need.”
He left, shutting Kris inside. Alone.
Alone, forever. For the rest of his days, alone. Without the love of his life by his side. Without his husband.
Without even saying goodbye for the last time.
David had been ripped from him. By al-Qaeda, and by the CIA. By the world, and by fate. By people who hated them for loving each other, for daring to put their love first, before everything else.
But most of all, David had been killed by Kris.
Pakistan Northwestern Frontier
Bajaur Province
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Six Days After the Blast
The car bounced and swerved over the rocky ground.
Every bump jolted through his body, sent shockwaves through his bones. His ribs were on fire, broken in so many places. He could feel their pinch against his lungs with every inhale, like he was sucking the bones deep inside his organs. He tasted copper, iron in his mouth. Dried blood coated his lips.
David’s memories were hazy, images floating out of sequence. Driving. Hamid crunching chips. Kris’s smile. Heat, too much heat. Bones snapping. Kris, whispering his marriage vows. A jihadi grabbing his head, staring down at him. Throwing him into a truck. The way Kris’s eyes slowly opened, smile on his lips, after they’d kissed for what felt like hours.
Fists. Kicks. A tarp. He’d known how it would end as soon as he saw the tarp.
His thoughts had gone to Kris, of course, and he’d composed the most perfect love letter he’d never send to him as he huddled on the bloodstained tarp, taking kick after kick into his body. My love, you are the stars and moon of my life. You are the peace my soul has always sought. You were the last gift of a vengeful God, and the only thing that kept my faith alive. Because of our love. Because you loved me. If you exist, Allah must have created you. Nature could not shape someone so perfect as you are for me. My soul, my love, I will always watch over you.
The world had gone fuzzy after that. He remembered a speech, a video recording. Frantic shouting. Gunfire, far away. Hands grabbing him and carrying him down, deep down, into a tunnel cut into the dirt floor of the mosque. Darkness and dust, his feet dragging as someone hauled him away, pain like a rake that scraped his brain as he was dragged through a black tunnel that seemed to twist and wind forever. Finally, sunlight had speared his eyeballs, sent lances straight through his brain. He’d mumbled, tried to roll away. Tried to escape, but his feeble flailing did nothing.
The last thing he remembered was being dropped into the trunk of another car and driven away.
Why was he still alive? What were they waiting for? He’d rather it all end quickly.
Kris, my love. I will always be with you. In this life and the next. I swear it.
The car drove uphill. He pressed against the trunk’s hatch, broken bones grinding. He gritted his teeth, tried to push through the pain, the fire in his lungs. Let it end, let it all end.
Finally, he heard brakes squealing, felt the car rock to a stop. A man scrambled from the front seat, racing around the car. The trunk opened, and sunlight stabbed David, arching around Al Jabal’s scowling face.
Al Jabal reached for him, hauled him from the trunk.
“What is this?” An older man’s voice, shocked, rose from behind the car.
David hit the ground. He landed on his face, on his broken ribs, his shattered leg. He gasped, inhaling dust and frigid, thin air. He was in the mountains again. He could taste the snow, the alpine air.
“Hide him,” Al Jabal hissed. “Hide him for me, Baba. I have to go.”
“Habibi, what have you done? Wallah, this is not right! Astaghfirullah!”
“He is my hidden treasure, Baba. But he must be a secret, for now. I will be back for him. I will use him to end this war. Get rid of the Americans, the crusaders, for good!”
“Habibi, no—”
“The bees do not come here, Baba. Keep him hidden. Keep him safe! I will return.” Al Jabal spat on the back of David’s head. “Treat him like the dog he is.”
David watched through his swollen eye as Al Jabal ran back to the open driver’s door and slid into the car. The old man’s voice came closer, and two wrinkled bare feet appeared before David. He tried to roll away, flinching.
“Habibi!” Al Jabal’s father called. “Come back here! Stay at home! Do not return to the fighting!”
“Fighting is all we have left, Baba.” A car door slammed. The engine sputtered and turned over, shuddered, and finally started. Tires spun. Dirt and a thousand tiny rocks slammed into David’s face.
Al Jabal drove off, squealing tires and creaking shocks bouncing over the rutted goat trail sloping and winding its way down the mountain.
He tried to move. Tried to put one palm on the ground and push himself up. He collapsed, a scream dying on his lips as he pressed his face into the dirt. His arm, his ribs, his bones, felt like they were being ripped from his body, like his skeleton had been pulled apart beneath his skin.
Al Jabal’s father crouched beside him. He rested a gnarled hand on David’s shoulder and brushed his son’s spit from David’s hair. “As-salaam-alaikum,” the old man whispered.
“Let me die,” David breathed. He spoke in Arabic, his first language. He repeated his plea in Pashto. “Let me die. In shaa Allah. Please.”
“In shaa Allah, you will not die.” The old man got his arms under David and pulled him up. Got him sitting, even though David screamed and gritted his teeth, tears flowing from his eyes. “Please!” he whimpered. “Please, let me die...”
Roughened hands cupped his face, and leathery thumbs stroked away his tears. “Bismillah, do not presume to know Allah’s plan for you, or for the world. Your death will come when Allah decides. He has decided to bring you to my home, and as for me, I will not allow another to suffer. I will care for you, brother. Alhamdulillah.”
David shook his head. More tears fell, rivers streaming from his eyes. He didn’t want kindness, especially not from Al Jabal’s father. The father of the man who’d kidnapped him, tortured him. Had planned the deaths of his fellow officers. Was Kris even alive? He’d trade his life for Kris’s, had begged Allah to trade. Why was he still breathing?
Was the pain he felt only physical? Or was this what it felt like when a soul was ripped in two? Was this what his mama had felt that night, watching the television in Libya and seeing her husband climb a rickety ladder to a noose?
Al Jabal’s father started reciting a hadith. “Whoever removes grief from a believer, Allah will remove from him one of the griefs of the Day of Judgment. Whoever cares for those in need, Allah will care for them in this world and the next. Whosoever protects a Muslim, Allah will protect him in this world and the next.”
He laid David’s arms over his shoulders and helped him stand, bearing David’s weight when David cried out, unable to walk. His leg, and possibly his pelvis, was shattered. He leaned into the old man’s surprisingly strong shoulders, resting his filthy forehead against his neck. For the first time, he could see more than the dirt or the inside of a car trunk.
Untouched land spread for miles and miles, the slopes of mountains unblemished by the scars of war, bomb craters from drone strikes or missiles or artillery. Villages dotted the tableau, lazy coils of smoke rising from thatched roofs beside tilled fields. Snow was creeping down from the ridgeline, already covering some of the villages, parts of the dirt trails that wound over and through the mountains. This was a corner of the world untouched by the modern world, unravaged by war. Where did such a place exist? Where on the planet was he?
“I will bring you into my home,” the older man said. “It is just there, beyond the fields. You will be safe with me. In shaa Allah, you will.”