Chapter 7
Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan
Khan brought them back to their compound, deep in the Panjshir, by the middle of the next day. He traded hellos with Fazl and Ghasi but didn’t wait for George and Ryan to finish with their satellite call to Langley.
“Agha Gul Bahar, you will tell them what you learned. What we spoke about.”
“Of course, General.”
“We will wait for your bombs to drop from the sky and for Mazar-e-Sharif to be liberated.” Khan gripped his and David’s hands, hopped into his truck, and headed back to the front lines.
Exhausted, Kris and David trudged for their compound. Two figures burst from within, heading for them.
“Here we go,” Kris murmured, watching Ryan and George run pell-mell.
“Where’s General Khan?” Ryan shouted as soon as he was in range, pulling ahead of George. “Where did he go?”
“He left. Back to the front.”
“We wanted to speak to him. Damn it!” George kicked a baseball-sized rock, hurling it down the flinty road.
“What did you do?” Ryan pressed into Kris’s space, glowering. “What did you do to piss him off, Caldera?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Back up!” David dropped their pack and shoved his way between Ryan and Kris. “You’re out of line!”
“Stand down, Sergeant, you’ve done your job.” Ryan shoved back, pushing David away. David didn’t budge. He loomed larger, spreading his shoulders, his legs, bracing for a fight.
“Enough!” George bellowed. “All of you, enough!” He glared at Kris. “What the fuck happened? Did you get the GPS data?”
“That and more. We got the entire front of the Shomali Plain mapped. Shura Nazar forces and confirmed Taliban positions. Khan also tipped us off about Mazar-e-Sharif. He needs help there. Wants us to send forces.”
“Langley is thinking the same. CENTCOM wants to use Mazar-e-Sharif as a northern outpost. A staging ground to shuttle supplies in-country from Uzbekistan.”
“Khan will be delighted to hear that.”
“Why the fuck didn’t he stay to talk to us?” Ryan still fumed. “Why the hell is he so captivated by you, Caldera?”
“I’m not an asshole, Ryan! Maybe that’s why!”
“Both of you. Shut your mouths, right now,” George growled, his hand slicing through the air. “We’re not doing this in front of the Afghans.” Eyes followed them everywhere. “Ryan, get back inside. Kris, hand over the GPS data. Ryan and I need to send it to Langley.”
Kris rifled through their dusty pack, ripping out the GPS handhelds. He shoved them at George, ignoring Ryan’s fixed stare, his rancid glower. “Everything is in there.”
George passed the GPS units to Ryan, who took off, heading back for their nerve center.
“Get washed up.” George looked back and forth from Kris to David. “You look like you brought the entire battlefield back with you.”
Kris took a splash bath out of a small bucket of frigid river water, scrubbing the dust from his face and his hair and splashing his pits and crotch as clean as he could. Someone from the village had washed his left-behind clothes while he and David were on the front, and he slipped into crinkled cargo pants and a thick turtleneck, trying to warm up. David went next, and he met Kris after at the fire pit with two cups of instant coffee.
David stared into his coffee cup, a deep frown etched on his face. His beard twitched, lips pursing as his jaw clenched. “Why does Ryan dislike you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
David stared at him.
Kris turned away, back to the fire. “I’m gay,” he said quickly. “And I don’t have any business being here. Being a part of this operation. Ryan’s always known that I’m going to fuck it up, somehow, someway.”
“Is that what you think, or is that what he says?”
Kris shook his head.
“I didn’t know you could be out in the CIA.”
“Well… I’m not sure you can be, really.” Kris shivered, more than just the Afghanistan cold seeping under his skin. “You didn’t know?” How was that even possible? Everyone knew just by looking at him. Everyone knew, with a single look, that he wasn’t worth their time.
“From the moment I shook your hand, all I’ve seen is a CIA officer who knows his shit. Who is an undisputed expert in this country, in Islam, and who consistently performs exceptionally. That’s all that matters.”
Kris couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t look at David, either. His stomach knotted, and knotted again, coiling tighter than a spring about to snap. “You’re the only one.”
“General Khan sees that too.”
“Caldera!” George’s voice boomed from the compound’s entrance.
Kris twisted. George waved to him, ordering him inside.
“The principal is calling. Wish me luck,” Kris murmured, rising. David said nothing, just watched him stride into the compound, following George.
Jim and Phillip were gone. Maybe on the roof. Derek was nowhere to be seen. Even Palmer was gone, though he normally shadowed Jim and Phillip on the radios. It was just Ryan and George, standing in front of the giant map he’d helped hang.
“Kris… We need to talk.” George stood beside Ryan, arms crossed, scowling. “We think it’s time you head back to the States.”
He’d known it was coming. He’d known from the first moment Ryan had protested, back in Langley, September 14, that this would come. His ignoble removal from the team, sent packing, don’t let the door hit his ass on the way out.
He hadn’t thought he’d be so enraged. Fury billowed through him, an inferno that sucked the air from his lungs, from the room. “Why?”
Ryan and George shared a long look. George opened his mouth.
Ryan spoke first, cutting George off. “You’re a liability. Whatever is going on between you and General Khan is interfering with this mission. We’re worrying that an Afghan general is going to sexually assault you instead of focusing on the mission.”
“What?”
“We needed the GPS data and we knew you could get it quickly. Khan connected with you, we believe, inappropriately. But we knew we could use that connection to get the intel we needed, fast,” George said, his voice heavy with something.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ruby rage colored Kris’s vision. He could feel his hands slicking, his muscles tightening throughout his body. “You think Khan wants to fuck me?”
“Are you inviting it from him? Your behavior around the general is concerning,” George said carefully.
“I am behaving exactly as the culture prescribes! Which you would fucking know, if you bothered to learn anything at all about it!”
“Holding his hand, being touchy-feely with him, being all up in his business? That’s culture?” Ryan snorted.
“This isn’t a machismo culture!” Kris roared. He’d never shouted this loudly, never bellowed like this. Not at his drunkest, not even when he was thrown out of beds in college or dumped by the older men he’d slept with on weekends and ditched on Monday mornings. Never, ever had he been filled with this much rage, this much sizzling-hot blood. “In Muslim cultures where there is a strict division of the sexes, men form close emotional bonds with other men. They aren’t concerned with posturing or proving who has the bigger dick in a perpetual ‘who is the bigger asshole’ contest! Yes, men here hold hands! Yes, men here hug! Being physical is a sign of trust!”
“That’s just Khan. We haven’t even started on you and Sergeant Haddad.” George sighed.
“What the fuck do you mean about me and David?”
“Oh, it’s David now, is it?” Ryan shook his head. “Of course it is.”
“Ryan.” George cut his gaze to Ryan. His expression had gone dark, a frown worrying his forehead. His fingers dug into the sleeves of his jacket, his knuckles white. “Look, Kris…” Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I asked Sergeant Haddad to look out for you. To keep an eye on you. And I think you may have gotten the wrong message from that. We’re concerned you’ve taken his protection as something it’s not. And we’re worried about what the Afghans will think about how you are around him.”
“How I am around him…”
From the inferno of his wrath to the frozen pit of his soul. He’d known. He’d known that all of this, everything, was only a test he was bound to fail. That no one was on his side.
George kept going, hammering the nails through his wrists. “We’ve all seen how you are with him. If we’ve seen it, the Afghans have seen it. We can’t waste our time and our energy worrying about how the Afghans are going to react to you. To your—” George waved his hand over Kris, as if he could encompass everything Kris was with one limp-wristed waggle.
“It’s time for you to go.” Ryan’s glare could cut diamonds, could cut Kris’s soul to shreds. “We’re contacting Langley. Tonight.”
There was nothing to say. Nothing he could do. If he gave them the satisfaction of his rage, they’d win. If he tried to argue, they would say he was belligerent, combative, and it would prove their point even more: that he wasn’t fit to be there. His life, again, was being decided by other people, others who had ideas about who and what he was. His only choice, his only power, was in his reaction.
He said nothing, just turned and walked away.
David waited for him outside the compound, hovering by the dusty glass doors leading to the dirt courtyard and fire pit. He was like a gargoyle without a ledge, waves of morose frustration coming off him. His frown lines were etched deep into his face, canyons that held something dark, something secret.
George’s admission repeated inside Kris’s skull. I asked Sergeant Haddad to look out for you… taken his protection for something it’s not.
He hadn’t hoped for anything with David, except for maybe a friend. But that in itself was too much, too audacious a wish. He’d forgotten the rules of the world: he wasn’t allowed to befriend these men. He wasn’t allowed to befriend any men.
“What happened?” David pounced as soon as he fled the compound, falling into step with Kris as he thundered across the cold dirt.
He just had to go, walk away, be alone. Not let anyone see how much it hurt. Or they’d win again. They’d always win.
“Don’t. Don’t worry about it.”
“Kris, something happened. What? What did they say to you?”
“Sergeant, it’s fine—”
“Sergeant?”
Kris slipped around the edge of the stables and collapsed against the mudbrick wall. He threw his head back, staring up at the peaks encased in ice and dusted with snow, down almost to their compound. Another week or two, and they’d be getting snow falling on their heads. But he wouldn’t be there to see it.
David followed, standing too close. He hadn’t stopped staring at Kris, peering at him like he was trying to decipher a riddle, read the way Kris fought to keep his chin from trembling, stop his hands from clenching. “I thought we were past ‘sergeant’.”
“George told me about your agreement. That he asked you to keep an eye on me.” Kris exhaled slowly. His fingers scraped the wall behind him. “It’s fine, I understand. I appreciate all you did. But—”
David’s frown, if possible, grew deeper. There was an intensity to him, a star hovering on the edge of a supernova, as if everything that he was had compacted deep down inside his body. Rarely, so rarely, parts of him escaped, solar flares thrown off, intense enough to fry the sky. Kris had only seen hints of that intensity.
“Sergeant, you don’t have to do this anymore. I’m going home. They’re sending me back.”
“What?” The world narrowed to David, to his shock, the way his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. He stepped closer, almost boxing Kris in against the wall. Kris tried to shift away.
“They’re sending me back.” His voice went thin. He grunted, dug his fingers deeper. “I’m leaving. As soon as they can get me out of here.”
“Why?”
Kris laughed, hysteria straining through him. “Because they think my cultural sensitivity is inviting sexual assault. That it’s too risky having an openly gay officer here. That I’m too close to you, and the Afghans will see that. I’m gay, and that’s the fucking problem. For everyone. They don’t want to worry about me, they say.” Dry mud flaked from the wall, coming apart beneath his fingernails. Like the dirt, his control crumbled, and Kris felt the first sob bubble up in his chest.
No, not in front of David. Let him keep a sliver, a shred of dignity. Just one tiny piece.
“That’s bullshit!” Rage poured off David, an explosion of it, the sun shedding its outer layers. Kris could almost feel the heat, the power. “You’re the best officer the CIA has in-country. You get the Afghans, more than George and Ryan combined. You know the culture. General Khan respects you. You were his honored guest at the front!”
“Even if I told them all that, they wouldn’t listen.”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“Their minds are made up. They don’t want me here.”
David’s jaw squared and set. He pulled back. Glared over Kris’s head, over the roof to the compound beyond. “Then I’m telling them. They need to know what you did.”
“Sergeant, please. Don’t.” Kris grabbed David’s arm, trying to stop him. It was like trying to stop a bull. “Don’t make this worse,” Kris called after him.
“How can it be worse? They’re sending away their expert. You leaving would be the worst thing for the mission. The absolute worst thing.”
“Won’t you be glad you don’t have to babysit me anymore?”
That stopped him. David spun, the fury on his face darker, the edges of his scowl harder. “I do not babysit you!”
“You were told to watch out for me—”
“I was already watching you. Before they asked.”
“Why?”
David said nothing. He turned and kept walking for the compound.
David burst into the nerve center. George and Ryan were conferring, their heads leaning close. Phillip was at the radios, starting the switchover to convert to the secured satellite uplink back to Langley.
“We need to talk.” David stared right into George’s eyes. “Now.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ryan rolled his eyes. “You too? What the hell?”
“Ryan.” George closed his eyes, for a moment. “All right, both of you. Ryan, Phillip. Out.”
“Sir—”
George cut off Ryan’s protest. “Out. Now.”
David waited while Ryan filed past him, brushing too closely, staring him down. David kept his eyes fixed on George. Ryan was an asshole, but he was just the voice in George’s ear. George made the calls.
“What’s on your mind, Sergeant Haddad?” George had a pained expression. He spread his legs and crossed his arms, as if he were waiting for the executioner’s bullet.
“You’re making a mistake. Don’t send Caldera home. He’s the best officer you have on the ground.”
Everything in George slumped, a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“General Khan respects the hell out of him. He was Khan’s honored guest. We’ve been at the front for two days, embedded with their fighters. Not once, not once, during that entire time was he treated with anything other than the utmost respect and deference.”
“What was your role during the scouting? Did Khan speak to you?”
“I carried the backpack and I wrote what Caldera told me to write. I was muscle. That’s it. If you’re going to try and say I was the one Khan worked with, you’re wrong.”
“What about the Shura Nazar fighters? Did anyone… perceive anything?”
“You’re asking if the Afghans are freaked out about Caldera?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What did he do? What about his performance is causing you to question him? What has he done to earn this skepticism?”
“His performance has been fine—”
“Then where is this coming from?”
“You know where! We took a chance bringing him because of his knowledge base, but it’s too big a risk! We shouldn’t have done it to begin with. We don’t bring female officers because of the risks, and we shouldn’t have brought Caldera! I’m sick of worrying that he’s going to be attacked! That someone is going to take offense to his existence! Or, if things go wrong, and he’s captured by the Taliban! I can’t sleep, I’m spending all my fucking time worrying about him!” George turned away, pacing to the far wall. He stopped in front of the map and dropped his head. “I don’t want to lose anyone I’m responsible for.”
“You’re willing to banish the best man you’ve got on the ground?”
Turning, George peered at him. “You really believe that?”
“I’ve seen it. Firsthand.”
George withered. One hand rose, covering the mark on the map where their village was.
“Your fears and your prejudice are going to ruin the mission. And they’re hurting Caldera.”
“I’m not prejudiced.” George glared. “I have nothing against Caldera. Nothing.”
“Except you’re judging him on all the wrong things. For all the wrong reasons. Start looking at what he’s doing, not who he is. Start looking at his performance. At how exceptional he is here.” David snorted. “Stop listening to Ryan.”
George’s glare turned sour. He squeezed his eyes closed. “What about—” He hesitated. “—him and you? What’s going on there?”
“Nothing. Nothing is going on. You’re so focused on Caldera and worrying about him, you haven’t even realized that he and I are exactly the same.”
George blanched, rearing back. His jaw dropped open.
“I mean, we’re acting the same.” David fumbled his words, stuttering once. “We’re behaving the same. If the Afghans don’t have a problem with me, they don’t have a problem with him. With our friendship. It’s probably closer to what they’re used to seeing. Frankly, you’re just reading into everything, seeing what you want to see and thinking the worst.”
“I thought you were coming out, Sergeant.” George chuckled, shaking his head. He groaned. “I couldn’t take double that stress. Not now.”
David kept his mouth shut. His fists clenched, the leather of his gloves squeaking, fingertips digging into his covered palms.
“I know he’s the best. That’s why I sent him to the front, to Khan. I thought, ‘once he’s done, once he’s got what we need, he can go home’. Does he need to be here still?”
“Do you want this alliance to really work? Do you honestly think everything is just fine, it will go perfectly smoothly from here on out? What about when something happens that you can’t fix, or when you’ve pissed Khan off so badly he wants to throw you out of the country, and Caldera is ten thousand miles away?”
“Damn it.” George scrubbed his hands over his face. “All right, he stays. You guys obviously work well together. I’m going to keep you partnered up. Captain Palmer says he’s fine with that, that the rest of your team is making good progress with their appraisal of the Shura Nazar forces. Are you good with it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Watch out for him, Sergeant. Don’t let anything happen to him.”
“Sir, can I speak freely?”
George grunted.
“You need to think about why you believe Caldera needs protecting. He’s a CIA officer, the same as you. You both went through training. He’s stronger than you give him credit for.”
“That’s enough, Sergeant.”
“And you need to think about why it took me barging in here to make you see reason. Why couldn’t Caldera himself tell you this? Why don’t you see his accomplishments? Why did you only listen to me?”
“I said that’s enough!”
David’s jaw snapped shut.
“Get out of here. I’ve got to go over the intel you guys brought back from the front and get on the horn with Langley.” The dark circles beneath George’s eyes seemed to grow, spread, turning to pools where all the sleep he wasn’t getting stacked up like spilled ink. “Send in Ryan when you leave.”
David didn’t speak as he strode out of the nerve center. Ryan waited just outside, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. He stared at David, his cheeks hollowing when he sucked in a deep breath of smoke.
“What happens is on you,” he said, puffs of smoke billowing around his every word. “You wanted this. You own it.”
David kept walking. Kept his shaking hands balled into fists. Shoved them into the pockets of his jacket. He needed to get away. Get clear of everything.
Get away from Kris, especially. Just for a little while.
Palmer and his men had set up a makeshift firing range in the hills above the village, shooting into the dirt and dust against the slope of the mountains. Snow crunched under David’s boots as he climbed the narrow goat track leading to the range. Sounds faded, falling away, until it was just the snow and his breath, the sounds of himself, his own life, that surrounded him.
He pulled his handgun and lined up, taking aim at the debris his team had dragged in for targets. Old water canisters and broken furniture. Decrepit Soviet jeeps, half blown apart. Moldy tires, more than half disintegrated.
He breathed with each bullet he fired. Slowly, in and out. His mind cleared, going blank, until there was nothing left. No thought, just breath. Just the squeeze of the trigger and the bullets slamming into their targets, and then into the snowy hillside. Thump, thump, thump.
The isolation suited him. Fit him like a glove, a perfect pairing of his soul and nothingness.
He’d always been alone, always been an other, from ten years old on. He’d been a boy without a home, without a father, a history, a people, or an identity, a boy apart from all the others. He’d learned early to carve and mold and cover the parts of himself that didn’t fit into the world. Keep the fractals of himself hidden, the way he came up at harsh angles to everyone else. He was a kaleidoscope, shifting and changing in the light. What was true was kept in the shadows, the same shadows that lived in his bones, that covered the memories of praying beside his father in the sunlight, murmuring the Quran.
He’d practiced hiding so many parts of himself so many times, that when he became a man and there was something else to hide, it was only too easy, and oh so natural, to bury that as well.
Bury everything.
It was harder to keep everything hidden here, in Afghanistan, the land of secrets and death, the graveyard of eternity. His seams were coming apart, the latticework he’d laid over his soul to contain everything he never wanted the world to see. At night, truth rose like stars, like the moon, bathing him in things he didn’t want to see, to feel. The rhythms of Islam were pulling on him, the daily calls to prayer, the whispers that saturated the air, made the country thick with the presence of Allah. Something was tapping at him, something he had thought had been cut out and he’d left behind in the sands of Libya. Something that had been forcefully ripped from him, twenty-one years ago.
And something else, too. Something he’d found when he was a teen in America, a part of himself he’d walled off instantly. But between Afghanistan and Kris, between the prayers and the whispers and the pull toward Mecca, toward Libya, toward his memories, and between the tug in the center of his being toward Kris, as insistent as the constant of gravity, he was splitting apart.
He kept firing until he was out of bullets, and until the whispers and the pulls on his soul were buried again.
“Kris? Can you join me on this call to Langley?”
Numb, Kris followed George to the waiting satellite connection that would be the end of his tenure on the team. His jaw locked, closed around words he couldn’t speak. Shame scraped his insides like a rake.
He felt David’s eyes on him. David had stayed scarce until dinner, no longer haunting the halls of their compound or lingering by the bonfire.
Kris had stayed outside until his fingers went numb, knuckles stiff from the cold and fingertips turning blue. He’d wanted to soak up as much Afghanistan as he could, feel the life of the people, the land, one last time. Khan’s voice, his fractured words, detailing the deprivations and degradations his people had endured at the hands of the Taliban, across the crackle and spit of the fire, looped in his mind. How did the world stop bad people from hurting good ones?
What kind of person was he? Where did he fit on the scales?
He couldn’t answer that. He just didn’t know.
He’d spent the afternoon typing up a report on his and David’s time on the front lines. Everything had gone in, from David’s analysis of the Shura Nazar to his photos of the front and of the Taliban. Khan and his forces, not so starved and helpless as Langley had once believed. Their conversation by the fire and Khan’s quiet plea for help for the people of Mazar-e-Sharif. He’d turned it in earlier and started to pack.
George had the satellite phone on speaker, and the hisses and pops, the scratch-filled background to their tenuous secured connection, filled the empty nerve center. It sounded like they were talking to the past.
“Kris!” Clint Williams’s booming voice powered over the pops and screeching wails. “Fantastic report on the front. This is outstanding. Excellent job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Give me your no-bullshit assessment, Kris. Tell me about the Shura Nazar. Can they fight?”
“Absolutely. They have been fighting, for years. The Taliban have pushed them back because they have more money and they can buy off rival warlords. Or buy secondhand military hardware from Russia or China. Right now, the Shura Nazar and the Taliban are at a stalemate, but the balance is tipping toward the Taliban with the rush of foreign fighters pouring into Afghanistan to offer their assistance. With no intervention, the Shura Nazar will fall next spring.”
George nodded along with Kris. “I concur with Kris’s analysis, Clint.”
“So does Langley. We’ve had our analysts here dissecting your report, along with everything else we have, and they came to the same conclusion. Gentlemen, what is the plan?”
George raised his eyebrows at Kris. “Thoughts?”
What was this? Hadn’t he been ignobly told to pack his bags and clear out, be on the next chopper to Tashkent? Kris hesitated, holding George’s stare. “The Taliban front lines are exposed. They defend against artillery and small arms fire only. Taliban positions are target-rich for an aerial bombing campaign. If the US can pound the Taliban positions and break the front lines, the Shura Nazar will be able to storm through. We just need to open the door for them.”
“We need to bring the rain, Clint. If we do that, the Shura Nazar will win the war. And it could happen fast.”
“Which means we need to be ready to capture the foreign fighters and al-Qaeda members when this whole thing blows up.” Williams sighed over the line, a long string of static. “Kris, CENTCOM agrees with your assessment that Mazar-e-Sharif is the key to northern Afghanistan. Mazar and Taloquan both. The current strategy is to liberate both of those cities, and then move on Kabul.”
“That will bolster the Shura Nazar, thin out the Taliban, and cut off their attempts to pinch the Shura Nazar when they move on Kabul.”
“And the military is tickled pink about having Uzbekistan so close to Mazar. CENTCOM is already working on propping up field bases there for resupply and combat missions,” Williams said. “So you guys need to get up to the northern front and get another GPS survey done. We need to know where the lines are outside these two cities. Where we can start dropping some bombs. And where we can insert a second CIA team outside Mazar.”
“We’ll get it done.” George scribbled notes as Williams spoke. His gaze darted to Kris. “Sir, there’s one more thing.”
Kris closed his eyes.
“Sir, Kris has made significant inroads with the Shura Nazar leadership. He’s become the liaison between the Shura Nazar and our team, and the CIA as a whole. During their negotiations, Kris learned of the Shura Nazar’s need for humanitarian resupply. There’s a famine in the valley and people are struggling. He’s promised an airlift of food. What can we do about getting that filled?”
Williams was quiet. Static filled the line. “I’ll make some calls. We’ll get the Air Force to make a drop within forty-eight hours. I’ll send you the coordinates when I have them. Kris… Well done. Really. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kris stared at George, jaw hanging. He tried to speak, but George shook his head.
“We’ll call you with an update in twelve hours, Clint.”
“Keep up the fantastic work. The president is impressed. So am I.”
The line cut.
Silence.
Afghanistan was an unnaturally quiet place. The snowcapped mountains, the icy peaks, all seemed to encase the valley in a stillness, a separation from the real world. Without the static of the phone, without the rustle and bustle of the rest of the team working in the nerve center, the quiet of Afghanistan seemed to seep into the room, fill up the corners, swim down their throats until Kris was drowning in thick, weighted silence. He could hear his own breath, his own heart beating.
“I owe you an apology,” George finally said. His voice was low, almost grinding in his throat. He flicked a pen against his palm, over and over. “You have done exceptional work here, Kris.”
“You’re not sending me back to Langley.”
“No.” George grimaced. “I want to. But I want to send you back for the wrong reasons.”
Kris waited.
“My first team lead was on counterterrorism operations in Greece. When it was bad. Greece was a nexus for all flavors of terrorism, from the rising Islamic terror to right-wing fascist neo-Nazis to extreme left anarchists. It was a violent, unstable place. And I lost someone. Someone young, and new, and brilliant. We all thought we had a handle on the risks. We all thought we knew how bad it was. But… we lost her. A neo-Nazi countersurveillance operation discovered she was working for the CIA. They lured her into a trap, and—” The pen kept slapping his palm, faster. “I promised myself,” he said carefully. “That I would never, ever sit in an officer’s house and tell their family that one of my people had been killed. On my watch. It is… the worst feeling anyone can ever feel. That you let someone else down like that.”
Something grabbed Kris’s heart and squeezed, kept squeezing. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The echoing roar of an airplane filled his soul, the too-low whine of a jet engine accelerating over Manhattan.
George finally met Kris’s stare. “You are a good officer, Kris. A very good officer.”
Kris said nothing.
“You are. Which is why you and Sergeant Haddad are headed to the northern front. I radioed Khan this evening, told him we wanted to expand operations, and that you would be there to map out the lines. He was overjoyed. You both leave tomorrow. Get it done and come back safely.” George nodded and turned away, done with the conversation. He tossed his pen onto their makeshift work table, into the clutter of papers and floppy disks and old coffee gone cold. “Keep up the good work.”
Kris escaped to the roof to watch the stars wink over the Panjshir, appear in a flood of scattered paint across the arc of the sky. To the south, faint echoes of artillery sounded, like the roar of a subway rumbling beneath the Upper East Side after midnight.
He finally headed down late, after the rest of the team had turned in. Days were long, frigid, and rough. Everyone went to bed early. He hoped David was already sleeping.
No such luck. David was awake, propped against the cold cinder block walls of their tiny room, reading by the light of his headlamp. He looked up when Kris slipped around their dingy curtain, blinding Kris.
“Sorry.” David set his headlamp on the floor. The light cast long shadows up the walls, claws that curled over and reached for Kris, trying to drag him down, tear him apart. “Everything okay?”
“I’m not leaving. But I guess you already knew that.”
David nodded.
“Why? Why did you say anything?”
David took his time answering, closing his book and tucking it back into his pack. Kris watched him, searching for something, anything. An opening, an answer.
“Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.”
Kris shook his head. He’d learned to give up, long ago. Give in. Sniffing, he grabbed another jacket, tried to wrap up in it.
David watched him. “We’re going to the northern front tomorrow. It’s going to be cold.”
“It already is cold.” Kris had slipped on another sweater earlier and was bundled in his thick jacket. He’d pulled on his gloves, wool and leather, and wrapped one of the black-and-white scarves Khan had gifted to him at the front around his neck and head.
“You can sleep next to me. If you want.” There was an empty space beside David, his gear shoved away, cleared out to the other side of their room. “For warmth.”
Kris had seen porn movies that started this way, probably a dozen. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, so bone-weary, his heart so shredded, he might have mustered a flirtation in response to the invite. Or at least a joke. Something to blunt the choking tension, the cloying hesitation, the stink of anxiety that permeated their room.
But he was too tired.
He dragged his mat and sleeping bag next to David’s and crawled inside, bundled in all of his clothes. David waited, hovering, propped up on his elbow as Kris settled in. As his head hit the bundled sweater he used for a pillow, Kris felt David settle in behind him, felt his body through his sleeping bag when he curled into Kris’s back.
As he fell asleep, the weight of David’s arm settled over his waist.
He was choking on smoke and bone dust, jet fuel and atomized concrete. A billion pieces of burned paper falling on him, smothering him. Massoud’s body, broken and bloody and bombed, the leader of a parade of ghosts led by Mohamed Atta, with his box cutter and his black flag and his empty, evil eyes.
This time, George was there, watching it all, along with Clint Williams. We thought you were good, they said, though their lips didn’t move. We thought you were the good guy.
He tried to run, but when he turned, David was right behind him, closer than his own shadow. Kris couldn’t get around him, couldn’t get away from him.
I thought you were worth—
He woke before David finished, gasping and clawing at his sleeping bag, at the arms holding him tight. David clung to him, burying his face in Kris’s neck, both arms around Kris like he was David’s teddy bear. He snorted and stretched, but let Kris go long enough for him to escape.
Kris stumbled out to the nerve center, to the hum of the computers, the snores of the rest of the team, the soft murmurs of the radio. Dari and Arabic floated through the static, live captures of the Taliban’s radio net. Kris picked out the words for apple and pomegranate, rice and goat. Hunger and cold. The enemy was struggling, hungry, cold, and lonely, talking into the night about what they wanted to eat.
Eat an airplane, Kris thought. Eat an airplane, dropping bombs until you’re full. Until you’re so full you explode. Until you’re one of three thousand, a name that can’t be remembered because there are too many.
He tried to breathe, tried to stop the shaking that came over him, crawling up from the bottoms of his feet, all the way up his skin. He hadn’t felt this before, hadn’t yet run face-first into the same furious, crackling rage the rest of his team nurtured. He hadn’t joined in on the calls for revenge, the bloodthirsty hunger for retribution against al-Qaeda, against the Taliban. He’d kept the blame for himself.
“Kris?” David yawned as he slipped out from behind the curtain to their room. “You okay?”
Fury roared through him. Blinding, aching fury. His bones seemed to scream, his skeleton shaking, burning to every last inch.
“Kris?” David was right there, reaching for him. His hands landed on Kris’s arms, gently.
Kris jerked free. “Stop!” he hissed. “Just stop!”
David stepped back, hands up, surrendering. His eyes glistened, pools of silver in the flash of the radio lights. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t help me! You shouldn’t care about me! You shouldn’t do any of this!” Kris waved back to their room, to David, trying to wrap everything David had done, all that he was, up as one. “I am not worth anything!”
“What?”
“I am not worth one moment of what you’ve given me! Not a single moment! Your care, your concern, your coffee? Stop wasting your time on me!”
“Kris…” David slowly inched forward, his voice a whisper. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because—” His heart screamed, the same pitch, the same tone as the planes that had flown over Manhattan, that had slammed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Ash coated his throat, and in his hands, he felt the dust of thousands upon thousands of bones sift through his fingers. “Because I am responsible for nine-eleven!”
David froze. His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“My section, my unit! We were tracking Khalid al-Mihdhar and Marwan al-Shehhi. We had them on our radar. The FBI, earlier this year, they asked for what we had on them! We refused to share the intel. We knew they were al-Qaeda. We knew they were connected to the embassy bombings in Africa. We were tracing their connections, their meet-ups with other al-Qaeda operatives. Money that was exchanged. But we wouldn’t share what we had! The higher-ups, they thought the FBI would fuck it up! We wanted to see how much higher we could go through the chain. Didn’t want to risk blowing our intelligence if the FBI just arrested them! But no one knew, no one fucking knew, when they needed to know! To stop what happened!”
“Kris, what—”
“Their names were on my desk! Mine! If I had just passed those names along, if the FBI would have alerted someone, anyone, about those two… American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175 wouldn’t have slammed into the Pentagon and the South Tower!”
“You don’t know that. You can’t say that—” David sputtered, shaking his head.
“They would have been detained when they entered the US! Questioned. They wouldn’t have been on those flights. Maybe al-Qaeda would have had to call the entire operation off! Maybe they would have had to cancel it! If they’d had to cancel it, then Ahmad Shah Massoud would still be alive. Bin Laden wouldn’t have had to murder him! Everything, all of this! It’s my fault! Because I didn’t—”
His voice cracked, and Kris collapsed, the bones in his body no longer able to hold him up, keep him standing under the weight of three thousand dead souls, under the years of unlived lives, under the shame that grated his heart to slivers, to dust, to ash. He fell to his knees, curled over, and pressed his forehead to the dirty floor, to the threadbare carpet covering the cold concrete.
He couldn’t breathe. He gasped, his throat closing, choking off like he was being strangled. Tears flowed, cascading down his cheeks, falling from his chin into pools beneath his face. Snot and spit dribbled from his nose, his mouth. He was disgusting. A disgusting human being.
A hand rested on his back, gentle, warm. Another landed on his head, fingers sliding through his hair. The hand guided him up, cradled his head until he was sitting, staring into David’s stern face.
Kris waited for David to snap his neck, to rip him in half. To end everything.
“It was not your fault,” David breathed. His voice, a whisper, shook. His eyes burned, slamming into Kris like brands. “It was not your fault. You did not hijack those planes. You did not fly them into the Towers, into the Pentagon. You did not do this.”
“I let it happen…”
David gripped his skull, pulled Kris closer. His hands shook, his arms, and Kris trembled with him. Kris’s teeth started to chatter. “Do not take on this blame. You are not them. You are not a murderer. You are not part of their hate. You are not to blame.”
“I am…”
“You are not the beginning of this, Kris. You are not where all of this, all of the hatred, all of the fighting, comes from. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“All I can see, when I close my eyes,” Kris gasped, “are the Twin Towers. The planes. And their faces. Looking up at me from my desk.” He squeezed his eyes closed. Tears spilled from his eyes. “How can you even look at me?”
“Because I see what you don’t. I see the smartest man I’ve ever met. A man dedicated to the fight. To stopping the Taliban, to capturing Bin Laden. I see a man focused on doing the right thing. On being the best he can be. I see a hero, Kris.”
“No…” A sob built in his chest, and he tried to pull free of David’s hold. “No, I’m not.”
“I see a man who came to Afghanistan, and despite everyone’s judgments, everyone’s prejudices, did his job perfectly. You built an alliance with General Khan. You did that. You built that. The people of Afghanistan will have hope, and a future, once we get rid of the Taliban. And we will, because of what you’ve built with Khan. How is that not heroic?”
Kris shook.
“I see a man I care about,” David whispered. “Someone I—” His lips clamped shut. His thumbs stroked over Kris’s cheekbones, wiping away tears. “I see you. I see someone exceptional.”
He pulled Kris in, slowly wrapping his arms around Kris until they were one, huddled on the floor and wrapped around each other, arms and chests pressed so tightly together there was no space between them. Kris trembled, shaking until he thought his body would just fall to pieces. David held him, a fierce hold that surrounded Kris, enveloped him completely, and held him up. Held his bones and his soul in place.
He didn’t know how long they stayed there. It felt like an eternity, listening to Arabic whisper over the radio and Ryan and George snoring in counterpoint. Finally, David pulled him up, guided him back to their room. He unzipped his own sleeping bag and laid Kris inside, deep in the warm folds that smelled like David, that radiated his presence.
Hesitation. David stared into Kris’s eyes, deep into his gaze.
Kris reached for him. His hand shook.
Silently, David slid into the sleeping bag beside Kris, their bodies aligning, folding into each other. A sob caught in Kris’s chest, and fresh tears spilled over the edges of his eyelashes. Arms wound around him, held him close. “It’s not your fault,” David whispered. “It’s madness, it’s hatred, it’s murder, plain and simple. It’s history that got all fucked up. It’s a thousand things other than you. It’s not you, Kris.”
Kris pressed his face into David’s neck and, for the first time, let himself weep.