“I enlisted right out of school,” I said. “My teachers said it was a good idea. What else was a big lunk like me going to do?”

Kristina squeezed me tight. “They shouldn’t have just written you off! You’re smart! Smarter than they knew!”

I shook my head. “Wasn’t just that. I’d always wanted to serve. Saw my dad doing it, wanted to be like him. Wanted to be part of something bigger. Saw the flag at the recruiter’s office and it just felt… right. First week of basic training, I realized I’d found something I was good at. I was bigger and I was strong and they just had to give me a mission and I wouldn’t stop until it was done.” I felt the rage inside me flare hot as I thought about how that loyalty had been betrayed.

“Anyway, I wound up in a squad with a great bunch of guys, all from Texas. Drummond, he was this tall, skinny guy, looked like he should be playing basketball. He could put a bullet through the O on a Coke can from half a mile away. Felton was our medic: he was the smart one. The marines had put him through medical school. Martinez always kidded around, but he always had your back. But the guy I got on best with was Baker, our squad leader.”

“He was tough, but he was short: he always said he was 5’5” but we all knew he was 5’4”. When he was giving me an order and there was gunfire, I had to hunker down so he could shout in my ear. People joked about it: the little guy and the big guy. But we just fought well together. And back home, it was Baker who helped me move into my apartment, Baker who had my back in a bar fight, Baker who was there for me when my mom died.” I shook my head. “He was a great leader. Always looked after his people.” I looked down at Kristina. “You remind me of him.”

She blushed.

“In a squad you fight together, you eat together, you guard each other while you’re sleeping. We went on too many missions to count, all over Iraq. When we came home to Texas on leave, we’d hang out. One by one, they got girlfriends, got married.” I felt my neck color. “I didn’t. Never was too good at all that stuff.”

Kristina drew in her breath in sympathy, but I shook my head. “But it was okay, I didn’t mind being the single one. We were one big family. The summers were barbecues and pool parties....” I trailed off, remembering. I didn’t know how to put it into words, but those long summer days, sinking a cold beer and seeing the kids running around... it had reminded me what we were fighting for. “The squad was my life,” I said simply.

Kristina tightened her arms around me. She could sense something bad was coming.

“Then one day, back in Iraq…. We’re on a plane, flying back to base after a mission. Just the five of us, plus the pilot and co-pilot. A storm blows up out of nowhere. Worst storm I’ve ever seen in my life, the kind we used to get in Texas, where the whole sky’s alive and best thing you can do is hunker down in the cellar. But we’re right there in it, being hurled around, and there’s no place to land. It goes on for hours, until the plane sounds like it’s going to come apart. Then we lose both engines and after that we’re just a twig in the wind.”

Kristina was clutching at me, holding me as tight as I’d held onto my seat on that plane. “Don’t remember the crash,” I told her. “Just woke up in the wreckage. Pilot and co-pilot are dead, but my squad’s okay, just banged up a little. We get outside and we’ve got no idea where we are: dawn’s just breaking and it’s just desert in every direction.”

“We wait till nightfall for rescue: no one comes. We don’t have much water so we decide we need to get moving and it’s better to travel at night, when it’s cool. So we pick a direction and we start walking. Mile after mile after mile, the sand coming over our boots. But it’s okay: we’re marines. Marching ain’t gonna kill us.”

“Then we come to the town. Abandoned, most of the houses just rubble. Takes us an hour before we find part of an old sign and Felton translates. That’s when we find out that we’re not in Iraq, anymore. The storm blew us over the border. We’re in Iran. The only five US soldiers, at that time, in the entire goddamn country. And we’re right out in the wilds, where it’s just local militia who hate the US. We’re... alone.” I looked down at Kristina and she nodded somberly. She was the one person who could really understand what it had felt like.

“We hide out in one of the houses that’s mostly still standing and get on the radio. We manage to raise a US airbase that’s just over the border in Iraq, and everyone cheers. But then we give them our location... and it all goes quiet. We raise them again but we’re told to wait for instructions. And then the local militia arrives and starts shooting. They’d found the plane and followed our tracks, I guess. And they’re not going to stop until we’re dead.”

“There are way too many of them. We barricade ourselves in the house and try to hold them off. But they’re calling their friends on the radio, spreading the word that we’re there. All of us have been fighting in Iraq for years. We’re not new to war. But this isn’t war. They hate us. They’re going to slaughter every one of us.”

I’d closed my eyes. I could feel the heat of the desert on my skin, taste the dust in my mouth. I could see the abandoned house all around me: crumbling stone block walls, ragged mats on the floor, odd items that the family who’d fled had left behind: a jug, a plate, a kid’s sweater. I knew that I was still in Lakovia but the softness of the bed beneath me, the quiet, even the cool, wet air from the window... all of it faded away until I was crouched by a window, eyes straining against the sunlight as I watched figures creeping over the rubble towards us. Only Kristina remained real. Touching her was all that kept me grounded.

“It’s hell: baking hot, dry and dusty, there’s not enough water and we’re all strung out from walking all night after the plane crash. We’re trying to watch every direction at once: there’s so many of them and they just keep coming. We can’t take a break even for a minute to rest or drink. Then Martinez takes a bullet in the chest. A really bad wound. Felton, our medic, says he needs medevac, but we still can’t get anyone on the radio. So Felton’s got to treat him right there, in the damn dining room, as best he can.”

“That takes us down to three guys guarding the house: Baker, Drummond and me. And we’re running low on ammo, too, so we have to make every shot count. It’s getting bad, but Baker, he just looks at the rest of us and he says, we are going to hold this house. We are going to hold out because that’s what Marines do. And when he said it, we believed it.” I stroked Kristina’s hair. “Like I said, he was a lot like you.”

“Night comes and we don’t have night vision so it’s just black. You see movement and you have to pray and fire. We’re begging now on the radio, begging for someone to come get us out of there, but no one answers. And there’s this moment when I look at Baker and he looks at me and we realize—” My voice grew tight, my throat suddenly dry. “We realize they’re not coming.”

“By morning, it’s really bad. We’re down to our handguns and we’ve been two nights without sleep. We’re jumping at shadows, really losing it. Felton’s trying to keep Martinez alive, but he’s in agony.” It was hard to speak, now. I could see the blood seeping through the bandages. “Martinez was the fun one. Like when we had the pool parties, he’d always cannonball into the pool. Or this one time, we were out there in Iraq over Christmas. So he puts on a Santa outfit—all he had was a Santa hat and a red shirt, but he stuffed a parachute up the shirt—and he goes around handing out gifts. It was only cookies from the mess hall and dumb shit like that, but... damn, if felt good, just to know we weren’t forgotten. He had kids: two little girls. And he had this big, deep laugh, like he was laughing from the bottom of the sea.” I swallowed. “Only... now he’s screaming. So loud the walls are rattling with it. And he’s pleading for something for the pain and Felton keeps telling him there’s nothing left.”

I could feel that Kristina had lifted her head and was staring up at me, but I couldn’t look at her. If I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue. So I gently stroked her hair, stared at the ceiling, and kept going.

“We finally get someone on the radio. American, but no call sign. Some other grunt, probably disobeying orders just speaking to us. He just says, “Sorry.” And that’s when we know for sure: no one’s coming.”

“Just before noon, Drummond screams. He’s at the window across the house from me: I turn around and there’s a militia fighter right there, with a knife stuck into Drummond’s throat. We were all so tired and strung out, he’d managed to creep right up to the window without Drummond seeing.” I swallowed and had to stop for a second. “Drummond was the oldest. He had a stepdaughter who had something wrong with her spine, and he needed the pay for medical bills.” I pressed my lips together. “I shoot the guy but it’s too late, Drummond’s dead.”

“Now there’s only two of us, Baker and me, who can guard the house. Felton’s too busy trying to keep Martinez alive. There’s no way we can watch all the windows and doors so we have to go outside, try and hold them off at a distance. But we’re barely outside when it starts getting dark. At first, we think maybe we’ve lost track of time and it’s dusk. Our watches are telling us it’s noon, but we’re so exhausted, we can’t think straight. Then we see this... thing on the horizon. Not like cloud, or smoke. It’s just dark brown nothing, you can’t even tell how far away it is because there are no features. It looks like the goddamn edge of the world. And whatever it is, it’s growing fast. Everything stops. Even the gunfire from the militia stops. Everyone’s just standing there staring at it.”

“People talk about the wind howling, but I never really understood what they meant till right then. It was howling like a monster, like it hated us. That’s when we figured out it was a sandstorm. Just before it hit us.”

“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 so we 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 it is Baker.”

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 a great 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 retrace my 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 almost am dead. 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 on this side of the border and the others were killed on impact.”

“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 a mission. 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’m good with following orders.”

Kristina nodded sadly.

“And the flashbacks: that’s even more of a problem. They’re not allowed to ask about PTSD and stuff, but…” I felt the anger rising inside my chest. “But they don’t have to, you know? They just say something like it must have been tough, over there. And they see me go tense and they know. And I want to scream at them, look, it comes back to me sometimes, but most of the time I’m okay! 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.”

“I’m too ashamed to stay at the ranch, with my dad. He was a Marine his entire career. I’ve been discharged and now I can’t even get a job. So I move to LA. Get a job as a doorman in a dive bar. But I’m too... dumb, I guess. Everyone else is on the take, like let one drug dealer in to deal, and stop all the others, in return for a cut. But I didn’t want to do that. Didn’t seem right.” I sighed. “Like I said, dumb.”

“Not dumb,” Kristina said fiercely. “Good. What were you doing in New York?”

“Thought if I could get away from the desert, the flashbacks might stop. They didn’t. So I was heading back to LA... when I met you.”

Her eyes were shining with tears. There was so much I wanted to explain about what she meant to me: how meeting her had changed everything. She’d given me something to be loyal to, something I believed in. She’d made me feel happy for the first time since it all happened. And I loved her like I’d never loved anyone: she was sweet and special and bright and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. But my words had run out. I gazed at her, shook my head, and just said, “I know I’m not a prince. But you’re right for me.”

And she just nodded and kissed me. She scooched higher up my body, straddling me, and we lay like that in the darkness for a long time, our cheeks pressed together. I felt... lighter. Like something had released, inside me. “It’s the first time I’ve ever told anyone,” I muttered. “I mean, I told the brass how the others died. But not how it felt.”

She nodded and the feel of her silky hair brushing my shoulders calmed the last of the anger inside me. It was weird: I wasn’t used to feeling at peace.

“You know, there are people who can help you with the flashbacks,” she said tentatively.

I shook my head. “Couldn’t,” I mumbled. “Tried it. Couldn’t talk to them. You’re different.”

“Then will you at least let me share something with you? Something that worked for me, after the war?”

Just the reminder that she’d suffered made my arms tightened protectively around her. I wanted to kill every one of the bastards who’d imprisoned her. “Go on.”

“I still get the flashbacks, sometimes. When it’s really dark, or I’m alone. Sometimes they come as nightmares and those I can’t stop...until I met you.” She ran her hand over my chest. “But the flashbacks... my therapist taught me how to beat those. Maybe it’ll work for you, too.”

I nodded, but half-heartedly. “They’re so real,” I said. “And so big. And... heavy.” I shook my head. “I know that doesn’t make sense. It’s just a memory. But—”

“But it feels like it’s solid, like it weighs a thousand tons,” she said.

I blinked at her, surprised. “Yeah. Like a freight train coming at me. I can’t stop it.”

She raised herself up on her arms so that she could look down at me. Her hair hung down, brushing my chest and, if I glanced down, I knew I’d see her breasts, pale in the moonlight. But I was so focused on what she was saying, I managed not to look. “That’s because you’re so big and stubborn,” she said, mock-sternly. “You’re trying to fight it.”

I scrunched up my brow. “What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

She put those cooling, calming hands on my biceps. “You let it come, but you get out of its way. Like you’re sidestepping.”

“Sidestepping?”

“You don’t have to move much. Just enough that it misses you. Just think really hard about somewhere you really like. A place you’d like to be, with a person you’d like to be with. You’re there. And then the flashback still comes, but you’re not in it. You’re just watching it, like it’s on TV.”

I stared at her. If it had come straight from a therapist, I would have written it off as a load of horseshit. But I trusted her. Hell, there was no one I trusted more. “Somewhere I’d like to be?” I said slowly. Texas.  “And someone I’d like to be with.” I looked right at her, and she flushed, then cuddled down on my chest again.

I lay there feeling even better than before. I didn’t know if it would work: it didn’t seem like much of a weapon, given how powerful the flashbacks were. But just having something, after all these years... that helped.

There was a sound outside the window, very faint. I could barely hear it, but Kristina jerked to attention and listened and so I did, too. It sounded like bells.

“It’s the clock tower in the city,” she said at last. Her body had gone tense. “Midnight. Ten hours until the bombers launch.”

“You did everything you could,” I said. “Garmania started this. They pushed you and pushed you. They tried to kill you over and over again. And your dad. And planted bombs and—”

“I know. I just... I don’t feel that it’s true. I can’t believe they want to go back to war with us. Not in my gut.” She sighed and let herself flop on top of me. “I suppose I just don’t want to believe it.”

She lay there on my chest, defeated. And I frowned up at the ceiling. She’d done so much to help me. I wanted to help her. But I didn’t know anything about politics, or being a leader.

So, I just told her what I did know. “Your instincts are good,” I said.

She jerked up, startled. “What?”

“You were right about Emerik and Jakov. And Caroline, too. None of them were traitors. And you’re smart. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. If you say Garmania doesn’t want war, I believe you.”

She shook her head. “But they’re behind everything! It all points to them!”

“OK, but....” I sat up, carrying her up with me until we were upright. She crossed her legs and sat on my thighs, our faces only a foot apart. “What if they’re not?”

She shook her head. “Nothing else makes sense!”

I scrunched up my brow. This wasn’t what I was good at. But this was what she needed me to do. So I thought. “The weapons the assassins used,” I said at last. “All Garmanian. So if Garmania isn’t supplying them, who is? Are there any other countries Garmania sells its stuff to?”

“No. They’re highly secretive about their weapons tech. They’re proud that only they have it.” She shrugged. “Maybe the assassins bought it on the black market? There were lots of guns in circulation after the war.”

I frowned again, thinking back to Texas. “I can believe that for rifles, maybe even the explosives. But not the mortar they used to attack the ranch. You can’t buy that in the back room of a bar.”

“So it is Garmania behind it all,” she sighed and hung her head. “It has to be.”

“No!” I tipped her chin up to look at me. We were onto something, now. I could feel it. The wheels in my head might turn slowly, but once they started....”Think! There must be someone else who has Garmanian weapons. Some other country, an ally….”

“There isn’t! The only people who have their weapons are Garmania and—” She broke off and stared at me.

Even in the darkened room, I could see how pale her face had gone. “Who?” But she just looked ill. Something had occurred to her, something so horrible she didn’t dare touch it again. “Who?”

She swallowed. “Us.”