evac. Ray would never leave anybody behind. If we’d had a mascot, Ray would have stayed behind with the pooch, putting down hadjis to the end.”
Lance Corporal Krahl: “Billy hated the corps but he loved Ray Cruz. He’d never let Cruz down. Cruz was the mythical sergeant. He seemed like he was out of the movies or something. In the end, I wish he’d loved Ray less because he wouldn’t have worked so hard toimpress him and to become Ray’s spotter. Loving Ray got him killed. I hate to say it, but that mission was a major fuck-up from the start, sending guys way out in bandit country with no air, nothing but fucking
goats
as cover, help two hours away. But if anyone could do it, it would have been Cruz, and if Cruz was going, Billy had to go. God, I miss Billy. Such a good kid, deserved so much more than a facedown in some shit hole full of people with funny hats.”
Swagger’d also watched videotape of the ambush over and over, this under the guidance of the S-2.
It took a while to make out, the angles so grave, the visual information so sparse: the men were, viewed from the top down, just glowing jiggles of light against the multihued dark of the landforms beneath them, the goats faster moving, longer. Still, in time, it became clear. You could watch the ambush team setting up. You could see them checking maps, and whoever was in charge put his security people exactly where any experienced soldier in any army in the world would have put them. He set up his big gun, squirmed behind it. Next to him had to be his own spotter. They held to good ambush discipline, no fucking around, utter stone stillness, no excess motion, men hunting hard and well.
“The colonel wanted to put a Hellfire into them. Would have blown the mission, I think, but would have saved our guys. But there was no way we could get an Apache in close enough in the time frame. We just had to watch and hope the bad guys didn’t shoot, but they did. It was horrible in the bunker, watching it all happen, not being able to do anything about it.”
The major froze the video image of the ambush team setup and still, the targets moving in along their goddamned goat track a distance calculated to be 841 meters out, completely blind to anything except the bleating of the goats.
“Did you request Reaper coverage from the Agency?” asked Bob.
“No, sir. It involves going through a lot of protocols, and no one really trusted that the info would stay private. It’s one thing when a big unit moves out—everybody already knows everything—and anotherwhen an outfit is under fire and you can bring Reapers in fast, so there’s not an issue of security. Here we wanted to run as tight and quiet a ship as possible.”
“Major, how do you figure these guys knew where Ray and Skelton were, and set up so perfectly? I mean, if I had to textbook an ambush, I’d use this tape.”
“I don’t know. A leak? Maybe. More likely these hadjis were on some mission and they saw targets. They had a new toy, a .50 Barrett they’d recovered somewhere. They’re not the most mature individuals, are they? So they set up to take the goatherders down, to test the weapon, to spread the word, maybe to blame the Americans. Only, one goatherder gets away, so they follow him, because he’s no longer a random victim, now he’s a witness and maybe if he makes it out, he gets them in trouble with their own command. I don’t really get how their minds work. I don’t know how they can kill so much and think it’s moral. It’s baffling to me.”
The food came, jarring Swagger back to the real world. He shoved his notepads to one side, ate sparingly, not really paying attention, trying in his mind to find something that would tell him any little thing. Was there a Ray Cruz explainer in there? A little anecdote that revealed an insight, if indeed it was Ray Cruz on the other end of that radio message? The one thing that stood out had come from the sniper Kelly, when Bob asked him,
Lance Corporal Krahl: “Billy hated the corps but he loved Ray Cruz. He’d never let Cruz down. Cruz was the mythical sergeant. He seemed like he was out of the movies or something. In the end, I wish he’d loved Ray less because he wouldn’t have worked so hard toimpress him and to become Ray’s spotter. Loving Ray got him killed. I hate to say it, but that mission was a major fuck-up from the start, sending guys way out in bandit country with no air, nothing but fucking
goats
as cover, help two hours away. But if anyone could do it, it would have been Cruz, and if Cruz was going, Billy had to go. God, I miss Billy. Such a good kid, deserved so much more than a facedown in some shit hole full of people with funny hats.”
Swagger’d also watched videotape of the ambush over and over, this under the guidance of the S-2.
It took a while to make out, the angles so grave, the visual information so sparse: the men were, viewed from the top down, just glowing jiggles of light against the multihued dark of the landforms beneath them, the goats faster moving, longer. Still, in time, it became clear. You could watch the ambush team setting up. You could see them checking maps, and whoever was in charge put his security people exactly where any experienced soldier in any army in the world would have put them. He set up his big gun, squirmed behind it. Next to him had to be his own spotter. They held to good ambush discipline, no fucking around, utter stone stillness, no excess motion, men hunting hard and well.
“The colonel wanted to put a Hellfire into them. Would have blown the mission, I think, but would have saved our guys. But there was no way we could get an Apache in close enough in the time frame. We just had to watch and hope the bad guys didn’t shoot, but they did. It was horrible in the bunker, watching it all happen, not being able to do anything about it.”
The major froze the video image of the ambush team setup and still, the targets moving in along their goddamned goat track a distance calculated to be 841 meters out, completely blind to anything except the bleating of the goats.
“Did you request Reaper coverage from the Agency?” asked Bob.
“No, sir. It involves going through a lot of protocols, and no one really trusted that the info would stay private. It’s one thing when a big unit moves out—everybody already knows everything—and anotherwhen an outfit is under fire and you can bring Reapers in fast, so there’s not an issue of security. Here we wanted to run as tight and quiet a ship as possible.”
“Major, how do you figure these guys knew where Ray and Skelton were, and set up so perfectly? I mean, if I had to textbook an ambush, I’d use this tape.”
“I don’t know. A leak? Maybe. More likely these hadjis were on some mission and they saw targets. They had a new toy, a .50 Barrett they’d recovered somewhere. They’re not the most mature individuals, are they? So they set up to take the goatherders down, to test the weapon, to spread the word, maybe to blame the Americans. Only, one goatherder gets away, so they follow him, because he’s no longer a random victim, now he’s a witness and maybe if he makes it out, he gets them in trouble with their own command. I don’t really get how their minds work. I don’t know how they can kill so much and think it’s moral. It’s baffling to me.”
The food came, jarring Swagger back to the real world. He shoved his notepads to one side, ate sparingly, not really paying attention, trying in his mind to find something that would tell him any little thing. Was there a Ray Cruz explainer in there? A little anecdote that revealed an insight, if indeed it was Ray Cruz on the other end of that radio message? The one thing that stood out had come from the sniper Kelly, when Bob asked him,
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