Chapter 4: too deep; what was he going to do? (rated T)

Please note: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...

Upstate New York, late December, 2016

Jules sat with her hands around the back of his head, letting the weight of it sit in her palms. Inside her, she imagined light traveling down her arms and off her hands like heat, jumping the space between her hands and his head. The heat went through his hair and down the skin of his neck and back.

Tuning in more deeply, she could feel the subtle motion at his neck from the stretch of muscle from his breathing – a soft to-and-fro there in the tips of her fingers.

For a long while she just sat there silently, matching his breathing with hers. There was symmetry in that, and a deeper connection as they breathed together. And in a little while, she began sending pulses of a particular energy through her hands down into him. It was a searching energy. Jules was looking for something inside him, trying to hook onto it and pull it forward into conscious thought.

But Reese was too deep inside his own memory to pull him out of it.

Mountains west of Herat, Afghanistan, November, 2001 (rated T)

No moonlight that night, and it was tough going, on the trail up a steep slope, rocks sliding out from under their footsteps. Up ahead was another group of Rangers chasing after Taliban from Herat. Enemy soldiers were heading for the border with Iraq, and the Rangers were trying to cut them off before they escaped.

Off in the distance Reese and his men could hear small arms fire, and lots of it. Denny was on the radio, listening in, and even in the dark, Reese could see his face was worried. Their own group was small, traveling light, and had to be on the far side of the mountain ahead by morning. Theirs was a different mission.

Denny turned around to tell them something, and then all Hell broke loose from above them. Reese saw Denny flinch as a barrage of gunfire and mortar shells rained down on their position. The men leaped from the trail off the sides, taking cover wherever they could find it. They could hear the whistle-screech of mortar shells in the air, just before they landed; then loud explosions just ahead, and sounds of shattered rock bits bouncing off more rock in front of them. Seconds apart, mortars landed just short, one after another, and rounds from rifles whizzed and snapped in the air, bouncing off hard rock all around them. This couldn't be the small group of Taliban up from Herat. There were too many firing. Reese and his men fired rifle bursts up the trail, shooting at the spots where the mortars had come from.

Denny was calling for air support, and in a little while, they could hear artillery fire from behind them, up over the top of them, to the hill where the mortar-fire had come from. A little shelling before the main course was served up to the Taliban. For a little bit then, the hot-metal rain slowed down from the ridge, and Reese thought about moving his men to a better position. But as soon as they tried, more gunfire, and another mortar came in from another angle. They turned their fire to the new targets, while the heavy artillery behind them concentrated fire up the ridge.

They could hear the fight going on above them. The Rangers were taking fire from enemy higher up in the mountains. And their guys were firing everything they had at the enemy in return. The sound of it coming down the mountain was intense. Reese and his men needed to get up there to help.

Reese thought there might be a trail up there, just wide enough for a few motorcycles to ride in from the other side. Russian motorcycles were the Taliban's favorite way to travel – all over trails in the hills, mobile bands of mortar-armed soldiers firing off a few rounds, then moving on before they could be targeted and taken out.

In the darkness, he could hear the whistle-and-screech of another round coming in, closer this time. They all ducked lower, and covered their heads. The ground shook with the explosion. Pebbles pelted them and Reese could hear some of the others cursing, as they fired burst after burst up the ridge.

Overhead now, they could hear engine noise from airmen flying Close Air Support to hit the Taliban positions. A meat-grinder was just about to land in the middle of the bad guys, and it couldn't happen fast enough for Reese and his men. They were itching to move, to get back on the trail again, up to help their guys on the ridge. They heard and could see rockets exploding in the dark, orange balls of flame and smoke roiling up from the ridge above them. Reese heard Denny muttering out loud to the Taliban.

"Have a nice day." And some of the others chimed in, too, as the CAS circled again and again, pounding them over and over.

It didn't last long, but the Taliban took a beating in that short time. And when CAS flew off, it got really quiet really quick. No gunfire. No more mortars screaming in from the ridge. Just the sound of the wind in the rocks.

Reese and his men moved out, careful to stay low until they got to a spot that was better protected. They hustled ahead then, faster, making good time climbing up to the ridge. As they got closer, they could smell the smell of the rocket blasts that had flattened enemy positions.

The moon was just rising behind them, and weak light lit the trail as they got in closer. Denny had been calling ahead, but their guys weren't responding. Maybe COM was out, Reese thought. Or maybe something worse.

The first two they found were Taliban, thrown from their cycles in the strike. Reese walked up to one. He could smell that smell. Once you'd seen it, and smelled it, you'd never forget it. Twisted metal from his cycle had lacerated the soldier's midsection, and the contents had spilled out on the ground. Moonlight glistened off the coils, and they could smell blood and entrails in the night air. Reese stared at the still form, ashen skin where it wasn't bloody.

They moved on to the second one. Legs gone below the thighs, and torso twisted. Black burns on the paler skin. His men were checking the bodies, and on the ground, a small book, with the bloody picture of a woman, covered in black, holding two small children. There was a look in their eyes, Reese thought, a hollow look; not like the smiles and laughter of kids mooning for the picture. More like the look of kids who'd seen too much in their short lives – of war, of poverty, and death. Reese stood for a moment, looking down at the picture. Those faces. Those eyes. It was hard to see, and hard to look away.

Reese's men had started off again, and Denny turned back toward him.

"You comin' ?"

He looked up at Denny and nodded. That picture. Those eyes. Burned into the back of his. Like another from his time there in Afghanistan.

His mind jumped to summer of 2002, and the new kid they called Sketch. Funny-looking kid, with red hair, freckles and big buck teeth. Looked like a pimply teenager to Reese, but then he'd pulled out a picture of his wife and two kids. Proud, just like a Dad. Same red hair and freckles. Jeez, they looked just like him, poor kids.

Sketch got his name from the sketchbook he carried. He was always drawing things in the book, especially kids' faces. He had a way with their eyes. Looked just like them. He was good at it, and Reese was surprised that he could handle a rifle, too. Every time he looked at him, he forgot that he was a Dad. He kept thinking Sketch was a kid himself.

And one day, when they were driving on a long stretch of road, his men in a caravan of Hummers, they had come upon a little village. Just a few houses at the side of the road really. And there was one on the left, with some kids in the front – gawking at their caravan passing by. Reese could see one of the kids waving to some of the men as they drove by, and he remembered their eyes meeting for a moment as he came up even with the boy. They exchanged little smiles in that moment, his dark eyes flashing with his smile.

And then they both flinched as the shock wave hit them, then the sound of the explosion up ahead. They turned together, and saw a Hummer lifting in the air up ahead, the first one in the caravan. Flames and smoke hid the thing as it came back down to the road. The front part of the caravan was engulfed in smoke. Reese's men started running for the front, hidden in the smoke and debris.

When Reese got up there, the men were pulling wounded from the Hummers following that first one, and he could hear screaming from the wounded all around him.

"My legs ! My legs !" Reese walked past, to the first Hummer. Ripped apart, windows blown out. He looked in the passenger side. In the floor, a huge hole was ripped through the metal. In the seat there, on that side, was a soldier, and Reese could see his red hair sticking out from the front of his helmet.

This is gonna be bad, Reese thought to himself. The kid must have lost his legs in the blast.

"Medic!" he heard himself yell. And he leaned in with his arm to reach around the kid's chest and under his armpit to lift him. The door wouldn't budge, and he'd have to pull him out through the window. The kid was light, but not that light. Reese lifted him and then fell backwards to the ground with the kid's head and chest in his arms. And nothing else.

The Medic stopped for a second and looked down at Reese, then at Sketch, then back at Reese. He shook his head and then moved off. Nothing to do here.

It took a minute for Reese to get it. He'd started to yell for the Medic to come back. There was a wounded man here. And then something snapped in his head. He rolled over, and laid Sketch's torso on the ground. He jumped up, and looked back to the houses along the road. The signal must have come from one of those. The signal to blow the IED that took out the Hummer with Sketch inside.

Reese looked back the way they had come, and there was a knot of his men on the dirt in front of the house where the children had been. He ran down there, and when his men saw him coming, they parted. A man was kneeling on the ground, with his hands tied behind him. One of his men was holding a cellphone in the air toward Reese.

"He used this," the soldier said, as Reese walked up. They used cellphones to detonate IEDs placed on the roadways where the Americans would be. Reese looked at the man, kneeling, with hate in his eyes, and a smirk on his lips.

The smell rose up from Sketch's blood and guts soaked into Reese's camo. That same smell. His arms and hands were sticky with Sketch's blood. Back in the Hummer, the singed sketchbook with the drawings of so many kids' faces. And in his chest pocket, the picture of his wife and the two little kids back home. Reese could feel something start to break free inside him.

On the ground, kneeling, the man lifted himself, raising his head, shouting something Reese didn't understand. He started to reach for his rifle, the thought of those kids in his head, and this man on the ground, smirking, shouting in his face.

Reese shouldered his rifle, and his men backed away. No one said anything to stop him. The man on the ground stared up at him, defiant.

Then a little voice nearby. Reese turned his head. The little boy with the dark eyes, waving and smiling as they'd passed by – held now by one of his men squatting behind him, arm wrapped around the boy's tiny frame.

His face was streaked with tears, and he was reaching toward the man on the ground, calling him. Then he looked up to Reese, terror in his eyes, and that question, that terrible question, too.

What was he going to do?