A/N: Happy new year everyone! Also, the scene in which Michael drags Sam for 7 miles will be in this story, but not just yet.

XxX

Chapter 18.

April of 1990.

Michael and the Monster.

War is like a long nightmare. You show up in a uniform, holding a gun, armed with the knowledge to outmaneuver some enemies, and the weakness to fall to others. Far from the action, the generals sit in their tents and shuffle little wooden soldiers around on topographical maps, and back home, people protest and pray and eventually forget. Factories pump out flags on flimsy sticks, letters and cards from classrooms are delivered alongside airdrops, and every day the desert sucks away the last pieces of yourself you managed to hold onto. War is made up of little pieces of paper, of contracts and business deals, of bags and boxes full of bloody coins. It forces you to learn, to grow unnaturally fast, to adapt and change and become someone else.

I learned about war, and about deception, from the spy at our base. Larry filled the quiet hours with rambling, sometimes a madman, sometimes a genius, and there was nothing to do but listen. He took every chance he could to teach me something new, and our lessons could be gentle and harmless, or brutal. He had high, specific expectations, and when I failed him the kindness drained from his eyes. He wanted me to be like him. I could feel it.

But I was nothing like him on the inside. It was a truth I clung to. It was what drove me to make my first great mistake in years – to leave my friends behind and go off on my own. Larry would have blown a gasket if he knew why I was going to Ubu, one of the villages that had proven an effective chokepoint for supplies to Dubwana and his army. Larry would say the warlord was too focused on his northern mines to care about Ubu, but I made it my personal mission to look out for it. Whether it was naivety, or caution after Mshauri, Larry would hate it.

He would hate me for this.

I was on my knees, my hands bound behind in front of me, my uniform lying in a heap that slowly burned at the base of a makeshift throne. Ubu was safe for the moment, but curious, and they stood by their homes and watched me with wide eyes, because they were afraid to look at the throne.

Dubwana was here. He sat like a king on a thatched seat, a silver crown upon his head. He had dusky brown skin, mostly hidden beneath a massive fur cloak. Beneath it, his legs showed many scars, and his feet were bound in sandals. He looked like any other man, and was no bigger than any of his companions, but it was immediately obvious that he was the authority here.

When he was done chatting with his companions in rapid Swahili, he stepped off his throne and approached me. Larry had taught me defiance in the face of certain death, but I had seen the way that worked for the men he killed. I practiced caution instead, looking at the ground.

Dubwana crouched down, staring at my face, frowning seriously, "What are you?"

He spoke English with a heavy accent, but I was used to the inflection by now. I chanced a look up into his eyes and found that one had a slash across it and the iris was gray.

"I… I'm a soldier."

"American." Dubwana looked around at the villagers, who seemed to shrink back a bit. "You are giving me the headache, you people. Sitting on my villages, stealing my supplies, killing my men. Do you know who I am, boy?"

"Dubwana," I said, though I had a feeling he was asking for more than a name.

He grabbed my face, squeezing my cheeks with long fingernails, and spat, "I am king. You are in the presence of royalty!"

I knew what kind of king he was. Dubwana was the target of our operation because we wanted the resources he was claiming, but there was more to him than that. He was starving the locals, terrorizing the countryside, claiming authority he didn't have, usurping the government. His type of leadership, his attempt at domination, came at a high cost.

"You will be telling me the plans you are making," Dubwana said.

Before he asked a question, and before I could have said anything, someone grabbed my arm and twisted it, nearly taking my shoulder out of socket. The warrior bore me to the ground, my face in the sand, and held me there, every nerve tingling. The pain was so sudden I screamed. I struggled, but it was like a boulder had fallen on top of me. I was helpless.

"Where are your allies?" Dubwana asked.

I said nothing. When I was young, my father would demand I tell him where I hid my little brother, and twist my arm until it was close to breaking. All the beatings I had taken, all the cold, lonely nights in juvie without a word, all the interrogations by teachers and grocery store owners, prepared me for this moment. To accept the pain, and live with it.

"Where are your allies?"

Sand ground into my cheek, salt in a wound.

"Where are your allies?"

I thought about the Reyes house, empty and cold.

"Where are your allies?"

It went on for hours, or minutes. It was hard to tell when the pain was so intense, when one arm went numb and my tormentor expertly switched to the other. Random thoughts flitted around in my head, memories from my childhood, expectations for my future. Only one thought stayed locked away in the back – surrender.

He was going to have to kill me, because I would never talk.

Dubwana seemed to come to that decision, because his questions became statements and threats instead. He was impatient and angry.

"Do you want to die, boy?"

No.

"Open your mouth and speak!"

No.

"Will you be so stubborn when I remove your tongue?"

Yes.

"His shoes. His shoes." He started in Swahili again, and the warrior finally released my arm. He yanked one of my shoes off, and then the sock, and grasped my foot in his hand. He pulled a machete from his belt, letting it glint in the sun.

Dubwana came down to my level again.

"You begin losing limbs now, boy."

I was ready, and so afraid that I trembled. It was a strange contrast. Somehow, I kept my mouth firmly shut, my eyes level, staring at my foot and imagining life without it. I was there, but my mind was distant. Everything inside of me was cold, as cold and lifeless as the Reyes house. On the outside I was trembling violently, naked in the arctic, a little boy in the hands of a stranger.

And then his voice came.

"Stop!"

Everything on the inside, in the inner circle, where Dubwana, the warrior, and I were standing, stayed the same. Neither of them stirred, and I could not look away from my own foot. But the troops Dubwana had brought with him all fixed their weapons on the new arrival, who held his hands up to keep himself from being shredded.

Larry was not armed. He had a radio in one hand.

"Dubwana," Larry said, "I'm here to negotiate."

Finally, as if he had just noticed the stir, the warlord looked up. He narrowed his eyes at Larry, and whistled to his monster, who let go of my foot. I was finally able to look up, to see my comrade walking into this warzone with nothing but a radio and his charm.

"We want our man back," Larry said, motioning to me, but not taking his eyes off Dubwana. "You want us to stop the siege. So, let's make a deal, shall we?"

Dubwana waved his hand dismissively, "What siege. You are hopelessly outnumbered."

"Oh, not here. No, the one happening at your base right now while you play fifty-questions with the kid."

Now the men stirred, murmuring, and Dubwana growled, "You are lying."

"You have one of these, huh? Give your guys a call." Larry wiggled his radio.

Dubwana was still for several seconds, suspicious, but curious. He finally said, "Shoot him if he moves," and pulled a little radio from his pocket. He unfolded the antenna and hit a few buttons, sending a signal out. He spoke in Swahili.

A response came, a little garbled.

Larry spoke, his voice low and threatening. "If we keep it up much longer, your walls will come down. Instead of negotiating and winning half of what you want, we will grind you and your people into a bloody little puddle in the sand."

At this threat, the militants tensed. Dubwana scowled.

"But this is your ticket." Larry held up his radio, tapping the button on the side. "One little word, and you get half of this oilfield and our blessing to do whatever the hell you want with it. But if you shoot me, if you shoot him," he motioned to me again, finally meeting my eyes, "You lose that deal. Think about what you want to do, Boss."

Dubwana had no time to think about it. In a blur of motion, Larry pulled a concealed gun from his waistline and shot the warlord square in the forehead. Soldiers popped off the nearby roofs and gunned down the hostiles surrounding the throne, leaving them lying in a pile around their king.

In a blur, in a breath, in a heartbeat, the warlord was done, and the mission was complete.

Larry dragged me out of the central area, into the space between two houses, and cut the bindings on my hands. He set his rifle down and took me by the face, doing a quick assessment.

I only managed to say, "You came."

"'Course I came," Larry muttered, patting me hard on the cheek and letting me rest against the wall. He wiped the blood from his face with his shirt, smearing it.

"But I…"

"None of that. Never apologize." Larry sat down opposite me, and I saw his hands trembling for the first time. "We make decisions. Sometimes stupid ones. But we stand behind them. You could have blown this whole thing, but you ended it instead."

"I didn't-"

"No modesty, either. It's annoying." Larry handed me his canteen. "You came out here with that bleeding heart of yours to protect this place, and you got caught. Our spy on the inside told us that Dubwana was finally leaving the compound, to come interrogate an American soldier personally. I knew it had to be you, you dumbass."

I winced at his sharp tone, but it was hard to be afraid of someone who had just walked into a gunfight to save my life. His canteen was full of whiskey. It went down like fire.

Larry watched me, "Shoulders hurt?"

I nodded meekly.

"Good. You deserve it. Think about that next time you try to be the hero."

"Is it over now?"

"No, but we're nearly there." Larry stood up, swaying a bit, and hauled me up by my arm. It stung, but I tried my best not to show it. "He left some men to hold down the compound. It'll take some time to weed them out. But my job here is done."

"You're leaving?"

"New assignment, hopefully far away from this shit show." He reached for the canteen, and then withdrew his hand, nodding to himself. "Drink some of that at night when the throbbing starts. It'll help you sleep. I'll see you around, kid."