Stephen Coonts - Combat

In order to avoid leaving traces outside, they took care of their needs at the back of a stall. Then Scarface tied Green to a post where the barn door opened, making no attempt to hide him from anyone who might come nosing inside. Scarface was in a surprisingly good mood, considering that he had spent all night walking through Indian country and had just lost an argument. He tried his bits of English on his captive.

“Door open,” he said. “See American.” He cocked his fingers into a play pistol and put the index finger to Green’s temple. “Bang, bang.”

“What’s he’s trying to say,” Frankie explained, “is that anybody comes around here, they bust in the door and they’re going to shoot anything they see alive. So they shoot your ass. And give us time to unload on them. That’s how this shit goes down.”

“Then what?”

“What?”

“Then what happens? All the killing. Daniela. Me. All the others. What’s the point anymore? There’s a cease-fire down here. You’ve got your shitty little country. What more do you want?”

“I want those people dead, man. All of them. They still have our land. It was ours for centuries. I want it back.” He made a whistling sound. “And you saw what they did to our people. That grave. Those people are savages. You can’t live with them.”

It was Green’s turn to smile, to share what he had figured out. Maybe Frankie would kill him. But he would not die fooled.

“Yesterday, you mean?”

“Yeah. Like that. Women. Little babies. Those people are fucking animals.”

“Except the bodies in that grave weren’t your people. Were they, Frankie? That’s why you were going at them with pick-axes, wrecking the evidence. You wanted to show us another mass grave, to pile it on. But you didn’t want us to look too hard. Because the corpses weren’t your people at all. And you knew where the grave was because you did the killing.”

Scarface looked at Frankie. Frankie’s face had gone mean in the gray light.

“Americans can’t understand,” he said at last, “what’s it’s like here. It’s kill or be killed. Them or you. There’s no choice.”

“Women and children? That’s real hero’s work, Frankie.”

“Women have babies. Babies grow up to kill you. Children don’t forget.”

“So everything’s okay. Anything for the cause. Butcher people. Massacre your neighbors.” Green glanced back and forth in the murky light that filtered through the walls and the little window. “Destroy villages like this.”

Frankie laughed. Green still did not get it.

“This village? We didn’t do this , man. Those people did it for us.”

Green looked at him. With a question on his face.

Frankie put on an expression that pitied Green’s naivete. “This was a Muslim village, man. Nobody gives a shit about those scum. Me, I almost like them, in a way. ’Cause those people spend so much time and energy killing them. A bullet in a Turk’s head means one bullet less for mine.”

Green leaned back against his post. Scarface said something to Frankie. Frankie nodded. Scarface stood up and drew a dirty rag from his back pocket.

“Too much talk,” Frankie explained. “Got to be quiet now.”

As Scarface approached him with the gag, Green said, “You’re wrong. This wasn’t a Muslim village. You can smell the pig shit.”

Frankie laughed. Green’s was the funniest act of the season.

“I didn’t say they were good Muslims,” Frankie told him.

They did not wait for the twilight this time. The afternoon was falling golden through the window when Scarface kicked Green awake, tore off the gag, and untied his hands. Then Scarface pulled a heel of bread from his jacket pocket and dropped it in Green’s lap. Green was so dry he could hardly chew or swallow. But he tried not to waste a crumb. This time, he took a swig of the brandy when it was offered.

“They’re lazy fuckers, those people,” Frankie explained. “They wrap up their patrols by the middle of the afternoon. Then they get fucking drunk. They have no culture. Just appetites, you know? They’re not Europeans. But at least it makes things easier for us.”

They let Green go to the back of the stall alone.

“Take a good one,” Frankie called. “’Cause it’s going to be your last. We just got time to get to the highway and take care of business before the UN trucks come back.” After a moment, he added, “They’re stupid, too. I hope those dickheads don’t just drive over your body and turn all this into a waste.”

Scarface muttered and walked off. He opened the door and brilliant light poured into the barn.

“He’s just checking if the coast is clear,” Frankie said. “Then it’s time for our walk.”

The explosion shook the birdshit from the rafters of the barn. Frankie grabbed his rifle and took off, abandoning Green. After a delay of a few seconds, the screams began.

Green had never heard such an intensity of shock and pain in a human voice. Even the girl’s cries had not been as piercing.

The window was set high, at the back of the barn. It was small. But Green thought he could fit through it. He was just pulling himself up to the sill, when he heard the voice behind him.

Frankie had come back. “Get the fuck down. Get out here. Now.”

The sunlight was hard as metal. Scarface lay on a pile of rubble. Thrown there. He had no legs.

He was screaming and rocking, trying to tourniquet himself with a belt. The only words Green could decipher were “Help me, help me.”

Scarface looked up from the shreds of meat and bone and rags where his legs had been. Looking at Frankie.

Frankie stood there. Fingering his rifle.

Scarface pleaded. He was nothing but a little pile of bloody meat. Sprawled on blown cinderblocks, broken beams, and masonry. The ultimate bed of nails.

“You.” Frankie said, turning to Green. “Get down. Lie down.”

Green stared at him.

Quick as a boxer, Frankie slammed him on the shoulder with his weapon, then beat him across the back. The barrel cracked against a rib and the sight tore through Green’s jacket.

“Get down, motherfucker. Lie down on your goddamned belly.”

Green lay down. A couple of body-lengths away, Scarface shrieked and begged.

“Spread out your arms and legs,” Frankie told Green. “ Do it.”

Green did it.

“Now don’t move. Or you’re history.”

Green understood more of what Scarface was saying now. The man was pleading with Frankie to make Green carry him back over the mountain, to help him stop the bleeding, to do something, anything …

Frankie picked up a chunk of cinderblock.

Green could just see Scarface’s eyes. The terror. The legless man scuttled and twisted, trying to bring his weapon around. But Frankie threw the cinderblock.

It struck Scarface in the chest, stunning him for a moment.

Frankie shoved his AK behind him, grabbing a rock with one hand and another piece of cinderblock with the other. He was quick.

“Ne,” Scarface screamed. “Ne, ne …”

Frankie stood over him and hurled the rock at his comrade’s head.

Scarface dropped back onto the rubble. After the pile of rocks and masonry settled again, there were no more sounds.

Frankie switched the piece of cinderblock to his right hand. This time he bent low and brought it down on the side of Scarface’s head, with all of his weight behind it. He swung with so much force he fell onto the body.

Green could not quite see the effect of the blow. But he heard the sound of a dropped pumpkin.

Frankie knelt over the man for a moment. Gasping. Then he smashed the chunk of cinderblock down again. Making sure. The shard trailed a spray of blood as it descended. Then more blood splashed upward, catching Frankie’s face.