Chương 3
Mara wanted to ask whether he remembered Daniel.
Instead she closed her eyes.
Her brother would have been thirty-six.
That was a useless thought, but grief was full of useless arithmetic.
Thirty-six.
He would probably have complained about his knees. He would have owned another terrible coffee maker. He might have divorced Rebecca anyway. He might have gotten out of the Army. He might have stayed until retirement and become the kind of man who told eighteen-year-olds that every new regulation had personally ruined the service.
He might have called her that morning and asked why she was doing something stupid.
She heard tires on gravel.
Not close yet.
A vehicle was coming fast from the paved road.
Keller looked toward the sound.
“Probably the ambulance.”
“I don’t need an ambulance.”
“You collapsed on a training route in ninety-plus heat.”
“I sat down.”
“You fell sideways.”
“That was after I sat down.”
“Sure.”
Mara opened one eye.
“Are you always like this?”
“Only with patients.”
“So yes.”
“Basically.”
The corner of Bowen’s mouth moved from where she sat nearby.
Vega remained standing alone.
The vehicle was not an ambulance.
A white government SUV came around the bend and braked hard enough to throw dust beyond its front bumper.
Captain Haines got out before the engine stopped.
He was younger than Vega, mid-thirties, narrow-faced and visibly furious. He took in the scene in quick pieces: soldiers sitting with their rucks off, Keller kneeling over Mara, Vega without his hat, the open envelope.
“What happened?”
No one answered immediately.
Haines looked at Vega.
“Sergeant.”
Vega held out the papers.
Haines snatched them.
He read the first page.
His anger changed direction.
“What is this?”
“Command-directed assessment,” Vega said.
“I can read.”
“Then that’s what it is.”
Haines looked at Mara.
“You’re Ward?”
Mara pushed herself onto one elbow.
Keller put a hand against her shoulder.
“Nope.”
She glared at him.
He pushed gently.
“Stay down.”
Haines walked closer.
“Ms. Ward?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the civilian observer?”
“That’s one description.”
“What description were you given?”
“Protected witness.”
The captain’s eyes went to Vega.
“You knew about this?”
“No.”
“You had to know something.”
“I knew a civilian participant was attached to the event under brigade authority.”
“Why didn’t I?”
Vega looked at him.
“That sounds like a question for brigade.”
The answer landed badly.
Haines glanced toward the soldiers.
“Everybody get your gear. Move down the road fifty meters.”
Keller said, “No.”
Haines turned.
“What?”
“These soldiers have been stopped in the heat. Some are already cooling. I’m not moving them until I check who needs water and who doesn’t.”
“I’m not asking—”
“Sir.”
Keller stood.
He was shorter than Haines by several inches.
He did not sound intimidated.
“I have a heat casualty on the ground. Command paperwork says halt the event. The event is halted.”
Haines stared at him.
Mara saw the same impulse in the captain that she had seen in Vega earlier: make the world move because you told it to.
The difference was that Vega now recognized it.
“Let him work,” Vega said.
Haines slowly looked at him.
Mara could almost feel the history between the two men.
Not friendship.
Habit.
Vega had probably spent years absorbing pressure from officers above him and translating it into orders for soldiers below. Captains changed every two years. Sergeants remained and learned the personality of whatever authority arrived next.
Haines folded the command order.
Keller made an annoyed sound.
“Sir.”
Haines stared at him.
“Please stop folding the evidence.”
One of the younger soldiers laughed before he could prevent it.
He immediately looked at the ground.
Haines handed the papers back.
“Where’s brigade?”
Bowen answered.
“On the way, sir.”
“How long?”
“They didn’t say.”
Haines rubbed his forehead.
“Of course they didn’t.”
The ambulance arrived seven minutes later.
Mara argued for three of those minutes.
She lost.
Keller had her on a stretcher before she could work out whether standing up would make her point or simply make her unconscious.
As they lifted her, she caught Vega watching.
“Don’t leave,” she said.
Keller glanced down.
“Me?”
“Not you.”
Vega took one step closer.
Mara pointed at him.
The gesture lacked strength, which irritated her.
“You.”
Vega’s expression did not change.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Inside, the air-conditioning was so cold that Mara began shivering almost immediately.
Keller climbed in with her.
Another medic started an IV.
Mara watched the bag hanging above her.
“I hate needles.”
Keller looked down at the catheter already secured in her arm.
“Little late.”
“My brother used to pass out during blood draws.”
“That seems medically inconvenient.”
“He was infantry.”
Keller sat back.
For the first time since the collapse, the sarcasm disappeared from his face.
“Ward.”
Mara looked at him.
“You mean the soldier on the memorial wall.”
“Yes.”
Keller nodded once.
“I was new to the battalion when it happened.”
“You knew him?”
“No. Saw him.”
“Where?”
“Aid station. Maybe twice. He came in for ankle tape once.”
The ambulance bounced over a rut.
Mara closed her eyes.
Keller continued carefully.
“After he died, they put his picture in the hallway for a while.”
“What picture?”
“Dress uniform. Formal one.”
“I hate that picture.”
Keller gave her a questioning look.
“He looks like a real estate agent.”
Keller stared at her.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
Not loudly.
Mara did too.
The laugh hurt her head, and she stopped.
For a few seconds, neither spoke.
Then Keller said, “Why were you on that march?”
Mara opened her eyes.
“Command wanted to know whether the unit had changed.”
“Changed from what?”
She looked at the IV line.
“That’s the question.”
At the clinic, they took her temperature again, drew blood, gave her fluids, made her drink something orange that tasted more aggressively artificial than any beverage should.
She spent forty-five minutes under observation while her body slowly returned to itself.
May you like
Her calves kept twitching.
Her hair dried stiff with salt against her cheeks.
