(Perhaps inevitably, our hero is a scrambling freelance reporter who can’t count the number of thugs after him, all the privileged anthills he’s kicked over, the story so far.)

Having to do my damn job right giving an Army general the opportunity to lie one last time, I hung up the pay-phone I’d finally found. Gen. Parnell Whitaker was doing nothing but swearing and screaming by that point anyway, and I needed to scram before he got someone on my tail.

Screw Parnell. I had his damn e-mails trapping his hand in the cookie jar. I just needed to insert his non-denial denials into my story and get it published to tie a rope around his neck and my waist. That way anything unforeseen happened to me – any tragic hit-and-run or fall that hit my head just wrong – he knew he was going down too … maybe. Hell, it was the only card I had left.
The Capitol dome looming through the murk, I jogged the six blocks back to Connexions, the dodgy, off-the-radar joint I’d found in down-market Southeast D.C. That Connexions didn’t require a credit card and ID to rent time more than compensated for its creaky computers.

Huffing and puffing past garages and cab companies, a bunch of defunct businesses and the shells of a couple of partially built, pre-Plunge condos (the Plunge hit Washington less than most, but still) – ah, there it was, a long, low, listing affair that might’ve started life as a machine shop. The bright sign over Connexions’ battered wooden door featured a riotously laughing black man in a top hat framed by a red, black and green rainbow. I pushed into its one sprawling room littered with floor lamps resting on worn oriental rugs. A long maroon couch anchored one wall, beat-up armchairs lay scattered about, and three computers sat on tables by the wall opposite the couch.
The owner, a small Subcontinent guy well used by life, raised his gaze from the book resting on a dusty glass case displaying novelty beer mugs and old board games. Another case held stacks of old magazines, a presumably fake gorilla’s head, and an assortment of shrink-wrapped sneakers. Behind him hung a splayed snakeskin tacked to a framed piece of red velvet.
He held up his book. “A history of your civil war. Your fields ran red not so long ago, and yet America, that exceptional nation, instructs us all. Since you’ve actually returned – you found the pay-phone I told you about so far away? – you may call me Zafar.”
Too bad the kid who’d been slaughtering space-cats who look like Hitler was gone, cause he might have shielded my screen from the big lug ensconced at a Connexions computer. The way he two-finger pounded the piece-of-fluff keyboard (pounding his default mode by the look of him), I hoped Zafar had a replacement handy. Though in jeans and tee shirt, from the flat-top up top to the boots down below and all the chiseled slabs of beef in between, everything about him hollered Hoo-Ah! Damn, Whitaker was lightning-quick tracking me from that phone booth to Connexions cause bingo! – a Boot on the ground.
Of course that explained Whitaker’s odd little machinations interrupting the start of our third and last interview. It had nothing to do with recording it as I’d foolishly thought. Rather than worrying about getting quoted correctly, the general was tracing the call to ensure that his e-mails I’d squirreled my way to never saw print at all. I’d waved that big rope tying his neck to my waist under his nose, and I guess Connexions wasn’t hard to find in the time it took me to jog there. It wasn’t like there was another shop renting computer time in the neighborhood.
Nothing to stop the general’s guy from following me if I walked out. So let me try to get the damn story out – and then come what may. I sat down to a grin from a tanned open face not particularly marred by an undulating nose. I nodded hello and micro-zapped the story up on my screen to insert Whitaker’s lies.
“Nothing like a nice clean, no-tell-motel kind of computer to keep up with your buddies,” he said.
“Unlike the ones where they want your DNA first?”
“Riki-tik, friend.” He looked me over from my glorified work boots on up to my long, lanky hair, and said, “Technically, my ‘treatment’ – there’s a joke – requires disengaging from the field of battle. Shit, let JSOC prove it was me using the anonymous e-mail way down here. Cause this boy is gonna find out if his squad’s got any casualties. And nothing but the crotch-rot Swanson was born with.”
JSOC – Joint Special Operations Command – damn! “Glad to hear about the no casualties. We certainly appreciate your service.”
“We? Oh, you mean all them people going shopping. How about you send my wife a case of peanut butter instead. We got two boys gonna be bigger than me sometime next month the way they’re going through it.”
“So you don’t care if they catch you e-mailing?”
“Do I look like I give a shit, my college-boy lieutenant e-mailing frat bunnies all over the East Coast, sending ’em pictures of himself standing with his shirt off in front of our fire base, for fuck’s sake. He’s going through one of those Dutch pirate servers like everyone else, including me here. You too with that weird ‘ditz’ sound your log-on made. I’m doing me no regular micro-zapping, Skype, nothing, till the Army spills the beans on what country my squad’s in – if it ever does.”
“Your lieutenant’s not worried about the pictures going viral, like if he’s good looking or something?”
“We’re hanging it way out over the line on a daily basis, people’s heads – enemies and friendlies – like pumpkins sitting on a fence at 700 meters. So an order from some numb-nuts in Florida who gets to change his socks every morning ain’t gonna stop you from checking up on your wife or girlfriend – or both.” He grinned again.
“You got both, I’d bet.”
“Me? Boy, we be nothing but ghosts where I been, hush-hush up the ass. Any vows this side of the ocean don’t carry no weight over there. But we kill enough of ’em, then buy off the rest, get somebody running things who’s got his mind right, we won’t even need an official war.”
This all tumbled out in a syrupy, good-old-boy rush.
“That’d be good, cause we got how many wars going right now?”
“Three official, two probably never gonna be official, where we’re using proxies and mercenaries – only difference being their color and their pay. And I don’t know how many hush-hush jobs to prop things up like the one I was in for 147 days. I’d still fucking be there except for the wrong damn NATO field-reject.”
“Yeah, what happened?”
“Army says I got the yips from pulling the trigger too much. Like a little shooting is gonna ruin my sleep. Ain’t nothing but politics – ‘international relations’ – them saying I need to calm my ass down. That NATO scum-sucker I walked away from after he pulled his weapon on me – he’s calm, you got that right. They’re saying how I could’ve killed him. Like if I wanted him dead he wouldn’t be stiff right now.”
Him getting excited, I said, “Hey, my name’s, uhm, Nick.”
He smirked. “OK, uhm-Nick. How about you call me Mac. So what brung your ass down here?”
“Trying to get some … stuff out off the beaten track where nobody’d bother me.”
“I hear that.”
“And you don’t worry about the Data Minders messing with you e-mailing your squad?”
He met my inquiring look. “The hidden tip of the motherfucking spear, man! Snake Eaters do not waste their time worrying about the shit Homelanders got to worry about.”
Jesus H., no wonder. Cause, I finally noticed, the whites of his eyes encircled his irises 360-degrees. Like the circle of the sun all the way around during a lunar eclipse. Looking permanently fierce and alarmed since birth and, voila, a stone-killer Gen. Whitaker sent to Connexions to attend to the little spot of bother known as me.
Damn, I had to tip Whitaker to my location. Had to do my job right calling for a final interview though I’d probably never write for even a supermarket shopper ever again. Hopefully Mac wouldn’t mess with Zafar too, listening avidly as he pretended to read.
“Lucky you, dude,” I said and turned back to my screen. Make him blindside me. My scrawled pay-phone notes held up, and I plugged in Whitaker’s crap – writing all the better, somehow, for being scared and quick. I waited for Mac, pounding away there at arm’s length, to make his move.
I hit print before it dawned I had no idea if Zafar even had a printer, but some dinosaur began chugging away over by his display cases. I thought about grabbing the print-out and gone, but where else to find a fax machine even more antediluvian than a printer before Mac rendered me room temperature? That’s right: fax, as Off the Warpath’s editor and I had agreed for my supposed security, much to his amusement. Zafar made it moot, saying, “I see you have printed – ah, only two pages single-spaced. They’re on the house. Now for the fax machine we discussed, which no one else has asked for in many a moon.”
A little birdie had slipped me three of Whitaker‘s particularly incriminating e-mails. I fished out the lining-his-pockets evidence, smoothed them on the display case, and gave Zafar Off the Warpath’s fax number.
“Doing business here in SouthEast D.C., I am able to shrug off most official burdens – Data Minders Turn Elsewhere!” Zafar said with a smile. “It took but a short time after purchasing Connexions from Mr. Howard’s widow to appreciate the local advantages. But since this fax machine is still registered, I think, may I glance at your material? Homeland Control Regs, you know.”
I hesitated, but hell, getting it out to the world was the whole point. Zafar recoiled after studying Whitaker’s e-mails with their bold heading: “For Official Use by Authorized U.S. Army Personnel Only” and his auto-signature at the bottom with his title and internal Pentagon address. “You are into it deep, friend, faxing private U.S. Army e-mails from a general!”
“Could you please shush!” I said, indicating Mac with my finger pointing back through my chest.
“Him? He is no worry. This is his fourth time here – nothing to do with you. We see much worse than him in my country.”
I turned to see Mac lounging back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head. He stood up. Bigger than me where it counted, younger, someone who turned heads to jelly! He ambled up and said, “Most business this guy’s had in weeks, at least the times I’ve been here.”
He turned to perusing the dusty display cases as Zafir said OK, he’d fax my stuff. With a shrug, he added, “I’ll plead the rigors of age and just say I forgot to review them – not that that will float my boat very far.”
I thanked him and fished out a twenty rather than the ten-spot I’d been holding and sat back down a moment to see if any more little birdies were chirping in my in-box.
A tall, skinny, almost albino-looking dude dressed in fatigues burst through the door. His small eyes set in a pale, squinty face, there was nothing washed-out about his intent. I logged off before he was on me, but couldn’t pull the computer’s plug. No talk, no shilly-shallying, he grabbed my wrist and shoulder and hissed, “Get up! Playtime’s over. You’re coming with me!”
I made myself heavy in the chair and flailed away as Mac rushed up. Two of them, Christ, I guessed I was making my exit. I looked to Zafar, and he held my stuff up and signaled OK. Working for Whitaker, why in the world had Mac let that all sail through to Off the Warpath?
Jabbing my weirdo attacker sideways in the knee as he dragged me up got a grunt but no more. No matter, cause he never saw Mac grown huge, his face a snarl. Mac hit him in the neck, and down he went neat and clean, Mac catching his head before it hit. He groaned and started to rise, but Mac did something to his throat. He slumped down and stayed there.
“Jesus, did you kill him?”
“Fuck no. For what? Cause you owe him thirty dollars for bending over his wife? You’ve never come close to killing anyone, so trust me: you better have a reason – or an officer to hang it on. Let’s go.”
“Where? What? I mean, where?”
“Out of here. Or do you want to be here when Twinkie wakes up? He’s not gonna be any too happy, and you weren’t exactly kicking ass before he got mad.”
“I don’t know. I don’t – ”
“No skin off my ass.” He looked down. “Shit. You see this rear-echelon motherfucker’s tattoo?” He pointed to a red animal of some sort on Twinkie’s forearm. “Probably some numb-nuts Academy boy. They’re big-time into that End of the World shit. You coming or what?”
So, leave with my ostensible savior? Would Mac really have caught the guy’s head like that if they weren’t on the same team? No point fleeing on foot, cause I wasn’t shaking Mac if he wanted to follow.
He reached under the table and yanked the cords to his and my machines out of the socket, rose, pulled some bills out of his jeans, and in two strides was at Zafar’s counter.
“Sorry about unplugging the machines, friend. I hope this takes care of that – and Sleeping Beauty there.” He threw the money down and picked up Whitaker’s e-mails and my story off the display case sight unseen. “He’ll be out for about ten minutes. I wouldn’t dump him nearby. But that’s up to you if you know the right place and you got a back door and a vehicle to bring up quick. Your best bet is call 911 and say he fainted. Don’t worry, friend, you’re not the issue. You coming, tough guy?” He pushed my work at me and was out the door.

***************

We jogged to a tall, silver, full-throated pick-up with a workmanlike gleam inside and out parked two blocks away. Mac drove hard, more intent on his mirrors than the windshield, but first grabbed a CAT Machine baseball cap to shield his face from light-pole cameras. I had to settle for a grimy brown one smeared with the name of some cattle drug.
I made the compass and the radar detector, but the four or five extra gizmos mounted here and there eluded me, as did the lunch pail sized motor with gauges and ports and a thick wire snaking up into the dash. But, saved so cravenly, I didn’t feel like small talk about his toys.
Finally encountering a red light at an intersection too busy to run, he pounded the steering wheel hard and give a whoop. “First action in weeks if you don’t count disciplining my broke-dick sons.”
He punched a button, and some twangy, pained country singer started up loud about “I’m too damn tired for how hard it is to fix you anymore.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I yelled. “No – I mean, thanks a million, man.”
“No problemo.” He sang along to the chorus a minute, “My kids are growing bedrock roots/How ‘bout yous?” Then, “Anyone faxing a general’s e-mail, I got their back. That is some deep shit. So you a blackmailer or just a reporter?”
“A reporter. Doing a corruption story about – ”
“Shut it! If it affects me or my squad, I’ll hear about it when they cut my orders. Otherwise, why do I care? Either way, I got deniability.”
“Okay. So where are we going?”
“We’re getting the hell off the streets until Twinkie back there wakes up enough to go back wherever he came from. Me – I ain’t worried. If he had back-up, they would’ve jumped in. Plus he’s not calling any kind of cop, I don’t think. As to you….”
“So where we going?”
“My house.”
“You live around here?”
“Sure, my crib. Do a little relaxing.”
Great. What, this guy wanted his pound of flesh for saving my bacon? We crossed over into Southwest D.C., which featured run-down residential blocks sprinkled among various closed or faded businesses. Down on First and R, down by where you fall off the edge of the world into the Anacostia River, Mac steamed to a stop across from a shabby little ranch house that didn’t match his or his pick-up’s crisp air. He strode through the wreck of a yard and waved his hand behind him to lock a truck that didn’t beep back.
We kicked through the dust by the side of the house, but kept going rather than turning towards a back door reached by a couple of stacked cinderblocks. He warned of dog shit in the baked swamp of naked dirt. On cue, a large, sloppy mutt stirred himself from the hole he’d dug under the yard’s one tree and came up snapping and growling till Mac snarled and raised his hand. The dog already heading back to his hole, I did the same. We passed through some bare bushes into a neat backyard with grass and flowers and then through a bright red back door.
Inside the sunny yellow kitchen I was surprised by the framed portraits of Malcolm and Martin; in the living room Martin and JFK hung amidst the chintz. A big, flat-screen TV was over in a corner, its giant packing box in the corner opposite. I drank in the red-roses couch encased in plastic, the blinding yellow carpet, the dried flowers overflowing a vase on the table, the Beatrix Potter bunnies here, the coffee-table antiques books there and looked at Mac and his muscles and laughed and said, “I’m sorry. But all this crap isn’t exactly what I expected.”
“It’s not my house, shit-brains. Look here.”
Deep red curtains blanketing both of the living room windows, he pulled one slightly ajar. Across the street, a long expanse of weathered brick wall stretched out of sight in both directions. A little to our left, the two halves of a hurricane-fence gate were so askew anyone could have crawled underneath. Beyond lay an expanse of tall scrubby weeds. I said, “What’s that, an old TB hospital they’ve closed down?”
He moved the curtain more and gave a chuckle. “You’d never know it from here, but that’s Fort McNair, home to the Capital Region Homeland Defense Battalion. Twenty-three-hundred grunts sitting on their asses waiting to lock down any rebellion. The Army should move them up to Baltimore, the shit they got going down up there, packs of dogs gone feral roaming the streets. But HeadFuck wants them here. Wonder what he knows he ain’t saying. Anyway, the best way to stay out of sight is right under the Army’s nose.”
HeadFuck, not HeadMan. Well, well, well. “So, what’re you, AWOL?”
He was on me quick, grabbing a fistful of shirt. “Do I look like the sort of pussy to go AWOL, the men I’m supposed to be getting home safe getting shot at four times a week? That the kind of staff sergeant I look like to you, you sonofabitch?”
“No, of course not. It’s just I….”
“Just you what?”
Doing nothing for my nerves, he did a quick frisk, released me and stared, then went over to the couch and started fiddling with something in a drawer in the coffee table. “You a drop-kick dog, dude? One of them dogs going through life getting punted into one wall after another?”
Was I? A damn interesting question for another time, I shook my head.
“Un-huh. Somebody who likes to hitchhike with a piano? Look, I got a brother in my squad in-country – where I’d fucking be right now if the Army had any balls. This is his momma’s house. For fifteen-hundred bucks for the time I got to report to Walter Reed three days a week, she figured she could go live with her sister.”
“What’s happening at Walter Reed?”
“You know what PTSD is, that the shit-brained newspapers are always yelling about whenever somebody punches a door or has a DWI. You know what it stands for?”
I nodded.
“Wrong! It stands for Pussies and Titty-Sucking Douchebags. The whole damn deal was cause of this idiot college-boy lieutenant. Not mine, but this asshole from The fucking Citadel walking way out of his way to tell me about needing to shave if you can fucking believe it. Me with thirteen years in to his thirteen months, and us deep in-country and my ‘beard’ barely a week old.”
He stopped a sec, then, “One of our own had got dusted the day before…. So, basically, I had that asshole’s shirt up over his head and his hands behind his back before he could spit.”
“But you didn’t hurt him.”
“Only a little. Then there’s wiping the floor with that NATO dickhead who took his side-arm out at the wrong party. So now I’m sitting around singing Campfire-Girl songs to calm my ass down so I can go back and shoot Fiends – the same ones we’ll be ‘mentoring’ a week later after we buy off the long-beard running their tribe.”
“Modern warfare, huh?”
“Look, America’s not at war. America’s at the mall, feeling for the money that used to be in our pockets. That’s what, almost 340-million of you to get your ass kicked or to screw a soldier on a Saturday night, depending.”
“And pay the tab.”
“Whatever. Then, a step up from you Homelanders, you got Air Force, Navy – them numb-nuts. Then you get your roll-around-in-the-mud regular grunt, good and bad both, even all the foreigners wearing my flag on their shoulder. Finally, up top, there’s the men that do what I do, the snake-eating tip of the motherfucking spear.”
“What – Special Ops?”
“That’s right, JSOC. Even the dumb-ass Army knows we gotta get regular maintenance. Years back, we’d get a short hop to Greece or Spain or someplace to raise some hell. Shit, had me one of my best times ever in Crete – if you ever heard of that. Everything, and I’m talking everything, was dirt-cheap there. But now, that’s too ‘dangerous,’ American personnel on everybody’s shit-list with HeadFuck making friends all over the map.”
“You think he’s more hated here or overseas?”
“Do I know – or even care? But I’ll tell you a natural fact: for a supposed to be ‘caretaker’ president, HeadFuck’s dug his self in pretty damn deep. Guess it takes somebody like him to make me miss the pointy-headed bastard who was running things before him.”
“Wasn’t pointy enough, you ask me.”
“Yeah, well, instead of sitting with German broads going topless on a beach in Majorca, I’m at Walter Reed talking about my feelings cause the Army says it’s got too much invested in an experienced Special Ops staff sergeant to flush me down the toilet.”
“Meanwhile, regular Army, or National Guard anyway, can’t see a shrink till their eyeballs are spinning in their heads.”
“Yo – you’re not here to be talking about eyeballs.”
Him almost as angry as when he grabbed my shirt, I nodded and said, “So you came to the hood to chill.”
“Nothing wrong with a little freelancing to keep the reflexes sharp. I had to get that one homie’s mind right, the one down the block wanted to know why I’d kicked Boo-Right’s Momma out. Like he gave a shit about Momma, been scaring her white for years. Boo-Right used to be just like him till I had him in my squad for six weeks, and he was riki-tik A-OK – especially when he basically saved all twelve of us when they were shaving our monkey good in We’re-Fuckedistan. We put him up for a Bronze Star, until that butt-fuck colonel blocked it, saying his first Bronze Star in something that big was going to regular Army. That Snake Eaters been getting too many.”
“So all the wars we got going, the Army’s taking all comers?”
“Look, most of our guys got their shit tied down tight. The Plunge and no more jobs upped quality. But every recruiting sergeant’s still got a bottle of urine-flush to wipe the Maryjane clean. Or the recruit’s got some kind of legal trouble. Or they’re White Power, in it for the weapons training.”
“Yeah, how do they do?”
“Hell, the skinheads are OK, you get their attention. But they get all embarrassed and secret and stuff, you catch ‘em in a group talking their ‘Blood and Earth’ shit.”
“They make out OK with all the foreigners we got now?”
“Not even close. But that’s another joke. A while back I was helping babysit some regular Army in a nasty part of We’re-Fuckedistan. And I needed a translator to re-give the order I was giving to a kid with an American flag on his arm. You fucking believe it? The whole company was half foreign, one hell of a mix with all the hillbillies like me. They kick ass, some of ‘em, once you got ‘em pointed in the right direction, but damn.”
“And they’re the ones that are always on-point.”
“Damn right. You gotta be lucky, and you got to be good to end up with USA stamped on your ass. Unless it’s posthumous, which just means paying off the grunt’s kids growing up eating tacos somewhere. Give ‘em that, shit yeah, growing up with no daddy. It’s only money – the same money my two kids are gonna burn through soon enough. Thank God they’re mostly growed, the fifteen-year-old anyway. So the motherhunchie likes to think.”
“So where’s your family – your wife and kids – live?”
“Away. Out in the country three hours southwest of here. We’re pretending the gas three times a week to Walter Reed and back cost too much. But fuck it, I left. Had to or I was gonna kill the big one – little, uh, Mac, Jr., let’s call him.”
“Fifteen’s a tough age. I mean, I would imagine.”
“How I know your sorry ass ain’t reproduced itself? Anyway, he’s into death metal. Fine by me, he’ll fit right in the regular Army till he gets he’s head blowed off at twenty when it’s his turn. Only by the time his time comes, he’ll be fighting over water.”
“ Gotta fill them plastic bottles, man.”
“Hopefully he’ll have his momma signed up on the insurance and not some gash telling him her third baby is his. Ain’t no way I’m making it till then with HeadFuck deploying like there’s no tomorrow. Problem is, I been away so much, he’s got hair down to his ass now, and his mother says that’s his prerogative. You believe that shit? Like you give it a fancy name, that means it’s OK.”
“Language been covering up a lot of sins in this country for a long time.”
“Let the kid go queer with that hair. Like I give a shit. Right before I left, what set the fuse, he comes down one Saturday morning with a candy-ass bracelet on, and that is where I drew the motherfucking line. He tried telling me I should like it, that it’s a warrior thing.”
“What’d you do?”
“Whadiya think – I took it off him. He was a strong little motherhunchie, stronger than I woulda thought, so that’s something. Plus we were out in the backyard, so the only thing got broke was her damn rose bushes.”
“Get with the program, Mac. They got so many rubber bracelets now, you can have a rainbow up and down your arm.”
“Not my kid.” He laughed. “Hell, we were both picking thorns out for hours. Plus the beer bottle he broke and came after me with – give him credit for that. His mother bitching that I shouldn’t even be having a beer in the morning cause we had the other one’s damn soccer game to go to. Candy-ass game – you look at somebody wrong, and it’s a foul. Like I’m gonna worry about them soccer sheiks smelling beer on me, the kid’s coach probably the cousin of somebody I shot last month.”
“No, no, man. Somebody you were mentoring .”
“Even with paying Boo-Right’s Momma all this rent, my wife said I needed to get away, do some thinking about what’s important to me.”
Mac looking ready to snap something in half, I tried to switch gears. “So what is important to you?”
“It sure ain’t the extra life insurance she was on my ass to get, saying the Army death benefit isn’t enough to feed them two ingrates on. All I needed was her to motherfucking co-sign a pipsqueak fourteen-grand loan to buy a new truck. That one around the corner is eight-years old even if it don’t look it cause I’m never home long enough to put any miles on it. Making the most money ever, so how’d I end up driving the oldest truck in my life? And I tried telling her buying a new one was as good as life insurance, she could just sell it when my time came.”
“Come on, Mac. You’re indestructible, you know that. You’re gonna end up sitting in a rocking chair with your knees hurting, trying to remember where you put your teeth.”
“Just as long as there’s some gash there who’s lost her teeth too.”
I grinned all friendly-like, not that he noticed. He’d rescued me and, nobody from the neighborhood dropping by to yuk it up with the big, intense white soldier, he was getting his money’s worth.
“That damn one-year term policy she wants me to get from that shyster she met on line at the store – right! – the premium totals forty-seven percent of the death benefit once they hear you’re Special Ops. Hell, I can go down to a Tunica, Mississippi casino and get better odds than that.”
“What do you play?”
“Poker. Nothing but. That piece-of-shit insurance is about as fubared as them Navy cocksuckers figuring out if an engine or something is broke by throwing it overboard. If it floats, it ain’t broke. Tell me a truck ain’t a better investment than life insurance that only pays fifty-three percent of what you put in…. I said tell me a new truck don’t make more sense than that, damnit. What the hell you grinning at?”
“What you said – about the Navy. Sorry, it took me a minute to get it. Look, don’t worry about insurance, man. You got a rich uncle you don’t know about waiting in the wings.”
“Not my dirt-farmers. She thinks with me being away so much, she’s calling her own tune now. But I showed her ass. Took the cash I’d saved for the truck from my last re-up. Had it all picked out, engine and everything, and would’ve locked that money away sitting on rubber in the driveway – the damn driveway I’m paying for by getting shot at all over the world. But, no, she wouldn’t co-sign that itty-bitty loan. So, fuck her, that money ended up here with me, what’s left of it, anyway.”
“Whadiya mean, ‘what’s left.’ How much money can you spend on booze and broads how quick?”
“Don’t forget my present to Boo-Right’s Momma.” He pointed to the new TV, frozen on a picture of a girl undraped in seaweed. “No way I was up here for weeks watching her little toaster oven. Not that there’s anything on to give a shit about. Fake tits, fake laughs, fake dying – five minutes and it all goes blank after what I’ve seen. Baseball once in a while. I like how the team’s manager, the leader – hah! that’s another one – has to get up to go talk to the pitcher, not the other way round.”
“Who you root for?”
“Been gone so much, I kinda lost touch. The Indians, probably, before they moved down to where’d they go after the Disruption – Knoxville? I don’t know, whoever’s winning I guess. I gotta pee.”
I fought the sheer nervous impulse to walk around the room and look at Momma’s tchotchkes. He came back and started messing again with something in the drawer in the coffee table. Eventually he looked up and said, “Till our day comes, motherhunchie, we do got to amuse ourselves. That’s something I learned a long ways from home a long time ago. And you know what, I found something here, right on Boo-Right’s Momma’s block, to help me power-up all that important thinking my wife’s so worried about.”
Pulling it out of the drawer, he said, “If you and Twinkie back there are setting me up cause I got sloppy e-mailing too many times from Connexions, then you, motherhunchie, are the most squirrel-nuts JSOC investigator ever been born. Or you’re just damn good with this little doofus act of yours. Either way, you don’t have a weapon on you, so we’ll see what happens.”
***************

And Mac brought out a little glass pipe along with a plastic lighter and lit up and sat back, holding in smoke with a rictus grin. He exhaled, not that much came out, reached into the drawer for more pebbles for his bowl, then made them disappear. Crack. That’ll calm him down.
“Unless you personally been under fire, I am taking no motherfucking looks from the likes of you.”
“Hey, knock yourself out.”
“We got six-hundred-and-twelve Special Ops wrapping up that gas pipeline dust-up I was in. The one they say ain’t worth shipping me back for. Unless it gets blown up into an official war and time for the regular Army to go roll around in the mud. Either way, Army says I’m headed to West Timor in a couple of months.” He fired up again.
“East Timor. I didn’t know we were there.”
“Pay attention, damnit. I said West Timor. And we won’t be there either, not least anybody owns up to. We gotta … take out – that’s what the brass-hats with big balls like to call it on TV – forty-two Fiends. We do it and get out, I get to sit on my ass and drink for one solid year. Twelve whole months, they can’t fucking touch me!”
“Sweet. A year on the beach.”
“That’s if I make it back to my wife’s loving arms – the ones getting a workout while I’m gone. A job like West Timor, you got a one-in-five chance of getting dusted. That means a candy-ass like you don’t get to say shit about how I relax.”
The pistol he took out of the drawer and laid on the coffee table was big and thick and had the usual dull gleam. ”Don’t mind Henrietta there. She helps me relax too. You want some of this?”
I could feel my mouth hanging open as I stared at the gun. An armed, unhinged killer on the pipe – I was so freaking glad he rescued me. “Uh, no. Not my scene, man.”
“All this is is plain old cocaine. Not all that strong, but they sure boil it down. Don’t make no difference if you’re smoking it. That’s just white-boy thumb-up-your-ass, thinking you’re better if you’re snorting it and get your nose chewed up. Your lungs will grow back – they’re a wet organ. Your nose ain’t gonna fix itself.”
I sat there staring at him, him and Henrietta. “So I asked you a question, Squirrel-Nuts,” he said on the exhale.
“I’m sorry, Mac. What’s the question?”
“Hey, don’t go squirrelly on me, Squirrel-Nuts, just cause a cold-blooded killer in the Secret Army of Northern Virginia is enjoying a little cocaine. I’ve killed 56 assigned targets. Extremists, Insurgents, Fiends – fucking Bad Guys – whatever they’re calling them that week. Maybe time to bring Commie back too. Check the T-box, squeeze the trigger soft, and bingo, Miller Time. We call it the Propaganda of the Dead. Works real well keeping the locals in line.”
“You don’t have to put any heads on a pike?”
“It’s civilized, man. They never know till it’s over. And that’s not counting who knows how many I’ve done up on a ridge under the moon spraying on full automatic. You watch your step, and Henrietta and I don’t need no more till I get back on an airplane.”
“That’s damn white of you, man.” That’s right, time to emphasize our shared heritage.
“All them air strikes I called in ain’t on my head – no way. You drop the bomb, they’re yours, flyboy. And I’ve never killed a kid in my life, he ain’t shot at me first. I don’t care what they say about that one maggot, him supposed to be fifteen, but with a beard Abe Lincoln would die for. Shit, I’d have had more confirmed kills except for that whole stretch of years when they went nuts with the damn drones the pussy-ass CIA is so crazy for. That shit’s important” – he jabbed his pipe at me – “cause now you get promoted based on your number of kills. They used to fudge it. Never came right out and said it. But now with HeadFuck turning us loose, they got a formula.”
“Promoted based on the number of kills: doesn’t that creep you out?”
“They’re Bad Guys, man! It’s just my damn job. The main thing is, if they had the same promotion ladder going all along, I’d be a master sergeant right about now. That’s what you get for sixty confirmed kills, and believe me, I’d’ve got me my four more. Be rolling in dough and not taking shit from anybody under a major. That’s another reason to hate the drones, even if they ain’t stealing one of my squad’s good honest kills.”
He stopped for another bowl. How much damn rock did he have in that drawer, and how twisted was he gonna get?
“All this T they drum up with these ’informants’ — enablers more like it — is bullshit, anyway,” he said on the exhale. “Homelanders are more likely to die in the bathtub. Especially you, dude. Anyway, work was slow for a few years till they loaded the drones up with so much shit – cameras and geospatials and electronically scanned array radar and satellite uploads – that now they cost more than a hunter-killer team of Boots.”
“For real?”
“Some JSOC major got ahold of a print-out we weren’t supposed to see of the actual dollars-and-cents math – death benefits versus these jacked-up drone replacement costs and whatnot. Our food and fuel versus the cost of securing a runway. Seems like the CIA got stage fright once their toys got so expensive, so we were back in business.”
“Raining death from the skies doesn’t cut it anymore?”
“Doesn’t matter how many bombs you drop, Numb-Nuts – ever hear of a little skirmish called Vietnam? Pussy-ass Air Force ain’t never won a war, and it never will. So let us do our thing, kill or get killed, and leave us the fuck alone.”
He had another hit and held it, polecat-white circumnavigating his eyes.
“So, Mac, why am I more likely to die in my bathtub?”
“You don’t think faxing out some general’s e-mail don’t lead to getting dizzy in the shower? These days with HeadMan running things? And don’t answer that, Squirrel-Nuts. I do not want to be thinking about you naked.”
His silence didn’t last long. “World War II, they say less than one in four soldiers under fire shot back. Now think about what I do. That means the Army made me who I am. I didn’t steal people’s kittens and torch ‘em as a kid. I didn’t even go hunting – too boring, nobody shooting back. So now I’m supposed to quit the Army and what? Go sell Chinese cars, that Caddy knock-off they got for like fourteen grand?”
“Hey, your Campfire-Girl treatment is gonna make you good as new. Good for another fifty-six anyway.”
“I’m good for ‘em now, motherhunchie.”
“You got a beer, man?”
“You should get yourself some of that Seroquel the Army gives out like candy – you crush it and snort it. All I got is some bourbon in the kitchen. Give you a hit for every hit you take off this shit here.”
I shook my head as he fired up again, Henrietta plopped in his lap. “So, uhm, you know what time it is?” I looked around for a clock. “Cause I got somewhere I gotta be, and I’m not quite sure how to get there from down the ass-end of wherever we are.”
He’d previously exhaled up towards the ceiling, but this time gave me a nasty face-full of cat-pee/burning-solvent smoke. “Wherever it is, you got plenty of time cause I’ll drive you. Right now your job is to sit there and shut the fuck up and be clever. And, just to prove I ain’t a hard-ass, you can have some bourbon if you want.”
“Nah. I still got some reporting to do later – face to face. The guy’ll smell it on me.”
“So, that’s against the law, having a drink? Or are you worried the cunt-sucking Data Minders might find out? Speaking of which, I ain’t even told you about my wife. That’s all she wants now. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind munching a little carpet once in a while – fair’s fair, change of pace. All that shit. But that’s all she wants. Said I was too rough fucking her. She used to like it rough, but what, her boyfriend’s a lapper, so now that’s all she wants?”
He stood up, sat back down, turned and put his feet up on the couch.
“And when I wasn’t too rough, she said them pills they had me on at Walter Reed till I tossed ‘em, were messing me up – me, who’s fucked his way all up and down the Irrawaddy and back again.”
There was no way I was encouraging this alarming heightening of our intimacy, him prone and fiddling with a pistol. “Hey, uh, maybe a hit of bourbon would be a good idea.”
“Fuck the bourbon, Reporter-Man. You don’t deserve it. Not the way people like you have fucked everything up. The damn Army lost its way when we stopped feeding ourselves. Living in dorm rooms half the time, for Christ’s sake, going out on shifts like we’re punching a clock, some third-country national smiling at you, loading your plate, pushing cake on you so you can’t move, spitting in your food in the kitchen. That’s what happens when you ‘occupy’ a country – try to fucking build it – instead of beating it down and moving on.”
“Can’t move on till we got the pipelines laid in the right direction.”
“Sit and crack two-thousand eggs in an hour, like I did way back when, you figure stuff out. Maybe that’s why they got the Filipinos in the kitchen now, to make sure nobody has any time to think. That and privatizing everything that ain’t nailed down, people sitting on their fat asses making big money. Half the dudes you run into aren’t even military, the geek Americans the worst.”
“How’s that?”
“Fucking think they know what they’re doing cause they sat in a cubicle somewhere mapping tendencies versus actualities or some shit. The Army’s so hard up for specialized Boots, they slap six weeks of ‘training’ on them and call ’em interrogators. I could do better. Hell, I have done better, the only thing I got up my sleeve is a couple of Marlboros that – don’t you be giving me no look – I give ’em to smoke. Your average raghead goes bat-shit for a Marlboro. Not that sympathy is my big play.”
“I don’t know, man. I can see the milk of human kindness flowing through your veins.”
“Ain’t no doubt a bullet in a Bad Guy can solve you a lot of problems. The courts weren’t taking them, and even when they do, they say shit in open court we don’t exactly need. Plus jailing ’em for life costs too much. But sometimes you gotta grab somebody cause you think you can get some intel. And these dim-bulb, cubicle contractors – don’t even talk to me about no damn psychologists – when they’re not shooting at shadows, they got no sense of how to fake friendship with a raghead. Unless they’re ex-special forces. Then I won’t even talk to the motherhunchies, selling out their unit for buckets of cash.”
“Never tempted?”
“If you’re killing somebody, but you’re not under oath, then you’re just a fucking killer – no more, no less.”
“Serious shit, huh?”
“You think? Shit, they call it ‘simulated drowning,’ but there’s nothing simulated about it. It’s interrupted drowning. The bastard is drowning. Freaks you the fuck out. Freaked me out a little, just standing in a corner watching. That’s the price we pay for crawling out of the sea: can’t stand to have water in our lungs no more.”
“Mac! You believe in evolution.”
“One of the few, buddy boy. But don’t get me started on the End-Times cult they got running the Army now, especially since HeadFuck barged in, not that it started with him.”
He ejected Henrietta’s clip, lined it up next to the pipe, took another from his pocket and rammed it home. I couldn’t sit there anymore – waiting. With all the people wishing me harm, to have it fall to some cracked killer offing me from sheer ennui though he didn’t know my real name. I got up.
“That front door is nailed shut. And no way you’re making it out the back door. So walk around, have a party. Just be clever. Clever – not too clever. Anyway, Snake Eaters like me should be hunting and killing, that’s it. Charlie-Mike, son: continue mission. Kinetic operations. Shift all this nation-building shit – ‘clear, hold and build,’ my ass – to the hold-your-hand-crossing-the-street regular Army. ‘Hearts and minds.’ Shit, tits and ass as close as I’m getting to that. We pay ‘em to turn in their weapons, and they give you some piece of crud Thomas Jefferson shot his first moose with.”
“They gotta make room for the new guns we ship in by the truckload.”
“Plus the Army wants us to get blowed up making sure somebody’s finger ain’t painted purple twice? Like it matters who they ‘vote’ for – any more than it does here in the Homeland, all the switches they flip. If you’re not on Uncle Sam’s payroll yet, just torch a couple of Hillbilly Grinders, you will be soon. If you can get to them before they roll over. But don’t get me started on motherfucking over-armored vehicles killing soldiers.”
“So that’s true about the Hillbilly Grinders rolling over?”
He stared his fierce weird stare, then had another hit, but at least exhaled towards the ceiling. “You didn’t hear: Don’t get me started? But I will tell you a natural fact. I will get my own damn leg blowed off – below the knee, no biggie. I know just how to do it. Guaranteed below the knee. Spend my days sitting on the porch before I let them send me back to the crybaby regular Army like that psychologist – a civilian couldn’t find his ass in the dark with both hands – was threatening me with my last Campfire-Girls up at Walter Reed”
“Look, Mac, I still gotta go.” Whatever time it was, I had to leave. My brain was twitching.
“Fine, go! Cause you’re being very un-riki-tik. You want Henrietta’s little sister to deal with Twinkie or whoever that general of yours deploys next? She’s small enough you could probably handle her without blowing your foot off. Please tell me you know how to handle a nice clean little Beretta.”
“Thanks, pal. But no guns. I’ve known for a long-time I ever get my hands on one, I’d hurt myself one way or the other.”
“Another surprise. Alright, let’s go. That crack-ho down the block’s been sniffing around long enough. This shit” – he held up the pipe – “your first time, it’s like sex at seventeen times ten. After that one first hit, you keep hoping maybe the next bowl or the one after that equals it.”
“You know you’re never gonna find it. You’ve been on it what, a week?” He nodded. “That’s long enough to know. What happened, some guy down the block gave you a taste or two for free – you know, to thank you for your service?”
He stared. “You know, it wasn’t so Goddamned easy coming off the Army speed this time back. Maybe cause we we’re so far in-country they gave us more than usual. Plus I got pulled out of theater Goddamn quick after rearranging that broke-dick NATO field-reject’s collarbone. Usually we try to taper off before going home. I figured this shit’d ease me off it.”
“Medicinal crack – cool.”
He threw his feet on the floor. Henrietta who’d been resting in his lap shifted to his hand. “Screw you, Squirrel-Nuts. I’ve spent less than three-grand on this shit. That means I have got myself locked down. And if I go through the six-grand I got left, well, fuck her too. Less for Wifey to get when she files for divorce. That’s money she coulda had sitting safe in my driveway.”
“That’s a lot of money, man.”
“And you are definitely tip-fucking-top of my list for handing out advice. Alright. I need me some rubbers, cause I am definitely wrapping my pile driver before I let that skank neighbor of mine touch it with any part of her that gets wet. Or maybe not. That’d give Mrs. Mother-of-my-Brats – second one don’t look nothing like the first – something to bitch about. Her telling me she ain’t so damn Christian she signed up for living with a mean drunk. Have to see how she likes me on cocaine.”
“You know it’s only a matter of time till you flunk a drug test and get a dishonorable discharge.”
“You think I give a rat’s ass about bad paper? It ever occur to you maybe I don’t want to get motherfucking dead? That maybe there’s a bunch more women I need to get naked with. Ever think maybe I used up my quota of luck, the last little crumb of it sliding down the side of a mountain chasing a Toyota? I got thirteen years in. What’s the Goddamn odds rolling the dice for another seven with HeadFuck deploying the judge/jury/executioner Secret Army of Northern Virginia like he was tossing empties out his truck window? Huh, motherhunchie?”
A noise outside, he rushed the window and raised that big pistol. I made out the sharp ping of basketball hitting sidewalk. It faded down the block, and he turned to me, still pointing the gun.
“Late one night, all of us tanked, this major let slip that all the Snake Eaters combined have done something like 58,000 ‘executive actions’ worldwide.”
“Executive – that means it comes from the dudes wearing suits.”
“You got that shit right. All I know, you pull the trigger enough times, it all kind of blends in together and you put it over in one little corner of your brain – where you better Goddamn well keep it. It’s the other shit you like to remember. The ho with the butter lips after you been up in the mountains for months. How cold it got that one January. The cake Martinez’s mom shipped us or the day Swanson butchered and cooked a whole cow we acquisitioned.”
“Don’t need any steak sauce, meat that fresh.”
“Just a little salt. Now do I need to repeat my question?” Henrietta nosed inquiringly forward.
“Uh, no.”
“No, what?”
“No, I never thought about the odds.”
“My Goddamn odds over seven long years of seeing the world killing for HeadFuck and whoever’s actually running him. Him with only three years in, you know he’s taking another five – if his health holds up, cause he wasn’t looking any too healthy the last time I saw him on TV.”
“He has been looking weird lately.”
“So, you standing there looking like you couldn’t make it through a regular Army Search-and-Avoid mission sitting in a field all day, you don’t have to consider them odds, do you Squirrel-Nuts? Not that you really give a shit about yourself, right? I saw the way you went all pussy with Twinkie, a big dude like you. I see you’re not wearing a ring – you ain’t got nobody. Me, I got two boys to raise. The younger one ain’t past all hope. So I do not need to be hearing shit about bad paper from somebody never worn the flag on his shoulder in his life. You got that?”
“Sure, Mac. You’re the king of you.”
“Riki-tik, son. Now I am getting me some cocaine, some rubbers and the skankiest ho I can find.”
Henrietta pointed the way.
***************
I offered to drive “since you’ve had a couple of bowls. You know, no offense.”
“The day ain’t dawned yet I can’t operate a vehicle cause of a little cocaine. Besides, I got plans, motherhunchie, so we’re just going to the local Metro stop so you can hop a train back to the World without getting your candy-ass handed to you on a plate.”
Telling him I was actually headed across the river to Anacostia knocked him back on his heels for the first and only of our little sojourn together. He allowed as how he’d drive me there since maybe he could score some cheaper crack over there. He waved away my carping about the idiocy of two big white guys trolling Anacostia for crack in a loud, look-at-me truck and punched in the twangy singer, this time wailing about “Folks coast to coast letting those in the know protect our libertieeees!”
We drove past tidy, two-story homes painted in various pastel shades, a colorful counterpoint to tired looking Ft. McNair. Sailing through another red light, a cab on my side had to screech to a halt, and I lost it. “Look, man, I’m going to a lot of trouble pursuing Truth and shit so I can maybe have a better life expectancy than your average Ramone. Now what happens when I ask to get out at the corner there by that bus garage?”
Fishing out the little Beretta from his waistband — that I hadn’t seen him swap Henrietta for — and nestling it in his crotch, he blew off a third red light. OK, we were skipping that particular corner.
“Running red lights go with a gun in your lap, Mac?”
“You think I’m worried about some punk D.C. cop? Bring it on!” He fondled the smart little pistol, but did stop at the next red light. Trying to keep it light, I asked if he was curious about my errand across the river.
“Look, Broke-Dick, do I care what you’re doing? You’re at least double age twenty-one, so go chase whatever kind of woman you want. We can compare notes later.” He made the singer even louder, something about “Our queers round here think the closet’s fine by them.”
The hot shank of a hot day, the truck door burned my dangling arm as I scanned the cross-streets for patrol cars and barked about stop signs. And then we were on the Frederick Douglass Bridge, the Anacostia sluggish, dirty and low in its banks there in late summer. And thank God for a little speed and breeze.
Sliding by a tangle of freeways, we passed a threadbare park, and within a couple of blocks we’d accomplished the journey from Momma’s scrappy, spare-parts neighborhood – but on the right side of the river – to a wide-porched, broke-down southern town, many of the houses leaning, their yards overrun. Trees cooled some side streets, and the faded awnings over some windows helped too. Then came blocks of grim two-story brick bunkers, a bunch with plywood windows.
Sullen, curious people stared at the white men in the loud truck, especially the one with the flat-top chewing his teeth and eye-fucking ‘em back. If cops, they sure were flaunting. If not, then who, what and why? We cruised the main drag past empty lots behind wire-topped fences, check-cashing joints, a big Baptist church, abandoned storefronts and at least two take-outs promising an improbable cornucopia of Subs, Chinese, barbecue, fried chicken and – the topper – fresh fish. Torn and faded We Buy Houses signs clung to poles by a fingernail.
Mac eased to a stop in a bus stop, rousing a clump of teens across the street all arrayed in some program’s blue tee shirts. He shot me the genuine grin – not crack-grimace – pretty much missing since we met back at Connexions.
“Sorry, Broke-Dick, about not having any beer. Me a Snake Eater on leave – not riki-tik. Word of that got out, shit’d be bouncing off my back awhile. So, look: don’t let ‘em catch you down here with nobody else around. You sure you don’t want to borrow Henrietta’s little sister? A good Boy Scout like you never got your prints captured, right? Not too many people my line of work still even got their prints. Anyway, this Beretta’s clean – like my conscience. You got that? Clean, motherhunchie! So you can get somebody’s mind right and just drop her as you slowly walk away. Not that you stand any chance of blending in down here before the dude’s homie shoots you in the back, but at least you’ll have left your mark.”
I shook my head about the gun and handed back the cattle-drug hat.
“Gotta toss these hats, all the cameras that got ‘em riding around in this truck. Too bad about the CAT one — but that’s life with the Data Minders. Shit, tell you what: I was boring my balls off bouncing off the walls there in Momma’s living room. At least you didn’t go all wuss on me, so we’re free and clear.”
“Well thanks, Mac. That’s a good deal cause, you come right down to it, I guess you saved my life. Probably. So, uh, you know, thanks.”
“My name’s not Mac.”
“I know. Mine ain’t Nick.”
“No shit. Now make tracks before this gets too disgusting.”

~ END ~