The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

Being back in the Army had brought back a rush of emotions and memories that I didn’t want to deal with. It was close to the surface, closer than it had been since the day I’d been discharged. All I had to do was close my eyes and I was there, breathing in the air of Afghanistan.

The thing was, it had all gone bad so fast. Less than forty-eight hours after Kowalski was killed, we were back out on patrol. Roberts got blown up, and Dylan was injured. I remember Colton calling over the radio, his voice frantic, “Sherman, get your fire team on line!” and I’d called back, “I don’t have a fire team!”

The next day we met in the shack Colton called his office. Lieutenant Eggers, Colton and Martin, our platoon’s leadership, and me and Hicks.

“We’ve got three new FNGs coming in next week,” Colton said. FNG means fucking new guy.

“I don’t want ‘em,” Hicks said. “My fire team is set.”

Martin grimaced. “That’s gonna leave us seriously unbalanced if Sherman takes all three. We know anything about these guys?”

Eggers said, “They’re all straight out of Benning.”

“Fuck,” muttered Colton.

In the end, they decided I was going to take all the new replacements. And to be honest, I was too exhausted to care. I’d seen the guys I depended on, the guys I was supposed to take care of, decimated in a matter of two days.

I wasn’t the only one in bad shape. Two weeks later I’d walked by Hicks’ fire team’s room and found the door conspicuously closed. The unmistakable smell of marijuana drifted out of the door. I just kept walking. It was my responsibility to do something about it. The Army had zero tolerance for drug use. On the other hand, what were they going to do to those guys? Send them to Afghanistan? Our squad was in such bad shape, and the new guys were such fumbling idiots, if the experienced soldiers in our squad needed to blow off some steam, who the hell was I to say anything?

I did say something to Hicks. That was going to be the limit of my involvement. His guys were out on the wire that day, so I found him in one of the guard towers, leaning against the wall, his rifle cradled in his arms. He was staring off into space, his blue eyes gazing off at the landscape, not really paying attention.

“Sherman,” he said as I got to the top.

“Hicks,” I replied. “You got a minute?”

“What brings you up here?” he asked.

I leaned against the wall, looking out into the distance. It didn’t look like there was a live human being for a thousand miles except us.

“Just wanted to give you a heads up. Not really my place to get involved, I guess. Your guys are smoking pot in their room.”

He shrugged and frowned. “Yeah. I know.”

I didn’t say anything, and after a minute he said, “You gotta do something to stay sane. If that’s the worst they do, I’m all for it.”

“Pretty much what I figured,” I said.

“You know what they saw,” he said.

I did. Dylan’s pale face, as he bled out on the snow, me praying the chopper would show up in time. Roberts, as we carefully took the remaining body parts we could find and stuffed them in a bag. Kowalski and his crazy trail of kids.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’m not judging. Just figured you needed to know.”

I lit a cigarette, cupping my hand around the coal.

“You married, Sherman?”

I shook my head. “Nah. Broke up with my girlfriend the day I enlisted. It was long overdue.”

He nodded. “Smart. It’s tough on wives. I send notes home to Stephanie. Real letters, instead of this email bullshit. I lie my ass off most of the time, and tell her we’re rear detachment, and nobody’s been hurt.”

I sort of knew his wife. Stephanie Hicks was an attractive blonde lady with Scotch-Irish features, from a tiny town in southern Virginia. Two days before we deployed, she hosted a barbecue for all the soldiers in our platoon at their small house on the edge of the post. It had been an emotional, drunken bash, ending with Colton and Martin having a half-drunken fist fight in the backyard, a fight which ended with them sitting, leaning on each other, tossing back shots and laughing their asses off. Stephanie was a southern girl, who negotiated the party with charm and wit, but I caught her gazing at her husband with terror behind her eyes more than once that night.

I nodded. “No point in making her worry about stuff she can’t do anything about.”

“Yeah, well ... they don’t get it. When I got home from my last Iraq tour, she thought I’d gone fucking nuts. We had to go into therapy. But the thing is, our therapist? She didn’t know shit. Not about this.” He waved his hand vaguely at the surrounding countryside as he said the word.

I was uncomfortable. Hicks hadn’t been an enemy, but we’d never been friendly. But then again, we were peers, and he couldn’t exactly talk with the guys in his fire team about this kind of thing.

“Anyway,” he said. “How are the FNGs working out?”

“Too early to say,” I replied. “I think we might have a good one out of the three.”

He nodded. “We’re going back out in a few more days.”

I nodded.

“Ten fucking days,” he muttered.

I’d heard. After our departure from Dega Payan, the Taliban stuck around the district, ambushing convoys and drug smugglers. The repairs we’d done to the girls’ school were destroyed by the insurgents, who leveled the building. So we’d been ordered to base our platoon on a useless hill near the village and conduct sweeps. The rest of the company would be spread at three other nearby camps, which would undoubtedly draw in more Taliban, and then the fun could begin.

“I’m trying to get my guys ready. But they’ve got no idea what they’re getting into.”

He