I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (3 page)

CHAPTER TWO

The Strykers removed Manchester United and the old man and woman from their vehicles before they ripened. Spencer waited through five long hours, resting his head on his knees with the body bags fifteen feet away from him until somebody finally boxed in a helicopter to lift him and his stinky cargo back to base from 2
nd
Bridge 2
nd
Division Stryker’s forward position. The bags were left stewing in the heat, where they had ballooned with gasses by the time they were loaded into the chopper. Even with his head stuck out the open doorway, the sickly sweet stench was inescapable.

Right after landing Spencer made straight for his tent.
Towel and shower first, then shuteye.

“
Fuck!”

Outside Spencer’s tent, Miller’s “translator” sat squatting on his heels, his chin low beneath his pakol, the Afghan cap he wore pulled down over his eyebrows. Spencer instinctively loathed the man. The Afghan would never look him in the eye. He was a snake, not a fighter. The man’s loyalty was to the money Miller represented, period.

A half-emptied bottle dangled from Miller’s loose wrist. The drinking was nothing new, but this was the first time that Miller was flopped inside Spencer’s tent drunk before noon. He had his muddy canvas boots on, too, one on Spencer’s sack, the other rested on top of Spencer’s guitar case. Spencer kicked Miller’s boot to the side and toed his guitar case deeper beneath the cot.

Miller wasn’t Army, which made for a loose, undisciplined hierarchy. Their relationship was tentative at best.

Neither saluted.

“Take a drink,” Miller slurred. He reached out the bottle and sloshed a long splash of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label onto the tarp floor. Spencer stared as the whisky soaked into the canvas, leaving concentric rings of wet dust on the floor of the tent that was more home to him than anyplace else that came to mind.

Spencer pulled his shirt off over his head. Ripples defined every movement across his taut, lean musculature. Miller thrust the amber liquid toward him again. Spencer turned away before peeling himself out from his pants. In his skivvies, he stared down at Miller, who remained kicking back on the one place where Spencer might have sat down to unlace his boots.

Miller rested the whisky bottle against the receding hairline on his forehead. “Boy Scout,” Miller griped. “Jesus Christ Almighty, have a fucking drink!”

Between the swollen finger and close to thirty hours without any shuteye, Spencer’s only reaction was to shift his stance, bringing the fifty caliber’s long barrel hanging from his shoulder to point straight at Miller’s face. The weapon was covered; safety and scope caps on, chamber cleared, but Miller’s eye followed the menacing line of the weapon. Spencer’s silhouette stood outlined against the intense daylight outside the tent.

Miller drew back the outstretched Scotch whisky, followed, after a pause, by Spencer racking his weapon.

“Fine,” Miller agreed. “Fuck it.” Miller swung his boot off Spencer’s cot. “Debrief at 4 o’clock, back here,” Miller ordered, then he rolled out from the cot with his bottle in one hand, cup in the other.

That’s 16:00, asshole
, Spencer thought
.

There was a written zero-tolerance policy for alcohol on base. That was one more thing Spencer disliked about his handler; the way Miller treated rules like they were all a joke that didn’t apply to him. Miller didn’t even bother to hide the bottle inside a bag. Every time Miller got into a bottle, he was bound to mouth off and cynically snark at everything. Always acting like he was something special, like he knew the score while everyone else around him were order-taking idiots.

Poisonous loser bullshit
. Real soldiers were giving sweat and blood to handle tough duty and Miller talked like they were all chumps. But Miller moved through debriefs faster than any intelligence officer Master Sergeant Jonathan Spencer, MSJS, had ever seen. Drunk or sober, Miller synthesized ground photos and aerials, troop movements, supply chains, tactical models, and complex scenarios on the first pass, holding them inside his head in a three-dimensional picture that he was able to examine from every angle. He knew every technology, he knew the personnel, and he knew topography and weather data even and what outpost was going to get a fly-in from a visiting congressman. If a local Afghan Government official was killed anywhere in his district, Miller knew who would be taking his place. Well before any announcement was made, he was already shifting chess pieces in his head.

Spencer’s assignment was to support Miller, but there were no rules dictating that Spencer had to like the man or his behavior. MSJS trained, maintained, sustained; he achieved the stated objectives again and again. That was the job. The three bloating bodies spoke for themselves. Whatever decisions or policy choices his army or his Commander-in-Chief set forth, he was there to execute on them. The information and the knowledge to evaluate was beyond his pay grade.

Spencer moved outside into the sunlight to examine the damaged finger. It remained double its normal size. Not ballooned like before, but it could not go without repair. Still, that could wait until after a hot shower and a trip to the mess tent. Other than a cold MRE with the Strykers and one granola bar, he hadn’t eaten since 18:30 the night before.

He climbed the metal steps in his flip-flops, opened the shower stall inside the portable trailer, and glanced around, feeling good that the first shower stall he picked was freshly cleaned. He left the hot water splashing against his eyelids for minutes, then lifted his head and felt the spray against his throat and neck, all the time forcing the images that passed inward through his scope to wash past.
One direction. When you look through your scope you locate targets. You dispatch targets. It’s a one-way baffle. The shit goes out, never in.
The black-covered mother he dispatched was only the third woman he had ever shot. A mother playing with her kid.
Fucking war
.

You shouldn’t have done it, shooting both together.
It didn’t matter that the fresh Afghan recruits were shot down one by one by the roadside; there was no excuse. He scrubbed hard, but no amount of scrubbing would clean away how he had made a game out of it, how he killed them with one bullet.

Full soap dispenser. That was good. Plenty of hot water, red dirt flowing down the white shower walls, swirling, past the stainless steel screen, and down the drain. But the one finger ached at even the slightest touch. Spencer shampooed his scalp then turned off the hot water and left the water on cold, or, rather, the lukewarm temperature that was as cold as the water ever got at midday. Running along his back and shoulders, he lifted his arm up into the spray to scrub his armpit. Spencer felt a tiny, penetrating burn running along the latts. He made a mental note of it, turning just enough to check whether there was a tear. No. Just a pull. He recalled thinking that he had landed poorly when he jumped; the Barrett added thirty-one pounds and it was his fault for not front-balancing it during descent. He had no excuse for allowing an injury that was preventable.

He walked in his underwear straight to the medical tent after the long shower. He learned something there; who knew about Plant Thorn Synovitis? Puncturing the knuckle could easily have left him with a localized form of arthritis if he had ignored maintenance and toughed it out instead. A shot of antibiotics later, along with a bottle of naproxen, and Spencer felt satisfied that he had made good decisions. He entered the mess tent having missed the regular lunch so instead of pulled pork and a French roll, he got a PB&J and an apple. Fair tradeoff.
Maintain the hands, the tools of the trade.

Inside Spencer’s tent, Miller was flopped-out; a snoring ball of drunken sweat, half on Spencer’s cot and halfway out. Spencer looked on and wished that he could have turned in Miller to the Duty Officer for drunkenness. Miller was an asshole, but Spencer was no rat. For better or for worse, he and Miller were an autonomous operation. Once a week, on average, Miller appeared with a translator in tow. Miller arrived by helicopter when he could, by convoy when he had to. IEDs scared the shit out of him.

Miller’s stomach heaved, his throat swelled, and his mouth opened wide, looking like he was about to puke. Right on Spencer’s cot. It looked painful as he choked it back, but then he rested and went back to snoring.

Spencer stripped and cleaned the Barrett while Miller snored.  Right after he finished, he looked at his cot with Miller still on it and his bullshit alarm went off.

“Hey. Wake the fuck up.” Spencer lifted his boot heel and rattled the cot. “Miller!”

Miller awakened contorting his dried-out mouth and tongue, initially looking for the Scotch before squinting to see Spencer across the tent seated on the floor.

“Enough! I earned so down time! This is my place. Get off my bed!”

Miller opened the bottle then took a sustained swig from the last dregs.

“Ten months going from one shit pile to the next one,” Miller griped. “Pricks won’t even give me a permanent helicopter.”

“Its way past 1600 hours,” Spencer shouted, this time rousting Miller and pulling him into a sitting position then holding him upright, shaking at him until his glazed eyes stayed open.

Miller’s cheeks puffed like a blowfish, and then he exhaled and took in a deep breath, blinking as he centered his focus.

“What time is it?”

“21:15. You slept through third mess.”

“Doesn’t matter. Got Commissary food on dry ice if I want it.” He shook his face to wake up then held his balding skull in both hands. Shaking was bad.

Spencer added, “Commissary food and $200 whisky.”

“You don’t know anything,” Miller wheezed.

“I know that drinking that way the body can’t regulate temperature,” Spencer warned. “You can go from sunstroke to hypothermia in the same day around here.”

“Whisky won’t kill me.” Miller twisted his neck and worked on getting focus. “Out there’s an IED with my name on it. I’m going to get blown to shit. Those mangy fucking mongrels out there will licklittle bits of me off a metal carcass. All for some piece of shit war in this piece of shit place. Fuck.”

Miller’s speech slowed, but beside that and the occasional misstep and quick recovery, Miller generally held his liquor. Not this time. He tipped back another gulp, blew the alcohol out over his tongue and lectured on how “the U.S. is going to leave here and the sand will wipe away our footprints just like that.”

He snapped his fingers. “Another dirty forgotten little war… we shit ourselves until we die and then nobody knows or cares that any of this ever happened.”

The translator, Afif, appeared behind Spencer and began to boil tea. Spencer smelled him before he turned around. Afif had the dank mushroom smell of decay.

Spencer seldom liked the smell of people; gun oil and graphite, sawdust and nitroglycerine were his cologne. Miller’s scent was acrid, a vinegar-sour stench of lies.

“Does he have to be here?” Spencer griped. Outside the wire, they went with the territory, but inside base, Spencer felt he had the right for some relief from these skulking types.

“Don’t worry about this one,” Miller assured. “He does what I tell him. No more Pathans. Done with them. It’s always the same with Pathans… they’ll take the money, but they’re guilty about it. Always on slow boil. One day they blow up and cut your throat.”

“Tell him to stay in front. I don’t want him behind me.”

“I’ve tried Tajiks, Hazzari, too, Miller continued, ignoring Spencer’s comment. “Afif is Ismaili.”

“Ismaili?” Spencer asked.

“Shia, from Badakhshan Province way up in
the northeast. Best brand of go-fer. His kind has got no place to run. If he goes into China, the Han kill him, or if they don’t, the Uyghurs will. He can’t run over to Pakistan like any Pathan and hide with his cousins. The Pakis will cut his nuts off then listen to him howl for a couple days before they chop off his head.

“I own his ass.”

Miller pressed the heels of both his palms up to his temples. “Jesus. Let’s get through this. Right now if somebody cut off my head, it wouldn’t be so bad.

“Report, Sergeant. Tell of your mighty accomplishments!”

“Extraction better this time out?” Miller asked. All of Miller’s special assets were at the mercy of other units to get in and, especially, to get out again.

“Yes sir.” Spencer paused. Miller wasn’t his superior officer; Miller wasn’t even military. The “sir” was automatic. But nothing in the job description said he had to babysit drunks, especially a chickenshit civilian pissing and moaning because the big world might not be so pretty. It wasn’t entirely clear that Miller was CIA, either. Miller and his Afghan interpreter showed up, Miller delivered target orders. Miller returned, Spencer debriefed, Miller hit the Scotch. 

“Correct coordinates. GPS working for a change,” the sergeant continued.

Spencer nodded and began. After nineteen years in, he was usually on autopilot at end-of-mission debriefs. “Successful drop at 03:00 hours, thank you 82nd Airborne.” He held up the swollen finger. “I managed to drop on the one thorny bush for a mile around.

“Dug
in
at
position
400
meters
outside
the
village,”
he
continued.
Routine
.
“Confirmed
Strykers
at
staging
point
ahead
of
extraction.
Three
targets
sighted
06:45.
Three
targets
neutralized
06:58.
Extraction
07:05,
along
with
remains.
That
and
waiting
around
for
hours
to
get
me
back
with
the
rotting
skunks.”

“I need more detail on this one,” Miller insisted. “Full report.”

Spencer continued, still on autopilot. Orders-missions-debriefs and systems-maintenance in between. Manchester United, his mother, his raging father. Bloated body bags all smell the same, sickly sweet repulsion.

“Correct coordinates,” Spencer narrated. “GPS was working correctly for a change.” Targets were located. Mission completed. Remains retrieved, as ordered. Extraction uneventful. Strykers laid down a few short bursts, 60 rounds, estimated. Kept the rest of the village behind walls. They picked up an Apache that kicked up a dust storm over the village while the Strykers moved out. Good packed earth on the return so they kept off the roads on the run back here.

“Targets?”

“Like I said, mission accomplished.” Spencer finished speaking and eyed Miller, who pulled a tablet computer from his satchel, turned it on, and squinted with one eye until the photo display came into focus.

“Positive ID? All three?”

“Like I said.

“They’re bagged. In the mobile morgue. Look for yourself. The two males, absolutely. Can’t ID the woman, not with her always covered head-to-toe in chadri and burqa.

“Can I have my bunk now?”

Miller tapped his laptop and opened the video. Taken from ten thousand feet, it keyed on Spencer and all three of his three targets. He sat there, squinting, until suddenly snapping to attention like he was watching the team driving for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

“Oh shit! You didn’t!” He ran his finger across the bottom of the screen and held the computer excitedly out to replay it so Spencer could watch with him. The scene showed the soccer player and his mother flopping over simultaneously.

“One shot?” Miller questioned, perking up enthusiastically. “Motherfucker! A two-fer!”

Spencer turned his eyes away. It sickened him now, hearing Miller’s excitement. When he was lying in the dirt alone, with a village of hostiles a few hundred meters away, it wasn’t nearly as bad. Taking a target with one shot is a decent way to kill and a decent way to die. A fair exchange; clean and organized. Not dirty and chaotic, not like a bomb. But he should not have done that, made his duty into a game.

Miller stared down at his courier satchel where it was lying on the floor beside the cot. On a whim, he snatched it and flipped it upside-down, snapping the wire closure and shaking the bag. A cascade of $10,000 stacks of bundled $100 bills tumbled over his chest and around his sides. He patted the pile and began shrieking a hyena-like crazed laughter.