get there we had to go through Taliban territory, hence the quiet. We were a small team. They thought smaller was better. I suspect we were picking up a CIA operative, but I can’t be sure.”
“Macon, you don’t have to,” Ally said.
He felt his eyes harden. She was still playing games with him. “Oh, I think I do. I don’t want you to have wasted your time.”
She shook her head, tears streaming. “Please, Macon.”
“Let him get it out, Ally.” Adam was quiet, as though he knew how close to the edge Macon was. “He needs to tell this story. You haven’t told it to anyone, right?”
“Not even Kai.”
“Then don’t,” Ally said through her tears.
He turned to her. “You came here for this story. You fucked me to get this story. Oh, sweetheart, you’re going to get the truth.”
“Macon, maybe we should call Kai. We could go to his place and talk about this as a family.” Adam seemed awfully reasonable now.
“She’s not my family.” And she never would be. “I’m going to give her the information she needs and then we can be done.”
“I don’t want that,” Ally said, pleading.
“I don’t want to have been lied to for weeks. I guess we can’t always get what we want. You want to know what happened to your brother? Shit happened. It happened to all of us. We were deep in the desert when we realized we had a low tire. Rowe and I got out and patched it. The driver liked to play pranks. Asshole kid. He pulled away when we tried to get back in. It was a joke. I believe I threatened to kill the little fucker if he did it again. Which he did. That was when he hit an IED. Blew the fuck out of us. I got caught under a heavy piece of the vehicle. I was pinned down. A couple of us were. That’s when they showed up. Taliban. They started to pick us off. The stupid piece that took my leg provided cover for me. Same for Rowe. He was pinned down next to me, but it was both his legs. At some point they decided to come and do some up-close fighting. There were only three of them. Two of them were kids. I killed a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I shot him in the back before he could take out Kellison. Didn’t matter. The other kid got him. Rowe and I took out the other two despite the fact that we couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. We could still shoot.”
“Macon,” Ally began.
Adam held up a hand. “Don’t. He needs to do this.”
He ignored them both. He wanted to get it all over with. He wanted to walk away. His first instinct was to leave, but he was going to fight that. His brother hadn’t done anything wrong. He could at least still have his brother in his life. But no Ally.
“It got quiet after that. Really quiet. Rowe and I were the only ones left alive. We did what we were trained to do. We took stock of what we had. Neither one of us could move. I managed to get a tourniquet around my leg, but I couldn’t move the Humvee. We had a couple of energy bars and one bottle of water between us. We rationed it, but there wasn’t much left after a day and a half. We knew there was more. I could even see a bottle of it, but I couldn’t get to it. At one point I tried to use my knife. I tried to saw my own damn leg off so I could get to it, but I kept passing out.”
Ally was weeping freely now, but he was strangely numb. He didn’t even want to hold her. It was all bullshit. She was crying for her brother. He thought about all the times he’d left her alone in his house. Had she searched his computer, his phone, his paperwork? She wouldn’t have found anything. She hadn’t found anything or she likely would have hit the road by now.
“On the second day we realized we had no idea if anyone at all was coming. Our mission had been secretive.” His stomach rolled as he thought about some of the things he wasn’t saying. He didn’t mention that the vultures had shown up. They’d been smaller than American vultures, but no less hungry. He’d tried to get them off his teammates, but he’d been useless.