25
Logan
“Well, I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Bryce nods slowly at me from across the conference table; “Not bad, Logan; really.”
“I do have my moments, you know.” I frown, watching him grin at me.
“What’s your timeline?”
“The sooner the better, man. I’m going to ram this down the board’s throat until they either sign off on it or choke on it.”
Bryce gives me a look; “We really gotta work on your bedside manner, pal.”
I laugh; “I won’t even pretend to give a shit about diplomacy; that’s your area.” It works out well with Bryce and I; he’s the carrot, and I’m the stick.
…The stick with chip on his shoulder, a mean right hook, and no patience for petty boardroom bullshit, I might add.
“It’ll get through, don’t worry.” Bryce looks up and studies my face in that strange, quiet way he does sometime that always makes me feel like he’s the oldest of us, even though it’s the opposite.
“What?”
“This is because of Akazi, isn’t it.”
My jaw tenses and I meet his eyes for moment before I look away. Even the name of that fucking place just-
“Look, sorry, I shouldn’t have ask-”
“Of course it’s because of Akazi,” I mutter, shaking my head looking at my hands in my lap.
When you look back on life, there are things that stick out as turning points; places where the road split and you made a decision. And when I think over my own journey, there’s one single place and one single fucking moment in time that ends up defining the course of my entire life from there on out.
And that moment is Akazi, Afghanistan.
War sucks, and I don’t mean that in the slang sense of the word. I mean it in the sense that it sucks just about every single part of your soul out of you like some sort of vortex of pain and suffering and hardening of the spirit. And it’s when you’re there, amongst the flames and the heat and the death and senselessness of it all that you truly understand that war is literally hell.
We’re listening to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” that day in the second Humvee when the ambush hits. You’d wonder with all the shit that happened immediately following that how I’d have possibly remembered that little detail, but it’s one of those bizarre things that’ll stick with me long after I manage to forget the rest of it. Evans, our driver, is cracking some sort of crude joke about someone’s sister while Simon Le Bon belts out a chorus through the speakers when the first Humvee in front of us just erupts into liquid fire. It fucking blooms into flame, and then it’s just gone. The chaos of the moment hits like a shot of something strong right to the head, and there’s screaming and shouting as Evans tears us off the road as metal rakes the side of the truck.
The actual sequence of events are blurry, but I can remember the sound of peppering bullets plunking like hail on the other side of the building I’m crouched behind. There are people everywhere - and I don’t mean soldiers or guerrillas either, I mean fuckin PEOPLE. There are civilians and fucking children running right through the firefight and all I can think is how Goddamn UNFAIR of a world it is because of that. How in any rational, sane universe, no kid should have to cover his fucking head and run between two ideologies hurling metal at each other that he doesn’t give a fuck about.
Guys who’s names I knew but have now forgotten are getting shot - they’re dying around me, and through it all, the guys from Duran Duran just keep on playing from the open door of the shot-up Hummer behind me.
“Mark target!” Our ranking Sargent is screaming at me, his face tight as he pops around the corner to squeeze off a few shots; “Drone strike inbound, Irish! I need a target, NOW.”
I glance over the wall, wincing at the spray of rock that scatters across my face as I eyeball the enemy position. There’s a three story building at the end of the road with Taliban on the roof with mortars and two gun placements.
“Sir!” I yell, ducking back behind the wall; “Tall building, end of the street; tallest one in town!”
He’s radioing it in, but there’s something lingering from my quick look at the building that’s nagging at me, and I chance one more peep over the wall.
Oh, fuck.
It’s hits me like a slug to the gut; the tallest building in town, with the empty flag pole, and the Taliban on the roof….
…And the playground right outside the front door.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Call it off!” I’m running, heedless of the metal flying past my head and exploding across the ground by my feet as I sprint towards the Sargent across the road on the radio; “It’s a school! It’s a fucking school!” I’m waving my arms at him, screaming. He must suddenly hear me, because he squints and looks up as he puts his radio down; just in time for the bullet to catch him right through the ear and drop him like bag of cement on the ground.