2

I was slammed into a stone grey cell. The bench was concrete. The door was thick steel, and there was only a small thick glass window to the outside. We were under arrest on suspicion of murder. We would be in until morning when the judge came to set bail.

God my butt got cold in hurry. I looked around the fluorescent blare of the cell. I thought back to the times I had come into such a cell at the Ghraib, to revive or examine a detainee or prisoner. How many times I had heard them groan or murmur softly in Arabic. I remember flashes of seeing and noting lacerations and contusions. I remember the times I had checked for fractures.

I remember coming on a corpse that had grown cold, because they had lost track of him. The cell was spattered with the rice water that comes with cholera. I had the corpsmen clean it out. He'd been forced to drink unpurified water from different wells each time he didn't cooperate. One of them, of course, was infected. He must have died within two or three hours of being put in the cell. Yes, cholera works that fast.

But the most vivid cell memory was from after that drive back to the airport. When I got to the airport, I was caked in dried blood and viscera. My hair clung to my skin, glued into place.

I had dismounted out of the stricken Hummer with a nonchalance that I had copied from every action movie heroine in my memory. I tried to put that "I can hang with it" face on. I stared hard as the desert camo-suited MPs came up. Their helmets and goggles making them look like imperial storm troopers out of some unmade Star Wars film. They half jogged, half walked. Their guns were leveled. At me.

From experience I knew that this unit was from New Hampshire. They'd signed on to guard the naval base up there, maybe spend a couple of weeks a year in some remote location. Get called up to help fish people out of flood stricken houses and direct traffic around washed out bridges.

And here two of them were ready to deliver a burst to my chest. I slung off my helmet and dropped and then raised my hands in the air. My face got hard again. I only at that moment realized that I had foolishly allowed myself to relax.

"Stay put." This was to my boy who was still riding the gun.

"Are you going to put those down?"

"Order him off the gun."

I was certainly expecting a friendlier welcome. It was only moments later that a Hummer drove up, a brigadier's two stars flying from the front. I slammed to a stop, and out popped a Major. Probably the General's aide. His face was thin with long service and devotion to a kind of asceticism. He had a slight grey about his stubble and at his temple. His eyes were hawk cold grey.

The MPs barked acknowledgement. Before they could coo over having the intruders covered, the Major had ordered them off. My gunner got off his station and wove his way out of the the Hummer. A large tow truck rolled up and crisply the contractors began to roll our vehicle up on it.

I again was surprised at the curtness of what came next.

"We are taking you to be debriefed."

This was not according to script.

He looked up and down me.

"You look like hell."

"I'd appreciate a shower first."

"That's not going to happen. Now I'm going to request that you follow those MPs."

Moments later I was cuffed and walking between four MPs. Guns at the ready into the welcome shade of a hanger. From there were transferred to the care of a different set.

And not long there afterwards, I was in a cell not much different from this one. It had once been a holding cell for airport security. No explanations were being offered, and as I went through the formalities, I kept myself tight lipped. I could feel my lips press to a crease. I was tight at every point and every joint.

And I still had no idea what was going on. No medical attention, no explanations. Under arrest and treated like a criminal.

The door opened about half an hour later. The clearly wanted to let me sit and "cold bake" in the air conditioning. The discomfort would become intense. I still was not going to lose my calm at this moment.

It was the Major again.

"I'm here to ask a few questions."

One part of me wanted to say that I was here to not tell him a damn thing. But I knew better. I knew the holes people got dropped down when they made life hard for the ticket punching classes. And this Major had no authority. He was ram rod stiff and wound up like a clock. But he had no discretion.

"Of course Major. I'm here to help."

That line, "I'm here to help" had come out of my lips so many times before, and in so many different circumstances.

"As is obvious, there was an incident on the way here."

"Yes."

"Would care to tell me about it?"

"We were hit by an IED and an ambush. The driver and the senior contractor were both killed instantly. I took the wheel and we drove out of the ambush. There were indigenous casualties."

"And you didn't call this in."

"The radio was out, and I was too busy driving to fish for my phone."

"And that's it."

"I can make a written statement."

"That won't be necessary."

"So how much trouble am I in?"

"The local civilian authority wants you turned over."

"But that's not going to happen."

"They are claiming that you killed five people."

"That depends on how you sort things out. But it might be accurate."

"And you don't have anything to add?"

"Is there anything you want me to add?"

"One witness says that he saw someone in the vehicle fire first."

"That's very efficient of the local constabulary to have rounded up so many clear eyed people so quickly."

"What is your recollection."

"I only saw the IED. I am not sure about the order. But if someone in our vehicle fired, it was in direct response to an imminent threat."

"And you are sure about that?"

I licked the dryness off my lips.

"I am."

"You know that the locals have strung the driver's body up, or some remains that they claim is the driver."

"I am sorry for his family."

"I'd appreciate it if you could me cooperative."

I looked at the wind up officer. I was trying to figure out what he wanted, and then it occurred to me that what he wanted was simple. He wanted this resolved.

"What would make this go away Major?"

"It's not going to go away. This is very serious."

I knew better. Indigenous Iraqis were killed time. But us. By each other. By militias. Baghdad is the city on the banks of hell.

"What makes it serious?"

He looked at me. Clearly there was a need to know that somewhere along the line, I had been pushed out of. He was not saying precisely what was important.
"I've already said as much as I can, or am going to."

"Then I can't be of much help to you. This was supposed to be a routine ferry to the airport."

"Did they tell you why?"

"My assumption was that we were going to take possession of some people who had been rendered to American custody in Iraq, and that we were going to take them to the Ghraib."

I was dead blunt, as if I were talking about putting the dog out for the night. In fact what that meant was that we were taking people to be tortured and interrogated.

"I'm going to go away for a while now. I hope you can be more helpful when I get back."

He turned. The door closed. And I was left to sit. There was no place in the cell to relieve myself, and the pressure on my bladder was beginning to creep to the point of discomfort. My skin itched.

Which is why, with whatever was to hand, I began to groom myself. Flake off the blood, dry rub myself down with my clothes. Anything anything anything to get the skin clean, and exposed to a kiss of air. I could only wait to see if the company, or The Company, cared enough about my existence to bail my out.

I slept in that cell in the airport in country.

But not in the cell in Kansas, about three hours later, a person I did not expect to see at all, tapped on the glass.

It was Col. Beck. His features having a kind of grim amusement.

Now where did he come from?

And how did he get here?

And why did he get here?

3

It was deep in the middle night in a motel room that the three of us, Merc, the Colonel and myself were talking.

"So you can understand how it didn't look good when your friend was found in a hotel in Reno with a dead over age hooker giving a blow job to a Colt .45 and then you turn up bold as brass driving his car."

"He sold it to me."

"That is a detail that escaped the police officers. Fortunately that part of your story checked out. They had you on murder, grand theft: auto and an assortment of sealed charges."

I piped up. My hips resting against the heater which I had turned on, despite the season. God it felt good to get them warm, the cell had nearly sucked the heat out of me.

"What's going on here."

Merc added in.

"It's time for truth or consequences people."

The Colonel smiled.

"Let me be blunt, your friend was up to his neck in corruption problems. I know you never want to think of your friends like that, but there is a widening bribery scandal. And he was some how touched by it. It is in his suicide note."

He spread two pictures out. One was of Merc's friend, haggard but ruggedly handsome. The other was of the woman we had seen in Las Vegas. The picture caught her shining features.

"We saw her in Las Vegas."

"I met her to pick up the paper work and keys."

Suddenly I realized that time I had taken her to be just a random person that Merc had noticed. Now I knew that there was something else going on. I wasn't sure what.

"So you knew her."

Merc smirked.

"You might say that."

"There's no time to be coy."

"She and Jim," his buddy's name, " had a funny thing going on."

"The police said that you had carnal knowledge of her."

"That's true, she, Jim and I had a drunken thing one night at Stardust, oh about 8 years ago."

The Colonel nodded.

"I'll get you out of this, because it's army business. But you have to know that they are going to be talking to you again. Not the locals, the federal authorities."

The Colonel let us sleep after that. I spent the night trying to some how huddle down into Merc for warmth. Something had choked off desire in the waking world, but that night I had strange dreams.