“They convicted me.”

“I am sure you had your reasons for allowing it.”

As before, I couldn’t tell much about our route, since there were no windows in the back of the van, but I did make an effort to rise to my knees and look forward through the windshield whenever we turned. The return trip to the city seemed a little faster. Maybe that was because we were going downhill, or maybe it was because I was the one with the gun this time.

I did my best not to think about Laui Kalay, but Vega’s words had stirred the memories again….my captain coming over to the hooch that morning to ask questions about a video on the Internet. When he had described it to me and told me who was in it, I had flatly denied that such a thing was possible. Then he had played it for me on his phone. I saw marines crouched over a haphazard pile of Afghan bodies, my comrades baring their teeth like ghouls, laughing, cutting away fingers, cracking teeth. I recognized those marines, my men, and knew that I had failed them. I hadn’t seen the signs. I should have sensed it in them. I should have saved them from the madness. I should have sent them home.

My captain had paused the video and pointed to the screen. “We’ve identified that one there as Simpson, and that’s Wallace, Pierce, and Edwards. Who’s the one behind the camera?”

The Afghan dust had never been so thick inside my throat. I swallowed, but the dryness wouldn’t go. My voice cracked when I said, “I don’t know.”

My captain slipped the phone into the right front pocket of his blouse. “Gunny,” he’d said. “I know this is tough. If I was in your shoes, there’d be a strong temptation to close ranks. But it won’t do. This thing is already all over the Internet. These guys’ families have seen it. The press has seen it. Congressmen and senators have seen it. The president has probably seen it, or he will, you can bet on that. These guys are done, and so is the one who filmed them. There was nothing anyone could do for them after the knucklehead who filmed it posted it on the web. Tell me who he is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think I’d run interference if I could?”

“Yes, sir. I know you would.”

“You need to get on the right side of this, Gunny. Who shot the video?”

“Sir, I really do not know.”

He sighed and stood up. “All right. Doesn’t matter. We know it was Ford. I just wanted confirmation before I sent the MPs over to his hooch.”

After the captain left, I sat on my bunk thinking about Ford. He was an E3, a lance corporal, with a little under two years in the Corps. We’d been on tour together for nearly five months. He had turned nineteen on that tour. It had only been a week since a couple of the men and I had arranged a little surprise for him. We had sneaked Ford into the command center of our forward operating base and there, courtesy of a satellite uplink, he had enjoyed almost ten minutes of conversation with his teenaged wife, who was at home in California smiling at him from the computer screen.

Before the men and I had left Ford in the room, his wife had held their son, Tommy, up to the camera. Little Tommy was seven days old, wrapped in a white blanket, with a scrunched-up pink face and baby-blue eyes and a little crocheted beanie on his head. The guys and I withdrew and waited just outside. When Lance Corporal Ford emerged a few minutes later, his eyes were red and swollen. “Thanks” was all said before walking off alone.

I sat on my bunk that day after the captain left, and I thought about that baby. I thought about what it had been like to grow up in a small town in south Texas, ashamed and afraid to speak my father’s name. I had been taken in by my mother’s parents after my father murdered their daughter, my mother, when I was six years old. I knew what it was like to live with unrelenting shame, to wonder if the taint was on me, too, if the wicked thing had been passed down.

I thought about that and about the baby, little Tommy Ford. I thought about his father turning nineteen in that hellhole of a country, and the way the things a man saw there could attack his mind. The damage done could be as deadly as a bullet. The rage. The guilt. The horror. You had to beat it back or it would own you. I had fought that battle myself, years before, on my first combat tour. Every soldier does. But I was the seasoned veteran. I was Ford’s sergeant. I should have seen it coming. I should have gotten out in front of it, talked him through it, saved Ford for his son.

One Christmas in Uvalde, I had gone outside to get mesquite wood for the fireplace and found my grandfather sitting on the front porch swing, alone. He hadn’t noticed me in time to wipe his eyes. The sight of that strong man’s cheeks awash with tears had stopped me in my tracks.

“What’s the matter?” I had asked.

“Nothing, son. Don’t worry.”

“What is it, Grandpa?”

“Oh, you know during the holidays sometimes, I think about your mom.”

It was my thirteenth Christmas. She had been dead for more than half my life.

I had watched his rugged profile as he looked away across the valley. The sun had been about to set.

He said, “Your father came to me that day, before he did it. He was always in some kind of trouble. That time he had got crossways with some El Paso boys. He said he needed money. If I’d given what he wanted it would’ve nearly wiped us out. But money would’ve fixed things. Maybe if I hadn’t been so stubborn…” My grandfather shook his head and wiped his eyes again. “God help me, it was only money.”

Twenty years later, sitting on a bunk in an Afghan war zone, I knew that there are moments when the flow of life presents a choice between an awful sacrifice and a future of regret. Ford had a wife and a newborn son. I had nobody to shame. It was too late for the other men in that video. But maybe there was still a chance for little Tommy. They couldn’t know for certain who had been behind the cell phone’s camera. I decided that they must not know. They would not know.

I stood up and went looking for the captain.

38

“This is it,” said Vega.

From behind him in the van, I rose up to check the situation through the windshield. It was a residential neighborhood of three- and four-story apartment buildings on each side of a narrow street. I saw trash standing in the gutters, the grime of air pollution coating everything, cracked stucco and concrete walls defaced by graffiti, six or seven kids kicking a ball, lots of clothing hanging out to dry on balconies above us, cars and trucks parked with two tires up on the sidewalk, and a pair of mangy-looking dogs trotting toward the van with their tails tucked tight between their legs. Both of the dogs cast furtive glances toward anything that moved. I knew exactly how they felt.

I said, “What’s the plan?”

Vega pointed toward a second-story apartment above us on the right. “The man you want lives there.”

“Who is he?”

“Emilio Delarosa.”

It took a moment to sink in. “Alejandra’s husband?”

“That is correct.”

“Give me the car keys.”

The driver passed them back.

I gave a twist tie to Vega. “I want one of his hands sticking through the steering wheel, and then you tie his wrists together, understand? Then I’ll get out first, and then You’ll get out.”

“I cannot go with you.”

“Why not?”

“Delarosa would not speak freely if he knew I was involved.”

“He’s afraid of you?”