An hour passed since the ambush. When Brint came to, he was engulfed by the metronomic perturbations of a helicopter’s blades beating at the air like a filthy rug. He glared up into the smooth face of his intelligence sergeant, Dev, dazed and disoriented. The man stared back down at him, looking glass reflection an echo of nothing but pain.
The makeshift camp was riled up; soldiers stirred with the fury of a nest of ants kicked around, stomping hither and thither and every which way in search of a fight that had already left them. There wasn’t much to defend now—the damage had already been done.
“How long have I been out?” Brint asked of his subordinate.
“Not sure, man. Just found you over here. LOCKE—” Dev hollered, throat open and full of volume. His eyes lifted to scan across the way for that familiar man in motion. They were green like his CO’s, studiously stern and seemingly hyper-astute. “I got Brint, but he was out. Can you come look at him? I don’t see any blood.”
Locke, for his part, was working double duty—the squad’s second med sergeant was laid out in a tangle of desert reeds, sand clumping in the wound tract of the headshot that killed her.
“18D Reston and 18C Ari are dead, fuck—” Locke ambled up to Dev and Brint with his wide, heavy footsteps punching deep into the sand. When he arrived, he lifted Brint out of the sand, easing him up with hands about wrists in woven reassurances, mutual grasps. “18C Toriet and 18B Sejan are missing, no idea if they’re alive or dead—but there’s tracks leading North.”
The big man, usually content to play the fool, to be the harbinger of ill-timed cheer to his squad’s most dour moments, was all hard information, straight lines. He examined Brint and gave him a cursory all clear: if Brint could stand, then he didn’t have enough concussion to warrant Locke’s time right now. He turned that serious chestnut gaze to Dev, imploring. “Did you see anything?”
Brint blinked slowly, as though cognizance was a gift from the sun’s sight steadily falling, a shower of warmth dressed in the particulate of their landscape, settling dust and sweeps of ceaseless amber. He was clear, blank; a slow breath, a level gaze moving between the two men who attended to him. It sank in like hours lost to inactivity in the span of seconds, heat to his bones, color to the concave bend of his hollow cheeks. All those words, their reality, a sopping mirage solidifying into a cracked pane of glass from the window of his purview.
This was wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Kasse Sejan was a force among flesh. He was an uncatchable breeze. He was invincible, infallible. He was…
gone.
“No, the dust is—” Dev was unable to complete his relay before Brint shot up too fast, head spinning from the hasty motion.
“Alright, let’s go. Everybody get in the fucking car,” Brint commanded, cold and drained of life’s typical luster. “Dev, you’re driving. Locke, you’re navigating.”
Locke looked startled, gaze shifting nervously between Dev and Brint with the sway of his contrapasto weight. “Brint, we have bodies, you need to let the chopper run the search—”
All eyes were on Locke. Dev’s softened as if to say c’mon man, look at him, you can’t win here. Brint’s, however, were so focused they were harsh. They snapped to 18D.
“What was that sergeant?” It took effort, but the older man found steadiness on his uneven legs. “Are you telling me, lieutenant and commander of this ODA, to let air support go fuck around in the open desert searching for two kids who may or may not be dead, when we have actual fatalities here? What, pray tell, did you plan to do with these bodies? Cart them back to base in our land vehicles? Let them rot in the sun all afternoon? Or did you want to bury them out here in the sand with our fucking trenching trowels? Don’t you think they’ve been through enough? Don’t you think they deserve to go back to where they belong and get the respect they’re due?” It was exceedingly rare for Brint to pull rank on his team. Time was wasting though and really, they were all dying out there.
“My orders were to get in the car,” Brint reiterated, slower, clearly enunciated in case there was any confusion. “Are you not going to follow my orders, Sergeant Locke?”
When Dev brushed past the med sergeant, his index finger caught in the man’s hand and gave it a tug.
“No sir,” Locke replied, suddenly indignant, suddenly cold as he straightened. He fell in line with Dev’s step, turning away from his CO as he moved toward the car. “Just playing devil’s advocate, sir.”
When it came down to it, Locke was certain:
If Sejan and Toriet didn’t want to be captive, they would not remain captive; if they didn’t want to be found, they would find no trace.
Stiff, Locke got in the car without another word, rustling through their maps in silence.
“You know he’s not going to let Sejan go without a fight.” Dev’s voice was guarded by the loud rumbling of the truck engine’s idle chugging. His words were plain yet anchored in an affectionate gaze directed at other man, sorry he’d been scolded when the day wasn’t going great for any of them. “Just entertain him for a little while. There’s only so much we can do out there. He knows it, even if he wants to be the hero and come running to save his boy.”
“Didn’t have to be a dick about it,” Locke grumbled, hand falling atop Dev’s on the car’s shifter for a fleeting moment. “I’m sensitive, man. Hurt my feelings.”
“Chin up,” Dev grinned like any expression other than dour could ease the constriction of their grim atmosphere. “Who knows—maybe we’ll find them.” The insinuation of normalcy was a false comfort easily afforded, a hope easily truncated. Things would never really revert to normal for that squad always on the move, not with the cold forms of Ari and Reston stretched out limp beneath a tarp whose corners were subject to the flirtations of the playful wind. Sejan and Toriet’s possible reacquisition would bring some return to form, however—it would be a step in the right direction.
Brint joined the pair a moment later, arms overloaded with canteens, vehicle door slammed behind him. They were off into the world with no walls and never ending sky, traversing an ever changing landscape of sands pulled to the rhyme of no tides. As usual, they were at the mercy of nature and luck, fickle whims functioning independently of each other, always circumspect on if their geminate conspiracy would either grant them fortune or failure.
The pair of engineers now lost had left their marks all over the maps Locke studied. Ari’s suggestions on their various missions were scratched in blue, Toriet’s rebuttals in green, and Brint overruled them all in red. They’d taken all the intel Dev had gathered about exceptionally hostile stretches of territory and shaded them in atop the swirling agglomeration of topographical demarcations. Long snaking pathways were drawn betwixt flat renderings of mountain passes, cheats and tells against all the surprises the sand kept hidden in its permeable terrain. A path north to Lasandet was clearly charted, but from it branched incidental avenues, possible outposts, distractions or disasters waiting to happen.
Dev followed an open trail cut between the gentle rising of two dunes. Guided both by practicality and the directions given by the man at his right, they were an hour and a half into their journey when he slammed on the truck’s squeaky brakes, startled by Brint shoving his torso up between his front seaters with an alarming—
“WAIT!” The CO’s binoculars flew out of his hands and crashed into the windscreen, exacerbating an existing crack that was slowly cutting its way down the center with every bump and ditch-slam.
“FUCK man, what the—what?!” Dev managed between choppy breaths.
“Over there,” Brint gestured. “What’s that? A mirage or legit?”
One hundred yards ahead, the sand was flecked with black, debris or heat waves swaying to the cadence of the setting sun, suspended between cresting night and fleeting day. Ossa’s desert was untrustworthy in its most arid state. It took full advantage of the inaccuracy of human sight and marred the distance with unintelligible constructions made from bent light, Fata Morgana formed to fit into the shape of something deceptively natural.
“That’s legit!” Locke exclaimed with certainty, as though he’d been given some preternatural ability to separate illusion from reality, mirage from what truly existed. “I recognize that fucking Peregrine—that’s who attacked our fucking camp.”
In the ruddy dusk, the entire scene was painted red with violence, molten action chilled till all that remained was molded tar to recount events, to concede defeat, to recollect injury. When the vehicle stopped some twenty yards off the wreckage, Locke was already sure they wouldn’t find their friends inside.
“Those motherfuckers,” he chuckled to himself as he folded his map, leaning into a full out laugh, roiling and turbulent and guttural and deeply afraid for the safety of his friends. “Ossans ain’t gonna get you without a fight.”
“Yikes. That one must’ve hurt,” Dev commented to no one, ignition turned off with a flick of his wrist.
Brint was already out of the car before the quietude of the open air could settle in, boots marching him away from the lingering echoes of his med sergeant’s laughter and the fading reverb of old machinery made silent. The lieutenant slung his weapon around to his back and stomped off between the pathway of metal shorn from wreckage and stabbed throughout the sand like it was a field of scabbards, past mass open graves of gashes sliced into the fragile terrain of ever shifting particle flesh. He unknowingly followed footsteps now covered, he walked a path that a young man earlier ran. Rifles readied in their arms, the pair of sergeants forced to accompany their CO were only a handful of steps behind.
The growing night smelled like gasoline and oil; like blood and sweat, rust and the softest accent of aloeswood traveling on a wayward breeze, pungent spices and ancient incense embedded in seat-linens never washed. Brint circled the mangled vehicle. On his knees, he pulled out his torch to illuminate a space between truck bed and Earth, consumed by shadow.
Dev peered into the cab, eyes surveying the splatter of grey matter forced through the back of the driver’s shattered skull, his body misshapen and crumbled, the glove box open and emptied.
“Looks like they definitely had the upper hand here.” The intelligence sergeant’s bright eyes moved up to find Locke. “Executed driver, no other bodies, no supplies.”
“But if they had the upper hand, where are the bodies?” Locke wondered aloud, apparently not reprimanded enough to keep from playing devil’s advocate. Suddenly the large man was wary, skittish, skimming their perimeter with his maple eyes. “There were just… so many at camp. Where are they? Dead driver could just be bait for an ambush that we just fell right into…”
Brint’s attention shot up to the two men. Beneath the weight of his CO’s eyes, Dev shrugged his shoulders.
“Anything could have happened. Maybe they were kicked out along the way, picked off one by one until only the driver was left. Maybe they were captured and forced to take our boys somewhere to contact us for a pick up. I wouldn’t put it past those two to negotiate for hostages.” The nonchalance in Dev’s voice made it seem like he didn’t already know about Kasse’s very in-demand gift. “If this was an ambush, surely those guys would leave something more than their own dead driver to entice us to stay longer. That doesn’t really make sense, Locke. Ossans are all about making points—there’s no point to be had in the still fresh blood of their own man. Not when ours have dog tags and IDs and other paraphernalia that can be used to better lure us in.” Eyes full lies, Dev made a mental note to himself to explain the situation to his companion later.
“My point is,” 18F continued, “They’re not here. It’s almost dark. Can we go back to camp? It took a long time to get out here.”
“They could be anywhere nearby,” Brint wagered, looking out onto the horizon punctured by faraway spires of mountains rising.
“Or they could be hours ahead of us by now, in any direction,” Locke reasoned, in turn. He nodded slowly, eyes locked on Dev. There were things his more perceptive companion seemed aware of that the med sergeant hadn’t yet grasped, so he followed that man’s lead like he always did: with a trust so bright and wide-eyed it nearly rendered him blind, left him a fool in the eyes of more worldly onlookers. He was a soft thing, Anton Locke, always hazy eyed in LaVaughn Dev’s presence.
“Look, we all had the same SERE training—what’s been drilled into us the entire time we’ve been out here, Brint?”
“We’re vulnerable. We’re slowly becoming a liability to ourselves,” Dev added, vision drawn sluggishly sideways and away from Locke. When he looked to his commanding officer, that detail oriented man saw the face of someone who was fighting against his better instincts, a man right in the middle of losing a battle with himself. Brint was crumbling under the weight of endless possibilities and unknowns; he’d sacrificed his battle-honed logic to chance and, like a drowning man struggling to grasp anything before he succumbed to the sea of his consciousness’ morbid depths, he was on the verge of pulling the other two in with him. How sad was this, Dev thought in the silence of his superior’s indecision, to watch a stubbornly syllogistic man bare his chest open to emotion. They were all human. God, they were all so human.
“Let’s just make a quick perimeter—” Brint tried to reason, back facing the brilliance of evening.
“We actually really don’t have time for that.” Dev’s eyes narrowed, focused on two points of light that bobbed and quickly disappeared, blotted against the fading spray of day. “Movement at Brint’s seven o’clock. You seeing this, Locke?”
“Get in the car,” Locke ordered, suddenly serious. The authoritarian edge of the large man’s bark was rarely more than a bruise, but in the face of what he saw as a threat to the life of both Dev, who he’d grown to care rather deeply for, and his CO, who was evidently not thinking reasonably for the grief of losing Kasse Sejan four sergeants in a single day, the wake of his bite would need stitches to heal. “Lights off, Dev, then we go.”
Fuck, Locke wasn’t the marksman for this job.
Fuck, they didn’t have the ammo for this shit.
Fuck, Brint was gonna fire wide and fast,
all frenzy and fervor of his rage.
Fuck, Locke was gonna fire tight and nervous,
afraid for his boyfriend’s tomorrow.
“Boy, you gotta drive.”
“You drive better. I’ll be door gunner.” Dev was quick action and acquiescence. He spared no time, he wasted no movement to dawdle over that which was unnecessary. The humvee’s keys rattled dull in his fist as he sent them sailing through the air toward their medic.
“That could be—” Brint dawdled, turning at the waist.
Dev snapped back at the lieutenant. “It’s not, and if it is, then they know where camp is. Let’s go!” Circling back around, the intelligence sergeant grabbed the older man’s hand and drug him toward the car. Brint caught on in a few steps, clumsy feet shuffling in the dirt for traction, arms working to prepare the rifle slung across his back, boot tread path sloppy in their stumbling wake.
Keys caught, Locke was in the driver’s seat lickety-split, slamming the seat back to accommodate his superior size. With Dev and Brint scrambling into the car, the med sergeant was off revving the engine to life in a dusty peel that carved a donut and a half out of the red Ossan landscape.
“Seatbelts get fucked, boys, hold onto your tits!”
No single soldier had ever coaxed the humvee into moving quite like Anton Locke as he overclocked all systems, punched that wheezing chassis through sand dunes and sastruga. She’d seen better days, though, wasn’t as young or spry as her manufacturing date. Every time they landed hard from the air caught in evasion, the windshield cracked a little more, the frame groaned a little louder,
their tail’s lights got a little bit brighter.
“They’re probably going to stop, think we picked them up, and keep after us.” Dev assessed the situation with his bare eyes squinting against the horizon, muscular frame whipped around in his seat to ease the strain of his rearward gaze, weapon propped beside the seatback.
“They’re not to the wreck yet,” Brint announced, torso draped over the backseat to maintain his line of sight out the back window. It was difficult to keep his binoculars straight with his medic driving the truck like he stole it, but the lieutenant managed enough stillness in the aftermath of every crater they hit to relevel and catch another glimpse of their targets. “If we can get ahead of them enough to drive normal, then you won’t have to use the brakes and we can disappear into the night. Assuming they do stop and check out the scene.”
“… Take out the tail lights when we get back to camp,” Dev suggested.
“For fucking sure,” Brint replied. “Put some tape on the windscreen, too. You’re making this hunk of shit work for it, goddamn, Locke.”
Skidding to a halt, Locke’s usually jovial expression was gone, hardened to an unmitigated gameface screaming fuck this desert silent into Ossa’s chilling night. Without explanation, he got out of the car, picked up the first fist-sized rock he found, rounded the vehicle, and beat the literal lights out of the Humvee, one by fucking one. Job complete, Locke dropped his weapon and took his seat, silently throwing the car back in drive to resume their escape to camp.
“I have to use the brakes,” he clarified, some thirty seconds after they’d picked up speed. “Not being able to utilize the brakes is a safety hazard. We shouldn’t encourage reckless driving habits—we’re better than that, guys.”
“Oh, okay,” Dev laughed, open mouthed and delighted in the face of their grim prospects. “Mr. Seatbelts Get Fucked has suddenly evolved into Mr. Safety First. Right, right. I see how it is.” He shook his head, sitting up straight to settle into his observation again.
“You get to fuck your seatbelts because I uphold the majority of offroad safety protocols, don’t play with me, boy,” Locke snipped back, shoving at his boyfriend in the passenger seat as he broke back into a grin. He couldn’t help himself when Dev was the one goading him.
The repartee coaxed a smile from Brint, even though his front seaters couldn’t see it. A steady influx of adrenaline shook the lethargy from his idle and helpless worry, upper-jolt through his downtrodden systems. Working toward something was slowly eclipsing his depression in that moment of extended tenebrousness, the thrill of looming combat came like a current coursing through his veins. The lieutenant’s eyes were attached to the horizon, seeing somewhere between the marring of sun sear and spot movement. He was aided by Dev’s less accurate assessment. He was half distracted by rechecking his weapon.
“They’re stopping,” Brint announced, “Whole truck of them—four, five, six. Fuck.”
“Yep, they’re definitely going to think we’re getting away with something.” Dev looked up from his hands working the rifle’s magazine. To his naked eye, the men were black spots scurrying about, arthropods working the shallow incline of a grainy mound.
“Just keep going, maybe they’ll get bored and turn back.”
“What are they gonna do, go back home and sit around watchin’ Ara me Va? Eat some sandy ass popcorn and forget their military objective? Bored my fuckin’ ass.” Locke was spitting fire over his shoulder, leaning into the hefty amount of concentration it took to drive a humvee through sand at close to 75mph. Spying a rising dune up ahead, the med sergeant eased them toward the right, toward flatter terrain, making a mental note to straighten out afterwards.
His words reminded him that he was at least a month behind on Ara me Va episodes and his mind wandered, ruminating on what could be happening in that fictional Ossan world of intense melodrama he loved so much. He always looked forward to stealing away with Brint’s phone with Dev when they were in range of a cell tower, holing up and marathoning episodes until they either got caught and castigated for using all their CO’s data or they were on the move again.
“Yeah, and if they knew where to get us in the first place, then they know where to find us again,” Dev said, glancing from Locke to Brint. “It’s more likely their truck will rattle apart. Piece of shit MTVRs aren’t worth their weight in scrap, or so I’ve been told.” With a focus on intelligence, Dev was something of an information sponge. He was not inherently well-versed in the language of vehicles—he knew that fact about the MTVR because Locke had told him as much on a lonely watch many, many moons ago.
“You know, sometimes I sit and wonder to myself: how is it that I got stuck with every smartass in the army?” Brint turned his head aside in acknowledgement of his snap-mouthed subordinates, however he didn’t really look at either of the men. He was back on the distance like an owl-eyed predator, lenses glistening in the meager light of the fading day. “Movement. They’re on their way. Temper your pace just a hair, Locke, we should try to disable them so they don’t follow us all the way back and fuck up the rest of the squad.” Or any remaining help that was lingering at their camp. That ODA’s current mission was effectively paused. Now they would have to regroup, plug holes, and carry on searching for their missing crew.
In direct contrast to his superior’s orders, Locke maintained his speed, watching the old MTVR’s headlights slowly fade into atmospheric distance in his rear view mirror. Satisfied, that gentle giant’s listless gaze strayed, refocused on Dev’s austere reflection, his fondness quelling any sharp retort he might’ve been keeping in his mouth just in case Brint had something to say about his current insubordination.
Soon, the horizon went dark and it was just Locke, Dev, and Brint, somber and alone in the quiet with their daunting new task: to locate their lost brothers in the endless red desert.