I groaned. “I don’t like to talk about that stuff. And anyway, it’ll only upset you.”
“It might help me understand you better.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
Her mouth hung open as though taken aback by my question. “I don’t know. I guess you’re not the person I thought you were when I first arrived. You must’ve been through a lot in your life to get to this point, and if we’re going to be spending two weeks together, I’d like to learn more about what makes you… you.”
I glanced at my wrist and realized I was spinning the worn leather braid. Could I tell her how I got it?
I stopped fidgeting. “I don’t know, Cam. Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“All right.” I paused and considered my words. “There’s this one day that plays over in my head. My team was deployed to the Kunduz Province in Afghanistan on what should’ve been a straightforward mission. They assigned us to protect a bunch of overseas doctors working at a local hospital. We’d escort them wherever they needed to go and also be on-site at the clinic to provide security. Easy work compared to being on the front line, but there were a lot of kidnappings and suicide bombings happening, so it was justified.”
She remained silent, nodding from time to time and giving me her undivided attention.
My mind drifted back to that day. It was easy to do; those images were never far from my thoughts. The run-down hospital with its basic medical facilities, boarded-up windows, and exterior walls peppered with bullet holes. Hell, I could almost still taste the dust that was stirred up every time a vehicle passed.
“There were these orphan street kids always hanging around. A bunch of them would run up to us giggling, and then one would tie a leather band on our wrist before they’d all run off again in fits of laughter. They’d hold out their palms to see what we’d give them in exchange for their gift. We’d hand over chocolate bars and gum from our ration packs. I suppose we shouldn’t have done that. Perhaps then they wouldn’t have kept coming back. It became a bit of a game between us. Must have collected about twenty of the damn things myself. This is the last one they put on me.” I held up my wrist to show Cam. I doubted the tattered leather would survive another year.
I was about to continue, but hesitated when Cam folded her arms around her belly.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Please, keep going.”
I nodded before downing the rest of my wine. “It’s so stupid, some of the shit that’s stuck in my head from that day. I’d been patrolling the perimeter with two guys. Sinclair was on his first deployment and nervous as hell. The poor son of a bitch checked his watch every few minutes as if he couldn’t wait for the day to be done. Rodriguez and I had been teammates for years. He’d been telling me a story about how his brother’s pit bull knocked up the neighbor’s poodle. He laughed so hard the cigarette fell right out of his mouth.” I smirked at the memory, but it dropped away because that had been the moment it all turned to hell.
“Then the rebels mortared the shit out of the hospital. Did a lot of damage before I could even call in support. It was their own damn people in there. The old, the injured, women and kids. They did it because they didn’t want the locals to be grateful for what the doctors and our military were doing.” I released my grip on the glass before it shattered in my hand. All these years later, the anger I harbored for those cowards was still raw. “We called in the Dust-off—the evac helicopters—and got the medical staff out. They were our mission's priority. But the bulk of the casualties were locals. There wasn’t room to take anyone else, and it wasn’t safe to send more of our doctors back in to help the ones left behind. It was our fault the place got bombed, and we couldn’t even stick around to help. Just bailed on them like it wasn’t our problem to deal with. It was a fucking mess. The things I saw as we left that hospital…” A painful knot formed in my throat. I stared at the table where my thumbnail pressed hard into the grain of the timber. “Those kids didn’t make it.”
“Shep, that’s…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have told Cam that. Maybe it was too much.
I grabbed the bottle of wine, topped up her glass, and refilled my own. We both took a long drink.
“Killing a man who’s aiming his shitty AK-47 at me or my brothers was one thing, but seeing women and children injured and dying and not being able to do anything to help them? That shit stays with you. I never want to feel like that again.”
She blinked fast and pushed her plate aside. “I’m so sorry you went through that. God, those poor people.”
I hadn’t meant to go into so much detail, but once I got started, it kept rolling out. There was something about Cam that made me drop my guard.
“We were supposed to be there to help, but sometimes we were making things worse. How can you beat an enemy that's willing to manipulate and sacrifice its own people to get what they want?”
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right? Their blood, it’s not on you. It’s on the psychos who bombed a hospital with innocent people inside. Your team and those doctors were doing something good in a place most would be too damn scared to walk into.”
Perhaps she was only trying to lift my spirits by saying that, but I was too distracted by her hand on mine to care. Her skin was smooth and warm, and when I looked her in the eyes, she didn’t glance away.
“Thank you for telling me. That can’t have been easy.” She removed her hand and leaned back in her chair.
I nodded. “Plenty more where that one came from, but you get the idea.”
Before she could ask any more, I stood and went to the kitchen. There was a bottle of sixteen-year-old single malt I’d been saving. Now seemed like a good time to try it. I brought it back to the table with two glasses and sat across from her.
“I need something a little stronger than wine. How about you?”
She nodded.
“And don’t worry. I purchased this bottle myself.” Well, purchased with the funds from murdering assholes, but we didn’t need to go into that.