‘How many are deployed?’
‘In that region? About eleven thousand.’
She seemed surprised. ‘Do the units stay the same?’ she asked.
‘People circulate. Most do their secondments and return home. Others...’ He shrugged. Even now, as he looked back he could recognise that he’d had a choice. He could have challenged the exile. In fact, his commanding officer in the Svardian Armén had been trying to get him back on home soil for at least two years now. ‘We come from all around the world—each member state contributing certain numbers if and where they can,’ he explained.
‘Some of you stay?’
‘When we can.’
‘Do you want to go back?’ she asked hesitantly.
He didn’t know if he could. Not now. Not after. And that thought alone cost him greatly. He looked across the room to the stack of paperwork Freya had pushed to the side and saw the AAR on the top. The report, nearly two weeks overdue now. A year ago such a thing would have been inconceivable.
‘I’d known Enzo for about five years. We’d crossed over on a number of missions in a number of different locations. He was all Italian charm. Quick with a joke, a leer and a laugh. But he loved his wife,’ Kjell said with the first sincere smile she’d seen lift his lips since dinner. ‘At least once a day we’d be subjected to rhapsodies about her beauty and her kindness. He gloried in his love for her,’ he said, Kjell’s tone full of amusement. ‘The sonnets he could have written about her hair alone...’ He half laughed, and Freya felt her lips curve into a smile.
Kjell leaned his head on his hand, elbow rested on knee and eyes locked on somewhere Freya would never likely see, remembering someone she would never meet. Her heart ached, instinctively knowing the end to this story and wishing there could be another way for Kjell to face his demons.
‘We were at the end of our patrol. We should have been heading back to base, but we were rerouted.’
There was something about the way he said that last bit, a shift in tone that didn’t sit right.
‘You disagreed with the command?’
‘I would never disobey a direct order.’ Grim-lipped and pale, Kjell’s eyes were locked on a distant horizon.
Freya frowned, trying to find the right words. ‘Did you question it?’
His jaw flexed, the muscle tight and his skin flushed with anger. ‘No.’
Oh. Her heart ached for him. She could see it now. He had disagreed with the order but, as a dutiful and conscientious soldier, couldn’t,wouldn’t, question it.
‘Chain of command is just as important on the ground for UN missions as it is with any other deployed army,’ he ground out through teeth clenched so hard she feared something might break.
She placed her hand on his forearm, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘But I could feel it,’ he said, his unseeing gaze finally clearing enough to lock onto hers. ‘In my gut. We both did. We both knew it was wrong. We were to help safeguard a group of foreign nationals who had gone off-itinerary to visit a local community centre. The intention was good enough, but the security plan wasn’t in place to cover it and they clearly didn’t realise how unstable the region was. Absolutely they needed the support, but there were two other patrols who were fresher and just as close.’
‘So why were you sent?’
Kjell’s eyes shifted from dusk to midnight in a heartbeat. ‘They were showing off. They wanted to sendme,’ he said, jerking a thumb back into his chest, ‘a high-ranking senior officer.’
Freya felt her eyes grow wide and round. The agony in his tone, the bitterness and hurt, was awful for her to hear.
‘We all knew it. Showboating for the oil execs. The squad shared eye-rolls and friendly banter, but I didn’t like it. It waswrong.’
‘Kjell—’ She wanted to tell him he could stop, wanted to protect him from reliving such great pain, but it was as if he couldn’t hear her.
‘When we got there, the visit from the oil execs had drawn a lot of unwanted attention and a crowd was beginning to form. Some of the young teenagers at the community centre had been part of the reintegration programme, having turned their backs on the local militia. Most of these boys, Freya—they’d been taken when they were five or six...and at sixteen they were still fighting for their freedom.’
Her heart ached for children she would never meet, their struggle as impossible and inconceivable to her as it was an anathema.
‘Foreign execs and ex-child soldiers. It was exactly the kind of target that the militia liked best. We were on the radio before the convoy could pull to a stop, calling for reinforcements.’
Freya wondered what he saw in his mind—his gaze fixed over her shoulder.
‘They were probably already there—the rogue militia, indistinguishable from the people in the crowd who had gathered to support the centre or had been drawn there by curiosity about the visitors.’