Sebastian shook his head. “That’s what I mean, though. Who ordered the bomb dropped? And why’d we live when everyone else…” He was going to say “burned to ash,” but stopped himself. They’d been strangers to him. They’d been brothers in arms to Pete.
Pete stared out at the river and swirled the beer in his hand. “Chance or fate,” he finally said. “The soldier’s great question.”
Sebastian thought that was an interesting idea even if it didn’t answer anything. Pete kept speaking.
“You should talk to Dash. He’s the one who came to first. Found you and me on the stairs. He got us home.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian had tried to speak with Jean-Jacques a few times, to little avail. The other man had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with him. “I’ll do that.”
Sebastian looked up and let the sun warm his face. He was still trying to unravel the knots in their saga, but couldn’t quite figure out how. He’d left it alone for years, thinking it for the best. And it had been, for a while. Be thankful you’re alive, his mom had said, quoting Corinthians: “For who hath known the mind of the Lord?”
Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes it needed to be.
Was it still?
“I feel old,” Pete said. He’d finished his beers. “Too much waiting around.”
“You’re… twenty-seven?” Sebastian knew that already but wanted to appear uncertain. “The rock star age. Jim Morrison, Hendrix, all those maniacs.”
“Rupert Brooke, too.” Pete’s voice softened a beat. “If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field, That is for ever England.”
Who thinks like that? Sebastian thought. Who quotes Rupert freaking Brooke anymore? He found it strange and odd but also endearing. Then he listened as Pete recounted when and where he’d given his youth. Eighteen—a baby-faced private patrolling the Balkans. Nineteen—a baby-faced Ranger going on clandestine raids into Persia. Twenty-one—a not-so-baby-faced Ranger helping put down the Syrian uprising, gifted a local belly dancer by a superior to mark his entry into manhood. He’d talked with the dancer about her studies, he said. She’d reminded him of his sister too much. On and on, through his formative years and the cythrax bomb, direct-action tours and long-range reconnaissance missions, from mountain caves to desert hideouts to dense, jumbled megacities. He likened the work of counterinsurgency to that of a politician, always currying favor and seeking buy-in. The work of a counterterrorist, though, that was the work of a monk. Autonomous, as reliant on routine as it was on belief. He liked those missions the best. They were pure.
“Squeezing the trigger on a man who deserves it?” he said. “That’s victory. Or the closest thing we have these days.”
Then, as if his batteries went out, Pete was done. He looked down at his lap. Sebastian just nodded and kept quiet. Any words would’ve spoiled it all.
Some time passed. “Excuse me,” Pete said, pulling out a phone Sebastian hadn’t seen before. “Need to make a call.”
Pete walked to the far side of the patio, yelling out a big “Yo! It’s Swenson. What you got for me?” then turning his back away from the table and speaking more subdued.
Sebastian took a bite from a now-stale spring roll. What a weirdo, he thought. Heroes! They really are just like us.
More time passed. Sebastian moved his chair into the shade. Pete’s phone call with someone who knew him as “Swenson” continued to absorb him. Sebastian wasn’t sure what to make of his continued efforts to get involved with the manhunt for Jonah Gray. On one hand, he was Justice. Of course he should be involved. On the other—he was a walking, talking titan with a magical burning eye. It wasn’t like he could go undercover.
Chance or fate, Pete had asked. Sebastian knew which had saved him. It hadn’t been the government. It hadn’t been God. It’d been a luck even blinder than he was. He thought about his family offering to pay his ransom. They’d tried, at least, whatever the federals had to say about it. That’d taken courage. That’d taken love.
So many others had died in Tripoli. Rangers. Soldiers. Terrorists. Insurgents. Innocents, too. Why had he lived? Others needed to be there. He’d chosen to. Sebastian pulled out his own phone. Into the web search he typed Abu Abdallah Wife and Baby.
He scrolled down and clicked a website written in Arabic, pressing the translate button. His phone’s internal stateware issued an alert—this website had not been approved by cyber command. Whatever, he thought. I turn invisible. I’m already on every watch list there is.
It was an op-ed from the Tripoli Post, dated three years prior.
What are we to make of the unbelievers’ attack last week on a rice farm in the city outskirts? Let’s start with the bodies: at least sixty dead, to include dozens of local women and children. The invaders claim over thirty of their own were killed in the gunfire. That’s ninety human souls lost in minutes. For what?
Or we could start with what you, what I, what everyone in Tripoli has been talking about since that bloody day: the bomb of fire that fell upon the farm. My mother’s mother says it came from Allah. My neighbor says it came from the invaders’ fighter jets. My joker son says it came from a fool American on a ship who fell asleep on the wrong button. I say all those can be true, or none. I also say I’ve never seen anything so bright and also so dark.
Who amongst us didn’t believe in those minutes we were living the Hour of Judgment?
Or we could start with the new fact that Umm Khalid was one of the Muslims martyred at the rice farm. She was one of the wives of the jihadist cleric Abu Abdallah, and not a native of our land or city. But she came here with her new child seeking peace. She came here seeking haven.
We failed her. We failed her child. We did not protect them, as was our charge.
My readers know what I think of the jihadists. They are dogs, barbarians who pervert the Quran. But after last week’s bombing, I am left wondering: What now is the right choice for Tripoli? What is the right choice to keep our families safe? Things like that did not happen until the unbelievers came here.
Bomb of fire, Sebastian thought. Huh.
He put away his phone. He looked up to find Pete looming over him, wraparound ballistic shades propped up on his head, a tower of muscle and light.
“What’s so vital in that phone, hostage,” Pete said.
“Nothing, really,” Sebastian said, trying to sound normal. “Work stuff.”
Pete stared at him without blinking for what seemed like perpetuity. Sebastian knew he’d break under scrutiny. He almost hoped for it. Anything to get those two bright eyes of fury off him. Then Pete smiled wide, breaking the spell. “Just joshing. Roll out?”
Sebastian set down cash so they didn’t have to wait for a bill. Where to next? Sebastian suggested a museum, or perhaps a panel discussion at Empire State University. Pete thought he was joking. As long as he was home in time for the new Utopia episode, Sebastian didn’t care. Bobby Kennedy survived the assassination attempt this episode, and he wanted to see how. They settled on Kiernan’s, a pub in the Village that claimed to be America’s oldest. Lincoln had campaigned there. Women hadn’t been allowed until the Haig administration. It was a historic place. Thanksgiving wishbones from World War I doughboys who didn’t make it home from France still hung from the rafters.