A Knife Edge

FORTY-FIVE

Ruben Wright and I were sitting in a slit trench dug into a snowdrift, the air around us swirling with frozen ice crystals that reflected the available light like diamonds. The cold had numbed my ass so completely I wasn't even sure I had one anymore. I was so cold I'd crack if I tried to move. Ruben was sighting down a Squad Automatic Weapon, an M249 machine gun, his left cheek wrinkled with deep clefts beneath an eye clamped shut. He was aiming at a far ridge over which we knew the enemy would be charging. It was just Ruben and me, alone in the snow. He looked good for a dead guy and I told him so. Perhaps being dead he wasn't affected by temperatures frigid enough to freeze skin to exposed metal. “Death agrees with you, buddy,” I said.

“Nice of you to say, Vin. In return, I'd like to tell you that you're kinda stupid.”

“Oh, yeah? Why's that?”

“Did you really think I'd committed suicide?”

“It looked bad there for a while, Wrong Way.”

“Would I cut myself out of my own harness?”

“There were conflicting signs.”

“Goddamn it. So I had MS. I could still do what I needed to do — jump out of planes, kill the bad guys…”

“Knowing you, I wasn't sure how you'd have handled it — wasting away slowly…”

“I was handling it fine, for Christ's sake. Just another challenge.”

“What about Amy and Butler?”

“Yeah, well, shit happens.”

“You were stalking them.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I found the MPEGs.”

“Always knew they'd turn up.”

“I know you. At least I thought I did. I looked at the facts. They told me it was possible you might have decided to take Butler down with you — leave while the party was still happening, and get in a little revenge of your own.”

I turned to face him. His gray eyes were clear and his skin glowed pink with health. He was going to say something, but he appeared to change his mind and instead commented, “You don't look well, Vin.”

“I don't feel so good,” I agreed. Indeed, I was pretty sure I'd reached the point of no return. My blood was so thick with cold my heart couldn't pump it around my body. I noticed that blurred black-and-white shapes had appeared over the far ridge, a wave of them. The enemy had returned. Behind them, giant mushroom clouds from an earlier dream blossomed and reached far into the upper atmosphere, and this time they were white rather than orange. Ruben let off a burst of fire from his SAW. I started firing my weapon at individual targets, my trigger finger the only part of me that I could move. I hit nothing. Ruben hit nothing. The enemy kept coming. The rifle bucked and jumped in my hands over and over. No hits. I managed to change mags and then flicked the selector to full auto. The rifle reared and sprayed its deadly load. I glanced to my right. Ruben was no longer beside me. Just like I'd suggested, he'd had the good sense to leave before the situation climbed into the toilet.

I woke shivering so hard my top and bottom teeth were banging away at each other like a couple of castanets. I was lying on a hard, dirty floor. My head hurt with a pounding pain. My hands were locked behind my back. I licked my lips. They were cracked and bloody and swollen. One of my eyes wouldn't open. Maybe it didn't want to know what was on the other side of the lid. My captors had stripped me down to my BDU. No shoes, no gloves. Everything ached. I craved water. I rolled onto my side and sat up and tried to get my bearings, stop my shivering. I couldn't feel my hands or toes.

A door kicked open, letting in so much light it was almost blinding. Several dark shapes entered. When they came closer, I saw the shapes were a couple of men leading horses. They came past, close. Both animals lifted their tails and dropped piles of steaming shit in front of me. I accepted the invitation, wriggled forward on the bones of my butt, and dug my toes into the crap. Delicious warmth surged through my feet and up my legs. Someone yelled something and slapped my face a few times. I was numb so it didn't hurt too bad, although it changed the rhythm of the headache between my ears, shifting it into four/four time.

Another man bent down, grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. “You are American,” he said in heavily accented English.

There were no identifying patches on my uniform or gear, but I had to have come from somewhere. “American,” I said.

I earned another slap. Whack. “I hate Americans,” he said. “What are you doing in Pakistan?”

I didn't answer. Whack.

“What are you doing here?”

“Tourist,” I said.

I knew what was coming. I wasn't disappointed. Whack. My brain bounced around inside my skull.

“I will kill you if you do not answer my questions. Will you answer my questions?”

“Yes,” I said, though I made no promise to answer them truthfully.

There was a discussion going on between the guy slapping me around and someone else I couldn't see. They were arguing excitedly in Pashtu.

“Do you know what this is?” the man demanded, suddenly back in my face. His eyes were green, his skin olive. Up close, he reminded me of a badass-biker type. A wild, light-brown beard began somewhere inside his nose and ended raggedly mid-chest. He didn't seem in a particularly good mood. I glanced down. My Beretta sat in the palm of his hand.

“Yes,” I replied, keeping it simple. I knew what it was.

He pulled the slider back to chamber a round, lifted my head, and put the muzzle against my forehead. My good eye watched his finger squeeze the trigger. I watched as the skin on his dirty index finger between the second and third joint whitened with pressure against the metal. The trigger moved. I couldn't. Any moment the hammer would hit the—

Clack.

“Next time, American, there will be a live round behind the hammer.”

I saw him raise the gun like he was going to use it to chop wood, saw the down swing, felt—