The Lance

CHAPTER NINE

Carter got out of his bloody clothes. His back looked like a ghoulish rainbow from where he'd hit the pavement. The disc injuries he'd gotten in the Himalayas sent warning shocks though his low back. He stepped into the shower and turned up the hot, trying to keep the stitches on his leg out of the stream.

He thought about Selena, how different they were from each other. It was hard to see how people as different as they were had come together. Take family, for instance.

His family was a mess, a textbook example of dysfunction. His father was an alcoholic bully. His sister was neurotic and angry and married to a total asshole. His mother had been a doormat for his father and now she had Alzheimer's. He'd never had much money and he'd worked his way through school.

Selena had been raised by a loving, wealthy uncle. She'd gone to the best private schools and when her uncle died he'd left her more money than anyone could ever spend. His death had brought her to the Project. Education, money, background, Carter and Selena might as well be from different planets.

Carter got out of the shower and dried off. He set the alarm and lay down. He fell asleep.

He dreamed the dream.

He's coming in over the ridge again, the rotors echoing from the valley walls, beating out a rhythm of death. The village is like it always is, a shitty, dust-blown cluster of flat-roofed buildings, baking in relentless heat, surrounded by sharp, brown hills. A wide, dirt street runs down the middle.

His team drops from the chopper and hits the street running, M4 up by his cheek, his Marines behind him. On the right, houses. On the left, more houses and the market. It's just a chaotic mix of ramshackle bins and hanging cloth walls. Clouds of flies swarm around dead things hanging in the butcher’s stall.

They make their way past the market. He keeps away from the walls, so a round fired won't burrow down a wall and right into him. He hears a baby crying. The street is deserted.

A dozen bearded figures rise up on the rooftops like ducks popping up in a carnival shooting gallery and begin firing AKs. The market stalls disintegrate in a firestorm of splinters and plaster and rock exploding from the sides of the buildings.

He ducks into a narrow doorway. A child runs toward him, screaming about Allah. Carter hesitates, a second too long. The boy cocks his arm back and throws a grenade as Nick shoots him. The M4 kicks back, one, two, three.

The first round strikes the boy's chest, the second his throat, the third his face. The child's head disappears in a red fountain of blood and bone. The grenade drifts through the air in slow motion…everything goes white…

He woke, heart pounding, drenched in sweat.

Ghosts. Impressions from the past, his very own personal time machine.

He waited for dawn.