Playing Tyler (23 page)

“In Afghanistan? In Helmand? It's one of the largest opium-producing regions in the world. Don't be stupid here, Tyler. It's drugs. It has to be drugs.”

No. Can't be drugs. Rick can't take a job from a bunch of drug runners. He would never do that. He hates drugs. Believes in his country. Believes in honor. Believes in the war on drugs. He would never have me fly missions for some drug lords. Not ever. “Rick doesn't know that they're running drugs.”

“Are you kidding me? He knows everything!” She stands right in front of me, taking my face in her hands. “I'm sorry he's not the man you thought he was, but trust me, he knows what's in those trucks. And he's paying you to make sure they get to where they need to go.”

I feel the touch of her hands on my cheeks. I hear her words. Hear the sound of her voice. But I can't put them all together and make things fit the way I need them to go.

“No.” I hold her hands in mine. Take them off of my face, gently. “No, he doesn't know.” Because if he knows, then I'm a drug runner. And a murderer. And that just can't be. That's not who I am. Not who I want to be. “It can't be true.” I kiss her. Kiss her on the top of her head. “I'll talk to him about it. Tell him. He'll cut them off. Take care of it. But trust me, he would never agree to work for those people. Not ever.”

“Why do you keep defending him? It makes no sense. He knows everything about this program, he controls everything!”

“You don't know him.”

“This is insane. Insane! I can't, can't do this anymore, Tyler. I just can't.” Her whole body's shaking as she backs away from me.

“What?”

Her eyes shine so hard they look like they're on fire. “It's him or me. Your choice.”

Fuck. This. I turn around and walk out the door, slamming it behind me.

 

Don't have to wait for long. Rick's in my driveway when I get back. I creep Mom's car in behind him and turn off the car. Deep breath. He doesn't know about the drugs. He can't know.

The day is warm for October, afternoon sun hanging low, painting the sky orange. Rick's wearing a fleece pullover and jeans. Deep breath, Ty. I fidget with my phone, tucking it into my pocket. He waves his hand in greeting. “Hey, Ty, got your text.” He looks at me as I get out of the car. Then the smile leaves his eyes. Grabbing the envelope. My next envelope, he hands it out to me.

I take it. Don't want it, but I take it. Maybe I'll mail it to a rehab center. Give it to somebody good. Somebody who helps people. Slip it in my back pocket. I shrug. Honest, Tyler, just be honest. This is Rick. You've known Rick for years. “Hey, yeah, come on in, I need to talk to you about something.”

He follows me to the front door. Big guy, standing right behind me, smelling like a mix of aftershave and whatever the stuff is he has in that flask that he carries. Damn, I wish he'd stop drinking so much. I unlock the door and we go in. Go over to the fridge, open it. Take out my phone, fiddle with it, put it back in my pocket then grab a bottle of Gatorade. I offer one to him and he accepts. We move over to the dining room. I don't want to sit in front of the sim. And the dining room has this great long window that lets in the light. Help me to read his face.

“What's your worry?” he asks, tone light.

“Rick, I need to talk to you about the missions. The ones where I fly cover for the convoys.”

His face becomes stone. Just like that. Shit. This is bad. “What about the missions with the trucks? I haven't noticed you reporting anything having gone wrong. Do you have a question?”

“No, well.” His face oh shit, his face. No. He can't know. Tell him. Hear him when he gives a reasonable explanation. “It's just that after the trucks deliver their cargo, they stop on the way out, before the border, near Baram Cha and load up again. They don't go home empty.”

“That doesn't sound like a question.” His voice is cold, cast in steel.

Now. Chest wound tight. Ask now, just say it. “Drugs, Rick. I think they're running drugs. I know that this is probably shocking and all that but I think you need to know what the Pakistani company hiring us to fly cover for them is doing.”

He takes a sip from the flask. Then another. Swallowing long, deliberately, like he's weighing his options. Shit. Shit. If he was innocent he would be mad. Outraged. And he's not. He's drinking. Thinking of the best way to spin his lies. Are you fucking kidding me? Rick? Rick's lying to me using me all this time the only person who's been there for me tricked me into running drugs for him this has to be a lie has to be not true but he's quiet too quiet. “Dammit, Rick. Are you paying me to fly cover for a company that runs drugs out of Helmand and into Pakistan?”

He stares. Please say no, please. He looks me over, face unreadable. He stands up, moves over to the china cabinet, grabs two tumblers. Bringing them over to the table, he takes out his flask and fills the glasses, pushes one over to me. “I've known you for, what? Two years, three now? I'm asking you now, as a man, have a drink with me.”

He takes the tumbler in his hands and brings it to his lips in a sharp motion made fluid by muscle memory, throwing the brown liquid to the back of his throat, banging the empty tumbler on the table. I feel acid leaching down into my heart, my lungs. I grab the tumbler, try my best to mimic his movements and feel the booze burn its way down my throat, hoping it can stop the rising tide of anguish. But all it does is make my throat blaze and my eyes water, leaving me gasping for breath.

“Have I told you about the Ghouls?” He grins and refills the glasses, his eyes lost in the circling surface patterns of the liquid.

“What?”

“Ghouls are the HCNs that the intel team uses for BDAs.” Words leaving a bitter taste in the air.

I cough. “Can you put that in English, please?”

“After you hit that house we sent subcontractors, Host Country Nationals, local Afghan operators in to do a Bomb Damage Assessment. They always have some bullshit cover: aid workers, government officials, press credentials, but really they're in the body count business. They go and make sure that we got who we wanted to get.”

“You said I hit the target that day, you were standing right there.”

“You did. Our terrorist target, Said Al-Jafar, was good and dead. He was on the roof, remember? You also got one of his associates as well, all known Taliban fighters. But the same strike also killed two of their wives, along with three children. Azar, twelve, Amir, six and Faheema, who was only three years old.”

My throat's dry. Nerves frozen. Sick. Children. I killed children oh my God I can't have killed children there's no way.

“That three year-old girl, Tyler, was she an enemy of freedom? A Taliban sympathizer? I doubt it. These actions, on some level, are completely counter-productive to the mission objectives. The counter-insurgency doctrine of ‘clear, hold and build' becomes ‘bomb, kill and make more enemies.'” He moves the glass up towards his lips and I blink back the wet in my eyes. “We just gave Faheema's cousins and any other able-bodied man from that village a reason to join the insurgency. Now I don't know how you may feel about all this but I can tell you that I don't enjoy this aspect of the job. A shit pizza is what it is.”

Hand and head tipped back, the empty glass taps back onto the table. His eyes resemble the glass wrapped in his hand.

“But you're the math guy, right? Consider this for me: that missile you fired killed seven innocent people, women and children, who might've helped recruit another dozen or so insurgents. So what I need you to focus on is: how many lives did you save?” He fills his glass again. “As it turns out, you cut off the head of the snake. Without leadership, insurgent activity in that sector has almost completely evaporated. It's been a week now and we've had zero IEDs, zero ambushes, zero mortar attacks on our forward bases.”

“But how do you calculate something so…”

“Abstract? I don't know. Dead children are an unfortunate consequence of the business that we're in. Some Pentagon press aide jerk-off comes up with some cute little phrase like ‘collateral damage' and that's bullshit. It's bullshit, you and I know it's bullshit because those kids had names, dammit. Azar, Amir, Faheema.”

“And Brandon?” The words are heavy, loaded.

Wrist, head, glass tapping down on the table. “Look, those little kids had the grave misfortune of being within the blast radius of a coalition airstrike. They were innocent because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know that you care about your brother, but he made a choice. It's a choice he would've made whether it's the Taliban supplying it or our Pakistani partners.”

“No.” I throw back the contents of my glass, wanting the burn.

The expression on his face isn't malicious, it's soft, sad, like it hurts him, too. “Sometimes the real cost of freedom is allowing people the privilege to make bad choices, self-destructive choices. That's the horrible reality of the world, Tyler, and I need you to come to terms with that. You think it's wrong, but that's the part that you're not seeing. If we don't profit from it, the terrorists will.”

I want to let his words wash away the wrongness of it all, replacing my doubts and fears and horror with relief. Want it more than anything. Gripping the tumbler, I close my eyes and wait to feel better. Wait to get some sense, any sense, that this could be anything other than wrong.

The image of Brandon unconscious in the hospital bed thunders through my brain, tearing everything I am in half. “It
is
wrong, though, what we're doing. I want to think that it's not, but it is.”

“I understand if you're uncertain because of your brother's situation. I'll give you some more time.”

“I don't need more time.” My chest is so tight. Like he just took everything inside me apart and all I have left is these scrunched-up lungs and anger. “We're fucking running drugs! Killing babies! Nothing you can say can make this right. Nothing.”

“Think before you speak here, Tyler. I know you're upset.” Warning, dark, low, forbidding, rides in his voice.

“No.” Whirling, screaming, agony inside.

“I would hate to see you throw away your future like this.”

Somehow, through the chaos, I find the words and shoot them across the room. “Get out of my house, Rick.”

His eyes go black. Like two pieces of coal going molten. “Don't go against me. You'll regret it.” But he turns, and he leaves.

Can't breathe. Can't think. But I wait till he's gone. Pull the cell out of my pocket. Find the voice recorder app. I hit
stop
. I have to call Ani.

 

I knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Is she home? Why isn't she answering her phone? Does she know? Did Rick call her? Is she too scared to talk to me? Rick better not have scared her off. We weren't supposed to be doing this. Weren't supposed to see each other. Would he hurt her?

Hand meeting the hard wood of the door. Each knock rattling up my arm. I feel it in my wrists, my elbows, my shoulders. No answer to her buzzer. She has to be there. Somebody has to let me in. It's not too late, is it? 11pm. No. Kids at Yale should be up. It's a Thursday, they should be around. Someone should be here. Where is she? I pound both fists into the door. Loud, angry, pain now, aches rolling up both arms. Should have called first, but I tried to text from the car. My fingers just couldn't stop shaking and my legs wouldn't stop moving and the music on my iPod just wasn't loud enough to calm the thoughts whirring around in my head and I just want to scream. “Hello?” a voice says over the buzzer. Not Ani. Her roommate. What's her name? Becky? Clary? Christy? It's Christy.

“Christy, it's Tyler. Ani there?”

“No, she's having a snack I think. Check the Buttery.”

Damn! The Buttery. “Thanks.” I run around the side of the building, please let there be some kids coming out or going in through the side door to… Yes!

“Hold the door!” I call. A little girl. She looks young but who knows? I can't tell who would be too young to be here or not. She smiles and holds it open, swiping a strand of black hair up underneath her hat. “Thanks.”

I brush past her. She smells like incense. Do they smoke pot at Yale? Guess so. The halls at Yale are like any other halls. Lifeless except for bad smells of spilled food and vomit and the chemical used to clean them. The smells from the Buttery hit me as I jog down the way. French fries and burgers and pizza. I nod at the guy working the register and scan the hall.

She's sitting under an old window with her ereader in one hand and a sandwich in the other. I think I am just going to break. Break from not knowing where to start or whether I should hold her or be pissed that she can look so normal when everything is so fucked-up.

Walking up to the table I say, “You were right. About everything.”

Her back straightens, she looks up. Her brown eyes are wide, glassy, and the color leaves her face in a stunned rush.

Silence. I can't say anything else. Want to explode want to yell but I see the tension in her shoulders and I see that look on her face and I know that she's processing… that I have to be patient but I can't.

I say, “I told him I couldn't do it, told him I can't… can't do that.”

“Does he know about Brandon?” Her arms, her posture, her lips quiver.

“Yeah. He was the only person I could really talk to for a long time, you know? But he thought I would take the money, keep taking the money, I guess most kids would still take the money but I don't want to do
this
. I want to fly, I want to so bad, but drugs?” Words flake off of me, hitting the floor at my feet. Inert. Useless.