Chapter 1

The full moon hung low in the western sky and the sun had just peeked above the eastern mountains when I got to the muster area. A light breeze stirred the brown dust, still cool this time of the morning. The temperature would be climbing by the time we got back, on its way to the century mark.

Staff Sergeant Bill Mackey, assisted by Sergeant Willis, third in command today, had gotten there before me and was still inspecting the troops. Serious man, Mackey; all business before a patrol. I approved.

He had almost finished checking that the men had full loads of ammo, water in their camelbacks, fresh batteries for their radios, things like that. He’s on his second tour and there’s not much he doesn’t know about infantry combat in the Middle East. A lot more, in fact, than I know. He might have been leading this patrol had I not been available, but then, I’ve got that reputation for being ‘lucky’. Or maybe it was because I’m a short-timer like the others, and available.

But no alert orders. I’ve already been here more than a year and I’ve had enough of this rockpile!

Paperwork glitch, or maybe the Agency worked on a different schedule. Remembering back to when they’d offered me the assignment, nobody had mentioned how long I’d be expected to stay.

Maybe they had no place to send me. Certainly not to where I’d been before, because the school no longer existed. A friend messaged me a while back to tell me it had been shut down. People warned not to talk about it, the usual draconian threats made, then transferred out with barely time allowed to pack.

I decided that when we got back, I’d send a message up the chain. Maybe they’d just forgotten about me. It wasn’t as if I was some ordinary square peg in the appropriate hole.

One staff sergeant, Mackey, second in command and highly experienced. A buck sergeant, Willis, third in the chain. Eleven short-time infantrymen, strangers except for Kazinsky; he had been a driver at the time, assigned to a Stryker unit when I joined it TDY. One carried the backpack radio, two carried SAWs, and two others had grenade launchers attached to the underside of their rifles. That was the patrol.

The squad automatic weapons are in reality light machine guns, but light only in the sense that they differ from the M2 heavy machine gun.

Mention light weapons infantryman, the job description for the patrol’s members, and you’ll get a chuckle. Or maybe a curse. ‘Light’ is a misnomer; infantrymen are informally called grunts for a reason, the reason being the heavy loads they carry. The riflemen, in addition to their basic load of rifle and ammunition, carried extra ammo today for the grenade launchers and machine guns.

Every member of a patrol is armed, including the medic. The Muj are equal-opportunity assholes and a medic is just another target.

Not enough men for a combat patrol, but plenty to patrol the village. If the Muj had managed to reach the village during the night, we were the ones most likely to find out the hard way. They’d be gone by now, but improvised explosive devices, IEDs, and booby traps could be anywhere. I’d found more than a dozen since being assigned here, part of why I’m considered to be ‘lucky’.

There would be another patrol later in the afternoon and snipers were on rooftops watching all the time. More activity is better, so the afternoon patrols rarely saw action.

The compound was a big target, and important. Counting the outposts on Route 47, the commanding general controls more than 1600 square kilometers of mostly open country. Or so we say; the jihadists come down from the border at night to argue the point.

The outposts are small, a squad or two, but backup is available. A relief force can arrive in half an hour, sometimes less. When the Apaches are available, and most of the time they are, air power is no more than ten minutes away from the farthest outpost.

All by themselves, the attack helicopters can break up an assault. Not to mention strewing good jihadists across the landscape. You know, the only good jihadist is ... everyone’s heard that one too.

The Muj, short for mujahideen, don’t have enough people to do more than harass us. IEDs are the usual tactic nowadays, and once in a while there’s a suicide bomber or an occasional ambush when they think they can get away with it. The rest of the time, they lob in a few shells from a hidden mortar and beat feet. Doesn’t do much damage, other than wake people up and make them nervous.

That’s what the patrols are for, to keep them from building up a force big enough to do real damage. Drones and helicopters and ground-attack planes can only do so much; to really control territory, you’ve got to have boots on the ground.

Rules of the game, up here where the Pak border is so close. Despite our patrols, they still manage to mortar the compound about once a week.

It’s better now than it was when I arrived; not great, but better. Ambushes were a lot more common a year ago, but we’ve created a lot of good jihadists since then. They were new and enthusiastic back then, kill the infidel and all that. But there aren’t nearly as many old jihadists now.

I waited for Mackey and Willis to finish and listened to the troops bitch. A bitching troop is a happy troop, so they say. It might even be true, at least some of the time.

“So what’s this clusterfuck about?”

Kazinsky; it figured. Somehow, the FNG was always the one asking a question no one could answer.

“Just another patrol,” Myer said wearily. “We walk through the Ville, wave at the locals, get back in time for chow.”

“Why not a Stryker?” Kazinsky persisted. “Maybe two? Just drive around and wave?”

“What, you don’t like the infantry?” Johnson snorted. “We take long walks, in case you’ve forgotten, but the real reason is that the roads aren’t wide enough. Mud walls on both sides, too narrow for a Stryker to get through.”

“So why not a couple of hummers? With Ma Deuces up top?”

“Fuck, Kazinsky! Why don’t you let the general know how to run this shit-storm, next time he invites you over for tea?”

“Wise ass.” Kazinsky glared, but quieted when he spotted SSG Mackey glaring back.

He formed up the patrol and nodded at me. I nodded back, then walked through the gate and turned right. Behind me, the men filed silently out through the gate and moved immediately to take up positions on both sides of the dirt track. The last ones waited for the others to move out, before following. They might accordion closer together later on, but for now, they were keeping a good combat spread. That was Mackey’s problem, not mine.

Mine was to stay out ahead and try to sense anything unusual, because unusual can get you killed. But we were still close to the walls and the trouble, if there was to be any this morning, would come later. I had time to think.

It’s not really luck, what I do. My place is out front because my special Talents have a better chance of working if I’m not surrounded by others. That’s how I’ve spotted ambushes in time to avoid them, found a couple of buried IEDs too, but only after I got close. I have to be close; the closer I get, the stronger the hunch is. Meters count, sometimes even centimeters do.

If I’d been back in the middle of the patrol, the lead scout might have, probably would have, set off that buried booby trap. But he didn’t, because I spotted the nearly-invisible thin wire that was stretched across the dirt track. And understood that the way to disarm this particular bomb was to cut the wire. A tug, what you’d get if a boot pulled on the wire, would have released the trigger.

The Agency, actually the people who sent me over here who act for the Agency, considers me a failure. I suppose I am, in their eyes because I can’t do more, but more-or-less by accident they put me in a place where I can do some good. I’m not a failure here.

Not that it helps, sometimes. My paranormal Talents don’t always work, which is why I get nightmares. If they were only reliable...!

The Agency’s School produced a number of strong telepaths, people whose Talents always work. They’re good, better than me, but then that’s all they can do. I’m not a strong telepath, but I’ve got other Talents. I just wish I could rely on them.

A good school-trained telepath can pick up thoughts from almost anyone. I can too, sometimes, but for me it’s hit-or-miss. I’m only reliable when communicating with, ‘comming’ as we call it, another telepath. The School’s administrators would probably have booted me like they did the other failures, but I was the only multiple Talent they’d ever found. So they kept me around, more or less as an experiment. Maybe my Talents would firm up or something, and if not I might develop others. Abilities no one suspected.

I tried; over and over again, I tried. Plug in the helmet, try to follow the instructions of the computer’s artificial intelligence, but it kept showing me Rhine cards, the ones designed by Dr Rhine, and my mind always went off in other directions.

And after every session, there were the headaches. Nausea-inducing migraines, every time.

My telepathy Talent, TP, is reliable if I’m communicating with another telepath. It’s not a problem except for the headaches, but as for picking up conversations between normals, most of the time all I get is static. No voices, just a kind of buzzing. I have had one other success, what I call the ‘bubble’, and the Agency doesn’t know about it. I didn’t bother to tell them, it only affects me, but I’ve found it very useful over here in this rockpile where almost everyone hates us.

Anyway, the headaches don’t happen immediately. They may hold off for a couple of hours after I use some sort of Talent. I wish aspirin would work. It did, before the computer and the AI, but now it doesn’t. It’s some kind of side effect.

The agency spent a lot of money on me before they gave up, I’ll give them that. Most of the time they boot people early, but I’m their only psychokinetic, PK, so they kept trying. Unlike telepathy, my PK is reliable but weak and distance is important. It only works out to about a hundred meters, and at that range it’s so weak as to be almost useless. Some sort of inverse square rule, maybe. Halve the distance, about four times the strength? One of these days, I’ll try measuring it, despite knowing that I’ll pay for the effort with pain. I can also sense the future sometimes, not like a picture or anything, but it’s handy when you walk into a casino. Any game, doesn’t matter; if the hunch is not there, a feeling of certainty, I don’t bet. When it comes, then it’s time to put down as many chips as the house will allow. It’s also useful for avoiding ambushes and IEDs when it works.

There’s a word for almost-successful: failure.

Precognition? For whatever reason, I didn’t tell them about that either. I was paranoid by the time I discovered it, which might be another side effect of the hours under the helmet. Or maybe it was another hunch. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s just a way of using my PK to protect myself. I had a hunch, so I kept my mouth shut. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.

Not a twinge from my precog Talent today.

No clue, that in less than an hour my luck would finally run out.

My subconscious got the message before my conscious mind did, and the bubble formed almost as soon as the thump hit my boot soles. Then the shock wave arrived and blew me clear across the dirt road. Bouncing off the mud wall further disoriented me, but I was alive, if stunned, and my bubble had saved me again. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I knew that much. I was flat on my back, cushioned by a few centimeters of bubble-field underneath and looking up at a layer of dust over the top.

I collapsed the field and the dust fell, making me sneeze. It helped; after I sneezed, I was able to shake off the numbness from the explosion. If this was an ambush instead of an unattended IED, I couldn’t do anyone any good by making a target of myself. I stumbled to the opposite wall and took cover, but no one was shooting as far as I could tell. I heard only a kind of crackling, ringing noise, at first, but after a few moments I heard moans.

The radioman was down, hurt but alive. The radio was dusty but otherwise undamaged, so I tried the handset. The response was reassuring; communication, when you’re in combat, is a priority. I called in a situation report, a SITREP, and the major I spoke to assured me help was on its way. Just as soon as he could contact the RRF, and if they were still on station, air support, but they might not be. Manning problems, now that we were drawing down our in-country forces.

I ended the contact, and the nausea got me before I’d taken three steps. My mouth suddenly filled with saliva and I vomited up everything I had eaten for the past month.

Delayed reaction from being bounced off that wall? Maybe. Or maybe it was the bloody things on the ground. Even psi’s can be shocked. We’re human, after all.

I swished my mouth out with water and felt a little better. Doc, the medic, was alive but stunned. I gathered up bandage packs from the dead men, added my own combat dressing, and collected others from Doc’s pack. Functioning, not good, but better. I posted two men, including one that appeared to be deaf, where they could see anyone coming up the road. Not much protection while we worked, but it would have to do. I didn’t sense danger, so no follow-up attack? Or maybe it wasn’t working, because it’s like that. Unreliable, meaning don’t rely on it. It would take the quick reaction force at least half an hour to reach us, maybe longer. Assuming the jihadists hadn’t managed to plant an IED. Ambush the relief force is a common tactic over here.

Sergeant Mackey and the walking wounded bandaged themselves and the other leakers. I got the concussed guys behind cover and we settled in to wait, but not long. Half an hour later I heard the grinding of motors and spotted the scouts when one waved at me.

The reaction force had a pair of up-armored HMMVWs and a medic with more supplies, including canvas stretchers for the wounded. Scouts out front, an infantry fire team ahead of the vehicle looking for more IEDs, a full squad trailing. Somebody thought we were important, or maybe it was just a slow day at the Compound. I guess I’m a little bitter.

The regular hummers also had pedestal-mounted Ma Deuces, the name for our elderly but still effective .50 caliber M2HB Browning machine guns. Two men manned the machine guns while the others dismounted. The infantrymen spread out to provide protection, the medic worked on my wounded. It didn’t take long.

The trucks carried the wounded to the field hospital, the squad leader took the remaining troops back to their company area, and I reported to the S2 for debriefing.

Except for the paperwork, the patrol was over.

I had reason to be bitter. I’d been leading patrols for more than half a year now, and as far as I could tell the people who’d sent me here had forgotten all about me. Paranoia? Maybe, maybe not. It probably doesn’t matter. Out there, in what the troops call the suck, it’s every man against the IEDs, every man against the bullets.

When they’re targeted at your men, even if you’re not afraid for yourself, there’s fear. You fear what will happen to them.

Soldiers expect much from their leaders, rightly so. Why does the Army insist I take out so many others? If they’d only let me patrol alone! But it’s not the Army way.