Knife (9780698185623) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands.
    â€œBoys.”
    â€œIt’s clean, Cooke,” Hagan said. “Always is.”
    Shaw grabbed his snub-nosed shorty, racked and cleared it, and looped the black sling over his shoulder and around his neck. Hagan did the same and they left the room.
    â€œSave you a seat,” Hagan said over his shoulder, and Cooke gave a nod.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    T he ride to the blacked-out airfield took less than ten minutes. Gravel hit the undersides of the bus and the sweet southern air flowed through the open windows and wrapped around the men’s faces. As the buses wound their way through the pines and red hills, Shaw’s world slowed. Voices registered and carried through the cabin but in indecipherable sentences. The tones, pitches, and meanings lost in the rumbling of the bus. His hands tingled, so he wrapped them around his weapon. The grooves, dips, and metal ridges were familiar. Comforting.
    Massey leaned in to Shaw.
    â€œI’m on pill duty. Need extra?”
    He was the second son to a Guatemalan mother and a white corn farmer from southern Illinois, and people laughed when they heard his name, thinking Martinez or Valdez would be more apt. Massey looked distinctly exotic, especially with a beard, but had a white man’s name and couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish. He was organized, and had a sweet tooth and an admirable knack for fitting in. He started conversations with strangers in supermarkets or gas stations and didn’t walk so much as glide or saunter. He had friends everywhere. Everybody liked him. Even high-value targets would seek him out on objectives, probably trying to catch a sympathetic eye from a look-alike captor.
    â€œI’ll take a few,” Shaw said.
    Massey gave him four packets, eight pills total. Shaw could’ve probably killed himself if he took them all together.
    â€œSave me a seat by the shitter, huh?”
    Shaw told him he would.
    Approaching the airfield, the guys were talking either too much or not at all. The lit cabins of the four C-17s that were waiting for the operators and their gear were the only lights visible on the airfield. There was no parade or receiving line bidding them adieu or good luck, and it would be the same when they came home. Most of their families didn’t even know they were leaving. They left in anonymity and returned the same way, if not in boxes. If guys had the chance to let their wives know they’d be gone, the women wouldn’t be able to tell their kids where Daddy had gone to because they often didn’t know themselves. He was just gone, sometimes for good. They hoped he’d come back. The buses downshifted in groans and hissed to a halt. Men grumbled awake from short sleeps, stretched and yawned to wake themselves. Shaw shook Hagan’s shoulder.
    â€œLet’s go, Hog.”
    Sprawled over the seat across the aisle in a jumbled heap, Hagan had fallen asleep. He snored and drooled, and true to form, he woke up and wiped some spit and snot off his shoulder and onto the back of the seat to his front. He smiled and shouldered his pack, sprang to his feet, and ran off the bus. The clean air was ruined by the harsh diesel spitting from the buses and the aviation fuel splattered all over the runway. It smelled like oil changes and greasy kitchens. Shaw’s beard danced in the wind on his way to the lowered ramp of one of the C-17s, and Massey took his place opposite Slausen, beside the entrance of the bird. The two medics stood across from each other, handing out Ambien to the operators as they loaded onto the plane.
    Slausen was missing one of his front teeth and had a problem taking in stray cats. The men joked that Slausen’s heart would take them in but his brain would forget he was gone most of the year. The cats would tear his place to shit, clawing one another to death for food. The guys made sure to come with him when he got back home from hops to see his