Free Task Force Desperate by Peter Nealen Page B

shoulder, I reached for gauze and started to gently bandage it. The kid was just watching me, his chin tucked in, not making a sound. “The bad guys are trying to create chaos, so they can take over. Chaos leads to more chaos,” I said. “When you break down a society, everything breaks down, even the decency of a lot of the people, and shit like this is what happens.”
    We continued to work well into the night, patching, stitching, and splinting. Fortunately, there weren’t really any critical cases that we had to either keep around or try to take to the hospital, in the north of town. A little after midnight, we were able to send them all home.
     
    It was three in the morning when I woke up. I couldn’t remember the dream, just the sick, disquieted feeling it left me with. For a few minutes I lay there, sweating, staring at the ceiling, trying to will myself back to sleep. I had only managed to drift off an hour before.
    It wasn’t working. There was a faint red light splashed on the ceiling, and I looked over to see Larry sitting on his cot, reading by the red glow of his headlamp. Guess he couldn’t sleep, either.
    I sat up with a muffled groan. I didn’t want to be awake, but I knew from past experience that I wasn’t going to get to sleep for a while when I felt like this. Larry looked up, putting a finger in his place in the book as I swung my feet to the floor.
    “One of those nights, huh?” Larry asked.
    “Yeah.” I put my head in my hands and rubbed my eyes. “What’re you doing up?”
    “Same reason,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep.” He held up the book, one of the monster hunter books he’d gotten me hooked on. “Thought I’d catch up on a little reading.”
    Larry and I went back a ways. We’d been on the same team in the Philippines, just before we’d gotten out and hooked up with Alek and Jim to start Praetorian Security. We’d been in half a dozen hellholes together since.
    “You never made it to Libya, did you?” I asked.
    “Nah, just the PI,” he said, setting the book down on the rack next to him. “Twice before our team, then the deployment we did.”
    Suddenly struck by a memory, I grinned. “You remember that one night on Mindanao, something like a week before everything went to shit? We were about two miles outside of that tiny-ass village that nobody knew the name of.”
    Larry chuckled. “When Lucky woke up with a banana spider two inches above his face?”
    “And sat up right into it.” I shook my head. “I’m still amazed he didn’t start shooting. He sure freaked out far enough.”
    “Lucky was always a little high-strung,” Larry said. “What happened to him, anyway?”
    “Don’t know,” I admitted. “He got out right after we got back from that deployment, and I kind of lost track of him.” Larry just nodded. That happened in this business. A guy you had spent every waking moment with for a year or more got out, went home, and just kind of dropped off the map.
    After a long pause, Larry asked quietly, “Why’d you ask about Libya?”
    “Ah,” I searched for an answer that would make sense. I wasn’t entirely sure, myself. “This just kind of reminds me of the situation over there. What with the complete chaos, what starved, beaten version of a civil society they had there breaking down. It wasn’t pretty. It ain’t going to be here, either.”
    Larry murmured thoughtfully. “Can’t save every situation, brother.”
    I snorted. “Can’t save any of ‘em, is how it’s starting to look.”
    Larry leaned back and swung his feet back up on his cot. It creaked dangerously under his weight. “You know, I remember you saying once, ‘The world is fucked. Any student of history should be able to see that clearly enough. The only thing any of us should worry about is doing the right thing. Probably won’t change anything, but that doesn’t stop it being the right thing.’ Sound familiar?”
    I shrugged. “Yeah, sounds like something I’d