Free Quest for Honor by David Tindell

tour of Iraq and were here to get some action before it was all over. Many of them were still lacking the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and while that was a worthy thing to have, Mark made sure the men knew the way to get it was not to get all cowboy out here on the line and make mistakes. He didn’t want to have somebody back home sewing the CIB on a dress uniform that was headed for a casket.
    The howitzers of his artillery detachment were tuning up for the day’s first fire mission when Mark took one last look at the paper littering his desk. He always visited the gunners right after breakfast and then toured the perimeter. On top of his IN box was a flimsy from his overnight staff. The lieutenant at Langdon was reporting fresh intel of a possible enemy attack against the nearby village, about three klicks from the mountainside where Langdon commanded a strategic view of the southern end of the valley. When they’d built the base, someone said it was like they were giving the Tals down in the valley the finger. Was it the lieutenant who’d said that? Something about this guy’s name….He read it again. Solum. That rang a bell somehow.
    He’d met the lieutenant in question, of course; Mark had made an effort to get to know each of his officers, not to mention as many of the enlisted men as he could. With over seven hundred troops under his command, that was exhausting work, but it enabled him to give his command a more personal touch, and the men got to know their C.O., which was always helpful. What about this guy? Mark took a minute to find the man’s file. Just a one-page entry, as it was for most of his officers. There it was. Kenneth Solum, twenty-six, graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, went through ROTC there, hometown was Rice Lake, Wisconsin. That was it. He remembered the name now, from a story his father had told him and his brother years ago. Could his lieutenant be related….? No, too big of a coincidence, but the geography fit. He made a decision.
    In the outer room of what passed for his headquarters, Mark saw Captain Bill Richards, his adjutant. “Bill, isn’t there a chopper going to Langdon this morning?”
    “Yes, sir, about a half-hour from now. Langdon’s the last stop on the run.” Richards, a tall, angular Texan with a drawl that confused the locals here but, Mark suspected, charmed the women back home, checked the clock on the wall. “Make it twenty minutes. Going along, sir?”
    Richards had an instinct about these things, and that made him a particularly good adjutant. “I think so. Where’s Major Ruiz?”
    “Already out with the battery, sir, prepping the fire mission.” Ruiz was Mark’s 2IC, second-in-command, and a damn good one he was turning out to be. This morning Mark’s battery of four 155mm guns was getting ready to fire in support of FOB O’Neill, which had taken three mortar rounds from the nearby mountainside about twenty minutes ago, an annoying interruption of morning chow. This wouldn’t be their last mission of the day, probably; in the hundred and twenty-five days Mark had been in command, his battery averaged nearly four per day, firing over fifteen hundred rounds. The loud crack of the big guns was a common sound around the base, and the farmers and villagers down below hardly paid attention anymore. Mark had seen them more than once, going about their daily business just as they had been doing for generations, ignoring the one-sided duels between the heavy weapons of the Americans and the lighter, less-accurate mortars of the insurgents. Even when the stray mortar round landed in their fields, the Afghans rarely complained. What good would it do? It was how life was in Afghanistan. He’d asked a village chief about it once. “Before you Americans,” the chief said wearily, “it was the Russians. Before them, the British. Before them, someone else. After you leave, someone else will come. It will never stop.”
    “We’ll see