Free New Title 1 by Patrick Lestewka Page A

boatloads of weapons in a Mekong bay. Zippo scouted ahead and found the drop point as night fell.
    We moved in. It was about ten o’clock at night. We saw people unloading long boxes we assumed were rifles. I gave the order to open up on them.
    I remember the sound of wood splintering and things exploding and, like a deep-space transmission, screaming. People were running around the decks like headless chickens. A man was on fire, body an oily tower of red and black flame, and he grabbed someone else and soon they were both ablaze, fire pouring out of their mouths like flame-swallowers at the circus. I remember a man raising what could have been a rifle or a fishing pole, remember pulling the trigger and watching his face collapse into itself in a red spray, remember his features the split-second before the slug destroyed them, their flatly elegant symmetry.
    Swift, silent, deadly.
    Daylight came, and we discovered that we had killed a lot of fishermen and children. Intel had fucked up. I got on the blower to command. I was screaming into the handset while Tripwire knelt with this kid’s body in his lap, a body with no head, and I was saying: “We got a royal fuck-up here, Colonel. Dead kids and dead fishermen and not one gun on board.”
    The Colonel said: “Don’t worry. It’ll spin, Sergeant. We got body count.”
    So I turned to my unit and said, “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine,” because that’s what I was getting from upstairs. But we had dead bodies draining over bullet-riddled gunnels, bodies of children and eels and monkfish baking together in the bank’s red sands so everything was most definitely not fine, top brass could spin that motherfucker to the moon but the stink was going to linger.
    They gave us all the Combat Infantry Badge for that action. There was an award ceremony, the seven of us standing on a makeshift platform with medals stuck on our chests for killing innocent civilians. I knew in my heart it was wrong. But we were at war and different rules applied…
    …Malik cuts onto the freeway before turning back on us like an exasperated parent and asking, “What the fuck happened in there?”
    “Dade happened,” Deacon says. “Dade happened all over that motherfucker.”
    “Where’s Tiny?”
    “Dead,” I say. “Got his shit scattered by some rent-a-cop packing a pistol should’ve been taken off him three seconds after we cleared the front doors—”
    “Don’t you fucking pin Tiny’s death on me—”
    “That guard was your cover!” Deacon shouts at Dade. “Why the hell didn’t you pat him down? Armed robbery 101, mother fuck !”
    Malik pulls into the fast lane. Five or six squad cars, sirens wailing, speed by in the opposite lane. Between us, spilled across the van’s floor panels, are stacks and stacks of bills.
    “And what about the cops?” Deacon continues. “Why’d you kill them ?”
    “Shitcan the questions,” I say. “Not here, not now. People are dead, Tiny is dead, and all we can do is deal.” To Dade: “This is the end of the line for you. No more jobs. Take your cut and run, son. Find some sunny somewhere and square your shit away.”
    “I’m okay, boss,” Dade says.
    “No, Dade,” I say, placing a hand on his shoulder, feeling him shiver. “You’re not okay. You need help. I wish I could help you myself, but I can’t.”
    “My shit’s hardwired, Oddy. I’m watertight.”
    “You’re fucking bugshit,” Deacon spits. “Killing people for no goddamn reason.”
    “Say that again.” Dade’s voice is barely audible above the wind whistling through the van’s seams. “Just one…more…time.”
    “What the fuck’s going on back there?” Malik asks.
    “Not a goddamn thing,” I say. “Everything’s cool and the gang, isn’t that right?”
    But Deacon blows any good vibes out of the water when he says, “You heard me: you’re bugshit. Section -fucking- 8.”
    “Take that back,” Dade whispers. “Take it back or I’ll