Page 1 of What Remains

1

“Thanks, kid.”Retrieving two sweating six-packs of Red Bull from a grimy-looking adolescent, Flowers slipped the boy a fistful of Afghanis then rattled off something in Pashto to which the kid nodded, pocketed the money and gave Flowers a thumbs up.

As they pulled out of the Panjir Pump, John asked, “What did you say?”

“I asked him to set aside a couple more six-packs and then keep the change. There’s a guy at the gate, Maimon. He’s okay for a Zero. He’ll hang onto those babies until we get back.”

“You trust the kid not to just run off with the money?”

“Not really.” Flowers swung their Humvee onto the Russian Road, which ran west to east along the north side of the airport. “But I prefer to believe in humanity’s inherent goodness.”

“In Afghanistan?”

“Yeah, well. We live in hope, man.”

Not much of hope in Afghanistan either.To their north, the taillights of the other two vehicles of their convoy were nothing more than fiery twinkles. Roni was in the lead Humvee.With Driver, of course.The thought provoked a stab of jealousy that he tried to ignore but failed. “We’re going to lose the others.”

“We lose them, we lose them. Not like I don’t know the way,” Flowers said, carelessly. Then: “Better give that seat belt another tug, Doc.”

“What?” The word was barely out of his mouth before his shoulder slammed against the passenger side window as Flowers spun the vehicle into a sharp left. The jeep’s chassis dipped and bucked as the tires struggled to find purchase and then they were juddering over open desert.

The hell?Hooking a hand onto the grab bar above the passenger side door, he shouted, his voice hopping and skipping with every bounce, “T-t-take it eee-eee-eeasy!”

“Relax, Doc!” Flowers shouted above the vehicle’s creak and squeal. “A little shortcut! Got to put on some speed to catch up with the others!”

“Uh-uh-uh-huhuhuhuh.” The word jumped and jigged in time to the rock and shimmy of the vehicle. Hooking his right hand onto a grab bar above the window, he shouted above the racket, “Wouldn’t call this ar-r-r-road!”

“Because it’s not!” In the green glow from the dash, Flowers’ teeth gleamed in a wide grin as they bumped and jumped along, their speed dropping then picking up again as the tires found purchase on stretches of flatter earth. They rocked in their seats as the vehicle dipped and swayed. Above the engine’s scream, Flowers bawled, “Hold on, Doc. Two minutes!”

Gonna be a long two minutes.Planting his boots in the footwell, he braced as the Humvee bounced and jounced, the beams of its headlights dipping up and down in wild, erratic arcs. It would be a miracle if they didn’t break an axle.Or me chip a tooth.

The next two minutes were punctuated by Flowers jabbing at the brake, jerking the wheel, or spinning them right and left. Rocks pinged and ponged and ricocheted against the undercarriage as the tires churned, throwing up whorls of reddust, red dirt, red sand, and chalky debris. This, John thought, must be what it was like to take a joyride on Mars.

Then, Flowers spun the wheel right, a maneuver that would’ve thrown John into the man’s lap if he’d not had the grab handle in a death grip. There was a tremendous bump and then a lurch as the Humvee jumped over a lip, reared, and then came down onto hard-packed earth.

“There we go.” Flowers used his chin to point through the windscreen at a red wink of taillights. “See ‘em up ahead?”

“Yeah.” He had to push the word through clenched teeth. “Where’d you learn to drive like that? They teach you that in the Raiders?”

“Naw.” Flowers jabbed a control on the dash. A half-second later, twin jets of water bathed the windshield as the wipers went to work. “Believe it or not, learned from a cop.”

“You’re joking.”

“Honest to God. See, the cops in my town did this thing every year for people who wanted to write police procedurals. You know, become someone like that John Sandford guy, or Tess Gerritsen? Part of the course was you could learn how to drive like a cop in a high-speed chase, force someone into a spin, that kind of thing. So, I went.”

“You wanted to write a police procedural?”

“Naw.” Flower snapped off the wipers. “I just wanted to learn how to scare the crap out of someone.” A pause. “You need me to stop so you can clean yourself up?”

“Very funny…”

2

A half hour later.

The Moon was new and the bowl of the sky milky with stars. Night, velvety and deep, seemed to drape itself like a heavy curtain over the earth. Other than the hum of tires on the packed dirt road as they sped north and the occasional squeal of the vehicle’s chassis, there were no other sounds.

Flowers was on his second Red Bull when John asked, “You going to tell me how you guys ended up ex-Raiders?”

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