“So you’d suspected I was hiding something from you, and then you found this?” Max whistled. “Okay, I get it now. That’s like… I don’t know, the worst kind of ridiculous. Where was this taken?”
“Somalia.”
“When?”
“Ninety-three.”
Jed said it without hesitation, like it had been yesterday rather than more than a decade ago. Max chanced a glance at him. He was sitting up, his good leg curled beneath his body, his bad leg stretched out. He was as inscrutable as ever, but he seemed at ease with the conversation.
“You joined up in ninety-two, right?”
“Right. Don’t tell me how young you were then. I don’t want to know.”
“You’re notthatold.”
Jed hummed and absently rubbed his bad leg. “Some days I feel it.”
He sounded distant and tired. Max frowned. Maybe he’d got it wrong and this wasn’t the right time. Kim had implored him to confront Jed about the photographs sooner rather than later, like she knew something he didn’t, but though he had the world’s best poker face, Jed was still really sick. “You don’t have to talk about this. We can forget about it if you want.”
Jed shook his head. “That theory hasn’t worked so well for us so far, has it?” He spun the picture on the table. “Somalia was the first real conflict I ever saw.”
“First of many?”
“Too many, but it’s weird. I have some good memories of this place, and it taught me a lot. I learned Arabic in Somalia, and some backstreet Swahili.”
Max settled back on the bed, maneuvered himself around Jed’s outstretched leg, and made himself more comfortable. Jed was good at telling stories when his mood was right. “Was it likeBlack Hawk Down?”
Jed fixed him with another sphinxlike stare. “Couldn’t tell you. I’ve never seen that movie. Anyway, this picture was taken a year after that incident, so I doubt it.”
Max tried another tack. “Who took the photo?”
“It looks like a shot from an onboard camera, so probably another chopper. There were two others close by.”
“What were you doing?”
“Looking for someone.” Jed cast his gaze over the image, as though familiarizing himself with the tale behind it. “Most of the heavy fighting was over by then. We were based within an IDP camp, helping the aid agencies with security and medical care.”
“IDP?”
“Internally displaced person,” Jed clarified, still staring at the picture. “They were called refugee camps back then.”
“Were you looking for a… displaced person?”
“No, we were looking for a kidnapped aid worker. The camp was safe, but outside militants and guerrilla groups were still fighting each other, and they both had a penchant for abducting Western civilians. Some governments, especially the Europeans, were prepared to pay big ransoms to get them back.”
“What happened to him? The aid worker, I mean?”
“Her,” Jed corrected. “She was a nurse. There was an incident outside the camp one day. The militants bribed some local kids to convince the medical team to step outside the perimeter. We weren’t there. We were on patrol in the village. By the time we got back, two doctors were dead and they’d taken the nurse.”
Max sucked in a breath. “What did you do?”
“We only had two vehicles at the camp that day. They couldn’t carry enough of us to engage a guerrilla group on their turf. We had no choice but to load up and drive like crazy back to the main base by the city. We scrambled the chopper and went looking, but….”
“Too late?”
Jed nodded. “By a long way. They dumped her by the roadside five miles outside the camp. It was my job to jump out and get her while the others put down covering fire. From a distance, I couldn’t see if she was alive, but she’d bled out by the time I got to her.”
“They shot her?”