“We heard her snoring. We decided to take our chances with the weather, got the hell out of there, and made camp a short distance away.”
“That sounds … scary.”
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.
“Greenland wasn’t scary. It was … freeing. When you’re with one other person on the ice for weeks at a time, you run out of things to talk about. Then, after enough silence, you run out of things to think about. Your mind is just … empty. You live moment to moment in a way that’s impossible when you’re surrounded by cities and crowds of people. Your pain and all your burdens just fall away.”
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.
She opened her eyes, looked into his. “What pain were you carrying?”
“Afghanistan.”
20
“What happened in Afghanistan?” Samantha took the canister of oxygen from Thor and began administering it to herself. “Can you tell me?”
Thor had never told a woman what he’d done that night. His fellow Cobra operatives knew the story. They were all veterans who’d served in special operations forces, and Thor had trusted them at least to understand. He’d also felt they deserved the truth about him since they were all going to be working together.
But Samantha…
She knew very little about war. She was logical and rational, and there had been nothing logical or rational about his actions that night. Still, a part of him wanted her to know. He’d been more open and naked with her than he’d been with a woman in a very long time, and he’d almost lost her today.
“Thor?”
He brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “It’s not a pretty story.”
“It hasn’t been a pretty day.”
“I told you about the IED blast that killed my friends—Lars, Felix, Mads.”
“Yes. You were thrown clear. Mads and Felix were killed. Lars died while you held his hand. I remember.”
“Three died. Three of us survived. We were airlifted back to our base, along with the bodies. I was out of my mind with rage. I wanted blood. I wanted to make al Harzi pay for what he’d done. Jakob, one of the other survivors, felt the same. So, we waited until night, and we commandeered a vehicle and snuck off base, armed to the teeth.”
“You went AWOL?”
“AWOL? What’s that?”
“Absent without leave.”
“Yeah, and stole a vehicle.”
“Okay. Wow.”
“We drove through the night back to those poppy fields. It was a crazy thing to do. AQ operatives and Taliban fighters were everywhere. But we made it to al Harzi’s hideout, passing the crater in the dirt road that was left by the IED. The blood of our friends was still there in the dirt. We parked about a half-mile away and walked the remaining distance, weapons ready.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“I was too out of my mind with grief and anger to be afraid.” Thor told her how they’d taken out six armed men to get into the compound and then made their way through a courtyard into the main structure, killing every fighting-age male. “Some were teenagers—just kids. Others were the real deal—AQ combatants. We killed every last one of them in front of screaming women and crying children.”
“Oh, Thor.”
Thor couldn’t meet her gaze. “It wasn’t war. Warfighting is supposed to be controlled, targeted. It was a rage-fueled massacre. I had become a Berserker, a monster. All I wanted to do was kill and kill and kill.”
“Did you kill the women, too?”
“No women or small children.”