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He ignored them all and went down and signed up.
And then he was in Iraq, and it had been hell. He still didn’t understand it all. Maggie, who had been in Mosul too and who had stayed in longer than he had, insisted that Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no evidence that Iraq had been a part of 9/11. She said it had to do with Bush and his daddy issues. Well, he could relate to that —but he wasn’t the president of the country. Had they really gone in because Bush Junior had something to prove to Bush Senior? He shook his head. Since then, he’d heard a lot of vets debate it — late night conversations when the civilians couldn’t play ‘got ya’ games —and the talk was that the war was really about corporate interests and defense industry profits.
He didn’t know. He wasn’t book smart like Benny or even Maggie. But it didn’t seem like anyone really thought it had been about 9/11.
The feeling had been that the U.S. could go in, kick butt, and come home having had revenge on those damned terrorists. Turned out that there were a lot more scared Iraqis determined to protect their homes than there were terrorists. And there were more than just two sides fighting in the conflict. He’d been relieved actually that he was just a raw grunt. He didn’t have to understand it. He just had to go where he was told and shoot what he was told to shoot at.
Until Mosul.
Mosul had been a clusterfuck, and he still didn’t know who was doing the worst damage — the Iraqis, the terrorists, or the U.S. military. But there were thousands of women and children trying to flee the bombs and the soldiers. Trying to escape.
Ryder had a knack for organizing people. He could shoot —of course he could, growing up with all those vets in the Okanogan? And the shifter reflexes? Sure, shooting was easy. But he could also calculate the provisions, organize troops and put everyone on the road — and that was an even more valued skill. So when he saw all those people trying to flee, he wanted to know why the Army wasn’t trying to help them?
Not our job, he was told. He was put on a squad to go door-to-door routing out terrorists. Although how they were supposed to know who was a terrorist and who was just terrified, he didn’t know. And at some point, he started pointing the terrified toward the gates to the south. The military convoy would be staging there, he said. Go, follow them.
And they did. Mothers carrying children. Elders helping other elders. His squad didn’t much like what he was doing, but they didn’t stop him. Probably because one look at his blazing eyes told them it wasn’t a good idea.
His wolf was infuriated. They were killing the children!
They were. And the problem was he thought the ‘they’ might be the U.S. Army.
At some point he got separated from his squad, and so he too started working his way toward that southern gate. And he picked up small groups of people as he went. Terrorists? He didn’t think so. But he’d learned that terrorism could start young, and who knew? Maybe some of those 12-year-olds were. Didn’t matter to him much. They needed out of this city that was being blown to hell.
He got them out. And he should have reported for duty. He knew that then, knew it now. But he’d turned back. His wolf said there were others. He could feel them, feel their terror. And so he went where his wolf said, and he led them out.
“The soldier from Mosul,” Jessie said quietly. “Jake Lewis called you that.”
He nodded. “Jake was in Iraq,” he agreed. “He’d retired as a lieutenant colonel before 9/11. Then when 9/11 happened, he forged his papers, and went back in as a newbie lieuy. They tell more stories about him than they ever will about the soldier from Mosul.”
He’d been startled the first time he’d heard someone tell the story of the soldier from Mosul. A shifter had wandered into Horse Creek, just passing through. And hearing that there were vets from Iraq among the shifters there, he asked if they’d heard the story of the soldier from Mosul.
Ryder hadn’t flinched, and only Maggie had looked at him sideways when the man finished his story. “A shifter hero,” he’d said. “And no one knows his name.”
The basic facts had been correct, but Ryder didn’t consider himself a hero. A damned fool maybe.
Since then he’d heard the story more than once. Shifters told stories, just like Benny had tonight. Get a bunch of men around a campfire, or late at night in some bar, and they’d tell stories — gossip really. Ryder had grown up with a bunch of veterans after all, he was familiar with their love for telling stories. And he’d heard the story of the soldier from Mosul from them too. His father had looked at him a bit peculiarly, but Ryder hadn’t said a word. The story changed, and sometimes he barely recognized it at all.
But they all agreed: one of their own had been a hero in Mosul.
Ryder snorted. Damned fool.
He went back after people one too many times. The terrorists had control of the city, and they were burning it. The last group he’d been leading got trapped, and Ryder had gone up on the rooftop to provide cover for them to get out.
“Don’t know who I was shooting at, to be honest,” he admitted now. “Couldn’t tell. But what I shot at, I hit, and they backed off. My little band of survivors made it out. I followed, moving across the rooftops in a way that no human could have done. I didn’t care. I didn’t expect to survive, so what did a first-rule violation matter? Followed them all the way to the gate and watched them join up with the long line of refuges walking out into the night.”
“And then?” Jessie prompted when he fell silent.
“And then, someone lobbed a hand grenade in my direction,” he said. “Friendly fire, they called it. My own troops fired on me.”
Jessie was silent, but she’d resumed stroking his chest. Long, soothing strokes. He liked it.
The grenade hadn’t been a direct hit, not even a shifter could survive that. But it had come close enough. And so he lay there, letting his wolf heal what he could. Not all of it; he’d insisted that some damage had to be left, in case they found him. In case he managed to get out of here.
“And you did,” Jessie said.
He nodded. “The surgeons wondered at my healing abilities. I tried to keep them slow, but my wolf was intent on getting well in case we were attacked. He didn’t trust anyone, not even our own side. Well why would he?”
He sighed. “So I was offered a medical discharge. I’d been in nearly four years anyway, and I mustered out and came home.”
