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“It was a lie. It was a fucking lie, sold to us, the idealists who signed up for the worst of the worst jobs because we were told that we’d be doing the right thing. And we counted on our leadership to send us to where we could make a difference. And instead, we just ended up killing a whole lot of people that we didn’t need to.”
“They were still military targets though, right?” Wyatt said. “I mean, you would’ve had to fight those guys sooner or later.”
“I thought so. Until one night, we got called out to spot for a JDAM- that’s like a guided missile. We set up nearby in this compound and lit up the target with a high-powered laser to guide that missile in to just the right spot.”
“So cool,” Devil whispered under his breath, and Griz nudged him hard to shut him up.
“Anyway, it didn’t feel right. Nothing looked military about it to me, even at night, even at that distance under night vision. Just looked like a cluster of houses. But we did it. We did as we were told. And then we went in to do a post-engagement damage assessment.”
“What did you find?” Boomer asked.
“No fucking WMDs, I can tell you that much,” Pony said with a bitter laugh. “We did find bodies, though. Men. Women. And even a few children.”
“Damn,” Wyatt said quietly.
“The intel guys had picked a spot that not only wasn’t a WMD lab, it wasn’t even a military site. It was just a bunch of houses, like an extended family. They had all gathered together for some celebration or another… a birthday, a wedding, something. And I dropped a fucking bomb on them.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Boomer said. “You’re not responsible. You were following orders.”
“Tell that to those kids,” Pony said. “Anyway, after that… I just got out as fast as I could. Left the Army behind. The point is, I did some pretty terrible things, all in the name of some very lofty ideals, because I was deceived by my leadership. So yeah, I can see Piper’s side on this. Just like me, she signed up because she thought she was going to be fighting the good fight. And her leadership said there’s the bad guys, right there, go get them. So, of course she believes them, because, why wouldn’t she? And I’ll tell you something else. However bad you think her sins are for coming into our club as an undercover fed, my sins in Iraq were a million times worse. So I’m inclined to give her a pass.”
There was another heavy silence in the room, as the brothers let all of Pony’s words sink in. In that silence, Pony realized he’d figured out exactly what he thought about Piper.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Pony said. “She’s better than me.”
“Better than you?” Wyatt said. “How do you figure that?”
“She told her boss to fuck off once she saw how wrong things were getting,” Pony said. “You know why Harris was so obsessed over the bar? That’s where she was supposed to plant the heroin.”
“That explains his little hissy fit, I guess,” Griz said. “How’d he get her to put it there in the first place?”
“He extorted her to do it. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, he was holding a bomb over her head. Sheplanted it, not thinking she had any other options, then came back and took it back out, even though she knew what a shitstorm it would cause for her. And her sister. She took it back out, and threw it in her boss’s face. Literally.”
“Got to admit, I would’ve liked to see that,” Griz said. “Piper chucking a kilo of H into that dickhead’s face, telling him to get fucked?”
“God, I wish I’d done that back in Iraq,” Pony said. “Actually acted on that bad feeling I had, that we were chasing fantasies rather than WMDs, and told my CO to fuck himself. Tell him that I wasn’t going to gun down strangers on some bullshit wild goose chase, just because some guy with a piece of tin on his collar said so. But I didn’t. I just kept going until it was too late. Not her, though. She made a stand, no matter the cost. So she’s better than me. And I’m going to help her set things right.”
There it was. Saying the words out loud had finally sorted out his tangled feelings, made it clear how he felt and what he had to do. And now that it was out, he felt a calm clarity that he hadn’t felt in quite a while.
“I’m with you, Pony,” Devil said, clapping him on the back. “All the way.”
“Thanks, Devil.”
“Hells yeah, dude. I need my sidekick.”
“Still not your sidekick, but thanks,” Pony said, looking around the table. “As for the rest of you, if any of you want my patch…”
“Shut the fuck up, Pony,” Wyatt said. “Anybody wants your patch, is going to have to take mine.”
“And mine,” Griz said.
“We’re all with you, dude,” Devil said, as nods and murmurs of assent came in from all around the table.
It finally came around the last brother, and Boomer said, “Jocko?”
Jocko looked down at his hands, drumming his fingers slowly on the table. Finally, he looked at Pony and grinned.
“What’s up with the sister?” he said.
