Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan - Year 2

XXVI

It's a loud howl full of anger, angst, frustration, pain, that threw us out of bed in the wee hours of the morning. (Just an expression, okay?)

We didn't need to wonder who had screamed. We rushed out of Lin's room and ran to the brothers'.

He was sitting in Erk's big bed, hands in his hair, his head between his knees and his shoulders were shaking.

Lin climbed into the bed, between him and the wall, I sat on the edge, on his other side. Together we put our hands on his shoulders.

- I had a dream... He was in my arms... He... He loved me...

He sobbed anew in Lin's arms, who looked at me above his head. She let him cry some more, then:

- Kris, what does Erk need?

He sniffled, I went to get a hankie and found one of his "panties", cambric and lace. He blew his nose then answered:

- For me to be strong.

- Yes. And?

- For me to... to save him? To go looking for him.

- Exactly. And what do you need for that?

- I need to muster my intelligence and my focus to think of a solution.

- Perfect. We'll let the others sleep a little and I think you should go back to sleep, too. Then, when you're feeling better, Bear, you and all your patrol, are going to brainstorm. And we'll use our satellite time.

I looked at my watch.

- There's two hours left, Kris. We'll let you sleep.

- No! No, sorry, I... I'm going to have... dreams if I'm alone... I...

Lin looked at me, I nodded. We slipped under the covers, one on each side of him, and we wedged him between the two of us.

Lin fell asleep quite fast, Kris took some more time, then his breathing slowed down and I knew it was time for me to follow them.

Phone woke us up a few minutes before 6am. Having heard Kris's howl, he knew where to find us. Lin went to dress, Kris said he would join us with coffee, so I followed my captain.

Once in the Ops room, Lin logged into the computer and, at the exact minute our sat-time was starting, started the search for Erk's and Tito's GPS chips. The ones in their belts and the ones in their guns.

And there, we got a surprise. A nasty surprise. We pinged two belts and one Behemoth. Tito's.

The other nasty surprise is that there were one or two kilometers between the belt buckles and the gun.

Kris's knuckles turned white.

- « Sorry bróðir » Erik said before we lost him... he whispered. He must have put the earpieces somewhere else.

- Probably means the aggressors found him once or twice thanks to comms, I said.

- Once. He must have wanted to avoid... Actually, you're right, Archer. He dropped the earpieces just after the Sorry, then, further away, the buckles. Then, the gun.

- Makes sense, I said. But why can't we find his guns? Tito's EMA 7 is here, since he dropped it on the road. But Erik didn't drop anything.

- I don't get it either, Lin said. They should appear on the map... Kris, please go ask Fatso for the GPS serial numbers for Erik's weapons.

While waiting for him to come back, we carefully noted down the coordinates that Phone then transmitted to Mac. Lin tweaked the signal, or something, to get more information while Mac was reporting.