Part 81 (2/2)

Not with the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.hing Taliban.

Finn knew he couldn't beat any of it, so he did what he always did. He

did what everyone else did. He did the only thing he could do.

He ate his pain.

He swallowed it whole, feeling it slide down his gullet like a bundle of

barbed wire.That was the only way you got through the day, and the week, and the month, and the whole tour.You ate your pain, knowing that the more you consumed, the more poison it would release into your system.After a while, that poison ate away at your nerves, your patience, your tolerance. Sometimes your humanity.

It drove some guys right over the edge. Finn knew-knew for f.u.c.king sure-who was collecting fingers from the Afghans. Maybe two-thirds of them were Taliban fingers.The rest? Well, when a guy had that much poison in his system, he sometimes said f.u.c.k it and took a trophy wherever he could find it.

A few guys had gone on trial for that. Most didn't; most never saw the inside of a military court. No one caught a whiff of the madness cooking inside of them.

Finn hadn't eaten that much poison yet. But, day by day, he found it harder to hate and revile the guys who went off the reservation. Day by day, that seemed to make more sense.

He ground his teeth and stared through the monocular, feeling the seconds and minutes catch fire around him in the burning afternoon air.

The rocky path below was empty.

All morning it was empty.

Well into the afternoon it was empty.

Not a mule. Not a sheep farmer.

Not a stray dog.

Empty.

Until it wasn't.

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