Oppose Any Foe

“Murph! Get down here. You want a sniper to put a bullet in your head?”

Murphy turned and looked at Luke. His eyes were just… gone. He shook his head. An exhalation of air escaped from him. It sounded almost like laughter. He stayed right where he was.

If more Taliban came, they were toast. Neither one of these guys had much fight left in them, and the only weapon Stone still had was the bent bayonet in his hand. For a moment, he thought idly about picking through some of these dead guys for weapons. He didn’t know if he had the strength left to stand. He might have to crawl instead.

As he watched, a line of black insects appeared in the sky far away. He knew what they were in an instant. Helicopters. United States military helicopters, probably Black Hawks. The cavalry was coming. Luke didn’t feel good about that, or bad. He felt nothing. Emptiness was an occupational hazard. He felt nothing at all…

Luke was awakened by his ringing phone. He lay there and blinked.

He tried to orient himself. He was in a tent, he realized, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

It was just before first light, and he was in the tent he shared with his son, Gunner. He stared into the black night, listening to the sound of his son’s deep breathing nearby.

His phone kept ringing.

It vibrated against his leg, and made the annoying buzzing sound that phones set to vibrate make. He didn’t want to wake Gunner, but this was probably a call he needed to take. Very few people had this number, and they were people who wouldn’t just call to shoot the breeze.

He glanced at his watch: five thirty a.m.

Luke unzipped the tent, slid out, then zipped it up again. Nearby, in the first pale light of the gathering day, Luke saw the other two tents – Ed Newsam in one, Mark Swann in the other. The remains of last night’s fire were in the circle of stones at the center of the camp – there were still a few coals glowing red.

The air was cool and crisp – Luke wore only boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Goosebumps popped up along his arms and on his legs. He kicked his feet into a pair of sandals and walked down to the river, past where the raft was tied up. He wanted to get far enough away from the campsite so that he didn’t wake anyone.

He sat on a boulder and gazed at the rising walls of the canyon. Just below him, although he could barely see it, was the sound of trickling water. Downriver, maybe half a mile away, he could hear the rushing of the next set of rapids.

He looked at the phone. He knew the number by heart. It was Becca. Probably the last person he wanted to hear from right now. He’d had Gunner for five days, which was perfectly legal, according to their agreement. Yes, Gunner had been out of school during that time, but the kid was some kind of genius – there was talk of him skipping grades, not falling behind.

To Luke’s mind, getting him out into the wild, enjoying nature and testing himself both physically and mentally, was good for him – and probably more important than anything he might get up to at home. Kids nowadays – they spent a lot of time staring into video screens. It had its place – those screens were powerful tools, but let’s limit it to that. Let’s not allow them to take the place of family, physicality, fun, or imagination. Let’s not pretend that real adventure, or even experience, took place inside of a computer.

He called her back, his mind alert, but open. Whatever game she tried to play, he would stay calm and be as reasonable as he could.

The phone rang once.

“Luke?”

“Hi, Becca,” he said, his voice low and friendly, acting like it was the most normal thing in the world to call someone back before sunrise. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she said. Her speech with him was always abrupt, tense. His life with her was over – he recognized that. But his life with his son was just beginning, and he was firm that he would navigate any roadblocks she might try to put in his way.

He waited.

“What is Gunner doing?” she said.

“He’s sleeping. It’s still pretty early here. The sun’s not even quite up yet.”

“Right,” she said. “I forgot about the time difference.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I was awake anyway.” He paused for a few seconds. The first glint of real sun was appearing in the east, a ray of light which peeked over the rim of the canyon and played on the cliff wall to the west, turning it pink and orange.

“So what can I do for you?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I need Gunner to come home right away.”

“Becca – ”

“Don’t fight me on this, Luke. You know it won’t hold any water with the judge. A special operations agent with diagnosed post traumatic stress disorder and a history of violence wants to take his young son on outdoor adventures, which, by the way, causes his son to miss entire weeks of school. I can’t believe I even agreed to this in the first place. I’ve been so distracted that I – ”

He interrupted her. “Becca, we’re in the Grand Canyon. We’re rafting. You do realize that, don’t you? Unless a helicopter lands down here to pick us up, we are probably three days from reaching the South Rim. Then a night in the lodge there, and a full day’s drive down to Phoenix. Which sounds about right, because as I recall it, our plane tickets back are scheduled for the twenty-second. And by the way, this whole PTSD diagnosis isn’t real. It never happened. No doctor has ever even suggested it. It’s just something that you’ve manufactured in your – ”

“Luke, I have cancer.”

That stopped him in his tracks. In recent days, she had been more agitated than he’d ever seen her before. Of course he had noticed this, but mostly ignored it. It was typical of her, and the amount of pressure she put on herself. Becca was a Grade A stress case. But this was different.

Luke’s eyes watered, and a thick lump formed in his throat. Could it be true? Whatever had happened between them, this was the woman he had fallen in love with. This was the woman who had carried his child. At one time, he had loved her more than anything in this world, certainly more than he loved himself.

“Jesus, Becca. I’m so sorry. When did that happen?”

“I was feeling sick all summer. I lost some weight. At first, it was no big deal, but then it became a surprising amount of weight. I thought it was from all the anxiety, everything that’s happened in the past year – the kidnapping, the train crash, all the time you’ve been away. But things have calmed down a lot, and the sickness didn’t stop. I went for tests starting a couple weeks ago. I had been vomiting. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew more. Now I know more. I saw my doctor yesterday, and she told me everything.”

“What is it?” he said, though he was not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“It’s pancreatic,” she said, dropping perhaps the worst bomb he could have imagined. “Stage Four. Luke, it’s already metastasized. It’s in my colon, in my brain. It’s in my bones…” Her voice trailed off, and he could hear her sob two thousand miles away.

“I’ve been crying all night,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t seem to stop.”

As bad as he felt, Luke found that his thoughts suddenly weren’t with her – they were with Gunner. “How long?” he said. “Did they give you a timeframe?”

“Three months,” Becca said. “Maybe six. She told me not to hang my hat on that. A lot of people die very quickly. Sometimes there’s a miracle and the patient lives on and on indefinitely. Either way, she told me I need to get my affairs in order.”

She paused. “Luke, I’m so afraid.”

He nodded. “I know you are. We’ll be there as soon as we can. I’m not going to tell Gunner.”

“Good. I don’t want you to. We can tell him together.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “I’ll see you soon. I’m very sorry.”

The hang-up was awkward. If only they hadn’t been fighting all these months. If only she hadn’t been so hostile to him. If these things hadn’t happened, maybe he could have found a way to comfort her, even from this distance. He had become hardened against her, and he didn’t know if there was any softness left.

He sat on the boulder for several minutes. Light began to fill the sky. He didn’t reminisce about the good memories with her. He didn’t go over all the battles they’d fought this past year, and how vicious and dug in she’d been. His mind was a blank. That was for the best. He needed a way out of this canyon, and he needed to break the news to Ed and Swann that he and Gunner were leaving.

He pushed off the rock and walked back to camp. Ed was awake and crouched by the fire. He had started it up again and had put the coffee pot on. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of red boxer briefs and flip-flops. His body was thick rippling muscle and ropey veins, hardly an ounce of fat on him – he looked like a martial arts fighter about to enter the cage. He watched Luke approach, then gestured to the west.

Over there, the sky was still cobalt blue, the night retreating, being chased away by the light coming from the east. At the very top, the towering walls of the canyon were lit by a sliver of sun now, setting their striations aflame in red, pink, yellow, and orange.

“Damn, that’s pretty,” Ed said.

“Ed,” Luke said. “I’ve got bad news.”