Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan - Year 2

VI

Tito walked Bear to the mess hall, then to their room after dinner.

Erik got told off by Lin, but since he was already doing his punishment, she couldn't add to it.

- By the way, hálfviti, the Swedes were not vikings. But more often their prey. Go back to your history classes. And don't make our Swede your prey, for God's sake!

Scolded, the giant looked at Lin with open, almost astonished eyes. Then he nodded and gave her his big smile. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, sighed, then whispered, "Moron" and smiled back.

We went out in the courtyard to drink our herbal tea outside, sitting cross-legged on the sand. In front of me, two covered cups were waiting for an Albanian and a Swede. They joined us a little later, Tito sat by my side, looking only half there. I handed him his cup and he took it reflexively.

- Well, pal, I whispered, it looks like you're walking next to your shoes. Has Bear something to do with it?

To my surprise, and my great joy, he nodded. I put an arm around his shoulders, held him close to me, and whispered in his ear:

- Do you like him?

- Yes, he sighed. But I don't know if...

- The fun part, Tito, is finding out.

- But what if...

- Tito, he's like you, he prefers men.

I saw stars in his eyes... And it wasn't just the reflection of the sky. Well, no, I'm just kidding. But if you had seen his hopeful smile...

I didn't say anything else, I didn't mind giving Cupid a hand, but I wasn't going to cut his job for him.

The next day, we put down the little mines again, blew the rock up and Erk passed us bags full of rubble that he filled by hand but with gloves, this time. The other patrols had left, Curly's patrol with the truck to the North, Mac's patrol to the East on motorbikes, both taking their new recruits.

We call it Mac's patrol now, because even though Stig is a corporal, like her, he asked to be relieved of the platoon command. Mac agreed, so she made him her second. They get along really well, these two, and Lin's used to staying out of anything until it gets out of hand, so she just asked Fatso to change the register and that's it.

So our patrol, the brothers', was still at base, since our last man was still «bedridden». He was involved in the manufacture of the little mines, of which Erk used a lot, but as Lin said, it's better to use baby steps with explosives.

He also helped Jo fix the generator. Well, fixing isn't the word, but between them, they found a hack to increase its lifespan. The little one was dedicated to the fridge, we ate cold for the three days it took us to finish digging the hole. The big generator was only turned on to heat the water for the showers. To tell you the truth, we were even deprived of hot coffee. Cook took out a big cast-iron teapot, painted it black, put in water and bags of black tea, and put it in the sun. It gave a very bitter tea, very strong and almost as effective as coffee. But frankly, I missed coffee, the tea was not as good...

The rock that we had been mining was not the base of the promontory, but a separate rock, laid like this on a layer of sediment itself laid on the rock of the promontory. And when, 4m50 deep, we hit the soil again, we were quite happy, and Erk pulled out his shovel-spade.

And at the end of the third day – and I'll let you make the biblical parallel yourself – Erk came out of his hole, earth-covered, sweaty, smiling widely. He was happy to be done with it.