Hurt Locker fic, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," James, Sanborn, OCs, Gen/ Preslash, R

[ishafel]

Written for Boz, in the NYR 2010 challenge.
Summary: Out of the sandbox and into the fire.


Afghanistan.

Iraq.

Venezuela.

Kenya.

North Korea.

James chases bombs the way other guys chase tail. After a while all the wars run together, all the dead kids, all the dirt and blood and rubble. He smokes too many cigarettes and he has a son at home he never sees.

His rep starts to precede him. They call him crazy and a cowboy. In South America, they nickname him Rambo. He isn't there to make friends.

He disarms a lot of bombs. He blows a lot of shit up. The Army promotes him sometimes.

The equipment gets better, but so do the bombs.

He turned twenty-five in Kabul. He turns thirty-eight outside Chongjin. He splits a bottle of Jack with his Specialists, and he and Campbell carry Cohen to his bed, just as the sun's coming up. Campbell's at that giggly, golden stage, and he'd fuck her if she weren't so impossibly young, and if she didn't remind him a little bit of the President.

When they're tucked in he ducks out of the tent to smoke. He has a sat phone, just like everyone else, but it never rings and there's no one to call except a woman he was married to once and a boy who's forgotten he exists. The cigarette makes him cough.

Someone claps him on the back. He reaches for his sidearm, squinting into the darkness, but all he can see is the shine of the man's skull, the gleam of teeth. It's no one he recognizes.

"The fuck?" he says, which is shorthand for Who the fuck do you think you are, or maybe just for Who the fuck are you? The pieces come together, and he says, "Sanborn, right? Bravo Company, in Iraq?" He has a handful of plastic pieces and copper wires to remember Bravo by. He doesn't have them with him. There's only so many souvenirs you can take on a plane.

The other man puts out a hand, and James takes it. "Still with E.O.D.?" he asks.

Sanborn shakes his head. "Back with Intelligence. They made me an officer, you believe that?"

James examines him. "Major." Doesn't salute.

"Heard you made Africa too hot to hold you. Damn, James, until I saw your name on the list I thought you were dead. "

"I'm harder to kill than I look."

Sanborn actually laughs at that. He's mellowed some, or James is remembering him wrong. "Working with you was certainly an education. You been at this, what? Fifteen years? That must be some kind of record."

It's light enough now to actually see Sanborn. He looks the same, mostly. Big. Dark. Fit. “Yeah,” he says. “Who knew the war would last this long?”

“Woman we got in the Oval Office now, we'll be lucky if it ever ends. You hear she's talking about Iran, soon as we mop things up here?”

“Guess we know who you voted for,” James says mildly. Politics has never felt real to him, not the way bombs do. You choose between the green wire and the red one, knowing if you're wrong, your fancy suit isn't going to keep your dick from being pressurized. It seems a little more meaningful than checking some box on a piece of paper. “Good thing. So long as people keep blowing shit up, I get to keep my job.”

“James. You ignorant redneck cracker. Only you would think it's worth keeping.” He's smiling. James smiles back, even though he's mostly sober now and he's remembered that he never liked Sanborn much. “You had breakfast yet?”

James steps on his cigarette butt. “I could eat.”

He walks with Sanborn to the mess tent. Sanborn still moves like he's in a hurry, not running, but quick. Going places. Even if “places” means a shit hole like North Korea. And “breakfast” means M.R.E.s. As much as bombs have improved, as much as the tech as evolved to match, James sometimes finds it hard to believe they couldn't do something for the food. He's eaten more M.R.E.s than he has regular meals, and sometimes he feels like he's forgotten what real eggs taste like.

But he's hungry, even if he's old and hungover. He still eats it. He's halfway through when he looks up to see Sanborn watching him. “Take a picture,” he says, “it'll last longer.”

“It wouldn't have the character of the original, though.”

James isn't a complete idiot. He recognizes the insult, and underneath it, something else. Something almost friendly. He and Sanborn were a lot of things, but they were never friends. “So look at you, Major. Desperate as you were to blow the sand off your boots, I never thought you'd end up career Army.”

“Yeah,” Sanborn says with a sigh. “Well, civilian life ain't all it's cracked up to be. And there was a brief period where there was a brother in charge, and they shut down Don't Ask Don't Tell, and it seemed like the Army was the place to be.”

James isn't shocked, exactly. He's been with guys himself, here and there, even though he isn't gay. But Sanborn doesn't give off the gayest of vibes. He seems way too uptight for it. “Really?”

“You didn't guess? I thought your instincts were better than that, James.”

“Yeah. They ever set off a gay bomb, I guess I'm screwed.”

Sanborn sort of smiles at that, not like it's funny but like he's being polite. “So how's it working out for you?” James asks, “Being gay and being all you can be?”

Sanborn doesn't appreciate that. “It's not,” he says. “Turns out the army's full of assholes.”

James looks at him. That one is so obvious it almost doesn't merit a response. He wonders what Sanborn would be like to fuck, whether he'd be this mouthy and obnoxious with a cock inside him, whether he'd give good head or be prissy about it. “Perfect for you, then,” he says quietly into his reconstituted orange juice.

It takes Sanborn a minute to decide whether James is calling him an asshole or a slut. Either way, James will probably end up getting punched in the face, which will be interesting.

He doesn't have a chance to find out. His sat phone starts to beep. He's checking the message when Cohen and Campbell burst in, far too enthusiastic for the time of day. They seem sober enough to kill people, even if they're not sober enough to drive. “Guess this is me.”

“We're on, Sarge.” Cohen tries to sound brisk, but he comes off squeaky. He's so young his voice has barely broken. “Sounds like a big one.” Cohen's only been in Korea three weeks. He can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Still, James feels a stirring of excitement, especially when Campbell nods. She was with him the tail end of his tour in Kenya, and she's good. She's the first girl he's worked with, part of E.O.D.'s belated attempt to diversify.

“Just as well,” James says. “I need a cigarette anyway.” He pushes his chair back, stands up. Sanborn stands, too. Now would be the time to shake hands and make vague offers of drinks that will never come to pass. Instead, he says, “Want to come with?”

Sanborn blinks. Smiles. “For old times sake,” he agrees.

James couldn't be more surprised if he'd taken off his jacket to reveal a chest full of TNT. “Great. I'll drive.”

Cohen and Campbell pile into the Jeep like kids going to the mall. Sanborn climbs in more slowly. James looks him over. He's wearing fatigues; he has a sidearm but not a helmet. He'll do. “Buckle up, boys and girls. Let's go blow shit up!”

When he floors the Jeep it throws Sanborn back against the seat. He looks like maybe he's changing his mind about coming. “I thought the point was to keep shit unblown up--.”

“Sanborn, baby,” James yells over the rush of the wind, “that was okay in the desert, maybe, but things are different here. I had to fancy up my tactics some.”

In the backseat, Campbell giggles. James did the math once. She was born in '94, which means when he went to Afghanistan the first time she was nine years old. He's not sure what kind of toys nine year old girls play with these days, but he's betting sniper rifles and bomb kits aren't popular.

There aren't many cars in Chongjin, and since the invasion started, there aren't too many people, either. The Koreans are more organized than most of the other countries they've invaded. They've had years to plan for this.

It's good, because it cuts down on civilian casualties. Bad, because before they pulled out, they mined most of the important parts of the major cities. It isn't particularly brilliant work but it's boring as hell to undo. James prefers to clear the area and trigger it, instead of trying to disable it, but that hasn't always been popular. He's hoping for something better than a maze of red and green wires this morning, partly as a birthday present and partly because he wants to make Sanborn squeal like a little pig.

There aren't usually too many insurgents on the street, but he gives Campbell the grenade launcher and Sanborn the bazooka. It's a tossup which of them is the better shot. Cohen says sulkily, “It's supposed to be my job to hold the bazooka--.” but he stops when Campbell elbows him.

James's son didn't whine like that at eleven. “What'd I tell you?” he demands, turning in the seat so that he can face Cohen. Sanborn winces and involuntarily grabs for the wheel, but James ignores him. “Specialist?”

“Don't piss into the wind, Sarge,” Cohen mumbles.

James can't remember actually having said this, but it sounds like good advice. He must have been drunker last night than he realized. “What else?”

“Keep my mouth shut and do what I'm told.”

“Attaboy,” James agrees. He turns back, just in time to yank the Jeep around a turn on two wheels. “You'll be okay, Cohen. But Sanborn here's been in hot zones since before you were born. We're gonna let him hold the big gun this morning.”

There are forty or so soldiers standing in the street a block away. James slows the Jeep down before Sanborn can bitch about friendly fire and rolls to a stop at the barricade. “Somebody order a pizza?” he asks the guard.

“You Master Sergeant James from E.O.D?” the man grunts. “This is officially U.N. territory. You're to liaise with Lieutenant Colonel O'Hara.”

James can see a patch of red hair, moving closer. “O'Hara? Does he want me Lucky Charms?”

“Rambo,” someone roars from behind the guard. “You crazy son of a bitch. Thought you blew yourself up in Kenya, but they tell me you're just too stupid to die.”

O'Hara is about four feet tall and looks exactly like a leprechaun. He's James's favorite U.N. flunky, which isn't saying much. But for a midget, he sure can hold his liquor.

“This man,” O'Hara says, waving his arms wildly. His chin is just about level with the Jeep's window. The guard steps hastily back. “This William James is the scoundrel who defiled the American president and her daughters, all during a single day's leave.”

“You're jealous, you sad little man,” James interrupts. “You were too short to be in the real army. You know what they say, when they were handing out dicks, the Irish were at the back of the line.”

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Sanborn says, over O'Hara's howls of outrage. “I'd like to apologize for Sergeant James on behalf of the entire United States Army. Rest assured, I'll see to it that he's in front of a firing squad tonight.”

O'Hara squints up at him. “Clearly, Major, you're the wisest man in the American Army, if not in all of America. It's a pleasure to meet Rambo's new keeper.”

“Sanborn, O'Hara. O'Hara, Sanborn. You got an actual bomb to defuse, I.R.A., or did you drag me halfway across North Korea for the hell of it?”

“Oh, you'll like this one, Rambo.”

James doesn't, though.

The I.E.D. is the biggest one he's ever seen, and it's set into concrete, which means he's going to have to chip bits of sidewalk away to get at the wires. He could blow it, if it were just a big, ordinary bomb-- but it isn't. He stands in the street, sweating in the fucking suit because it's already eighty degrees out, and waits for O'Hara. When he's sure there's no one in earshot but his team and O'Hara, he says, “It's dirty.”

“Shite.” O'Hara goes a bit green around the edges. “You're sure?”

“Without a detector? No. But if I were building one, that's how I'd do it. And where.” Radiological I.E.D.s are rare. The one in Mombasa killed more than a hundred thousand people, and this one is bigger. And better located. A strong wind will wipe out most of the US troops in the northeast. This is a piece of U.S. artillery; it was a nuclear warhead not too long ago and it probably still is. “You're going to want to start moving people back. And for fuck's sake, start looking for a civilian with a sat phone. It'll be close by, within a mile or two. They were waiting for the weather to be just right, maybe. Now that we're here, they'll quit waiting.”

O'Hara is suddenly all business. “What do you need, Rambo?”

James thinks about it. Shrugs. “I'm good,” he says. “Take Sanborn with you. He's a dead shot.”

Beside him, Sanborn stirs. “No,” he says. “I've got your six, James. Take one of the kids.”

James doesn't waste time arguing. “Take Specialist Cohen. He knows how to set up a perimeter and organize spotters, at least. Campbell, you're with me. Let's hope you paid attention in Africa. One of you bring the Jeep up and bust the equipment out.”

Campbell goes. James starts taking off the suit. He doesn't do this as much any more-- not because he's gotten more careful but because he likes the challenge of the suit, with its stiff, clumsy fingers and limited vision. Today he's going to need to be sharp. “You sure about this?” Sanborn asks.

James laughs a little. “Oh, fuck no. But I'm all there is.” He's been doing this a long time, and he's good at it. Reckless, maybe, but still good. Usually it's just a job, and sometimes it's a boring job. Today he feels shaky and a little sick-- and it's not a hangover. He's scared, and he'd almost forgotten how that felt. He wasn't in Mombasa when that bomb blew, but he saw what happened afterward: the kids with open sores and radiation sickness, the women who gave birth to monsters, the dead unburied in the street.

If it happens here, it will be his fault. He can't think about that. He can't think about failing.

James touches the casing of what used to be a missile. The radiation detector screams as soon as Campbell turns it on. He takes the hammer she hands him and lies down on his stomach, and taps gently at the concrete. Sanborn and Campbell stand there watching, guns at the ready, not even breathing.

James breaks off a piece the size of his fist and lifts it out. Underneath, there's a tangle of wires, more than there should be, in every color. “Talk to me,” he says without looking up. “One of you, talk to me about something else.”

Sanborn sits down next to him on the curb, and talks. He had a boyfriend at home, but that's over. You can't expect a guy to wait forever, he guesses, and Darius was a good man who deserved a family. James taps away, lifting out small pieces, while Sanborn tells him about retirement plans (the headhunters are after him, but Blackwater is a hell, no, and Sanction is only a maybe) and where he was the night before the elections when Obama and Biden died-- Columbia, South Carolina-- and how he'd almost gone out and joined rioters in the street, but then they found the assassin and it turned out he was Venezuelan, and instead Sanborn had sat at home and watched the news for three days straight, and somehow when he finally went outside Sarah Palin was President.

James mashes his fingers with the hammer, and swears softly to himself. He can feel where the wires go in now. He traces it as carefully as he can, while Sanborn's voice runs out and Campbell's starts. She tells him about her family: her mother the housewife and her father, a strict Mormon who doesn't believe women belong in the military; she tells him about being recruited to E.O.D. And how afraid she'd been in Kenya.

James cuts a wire without telling them, and nothing happens. He's sweating so hard he's sticking to the pavement. “Is there any water?” he asks, finally, and someone presses it into his open hand. He looks up for what feels like the first time in forever. It's O'Hara. Beyond him is Cohen, rifle on his shoulder, and beyond Cohen is Sanborn, still at attention.

“You look like shit, Rambo,” O'Hara says almost gently.

James twists the cap off the bottle and drinks it without sitting up. He doesn't dare get up, for fear he'll never get back down. “I feel like shit, I.R.A.,” he says honestly.

“How come you call him I.R.A.?” Campbell asks.

James passes the bottle back and starts again. “He has the Irish flag tattooed on his ass.”

“How do you-- oh.” He can almost feel her blushing. Poor little Campbell. She's losing all her illusions today.

And Sanborn must have drifted closer. “Oh is right. Real question is, why does he call you Rambo?”

“Ah,” O'Hara says, “is it the truth you're wanting? Because you won't have it from our man James. Delicate in his sensibilities and modest in his nature, that's James.”

James cuts another wire, going entirely on instinct, and listens to O'Hara's blarney. “Sure, and there we were, held prisoner by a dozen-- no, two dozen-- Venezuelan insurgents, unwashed and armed to the teeth. Well, they locked us in some sort of storeroom, bound hand and foot, and left us. Lesser men might have given up entirely, but not our Will James.”

O'Hara had been the one to dislocate his thumb and slip the cuffs. James had sat and watched. Having freed himself, O'Hara had picked the lock on James's cuffs one-handed-- but the door was padlocked from the other side. James had built a bomb, and they'd blown the lock, only to meet a SEAL extraction team coming in. The trouble was, it had been dark. No one had died, but the SEALS had been pissed about walking into the I.E.D.s James and O'Hara had set.

O'Hara'd ended up with a bullet in his thigh, and James had ended up with a nickname he couldn't shake.

Afterwards, when O'Hara was out of the hospital, they'd gone out drinking in Caracas. O'Hara drank James under the table, which wasn't something that happened often. He woke up in the tattoo parlor, thankfully before it was his turn.

“And that,” O'Hara finishes, “is why I have the flag of the greatest nation on earth in a particularly sensitive spot.” James didn't get it the first time, and he doesn't now. Maybe he'd understood when he was that drunk.

“So you didn't-- you know?” Campbell sounds completely caught up in the story. Hopefully she's still watching for the bomber. James cuts another wire. He's halfway there, and so far, nothing. His chest aches and his shoulders are beyond stiff and beginning to be numb. He wiggles back away from the bomb and lies with his forehead pressed against the concrete, saying fuck quietly to himself.

“James?” Sanborn asks, leaning over him.

“Sorry,” James manages. “Gotta take a piss, and I think one of you's going to have to pull me up.”

It actually takes two of them, and it hurts. James turns his arm slowly, in increments, so that he can see his watch. Three o'clock. They've been at this more than six hours. He pisses against the side of a bank, and zips up and wipes his hands on his fatigues.

When he comes back, the others are sitting waiting for him. “How's the evacuation coming?” he asks. Dumb. He should have asked hours ago.

“Slow,” O'Hara admits. “Your government thinks it's a ruse, and they don't want to pull out.”

“Damn,” James says. He's too tired for anything more. “We're losing daylight, people.”

Getting back down is even harder than getting up was. He's too old for this shit, and for the first time he's considering retiring. Not turning pro, even though Blackwater would probably double his salary, but taking up deepsea fishing, or golf, or some boring old man hobby.

He listens to Cohen wondering why the US hasn't pulled their troops out. “Isn't it good news if there's WMDs? Isn't that what they're fighting about?” Cohen is eighteen. He probably can't remember 9/11. James can barely remember it.

“They never seriously thought there were WMDs,” O'Hara says. “If they had, they wouldn't have been so focking quick to invade.” He starts to tell Sanborn and Campbell about St. Patrick, and then the Easter Rising.

“I.R.A.,” James mutters under his breath, but none of them even look up. They've given up on the mystery civilian. Maybe the guy never existed. Maybe this bomb is a dud. O'Hara-- little, red-haired O'Hara, with his freckles and his accent and his Irish flag-- did in fact fock James in Caracas. James liked it, but not enough to do it again, and O'Hara hadn't pursued it either.

Six wires left. James is back to chipping, maddeningly slow and nerve-wracking. O'Hara's phone beeps and he moves away to take the call. Cohen and Sanborn talk about colleges, about where Cohen's going to go with the money he's making. James knows guys who are professional Reservists and Guardsmen, fifteen years in. They never got the lives they were saving up for, and now they never will.

O'Hara comes back. “The U.N. is sending an expert,” he says. “But she's still two hours out. We're to continue at your discretion, James, you mad dog. Things are a bit dicey, as the United States has just declared war on Iran.”

“Awesome.” Sanborn sounds about like James feels. “That's certainly good news.”

“Hey,” James says, feeling ignored again. “O'Hara.”

“Rambo.”

“Here's the thing. I think I'm done.” The bomb lies quietly in its concrete grave. There's only one wire left, and James is pretty sure cutting it will set the thing off. “It's not neutralized. It can't be remotely triggered now. I don't think it can be disabled, and I sure as fuck don't think it can be removed.”

“Spell it out, Rambo.”

“Nothing else I can do,” James says. “Done here. If it goes off, it goes off.”

“Fair enough,” O'Hara says. “I'll call it in. We'll sit on it till the expert gets here.”

James gets up, slowly and painfully. O'Hara makes his phone call and comes back while he's still stretching experimentally. “You did good here today, for a crazy Yank,” he says. His phone beeps again and he answers it. “Yes, ma'am, he's right here. Just a minute.”

O'Hara passes the phone to him, and James takes it. “Hold for the President of the United States,” the woman on the other end says cheerfully.

“Wait,” James protests, “I'm not--.”

“Hello, Master Sergeant James.” Sarah Palin sounds just like she does on tv, and James can't believe this is happening. “I hear you did real good over there today.”

And even though James didn't vote for her-- has never, in fact, voted in an election, for anyone-- he can feel himself responding to her. He saw her big speech, broadcast around the world the day after President Obama was killed, when she promised to destroy Venezuela. He saw her after her son died in Nairobi, when she stood in front of the cameras and wept.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he says.

“We're going to need brave men like you in Iran.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Sanborn and O'Hara, Campbell and Cohen, they're all standing there staring at him. And they should be. If the president asked him to shoot them, all of them, as a personal favor to her, he'd do it.

“You be safe over there. When you get back home for leave, Willow and Piper and I want you to come to the White House for dinner, you hear? We're all real excited to meet a hero like you.”

She sounds like his mom and his first girlfriend both, completely irresistible. “I sure will, ma'am.”

Thank God she hangs up after that. James shoves the phone back at O'Hara, staggers behind the Jeep, and throws up the three bottles of water and the Power Bar that are all he's had since breakfast. He'd rather spend the rest of his life sitting on nukes than ever do that again.

When he comes back, the others are still waiting. “Was that really President Palin?” Sanborn demands.

“Yeah. And if she calls again, I'm not here. In fact, if she calls again, I.R.A., you shoot me in the face so I can't talk to her.”

O'Hara just smirks at him. “Yes, ma'am.” His American accent is even worse than James's Irish one.

James takes off his shirt and wipes his mouth with the cleanest part he can find. He takes the bottle of water Campbell holds out, swirls a mouthful, spits, and lights a cigarette. He's been blown up before, and it didn't hurt like this. He looks at the bomb and the tangle of cut wires. He'd like to meet the guy who built it, just so he could punch him in the face.

“So, I.R.A., I guess this is your baby now.” Without being asked, Cohen and Campbell start humping the gear into the Jeep. They're good kids. After a minute, Sanborn even goes to help them.

O'Hara turns and gives him that sweet, piercing smile that's gotten him laid on six continents, the one that can turn a lesbian straight and a straight man gay. James is in trouble. “I like your new boyfriend, Rambo.”

“He's not my boyfriend, you crazy Irish bastard.”

“Can I have him, then?”

“No,” James says, before he thinks about it.

O'Hara sighs. “Good luck with it, then.”

They pile back into the Jeep. This time Sanborn drives. James rolls down the passenger side window and leans out, the air cool on his face and arms. “Bet this wasn't what you expected when you said you'd come this morning.”

He can feel Sanborn's eyes on him, dark and intense. “Actually, I knew it was a possibility.”

James glances over at him. “This is what I do for a living, you know-- Intelligence.”

“Well, I wish you'd shared it with the rest of us.”

“You were pretty damn hot out there today, James. You didn't even blink.”

James looks in the rearview mirror. Cohen and Campbell are asleep, or at least pretending convincingly. “It's what I do,” he says. “You knew that. You hated it in Iraq.”

“I thought you'd be dead by now.” There's something in Sanborn's voice James can't read. “You seemed like you were gunning for it.”

James's fingers are clenched, too hard, on the Jeep's window. “You can't,” he says. Stops. He isn't sure how to say this. Some people understand it without being told. Some people never understand. “You can't stop to think, or it pulls you under. If you admit you're scared, even to yourself, you can't do the job. You think I don't know how few people last fifteen years with E.O.D.? I know. I just don't think about it.”

He turns to face Sanborn. “Today I thought about it. It wasn't good. I've disabled bombs in moving vehicles, and during sandstorms, and under heavy fire. I stopped to think today, and I damn near got all of us killed.” He remembers the moment of panic he had, the moment when he'd realized what could go wrong.

“People react differently to different situations. You can't--.”

“I don't,” James says. “I can't afford to. If I stop I might never get started again. I gotta be Rambo, because if I'm not, I'm no good.”

“Okay,” Sanborn says, “okay.” James has the feeling suddenly that he's lost something he never knew he had, and isn't even sure he wanted. A door closing he hadn't realized was open, or a live bomb that didn't detonate.

“When we get back, I am going to get fucking wasted” he says, and he lights another cigarette.