She Tore the Earpiece Out and the Ridge Went Silent

"Worse," she said.

She handed it to him anyway. He drank it without complaint, which was also exactly what she would have expected.

They sat in the quiet for a while, the way people sit in quiet when they have been through something that has already been said in every important way and doesn't require the additional version that comes out of mouths.

"You tore the earpiece out," he said eventually.

"I did."

"Bradley told me."

"What did he say about it?"

"He said you were either the most insubordinate sergeant he'd ever commanded or the most effective." James looked at the coffee cup. "He said he hadn't decided which."

"What did you say?"

James thought about it. "I said those weren't mutually exclusive."

Rachel almost smiled.

On the way back from the hospital, she stopped at the ridge where she had cached her equipment before the exfil. The pack was where she had left it, the rifle case beside it, everything packed and sealed and waiting. She loaded it onto her back and carried it down to the transport without looking back at the road below the ridge, where the evidence of the afternoon had already been reduced by wind and distance to something that looked like it might have been a mechanical problem with an unfortunate convoy.

The desert was good at that. It covered things over, not because it was kind, but because it was indifferent, and indifference applied long enough to anything eventually smoothed the surface back to ordinary.

But the surface was not the same as what was underneath it.