Page 27 of Whisper

Atta’s arm fell, slashing at Kris, cutting him to pieces, shredding him with the box cutter he’d used to hijack American Airlines Flight 11—

“Caldera. Caldera!Kris!”

Shaking woke him, rough jerks that ripped him from his nightmare. He gasped. Frigid air filled his lungs. The cold stabbed his insides. He rolled over, coughing into the floor. He expected to see blood.

Haddad hovered beside him. One hand squeezed Kris’s shoulder. Kris could barely see the outline of Haddad’s face. The world was dark, pitch black.

“What time is it?”

“Zero four hundred. Everyone is asleep.” Haddad ran his hand across Kris’s back, inside his sleeping bag. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine.” Kris pushed himself up. He was tangled in his sleeping bag, and his jacket and fleece pullover were twisted, straightjacket-like. The freezing night air had slipped under his layers. His skin felt like a sheet of ice had frozen to him. He couldn’t stop shaking. Shivers or his nightmare, he couldn’t tell.

He heard a zipper, the long line of Haddad’s sleeping bag opening. “Come with me.” Haddad held out his hand.

Kris stumbled up, slithering out of his own sleeping bag and straightening his layers. He’d have to put on more clothes. Their stone headquarters did nothing to stop the chill. He wrapped his Gore-Tex jacket around him, burying his face in the turned-up collar.

Haddad guided him out of their cramped room and through the nerve center. Laptops whirred, and the radio was set on a low, soft crackle. Snores rose from the other sleeping rooms, behind curtains. After days of travel, the team was finally sleeping, and sleeping hard.

Haddad kept going, slipping out into the dead courtyard between their two buildings. Three Afghan soldiers huddled near a fire on the other side of the dirt patch, bundled in thick woolen blankets. They talked softly, AK-47s resting nearby. They were the night guards, keeping an eye on the team while they slept.

Haddad led him to the small fire ring, glowing with the last of the banked embers from their fire the night before. They’d all sat around the flames once Palmer and George had outlined their mission for the coming days. After the briefing, there hadn’t been much to do except think.

Kris squatted, huddling with his hands in his armpits and trying to keep warm as Haddad turned the coals over, tossed more sticks on the fire, and blew on the embers. When the flames flickered to life, Haddad stepped back and moved to Kris’s side. He wrapped his arms around Kris, briskly rubbing up and down his back.

The heat of the fire licked up Kris’s body, but it was Haddad’s warmth that seeped into his bones. He went limp, slumping into Haddad’s hold.

“Better?”

“Mmmm.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Kris shook his head. He couldn’t even think. His nightmares painted images for him, screamed at him when he slept. He couldn’t put the words together in his mind when he was awake. The attacks, and who was to blame—

What would Haddad, this vanguard of American fury, of patriotic fervor, a literal superhero sent to avenge the deaths of thousands, think if he could see Kris’s nightmare? If he knew the truth?

Haddad kept stroking up and down Kris’s back, his movements slowing, becoming softer. “You said you’re from New York.”

Kris nodded.

“The Bronx? Brooklyn?”

“No need to be insulting.” Kris tried to smile. He couldn’t. “Manhattan. Lower East Side.”

Haddad breathed in and out, slowly. “I’m sorry.”.

“I haven’t been back since high school. I don’t know anyone—” His throat closed. “I don’tthinkI know anyone who was in the towers.”

He thought back to his last year of school. Hadn’t Junior and Mateo wanted to be firemen one day? Hadn’t Celia said she was going to work in those towers, no matter what, even if she had to work as a cleaning lady or a food server in the McDonald’s? Mr. Birmingham had always told her to dream bigger, to imagine herself in one of the offices up there, a corner office, with a view of the glittering sky. Celia said she’d never be smart enough for that.

But Kris hadn’t ever thought he’d be in Afghanistan, or have jumped out of a plane, or have joined the CIA.

Sweet Jesus, who had he lost from his past? Celia was a mean bitch with a cruel streak, and she’d picked on him for years, taunting his eyeliner and the way he loosened his tie, his shell necklace and the shortest shorts he could get away with in the summer months.

But she was smart, and she could have made it, could have had that corner office, and no one deserved that day.

And he had—