Prince Harry Boy to Man

Part 22: Reward for the Capture of Harry ibn Windsor al-Wales

As soon as Colonel Arbuthnot's absence was discovered, and the alarm was raised, Harry and Mustafa made straight for the tent of the American commander of the camp. He was now, by default, their senior officer. Harry felt they had to do this right away, though he also felt out of his depth. He'd never been outside the British chain of command. Now he wasn't quite sure what to do. He took along Mustafa for support and they made their way through a thicket of American adjutants who barred their way. No one wanted to deal with him. The camp was going through its first real emergency, an attack that highlighted their vulnerability. The adjutants thought it was more interesting to look at him and share a joke with him when there hadn't been an incident that exposed how close they all were to real danger.

The Texan commander was less put out by what had happened than his adjutants were. He chewed on a cigar and that helped to keep him calm. He also had a saber in his hand. His grandfather had had it in World War Two. His father had had it in Vietnam. He'd had it himself on an earlier tour of duty in Iraq. The saber had been through much worse than the disappearance of a lone Brit officer, even if he was fairly senior and even if the camp's two fences had both been cut without any of the guards noticing. He sat cantilevered back in his desk chair, saber pointed and propped on the floor as if it were a cane, while chewing his unlit cigar.

"At ease, boys," he said to the two junior officers saluting in front of his desk.

"Sir!" said Harry, searching for the words. Why wouldn't they come? Why was he so stupid? "The thing is. Um. We. Well, Lieutenant Khan and I ..." A bead of sweat fell down his naked side underneath his tunic.

"Spit it out, boy. I'm waiting."

"It's just that. Well. Khan and I. We want to go after him. We need to go find Colonel Arbuthnot, sir." As the American still sat unperturbed in his desk chair, Harry added, "We have to!"

"He might be dead."

"What?"

"The Taliban and the local militias don't put too fine a point on a thing like that. Whoever did it. They'll take a human head off quicker 'n an Abilene slaughterhouse'll put a peg in the head of steer."

"Sir!"

"I'm just sayin' boys. We gotta be realistic."

"We want to go out and find him, sir."

"Go out. Go out where?"

"Follow their tracks, sir. Find where they're holding him."

"Follow their tracks? Are you kiddin' me? They came here in broad daylight. Did a surgical cut of the fence. Didn't touch any stuff in our arms depot. Didn't lay a hand on the choppers. Extracted their man practically with kid gloves so no one noticed. And made a getaway without anyone seeing them. What tracks? They didn't leave any tracks, knucklehead."

Harry had been called a knucklehead, or its equivalent, plenty of times before. His father had said it. Sergeant majors had said it. Teachers in his different schools had all said it. This was the first time an American had said it. He didn't like it. It was the first thing since the colonel's disappearance that steeled his resolve. It suddenly made him angry and serene.

"You propose to do nothing then, sir?"

"I'm gonna do plenty, boy. It's not your job to tell me what. Cause it's my god damned command not yours." Here he picked up the saber with alarming speed, flashed it through the air, and brought it down on the edge of the wooden desk. Bang. A chip of wood flew threw the air and landed on the floor.

Harry and Mustafa both jumped.

"And another thing. Andrew Arbuthnot and I were buddies. I liked that man. The god damned civilians back home gave him a helluva job to do. Here he was a decorated soldier. On his second tour of duty in this hellhole. And they give him you to take care of."

Mustafa looked straight ahead, but Harry couldn't stop himself from wavering a little at this.

"That's right. That's god damned right. You should be ashamed of yourself."

Harry would not normally have answered back in an encounter with a superior officer, but this man who'd called him a knucklehead had touched a nerve. "Well, it won't be for much longer, sir. Your side is about to send me back to England."

"What the hell you talkin' 'bout, boy?"

"The American reporter. Reed, sir. He's as good as promised to blow my cover. They'll send me back as soon as he does. You won't have me to worry about much longer, sir."

"That's what Nixon said. Later on, he was president."

"What?"

"Get this through your thick head, soldier. CNN is not a department of the Pentagon. Reed don't work for me. He's here on sufferance. Don't you know yet how the god damned media works? They'll kick up a stink and make up stories about how bad the war's goin' if we don't let them put reporters out here with us."

"I know that, sir."

The American commander heard the change in the young man's tone. It was as if he'd finally got through to him. Something else occurred to him that made him pause. It almost made him forget that he was angry with the young lieutenant. "That Reed's a strange one. Don't you think? He's kind of a girlie boy, wouldn't you say?"

Here Mustafa dropped his eyes and blushed. Harry gave him a sidelong glance. They'd both been through long hours of British army training workshops about how to deal with gay soldiers under their command. Harry felt it was incumbent on him to interrupt. "If you'll allow me to say a word, sir? You shouldn't say girlie boy. That's homophobic. Sir."

"I can say whatever I want, boy!" The American's anger had returned. "Do I have to remind you both that Reed's not a soldier? He may wear the duds, but he isn't under my command. Or yours. And the UK army's god damned political correctness don't apply here!"

Harry and Mustafa looked straight ahead without making eye contact.

"But I'm a tolerant man," resumed the American, softening, and saying the word as if it were spelled "tollrunt." He looked upwards. "It's not my problem if the whole leftwing media's full of homos."

Harry cleared his throat.

"All right. I hear you. You two boys are dismissed. I will keep you informed. Your job now is to go back to the UK side and keep 'em calm. Don't let 'em have any kind of limey meltdown. In the meantime, we'll need you both on extra guard duty while the fence is repaired."

"What good will that do, sir?"

"Dismissed!" The American commander whacked the desktop again with his saber. Another chip flew into the air. Harry and Mustafa saluted hurriedly, wheeled, and left the tent.

They both walked across the camp more slowly than they'd left the American commander's tent.

"What do we do now?" asked Mustafa.

"We go after him."

"What?"

"Like I said."

"He just said not to. What'll happen if he catches us? What'll Colonel Arbuthnot's higher-ups in Kabul say?"

Harry said nothing for several paces. Then he sighed. The decision came to him as a relief. Doing something felt better than doing nothing. It felt better than hunkering down and waiting for the next thing to hit.

"I don't care what they say. I'm going to look for him. You're coming with me, mate."