A Line in the Sand


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
 Copyright © 2023 by Kevin Powers
 Cover design by Gregg Kulick
 Cover art © Getty Images
 Cover © 2023 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
 The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
 Little, Brown and Company
 Hachette Book Group
 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
 littlebrown.com
 First ebook edition: May 2023
 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
 The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
 LCCN 2022943472
 ISBN 978-0-316-50755-4
 E3-20230412-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 One
 Two
 Three
 Four
 Five
 Six
 Seven
 Eight
 Nine
 Ten
 Eleven
 Twelve
 Thirteen
 Fourteen
 Fifteen
 Sixteen
 Seventeen
 Eighteen
 Nineteen
 Twenty
 Twenty-One
 Twenty-Two
 Twenty-Three
 Twenty-Four
 Twenty-Five
 Twenty-Six
 Twenty-Seven
 Twenty-Eight
 Twenty-Nine
 Thirty
 Acknowledgments
 Discover More
 About the Author
 Also by Kevin Powers
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 Also by Kevin Powers
 
 The Yellow Birds
 Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
 A Shout in the Ruins
 
 
 
 
 For my mother, who never said no to a book
 
 
 
 
 War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
 —Major General Smedley D. Butler
 
 
 
 
 ONE
 Arman Bajalan woke in darkness, as was his habit. He turned toward the clock on his nightstand: 4:37 in digital red. Another eight minutes to sleep. Outside his window, a songbird warbled in the yellow glow of an alley streetlight. He swung his legs over the side of his single bed and rubbed his eyes awake instead of going back to sleep. A jet passing overhead from the naval air station washed the morning twilight in the noise of its engines. Arman looked up toward his ceiling’s popcorn surface as if to track the jet in its low flight over the city.
 He stood beneath another streetlight a few minutes later, waiting for the number 3 bus to take him to work at the motel on Ocean View. He wore his custodial uniform, gray work pants and a matching top with a patch on the pocket where his name had been embroidered in white thread, cursive script. After reading his résumé and offering him the job, Mr. Peters, the motel owner, had added Dr. to the name patch. His coworkers called him Professor the first few months he worked at the motel, but that had died down once it was clear Arman would not be moved in one direction or the other by the ribbing. A heavy set of keys hung from a carabiner on his belt, and he shouldered a nylon gym bag with a towel and a pair of swimming trunks inside.
 His usual bus never came. Arman waited in the emptiness of the city street and the last cool air of night receding from it. He checked his watch two times before another bus arrived at 5:14 and knelt toward the curb with a pneumatic hiss. Arman and the bus driver told each other good morning.
 “The last bus never came,” said Arman.
 “Engine trouble. Sorry about that,” the driver said. “Had to switch buses and the schedule got mixed up.”
 The bus rose and rumbled off, and he put a pair of earbuds in and scrolled through his iPod until he found a Commodores song and pressed Play. The bus driver glanced at him in the mirror often enough that he pretended not to be when Arman caught him. Arman used to smile when he saw suspicious eyes looking back at him in the rearview, but he had given up on that some time ago. Still, he sometimes wondered who they saw when they looked at him. Once, not long after he’d arrived in America, he’d looked into the bathroom mirror in his apartment and tried to imagine that his gray-green eyes belonged to a stranger, but it didn’t work. He could not escape himself. And he knew that people mostly saw what they wanted to see anyway. He put “Sail On” on repeat until the driver let him off at Granby and Duffys across from Doug’s Hot Dogs just before 5:45 a.m., almost half an hour later than usual.
 He walked through Ocean View Beach Park with his hands in his pockets and headed toward the bathroom to change into his swimsuit. Beyond the beach grass, the rising sun carved a red sliver across the horizon. The sky above was not yet light. Black becoming blue. Stars already absorbed by nautical twilight. Arman reached the public restroom and grabbed the door handle, but movement over his shoulder caught his attention. Two men approached from the beach, carrying themselves with a casual menace. Arman looked down and saw his hand tightened into a fist around the door handle, his knuckles whitened by the reflexive effort. They were near enough when they passed that he