The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters)

by Sheehan-Miles, Charles

  We didn’t find any more survivors in the houses. In all, thirty-four villagers ... nineteen of them children ... froze to death.

  An hour later, I stopped to grab a smoke, just as the helicopters were arriving. Hick’s fire team had finished their assigned houses, and he walked over and stood beside me. Both of us were silent, standing there in the snow. I didn’t have to ask what he was thinking, because his team had found pretty much the same thing as mine. Hicks was a sharp soldier and a good leader. But he was human, and right now, his face was grim.

  A medic picked up the little girl out of the Humvee and started to carry her toward the small crowd of villagers. She wasn’t injured enough to go out on the medical flight. She wore a blue flowered dress with long sleeves, long brown hair tied up in pigtails, and had big round eyes. As the medic carried her to the villagers, her eyes sought out Kowalski. He called out, “Wait!” and ran over to them.

  Kowalski said something to her, and she nodded. I don’t know what he said. I’m sure she didn’t either. But whatever it was ... maybe something I don’t understand, because I’m not a dad with a little girl... she got it.

  He took the little pink and white ribbon off his web gear and tied it up in a bow in her hair. She waved, and then hugged him. I had to bite my lip.

  Kowalski turned around and walked back toward us. He saw me watching and gave me a nasty look. “What the fuck are you looking at, Sarge?”

  I smiled, took a drag off my cigarette, and said, “Nothing, Kowalski. Nothing at all.”

  Comet (Ray)

  By the time the choppers cleared out of Dega Payan, it was getting dark, and very cold. Cold like I’ve never experienced before or since. I don’t know what the temperature actually was. But when you’re a thousand miles from nowhere, and there’s no electricity, and you can hear the wind howling down off the mountains, then the cold gets to be bone deep. The kind of cold that can make you wish you could just die and get it over with, where you get sharp pains in your extremities before they just go numb.

  The kind of cold that can freeze an entire family in their home.

  Sergeant Colton pulled back one squad, leaving only one on the perimeter. The rest of us holed up in a vacant hovel or in the Humvees, running them periodically to let the heat run. We rotated the overwatch squad out every two hours so they wouldn’t freeze to death, which meant no one got any sleep that night.

  A number of us were going to have trouble sleeping anyway. Dead combatants were one thing. They were the bad guys. Not easy to deal with under any circumstances. But today we’d pulled thirty-four bodies out of those frozen, buried houses. Most of them kids.

  I didn’t know if I was ever going to sleep again.

  We stayed in the village for nearly a week. It was a mistake, but those were our orders. Apparently Kabul hadn’t sent the disaster planning money provided by the US to Badakhshan province that year. And someone in the provincial administration spent what money they had on who knows what. The result being a huge outcry across the country over the freezing deaths of 34 innocents. So someone in the White House, or in Kabul, or wherever, decided the US needed to make a show of humanitarian aid to the devastated village.

  They needed it. There was no question there. We dug out the homes. We helped dispose of the bodies. We provided medical care, and food, and generators, and even little compact dung burning stoves someone dug up from somewhere. We cleared out the burned out girl’s school building, and Kowalski, who we all knew as an unmitigated asshole, transformed before our eyes as he organized a soccer game for the kids in the snowfield next to the school. Of course they didn’t have a soccer ball, but somehow he got one of the pilots to bring a basketball out on one of their flights.

  Lieutenant Eggers was so impressed with this that he relieved Kowalski of any other duties for the remainder of our time in the village. The rest of us would be out there digging holes or patching walls or whatever, and then Kowalski would run by, the head of a comet, with a tail of twenty or more kids following. The little girl with a pink and white ribbon in her hair was usually at the head of the crowd.

  Understand ... Badakhshan, as a whole, and our district particularly, were pretty pro-western. They’d suffered heavily under the Soviets, and even more so under the Taliban. Decades of neglect meant they didn’t even have the basics ... it wasn’t until last year that an actual road was put in to reach this village.

  The only problem was, our presence brought attention to the village. By the fifth day, it brought Taliban insurgents.

  The first sign came on the afternoon of day five. Because we were down one man, my fire team had also drawn light duty. We were on the roof of one of the buildings, trying to figure out how to patch it with the crappy materials we had on hand, and where I could keep an eye on Kowalski and the kids. And that’s when a shot rang out.

  The kids scattered instantly, some of them dropping to the ground in the snow, others running for the confining spaces between buildings where they could hide behind the high walls. A second later, I saw Kowalski running across the field, chasing three stragglers to get them out of the line of fire.

  My radio exploded to life. Second squad was under fire.

  “Gear up!” I shouted, anticipating the Lieutenant’s next order. The insurgents had to be in the woods somewhere. Someone was going to get the order to flush them out.

  Dylan and Roberts quickly threw their helmets on, and we got off the roof and joined Kowalski on the ground.

  “Where did the shooting come from?” I asked.

  Kowalski shook his head. “Not sure. Woods, I think.”

  A second later the Lieutenant called me over the radio. “Gather the children in the schoolhouse and protect them,” he ordered.

  “Shit,” Kowalski said. “They’re all over the place.” He started to call out their names, one by one. A few seconds later, heads popped around the wall. Kowalski used a combination of grunts and sign language to tell them what we were doing, and then the four of us led the little legion of kids to the schoolhouse and got them inside and under cover.

  As soon as the kids were under cover, we took up positions: Kowalski and Paris inside the building covering the door, and Roberts and I on either corner to provide crossfire if needed.

  I radioed in. “We’re in position. All the kids accounted for.”

  In the distance, I heard the pop of a rifle, then another, followed by a low-pitched burst of machine gun fire. That had to be from third squad, somewhere out along the road. The cold was settling into my bones, snow soaking into my right leg, despite the thick uniform and knee pads.

  Another pop of rifle fire, this one closer. It sounded like it was just on the other side of the tree line.

  “Roberts,” I called and pointed at my eyes, then to the alley that led to the trees. The alley ran right beside the girls’ school.

  A hair’s breath later, all hell broke loose. Another pop from a rifle, then another, and a chunk of masonry right over my head cracked. I slid prone to the ground, extending my rifle in front of me, and aimed toward the trees. I didn’t feel the cold anymore, because my heart was thumping and my body was suddenly charged with adrenaline. Another shot hit the snow near me, burrowing a gouge and then slamming into the building to my right with a crack.

  I took aim at the tree line and squeezed the trigger, firing a three round burst into the woods. The sound of the rifle set my right ear ringing as it slammed against my shoulder.

  “Motherfuckers!” Kowalski screamed, directly across the street from me. He stood up in the doorway, his M249 machine gun raised at his shoulder, which was crazy, and began firing wildly directly over my head. I cringed and put my hands over my helmet, which was probably the most useless thing I’ve ever done, and then rolled over and looked behind me just in time to see an insurgent crumpling to the ground, riddled with bullets from Kowalski’s machine gun.

  Everything went quiet. Was it just the one? We didn’t have any way of knowing.

&nbs
p; “Lieutenant, spot report,” I called over the radio, too rattled at that point to use proper call signs. “Insurgent down next to the girls’ school.”

  “Roger, Bandit 11. Remember your proper radio procedures. Bandit six out.”

  Jesus Christ. Eggers was a cold fish. But at least he got the job done.

  Half an hour later, the woods and village were clear. No more insurgents were found.

  I’m moving, damn it (Ray)

  “Load up, guys. I want everything ready to go in five more minutes.”

  “Yeah, I’m moving, damn it,” Kowalski said. “Don’t get your panties in a wad.” He was back to his normal sour self this morning, a grim frown on his face. All the same, he threw the last of the gear on the Humvee, tightening down straps and making sure everything was ready to go.

  A small crowd had gathered in front of what passed for a municipal building in Dega Payan, though it was virtually impossible to tell the difference between that building and any of the other dwellings. The kids were in the crowd, and Kowalski walked over to them and kneeled down. He made a funny face at the little girl with the ribbon and she giggled.

  At the head of the crowd was the grey old man we’d seen on our first arrival in town. Jamshed, the interpreter, listened to the old man for a couple of minutes, then turned to Lieutenant Eggers.

  “He says, with Taliban in the area, why are we leaving now?”

  Eggers grimaced. “Tell him the Taliban is here because we are. They’ll follow us out. We have orders to leave, I’ve got no choice.”

  Jamshed frowned and spoke to the old man in Tajik again. The old man didn’t wait to finish, instead erupting in angry gesticulation as he spit out a series of words.

  Jamshed shook his head, answered, and then withstood another verbal assault from the old man.

  I called my guys, then put my fist at shoulder height, shaking it in a left to right motion, the hand signal to get in their vehicles. Paris and Roberts turned to get in their vehicle, and I slung my rifle over my shoulder and was about to go to mine when I heard a distinctive sound, a small thump, like a rock hitting the snow.

  Everything froze, as the eyes of every single soldier and civilian zeroed in on the small metal device that had landed at the feet of the girl with the ribbon in her hair. I felt sluggish, unable to move fast enough, as I shouted for the crowd to get back, and Hicks shouted, “Grenade!”

  Kowalski spun, shoved the little girl hard, and she fell backward away from the grenade. Then he threw his body on it. He hadn’t even made it all the way to the ground when it went off with an unbearably loud whomp and his body was thrown five feet in the air and came down in ruined shreds.

  The children screamed, and mothers did too, grabbing their children and running as fast as they could. Yelling from the squad and team leaders increased the noise as the platoon deployed, weapons at the ready. Half of them had their rifles trained on the male villagers.

  Sergeant Colton screamed at Jamshed, “Who the fuck threw that grenade?” He grabbed the interpreter by the shirt, shouting directly in his face. “Who the fuck threw it?” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips into the face of the Afghani interpreter.

  The men in the village were frozen in place, a dozen rifles trained on them, as our platoon instantly turned from protector to captor.

  I screamed for a medic and ran forward. Kowalski lay face down, and blood poured out into the snow faster than should ever be possible. Paris fell to his knees next to me, and we rolled Kowalski over.

  “Oh, Christ!” Paris cried out, anguish in his voice.

  I had to struggle to hold my stomach. There was no saving Kowalski. The grenade had gone off directly underneath him, ripping through Kevlar and the ceramic plates in his protective vest as if they weren’t there, tearing his chest open, leaving ribs and his chest cavity open to the air. His eyes were glazed, wide open, and one thing was certain: he’d died instantly.

  I sank back on my haunches and looked up at the sky. I wanted to scream, but there was nothing I could do.

  As we gathered up and bagged Kowalski’s remains, I saw the little girl in a doorway. She still wore the ribbon in her hair, and tears were running down her face.

  I never learned her name.

  She can have the belt (Carrie)

  I still wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent, but getting a chance to talk with Alexandra and Dylan and getting something to eat had done a lot. As we got up from the table, Dylan said, “I’m gonna go out front and smoke. Meet you back upstairs?”

  Alexandra kissed Dylan, and he went on his way as we walked together to the elevators.

  As Alexandra reached out to press the button, I said, “Do you know, I’m afraid to go back up there? It’s like any minute they’re going to come tell me Ray’s gone.”

  I closed my eyes and shuddered. I hadn’t wanted to even think that. Much less say it.

  “It’s okay. I’d be terrified too.”

  “I don’t know how you dealt with it after Dylan was injured.”

  She shrugged. “I ... I didn’t know he’d actually been hit. I didn’t know anything. It was just this crazy limbo, where the guy I loved disappeared.”

  The elevator door opened, and we stepped inside. I pressed the button for the third floor, and said, “Has he gotten over his ... whatever it was? Inferiority complex?”

  Alexandra smiled. “Dylan’s come a long way. But he’s still got a long way to go. You don’t erase all that trauma overnight.”

  I gave a bitter smile. I knew that all too well. And Dylan at least talked about his. When it came to the war, sometimes Ray was so tightly bottled up I thought one shake would cause him to explode. I sighed and said, “Make sure he keeps talking. Sometimes Ray is so closed up, I don’t know what’s going on in there.”

  “Is it a trust thing?”

  I shook my head. “No. Yes. I don’t know. You know what happened with Martin. Ray was on the phone with him when it happened. I don’t think anyone in their unit got away without being really damaged.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “I know you’ve been dealing with the trial and all that, but what’s going on with your fellowship?”

  I looked at her and said, “It’s been a ... a challenge. NIH isn’t what I expected. I told you about the stupid accusations against me. I haven’t been to work in almost three months. I go back in two weeks, but … I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s like … I won … but I feel like I lost.”

  She gasped and said, “What?”

  “Alexandra ... it’s complicated.”

  Complicated it was, and I wasn’t even sure I understood the whole story. But it started with all those trips into the Rocky Mountains I’d taken with Bill Ayers tracking mountain lions, and it had ended the day I was called into Doctor Moore’s office at NIH.

  They’re going to do the whole fucking academic witch-hunt. All my research is federally funded, Carrie.

  That’s what Bill told me that day he called demanding to know if I’d reported him for sexual harassment. I hadn’t. I’d dismissed it, put it out of my mind. Irony, then, that the accusation ended up being turned on me instead.

  We reached the waiting room again, and I said, “I’ll tell you more, later. It’s all been so confusing, I haven’t really discussed it much with anyone other than Ray.”

  She put her arm around me in a casual hug and said, “Any time, Carrie. You’ve always been there for me.”

  In the waiting room, Jessica was still curled up with a book. I sat down next to her and asked, “No news?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing yet. Mom called ... from the phone on the airplane. She asked me to tell you she loves you. Their flight gets in at ten o’clock.”

  “It’ll be midnight before they get here, then,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You doing okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Battery’s almost dead in my phone.” Her response was toneless. I was really starting to worry
about Jessica. The first couple of hours we were here, I’d attributed her near silence to shock. But we’d been here for hours now, and she was still speaking in a shocked monotone. It was out of character and starting to scare me. I wondered if Alexandra would be able to get more out of her ... they were far closer in age.

  I didn’t have an opportunity to explore it further, because a few moments later an exhausted looking surgeon walked into the waiting room. She was in her early forties, with dark hair tied in a bun at the base of her neck.

  “Carrie Sherman? I’m Doctor Schmidt … I came by to check on you and to let you know Sarah is out of surgery and recovering nicely.”

  Jessica leaned forward and spoke, her tone urgent, “Is she awake?”

  The surgeon shook her head. “Not yet. But we’re feeling confident that her progress is very good. She’ll be in the intensive care unit for the next several days at least.”

  I took Jessica’s hand in mine. She’s always responded almost physically whenever Sarah was hurt, and the news that she’s not just in the hospital, but in intensive care, for days, was going to shake Jessica up. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  Alexandra said, “When can we see her?”

  “If you’re ready, I’m going to take you to the ICU now. But I need to prepare you. She’s still at significant risk of infection. When you go to visit, we need to limit it to one at a time, and for no more than fifteen minutes. I’ll ask you to disinfect your hands on the way in, and to wear a face mask.”

  “That’s all fine. Whatever’s best for her, of course.”

  I felt a pit of fear in my stomach. Ray was still in the operating room. “What happens ... I mean ... will they know where to find me? When Ray comes out of surgery?” Or if anything happened? I couldn’t say it.

  “I’ll have them page me immediately if there’s any change. My understanding is they expect him to be in surgery at least two or three more hours.”

  Two or three more hours. Why did it take so long, what exactly were they doing that could cause this to be a ten hour or longer procedure? I thought about the doctor, Peterson, and what he’d said. Part of the skull driven into his brain.