by Leila Haven
Nobody in my new unit spoke to me at first. They were obviously a tightknit group and I was the outsider that had to prove my worth. I was beginning all over again.
Our mission was quite mundane in comparison to those I had spent the last few days doing. We had to patrol the streets in the truck, keeping an eye on the local village to make sure the Taliban didn’t cause any trouble.
We drove around and around all day. I was itching for some action but the day continued on quietly. We returned to the base at the first sign of sundown. It was going to be a long deployment if it continued on like that.
It took all my self-control to not seek out Matt when we returned. I saw Watson and a few of the others but he wasn’t with them.
I did, however, see Simon alone in the rec room. It was an opportunity I couldn’t let pass. I went straight in and flicked off the television.
“Hey, I was watching that!” he said.
“You’ve got a big mouth, you know that, Simon?” I stood over him, trying to contain my anger. I had a lot of energy left after the boring day and it was ready to be channeled into anger.
“What are you talking about?”
“You went and told Atoll what you saw in here a few nights ago.”
His brow wrinkled for a minute as he recalled what I was spelling out. “No I didn’t.”
“Nobody else saw it.”
“That you know of.”
How could he deny it when it was so obviously him? There had been only three people to step foot in the rec room that night and I knew it wasn’t Matt or myself. That only left one person.
“Don’t deny it,” I said. “I know it was you and there is nothing you can say that will make me think otherwise. Just stay out of my way, okay? I don’t need tattle-tales like you around.”
I huffed as I left. Simon had switched on the television by the time I reached the door. I was seething with anger, yet still had never felt more powerless.
The thought of finding Matt and relieving some stress with him was more than tempting. I needed some release but I only had to think of my father and brothers back home to have me walking in the other direction.
I went to the gym instead and hit a punching bag for a full hour before I was tired enough to go to bed.
The next day was proving to go the same way with my new unit. It wasn’t until a call crackled through the radio that my day was looking more interesting.
“Attention all units, assistance is required in the Alpha Zone. Everyone is ordered to get there without haste.” The staccato voice kept dropping in and out as the message repeated a few more times.
Corporal Manning, my new unit head, gathered us together quickly before we headed off to the Alpha Zone. Everyone knew that it was the most dangerous area in the city.
The entire base barreled toward the zone, none of us knowing exactly what to expect. If it was an all-units order then it had to be big. A part of me wished to go back and undo wanting some action.
We saw the smoke first, lingering in the air and choked my throat. None of us could see the source yet, but it was a massive plume. Somewhere, something big was blazing in the heat of the desert.
Army vehicles filled the roads heading into the zone, some already empty as soldiers rushed toward the trouble. Manning gave us orders to stick together and move quickly as we pulled up.
We walked for seven blocks before the source of the smoke came into view. The city’s hospital was on fire, one of the biggest buildings in the area.
The camouflage pattern of soldiers’ uniforms scattered everywhere. A stream of men were running into the burning building, prepared to confront whatever was inside.
Manning received orders from the highest ranked official and passed them on to us. There were still patients inside the building that were unable to get themselves out. We needed to go in and rescue them before the whole structure came down.
I knew how quickly a building could fall when there was explosives and fires involved. I didn’t know what had caused this particular carnage but I would have bet my life the Taliban were involved somehow.
We grabbed gas masks from the truck and put them on while running for the building. They offered some relief from the smoke but didn’t help with visibility.
The hospital’s corridors were thick with smoke. Orange and red emergency lights were flashing, seemingly eerie in the gray glow. I couldn’t see two steps in front of me. Soldiers and scared patients continually collided with one another, everyone trying to either help or escape in the midst of the chaos.
Manning led us up a staircase before we climbed several more floors. The fog of smoke only got worse as we moved. My uniform felt too heavy in the heat, clinging to every part of me.
We reached our assigned floor and headed inside. Chaos confronted us. I almost ran into Watson as he carried an elderly woman from a room. He didn’t recognize me, just kept doing his job and taking her to the stairs.
I entered the next room where a woman was on the floor clutching her toddler to her chest. “Ma’am, I’m here to help. Come with me,” I said, gently touching her elbow to get her attention.
She shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. We didn’t have time to debate the subject. The woman needed to come with me, even if she couldn’t understand my language.
I took her elbow and heaved her to her feet. She was sobbing out a string of words in her native language which I couldn’t understand. But her feet moved which was exactly what I needed them to do.
At the door to the emergency staircase, I handed her over to another soldier for the walk down and continued on in my mission.
As fast as I could I worked my way through the floor, gathering patients and guiding them toward safety. They didn’t have the luxury of gas masks, inhaling the smoke made each of them cough and hack. At least they weren’t unconscious yet.
I’d weaved my way to the back of the floor when I found an elderly man needing help. He was lying in bed, unable to get up and move on his own. He was far too large for me to move, I needed assistance.
Heading back out into the corridor, I spotted Matt. I would be able to pick him from any crowd, I was sure of it. I hurried over and tugged on his arm. “I have a man that needs help. He can’t move.”
Matt nodded and followed me. Together, we managed to get the man into a wheelchair and to the staircase so he could be carried down.
All of a sudden the roof from the floor above crashed down. I lost my footing and went skidding downwards as the floor underfoot also gave way. The last thing I saw was Matt’s shocked expression as he went down too.
Everything around me was showered with debris from the building as it gave way. Black and white confetti, falling with me into the abyss below with no sign of stopping.
The last thing I remembered was catching a glimpse of Matt’s panicked expression before I was knocked out completely.
There was no way to tell how long I was unconscious for. When I blinked my eyes there was little more than darkness around me. Spots of white light filtered through from tiny spaces, the only clue that my eyes were actually open.
I couldn’t move my body. From my head to my toes everything was being encased by the building. I had somehow become a part of it, buried deep within the foundations with no idea how to get out.
“Help!” I called out. Every breath was a struggle as I fought the panic of having limited oxygen. I had fallen into a pocket and there was no telling if I would be able to get out again.
I’d had training on emergency situations like this one. While it wasn’t specifically targeted towards being underneath the rubble of a building, it was supposed to help me deal with survival situations.
I tried to wiggle my toes, at least they were working. Next I tried to move my entire legs. There was a small amount of give but not enough to be able to move them much. My arms and hands worked too but I could barely find room to move them.
Moving to get myself out of the debris was not going to b
e a viable option. I was going to have to rely on my comrades and hope they would find me before I ran out of air.
The image of Matt’s face infiltrated my thoughts. I had caught only a glimpse before being knocked out but his expression was burned into my brain. He’d realized we were going down and there was nothing either of us could do to stop it.
“Help!”
Panic was definitely creeping in. All I could think about was the finite amount of air I had around me and how quickly it could be used up. I wasn’t sure if my short breaths were from hysteria or an actual lack of oxygen.
I closed my eyes and hoped I would be able to find a way out of the rubble. I wasn’t ready to die yet, not like this. There was no honor in being crushed by a fallen building.
Chapter 16
Matt
҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉
At first I thought the voices were in my head. My tiny space in the collapsed building had been eerily quiet for too long. It wouldn’t be the first time my brain had played tricks on me when the situation was intense.
But, listening now, the voices seemed as real as they could be. “Help me! I’m down here!” I doubted whether my voice could be heard through layers of steel and concrete but it was worth a shot.
If I could hear them, maybe they could hear me too. That was what I was counting on.
I was itching to get out of there, desperate to find Sasha and know she was okay. When I saw her fall backwards into the sea of concrete, I had tried to grab her but she was already out of reach.
She had to be okay.
She had to be.
“Hey! I’m in here!” I tried pounding on a piece of metal poking out of my unstable ceiling. It made a shower of dust come raining down on me.
“Where are you?” the voice asked. I didn’t imagine it. There was a real person on the other side of the debris and they were searching for survivors.
I used every bit of energy I still had to pound on the metal repeatedly. “I’m here! I’m here!”
The voices sounded like they were getting closer as they tried to work out where I was. It would have been a disaster zone with the entire building falling in a heap. I could only imagine what the body count was already up to. I prayed Sasha wasn’t one of the victims already.
Another shower of dust floated around my pocket of safety as the rescue teams moved the debris above me. The tiny piece of light started to get bigger and bigger until I saw a face.
Watson was smiling when he removed the last of the concrete blocks trapping me. “You can’t do anything without my help, can you, Rafter?”
“If you’re going to gloat about this for the rest of our tour, you can just leave me here now,” I joked. Trust everybody’s favorite hero, Derrick Watson to be my savior. I was never going to hear the end of it.
“Just shut up and take my hand,” he replied.
Watson pulled me out of the pocket that had saved my life. We were both covered in dust and sported more cuts and grazes than we’d ever admit to.
“Have you seen Kincaid anywhere?” I asked, knowing how desperate I sounded.
“How about a thank you?”
“Thanks. Have you seen her?”
Watson shook his head and shrugged. “There are a lot of people missing. We’ve got the dogs working on finding as many as possible.”
Dogs were the best means of finding people when there was so much mess everywhere. I fully took in my surroundings for the first time. It was like a scene out of a disaster movie. The entire building had been flattened with the exception of one corner that was stubbornly still holding.
Injured people – both soldiers and patients – were limping to safer grounds. Splashes of blood coated their clothes, hastily applied rags were being used to close wounds. Everyone that was still standing helped those that were unable to.
Teams of soldiers worked their way through the debris, digging wherever they could to find survivors. No matter how many faces my eyes traveled over, none of them looked like Sasha.
I headed straight for the command zone, an area our superiors were using to coordinate the rescue effort. Even in this chaos we had to make order, it was what we were trained for.
“Has anyone seen Private Kincaid?” I asked Major Laurence, the highest ranked there.
He consulted his clipboard, a list handwritten attached to it. “She hasn’t reported in yet.” He hastily scrawled my name at the bottom.
“What can I do to help?”
“We’ve got all the dogs out that we have available, they’re doing a sweep of the area. Stick close to one of those teams and help dig when they find someone.”
“Yes, sir.”
I followed the order, but the whole time my mind was focused on finding Sasha. The thought of her beautiful body being crushed under the weight of an entire building pressed heavily on my mind.
If she was there, I was going to find her. Maybe she had landed in a pocket like I had, maybe she had already climbed out but hadn’t checked in yet, or maybe she was already dead.
I needed to find her.
The dogs were picking up on the scent of humans everywhere. The moment they barked and scratched an area, we pulled away the debris until we unearthed someone.
Not all of them were alive.
More people were dead.
Every time we found a new body it took a piece of our hope away. Every time there was no life visible I prayed it wasn’t Sasha. Our last conversation couldn’t be the final one we had. I needed to tell her how I really felt, I needed her to know how much I loved her.
The day passed in the blink of an eye. All the muscles in my body screamed with fatigue and an ache that would take days to get rid of. My eyes burned from the dust in the air and my uniform clung to me like saran wrap.
There was no sign of Sasha anywhere. I’d checked with Major Laurence several times and each time he consulted his list, she still wasn’t on it. I’d been all around the site and nobody had seen her.
Lights were erected when the sun started to go down. Locals from the area had joined our search mission, desperate to find their loved ones as I was. They worked side by side with our team, talking to us in a language not all of us understood, but it didn’t matter. We were all there to help and that was all that counted.
“You should take a break,” Watson said as he drank from a water bottle. “Have you even eaten?”
I shook my head. “I need to keep going. There’s still survivors trapped. I need to find them.”
“You’ll kill yourself without having a break.”
“I need to find her. I mean, them. We need to find them, the survivors.”
“It’s Kincaid, isn’t it? There’s something going on between you.” There wasn’t a question in his statement. I didn’t know I had been so transparent. But, then again, Watson always seemed to be able to read me like a book.
There was no point in denying it. The reasons for keeping it a secret now seemed minute. “I saw her as the building came down. She hasn’t reported in yet. She’s out here somewhere and I have to find her.”
“I get it, man, I do. But you’re not going to find anything if you’re dead on your feet. Take a break.”
“I’ll break after I find her.”
Watson capped his bottle and got back to work at my side. We’d known each other long enough that he knew he couldn’t change my mind. That was how true comrades worked together.
Midnight passed, making my back ache and my head pound. Soldiers were resting in groups and then returning to relieve the next team. The hours passed by like blurs, making my search more and more desperate.
I didn’t realize so much time had passed when I caught the first glimpse of dawn as it peeked over the horizon. It would bring with it scorching heat that would only make the search more difficult.
More locals turned up in the morning, eager to do whatever they could to help. The Afghan people were kind and brave, their true nature eclipsed by the evils of the Taliban.
I refused to give up on Sasha. The dogs were still finding survivors even almost twenty-four hours after the disaster. She would be one of them soon, we would find her. I wasn’t going to give up until I found her.
Sweat dripped from my brow as the day heated up. It was almost unbearable being in the direct sunlight but it was nothing compared to what those trapped were going through. They would be worried about losing air by now, dehydrated, and scared.
I continued to dig and dig.
At thirteen hundred hours the dogs indicated they found another person. Half a dozen of us dug through the rubble, using sore and bloodied hands to pull away the concrete, metal, and glass.
It was a woman, we could see her long hair. It was brown with a strain of red mixed in. I held my breath when I realized it was just like Sasha’s. I’d ran my hands through that hair before. I’d been lost in those very strands. They were the same hairs I’d used to tip her head back before kissing her.
My hands worked faster, the pain completely gone as I pulled debris away from her. As we moved, we revealed more of her body. The patch over her left breast clearly stated ‘Kincaid’. It was her.
My heart stopped beating while I felt for a pulse. Her eyes were closed and she was unresponsive. But there was a dull thudding in her neck. She was alive, but I wasn’t sure what kind of condition she was in. A graze to her temple had covered half her head with blood, now dried and cracked.
Simon helped me carry her over to the makeshift medic tent where a nurse gave her a quick look over. “She might have a broken arm. I’ll splint it and then she will be fine to transport back to base. You can take her over to the trucks once I’m done.”
The nurse deftly secured Sasha’s arm with a pristine white sling and gave the all-clear. We carried her away and got her inside the next truck that was leaving the site. I refused to leave her side and collapsed on the floor of the vehicle. My legs were unable to keep me up any longer, the past twenty-four hours finally caught up with me.