by Lyn Cote
She sighed and cuddled closer to him. “I haven’t chosen to live my life, or I guess I should say start my life, like my mom wanted me to.”
“She wanted you to go to college, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just yes?” He let his fingers trail over the soft skin of her cheek. Carly was so strong and yet so feminine. It awed him that she could care for him.
“What do you want me to say, Bowie?”
“I’m just tryin’ to say you shouldn’t have introduced me to your family. I know I won’t fit into your life away from the army.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth, honey, and you know it.”
She sat up straight, pulling away from him. “I don’t know where you get this!”
“I’m from a family that lives out in the sticks.” He missed her warmth immediately. “My mama sews quilts for craft fairs. My daddy works construction and farms a few acres. My sisters all got married right out of high school and started producing grandkids—”
“Bowie,” Carly interrupted, “what is happening between you and me has nothing to do with where we were raised and who we’re related to. If you think you wouldn’t be welcome at Ivy Manor, you don’t know anything.”
He liked the starch that had come bristling into her tone. “Carly,” he whispered, leaning forward, “I think I’m fallin’ in love with you.”
“Good,” she replied and kissed him.
This kiss was nothing like the quick stolen kisses they’d shared before. This was a full-blown kiss. He put his arms around her and pulled her against him. “Oh, Carly, you’re so special,” he murmured against her soft mouth.
She responded by parting her lips and deepening their kiss.
Rational thought left him and all he could process was the glorious feeling of holding Carly and kissing her.
Saudi Arabia, December 26, 1990
At 7:30 in the morning, Carly and her platoon were busy as usual cleaning out the sand-clogged fuel and oil filters of Humvees. In spite of improvising extra coverings for each of the critical openings in the engines, the blowing sand always got through. The constant desert wind, called Shammal, had picked up in the days heading into January. At the end of every day, Carly looked into a mirror and saw her eyebrows and hair white with the insidious sand. The rushing wind also provided a constant white noise behind every voice, every sound they made as they worked. It dulled Carly’s hearing.
When Haskell walked up to the vehicle Carly, Bowie, Joe, and Sam were working on, she saw his lips move but didn’t hear his words at first. She moved closer and then she heard him. “You guys got lucky. A Marine observation post needs to be resupplied. It will give you some practice for what we’ll be doing soon. Our company will be moving farther forward in a few days to get in place and set up to supply our ground troops when the real war begins.”
The words “the real war begins” caught Carly unexpectedly. She realized that she’d gotten accustomed to the daily routine and hadn’t thought very far da>.
“Here’s the map. Your squad will head out as soon as your vehicle is loaded with supplies. Gallagher, you did the best of the platoon on map reading, so you’ll be the navigator. Get the trucks there and back before nightfall.”
Carly looked at the map he’d handed her. “What about GPS?”
Haskell snorted. “Combat troops get GPS. Support gets maps.”
Carly watched him walk away, a chill running through her. The Marine OPs were charged with keeping an eye out for any Iraqi movement, so they’d be far forward. A scary thought. Her instant apprehension was a stark contrast to the guys’ reaction—they all were grinning. Again, she felt the odd man out. Was her fellow crew really thrilled to be going so far forward, or was it just a male thing? Since she wasn’t going to ask them, she’d probably never know.
Bowie, Sam, and Joe stepped up the pace and she had to hustle to keep up with them. Before Carly could deal with the throbbing fear inside her, she was sitting beside Bowie in the front seat of the first truck, the map and a compass on her lap. Joe and Sam were in a smaller truck behind them. The rest of the squad rode inside the back of both trucks. Carly studied the topographic map and then gazed out at the rough desert terrain far da> of them. A distant memory came to her. She was back in basic, trying not to fall asleep during a lecture on map reading.
All too soon, Bowie had driven them through the troop concentration areas, over the good highways and then the unimproved roads and finally beyond, into the desert proper. They saw a herd of camels loping across the uneven ground, an eerie sight. It made Carly feel as if she’d drifted into an earlier time or a Barbara Cartland romance.
“You okay?” Bowie asked.
“Fine,” she lied. The topographic map she’d been given didn’t inspire confidence. It was stamped: “Not Suitable for Ground Use.” “I’m just worried that I might miss a landmark or something.” In fact, there didn’t appear to be any landmarks in this vast open county. The terrain da> was beautiful in a stark way, with low red sand dunes and outcroppings of rock.
“You’ll do fine. You’ve got a sharp eye.”
Carly gave him a grateful smile. During their workdays, they tried very hard to keep their personal feelings hidden. So even though she thought a kiss now might help her feel better, she turned back to focusing on their course. If the map failed her, she’d been taught how to navigate by dead reckoning using a lensatic compass and the truck’s odometer. She noted down the reading from the latter. The wind whipped up a bit more, and gusts buffeted the side of their high vehicle.
“This is the kind of day where at home, they’d be taking trailers and RVs off the highways,” Bowie commented.
Carly only nodded. Saudi Arabia wasn’t like the Sahara with its classic white sand dunes. Its desert was flatter with boulders, lots of rocks, and scrub vegetation. Her mind drifted momentarily back to summer and Ivy Manor’s lush green garden. Then she snapped herself back to the present. It wouldn’t do for her to let Bowie drive them into something like a sabkhas, a salt marsh.
At that time of year, just before the January rain, Carly had learned that sabkhas could be concealed by a fragile crust. And she’d also been warned that the desert landscape changed with the wind. There was plenty of wind that day. She had to keep the platoon on track. Haskell would never let her forget it if she got them all lost. Feeling disoriented, she prayed for the first time in a long time. Dear God, don’t let me screw up.
Ivy Manor, December 26, 1990
Bette came in from the cottage for morning coffee. She had recalled that long-ago childhood day in 1929, soon after her mother had come back to stay, when they had gone to clean up the cottage for her mother to live in. Since then, the cottage had rarely been empty. That day, light snow was falling, and the summerhouse looked forlorn and out of place presiding over the dormant garden. Bette walked into the kitchen and Leigh was sitting at the table alone. Bette had hoped to have the first cup of coffee by herself, but she couldn’t retreat now. “Good morning, Leigh.”
“Hi, Mom.” Leigh sipped her coffee.
Bette poured her coffee and sat down across from her daughter.
“Your friend went home then?” Leigh lifted an eyebrow.
“You know he drove back to Washington last night.”
“How long have you been dating him?”
“We met at a World War II War Department reunion a few months ago.”
“I thought you worked for the CIA.”
“The CIA didn’t start until after the war. I started out working at the War Department while your father went to school at Georgetown.”
“I don’t believe it. You mentioned my father.”
Bette ignored Leigh’s tone. “There isn’t much to tell about those days. Curt went to school. We married. He went to war. He came home and died when you were a baby.” Protecting her secret, Bette kept all emotion from her voice.
“Why do I always get the feeling that there is s
omething you haven’t told me?”
Bette carefully controlled her expression. She’d promised Curt that she would never tell their daughter the truth. “You will just have to accept the facts as they are.”
Leigh looked unhappy.
Bette waited to see how her daughter would try to find out more about her growing friendship with Dan.
Instead, Leigh brought up a different topic. “I might as well tell you: Nate and I are at odds again.”
The cold way her daughter said the words stirred Bette’s worry and caution. She’d been right then. The unspoken conflict between Nate and Leigh was over Leigh’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia. But Bette said nothing, merely sipped her coffee. Whatever she said would be the wrong thing. That much the years had taught her.
“Don’t be a coward,” Leigh said, sounding as if she were taunting her. “Ask me.”
“It’s not my place to ask you. You and Nate are adults, and you don’t need me to stick my nose into your marriage.”
“You think Nate can do no wrong.”
Bette closed her eyes, summoning up her forbearance. “Leigh, I wish that someday the war between us could end. I’ve admitted I was wrong about the way I treated you when you got pregnant with Carly. I sincerely regret the hurtful words I said and the way I pushed you away. I cannot unsay or undo any of it. Will you never forgive me? Why can’t there ever be peace between us?”
Leigh wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“We’re about to start a new year. Can’t we bury the hatchet and start out fresh?”
Leigh burst into tears.
Bette didn’t know whether to comfort her or just let her weep. Her beautiful daughter had become as prickly as a porcupine. Lord, help my daughter. I can’t. I’m at the end of my rope with her.
In the truck, Carly watched the sun lowering on the western horizon. The daylight dimmed, along with her hope of getting back to base before dark. They should have reached the Marine outpost by now. Night came fast in the desert, and it was on its way. And they had been expected back before nightfall.
“How much farther?” Bowie asked her.
Carly bit her lower lip. “We should be there.”
“Where?”
“At the Marine PO.”
“I don’t see anything,” Bowie said.
“Let’s stop. Maybe if I get out and look around, I’ll catch a glimpse of it.”
Bowie slowed to a stop. The truck behind did the same.
Carly climbed out and scrambled up onto the broad flat top of the truck. She lifted her binoculars to her eyes and slowly pivoted in a complete circle. Nothing moved. No glint off glass or a Humvee mirror. When the circle was complete, she stopped and stared at the wasteland in front of her. A stray thought occurred to her. Why were they there anyway? Who would want this barren stretch of desert enough to kill for it?
“Any luck, Carly?”
“I don’t see a thing.” She felt the sick ache of failure, spiced with sheer panic. She controlled her voice. “Come up and try yourself.”
Bowie climbed up beside her. He went through the same procedure she had. “No, don’t see a thing.” He leaned close and asked in an undertone, “Are we lost?”
She had felt they were lost the moment they left the main troop area. But she couldn’t say that. She shrugged. “I’ll check our location with dead reckoning again.”
They both climbed down. The guys crowded around her as she checked the odometer reading and her compass. “From this, it looks like we’re right where we’re supposed to be.”
“Then why aren’t we there?” Joe, the squad leader, asked, sounding edgy.
Joe’s words sparked a breakout of grumbling, and Carly held up a hand to halt murmurs. Her mind zipped through all her options and found the remaining one. “I’ll check it one more way. The map Haskell gave me isn’t for ground use. See?” She pointed to the map. “It’s marked as made by the British Airways. The distances could just be wrong. And the topography might have just been roughed in.” She looked to Bowie. “I need something like a stick, about this long.” She held her hands about two feet apart.
“You goin’ to try the shadow-tip method of reckoning to check your compass?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Okay.” He ran back to the truck and popped the hood. He came up with the oil dipstick. As he ran toward her, he wiped the oil from the stick on a rag and then handed it to her.
She smiled her thanks and stepped over to a flat area blown clean by the wind. Bowie’s quiet confidence was keeping the rest of the squad from voicing doubt. Trying to look sure of herself, she stuck the dipstick into the ground. Then she picked up a rock and marked where the shadow of the tip fell on the ground. “We wait about fifteen minutes and we’ll mark it again.”
“I don’t have a clue what you’re doing,” Sam said.
“I’m finding due north so I can check the accuracy of my compass. If my compass and the shadow tip coincide, I’ll know if we’re on course. And if not, I can fix it.”
The guys looked to her and then at Bowie, who began doing some stretching exercises, looking completely unconcerned about whether they were lost or not. “Feels good to be out of the truck,” he said in an unconcerned voice.
Carly took a cautious deep breath. Dear Lord, let me be on course.
The fifteen minutes crawled by. Finally, Carly set another rock at the new shadow tip and drew a straight line in the dirt connecting the two. Then she placed the toe of her left boot at the first mark and the toe of the right foot on the second. “I’m facing due north now.” She pulled the compass from her pocket. “And my compass is right on. Gentlemen, we are on course. We just need to go a little farther. The map deceived us about the distance. And I think we’ve been going a bit slower because I’ve cautioned Bowie about sabhkas.”
“What?”
“Salt marshes,” Bowie answered. “Kind of like a dry swamp if we get into them.”
“Yeah, we get into one of those and with a little drizzle, we’re stuck till they get the big tow truck out here for us,” Carly added.
“And wouldn’t Haskell just love that?” Joe added. “Okay,” said he said to the platoon, “you heard Carly. We’ve just got a ways to go.”
They all hustled back into their vehicles and Bowie set off again. The topography changed over the next few miles. It had more contour than the open expanse behind them. Berms of sand and rock made it impossible to drive in a straight line as they had been. The wind had died down as night was falling. As Bowie drove on the leeside of one of the tall berms, Carly heard something odd. A clicking noise. “What’s that?”
Bowie shifted into neutral and put his head out the window. The truck behind them halted, too. Over the idling hum of their motors, that same clicking noise came again.
“Sounds like something out of an old war movie,” Bowie muttered.
The innocent comment sparked a dreadful thought. “Shut off your motor and radio Joe to do the same, and tell everyone to be quiet,” Carly said, urgency and caution icing her nerves. “I’m going to go to the top of the berm and take a look.” She grabbed her binoculars. She let herself out of the truck, careful not to make any noise. Heart pounding, she ran lightly over the sand, mounted the side of the berm, making sure of her footing at each step. Near the top, she lay on her belly. She lifted her binoculars.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Like a white-hot blade, sheer terror seared through Carly. Two enemy tanks were rolling over sand and around berms, rattling with the tinny sound she and Bowie had heard. Choking down nausea she closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them the tanks would have disappeared. Fighting hysteria, she bit down so hard on her tongue that she tasted blood. Could this be some odd desert phenomenon, like a mirage? But mirages didn’t rattle with the scrape of metal against metal, and she wasn’t half-dead of thirst and susceptible to hallucinations. She opened her eyes. The tanks were still headed straight for them.
She threw herself down
the berm, skidding and sliding on the sand and rubble. She raced to the HEMTT, straight to Bowie, and leaped inside. “Tanks,” she gasped. “Tell Joe.”
Bowie grabbed the shortwave radio and then cursed. “It’s dead.” He jumped out of the truck and ran back to Joe. Carly followed at his heels. She swallowed the shriek at the back of her her throat and said in a low voice, conscious of how sound could travel in the dry air, “Joe, two Iraqi tanks headed this way.”
Joe switched off his truck. He jumped out and dashed up the hill near where Carly had been and peered over the top. Within seconds, he was back with them. “Everyone, get your weapons ready. There’s a chance they might pass us by. It’ll be black in a few minutes, and they’re moving slow. Now!” Bowie sprinted back to the HEMTT and silenced the motor. Joe grabbed Carly’s shoulder. “Did we cross the border?”
Her pulse raced and her mouth was dry. “No, even if our map is skewed, we’re miles from it. They must be lost.”
“Or Iraq is starting something.” Joe swore. “I can’t raise anyone on the shortwave. That means the Iraqis could be jamming it, or the desert wind might be mucking up stuff.” He swore again. “Get back up on that ridge and give us warning if they head this way. They shouldn’t try to go over that berm. It’s a high one. It will be easier for them to go another way. Then they could miss us in the dark.” Joe gave her a gentle but urgent shove. “Now.”
Panting, Carly scurried up the berm again and just below its lip, flattened herself on her belly and lifted the binoculars. Daylight was just a glimmer on the barren horizon of shifting sand. Would the berm and the night be enough to hide their two trucks?
Suddenly the tanks stopped. A soldier popped out of the hatch of one and scrambled over to the other. She heard scraps of Arabic words on the night wind. The voices sounded worried. Were they lost? Were their radios acting up, too? Or were they talking about the Americans, deciding whether to attack them?
The weapons Carly’s squad had brought along were no match for a tank, even if they used the M203 grenade launcher in the back of Joe’s truck. Her whole squad could end up being killed or taken prisoner. Naked terror made Carly’s insides shake. She felt nauseated. The memory of the Arab grabbing her in Riyadh swooped to mind. Arabs had no respect for women like her, women who did a man’s job and didn’t wear abayahs and veils. She gasped silently, pushing down a consuming panic.