The First Billion

by Christopher Reich

  The clock on the wall read 2:15. The room was extremely bright and extremely quiet, a fluorescent universe of hushed sounds. His ear seized each in turn—the rise and fall of a neonatal respirator, the gasp of a fragile patient, the sibilant bleed of oxygen—then he continued his all-night vigil.

  He was back at the Zoo, doing tours of the Quad for having missed his second curfew in a month. He was pacing the ready room before his first flight into combat. He was the star witness at his own trial. All that was left to decide was the penalty. The verdict had already been given. Guilty on all counts.

  “Everything’s copacetic,” Byrnes had said, a footnote from their shared history to let Gavallan know he was testifying under duress.

  Hardly, mused Gavallan acidly.

  A skeleton staff presided at this late hour: a few nurses, orderlies, and cleaners. Through the glass partition, he kept track of a janitor polishing the corridor, his green-clad back bowed and sober, his worn mop eating up miles of hallway with a methodical, unerring rhythm that was a science unto itself.

  Gavallan glanced down at the child in his arms, a frail boy swaddled in a sky blue blanket. He’d been awarded the provisional name of Henry, and the name would stick until his mother could come to long enough to provide him a more permanent one. He’d been born one week before, full term, 4 pounds 2 ounces, 14 inches long. To look at him, he was a healthy child. His features were well-formed. Broad nose. Full lips. Dignified chin. His eyes were closed, and a cap of curly black hair crowned his brown skin. But the experienced eye knew differently and ticked off the indicators of the infant’s affliction with weary ease. The bluish, trembling lips. The drawn cheeks. The eyes twitching beneath the lids and the head that every minute or so jerked along with them. Ataxic aphasia, they called it, a condition prevalent among children born to crack-addicted mothers.

  A tap on the window drew Gavallan’s attention.

  “Coffee?” asked Rosie Chiu, the head duty nurse, pointing at her own mug. If she was surprised to see a man wearing a dinner jacket beneath his operating gown in the pediatric intensive care ward, she didn’t show it. He’d been coming too long for that. Always at night. Always alone.

  Gavallan shook his head and said no.

  He’d first visited St. Jude’s eight years earlier on a Friday evening benefactors’ tour. The donors were lectured about the miracle of magnetic resonance imaging, the latest advances in open-heart surgery, and the newest cures in the war against children’s leukemia. But it wasn’t until Gavallan made it out of the neonatal intensive care unit that he grew angry. His neck grew hot, his suit two sizes too small. Like little Henry, he’d become twitchy all over. He wasn’t sure why, but suddenly, he was mad—white-hot, steaming mad. Maybe it was the relentless sunniness of the place—the yellow walls decorated with dancing murals, the cheery nurses, the upbeat smiles—contrasted against the bleak reality of the situation. Even if these kids survived, what did they face? A life lived in medical institutions, state-run homes, or at best foster families. These kids with underdeveloped lungs and diseased eyes, with hair-trigger emotions and chronic aphasia. They had no right to their expectations, he’d railed silently.

  But ten minutes later when Nurse Chiu finished her talk about the hospital’s need for volunteers willing to come and walk the infants—to help them grow comfortable with the touch of another human being, to teach them to accept the gaze of another set of eyes, and, yes, just to keep the noisy little gremlins quiet—he’d found himself alone agreeing to return. And he wondered whose expectations he was challenging. His or the kids’?

  Gavallan shut his eyes. He couldn’t handle another body laid at his feet. Oh no. Byrnes’s call had freed him of illusions. Konstantin Kirov was just as Cate had described him—“ruthless and conniving, and maybe even more.” This time Gavallan could not look elsewhere for excuses. This time he couldn’t fall back on bungled intelligence or fumbled orders. This time it was up to him.

  “Don’t know if I can handle this one, chief,” he whispered to Henry’s sleeping brown face. “Think you can give me a hand?”

  And he marveled in disbelief at how once upon a time he’d been a warrior.

  The whine in his ear built slowly, as it had in the plane itself. A steady high-pitched cry that signaled the powering-up of the aircraft’s avionics package. He was going back to the Gulf. To Saudi Arabia. To Iraq. To Desert Storm. To the night the infrared cameras on the underside of Darling Lil recorded the tape that sat even now in his flight locker. The tape titled Day 40—Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex. He was going to his own private little corner of hell, and his familiarity with the territory did little to lessen his terror over the trip.

  “Thunder three-six. Red one. How do you read?”

  “Roger, Red one. This is Thunder three-six. Ready to copy words. Which way to Wonderland?”

  Gavallan is sitting in the cockpit of Darling Lil, far out on runway two-niner at King Khalid Air Force Base deep in the Saudi Arabian desert. It is 01:15 Continental European Time, the morning of February 25, 1991. Day 40 of Desert Storm. Ground operations have begun twenty-four hours earlier and the vaunted Republican Guard is surrendering en masse. Morale is high. But Gavallan is ever cautious. When will Saddam unleash his biological weapons? Is he waiting until the last minute to launch a nuke at Israel? What exactly is the Iraqi dictator keeping up his sleeve?

  Despite the cockpit’s airtight seal, the desert air seeps in and surrounds him. It smells of jet fuel and sweat and a million square miles of superheated sand. Gavallan loves the scent. Inside its arid folds, he can taste his country’s victory.

  Darling Lil is fully loaded for her night’s work. Two GBU-27s sit inside the weapons bay. Each a two-thousand-pound package of high explosives capped with a delayed detonation fuse and a laser guidance system to guarantee hand delivery to the target.

  “Thunder three-six. You are clear for takeoff.”

  “Thunder thirty-six copies all. Salaam Aleik’hum.”

  Gavallan wraps the fingers of his left hand lightly around the throttle and guides it forward. For a moment, the plane rocks, as if a boat in a chop, then he releases the brake and the Black Jet begins its shot down the runway. At 180 knots, he rotates the aircraft up and the wheels lift off the ground. He loves this moment, when the aircraft leaves the earth and he feels as if he too has been freed from his temporal moorings. The first climb is brief. At fifty feet, he levels off the aircraft and allows it to build speed to three hundred knots, then pushes up the nose and begins his ascent to his cruising altitude of twenty-four thousand feet.

  Outside the cockpit, the sky is cloudy. Few stars are visible. Gavallan’s eyes are trained on his instruments: altimeter, flight speed, fuel. Tonight’s flight plan is typical of the twenty-two missions he has logged to date. Takeoff to be followed by a rendezvous with a KC-135 to top off the tanks. After the completion of midair refueling, he will cross the Iraqi border and hit two targets, an IOC, or intercept operations center, at Ash Shamiyah, and an SOC, or sector operations center, at Ali Al Salem, one hundred miles to the south. Time to target is two hours forty-seven minutes.

  Gavallan runs a hand over his pistol, flight harness, and G suit, fingers probing for the search and rescue map wedged into his leg pocket and the cloth “blood chit” on top of it. The blood chit is to be used in case of forced landing or ejection and carries four “tickets” offering a reward to its holder for helping shepherd the downed airman to safety. The 9mm pistol is in case the ragheads need more convincing.

  Suppression of enemy air defenses has been ruled 98 percent successful, but someone has forgotten to inform the Iraqis of the fact. The flak that has greeted Gavallan on his most recent sorties is as hot and heavy as on the first night over Baghdad. Sooner or later, he will be hit. It is a law, not a probability.

  He completes refueling without incident. Routine, he says, working to quell his apprehension, feeling restless in the green-glow midnight of the Black Jet’s cockpit. He stays on th
e KC-135’s wing for ninety minutes, then “stealths up” and turns east, driving Darling Lil into Iraq. As he kills the primary radio, he glides his thumb over the CD player in his flight suit and hits the play button. Axl Rose screams, “Welcome to the jungle.”

  Ash Shamiyah goes off without a hitch. A grown man’s video game. Bomb armed. Systems check good. Target acquired: a gray rectangle dead center in his infrared display. Bombs away. The long downward ride, his thumb steering death on its unerring path. Thirty seconds later the screen whites out—a desert flower blossoming on his IR display. The IOC is a rectangle no more.

  Gavallan pushes the stick left, banking the plane hard into a four G roll. Gut tight, head in a hammerlock, he turns to a heading of 210 degrees, driving Darling Lil to the night’s second target. Five minutes later, static tickles his ear. The steely guitars of Guns N’ Roses abruptly cut out.

  “Thunder three-six. We have a code red, change of target.”

  Gavallan stiffens. The primary rule of Stealth flight has been broken. Radio contact on the newly installed EML—emergency transmission link.

  “Proceed to target designation ‘Alpha Golf.’ This is a Priority One, Ring One engagement. Do you copy?”

  Priority One. Ring One.

  Unconsciously, Gavallan leans forward, a tiger who has caught scent of his prey. Ring One refers to “command control communications centers,” or C3s, the highest-priority target on the modern battlefield. Priority One denotes that the commander of the C3 may be present at the target. In Iraq there is only one man who carries the moniker Priority One, and one of his many palaces is located in Abu Ghurayb—target designation Alpha Golf.

  “Thunder three-six. Copy.”

  “Okay, Tex, this is your chance for the big time. Don’t fuck it up.”

  It is his flight controller, Rob Gettels, and for once Gavallan can’t think of a witty response. Suddenly his throat is dry, his stomach jittery. He’s a rookie all over again and he’s taking the plane up for his first flight. But a second later, the nerves calm, the hand steadies, and the breathing slows. He programs the onboard navigational system and banks the plane north. He is on his way. Priority One. Ring One. The Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex.

  Twenty minutes later, the radio crackles to life.

  “Thunder three-six, green light on target Alpha Golf.”

  “Copy.”

  Gavallan lowers his seat an inch or two so that he can no longer see out of the cockpit. His world shrinks to the cocoon of instruments surrounding him. The stick between his legs. The throttle and weapons guidance joystick to his left. The infrared display that looks like a six-inch black-and-white television screen. The heads-up display above it.

  He is at bombing altitude. A finger toggles the “master-arm” switch. The bomb is primed. Eyes forward on the IR display. Target spotted. A pale stable of buildings silhouetted against the gray desert floor. He has studied the target before, as he has studied all of Hussein’s palaces, and he knows the main suite of bedrooms to be in the eastern wing, a slim outcropping from the principal complex of buildings. His middle finger slews the crosshairs back and forth across the palace until he decides he has found the wing. Then, as if a mechanism itself, the thumb locks down. Jett Gavallan does not miss his target. Distance five kilometers. A yellow light flashes. Laser acquisition engaged. Red letters fire on the heads-up display. Target in range. Gavallan hits the “pickle,” a red button on top of the stick, and the weapons bay doors open. Darling Lil shudders. Still no ack-ack. No SAMs corkscrewing their way through the night sky. No 57mm shells bursting like flashbulbs on his old Kodak Instamatic. Gavallan does not question. He does not hesitate. He attacks. He is the spearhead of his country’s arsenal.

  Gavallan depresses the pickle again and the bomb falls from the aircraft. Suddenly lighter, Darling Lil jerks upward, and as his harness strap cuts into his shoulder, he grunts with a secret pleasure. His eyes lock onto the IR screen and the delicate crosshairs positioned over the east wing of the Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex. All external stimuli disappear. He is in a tunnel. At the far end rests his target. The crosshairs do not move. Thirty seconds to impact. Twenty.

  Too easy, a voice whispers. Where are the SAMs? Where’s the flak parade? It is the voice that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He sees plumes of exhaust approaching the palace. He counts one, two, three vehicles. Tank? Jeeps? Trucks? Ours? Theirs? Someone running away? Someone arriving?

  Ten seconds.

  The crosshairs do not move.

  The radio screams. “Thunder three-six. Abort run. Copy?”

  The bomb appears on the screen. A dark dot skimming across the ground at an impossible speed. Above the screen, a red light blinks. Fuel warning. Tanks low.

  Five seconds.

  “I repeat. Abort run. Friendlies in area. We have friendlies on-site.”

  The words fire in Gavallan’s ear as a warning bell sounds in the cockpit. The fuel light is dim. Above it, another light blinks in time to the urgent keening of the warning bell. The Allied Forces Locator. He has engaged friendly forces. His eyes dart between the lights, hesitating. Events blur.

  Two seconds.

  Only then does the finger dodge right, the crosshairs leave the palace and land in the desert. Or did it go earlier? Before the command? It does not matter. The bomb does not listen. She has been too long on her downward trajectory and it is as if she is too stubborn to alter her course.

  “Abort run! Confirm, Thunder three-six!”

  One second.

  The desert flower blossoms. The screen blanches. A blizzard of white noise. The palace reappears. The east wing is no more, a bonfire of angles fallen in on itself. The heat signatures have disappeared, too, replaced by the blotchy, pulsing quasars that indicate fire.

  Ours? Theirs? Coming? Going?

  Jett Gavallan does not miss his target.

  “Friendlies hit! Friendlies down!” It is Gettels, his operational calm obliterated. “Christ, Tex, I said abort!”

  Gavallan blinks his eyes and catapults through space, through time, through the firestorm of his emotions to the present. He is walking. In his sleep, the baby named Henry twitches and is still.

  Ten Marines dead. Two in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. Forward elements of Task Force Ripper, he was to learn later. Scouts who got too far ahead of themselves. Gavallan knows their names to a man. He has sent the families checks for years. But their financial support is skimpy fare for a ravenous conscience. Everywhere he looks he sees pleas for help. Ask me, he begs the unfortunate. Order me. But his appetite for atonement is insatiable. Guilt, he discovers, is a desire, not an emotion. It can be slaked, but never extinguished.

  And Saddam? Was he within one hundred miles of the palace? Not likely. News reports showed him touring Baghdad the next day, his beleaguered people showering him with praise.

  As for the postscript, well, it went as he had imagined. The immediate transfer out of the theater of operations. The flight stateside. The firm and not so polite request that he resign his commission and never speak of the incident again. More he never learned. Who’d gathered the intelligence? Who gave the order for the raid? Why had the abort command come so late? Was the fuel light faulty? Was the allied locator on the fritz? What did it matter? No amount of rationalizing could scrub the blood off his boots. He had committed the cardinal sin: He had killed his own.

  Now, if he didn’t watch out, he’d have another name to add to the list. Not a heat signature in desert fatigues, but his best friend in the world. The man who’d stood by his side at weddings, christenings, and funerals. The man he’d worked alongside twelve hours a day, week in, week out, for seven years. The man he’d sailed with to Hawaii, ate steaks with at Alfred’s, got drunk with at the Chaya. The only man he knew who gave a good goddamn about John J. Gavallan from Brownsville, Texas.

  “Hey, Graf,” Gavallan called silently across the miles. “Hang on, bud, I’m coming to get you. Don’t ask me how or when, but
I’m coming.”

  Hundred-hour war, the world had called it. Piece of cake.

  Gavallan looked down at Henry. The boy looked like he was smiling.

  Piece of cake, kid.

  19

  Ker-thump!

  Cate Magnus woke from a sound sleep, stirred by the jarring thud. The noise had come from downstairs. The den, she thought at first, still fuzzy. No, the study, she decided a second later, pinpointing the sound as having come from the room directly beneath her. Sitting up in bed, she trained an ear to the silence. The house was still and part of her wondered if she’d heard anything at all, or if the noise had simply been the slamming of a car door down the block.

  It was early morning, and a predawn mist cloaked the bedroom in a grainy light. After a few seconds passed, she was able to make out the ottoman at the foot of the bed and the pile of magazines stacked on top of it. The Economist, Vogue Italia, Harvard Business Review, and, God help her, the National Enquirer. Throw them out, she ordered herself. All of them, before they become a fire hazard. Her eyes flitted to the hand-carved walnut desk under the window where she worked on her precious journals, black-speckled notebooks stuffed with daily musings, ideas for the column, personal promises, resolutions and dreams, press clippings of current events, photographs, drawings, and caricatures—a thirty-year-old’s running commentary on the world and her place in it.

  In the corner stood her rotting, half-drunk armoire, teetering to one side on its bum leg. Beside the armoire rested her easel, her vase and brushes, and the fisherman’s bait box that held her oils and acrylics. With the painting I’ve done lately, I ought to throw those away too, she thought. The guarantee date on her precocious talent had expired ten years ago. But for her treasured possessions, she found no comfort in the familiarity of her surroundings. After a two-year absence, the room remained unfamiliar, foreign, more a hotel room in a distant city than the home for which she’d scrimped and saved for so long.