by Tracy Walder
That night, around midnight, I hadn’t changed out of my work clothes and sat up on my bed, wide awake with a book open in front of me. I hoped that reading would shut down my brain, close up shop in a sense, so I could release the pressure of trying to track chemical cells and actually go to sleep. I was reading the same page over and over again when there was a knock on the door. I called for whoever it was to come in. Larry, a Navy SEAL from San Diego, popped in his head. He was tall, with a big toothy smile, and always appeared to be bouncing on the tips of his toes as if he were in the middle of a tennis match.
“Wanna go have some fun?”
“Hmm … will I get killed, maimed, or in trouble?” I closed the book.
“Nope. Just pure fun.”
“Okay, I’m in.” Fun is always the best therapy for me.
“Vest and head covering,” he said. “Meet me in five.”
It took less than five minutes for me to strap on my bulletproof vest and throw a scarf over my head. The bomb-sniffing dogs were at the SUV, where five other guys were waiting when I arrived.
“I knew you’d come!” A Navy SEAL named Daniel threw up his palm, and we slapped hands.
I hid in the way-back, as usual, and the six of us drove to a nearby airport that had been repurposed and was now an American military base. A shipment of night-vision goggles, called NVGs, had just come in, and the SEALs wanted to test them out and get used to them.
We drove through the usual security checks, parked, and then Larry helped me out of the back. The six of us jogged across the pitch-black tarmac to a canvas tent where the shipment had been placed. There were other military there, and the SEALs seemed to know them all. Or maybe they didn’t know each other, and it was just the intimacy of being in this strange desert airport, in the middle of a war, in the middle of the night, that made it seem like they were old friends.
Larry opened a crate with the claw end of a hammer and handed us each what looked like a helmet with binoculars attached to the front. One of the soldiers fitted me in one and adjusted the strap. The goggles lifted and lowered on a hinge above my face. He raised and lowered them, adjusted the helmet, and then said, “Good to go.”
The five SEALs from the office and I left the tent and crossed the tarmac again to where a couple of ATVs were sitting.
“Ladies first,” a guy named Alex said.
I sat on the seat of one of the ATVs. It was about the size of a dune buggy with an open top and four thick wheels that looked like they could roll over anything. Alex showed me the ignition, brakes, and gas. Then he got in the ATV beside me.
“Drivers ready?” Daniel asked.
Alex and I lowered our night goggles. When I looked out, everything was party-balloon green. The places that were illuminated, like the tent where we’d just been, screamed with white light. I looked at the runway and watched a rabbit skitter across.
“You see that?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, that was cool.”
“On your mark … get set…” Daniel started. And before he shouted go, I had pulled away and was racing down the tarmac as fast as that vehicle could go. In the neon green light, there was nothing ahead of me but paved blacktop with some arrows on it. I kept the ATV moving forward and looked back to see Alex catching up. And then I stood on the gas, actually stood, so that my butt was out of the seat, as I raced toward nowhere.
It must have been after three in the morning by the time we returned to the trailers. I took off my clothes, pulled on my sweats and t-shirt, slipped under the covers, and finally fell into a deep, pure, thoughtless sleep.
* * *
The next day I felt on fire, alert. It was like I’d gone on a mini-vacation. I was at my desk in my office all morning, sending and receiving cables from other agencies in regard to H, the terrorist I had started tracking while I was working in Africa. He had recently gained citizenship in a European country, so I had lost the chance to have him extradited back to his homeland. Over the past several days, I’d been speaking to FM, a man being held at another site. FM’s cousin lived in the same European city as H, and regularly prayed at the mosque where H was spreading his “charms” and trying to recruit new followers. According to FM’s cousin, H was being heavily financed by X to plot a “big” poison attack that would change the way Westerners thought of al-Qaeda. It was as if these guys were trying to make a name for themselves; they wanted to stand on the world stage, with everyone watching, and be awarded gold medals for killing. After several days of talking and negotiations, FM had given me his cousin’s address and phone number, which I immediately passed on to the Poison Trio and undercover operatives in Europe. To thank him for this information, I had given FM fresh figs, pomegranates, and a photo of his mother. The photo was the hardest item to procure, but through a string of contacts I did it.
Around noon, I shut down my computer and locked up my desk. I had a 12:30 meeting with an asset who had a tangential relationship with another individual I was looking for in relation to H. I ripped open a PowerBar and ate it while putting on my bulletproof vest. I was off to find Johnny, to take me to, and stay with me during, my meeting. With my vest dangling open and the PowerBar in my hand, I rushed out of my office and started jogging down the wavy marble steps to the first floor.
I can’t tell you exactly what happened. But something did. I tripped and plummeted straight down the stone steps to the stone landing, where I ended up unconscious on my back.
When I came to, I was surrounded by Navy SEALs and the office bureau chief, Redmond, a no-nonsense, square-jawed man.
“Don’t move,” Redmond said. He, like all my supervisors, knew I’d had surgery on my spine.
“I think I’m okay.” I wasn’t in pain. Just woozy. And tired. I wanted to sleep more than anything.
I started to sit up and was gently pushed down to my back and then lifted onto a stretcher.
There was a lot of chatter and directions, as if this was a life-or-death situation. I felt fine. More than anything, I was embarrassed to be the center of all this fuss.
“Really, I’m not in pain—”
Commands were snapped over my head, and I was carried out of the hotel office to a waiting military helicopter. Redmond wouldn’t take any chances. He wanted me flown to a nearby Air Force base where there was a hospital and doctors who could X-ray me to make sure everything in my spine and my head was undamaged.
There was something relaxing about that bumpy ride with the rhythmic chugging whir of the chopper’s blades. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, only to be awoken by a Navy SEAL who shouted at me, “No you don’t! Eyes open!”
It happened three more times. Finally I said, “Come on, just five minutes. I swear I don’t have a concussion.”
“Are you kidding me?!” he yelled. “There’s a war going on, you’re on an open-air helicopter, and you want to SLEEP? If you’re not concussed then you’re the most relaxed person I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, I am from California,” I said. “We’re mellow people.”
He smiled and nodded as if that just might be true.
We landed at the Air Force base, me on my back, the sun beating straight down onto my face. From where I lay, it looked like an enormous city of canvas tents lined up on a field of gray gravel. I was hustled, on a stretcher, to the trauma tent, which had enough equipment in there that I imagined anything could be accomplished there: surgery, X-rays, delivering a baby if necessary.
I was the only patient and was seen to by a doctor, a tall, sturdy-looking man, and a nurse, a soft-faced woman. They each wore beige-and-brown camouflage scrubs; her top had a v-neck and was almost stylish. There was something of a different era to them—as if they were from a 1950s TV show about a brilliant doctor and his kind nurse. Both were efficient and swift. He asked questions while she took my vitals. Her hands were warm, and when she touched me I had the urge to close my eyes and go to sleep again.
“Nuh-uh,” she said, gently squeezing my arm. “You�
�ve got to stay awake.”
The doctor left, and the nurse attached an IV to my arm. I didn’t ask why, or what it was, but I did feel more awake once that fluid was flowing into me. She left with a promise to return soon so they could do X-rays and a CT scan.
I lay in that tent, the canvas walls almost glowing from the intense sunlight, and listened to everything beyond the open flaps. There was the sound of trucks, people talking, mechanical beeping from equipment operating or things being moved, and then, suddenly, a wailing of sirens that drowned out all other noises. My mind tried to fill in the blanks: whatever just happened, it was far enough away that I didn’t hear it. An IED could have gone off; a chemical bomb could have been launched over the barbed-wire fence, past the barricade of armed security, and into the base; a suicide bomber could have blown up at the other end of the base.
The nurse rushed into the room and rolled me so that I was at the edge of the flaps, but with room for people to roll past me.
“You’re about to get lots of company,” she said. “A bomb went off just outside the base and hit a group of women walking to the market down the road.” Her voice was calm, but she was speaking quickly, and her hands were moving like darting flames as she arranged IV poles and attached bags to them.
“You can just let me go—”
“Absolutely not!” she said. “You need to be cared for, but first—”
A team of men and women, everyone speaking in a flurry of shouts, rolled in six people and lined them up beside me. Everyone looked charred, many were faceless. Their skin glistened like freshly burnt paper, and there were exposed chunks of red flesh from their cheeks to their feet. There were areas where I expected an arm or leg but just saw a raw, tattered opening. Bright bits of color, like large confetti, were pasted here and there over each of them. Maybe they’d been wearing colorful hijabs? The scent of burnt hair and blood was overwhelming. I could taste that smell, like a copper penny in my mouth.
The woman right next to me moaned and groaned. The rest were silent. The nurse who had helped me went to the moaning woman and hooked her up to the IV. Then she took her hand and held it. I hoped the injured woman could feel how warm the nurse’s hands were through the gloves she was now wearing. It was doubtful the patient understood English, but the nurse spoke to her as if she did. Her voice was soothing, gentle, reassuring. She looked into the woman’s face and told her she was in good care now and everything would be fine. The moaning slowed. Other people in the room silently tended to the others, but they all seemed to fall away out of focus as I watched the nurse and the woman.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I was so angry at whomever had placed that bomb outside the base. It was meant for American soldiers, or any American, but no one stepped foot outside the base unless they were in an armored car. So, naturally, it would hit villagers; maybe even the mother, aunt, wife, or sister of the terrorist who placed it there.
People quietly filtered out of the room, and the nurse went down the row of gurneys and silently checked on each person. None of them were attached to an IV.
The woman beside me turned her face toward me. Her skin was blackened, shiny, and there were bits of bright blue fabric embedded in her flesh. She stared at me, and the whites of her eyes glowed. I stared back and stuck out my arm toward her. She didn’t, or couldn’t, move, and I pulled my arm back in.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered again. I stayed with her like that; eyes locked to let her know she wasn’t alone, that she wasn’t just a body. I could see her and would hold her in my mind. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed, and soon my breathing synchronized with hers.
The nurse returned and took her hand once more. Again she talked to her gently and calmly—the way people talk to those they love. Then she tucked the woman’s hand by her side and checked my IV bag.
“She going to be okay? Are they all going to be okay?” It was too quiet in there. Eerie.
“Everyone else has passed. She’s getting morphine so she can go out peacefully.” She blinked both eyes shut for a second as if the thought pained her.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“There’s nothing that can be done,” she said. “Except to make it easier than it might otherwise be.”
She patted my shoulder and then turned to the woman and squeezed her hand once more before leaving the tent. It was now just the newly dead, the single survivor, and me. I looked back at the woman. We locked eyes again and breathed together. I didn’t know how long it might take, but if what she wanted was this—to die in the gaze of another human—then I would provide that.
It wasn’t long before the woman’s eyes flickered, and I knew we were no longer seeing each other.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered once more, before I looked the other way, out the flaps of the tent, where the living seemed even busier than when I’d first been wheeled in.
Soon the sirens were wailing again, though the pattern and length of each howl seemed different than the last time. The nurse, along with a few other people, ran into the tent. They weren’t talking much, but they all seemed to know what they were doing as they transferred me to a backboard and ran with me to another tent. We passed other people who were running—some pushing patients, some just with their heads down. Through the limited conversation, I knew that there was a bomb threat. Something, allegedly, was headed right toward us.
In the new tent, there was a wide, square hole in the ground—like a grave for more than one person. I was lowered into it. A doctor yelled, “Vest!” And then I watched as a bulletproof vest flew from one hand, to the next, to the doctor. The doctor laid the vest across my chest and then lay on top of me, facedown. The sirens continued to wail, the other people in the room scattered. To different graves? To other tents? I had no idea; all I knew was I was on my back with a vest between my torso and the doctor who lay over me. He was heavy on me, but not so much that I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t scared, but I did think about dying and how if I were to go just then, I wouldn’t be looking anyone in the eye, but I also wouldn’t be alone. It struck me how at a time of need, the presence of a stranger can stand in for family, the people you love.
When the sirens stopped—maybe 30 or 40 minutes later—it was business as usual. I was carted by two new people to the imaging tent, where they did the X-rays and a CT scan. It wasn’t long before the first doctor I saw came into the tent to give me the results. My head was fine, but I had two new bulging discs on my spine.
“You kinda took a one-two punch,” he said. “First the fall, and then moving you into that hole without your back secured.” He shook his head.
I could stay on the base and look into treatment for the discs, or I could refuse treatment and go back to the office. Either way, I was to lie on my back and do nothing for three days.
I refused treatment.
The medics wanted me supine for the helicopter ride back. But the sun was starting to set and I didn’t want to miss it. I sat up and looked out into the open sky that was red and orange and liquid-looking. Then I looked down to the beige blond, beautifully monotone landscape. I was glad I was alive to see it all.
I didn’t take three days off.
I didn’t even take that night off.
The bombed woman’s face was imprinted in my mind; I could feel her image as a permanent part of me. I decided that I had to amp up my efforts once again. I had to catch the terrorists who would do that to any woman. Any man. Any human. Anywhere in the world.
TWELVE
TROJANS RULE!
Europe February–April 2004
A new guy, Jerry, had joined the Poison Trio; now we were a Poison Quartet. There was nothing wrong with Jerry; he seemed smart and determined. He was older than me, but under thirty, with a youthfully tousled mess of blond hair. I didn’t particularly like him or dislike him. But I was having a difficult time acclimating to him—it’s hard to get used to a fourth leg when you’ve been balancing pretty darn well on three. I had no objection,
however, to a fourth set of eyes on the growing African terrorism cells.
At Jerry’s first meeting in the cubicles, with Graham, Sally, Victor, David, Ben, and me, he spoke up right away. Jerry talked loudly, forcefully, as if he had to convince the rest of us of what he was capable of. Sally pursed her lips. I had a feeling she was stopping herself from interrupting him. Graham calmly nodded. Victor did the same and then looked at me and said, “What do you think, Tracy?”
After all the work I’d done in Africa and the Middle East, we now knew definitively what H, the African-born terrorist now living in Europe, was up to. All my sources, collected together, showed that a multiplatform chemical attack led by H—most likely in Europe—was imminent. I knew, however, that the chemical intel wasn’t enough for operatives in his new country of residence to arrest him. My group looked beyond those chemicals, charted H’s movements across the globe as well as the movements of his known connections, and found that he had been involved in planning the coordinated bombing in Africa that had created those haunting and unbearable floating heads. I didn’t care why H was arrested. I just wanted him off the streets, out of the mosque, and unreachable to his followers so that his plan would be disrupted. Unfortunately, the intelligence agency in his new country of citizenship claimed that even the bombing connection proved too circumstantial to warrant an arrest.
There was still hope, though, as H had recently bought a plane ticket to another Western country. I immediately started cabling all the contacts I had in that country. If they looked at the evidence carefully enough, they might find it too hard to let this man roam free. Still, even if they detained H, his European country of residence would have to okay it as he was officially one of their own.
“Someone has to get over there,” I said to Victor. “We have to lay out all the evidence and present our case until people understand the consequences of not taking in H.”
“Which are?” Sally was baiting me. She wanted me to state the obvious.