by Chuck Logan
Then he experiences a confused moment when he feels a pocket of air dislocate past his cheek. He doesn’t hear the snap-hiss but something tells him that was a bullet.
He swivels his head and sees this tough-looking soldier clawing out of a gunner pocket. The dirt on his face is turned muddy by all the blood, and he rears up like an animated part of the wreckage—uniform torn, leaking what’s inside him. But he’s steadying a black pistol in both red hands, arms extended in the Weaver Stance—like he knows what he’s doing.
Survival reflexes trump conscious thought, and Morgon has the Beretta out as he crouches and sidesteps and rapid fires twice. The red figure drops.
When he picks up movement in the corner of his eye, he rotates, swinging the pistol to his front like a divining rod. Someone else is out there weaving in the dust.
Suddenly Ahmed is next to him, feeling him for wounds, “Can you breathe okay?” he yells. Then he strips off Morgon’s headdress and dumps a bottle of water on Morgon’s head, wiping caked grime from his hair, face, and neck.
Morgon points to his ears. Can’t hear. But his eyes work, because suddenly they are staring at an apparition that sways on unsteady feet in the smoke and dust.
“Shit, man,” Ahmed blurts, “it’s a chick.”
Morgon blinks sand, shakes his head, and stares at the blast-burned, bleeding, barely recognizable woman. Her uniform hangs in black oily rags and half her short, dirty-reddish hair is seared away. A scoured ceramic chest plate dangles in shreds of webbing. Blood trickles on her bare soot-blackened torso and her mangled left arm hangs limp.
But her right arm is working okay because she yanks a black automatic pistol from the smoking tatters of her survival vest and struggles to raise it. Morgon blinks, striving to get his bearings.
His control slips and he rages out loud, “Goddamn sonofabitch!” None of this was supposed to happen.
The woman gasps, maybe hearing him speak but definitely looking askance at his desert tunic and then staring at his face. “American?” She croaks. Trembling, unsteady, she drops her weapon and pitches forward onto her knees.
“Goddamn sonofabitch,” Morgon shouts again to clear his blocked ears, and he claws dirt from his eyes as the moment turns weird and suspended and Ahmed and the woman drift in the smoke all covered in desert gunk like beige aborigines in a ceremony. Can hear a little now. Ahmed is yelling, “We have to go. In a minute this dust will clear. Everything in Iraq that can fly . . .”
Morgon nods and tries to think as the survivor stares up at him, dirty whites of her eyes like two blood-streaked marbles in her scalded face. Looking at him. Looking into him.
“Pilots,” she makes the croaking sound again, struggling to rise. “Gotta help . . .”
Morgon blinks through an involuntary shudder. Dammit. It’s all upside down; vertigo, nausea, vomit rising in his throat. Her damn accusing eyes. He stares at the pistol in his dirty hand.
“Leave it; she’s dying,” Ahmed pulls his shoulder.
Morgon shakes him off, shouting because of his blocked ears. “She isn’t dying, and help’s on the way. I’ve been seen. No loose ends, gotta make sure.” To avoid her grave, bloodshot eyes, he steps behind her, raises the pistol at the back of her head, and fires twice.
***
Ten feet away, Jesse is entombed in the clutter of the smashed cockpit going numb and out-of-body strange, and she’s spitting dirt, and all she’s got left is her eyes. If she hangs on—North Dakota tough—hard enough, her eyes, locked wide open, will work beneath the muddy veil of gore and sequins of shattered plastic and instruments. Moment of hope now, seeing Marge take labored steps. C’mon girl, I know you’re hurting, but I’m just over here. You’re my lifeline. Just keep coming.
Then, aw shit, there’s a hajji fucker in a filthy checkered headdress, and now Jesse finds herself alone in a place beyond any notion of fear she’s ever known. The guy’s got a pistol that he raises and shoots at something. Not me. Past me. Then he sees Marge, and then there’s another one of them.
Jesse realizes by her frantic exhalations that she’s raging to move her hands, but they’re stuck immobile in dirt and debris. Gotta get to my pistolbecause Marge’s out there all alone with those bastards. But I’m stuck and can’t move. Not even to look away. Never been here before. This godawful helpless. The only thing she can do to fight back is will her eyes to stay open. Through the rush and ringing in her ears, she hears the one with the pistol yell muddy words through her fouled hearing. Sounds like he’s swearing. The other one removes the first guy’s headdress and pours water on his head from a plastic bottle, and that’s no hajji because she sees strands of muddy hair shine like copper wire and in a moment of acoustic clarity hears him swear “Goddamn sonofabitch” in American English.
“Been seen,” he rages.
And she suddenly realizes she doesn’t have to stay here where it’s real bad and getting worse, pinned in the present with the first sharkbite of real pain showing teeth through the shock. She can leave. There’s endless room to hide inside, and the momentum builds to lose the outside and collapse toward endless possibilities opening inside. And why not, because Oh Jesus God I got guts in my face and I wanna go home and I don’t want to see what they’re doing to Marge out there because the guy with the copper hair is raising the pistol again, and I want to help but I can’t fucking move!
Jesse can feel herself letting go, shutting down, blocking it out one piece of cloudy light after another. The scene in the dust tightens down to a tangle—raised, livid, red—pulsing like a pile of worms that writhe into the shape of a scarlet five-pointed star, and then she pulls her eyes in after her, and now she can stretch out free as she gently twirls into all this space that’s there for her to get away, and it’s soft and cool as she spirals gratefully into the darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Morgon steps over the crew woman’s body, pokes into the wreckage, and puts two more rounds into the gunner to make sure. Then he looks in the cockpit, which is pure Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ahmed yanks him away, yelling, “Time to go, man.”
Ahmed drags him in a loping sprint through the churning dust, and they trip and fall over a low wall. Okay, they’re in the ruins. They scramble on all fours, then scuttle, bent over, deeper into the maze of collapsed brick. A shape rises up in front of them, and Morgon snaps up the Beretta, but it’s the kid who had the RPG shaking like a palsied dog but grinning too. He waves to them and, panting, they pause and look back at the shadowy helicopters prowling the edges of the dust cloud. The tension releases in the form of spontaneous hysterical laughter, like juveniles who’ve pulled off a Halloween prank. Just as rapidly the sick mirth dissipates, and they stare at each other through the choking film of dust.
Panting, Morgon experiences a rare flicker of remorse. She was wearing a U.S. Army uniform. Before he can explore the implications of that, he feels a cool slap on his cheek and he stares at a dervish of pure clean air that cuts a swirling hole in the dust, and suspended in the hole he sees this angry black dragonfly.
Shit.The Apaches!
Instinctively, he dives for deeper cover, grabbing Ahmed, dragging him down as a buzz saw rips the air. All around them, the thousand-year-old bricks explode and shatter into dancing gobs of sun-baked mud. Which is what happens when you wind up on the business end of a 30mm chain gun spitting out 625 rounds of high-explosive dual-purpose ammo per minute.
Panting and shaking, Morgon is crammed against another comforting thickness of Babylonian wall and sees that the dust cloud has enveloped him again, blinding the attack chopper.
“C’mon, we gotta move,” he yells, tugging at Ahmed. But Ahmed doesn’t budge. He’s staring at a bundle of bloody rags that a moment before was the kid. Morgon rolls him over and checks the eyes, locked wide open. He looks just once at the shards of ribcage mixed with bits of mushroom pink. Sees a last air bubble go pop.
Quickly he yanks off the kid’s blood-drenched Arab shirt and flings it aside alon
g with the ammo bandoleer and the blood-streaked AK. And the RPG launcher the kid had retrieved from the crash site.
“What?” Ahmed is confused, gesturing.
“Leave some blood-trail evidence, give some credence to your kidnap story.” He reaches out and grabs Ahmed’s rifle and tosses it aside. Then he points to the walkie-talkie Ahmed still has clutched in his hand. “Call the guys at the bridge, tell them we’e hauling a body they have to get out of here.” As Ahmed makes the call, Morgon discards his own shirt and vest and hoists the smaller man’s body over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Not pausing to look back, they trot deeper into the ruins, toward the bridge and the truck.
Chapter Fourteen
A second after the explosion, Tumbleweed Five is slipping and sliding in the shock wave, and Colbert is fighting the controls. Joe Davis tears away the latches of his seat harness, loses his helmet and mic, and lunges forward over the equipment stowed between the gunner’s pockets. As he thrusts his head into the cockpit, the crew chief rises on his flexible harness and tries to restrain him. Joe flings the man aside, pounds Colbert on the shoulder, and stabs his finger in a violent downward gesture.
“Take me down!” he screams. But voice communication is only possible over the engine noise of an operating Black Hawk in the movies. Now the crew chief and the gunner are on him, helmeted and visored and armored like Star Wars storm troopers, and they roughly manhandle him back to his seat. Colonel Nasir clamps a steely hand on his shoulder, and Davis relents, seeing the caution, warning, and weary pain in the Iraqi’s dark eyes.
Davis lurches back down and replaces his helmet and mic. He understands, of course. The fuckin’ military. There is a procedure that must be followed. So vital minutes are lost while they wait for the smoke and dust to clear. He has no use for procedure and rules. He resents the chain of command. Most of all, he hates the notion that orders come down from assholes removed from the event. He believes all events are unique and dictate unique action.
And so they circle and wait until the last errant artillery round shoots off and the dust settles like a shroud over the gaping crater, strewn debris, and the buckled wreckage of Tumbleweed Six. Through an opening in the dust, the Apaches spot the insurgents running away and swoop in low and hose down the ruins with their chain guns. Then the dust closes in again.
When the Apache commander decides it’s safe, Colbert puts it down. Davis, Nasir, and the Iraqi intelligence cops leave the Hawk at gymnastic speed. They ignore the shouting crew chief. All veterans, they know you exit a Hawk at right angles to avoid the forward droop of the rotating blades. They fan out through the carnage. Davis heads for the wreck. Nasir leads his men toward the ruins.
The crew chief and the gunner detach their guns and set up a defensive perimeter to the front and rear of the chopper. The copilot stays on the controls, ready to leave fast if they have to. Davis follows after Colbert, who has sprinted ahead and now kneels over a ragged body in the dust ten feet in front of the wreckage. He checks for vital signs. He doesn’t find any.
Davis catches up just as Colbert throws off his helmet and plunges into the broken aircraft. First he crawls across the buckled cargo hold and checks the gunner. He shakes his head. Then he comes around and confronts the crumpled cockpit, pauses to gather himself, climbs in, and gingerly tosses aside a portion of human torso. He plunges his hands into the loam of debris, reaches down, and probes with his fingers. Then he starts digging madly, jerks his head, and screams at Davis, “C’mon! A pilot’s still alive!”
Davis joins Colbert and, inch by inch, they excavate the filthy ragamuffin head and shoulders of the slender pilot. Their hands are urgent and gentle by turns, clearing away dirt and debris, checking for wounds.
Now other aircraft arrive: First a brace of Kiowa scouts and two more Apache gunships. High up, F-18s circle. A medevac lands, and two medics rush out with a stretcher. Colbert and Davis step back to let them work.
Davis’ shoulder mic crackles. Nasir’s voice is as scratchy as the static as he says, “Joe, Nasir. We’ve cleared the ruins. Didn’t find anybody.”
“What the fuck happened?”“Don’t know, it was a freak. I don’t know.”
“One thing for sure, we aren’t going to Ramil today,” Davis mutters. Dizzy, drenched in sweat, he blinks to get his bearings. He identifies the problem and reaches for a water bottle in his cargo pocket. He thinks he has to call Appert back in Baghdad and tell him the Ramil raid went tits up. He’ll do that later. Then he sees Colbert’s hands, bleeding through his shredded Nomex flight gloves.
Without thinking, he removes the first-aid kit from the Colbert’s survival vest. He knows where it is. He knows how to strip off the gloves and bandage the torn hands. He knows a lot of things. In a pinch, he could even land Colbert’s chopper.
Colbert is staring, loose-jawed, at the medics who strip away the prone pilot’s filthy vest and body armor. Davis assesses him as he bandages his hands. Without something to do, the major has plateaued to the edge of shock. Davis helps him sit down, thinking he’s an older guy, then glances at the carnage in the shattered cockpit. Guard. Shouldn’t be here looking at and smelling the remains of one of his pilots chopped up like sausage. Should be home flying people off roofs in floods and shit. Davis takes a deep breath to center down, and it always amazes him how tourists to combat world love to rhapsodize about how all the sounds and colors and sensations punch up pins and needles bright and more intense than sex or drugs. Fuckin’ war poets are usually reporters or writers or officers who won’t be sticking around for the fiftieth or sixtieth hookup when the glamour has long worn off.
He catches himself. You put these people in this. It was your idea to use a Guard unit selected at random, last-minute.
Like an echo of his thoughts he hears Colbert say, “Never shoulda done it, put three of them in one Hawk.” Colbert’s fixed stare is stuck straight ahead.
“What?” Davis blinks, looks up.
Colbert jerks his head at the dirt-covered body in front of the wreck, at the cockpit, and then his hollow eyes return to the surviving pilot. “Put three women in one Hawk.” More sober, Colbert shakes off the glide into shock.
Davis is ashamed of his sudden curiosity as he looks with new interest at the medics who work at great speed, scissoring away the pilot’s flight suit, boots, and uniform. Carefully, they sponge away dirt and grime with sanitary wipes. Checking for wounds, they snip down to the bra and bikini panties, and she lays motionless as a drowned swimmer washed up on a filthy beach. Her smooth face is slick with blood from several deep gashes, bruising underlines her eyes and swells on her high cheeks. Dirt and worse fouls her golden hair. Davis breathes in sharp, pierced, when he sees the fresh blue paint on her toenails gleam in the morning sun below the messy bandaged knee. One of the medics picks at her hands and feet with a needle, then he says into his helmet mic, “Airway’s clear, breathing okay. Deep wounds on her right knee and right shoulder, superficial wounds on extremities, and her face is real cut up. But she’s unresponsive—looks like she’s scrambled bad. She’s urgent for TBI. Let’s get her out of here fast.”
Nasir has joined them and has heard the medic. “What do they mean?” he asks.
Davis taps his head and says, “Bad concussion. Probable brain damage.”
“Too bad. Such a good-looking kid.”
“What happened here, Nasir?” Davis asks, angry.
“I don’t know.” Nasir’s voice is bitter as he shakes his head and looks away. A curl of smoke twists up from Tumbleweed Six and flutters over the empty desert like a greasy black pennant.
***
Beyond the smoking ruins, across the bridge, in the shelter at the edge of a small shack town, Morgon hands the kid’s body off to several of Ahmed’s men, who quickly bundle it into the back of their Toyota, jump in, and drive off down a narrow alley. Morgon points to the pair of binoculars strung around Ahmed’s neck. When he has them, he takes a moment for personal inventory. He’s tremblin
g from the exertion of carrying the body, burning up with adrenaline, figures he has fifteen or twenty minutes before he flames out. The Apaches’ battle against the mud bricks sent the locals into hiding, so he climbs to the roof of a house and, keeping low, lenses the gathering helicopter convention through the binoculars.
And he sees them bringing a survivor out of the wreck on a stretcher.
“Shit.”
***
Jesse does the dead man’s float underwater, dreaming vague sensations of flight. Fangs of sunlight graze her cheek. She rocks to the vibration, engine noise, and the high-octane perfume of gas and sweat. Quick, determined fingers handle her, lift an eyelid; a needle of light probes her eye. A pressure cuff wraps her arm. Antibiotic astringent swabs her face, then fresh bandages press on her knee, her shoulder, her cheek, and her jaw. More pinpricks.
The medevac flares and lands on the hospital pad at Balad. The medics scramble to hand off the stretcher to nurses who run, heads bent, scrubs whipping, into the prop wash. They rush Jesse on a gurney to the trauma room.
This thing I gotta do. The American who . . . But the words that form in her head just mill around, and then the idea itself gets lost.
Voices come and go: “She been out, what, almost an hour?” “Score on Glasgow is not good.” “We want X-ray, MRI and CAT scan. Check for swelling. Then snow her up and tag her for Landstuhl.”
Swarming medics mob her and the bright lights glare down and astringent stings and needles prick. They suture the ugly wound in her knee, the flesh wound in her shoulder, and clean up and then stitch the deep gashes on her face. With a Valium IV drip running in her arm, Jesse is parked in a ward and scheduled to fly to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Diagnosis: moderate to severe TBI—Traumatic Brain Injury.
Chapter Fifteen