George Hartmann Box Set

by Kelly Utt

  Mom arrived not long afterward. She had been following the ambulance by car but became so overwhelmed that, at one point, she had to pull over and put her head between her legs to keep from blacking out. A passer-by on a bicycle saw and stopped to help. Mom managed to say a few words that explained the situation and the cyclist got in the car and drove her the rest of the way to the hospital. By the time she walked into the emergency department, the staff had set up a private room for us to wait in. That’s never a good sign. I knew it then, but I couldn’t yet wrap my mind around the fact that my dad likely wasn’t coming home with us that day. I remember going to the bathroom while Mom gave a staffer phone numbers to contact friends and relatives. I didn’t want to face the reality. Didn’t know if I could. I remember pleading with the powers that be to save my daddy. I felt like someone or something was listening, but help never came. Within hours, my dad was gone from this life forever.

  Mom was shaken to the core, yet I don’t think her strength was never more evident. She’s human, no doubt about that. But she can handle tending life’s portals. She’s strong when it counts. She was strong on the day Dad left us and she was strong on the day Biscuit did the same. Maybe I can learn from her now. Maybe I can absorb some of her strength. Maybe I should let her take the lead on deciding how to handle this. At least the part about the intruder at her house. If she’s inclined to believe it might have been neighborhood kids, maybe we should leave it at that and move on.

  Roddy places one hand on my forearm and nudges me. I must have been staring absentmindedly while absorbed in my own thoughts.

  “George?”

  I snap back to the present moment, then walk into the kitchen, away from the others, and gesture for Roddy to follow.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say to my father-in-law quietly. “My responsibilities are stretched and could easily end up spread too thin.”

  “And?” he asks.

  “I don’t know if I should go home and make sure Mom is okay or if I should stay here and proceed as planned. We have business to discuss. And we’re having a family vacation.”

  “So, what’s the problem? Talk it through,” he instructs.

  “The problem is the unknown. What if Mom is a target? What if the same people who came after us have their sights on her?”

  “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  “I know, Roddy,” I say, smoothing the hair down on the top of my head the way I do when I’m nervous. “What would you do if you were me? Just tell me what to do. I need somebody to take some weight off my shoulders.”

  Roddy exhales before he speaks. He doesn’t hesitate long though. More and more lately, I notice how confident Roddy is. He maintains his composure no matter the situation. He must have been trained to do so somewhere. No civilian could be quite that calculating.

  “Listen, George,” he begins. “I’ve had to make some insanely difficult decisions in my time. Decisions you wouldn’t believe if I told you about them.”

  “You made those kinds of decisions as a playwright?” I whisper, knowing the answer full well before I even asked the question.

  “Come on,” he replies. “You know there’s more to my past than that. I’ve seen the way you and Liam look at me. You don’t know the details, but you know.”

  “I’d like to know,” I reply.

  “And one day soon you will,” my father-in-law promises. “For now, trust me when I tell you to rely on your military training. And listen to your gut.”

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he says.

  “But, what if…”

  “George, slow down,” he says. Remember your training. Listen to your gut.”

  “I just want everyone— Mom included— to be okay,” I say.

  “We all want that,” he replies. “But what if it isn’t all okay? How are you going to handle it?”

  “Are you saying I should just let Mom fall into harm’s way?” I ask, a rush of anger suddenly boiling inside me.

  “Of course not, George,” he clarifies.

  I immediately regret feeling angry. Roddy isn’t my enemy. Far from it. He’s one of my greatest allies. He would do just as much to protect my family as I would. Like he’s said more than once, it’s his family, too. And Roddy is the kind of man who extends that to my mom as well.

  “It’s alright to be angry,” he says. He can tell how I’m feeling. I guess it’s probably easy to tell. “Anger can be a good thing, George. It can be fuel. Necessary fuel. It fueled us the night we saved Ethan.”

  “Then why am I so conflicted all of the time?” I ask. “I wish I had your confidence.”

  Roddy looks hard at me and leans back against the wall behind him.

  “Can I share an observation?l he asks.

  “By all means,” I answer. “Please do.”

  “Look, I can tell you’re not comfortable with violence. You want to keep a safe distance from the ugly stuff. And a lot of your bellyaching is because you worry about how you’ll handle it if you’re forced to get right up close.”

  “What?” I ask, feeling my face flush.

  “Take the night of the break-in, for example,” Roddy says in a hushed voice so the others don’t hear. “Why did you kick the gun away?”

  “When?”

  “When it was on the ground near the low-life who almost took off with our little boy,” he says. “Come on, George. Think strategically. Why didn’t you pick up the gun in that moment? It would have given you the tactical advantage.”

  I know he’s right, but my mind doesn’t want to absorb what Roddy is saying.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, I have.” My father-in-law asserts. “Let’s suppose the danger your family is in escalates. You’re going to have to start acting more like a trained soldier and less like a confused boy. Do you understand what I’m telling you right now?”

  Something inside me responds to the imperative and the term trained soldier. I stand up straighter. I can feel more strength rising into my chest and flowing all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes.

  Roddy is exactly right. I’ve always wanted to stay at a safe distance from the ugly stuff. A notable example springs to mind. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was one of my first temporary duty assignments as a newly commissioned Air Force officer. I had been assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to work as a predator drone pilot.

  From the safety of my control station in the Nevada desert, I’d been watching the same little girl on the ground in Afghanistan for weeks. She was small and playful, standing not much taller than the wooden table she rested her chubby little elbows on while she waited for villagers to stop and admire the fruit she was selling. Her long, dark hair was tied neatly behind her neck, each strand carefully placed to hold firm as she faced the world alone. It was the same shade of dark brown like mine. She drew shapes in the dirt with her toes when it was slow. No one passing by could see her handiwork behind the brown cloth she had draped over the front of the table. But I could since I watched from above.

  On days when dust blew angrily through the valley, she wrapped a beautiful blue fabric around her nose and mouth to protect her fragile airway from the onslaught. She smiled, even when weather conditions were difficult. I could tell from the crinkles at the edges of her eyes and the swells on the tops of her cheeks. When the wind died down, she took great care to pat the dust off of her colorful patchwork dress, delicately moving over one section at a time. She then did the same for the brown tablecloth. First the dress, then the tablecloth. Always in the same order. She had her methods and she was a creature of habit.

  I got the idea that she was loved. She must have been loved, or else she wouldn’t have been so meticulous in caring for herself and the fruit stand she manned.

  I found myself making up stories about her. It was hard not to. My human nature compelled me to try and fill in the blanks so that everything made sense.
I took what I thought I knew about her life and expanded on it. I liked to imagine she went home to a happy family when she packed up and walked the half-mile back to her modest cinder-block house at the end of each day. She didn’t attend school because girls in her country aren’t afforded the opportunity, but I liked to imagine that her parents taught her to read in the evenings after dinner. It would have been a great risk on their part because they could have been killed if the authorities found out. But it’s a risk I’d have taken if she were my daughter. She seemed bright. It would have been a shame to let her intelligence languish without an education.

  In my mind, I named her Idris. The name means “to study” in Arabic. I looked it up one morning after my shift when I couldn’t get to sleep. I never told anyone else about Idris, aside from including her movements in the daily surveillance reports I was required to file with my superiors. I didn’t mention her name in my reports. Or that I’ve given her one.

  The seemingly random way one baby ends up born into good fortune while another lands in a literal war zone where there’s little to no chance of living more than a short, harrowing life filled with misery and fear is downright heartbreaking. It was then and it still is now. I wished I could have rescued Idris and her parents and brought them here to America where freedoms abound. If I could have done it, I absolutely would have. If her parents weren’t able to make the journey and if they gave their blessing, I would have adopted Idris and raised her as my own. Ali and I were married then and we looked forward to having children one day. We weren’t ready at that juncture since Ali was still in law school and we were both focused on establishing our careers, but we would have found a way to make it work for Idris. I know we would have. I wouldn’t have even needed to ask Ali because I know she would have agreed. It’s ironic that the top-secret status of that mission means that I can never tell Ali about Idris. I find that terribly sad.

  Maybe it was the sensory deprivation that had me so eager to imagine a happy existence for Idris. I was spending twelve hours each day in a dimly lit, metal box which was smacked awkwardly on the desert just outside of Las Vegas alongside rows of others just like it. I worked the night shift from seven in the evening Vegas time to seven in the morning since Afghanistan is a twelve-hour difference halfway around the world. During the day, I utilized the blackout curtains and spent most of my time sleeping.

  Nellis Air Force Base was a fascinating place with an array of state-of-the-art aircraft to drool over, but the working accommodations for drone pilots left much to be desired. We were packed in tight. Our cramped metal boxes barely had enough room for the handful of airmen who worked inside and the monitors and flight equipment we needed to do our jobs. Until then, my time in the military had consisted of completing my Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, followed by Officer Training School, and then an assignment designing drones at my home base in Washington, D.C. I’d been largely removed from the day to day operations handled by the men and women who piloted the machines I designed.

  My higher-ups decided to remedy that situation, so they sent me to work on the front lines of the predator drone operation for ten weeks to observe things from a more hands-on perspective. I’m was four weeks in when the tragedy occurred, and it felt like it had been more like four months. I missed my wife and our comfortable loft. I missed my regular job. And, most of all at that point, I missed being in daylight. I think I was beginning to go a little nutty. And I wasn’t the only one. A guy was pulled from his duty station the week prior after repeatedly expressing concern that the blips on his screen were real people. It was odd to me that those were even considered the front lines anyway when we were conducting remote missions halfway around the world. That aspect of my career field was one I knew about but hadn’t fully considered the implications of until I got there and experienced it for myself.

  Truth be told, I was shaken by the whole mission. I got the idea the powers that be expected drone pilots to feel removed from combat and therefore less affected by its brutalities. After all, we got to step out of our metal boxes and go about our regular lives. The guys I met back then all had nice places to go home to. Most of the single guys lived in cushy apartments or condos, while many of the married guys owned their own homes. The cost of living in the Vegas area was reasonable. An active duty soldier could live comfortably on a pilot’s salary. Not to mention the endless entertainment options to choose from in Sin City. If those men and women had really been flying in a combat zone, they wouldn’t have had that kind of recreation available. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to kiss their loved ones each day. That’s a big deal. They seemed grateful. But they were clearly affected by what we did behind closed doors.

  The week of the event, Ali was scheduled to come to visit and I could hardly wait. I hadn’t seen her since I had arrived for duty four weeks ago. That was way too long. She had a few days off law school, so she hopped on a plane to get back into my arms. She was to be with me for a total of five heavenly days. I couldn’t take any extra time off other than my regularly scheduled weekend, but I knew she’d find something to keep herself busy when I wasn’t around. The hotel room Uncle Sam provided during my time there had a queen bed, so there was plenty of room for Ali to slide on in without us having to incur any additional lodging expenses. I remember wishing Ali could have been with me every weekend. My soul ached for her. So did my body. We had talked about flying her out every Friday then back home to D.C. every Sunday, but she didn’t want to get behind in her studies. We both took our careers very seriously, even back then. I’m not sure my heart could have grown any fonder of my amazing wife, but her absence certainly made me savor every single moment we had together.

  I was coping with the stress of the job reasonably well. I kept up my workout routine. It was often the busy morning rush hour when I found time to get out for a run. I was usually exhausted and weary from the messed up sleep schedule, but I ran anyway. Feeling the ground beneath my feet was my therapy. Being able to propel myself along with my own strong legs as I cruised over local terrain and took in the sounds and smells of the great outdoors was a gift I tried not to take for granted.

  On the morning of the tragedy, I left work as usual when my shift ended at seven. Ali was to be getting on a plane within the next couple of hours and I figured I’d stay awake until I knew her flight had departed on time. I treated myself to a leisurely breakfast at a diner and then went for a morning jog while I waited for the call saying Ali was on the aircraft and headed my way. I’m not sure why, but I took a notion to run right down the sidewalk on the world-famous Las Vegas strip that day. The strip was a little over four miles long, which gave me a solid eight miles total if I went up and back. I’m not sure what compelled me to come out there that particular morning. My hotel was on the North side of the city in a residential area near the airport. I had to come South to the strip, and I’d have to go back north to shower at my hotel and get some rest before picking Ali up at the airport. But it didn’t happen that way.

  I was passing Circus Circus on foot and I could feel the endorphins beginning to kick in when I saw a coworker of mine from Nellis walking into the front of the casino with a rifle in his hands. I could hardly believe my eyes. Cody Hebert had shown signs of psychological distress on the job, but I had no idea just how severe he had been impacted.

  I watched as Cody pushed his way past staff and forced his way into the building. He then reportedly continued back to the hotel tower and rode the elevator to the tenth floor, then took a room key from a member of the housekeeping staff. I had walked around the side of the building towards the rear parking lot to see if I could get a better vantage point on what was happening in the hotel. I was standing on a sidewalk outside trying to make sense of it all when Cody crashed through a window above me and fell to the concrete below, ending his life and splattering himself all over the place in the single most gruesome scene I have ever witnessed.

  The sound his body made when it hit th
e ground was one I’ll never forget for the rest of my days. I was traumatized big time. And it wasn’t over yet.

  When I called my supervisor to let him know about Cody’s death, the inciting incident he reported changed my worldview forever.

  It was Idris.

  Cody had been watching her while I was away. She was usually home for the evening when I left my station, but not always. Every once in a while, she’d stay out longer waiting for the evening crowd if she hadn’t sold all of her fruit during the day.

  That day, things escalated not long after I left when a known terrorist was spotted near where Idris was still on duty at her fruit stand. The orders came fast and from high up. Cody was directed to drop a targeted missile to kill the terrorist. There was no way to warn the innocent people in the vicinity. The element of surprise was critical to taking out the bad guy and the whole thing was deemed necessary for our own national security. Idris and the other non-combatants were considered acceptable losses.

  Cody tried to resist and to talk his way out of taking lethal action, but in the military chain of command, there’s no room for disobeying orders. You can be court-martialed or worse. The entire military structure and effectiveness of the organization rely on the chain of command. There’s no way around it.

  Cody followed orders and pulled the trigger. He dropped the bomb that killed sweet Idris and dozens of other civilians. And he couldn’t live with himself. He had become attached to her just like I had. She had been a bright spot and a human connection. And we destroyed her like it was nothing.

  It was hard for me to understand why Idris’s death was necessary. It seemed like we could have waited and followed the terrorist until he was further away from the public marketplace, avoiding collateral damage. It was also hard for me to understand why Cody’s death was necessary.

  The whole culture of military-operated predator drones and the Airmen who pilot them remotely is inherently tricky. I get that and I know I’ll have to deal with the same issues in my own business, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to reconcile the brutality.