Ascending the Boneyard (25 page)

As we fly over, I notice the rotors sound different. Not good different. Bad different. Grinding metal-on-metal different.

Haze notices it too.

“Is something wrong with the—”

“Stay seated. Be sure you're buckled in,” the pilot barks. “Touchdown is going to be rough.”

He cuts off the last word, because the chopper has started listing, kicking up a flurry of activity in the cockpit and a huge amount of dust below. For a second I worry about what happens if those clouds of dirt get caught in the rotor blades, and then I realize that we're in shit up to our elbows already—a little extra dirt isn't likely to change that fact.

Mason grabs on to my hand, and the three of us brace ourselves for impact.

“Rough” doesn't begin to cover it.

The chopper hits the ground with a deafening
thud
, dropping immediately onto its side, where the propeller blades spin themselves into oblivion against the dirt. Chunks of metal go flying everywhere; some even break through the fuselage of the Chinook, sending a spray of glass through the helicopter like a shaken soda bottle.

It takes forever for the pilot to cut the engines, so long, in fact, that I wonder if they're actually
trying
to kill us.

My internal alarms go Code Orange when I realize I'm not the slightest bit hurt.

As soon as the motors and rotors have groaned into silence, one of the commandos rushes up to Mason, unbuckles her, and throws her over his shoulder, carrying her out to safety. So much for me and Haze, apparently.

I look around the dust-choked interior of the helicopter, but I don't see anyone else inside.

“Haze?” I call out, wait for something to come back.

Outside the wreckage, I hear Mason shouting at the commando.

“Get off me! What the hell just happened?”

“This area is known to experience energy fluctuations,” he says. Even from my seat, where I'm stuck struggling to free myself from these ridiculously complex military harnesses, I hear something in his voice that chills me. “Sometimes those fluctuations confuse the machinery.”

I don't believe him for a second.

I have to free myself, see what's going on.

“Yo, Haze?” I call out again. He couldn't have gone too far; the guy was sitting right here two seconds ago.

By now I really wish I hadn't lost my goggles—I can barely see anything in all the smoke and dust. All I know is, Haze must have hopped out already. I'm not sure how.

I reach for my gear and . . .

Face mask.

Haze's face mask is attached to the strap of my bag.

Only Haze is still nowhere to be seen.

I panic-fight to untangle myself from the safety harness. The second I'm free, I clamber to get to the door of the sunny-side up helicopter.

“I demand to know where we are,” Mason says, her tone low and firm, like she's used to being in charge.

“We did not make it all the way to the airbase.”

“Where's my friend?” I yell, stumbling out of the Chinook.

Mason cocks her head at me like a confused puppy.

The commandos stand in mute attention. Before they were purposefully vague, but now they're blatantly refusing to answer me.

“Where's my friend?”

Mason puts her hand on my arm, but I shrug her off.

“Tosh—”

“No! My friend . . . Haze . . . was on the helicopter with us.
He was on the helicopter with us
, and now he's not!”

The commando fingers his rifle. “I'm going to have to ask you to calm down.”

“Tosh,” Mason says, trying to soothe me, trying to placate me, like she's in on it somehow, like
this
is the conspiracy.

I lunge at the commando, but she holds me back. It stops me cold for a second, how strong she is. I was not expecting that.

“Where. Is. My. Friend?” I'm panting, leeching sweat and spit everywhere.

The commando elbows me aside, leans in to Mason closer than she's clearly comfortable with.

“Ms. Barshaw,” he says in a half whisper. “A few moments from now, a vehicle will come by to pick you up. They're going to take you to a safe house. We need to get you off the radar.”

She gazes into the distance, her deep blue eyes filling with tears that she quickly blinks away. She nods without looking at him.

They're starting to break her down.

“I'm going to need your phone,” he tells her, holding his hand out, palm up.

Wait a minute. She didn't do anything—why is she losing weps? What kind of platoon leader strips you of your battle gear for no legitimate reason?

“No!” I call out, body-blocking Mason. “You don't have the authority to—”

Mason's grip tightens so hard around my arm, it starts to tingle. She turns her head, speaks to me over her shoulder.

“If you don't stop talking crazy, you'll get left behind. We can't afford to lose each other.”

She comes back a half turn, holds my gaze a few seconds before letting me go. Without taking her eyes off me, she fishes her cell phone out of her bag and hands it over.

The airman pries open the back, digs out the battery and the SIM card, pockets them, hands the phone back to her the way the commandos handed me that dead bird in Sandusky. She reluctantly takes it.

Seconds later, a VW van chugs up next to us. It's painted the same black-gray-purple motif as the commandos' fatigues, only the van sports tracks instead of tires, like an armored tank. The commando ushers her into the front seat. I stand there, checking and rechecking for Haze over my shoulder, until the commando impatiently waves me over and points to the back. I'm not even all the way in before the van takes off again.

I crush my bag against my chest, grip Haze's face mask with both hands, fight back a wave of tears.

“Sit tight,” the driver hollers over all the racket. “Ride's gonna be bumpy!”

I twist around, watch the smoldering helicopter wreck disappear over my shoulder as we speed off, hoping to catch a glimpse of Haze so I can yell at the driver to stop, to go back, to save him.

How could I have let this happen? The first rule of combat is: never leave a platoon member behind. Abandon no fellow soldier, ever.

I grip my chest against the memory.

Two truck doors.

One slamming right after the other.

And then she left.

21.5

Mason
and I are on the same mission.

22

Before long,
we roll up to the entrance of an adobe church. Mason barely waits for the driver to cut the engine before asking, “What is this place?”

“El Sanctuario.” His overexaggerated pronunciation makes me cringe.

As we pile out of the van, I fully expect further instructions from the driver, or maybe even for a nun to come out and escort us inside.

But no.

“What do we do now?” Mason asks the driver.

“Go inside,” he says. “And wait.”

“Wait for what?” she calls after him as he grinds the gears and sputters off down the road.

We spend a few seconds looking at the smooth mocha-brown facade of the church, at the adobe fence with its rickety wooden gate standing in an open invitation to enter, which we do. Just inside the courtyard, a rugged wooden cross is meant to let visitors know they are in a spiritual place.

Somewhere spiritual.

That's what she wanted.

Learn to fly. Fly away. Somewhere spiritual.

The ache radiates from my organs and cells into the clay and dust and cactus of El Sanctuario.

Mason reaches for my hand, slides her fingers through mine, and I manage somehow to slip back into myself without rupturing.

She seems to have taken a vow of silence as we wander the grounds, through the crosses that occupy nearly every inch of vertical surface. Wrought iron, wood, bamboo—they hang on every fence, stand planted in adobe bases, some are even draped with rosary beads. I've never seen a map that was so littered with religious icons—this is most definitely not my version of the Boneyard.

Mason tugs my hand, and I follow her as she tiptoes into the chapel.

The only light inside comes from sun pouring in through the windows and from small burning candles along nearly every wall. Mason sits on one of the flat wooden pews but doesn't motion me to join her, so I just keep moving through the high-ceilinged sanctuary. For some reason, I need to touch everything, to get the feel of this place on my fingers. The wooden shelves that hold up rows of votives. The hand-painted pictures of saints and angels. Wrought-iron candelabras. A statue of the Virgin Mary, tucked into a small arch carved into the wall. Shadow and light fall over the Virgin's face, and I lean in, run my fingers along the curve of her royal-blue veil. Flashes of memory hit me quick and hard. Devin's Virgin Mary skateboard. The I-Tech raiders decked out in the same shade of blue.

I pull my hand back, look closer at the carved face, at the hair painted the same soft brown as my mom's. The eyes cast downward. The lips bent in eternal sadness, as if the woman in the statue always knew her heart would break someday.

I close my eyes, watch my mom getting into Stan's truck that late afternoon, the way she leaned out the window for one last look at me as I stood there choked with paralyzing grief. I open my eyes again, stroke the statue, think how strange it is that the shadows fall across its face in exactly the same way.

In a flash, it's hot inside the sanctuary—boiling hot, like in the subway catacombs. Sweat pools, then pours down my neck and back. I find an open doorway, slip outside for some cool air.

I end up in a courtyard somewhere in the center of the sanctuary. Get my bearings. Start walking. Follow the high adobe fence that surrounds the complex until I hit another, smaller courtyard. Here, a man-made rock structure houses some kind of built-in shrine with a tiled picture of the Virgin Mary resting against the back wall and a statuette of Jesus kneeling before her. Bouquets of fresh-cut flowers sit at her feet, and rows of rosary beads that I'm guessing people leave behind after saying a prayer hang from a rod across the top. The bottom is covered in candles, most of them lit.