Home Front (25 page)

Besides, she knew what it looked like in there: cot after cot filled with the damaged and the dying. Gruesome, devastating injuries were survivable in this modern age. The field docs were nothing short of miracle workers.

It wasn’t just soldiers, either. Inside lay rows of Iraqi civilians, children and women, who’d been too close to an exploding IED or been hit by mortar fire. The smell was terrible, made worse by the unrelenting heat.

A doctor ducked through the tent’s canvas opening and held it open behind him. Six soldiers followed him out, pushing four gurneys. On each lay the black-bagged remains of a soldier.

Jolene and Tami immediately stood at attention and saluted. The look that passed between them was as solemn as the mood: each was thinking of how it would feel if the other were in that bag. Somewhere close by a mortar round hit, exploded through concrete. No one even flinched.

The doctor looked as weary as Jolene felt. He placed a hand on each one of the bagged bodies in turn and said simply, “Thank you.”

Jolene’s throat tightened. She looked down at the gurneys, knowing that the lost soldiers deserved this last measure of respect from all of them. One of the bags was small, too small, a bad thing. It meant that pieces were missing. The result of an IED or RPG probably. Beside each body was a small clear bag containing personal effects. Even though the bag was marked with bloody fingerprints, she could see the watch and dog tags and wedding ring inside.

It made her think of Betsy, holding up Jolene’s dog tags, asking if they would identify her …

The silence stretched a second more, and then someone said “Captain Craig” inside the tent, and the doctor went back inside.

Led by the gurneys and their silent watchmen, the two Black Hawk crews walked across the base to the waiting helicopters. Here again, the exact manner of transport was prescribed.

At Jolene and Tami’s helicopter, Jamie and Smitty saluted the bodies again; then they loaded the fallen soldiers onto the helicopter, using exquisite care, placing them just so.

As the loading went on, soldiers came from all over, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, and formed two straight lines out from the helicopter’s open side door, saluting their fallen friends one final time.

She wondered who these fallen soldiers were. Husbands? Fathers? Mothers? Did their families know yet that their worlds had changed?

Jolene and Tami nodded to each other and climbed into the aircraft. Tami was left seat today. She leaned forward, placed the white hero-mission card in the windshield.

Jolene strapped herself into the right seat and began the preflight checklist. The helicopter doors were closed. Within moments, they were taking off amid a swirl of beige sand.

Below, the soldiers began to disperse.

On the flight to the Baghdad airport the crew was quiet, as they always were on hero missions. The deaths weighed heavily on their minds. The war had begun to heat up in the past few months. It had begun to be normal to be shot at, to be hit. Jolene heard the
ping!
of machine gun fire hitting a helicopter in her sleep and often woke up screaming. Last week, a bullet had gone through the window beside her head, shattering it, and bounced off her helmet. She’d felt the slightest
thwack
to her head and kept flying. Only later did she begin to have nightmares about it, to imagine her head exploding, her body coming back to her children in a black bag that was twelve inches too short.

By the time they made it back to Balad, Jolene was beyond exhausted. She hadn’t slept well in weeks, and it was beginning to take a toll on her. She couldn’t remember the last time there hadn’t been a middle-of-the-night mortar attack. She slept through the shelling but woke to the sound of the blaring alarm.

After the end of the mission, the maintenance crew swarmed to check out the helicopter. Jolene and her team walked away. On this dark night, there was no camaraderie, no “let’s go to the DFAC for pie.” Each of them, like Jolene, was thinking how thin a piece of luck separated them from the bodies they’d transported today.

“You okay, Tami?” Jolene said as they reached their trailer.

Tami stopped. “No. Not really.”

They walked into the trailer. Tami flipped a light switch; on came the fluorescent bulb on the ceiling. Instantly, the dark little space was illuminated. There were family photographs everywhere—and a movie poster of Johnny Depp from
Pirates of the Caribbean
on the wall.

Tami sat down on her bed. It sagged in the middle; dust puffed up from the army-green bedding. The alarm sounded.

Jolene heard footsteps running past her trailer. She sat down opposite Tami.

Somewhere, something exploded; the lights in the trailer flickered and remained on.

When the alarm stopped and the world stilled, Tami went on as if nothing had happened: “Carl says Seth is having a hard time. Kids are making fun of him because of us. It makes me want to kick some preteen ass.”

“Michael just says the girls are fine.”

Tami looked up. “It’s not like you’re telling him the truth, either.”

“We’re hardly talking. He hasn’t sent me a single e-mail.” Jolene bent over, began unlacing her boots.

“You are getting a care package once a week. Who’s buying all that stuff and mailing it?”

“My guess? Mila. And the girls.”

“Have you written him?”

Jolene sighed. “You know I haven’t. What would I say?”

“Maybe he’s thinking the same thing.”

“I’m not the one who said I wanted a separation.”

“Are you really going to play chicken with your marriage from here?”

“I didn’t start it.”

“Who cares? Look at what we did today.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s how fast it happens, Jo. Dead. Alive.” She snapped again. “Dead. This is the time to say what needs to be said, not to play games. Your parents were losers who scarred you. I get it, I really do. But you have to find the cojones to talk to your husband or you guys are going to lose everything.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Tam. Your husband loves you.”

“It’s not easy, Jolene. None of this is easy, you know that. Michael loves you,” Tami said. “I know it.”

“No. I don’t think he does.”

“Do you love him?”

There it was, the question she’d spent months avoiding. Leave it to Tami to throw it out like the first pitch in a baseball game. “I don’t know how to stop loving him,” she answered quietly, surprising herself. “It’s in my blood. But…”

“But what? Isn’t that your answer?”

“No.” Jolene sighed. Really, she didn’t want to think about this, or talk about it. “Love is only part of it. Like forgiving is only part. Even if I could forgive him, how would I forget? He stopped loving me, Tam. Just stopped. He looked me in the eyes and said he didn’t love me anymore. How can I trust him again? How can I believe in our marriage, in forever together, if our love has some expiration date?”

“Just don’t give up. That’s all I’m saying. Write him a letter.
Start.
”

Jolene knew it was good advice. She believed in fighting for love; at least she once had. Lately, she had trouble remembering what she believed and who she used to be. “I’m afraid,” she said after a long silence.

Tami nodded. “He broke your heart.”

Jolene looked at her friend, sitting across from her in their dingy, smelly trailer, and she thought how lucky they were to have each other over here. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Tam. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Tami smiled. “I love you, too, Jo.”

Fourteen

“We’ve got an emergency situation that’s going bad fast,” the captain said. “We need to run search and rescue in a very tight spot. Reports give us a narrow weather window. We need two helicopters in the air in fifteen minutes or less.” He turned to point at a map. “Here. We’ve got two army rangers trapped by enemy fire.”

“We can be up in ten,” Jolene assured him. She looked at Tami, who nodded sharply, and led the way to the tarmac. There was no conversation along the way.

As they walked across the base, a sharp wind blew up dust that bit into skin and eyes; it raked the flag overhead, whipped it into a frenzy. After a quick check of her craft, Jolene climbed into the left side of the cockpit and took her seat.

She was the first one inside, but within seconds, the crew was all in place. Jolene ran the preflight check, cleared departure with the tower, and started the engine.

The aircraft climbed slowly into the air as she worked the controls—her hands and feet in constant motion. With each mile flown, the dust storm intensified. Wind smacked their windshield.

“Deteriorating viz,” Jolene said. She reached over, flipped a toggle switch, and glanced at her instrument readings. Wind gusted against them, pushed the Black Hawk sideways. A pothole of air sucked at the rotors; the helicopter dropped two hundred feet in a plunging, heart-stopping second. “Hold on, guys,” Jolene said into her mouthpiece. She clung to the bucking, jerking controls and steadied the Hawk.

At the search vector, it took all of Jolene’s upper-body strength to descend evenly in the maelstrom. Below them, the land was craggy, broken.

“There’s nowhere to land,” Jamie called out.

“Roger that,” Jolene said. She worked the two foot pedals, finding the delicate balance between the tail and main rotors.

“There!” Smitty said. “At one o’clock.”

Jo held the helicopter in a hover, but every second was a fight. Wind clawed at them, kept battering the aircraft. On the rugged desert floor below, she could just make out the two soldiers. They were obviously taking heavy fire. Bullets pinged off the aircraft.

Jamie shoved the door open and laid down a heavy cover of fire.

“All clear,” he said after a few seconds. “Good to land.”

A blast of dust and wind gusted through, swinging the Hawk side to side.

“Low and slow,” Jolene said into her mic. She lowered the aircraft slowly to the ground. The other helicopter remained in the air, covering them.

Jolene watched her gauges closely as they rescued the two army rangers.

When the soldiers were safely loaded in the back bay, Jolene finally breathed a little easier. In seconds, they were back in the air, flying toward the base.

There, they heard about another helicopter that had gone down near Baghdad, killing the whole crew.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. Everytime she closed her eyes, she saw helicopters hurtling to the ground, heard people screaming. She saw children, dressed in black, huddled around a flag-draped casket; a soldier in dress uniform walking to her front door … Finally, she gave up trying. Turning on her small light, she reached for her journal.

AUGUST

I love flying. I’ve always loved it, and I’m proud to be here, doing my job, helping my country. But there’s this fear in me lately, a terrible, frightening thing, like a bird flapping to get out of my chest. I have a bad feeling.

The things I’ve seen stay with me. Even in sleep, I can’t get rid of them—arms and legs blown off, soldiers dying, pictures of children pinned to trailer walls, curling in the heat. Every time I take off, I wonder: will this be it? I imagine my family getting the worst news.

Tami keeps telling me I need to reach out to Michael. She tells me how much Carl is helping her cope with what we’re facing. She says I am being stubborn and playing chicken with my marriage.

But how can I take her advice? How can I talk to Michael—Michael, whom I loved from the moment he first kissed me—Michael, who is my family. Or was, until he said he didn’t love me anymore. I watched my mom do that, year after year, reach out for a man who’d stopped loving her. It ruined her. I never thought I’d be like her. Am I?

Am I losing myself out here or just falling out of love with him? Or is this just a part of war? I know that no one at home can matter too much. My friends over here are the people who have my six, the people who will save me and cover me.

It’s not enough sometimes, though. Sometimes, I need … Michael.

I need him. But I don’t want to. I don’t trust him to be there for me. Not anymore.

No wonder I feel so alone. And now my damn watch alarm is going off, reminding me …

*   *   *

August passed in a blur of hot, lazy blue-skied days. Betsy and Lulu were busy almost all the time, going to day camps and spending time at the Green Thumb with Mila. Lulu’s fifth birthday party had gone off without a hitch, although it had been a quieter version of earlier parties.

On this Thursday morning, the sun rose hot and bright into a cloudless blue sky. It would be a glorious summer day. At nine thirty, Michael pushed away from his home computer and went upstairs. He knocked on the girls’ bedroom doors, saying, “Wake up, sleepyheads,
Yia Yia
will be here in a half an hour to pick you up.”

Then he went downstairs and put breakfast on the table. French toast with fresh blackberries. “Come on, girls,” he yelled again.

Sipping his coffee, he turned on the TV in the family room.

“… in heavy fighting last night near Baghdad. The helicopter, a Black Hawk flown by female warrant officer Sandra Patterson, of Oklahoma City, was hit by an RPG and crashed within seconds, killing everyone on board…”

Pictures of bright-eyed soldiers in uniform filled the screen, one after another …

“I thought women weren’t allowed in combat,” Betsy said quietly behind him.

Michael thought,
God help me.
It was bad enough that he’d just heard the report, and now he had to comfort his daughter. How could he reassure her when the truth was obvious to both of them?

What would Jolene do? What would she want him to do?

He turned slowly, saw the tears in Betsy’s eyes. She looked as fragile and shaky as he felt right now.