One September Morning (18 page)

Arlington National Cemetery
Noah

I
n every pristine tombstone emerging from the rolling green fields, Noah sees a different incarnation of death.

The torso of a soldier whose legs were removed in the field to extract him from debris.

Flesh blackened from mortar fire and smoke.

A baby with shrapnel peppered through its body.

A soldier, his body looking deceptively whole but for the blood draining from a mortal bullet hole.

Death…it’s everywhere.

And he’s running, not because he thinks he can escape, but because he simply cannot rest.

During his first deployment to Iraq, Noah was assigned to Baghdad General, where army doctors treated wounded members of the armed services, as well as injured Iraqi soldiers and civilians. A registered nurse, Noah had just taken his state licensing exam when John talked him into enlisting.

“We can’t sit back and let this happen to America,” John had said. “It’s our job to stop terrorism at its source, and I’m going to go over there and do it. Our country needs us now, Noah. Good people, the people on those planes, innocent victims. Children. Americans should have an expectation of safety, and it falls on the shoulders of the military to make that happen.” As John lifted his beer, Noah glanced beyond him to Elliot Bay. Noah remembered that moment so vividly these days, he could almost taste the beer—a porter. He could feel the smooth glossed table under his fingertips. And the heated passion burning through his brother singed like a broiler.

It had started with John’s free Sonics tickets. Noah was bucking for a celebration after finishing his nursing boards, and John suggested he drive into Seattle to catch some basketball. Noah had expected beer and bonding, but then John had hit him with this…this crevice in the road.

They sat at a table by a window in the Pyramid Alehouse, and Noah recalled looking out at the water, realizing how dark and bleak it became at night. An abyss. A few steps off the dock under their window would be like falling off the edge of the earth.

Just as his brother was proposing.

Noah didn’t want to go. He had no intention of fighting in a war. “Why would I sign up to shoot people?” he asked his brother.

“Is that what you think Dad does?” John asked.

“Not anymore, but yeah, he did. And it’s not for me. I made the choice to try to help people. I’m into healing, man.”

“And here’s the irony,” John said quietly. “Because we want the same thing, but the only way to heal this nation, the only way to help, in the wake of worldwide terrorism, is to stop the killing.” He sat back and sipped his beer. John always had perfect timing, knowing when to shut up and let those silent spaces eat away at you. “And you are not really doing your part to heal this nation by staying in your cushy bubble, tapping the air out of some old codger’s IV line.”

Noah braced himself against the table, his fingernails digging into the laminate of the wood. The challenge was well-precedented. He’d spent his life proving himself, answering the call, prompted by: “I can throw stones farther than you.” Or, “I’ll bet you can’t run to the mailbox and back in less than thirty seconds.” Or, “You can’t jump from the roof of the shed—you’re too little.”

This time, Noah wasn’t going to jump. “You need to do what you have to do,” he told his brother. “I just invested two years in nursing school, and I’m going to put it to use.” And nurses do more than tap air out of an IV line, he wanted to add.

“What if you can use your nursing skills to serve your country?” John lifted two fingers to the waiter, ordering another round. “You can enlist and serve in a medical unit.”

And that was the point where Noah started to lose the argument. Two beers later, they were brothers-in-arms.

Noah had been so green and earnest, fresh out of nursing school and wanting to help, thinking he could make a difference…until he was assigned to the hospital in Baghdad.

It was so different from nursing school, where patients were somewhat sanitized and other nurses and aides were readily available to consult about a patient’s needs or bitch about pulling a double shift. Here, gruesome victims were airlifted in every day, and “Stat” was called so often, Noah dreamed he was stuck doing triage on an endless line of soldiers.

When Noah had read about tourniquets and amputations in nursing school, he’d assumed that sort of medicine had ended with the Civil War. And yet in his first shift in the Baghdad ER, he’d watched in horror as a surgeon used a saw to remove a patient’s arm—a sickening procedure that converted him to vegetarianism and made him vow never to enter a butcher shop again. He soon learned that amputation was not uncommon. When a knee had been shattered into jelly, the leg bone draping, there was no talk of knee replacement or orthopedic surgeons. The term “cutting losses” began to have new meaning.

“This war is unusual in that we’re able to save ninety percent of the wounded who come through our doors,” one of the doctors explained in a morning conference one day. “But in order to do that, we have to amputate limbs. There’s just no other way around it.”

How many times had he woken up shrieking in the middle of the night, reaching for his leg or his arm or his foot, sure that he’d walked into an IED and lost a limb while he was unconscious?

Yes, his stint at Baghdad General had cured him of all confidence in the medical profession, all hope in humanity. To think that people created these bombs, that they sat by the roadside for weeks waiting for the right time to detonate, disturbed him deeply. Or the suicide bombers with backpacks or vests loaded with enough explosives to turn their own bodies to a bloody mist. What had happened in their lives to bring them to such a depraved, brutal place?

The worst part was seeing kids in pain, and there was plenty of that in the hospital where they treated American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, and civilians. It tears at you to see a baby with shrapnel in her tiny body, a small bundle so still you know it’s over.

Little girls with fat tears rolling down their cheeks because some of their fingers have been blown off.

He still hears the screams, gut-wrenching screams, and hopeless moans of pain.

He sees himself walking down the hospital corridor at the end of his shift, his body limp from physical and mental exhaustion. And there, on the floor of the waiting room, which is blessedly quiet and empty, sits a child’s pair of sandals, tiny shoes with a cartoon character printed on the straps, caked in blood. They’ve been abandoned, their owner obviously having been rushed inside to a curtained bay for treatment.

Noah left those shoes on top of the reception desk that night, but they were still there when he returned for work the next day, and the next day, until he tossed them into the Lost and Found and tried not to think about what happened to the child they belonged to.

It occurred to him then that, while a soldier chose to go to battle, a child had no choice. The war came to these children, driving bullets into their homes, pounding through familiar streets and marketplaces.

But he and John, they chose to go to Iraq. They enlisted in the Rangers with that very intention—to go where the terrorists were, to stop the siege.

In the beginning, Noah had enjoyed working side by side with his brother. Basic training was like extended Boy Scout camp, pushing to the limit, sparring, sleeping in tents. He remembers sparring with his brother, defending himself against John’s mean right hook. John had a skill for boxing, but Noah was the superior swordsman. God help him, he’d actually enjoyed bayonet training, stabbing the dummies.

It’s all fun and games until the dummies become real bodies.

And now he’s stuck in the middle. He’d rather die than return to the bloodbath and terror in the Middle East. He can’t turn back time and return to the scarred old oak dining table, sitting across from John, who’d instigate a secret kick fight under the table. John would find a way to crack everyone up, and Noah had, on more than one occasion, spewed milk from his nose.

This got him in a heap of trouble. Of course, Noah was the one who got in trouble. Always Noah.

Like in basic training when Noah stabbed the dummy and a swarm of angry bees emerged. Apparently they’d been nesting inside the dummy, building their fortress in the stuffing, and they did not appreciate the interruption of the bayonet slicing through.

Noah got stung, causing an anaphylactic reaction. He’d always been allergic, but somehow the adrenaline rush of basic training, getting pumped and feeling mightier than a gladiator, gave him false confidence that he could overcome a little bee sting.

He ignored the swelling. At least, he tried to until his throat began to close up and he went down. John grabbed an Epi-Pen from the unit’s first aid kit and stabbed him in the thigh with it. Later, over beers, they’d had a good laugh about it, how Noah had almost been eliminated by a yellow jacket. “Taken down by a mighty bee,” John teased.

Now, Noah thinks of the bee allergy and wonders if maybe it’s a way out.

Bees. Bees might be his salvation.

Al Fallujah, Iraq

W
here is the media now?

He hands the Ping-Pong paddle over to another guy and slams out into the deserted compound, a scattering of bungalows not much bigger than those plastic houses on a Monopoly board. This place is a ghost town without his posse—the paparazzi.

Stanton’s death brought them out in droves: big-name reporters, aloof photographers, cameramen from all the major networks. They came with a million questions, and he played host, ready and willing to answer. A role model. A rising star.

And man, the spotlight is sweet. The taste of power makes his blood surge, liquid steel in his veins. Energy radiates when the camera is on him, the eye of the world watching in awe. The camera loves him, and he’s happy to deliver a good show.

But in just a few days’ time, the media attention to the platoon has dried up. The journalists and photographers and cameramen packed their gear and headed off to hotels with showers in Kuwait.

And he’s left boomeranging back to the life of a drone in Camp Despair.

Withdrawal from the limelight is tough when you’ve got to go cold turkey. Although some of the other guys in the platoon seem relieved to have the cameras gone, he feels let down. None of this is worth the fucking effort if all those people back home can’t see the sacrifices he’s making. There’s nothing worse than working without getting credit. When he was a kid, his older brother used to bamboozle him into back-breaking work, trick him into doing all his chores, and then that bastard would take all the credit when the old man got home.

And he promised himself he won’t be taken advantage of anymore. Never again.

He wants the media back. Now.

And the quickest way to get the media sniffing around is action.

It’ll be hard to match the media buzz of Stanton’s death, but you got to work with what you got.

He pulls the door to the platoon’s bungalow open and finds it empty but for Gunnar McGee snoring away on his cot. That man can drop off in seconds—a true gift, the ability to nap on cue and block out the world so completely.

The soles of his boots tread lightly on the floor as he walks the length of the small room, pondering how to make it happen. Nothing too obvious. Nothing that could be traced back to him.

So far, no one has drawn the line to him as a suspect in Stanton’s murder, and he doesn’t think anyone is the wiser, except maybe Emjay Brown, who’s been nuttier than a fruitcake since the shooting. He would be worried that Brown saw him, if he hadn’t disabled Brown’s NOD himself.

In the end, the whole warehouse scenario had worked out perfectly, especially since that pussy Spinelli had cut his knee outside and needed the medic to bandage his boo-boo. That made two fewer people in the warehouse to see him, and two fewer soldiers to help John.

He paces past the rack of bunks, climbing up to see what Spinelli is reading.
MAD
magazine. The goddamned nose picker. He doesn’t belong in this man’s army.

Checking the door to make sure no one is coming, he reaches for the NOD beside Spinelli’s bunk and dislodges a part of the device. Not that he wishes anyone harm, but if something happens to Spinelli, he won’t be shedding any tears. The platoon can go on without Spinelli.

He is the weakest link.

Fort Lewis
Sharice

W
hen Sgt. Palumbo tears a blueberry muffin apart over the paperwork, Sharice has to look away. It probably doesn’t matter if the papers get stained with crumbs, but she doesn’t want to see it. She wants the funeral to go off without a hitch, and messy means mistakes.

Of course, it would have helped a great deal if Abby had handled some of these arrangements when she visited Arlington National Cemetery, but…oh, well. This is no time to push the girl beyond her stress limit.

“Does the family have any religious affiliations?” the sergeant asks.

Sharice wants to laugh, thinking of the answer her father used to give. “We believe in army,” he used to say.

Indeed, the U.S. Army was the superpower that gave measure and meaning to their lives throughout her childhood. She still remembers climbing out of the swimming pool at Fort Hollabird just before sundown each summer evening to face the flagpole while the flag was lowered and a soldier played taps on a bugle. There were the moves every two to three years, watching her mother pack her room into boxes, or, when she was older, carefully wrapping and stowing her own mementos and diaries. She remembered those notorious first days at a new school in Colorado, or Panama, or Georgia. The army brat label fit like a glove.

Her sister envied the kids who could stay and graduate from the school next door to their kindergarten, but Sharice knew she would be bored with that life, that she’d be leaning on the fence every day, looking and longing for change.

The army was in her blood; from her father she learned fierce patriotism, and from her mother she inherited the household equivalent of combat readiness.

When she met Jim while attending an Officers’ Club function with her father, she couldn’t deny his good looks, but it was his conviction to “make a career of it” that sealed their future together.

“Sharice? You must have some religious preference.” Sgt. Palumbo wipes his hands with a napkin. “Not that it’s necessary, but it sounds a bit cold to say no preference.”

“Methodist,” she answers, “but I’d like to have the religious service conducted by the staff chaplain at Arlington Cemetery.”

He nods, filling in the form.

“And can you check on the caisson? Make sure it will work for the urn. I thought we’d have a casket to carry when I ordered it.”

“We’ll handle that. One thing I have to ask you about is media coverage. We’ve had several inquiries from news agencies wanting to cover the funeral, but what is your feeling about it? We will, of course, respect the family’s wishes, but I know there’s been at least one request to televise the service at Arlington Cemetery.”

“Television coverage…” Goose bumps rise on her upper arms at the suggestion. John’s funeral is to be a nationwide event. A historic moment.

“It would be handled respectfully, of course,” he says quickly. “With the telephoto lenses and all the technology available, the cameras would be kept a discreet distance from the mourners, and—”

“Yes, yes, it’s fine.” Sharice may sound a bit too enthusiastic, but she can’t deny that this request warms her heart. America has embraced her son’s heroism—people want a chance to honor him and say their good-byes. This is all that a mother could ask for.

As Sgt. Palumbo goes on to describe the various components of the military honor service, Sharice bites her lip, restraining a twinge of emotion over the many ways her son John had made Jim and her proud.

She still remembers the day John and Noah came to her, together, to tell her that they’d enlisted in the army. “I know you and Dad were disappointed when I decided not to attend West Point,” John told her. “But I’m going to make it up to you, I promise.”

He had more than made it up to her, but then John was not one to disappoint. He realized nothing could please her more than knowing her sons were walking in their father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, serving their country.

John had understood these things, but Noah…there was a boy who marched to a different drummer.

And now, refusing to come home before the funeral…it niggles at the back of her brain. Sharice wants to know more than a phone call will reveal. What’s going on with him, really? Of course, he’s grieving over John’s death, everyone is feeling the loss. But shouldn’t he be home, mourning with his family?

Noah was always the quiet child, the one who would rather hole up in his room with a book than play football or tag out in the yard with the neighborhood kids. Quiet is one thing, but he needs to communicate with his family at a time like this. Sharice vows to pull him in line when she sees him back east before the funeral.