Beyond the Point(94)
Had she known what the day would entail, would she have smiled at the sun? Had she known, would she have laughed?
In the eight months since they’d arrived in Afghanistan, Hannah’s platoon had built six infantry outposts like this for incoming troops. From their headquarters in Sharana—where Ebrahim’s family lived—her platoon would convoy out far into the desert into hotly contested areas and get to work building, so that a surge of troops could arrive and retake the territory from the Taliban. Everything they built was temporary. An infantry team would secure the area while Hannah’s platoon built tents, dug trenches, and assembled plumbing for a future bathroom trailer. It took two days to get the first tents erected, so her engineers would have a place to sleep. Then they built a simple sand wall for defense, which took about four days. Then they’d move on to digging trenches for bathroom facilities.
They’d arrived in mid-October. By the time they left a month later, the outpost would be ready to house NATO troops for a short-term deployment, fighting in the hills no more than five minutes from where they stood. Hannah’s soldiers worked round the clock in 120-degree heat, always aware that they were sitting ducks. After three weeks in this remote location, her hands were showing evidence of all her hard work, and her body ached. Dirt caked under her fingernails; calluses formed on her palms. And every morning, she found handfuls of her hair on her pillow—it had started to fall out because of the stress.
Two days ago, her platoon had returned from dropping supplies and soccer balls at a nearby school. Since then, the little boy’s angry face had haunted Hannah’s dreams. But the physical exhaustion helped her sleep at night, even when she knew that Tim had arrived in Kuwait, hundreds of miles away, and was preparing to fight his own war. If she’d been at home, Hannah was certain she wouldn’t have been able to function knowing he was in harm’s way. But if Tim was going to be deployed, at least she was here, distracted by her own mission. It felt good to do work that mattered. And the harder she worked, the faster the time seemed to pass.
It hadn’t crossed Hannah’s mind that she might want time to slow down.
ONCE THE TARIN Kot tactical operations center was up and running, Hannah had spent several hours connecting a secure cable to the post’s sole computer. Technically, the line was only supposed to be used for military communications and since there were so many people around, there wasn’t much privacy. But with the few spare moments Hannah had alone with the only secure Internet connection, she decided to take a risk.
iCasualties.org, a rudely named website, logged all military casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Hannah checked it at least once a week when she was at FOB Sharana. It wasn’t a fancy website. No graphics. No photos. Just a crude table of data. Each row described a tragedy. Every column defined the details. Date, name, rank. Age, cause of death, place of death. Military branch, hometown, unit. The final column listed the soldier or officer’s current duty station. Most newspapers could, from one line of text, write an entire obituary.
Hannah scanned the most recent additions. She looked at the dates first—in October, 107 U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Thirty-four more had been added to the list since the first of November. After scanning the dates, Hannah skimmed the names for any she recognized. It was a morbid ritual—a sacrament Hannah knew every soldier and officer and wife and mother had completed more than once over the last four years. But by reading the list, searching for names she knew, Hannah inadvertently honored the names she didn’t.
Martinez, Misael, a staff sergeant from North Carolina.
Powell, Kyle W., twenty-one years old.
Hannah had read the names so many times that she’d learned to do it unemotionally. But every now and then, a name would stop her from scrolling, and the weight of anonymous loss would hit her all at once.
Seymour, David S. “Scotty.” Specialist. 24. Hostile—hostile fire—small-arms fire.
Hannah wondered who’d given him the nickname and whether he liked it or hated it, smiled or sulked when guys called him “Scotty.” He and Hannah were the same age. Twenty-four. This year, her birthday had passed without much fanfare. Tim had mailed her a care package, but as of last week, it still hadn’t arrived.
After she scanned iCasualties.org, she opened an e-mail that had arrived from Tim. Two sentences, short and to the point, like all his e-mails. But for some reason, this one left Hannah with a heavy feeling in her chest, like her lungs were filling with water.
Heading out for a ten-day mission. I’ll be in touch when we get back. RILY.
RILY had become their secret code. Their shorthand for all the emotions wrapped up in these months apart. Remember I love you. She remembered. It was forgetting so she could focus on anything other than her fear that was the hard part.
“LIEUTENANT NESMITH!”
Private Murphy called to her from across the build site, holding a two-way radio in his hands. An eighteen-year-old kid from Arkansas with a girlfriend at home and an unhealthy obsession with NASCAR racing, Murphy was a great soldier. Tough as nails, and always the last one to put away his tools. Hannah had grown to respect him.
“Yeah, Murph,” she yelled. “What’s up?”
“They’re saying we’ve got a big one coming. Twenty miles out.”
“Shit,” Hannah cursed, shocked at the profanity that came out of her own mouth. But there honestly couldn’t have been any worse news. It was sandstorm season in Afghanistan, and though they’d prepared for this possibility, Hannah had never expected it would come so soon. Twenty minutes wasn’t long enough. But it was all she had left.