Home Front(59)

“Knife oh-four, do you copy?” Tami said into the radio. “This is Raptor eight-nine.”

The helicopter next to them spiraled to the ground. On impact, a cloud of black smoke billowed up. For a split second, Jolene couldn’t look away.

Tami radioed the crash coordinates into the base. “Knife oh-four, do you copy?”

Jolene made a series of fast turns, evading, varying her airspeed, changing her altitude. Up, down, side to side.

When they were out of range, she turned to look in the back bay. “Is everyone okay?” she said to her crew, hearing back from all of them.

Jolene followed the other Black Hawk into Washington Heliport, landing behind it. She was shaking as she unhooked her MCU vest and seat belt.

She climbed out of the seat and stepped down onto the tarmac. The sky was gunmetal gray, but even in the gloom she could see the thick black smoke still rising up from the crash site. She closed her eyes and said a prayer for the fallen airmen, even though in her heart she knew that no one had survived that explosion. Seconds later, the roar of jet engines filled the night sky; bombs exploded in bursts of red fire. As soon as possible, she knew that a medevac helicopter would go to the site and try to locate survivors and victims.

She couldn’t help thinking that if you were alive and hurt in enemy territory with your bird on fire, it would be the longest wait of your life.

Could she have done something differently? Would a different choice on her part have changed the outcome? They flew in formation to protect one another, but Jolene hadn’t protected her partner aircraft; soon, somewhere across the world, a casualty assistance team would gather to give a family the worst possible news.

Tami and Jamie came up to stand beside her. They stood in front of their helicopter, which was scarred with bullet holes.

No one spoke. Each of them knew that one bullet in the right place, one RPG hit, and they could have been the aircraft on fire in the desert.

“Who’s hungry?” Jamie said, taking off his helmet.

“I’m always hungry,” Smitty said, coming up beside them, coughing. He gave everyone his trademark grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Tonight, for the first time, Smitty looked old. “I sure could use me a Mountain Dew.”

Jamie, as always, kept up a steady stream of conversation as they walked through the Green Zone. Everything he said was funny, and each of them wanted something to smile about. They ate made-to-order stir-fry and homemade milkshakes while the maintenance crew patched up their helicopter. All the while, they talked about anything except what was on their minds.

By midnight, they were back in the air, flying over Baghdad again. They skirted the most dangerous parts of the city. Now and then gunfire rang out—coming from opportunistic insurgents who could hear the helicopter and shot skyward, hoping to hit what they couldn’t see. They landed back at Balad without incident.

Jolene shut down the engine. The rotors slowed by degrees, the thwop-thwop-thwop more drawn out in every rotation.

Jolene finally relaxed in her seat. Through her night-vision goggles, the world looked distorted. Here on the black tarmac, she saw ghostly green images moving in front of her.

Absurdly, she thought of souls, walking away from their bodies; that reminded her of the crew they’d lost.

“My son has chicken pox,” Jamie said from behind her. “Did I tell you that?”

It was what she needed: a reminder of home. “Kids get over that fast. He won’t even remember it in a year. Betsy wanted strawberry Popsicles for every meal.”

“Will he remember that I wasn’t there?”

Jolene had no easy answer for that.

She unhooked the goggles from her helmet and unstrapped from the seat. When she stepped onto the tarmac, a wave of exhaustion overtook her, and it was not an ordinary tiredness; this was bone deep, a kind of standing death.

She wanted to know she’d done everything possible tonight, that she was not in any way at fault, but there was no one to tell her that, no one she could believe, anyway. The thought isolated her, reminded her of how alone she was over here. She wished she could call Michael, tell him about her day and let his voice soothe her ragged nerves. So many soldiers over here had that, a marital lifeline. Like Tami and Carl.

There was little privacy over here, and since Tami and Jolene routinely stood in the phone lines together, they heard each other’s conversations. She heard Tami whispering, I love you so much, baby, just hearing your voice makes me strong again.

She remembered when she and Michael had been like that, each a half of the whole. Tami came up beside her, bumped her hip to hip. “You okay?”

“No. You?”

“No. Let’s call home. I need to hear my husband’s voice,” Tami said.

They walked across the base to the phones. Amazingly, the line was short. There were only two soldiers in front of them.

Jolene let Tami go first, heard her friend say, “Carl? Baby? I miss you so much…”

Jolene tried not to listen. The truth was she needed Michael right now, needed him to say he loved her and that he was waiting for her, that she wasn’t as alone over here as she felt, that she still had a life at home.

When it was finally Jolene’s turn, she dialed home, hoping someone was there. Back there, it was two fifteen on a Saturday afternoon.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Michael.”