Home Front(66)

She walked beside Tami toward the trailer that housed the Charlie Company flight-planning room. They didn’t bother to talk; they were both too tired to make the effort. It was 2200, and they’d already flown two missions today. Yesterday had been even busier.

Jolene stepped up the muddy wooden steps and entered the trailer. The walls were covered with pieces of paper—schedules, reports, flyers, calendars. Every aircraft’s route was tracked from here. Computer screens sat on every desk. Here was where they stored all their machine guns and ammo and flight gear.

As she stepped into the trailer, the electricity snapped off and everything went dark. She heard someone say, “Shit. Again?”

Jolene knew the generator would kick in soon, but she was supposed to be at the helicopter in five minutes. “Zarkades, sir,” she said into the darkness. “You have a mission plan for Raptor eight-nine?”

There was a rustle of paper, then the creaking of footsteps on the plywood floor. “Air assault, Chief. You and Raptor four-two are going to Al Anbar. We have a marine unit trapped in a ditch. They’re taking heavy fire.”

The generator started up; the lights came on.

Captain Will “Cowboy” Rossen was standing in front of her, holding out her orders.

“Yes, sir.”

The captain nodded. “Be safe.”

Jolene and Tami went to the small room attached to the op center and retrieved their things. Jolene put on her heavy vest with the Kevlar plating and grabbed her flight bag. As they walked down the muddy streets, it started to rain. She looked up, saw a layer of pale gray clouds cover the stars.

“Shit. Viz is deteriorating,” Jolene said.

They increased their pace, boots sloshing through the mud. Jolene felt Jamie come up beside her, but neither of them said anything as they headed to their aircraft. Then Smitty showed up, strapping his helmet on as he walked.

“Your turn in the left seat?” Tami said when the bird was checked out and ready to go.

Jolene nodded and climbed into the left seat and strapped herself in. She clicked the night-vision goggles onto her helmet and pulled them into place.

In less than five minutes they were taking off, rising to just below the cloud cover.

It was a two-helicopter mission. They flew together, always in contact, across the black expanse of desert, over Baghdad to Al Anbar province, just past Fallujah.

As they came into Fallujah’s airspace from the north, the first round of machine gun fire sounded. The tap-tap-tap on the fuselage was small-arms fire.

“Raptor eight-nine, taking fire, seven o’clock, two hundred meters,” Jolene said into the comm. The other helicopter responded instantly.

“Raptor four-two taking fire, nine o’clock, banking right.”

They flew over a small village. A machine gun was set up on a rooftop, shooting at them.

Jolene scanned the area below; her night-vision goggles revealed dozens of greenish-white dots moving through the darkness. The soldiers trapped in the ditch or insurgents looking for them? She reached forward to flip a toggle switch, and everything exploded.

An RPG hit the fuselage so hard she was thrown sideways; her right foot arced up and kicked the instrument panel.

The cockpit filled with smoke. Flames filled the back of the aircraft; she could feel the heat. Jolene called out for her crew, got no response. She clutched the cyclic and tried to keep them in the air, but they were falling—plunging—downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

The power on engine number two went crazy; the instrument panel went dark. Nothing. Not even engine temperature.

She called out to her crew again, told them to brace for impact, and then she tried to Mayday her position, but the smoke was so intense she couldn’t breathe. All she got out was “Mayday—” before they crashed.

*



After a long day spent taking depositions of the police officers who interrogated Keith Keller, Michael came home, dead on his feet, and made dinner for his daughters—one of Jolene’s chicken and rice recipes that he found in the overstuffed three-ring binder. Later, when the girls were asleep, he walked out to the empty family room, standing there alone, noticing how quiet the house was.

An unusual emotion rose up in him, so odd that it took him a moment to recognize it. Loneliness.

For so long, he’d felt a kind of simmering anger at being Mr. Mom, felt emasculated by being responsible for his children and the cooking and shopping. He’d blamed Jolene for leaving him adrift on a sea of responsibilities he didn’t want and which he barely knew how to perform. But in the last few weeks, it had changed. He’d changed. He’d found a new side of himself; he loved reading to Lulu before bed, hearing her quirky questions about the stories, watching her small finger point at the pictures. He loved it when Betsy sat by him at night, watching TV and telling him stories from school. He loved how they’d become a team at the grocery store, working together, how a game of Candyland could make them all laugh.

He missed Jolene. How was it he hadn’t foreseen what his life would be like without her?

She was so far away, and every day she was getting shot at, dodging IEDs, changing in ways he couldn’t imagine. And what had he given her to take with her? I don’t love you anymore.

He walked over to the TV, turned it on. Her latest tape was in the machine, as always; the girls watched it endlessly.