“Thanks, Monty, you’re a real professional,” I said. Then Del Rio and I walked away and got into the car.
I took the wheel. I backed out slowly, then drove along the driveway, dust billowing up behind us.
Chapter 81
I HAD BEEN working the Schoolgirl case hard—for the girls, for Justine, a little of both, and had finally gotten to sleep. The buzzing of the phone jerked me out of a dream. My heart was pumping so hard, I thought I’d bust a valve. I opened the phone, didn’t even bother to let the caller speak.
I shouted, “Not yet,” then slammed the phone down on the table.
That bastard. I was so close to getting it. So close to figuring it out. I almost had it. What was I missing about Afghanistan and that exploding helicopter?
I dropped my head back onto the pillow. The dream was still vivid in my mind, and it played out like a movie on the blank screen of the ceiling.
The dream matched up with what I remembered of that day. I’d been standing at the ramp of the CH-46. I heard artillery popping from the fifty-cals as the helicopter burned. Men screamed.
Danny Young was on his back in the dark. His flight suit was soaked with his blood, so much of it, I couldn’t see where he’d been hit.
I called his name. Then everything stopped. There was a sound in my ears, like static, and my vision blurred.
I tried, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t get a clue what had just happened. I’d just lost a few seconds, though.
The action began again.
In life as in the dream, I had pulled Danny out of the aircraft, slung him over my shoulder, started to run with him across that burning battlefield.
I’d put him down safely and then—what?
I was flat on my back, and Danny was lying lifeless a few feet away. I had died and come back. With Del Rio’s help.
I put a pillow over my face, and more images of Danny came to me as I lay in my soft bed.
Danny had been a dairy farmer, the son of a son of a son of a dairy farmer in a small town in Texas. He had enlisted in the Marines because he felt it was his duty. And also so that he could get the hell out of the barn. I’d done the same—to get free of my father.
There was something so open about that kid, so gee-whiz about everything, that I had to love him. He had no guile. And while he was mostly innocent, he was also very aware of words and of feelings.
I’d served with him for just six months before he died, but in those six months, he was the only one besides Del Rio I could talk to in the squadron. The only guy who didn’t see me as privileged, just let me be myself.
I flashed ahead to meeting Danny’s wife, Sheila, when I got back to the States. She had strawberry blond hair and gray eyes. I remembered sitting in a small dark parlor in their house. There was black fabric draped over the mirror. The small-scale furniture was uncomfortable and looked unused.
I told Sheila that I’d been with Danny when he died. I told her that he’d been unconscious. That he hadn’t been in pain. That he was a brave man. That we’d all loved him. Every single word of that was true.
Sheila had clasped her hands across her distended stomach. She didn’t sob, but the tears poured down her face.
“We’re going to have another girl,” she said.
The static filled my mind again. It was that blank in my memory that told me something was missing. Something else had happened. What was it? What didn’t I know?
The damn telephone started to ring again.
Chapter 82
THE PHONE VIBRATED inside my fist. The faceplate read 7:04. Incoming call: T. Morgan.
I put the phone up to my ear, said to my brother, “Did you call here a minute ago?”
“I called last night. Didn’t you get my message? My shrink wants to see us together. This morning at nine.”
“Today? Are you kidding? I have a business, you know?”
“Sure. It used to be Tommy Senior’s business,” he said. “It’s important, but hey, suit yourself.”
Now I was sitting in a reception pod at Blue Skies Rehab Center, a pale blue windowless room with a wraparound ceramic tile mural of birds in flight and discrete groupings of streamlined Scandinavian furniture.
I was upset that I’d been summoned the morning of the meeting, but I’d be damned if I’d give Tommy any excuse to fail at recovery. With luck, I’d be in the office by 10:30. Schoolgirl was bubbling—and so was the NFL.
While I waited, I joined a conference call with one of our clients in the London office, then signed off as one of a half dozen doors down the hallway opened. A man stepped out and came toward me. He was lanky, gray-haired, wearing a yellow cardigan and pressed chinos, had reading glasses suspended from a chain around his neck.
He was also smiling. I stood to shake his hand, and he lurched and was literally thrown to the floor.
Suddenly everything was sliding sideways. I grabbed for my chair and fell into it, hard.
What the hell?
Light fixtures swung overhead, and shadows swooped over the pale carpeting. There was a roar, like wind—but there was no wind.
The floor rippled like the surface of a river.
I clutched the arms of my chair, which bucked as if it were alive and trying to shake me off.
The man in the yellow cardigan had covered the back of his head with his hands. The mural cracked up the center, and red flowers shot out of a vase like rockets. Glass shattered—and then the power went out.
A herd of people ran helter-skelter through reception, shrieking in the darkened room.
I hung on to the chair. It was as if I were paralyzed, but my terror was lashing around inside me like a downed power line in a storm. The room spun, and I was there again. The helicopter whirled in a death spiral, dropping out of the sky. I couldn’t do anything to prevent the crash and all those deaths.
Chapter 83
I KNEW THAT the monstrous dog shaking the building like a rag was an earthquake. Had to be. But in the dark, as the chair jounced and the floor rolled in waves under my feet, I was clawed out of the present and hurled seven years back in time.
I was in the cockpit of the CH-46 when the surface-to-air missile tore through the cargo bay floor and took out the aft transmission. The sound as it blew through the cabin was like the howl of the world coming to an end.
As the helicopter whirled downward, I was pinned to the left side of my seat. I pulled the engines offline to reduce the violent right-hand rotation, but there was nothing I could do to reverse gravity.
I held on to the cyclic, my shoulders nearly ripping out of their sockets, and tried to keep the aircraft level.
I had a single thought, to land the bird in one piece, and the machine was fighting me all the way. I held on to the stick, staring out through the dual tunnels of my night-vision goggles as the swirling abstract pattern of the ground came up to crash into us.
The landing gear tore up through the chin bubble by my feet as we hit. The force was stunning, sickening, and it jarred me through my bones—but the aircraft was intact.
I released my harness, reached over, and shook Rick’s shoulder.
He turned and grabbed my arm, said, “Bumpy landing, Jack. Very fucking bumpy.”
The gunner and the crew chief bailed out of the crew door behind me. Rick went between our two seats and followed them down the steps into the night.
I could have gotten out through my window, but I must have gone back to the cargo bay, because what I remember next was the sight of the ruined cabin, half of it ripped away by the missile. What remained was littered with dead Marines.
It was a horror show, the real thing.
Fourteen men who had been joking and cheering when we lifted off twenty minutes before were now broken and heaped against the left side of the cabin.
Danny Young was lying apart from the others, and he was soaked in blood. I felt for a pulse, but my hands were numb and shaking. I couldn’t feel a thing.
I called Danny’s
name, but he didn’t answer me. Were his eyelids flickering? I couldn’t be sure.
I inched my way through the aircraft, pulling Danny after me. I had him over my shoulder when I heard someone shout my name. I turned and saw Corporal Jeffrey Albert lying toward the rear of the cabin, where he was weighed down by the bodies of the dead.
He was screaming in pain.
Fire had started in the cockpit. As the cabin brightened, my ability to see through the goggles washed out.
Jeff Albert twisted his head to see me. I made a life-and-death assessment. Jeff was not only pinned, his legs had broken during the crash and his bones had torn through his flight suit. I couldn’t get him out by myself.
He screamed, “Get me out of here, Captain. Don’t leave me here to burn.”
“I’ll be back,” I shouted to Albert. “I’ll be back with help. I’ll be right back.”
Albert shrieked, “He’s dead, Captain. Danny is dead. Please help me.”
Chapter 84
THE LIGHTS IN the rehab center reception room flickered then came back on, their white incandescence practically blinding me.
When I took in the scene, I saw that the walls had cracked like eggshells, and the carpet was littered with shards of plaster and glass. I was both at Blue Skies and in Afghanistan, memories still pouring into my head like gasoline streaming over hard desert ground.
Men ran toward me, phosphorescent green figures against the black of night. I put Danny Young down on the ground, and then—the great gaping hole opened up in my memory. I was there. And then I wasn’t.
I was dead—and then I returned to life. For what reason, I had no idea.
There was intense and painful pressure on my chest, and Rick Del Rio was in my face. “Jack, you son of a bitch—”
He hadn’t known I’d left Jeff Albert to die.
He hadn’t known—and I hadn’t either. I had been out of my mind, hallucinating that I was in a bar. I’d thrown a jab at Rick. Now I was remembering for the first time, falling down the hole in my memory toward searing mortification.
Everything I believed about myself melted before this terrible truth. I’d left a man behind. I’d promised him I would be back, but I had left him. I wished Rick hadn’t brought me back to life.
I wished that I had stayed dead.
A voice called to me, “Jack. Jack, are you all right?”
Rick? Where the hell am I?
I stared at the gray-haired man, whose face was close to mine. Who was he? How did he know my name?
“I’m Brendan McGinty, Tommy’s therapist. You were moaning. Where are you hurt?”
“I’m… okay. I just—”
I struggled to stand, and Dr. McGinty held out his hand to help me up. I clasped his forearm and pulled myself to my feet. People scurried past in pairs and groups.
McGinty was speaking in a soothing tone. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll call a doctor to look at you, Jack.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m really fine.”
McGinty said, “Tommy, we have to postpone our session. We’ll reschedule.”
I looked up and saw my brother standing only a few feet away. He said, “Hell, no. We don’t have to cancel anything. Jack’s been through firestorms on the dark side of the moon. A little quake isn’t going to bother him. Right, Jacko?”
I wanted to get into the Lambo and jam the pedal down to the floorboard. I wanted to drive until I fell asleep at the wheel. I wanted to do whatever it took to get away from the guilt and the unbearable pain of what I’d finally remembered. I had carried a friend who was dead out of a burning helicopter, and left another man behind.
“You are okay, aren’t you, bro?” Tommy asked. “What the fuck. You’re already here. You’re a busy man, remember.”
I was so dazed, I could hardly speak, but I got out a few words. “Let’s do it,” I said.
Chapter 85
THE WORLD OUTSIDE my head seemed insubstantial, as if the present could be a dream and my memories much more solid and alive in the now.
Sounds were irrelevant; the sirens shrilling outside on the highway, the blaring voice over the PA system, Tommy and Dr. McGinty talking together as they walked down the hallway with me trailing behind.
I ducked my head as I crossed the threshold into Dr. McGinty’s office.
The room was small, and the quake had flung pictures and books across the hardwood floor. McGinty returned a floor lamp to its upright position and switched it on.
He said, “Jack, honestly. We can do this another time.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. I’d like to have our talk now.”
We cleared the center of the room and placed two identical wooden armchairs side by side across from McGinty’s recliner. I felt Jeff Albert’s presence eyeing me from a corner of the room as Tommy and I sat down in the chairs and McGinty got comfortable in his La-Z-Boy. It was a pretty crazy thought, but I wondered—had Jeff Albert been calling me every day to tell me that I was dead?
Tommy said, “I don’t think California broke off the continent, at any rate.”
We were dressed the same. White shirts, blue blazers over jeans. I wore loafers; Tommy wore moccasins. The smirk on his unshaven face made him look a little like the guy who stars on Mad Men.
The arrogance was completely unearned. The smug, invincible affect had come from my dad. Tommy was grounded in Tommy Sr.’s crap.
McGinty asked if either of us needed anything and then said, “Let’s begin. Jack, we’re hoping you can give us some additional insight into your father’s personality.”
Speak of the devil.
“How would you describe him?”
My father had been dead for over five years, but he would never really be dead to me. I said, “He was cruel. That was his best trait.”
Dr. McGinty smiled, then asked, “Can you tell me more, Jack?”
“Oh, hell, volumes. He was abusive to my mom all the time. He pitted Tommy and me against each other for his amusement. He didn’t stop until someone bled or cried. He was never wrong about anything—sports, human nature, the weather. He was a perfect godlike creature in his own mind.”
The shrink nodded. “What we call in my business ‘a real SOB.’ ” He looked to my brother. “Tommy, what do you think about your father?”
“Jack just sees it his way. Jack is never wrong either. Dad was trying to toughen us up,” my brother said. The smirk was gone. I’d attacked something he had defended his entire life. “He didn’t want the world to take advantage of us.”
I barely listened as my brother excused my father’s brutality. He said to Dr. McGinty, “Jack never gives him credit. Dad wanted us to succeed. He encouraged Jack to play football and to be good at it. Jack and I were black belts before we were thirteen. And when Jack became a Marine? Dad lit up when he talked about his son the war hero. He was really proud.”
I was looking over Dr. McGinty’s head, seeing Jeff Albert’s face through my NVGs. I saw the fear and the agony, the broken bones coming through his pant legs. He was screaming, “Don’t leave me here to burn!”
“What are you thinking right now?” McGinty asked me.
Images were firing off like fifty-caliber rounds. I had repressed the truth to protect myself. Now I had no place to hide. I wasn’t who I’d thought I was.
I said, “This was a mistake. I don’t belong here. I have to go.”
Chapter 86
I GOT OUT of the chair, made for the door. I had my hand on the knob when Tommy called out, “Hey, Jack. Whatever it is, you should stay. Take my session, bro. Okay, Dr. McGinty?”
“Of course. Please, Jack. Sit down.”
I didn’t want to let the demon out. It was too big and still too raw. How could I tell a stranger what I’d managed to keep from myself all these years? How could I tell Tommy?
“This is a safe place,” McGinty was saying.
McGinty was wrong. It wasn’t safe. Dropping my guard with Tommy took more than courage. It was a h
igh-risk bet with bad odds and an irretrievable downside. At the same time, the pressure to talk was building into a runaway need to admit what I’d done.
“I was flying a transport mission from Gardez to the base at Kandahar,” I choked out. “I had fourteen Marines in the back. You can hear a screwdriver drop in the cargo bay of a CH-46, so when the missile came through the floor… the sound… of the aircraft being ripped up…”
I envisioned the dead Marines piled up against the left side of the cabin.
I forced myself to continue. I described the crash and the aftermath: staring into the cabin through my NVGs, seeing the dead men, my friend soaked in blood.
“I had Danny slung over my shoulder—a fireman’s carry—and then Corporal Albert woke up. He begged me not to leave him there to burn. I already had Danny. I had to get him to safe ground. Albert was half-buried under the casualties. His legs were in pieces. I needed help to get him out of there. I promised him that I’d come back.”
The words were stopping my ability to breathe.
“Are you all right, Jack?”
“Jeff Albert told me that Danny Young was dead.”
“Do you think he was? How could Albert have even known?”
“I don’t know. It was night…. Danny didn’t speak…. I couldn’t feel a pulse because my hands… were numb.
“The way we’re briefed before each flight… is take someone out with you. You take out the most urgently wounded who are still alive first. If they’re dead, they don’t need to be rescued—everyone understands that.
“If Danny was dead, I saved a dead man and left a live man to burn up. I would’ve gone back.”
There was a long pause until McGinty finally spoke again. “Why didn’t you?”