THE AIR INSIDE the Humvee was thick with dust and heat. Under his camo jacket, Jack’s skin prickled with the threat of danger as he scanned the road ahead. The escort of Special Forces to a chicken farm in Southeastern Iraq where the farmer was dealing in rockets and missiles had been uneventful, but it was insurgent strategy to let them pass, plant IEDs when they were out of sight, then wait for the patrol to return and watch the jihad happen.
Sweat broke out along his spine. He had leave in a week and a half. He was just imagining trouble. He was going to be fine. The day was quiet. He was a cavalry scout, the best of the best, the baddest of the bad, able to take on the world—or so the scouts told each other. Ego could keep you alive.
“You feel that?” Bolton asked. He was a teacher from New Jersey and claimed to be “in tune with the universe.” He sat beside Jack.
“Yeah,” Jack said. It wasn’t anything audible, just hung in the air like a weight. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. But something.”
Everything inside Jack sharpened—his senses, his instincts and his primal sense of survival. This close to the end of his tour, fear no longer had meaning. He couldn’t function with it. Simple, steady common sense and remembering his training became the focus of every moment on the road.
The flash of light burst all around him like some personal supernova. Later, the other joes would talk about the deafening explosion, but he never heard it. There was only the light and the diffusion of everything beyond its circle.
When Jack came to, Bolton was slumped in his seat and the whole right side of the vehicle, which included the computer and a rifle, was gone. Above Jack’s head, Curry, the gunner, was praying urgently. “Help me. Please, God, help me.”
Jack forced himself to assess. He ran his hands up and down his arms, felt his thighs, his knees. He was okay. He pushed at Bolton’s shoulder. “You okay? Bolton?”
Bolton didn’t answer. There wasn’t a sound from the three other vehicles in the convoy. Jack’s heart beat fast enough to choke him.
He checked Bolton for injuries and found a lot of blood on his right side. But he had a pulse.
“Help me,” Curry continued to pray. “Please help me.”
Jack leaped out on his side and climbed into the turret. Curry’s face was white and his blood was everywhere. The explosion had blown away most of his right forearm, still held on by something stringy—a tendon, maybe. Swallowing the need to hurl, Jack pulled a tourniquet from pieces of the first-aid kit in his pocket. He tied it just above Curry’s elbow.
That’s when he saw the figure approaching from the west and drew his sidearm. It was a column of white walking out of the dry desert grass on the side of the road.
The caftan billowed in a whisper of breeze as the figure took a step forward. Jack aimed his weapon, widened his stance and shouted, “Stop!” The figure kept coming. Jack shouted again and held up his hand in the universal signal to halt. Still, the figure kept coming as though simply on a stroll. Jack fired above his head, but the figure didn’t stop.
Jack aimed for the chest, his finger on the trigger, but confusion made him hold back. Why wasn’t the attacker returning fire? He could see both his hands, scanned his body for a weapon and saw none—unless a bomb was strapped to his chest. Jack’s heartbeat accelerated and sweat ran into his eyes as the guy closed the distance between them.
Then he realized it was not a man. The walk was fluid and graceful. A woman. She could be as lethal as any man. He took aim again and then the pistol went slack in his hands as the woman raised her head to reveal a beautiful, wholesome face. The last time he’d seen that face, he’d been eight years old and the world as he knew it had ended.
“Mom?” He heard his astonished whisper.
The face’s soft beauty suggested the complete opposite of the drug-hungry woman who’d had three children she’d ignored while going through man after man in her attempt to stay high. Blue eyes met his and honey-blond hair ruffled as she pulled off the hijab.
“I’m going, Jack,” she said in the slightly slurred voice he remembered. She came to a stop near the vehicle. “You’ll be fine.”
Now two little girls who hadn’t been there a moment ago held her hands. One of them was dark featured and about four. The other was just a toddler with blond hair. Both pulled away from their mother and reached for him, crying his name. “Jack! Jackie!”
He felt a burning in his gut, as though she’d shot him.
He was Section 8. He’d been afraid this would happen. The guys who survived emotionally in this bubble of hell managed to somehow exist outside it. After living through an ugly childhood, he’d thought he was strong enough to get through anything, but apparently he wasn’t. After all he’d seen and done and survived, he was now hallucinating. His mother had been in jail for over twenty years, and he hadn’t seen his sisters in about as long.
His mother called his name, but it couldn’t be her; it was his brain playing tricks. He screamed for the image to go away or he’d shoot again. Now the girls were gone and his mother climbed the turret and took hold of his forearms.
“No!” he shouted and used every ounce of strength he had left to push her away. She screamed as she fell backward.
* * *
“JACK!” SARAH SHOUTED into his face, pushing at his chest with both hands. It was like trying to move a refrigerator. She wanted to think he wouldn’t harm her, but he was caught in one of his nightmares and in this one, she seemed to be a threat. Since he was a well-honed fighting machine, she had to wake him. “Jack! Stop! It’s me!”
Whatever was going on in his mind had twisted his handsome face into a mask of pain.
“Jack!” she said again. “Wake up!”
His eyes opened and he blinked, confusion, disorientation in his face. She took advantage of the moment to push harder against him and roll him over so that she knelt astride him and pinned him to the mattress. “Wake up!”
“Geez!” A strong male arm suddenly circled her waist and pulled her off Jack. “What happened?” Ben demanded, setting her on her feet and holding Jack down with his other hand.
Ben,