McCreary, Baldo and Douglas sat in the padded RPA chairs inside as Trest paced behind them. All eyes fixed on the flat screen before Baldo. The fireball from the Paveway bomb slowly dissipated. Still whiting-out the monitor that was a direct feed from MISTY’s camera.
“Show me target confirmation,” Trest ordered.
“Yes, sir,” McCreary replied, then turned to Baldo. “Prepare helmet cam feed for d-base interlace.”
“Yes, sir,” Baldo said. He rattled away at the keyboard and a database of ISIS member profiles appeared on screen. Baldo scrolled through helmet cam footage on another monitor. Stopping on a clear frame of Ali Abbas. The database ran a profile scan, returning a ninety-nine percent match. A black and white file photo appeared on screen with the jihadi’s name below. Ali Abbas Nasser — Senior ISIS operative. “Target confirmed,” Baldo said.
Trest leaned forward out of curiosity. “Go back to the woman.”
“Yes, sir,” Baldo replied. Scrolling the video backward. The woman from the dwelling appeared to look directly at Ghost One.
“She saw him,” Trest observed.
“How?” McCreary asked.
“You tell me,” Trest said. Then gave a final instruction before retreating to his office. “Let me know when he arrives.”
“Yes, sir,” McCreary acknowledged. No officer had to give the “At ease” order, but the effect on the three men was the same with Trest gone from their presence. Their shoulders relaxed, they stretched, yawned, and spoke free and informal among themselves.
“What I want to know is why he stopped when she looked at him,” McCreary pondered aloud.
Airman Douglas, finally free to see for himself, leaned around McCreary to look at the woman on screen. “Maybe he wasn’t looking at her,” Douglas said.
“Maybe he was,” McCreary countered.
“Consciously?” Douglas asked. Nobody had the answer. The three men watched the video play. Douglas broke the silence. “What would happen if he became conscious?”
“It won’t happen,” McCreary answered. Agitated. Driving the notion from their minds. “It’s never happened. The doc says he can’t wake up, can’t become aware. And if the doc says it, he can’t.” Baldo couldn’t restrain his curiosity.
“But, what would happen?”
CHAPTER THREE
SOARING HEIGHTS
Hal Sheridan’s eyes flicked open at 5:45 a.m. with a singular thought—Something’s not right. Lying in bed, staring straight at the ceiling, his entire body was one big ache. Clearing the early-morning cobwebs from his mind, he recounted the events from the previous night. Left work. Worked out. Ate dinner. Watched TV. Went to bed. What did I do in my workout? Nothing out of the ordinary. Did I catch a cold?
The sore, rippling muscles of his forearms thrust his body up from bed in a push-up. Every move he made shot tinges of pain throughout his forty-four-year old body. His joints felt like rusty hinges of an old iron gate.
Hal shot a glance to the nightstand, expecting to see a bottle of Jameson that would explain everything. It was bare, save for a brass lamp and an alarm clock. Hal opened the blinds in his room. Taking in the stillness of the morning sun as it spread like a golden blanket over the tract homes around him.
The community of Soaring Heights resembled any other modern southwestern suburb — stucco-walls, Spanish tiled roofs and architecture designed from a handful of cookie-cutter templates. The only difference — Soaring Heights was on base, available only to the employees and families of the Air Force and Department of Defense.
Hal’s home was a two-bedroom tract house on Mesquite Road. He stumbled his way to the laundry room. Bundling up sheets and blankets, along with a few other articles of clothing and feeding them into an upright washer and dryer. He opened a cabinet nearby, revealing neat stacks of linens. Each one folded with factory-quality creases.
Hal snapped a sheet open and made his bed with boot-camp regimen. Shaping hospital corners that veteran nurses would envy. He fluffed the pillows, setting them in their proper place, swiping away a trace of lint from one.
Hal ironed his uniform in the spare bedroom. Carefully tracing the edges of his First Lieutenant’s badge with the tip of the iron as a small flat screen TV blared the national news in the background. An embedded war correspondent stole Hal’s attention from the creases of his slacks. “I’m standing here live in Bagrami, Afghanistan, a suburb of Kabul, where last night a precision guided bomb from the US Air Force demolished the building behind me.”
Hal looked up at the reporter standing in front of a pile of urban, desert rubble. A muted green vision flashed through Hal’s mind. It was the same exact landscape, but in night vision. The image blossomed white. Blown-out from the explosion. The daydream sparked a cacophony of random images, piling up and snowballing through his mind — a glimpse of the woman in a burka, preparing a meal on the floor. An attractive woman in a lab coat, leaning in with a syringe. Her appearance and words hazy and distorted. A man in a turban, also in night vision green. He disappeared in a bright muzzle-flash. Another muzzle flash lit up the face of a different man — screaming in agony.
Hal wondered if he was the one holding the rifle that cut these men down. Before the answer came, another vision interrupted — this one surreal.
Hal jogged in the dark. The static of radio-noise and commands from a superior officer echoed in his mind. An explosion erupted nearby. So close he could smell the sulfur and toxic chemicals. Hal’s mind jumped back to reality, smelling the actual smoke from his pants, burning under the hot iron. The damage was beyond repair. Hal tossed them in the trash and grabbed a fresh pair, running the iron over it. The news show had moved on to a business segment. Hal watched and waited, hoping the newscast would return to the scene in Afghanistan.
Inside the box in Hangar 302, a bleary-eyed Baldo watched a grid of live surveillance videos on a flat screen. The feed was from cameras hidden throughout Hal’s tract home. One was high in the corner of his bedroom. Another showed a wide view of his dining room. There was one up high in the kitchen and one from behind a two-way mirror in his bathroom. Hal’s face filled that one, half-covered in shaving cream. “Sleeping Beauty is shaving. Everything’s A-okay.”
A tired McCreary glanced at the multi-windowed surveillance feed. “Alright. Get some rest. We’ll brief and run sims tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Baldo replied. Pushing his chair away from the console. He slumbered out of the box toward hangar doors opened a crack, catching rays of the desert sunrise.
McCreary hit a button, putting the image of Hal shaving on the large monitor.
Hal shaved like he ironed — with purpose. Slow and meticulous. His face didn’t need the shave. It could have gone another day without notice, but it was his morning regimen. As he angled his neck to glide the razor across, he noticed something… A rash. Running along his jaw bone and beneath his chin. It was symmetrical, about a half-inch wide. He rubbed it. Baffled. Immediately recognizing it—a chin-strap mark. He thought about the last time he had a chin-strap mark that deep — over twenty years ago in Jump Week of Airborne School. When he learned the hard way not to cinch down his Mich helmet too tight.
Two tablets plopped in a glass of water. Hal reached into the medicine cabinet, grabbed some aspirin and chased it with the fizzing water. He closed the cabinet door and stared at himself in the mirror. Puzzled by the rash, the flashes of images in his mind, and the overwhelming feeling of hangover and fatigue. But these, he feared, were only the symptoms. Symptoms of a larger feeling weighing down on him. Pressing hard, heavy and inescapable. A feeling that his life, and all the decisions he made since arriving at Holloman, were not his own.