Crocker reached for his head mic and whispered, “Breaker, how close was that?”
“A hundred and fifty feet,” Davis reported. “Maybe less.”
“Do you have any idea what they’re shooting at? You see fighters or bunkers?”
“Negative to all three.”
They waited. When no more mortars fell in the next two minutes, Jamila relaxed.
Crocker said, “All right. Let’s get this kid out.”
She nodded bravely as he pulled on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves. Years ago, during his corpsman training in Yokohama, he had watched a video on something called the Mauriceau-Smellie-Veit maneuver. He tried to recall it now, rehearsing the steps in his head. When he felt confident that he could pull it off, he turned to Suarez and said, “When I give the signal to Jamila to push, I want you to apply subrapubic pressure to the uterus.”
“How do I do that?”
“Press down on the pubic bone here, thus opening the vagina.”
He showed him where to position his hands, then took a deep breath, waited for her cervix to spasm, then asked her calmly, “Jamile, you ready to push?”
She nodded.
He turned to Suarez and asked, “You clear about what to do?”
He nodded, too.
“All right. On three.”
He counted out loud.
Suarez pressed, Jamila screamed, and Hassan, Amira, and Natalie furiously massaged her back and whispered encouragement. Crocker inserted his gloved left hand, reached his index finger upward, and inserted it into the baby’s mouth. Gently pressing on the kid’s maxilla to bring the neck to moderate flexion, he rested his left palm on the baby’s chest, reached his right hand around until he held the shoulders in his right palm, and pulled down and out.
The baby’s hips and shoulders slipped out easily, but the head became stuck, causing Jamila to start to panic.
“Relax, Jamila,” Crocker whispered reassuringly, “We’re almost there.”
He took a deep breath and felt with his left hand to make sure the umbilical cord wasn’t interfering with the baby’s neck. Then he turned to Suarez and whispered, “Push again, with conviction.”
With his left index finger in the baby’s mouth, he slowly maneuvered the chin through the cervix opening and guided the head out. It emerged with a pop, followed by a full-throated cry from the baby boy.
“Oh my God!” Hassan shouted. “Is it okay?”
“You’ve got a beautiful baby boy!”
Jamila started to bounce her butt up and down on the mattress with joy. “Oh my God! I can’t believe it! Praise God!”
“Hold on a minute. Stay still.”
Crocker handed the baby to Suarez, then calmly tied and cut the umbilical cord and removed the placenta. The baby wailed.
“Strong lungs.”
As Crocker cleaned Jamila up, Suarez wiped down the baby and handed it to its mother. Shouts of exultation followed and ricocheted off the walls. For a few moments the war was completely forgotten. Even for Crocker, who dealt with the minor bleeding, which was normal, and went outside to get some fresh air.
As he stood in the doorway watching the sun start to drop toward the horizon, he sighed deeply and his hands started to shake. Seventeen years ago he had sat in a delivery room in Alexandria, Virginia, and watched the birth of his daughter, Jenny. It seemed like another lifetime now. In a day or two-he couldn’t remember the specific day-she’d receive her diploma and graduate from high school.
He wanted to be there but wouldn’t. Instead, he’d probably be facing another unknown challenge. Protecting and aiding the innocent was his disease, his compulsion, and through the grace of God the only thing that satisfied the hunger in his soul.
“I don’t understand how the world can just watch this,” the suddenly talkative Natalie declared, emerging to stand beside him. “Syrians are good people. No one is with us. No one! Why is that?”
Crocker nodded. “It’s terrible, I know. We’re doing what we can.”
“No. Not enough.”
She was right. Despite Natalie’s distress and the mortars thudding in the distance, he looked out at the sun descending over broken chicken coops filled with putrefying chickens and felt a rare moment of peace. All he wanted now was a beer or a shot of scotch, a comfortable chair, and a place to put his feet up. But those small pleasures would have to wait.
Turning to Natalie, he said, “Do me a favor and find Suarez. Tell him I want him to fix a place for the mother and baby in the pickup.”
“I can do that.”
“By the way, what did they name the baby?”
“Tariq Yusef Mohammed Sadir, after his maternal grandfather.”
“Tariq Yusef Mohammed Sadir. Let’s hope he has a better future.”
He didn’t have time to speculate on what that might be. Seeing Davis on the porch keeping watch, he asked, “Anything new from Ankara?”
Davis wore the coiled, expectant look of a soldier waiting for the next battle to start. “Negative, boss. Nothing’s changed. They’re still waiting for approval of the LZ site.”
He checked his watch: 1938. A helicopter buzzed high in the purplish-black sky. Looked like a little Polish-made Mi-2 with rockets mounted along the sides. As it headed south he heard firing in the distance, then saw a cloud of black smoke, indicating that the helo had been hit by antiaircraft fire. It was unreal, like watching a movie. The resulting explosion reverberated through the house.
Crocker turned to Davis and said, “Tell the guys to prepare to move out.”
“Just prepare, or really go?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Without approval?”
“With it or without it. The situation here isn’t good.”
“Even without it, I have to tell Ankara something.”
“Tell ’em a helicopter was just shot down in the area and we’re hearing an uptick in fighting. So we’re moving north through what we hope is FSA-controlled territory. We’ll apprise them of our new position when we arrive.”
“Sounds good but kind of vague.”
“That’s on purpose.”
As Crocker paused to take one last look at the ragged landscape, one of Al Swearengen’s best lines came to mind. “Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand like a man, and give some back.”
For a brief moment he was tired of fighting. All he had to do now was deliver the people and cargo in his charge to safety.
Chapter Thirteen
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
– Frederick Douglass
At 2023 they set out, headlights extinguished, on Highway 60 with their cargo of sarin and refugees. Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain played on Crocker’s iPod as they rolled down a long straightaway past fields of new wheat. It was a warm, still night with dramatic clouds that reminded him of the J. M. W. Turner paintings he had once seen in the National Gallery in London. He wanted to chill to the dark lyricism of the music and Davis’s haunting flugelhorn solo, but his brain wouldn’t let him.
The Garmin GPS said they were only fifty-eight miles from the border. At home, fifty-eight miles was a trip to Costco and back, but now they were in northwest Syria, where new horrors seemed to lurk around every corner.
He shut his eyes as the minutes and miles slid past. He was half conscious, lying on his back in a swimming pool, when Hassan grabbed his shoulder.
“Look, Mr. Wallace. Look!” He was pointing toward multiple lights maybe a quarter of a mile ahead.
What now?
“Trouble. Look! There!”
“I see.”
It was unclear who was ahead and what the lights belonged to-more vehicles, probably. Crocker grabbed the 416 off the floor, re-bombed a mag, slammed it in, killed the music, and leaned forward.
“It appears to be another roadblock,” Hassan said anxiously. “Maybe FSA, maybe Islamists.”