He turned back to the ocean. Instead of sand, the water covered a bank of fluorescent lights. Off, he said to Exley. Turn them off. She ignored him, and when he looked for her, she was gone. He tried to run for her, but the waves ripped him away from the beach, away from her—
“Mr. Brown.”
Wells woke, muzzy-headed, to a hand shaking his shoulder. Instead of a beach, he was on a C-17. The cabin stank of sweat and stale unwashed bodies. They’d been airborne for twenty hours.
“You okay, sir? Look a little green.”
“Fine, Lieutenant.” Wells rolled his head, futilely trying to unlock the scar tissue in his back. Instead of standard seats, the military plane had plastic benches screwed to its walls. They seemed designed to torture the spine.
“Lieutenant, how long was I out for?”
“Five hours, give or take,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll be down in forty-five. Pilot just turned on the lights.”
The lights. That accounted for his dream, Wells thought. All around him, men in fatigues were slapping themselves awake, swigging mouthwash, stretching, anything to shake off the boredom of an 11,000-mile journey. Wells had hitched a ride to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, which was being sent overseas for the third time in five years. Macho chatter filled the cabin, soldiers psyching themselves up for the grueling days to come:
“Ready to land?”
“Heck no, Sergeant. Let’s spend another day in this tin can.”
“Ramirez, is that my toothbrush?”
“Nuh-uh, moron. Check your ass — it’s probably stuck there.”
“Think this is what it’s like to be an astronaut? When I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut.”
“You can’t even find Uranus, Roberts — get it? Uranus. Like—”
“I get it.”
“All right, who farted?”
“Who didn’t?”
Then, from the back of the cabin, the all-purpose Army cheer: “Hoo-ah!”
“Hoo-ah!”
“Those Talibs ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em! They going down like Chinatown!”
“Hoo-ah!”
“Like your sister on prom night!”
“Hoo-ah!”
“We’re sending Osama straight to hell!”
“Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!” At first out of sync, but then melding into one giant “HOO-AH!” so loud the cabin rattled.
Hoo-ah: short for “Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.” “I get it,” “yes sir,” and “rock on,” all in one. Not just following an order but being proud to follow it. Nothing like hoo-ah, the word or the spirit, existed in civilian life. Wells couldn’t help but smile. He felt privileged to be with these guys. After all these years of war in the desert and the mountains, the United States Army was still the world’s finest fighting force. Though the Marines might disagree.
Now, the men in charge, they were another story. They — their kids, at least — ought to do some time over here, and not on the guided two-day tours the Army gave them so they could tell the talk shows how they’d been to the front lines. Let them spend months dodging mortars and roadside bombs, feel for themselves how a base could turn into a prison after a while.
Enough, Wells thought. No more thinking. He’d volunteered to come back here. He had a job to do. “Hoo-ah!” he said to himself. He chugged half a bottle of water in one gulp, soothing his raspy throat, then poured the rest over his head, smiling in satisfaction as the lukewarm liquid ran down his face. He pulled a towel from the pack under his feet and wiped himself dry.
“Love those whores’ showers,” Lieutenant Gower said with a smirk. He was a sturdily built black man, twenty-six or so. Wells liked him, mainly because Gower, despite his obvious curiosity, hadn’t asked Wells anything about who he was. For twenty hours they’d talked about sports, played chess — Gower had beaten him handily — and otherwise ignored the question of how Wells had found his way onto this particular plane.
“Got that right,” Wells said. He decided to pull Gower’s chain. “Reminds me of ‘Nam.”
Gower’s eyes widened. “You served in Vietnam? For real?”
“Tet, Khe Sanh, all of it. I got a wall full of ears at home. Now, that was a war.”
“Serious?” Gower looked at Wells. “You’re messing with me.”
“Yeah, I am. Do I really look that old? I’d be sixty.”
“We all look sixty right about now. Tell you what, though. You got some juice. Not just anyone can get on a fully loaded C-17 on two hours’ notice.”
“I thought this was a Hooters charter to Bangkok.”
“Understood, sir,” Gower said. “Figured I’d give it a shot.”
THE CABIN’S SPEAKERS CLICKED ON. “From the cockpit. We know you love it up here, but it’s my duty to inform you we’ll be on the ground in Bagram in about thirty minutes.”
The inevitable “Hoo-ah!” passed through the cabin.
“Those of you who have visited fabulous Afghanistan before know that we like you to saddle up at this point in your trip. This is not optional.”
Throughout the cabin, soldiers pulled on their body armor and helmets. Wells reached down for his bulletproof vest, standard police-issue protective gear, far thinner than the flak jackets everyone else wore.
“That all you got?” Gower said, looking at the vest. “It’ll hardly stop a nine.” A pistol-fired, low-velocity 9-millimeter round. The plates in the Army’s flak jackets were designed to handle high-velocity 7.62-millimeter AK-47 rounds, which would shred Wells’s vest.
“I like to travel light.” Wells pulled on his helmet.
The intercom clicked on again: “For your safety, this will also be a red-light landing. We know you Army boys get friendly in the dark, but please try to keep your hands to yourself.”
The overhead lights flicked off, replaced by the eerie glow of red lights mounted in the cabin walls. “We will be coming in tactically, so strap in tight and enjoy the ride.”
Around the cabin, men buckled themselves into the harnesses attached to the walls of the C-17. “Anyway, we hope you’ve enjoyed your trip,” the pilot said. “Thanks for flying this Globemaster III. We know you have a choice of airlines, and we appreciate — Oh, no you don’t. Forget it.”
“Funny man,” Gower said.
“Wishes he was flying an F-16.” Wells tightened his harness around his shoulders. The C-17 swung hard right and tipped forward into a dive.
“He best not go all JFK Jr. on us,” Gower said. He laughed, but Wells could hear the tension in his voice.
“Don’t like flying, Lieutenant?”
“I know what you’re thinking. Why’d I sign up for the Airborne? Wife says the same thing.”
“And you tell her a man’s got to face his fears.”
“That’s right. So what are you afraid of, Mr. Brown?”
The question stopped Wells. “I’m not sure.”
“Gotta be something. Everybody’s afraid of something.”
“Failure, maybe.”
“Good answer. Gives nothing away.” Gower sounded disappointed.
But Wells knew there was another answer, one he would never share with Gower: Myself. I’m afraid of myself.
POP! POP! CHAFF FLARES EXPLODED off the C-17’s stubby wings. Then the jet swung into a corkscrew. Gower’s fists were clenched in his lap. The plane leveled out suddenly. Seconds later it touched the ground, bounced, then touched down again, rocketing along the 10,000-foot runway.