They flew in low, flaring and pivoting for the touchdown on a steel-mesh landing pad. A storm of gritty, stinging sand blasted into the cabin, scouring any exposed skin and working its way in through the layers of clothing Melton had drawn tightly around himself. One of the soldiers slapped him on the shoulder and grimly mouthed, ‘Thanks anyway, buddy’, before leaping out and hurrying off, bent double. The Army Times correspondent – or was he a former correspondent now? – followed the others out into the chill darkness, intending to head for the tent where some of the journalists maintained a rudimentary press club with a small stash of carefully hoarded bourbon and beer.
‘Mr Melton? Sir?’
‘Lieutenant Euler?’
Melton recognised him immediately. The platoon commander, who, at six-and-a-half foot, was forced into a very exaggerated stoop by the Blackhawk’s spinning rotors, hurried forward and took Melton by the elbow, steering him away from his intended heading.
‘Captain wants to see you, sir. We’re getting set to roll on fifteen minutes’ notice.’
‘Roll where?’
‘Don’t know, sir. But Captain Lohberger needs you over at headquarters. The squadron commander will want to hear what you have to say as well.’
‘About what’s happened back home?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Both men carefully stood up as they cleared the track of the rotor blades. Melton hoisted his backpack into a slightly more comfortable position and tried to take in as much as he could of his surroundings. Something was going to happen soon and the knowledge of it left a weird coppery taste in the back of his mouth. They hurried down from the rise of the makeshift helipad, diving into a small tent city laid out in a strict grid pattern, much of it obscured by the tan camouflage nets. Away from the overwhelming din of the chopper, he began to hear shouts and curses as non-coms wrangled their squads towards assembly points while junior officers like Euler gathered up platoons and began clicking them into larger units for deployment in the field. He could hear the whine of Abrams gas turbines and the snarl of Bradley fighting vehicles somewhere nearby, and overlaying it all was the ceaseless thumping of rotor blades as dozens of helicopters pirouetted through the inky black sky above them. The metallic, oily taste of diesel mixed with the grit and dust kicked up by the Blackhawk filled his sinuses. He pulled out a rag and blew his nose, knowing that the snot would be blood-flecked from the dirt.
‘Do you mind if I ask you a question, sir?’ said Euler, as they double-timed past a tent where a group of men in uniforms and berets he recognised as British SAS were hunkered around a table. One of the commandos levelled a hard stare at him and flicked the tent flap closed. ‘Is it true, sir, what we’ve been hearing?’
Melton squinted against the sand, which was already coating the inside of his mouth and nostrils. ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, exactly, Lieutenant. But it’s gone. Home. Everyone there has gone.’
Euler’s face twisted into a mask of despair. ‘I’d heard it was a jihad attack. Bio weapons or nukes, or something. Took out a bunch of cities.’
They turned a corner, nearly running into a couple of MPs.
‘Watch where you’re going, asshole,’ one of them barked, surprising Melton with a female voice. She was built thicker and closer to the ground than him. He muttered a hasty apology and moved on.
‘No, this is nothing to do with the jihadis. Unless it was merciful fucking Allah, of course, like Saddam is telling everyone. But nobody knows. Some kinda weird energy bubble or something. Seems to have zapped away all the primates inside its boundary.’
Euler looked aghast. ‘Primates?’
‘Just before I took off, that was the latest on CNN. Some Japanese blogger checking webcams of the San Diego Zoo noticed all the monkeys were gone. Didn’t take long to work it out from there.’
‘Holy shit,’ said the lieutenant in a small, choked voice that was completely at odds with his towering frame.
The reporter knew exactly what was going through his mind. He’d seen that same reaction many times today. Lieutenant Euler was counting his losses. Children and partner, if he had them. Mom and dad, ditto. Brothers. Sisters. Old friends and new. Neighbours. Faces on the streets where he once lived, even if he didn’t know their names. Ex-girlfriends. Classmates from school. A widening gyre of personal history, all of it sucked away in some freakish moment when the laws of physics got turned inside out. Any moment now he’d look around, like a child who’d woken up in a strange room, trying to figure out where he was and how to put everything back in its place. There.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Melton, but Euler just shook his head.
‘This sucks,’ he breathed. ‘Everyone?’
‘Most everyone,’ he confirmed. ‘Seattle’s still there. Alaska. Hawaii. Coupla places in Canada. That’s it, though.’
‘Man… Oh shit, here we are.’
They stepped into a large frame tent, one of the newer types that came with power outlets and lighting. It was nicer than the Korean War-era GP Mediums he used to spend time in. Melton recognised the tense, guarded body language of men who were used to facing the worst possible situations, but had never really expected anything this bad. He was almost rocked back on his heels by the concentrated force of their attention when they recognised him.
‘Come in, gentlemen,’ a voice called out. ‘We’re pressed for time here, Bret.’
Melton nodded a quick greeting at Captain Christian Lohberger, Bravo Troop CO, 5-7th Cav, and the only man in the tent who routinely used Melton’s first name. Everyone else referred to him as ‘sir’, or ‘Mr Melton’. Being called ‘sir’ beat ‘hooah’ or ‘Rangers lead the way’., the last of which Melton found increasingly annoying over the years, especially hearing the Ranger war cry from pukes who most definitely were not Rangers and were never going to be Rangers. And as a former grunt, the ‘sir’ thing had greatly amused him at first. Nothing much amused him at the moment, however.
‘I’m guessing Iraq’s not why you wanted to see me,’ he said.
Lohberger shook his head and cut straight to the bone. ‘No. We’re getting nothing but smoke blown up our asses from Division on down. What the hell is going on?’
Melton dropped his bag by the trestle table, on which a map of the Kuwait-Iraq borderlands rested. It was a covered in a swirl of red and blue lines and unit markings. The faces around the tent were grim and focused entirely on him.