Private jm-1 Page 15

  Suddenly everything was sliding sideways. I grabbed for my chair and fell into it, hard.

  What the hell?

  Light fixtures swung overhead, and shadows swooped over the pale carpeting. There was a roar, like wind-but there was no wind.

  The floor rippled like the surface of a river.

  I clutched the arms of my chair, which bucked as if it were alive and trying to shake me off.

  The man in the yellow cardigan had covered the back of his head with his hands. The mural cracked up the center, and red flowers shot out of a vase like rockets. Glass shattered-and then the power went out.

  A herd of people ran helter-skelter through reception, shrieking in the darkened room.

  I hung on to the chair. It was as if I were paralyzed, but my terror was lashing around inside me like a downed power line in a storm. The room spun, and I was there again. The helicopter whirled in a death spiral, dropping out of the sky. I couldn’t do anything to prevent the crash and all those deaths.

  Chapter 83

  I knew that the monstrous dog shaking the building like a rag was an earthquake. Had to be. But in the dark, as the chair jounced and the floor rolled in waves under my feet, I was clawed out of the present and hurled seven years back in time.

  I was in the cockpit of the CH-46 when the surface-to-air missile tore through the cargo bay floor and took out the aft transmission. The sound as it blew through the cabin was like the howl of the world coming to an end.

  As the helicopter whirled downward, I was pinned to the left side of my seat. I pulled the engines offline to reduce the violent right-hand rotation, but there was nothing I could do to reverse gravity.

  I held on to the cyclic, my shoulders nearly ripping out of their sockets, and tried to keep the aircraft level.

  I had a single thought, to land the bird in one piece, and the machine was fighting me all the way. I held on to the stick, staring out through the dual tunnels of my night-vision goggles as the swirling abstract pattern of the ground came up to crash into us.

  The landing gear tore up through the chin bubble by my feet as we hit. The force was stunning, sickening, and it jarred me through my bones-but the aircraft was intact.

  I released my harness, reached over, and shook Rick’s shoulder.

  He turned and grabbed my arm, said, “Bumpy landing, Jack. Very fucking bumpy.”

  The gunner and the crew chief bailed out of the crew door behind me. Rick went between our two seats and followed them down the steps into the night.

  I could have gotten out through my window, but I must have gone back to the cargo bay, because what I remember next was the sight of the ruined cabin, half of it ripped away by the missile. What remained was littered with dead Marines.

  It was a horror show, the real thing.

  Fourteen men who had been joking and cheering when we lifted off twenty minutes before were now broken and heaped against the left side of the cabin.

  Danny Young was lying apart from the others, and he was soaked in blood. I felt for a pulse, but my hands were numb and shaking. I couldn’t feel a thing.

  I called Danny’s name, but he didn’t answer me. Were his eyelids flickering? I couldn’t be sure.

  I inched my way through the aircraft, pulling Danny after me. I had him over my shoulder when I heard someone shout my name. I turned and saw Corporal Jeffrey Albert lying toward the rear of the cabin, where he was weighed down by the bodies of the dead.

  He was screaming in pain.

  Fire had started in the cockpit. As the cabin brightened, my ability to see through the goggles washed out.

  Jeff Albert twisted his head to see me. I made a life-and-death assessment. Jeff was not only pinned, his legs had broken during the crash and his bones had torn through his flight suit. I couldn’t get him out by myself.

  He screamed, “Get me out of here, Captain. Don’t leave me here to burn.”

  “I’ll be back,” I shouted to Albert. “I’ll be back with help. I’ll be right back.”

  Albert shrieked, “He’s dead, Captain. Danny is dead. Please help me.”

  Chapter 84

  The lights in the rehab center reception room flickered then came back on, their white incandescence practically blinding me.

  When I took in the scene, I saw that the walls had cracked like eggshells, and the carpet was littered with shards of plaster and glass. I was both at Blue Skies and in Afghanistan, memories still pouring into my head like gasoline streaming over hard desert ground.

  Men ran toward me, phosphorescent green figures against the black of night. I put Danny Young down on the ground, and then-the great gaping hole opened up in my memory. I was there. And then I wasn’t.

  I was dead-and then I returned to life. For what reason, I had no idea.

  There was intense and painful pressure on my chest, and Rick Del Rio was in my face. “Jack, you son of a bitch-”

  He hadn’t known I’d left Jeff Albert to die.

  He hadn’t known-and I hadn’t either. I had been out of my mind, hallucinating that I was in a bar. I’d thrown a jab at Rick. Now I was remembering for the first time, falling down the hole in my memory toward searing mortification.

  Everything I believed about myself melted before this terrible truth. I’d left a man behind. I’d promised him I would be back, but I had left him. I wished Rick hadn’t brought me back to life.

  I wished that I had stayed dead.

  A voice called to me, “Jack. Jack, are you all right?”

  Rick? Where the hell am I?

  I stared at the gray-haired man, whose face was close to mine. Who was he? How did he know my name?

  “I’m Brendan McGinty, Tommy’s therapist. You were moaning. Where are you hurt?”

  “I’m… okay. I just-”

  I struggled to stand, and Dr. McGinty held out his hand to help me up. I clasped his forearm and pulled myself to my feet. People scurried past in pairs and groups.

  McGinty was speaking in a soothing tone. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll call a doctor to look at you, Jack.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m really fine.”

  McGinty said, “Tommy, we have to postpone our session. We’ll reschedule.”

  I looked up and saw my brother standing only a few feet away. He said, “Hell, no. We don’t have to cancel anything. Jack’s been through firestorms on the dark side of the moon. A little quake isn’t going to bother him. Right, Jacko?”

  I wanted to get into the Lambo and jam the pedal down to the floorboard. I wanted to drive until I fell asleep at the wheel. I wanted to do whatever it took to get away from the guilt and the unbearable pain of what I’d finally remembered. I had carried a friend who was dead out of a burning helicopter, and left another man behind.

  “You are okay, aren’t you, bro?” Tommy asked. “What the fuck. You’re already here. You’re a busy man, remember.”

  I was so dazed, I could hardly speak, but I got out a few words. “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Chapter 85

  The world outside my head seemed insubstantial, as if the present could be a dream and my memories much more solid and alive in the now.

  Sounds were irrelevant; the sirens shrilling outside on the highway, the blaring voice over the PA system, Tommy and Dr. McGinty talking together as they walked down the hallway with me trailing behind.

  I ducked my head as I crossed the threshold into Dr. McGinty’s office.

  The room was small, and the quake had flung pictures and books across the hardwood floor. McGinty returned a floor lamp to its upright position and switched it on.

  He said, “Jack, honestly. We can do this another time.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Really. I’d like to have our talk now.”

  We cleared the center of the room and placed two identical wooden armchairs side by side across from McGinty’s recliner. I felt Jeff Albert’s presence eyeing me from a corner of the room as Tommy and I sat down in the chairs and McGinty got comfor
table in his La-Z-Boy. It was a pretty crazy thought, but I wondered-had Jeff Albert been calling me every day to tell me that I was dead?

  Tommy said, “I don’t think California broke off the continent, at any rate.”

  We were dressed the same. White shirts, blue blazers over jeans. I wore loafers; Tommy wore moccasins. The smirk on his unshaven face made him look a little like the guy who stars on Mad Men.

  The arrogance was completely unearned. The smug, invincible affect had come from my dad. Tommy was grounded in Tommy Sr.’s crap.

  McGinty asked if either of us needed anything and then said, “Let’s begin. Jack, we’re hoping you can give us some additional insight into your father’s personality.”

  Speak of the devil.

  “How would you describe him?”

  My father had been dead for over five years, but he would never really be dead to me. I said, “He was cruel. That was his best trait.”

  Dr. McGinty smiled, then asked, “Can you tell me more, Jack?”

  “Oh, hell, volumes. He was abusive to my mom all the time. He pitted Tommy and me against each other for his amusement. He didn’t stop until someone bled or cried. He was never wrong about anything-sports, human nature, the weather. He was a perfect godlike creature in his own mind.”

  The shrink nodded. “What we call in my business ‘a real SOB.’ ” He looked to my brother. “Tommy, what do you think about your father?”

  “Jack just sees it his way. Jack is never wrong either. Dad was trying to toughen us up,” my brother said. The smirk was gone. I’d attacked something he had defended his entire life. “He didn’t want the world to take advantage of us.”

  I barely listened as my brother excused my father’s brutality. He said to Dr. McGinty, “Jack never gives him credit. Dad wanted us to succeed. He encouraged Jack to play football and to be good at it. Jack and I were black belts before we were thirteen. And when Jack became a Marine? Dad lit up when he talked about his son the war hero. He was really proud.”

  I was looking over Dr. McGinty’s head, seeing Jeff Albert’s face through my NVGs. I saw the fear and the agony, the broken bones coming through his pant legs. He was screaming, “Don’t leave me here to burn!”

  “What are you thinking right now?” McGinty asked me.

  Images were firing off like fifty-caliber rounds. I had repressed the truth to protect myself. Now I had no place to hide. I wasn’t who I’d thought I was.

  I said, “This was a mistake. I don’t belong here. I have to go.”

  Chapter 86

  I got out of the chair, made for the door. I had my hand on the knob when Tommy called out, “Hey, Jack. Whatever it is, you should stay. Take my session, bro. Okay, Dr. McGinty?”

  “Of course. Please, Jack. Sit down.”

  I didn’t want to let the demon out. It was too big and still too raw. How could I tell a stranger what I’d managed to keep from myself all these years? How could I tell Tommy?

  “This is a safe place,” McGinty was saying.

  McGinty was wrong. It wasn’t safe. Dropping my guard with Tommy took more than courage. It was a high-risk bet with bad odds and an irretrievable downside. At the same time, the pressure to talk was building into a runaway need to admit what I’d done.

  “I was flying a transport mission from Gardez to the base at Kandahar,” I choked out. “I had fourteen Marines in the back. You can hear a screwdriver drop in the cargo bay of a CH-46, so when the missile came through the floor… the sound… of the aircraft being ripped up…”

  I envisioned the dead Marines piled up against the left side of the cabin.

  I forced myself to continue. I described the crash and the aftermath: staring into the cabin through my NVGs, seeing the dead men, my friend soaked in blood.

  “I had Danny slung over my shoulder-a fireman’s carry-and then Corporal Albert woke up. He begged me not to leave him there to burn. I already had Danny. I had to get him to safe ground. Albert was half-buried under the casualties. His legs were in pieces. I needed help to get him out of there. I promised him that I’d come back.”

  The words were stopping my ability to breathe.

  “Are you all right, Jack?”

  “Jeff Albert told me that Danny Young was dead.”

  “Do you think he was? How could Albert have even known?”

  “I don’t know. It was night… Danny didn’t speak… I couldn’t feel a pulse because my hands… were numb.

  “The way we’re briefed before each flight… is take someone out with you. You take out the most urgently wounded who are still alive first. If they’re dead, they don’t need to be rescued-everyone understands that.

  “If Danny was dead, I saved a dead man and left a live man to burn up. I would’ve gone back.”

  There was a long pause until McGinty finally spoke again. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I died,” I said.

  Chapter 87

  I hadn’t cried since I was a small boy, maybe four or five years old. I didn’t cry when my father died, not even close. But my grief for having deserted Jeff Albert seemed unstoppable right now. I put my head in my arms, and the pain just flowed.

  I heard Tommy explaining to Dr. McGinty that a chunk of debris had slammed into my flak jacket and that my heart had stopped. It had taken CPR to start my pump again.

  As Tommy talked, I saw Rick Del Rio’s face as if he were in the room. I heard him laughing, saying, “Jack, you son of a bitch, you’re back.” I heard the helicopter blow up and felt the scorching heat come in waves across the field.

  The shrink said, “You were dead, Jack. Tell me what you could have done to save that man.”

  My mouth moved, but I couldn’t speak. I stood up and so did Tommy. He put his arms around me and hugged me for the first time since we were ten. I cried onto his shoulder and he comforted me.

  This was my brother. We’d shared a room from the time we were brought home from the hospital. I knew him as well as I knew myself; maybe I knew him better. I had to accept that underneath the enmity, Tommy and I still loved each other. It was a huge moment between the two of us.

  I started to say it was good to be able to tell him what had happened to me, but he spoke first.

  “Well, isn’t this something? And Dad thought you were perfect. I guess he was wrong, brother Jack. Not perfect at all.”

  Tommy had suckered me. And now he was twisting the blade.

  The anger was instant and overwhelming. I pushed him with all my strength, watched as he slammed into a bookcase and tumbled to the floor.

  “What else do you need to know, Dr. McGinty?” I said. “I think you’ve heard enough.”

  Then I left the building.

  Chapter 88

  I felt pretty bad now. I felt betrayed by my brother. I got on the freeway and drove north, just barely noting the highway signposts zipping by.

  Speed gave me a feeling of escape, but my thoughts circled like a hawk on meth. I could run, but I couldn’t hide from this terrible feeling of guilt about Jeff Albert. I knew that logically I shouldn’t blame myself, but it didn’t help one bit.

  I took the off-ramp at Carrillo Street in Santa Barbara and got back on the 101, this time heading south back toward LA.

  I put my phone into the holder and called Justine.

  The sound of her voice over the speaker made tears come to my eyes. “Jack. Are you on the way into the office? I want to bring you up to date.”

  “Got time to have coffee with me?” I asked her. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Uh, okay,” she said. “Meet you at Rose. Don’t tell me you’re going to share, Jack?”

  “Hey, you never know. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Not true,” she said. “Not with you.”

  Nothing bad had ever happened while I was having coffee with Justine. Also, I couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been there for me.

  The Rose Cafe had once been a gas company dispatch office. It
had multipaned windows and I beams overhead. There was an in-house bakery and tables the size of pizzas, all of them full. The place smelled like cinnamon-apple pancakes.

  Justine was waiting at her favorite table in the back when I got there. She was wearing skinny black trousers and a pearl-colored blouse with a ruffle at the neckline. Her hair was cinched up in a ponytail with a pink band that matched her lipstick.

  She smiled at me and put her handbag on the floor to free up the stool. I sat down and she asked me, “And where were you when the earth sneezed?”

  It felt like old times to be with Justine at the Rose. We used to come to this place on Sunday mornings, read the paper, rate the bodybuilders who came in after their workouts at Gold’s Gym. I’d seen Arnold here often, and Oliver Stone, whose studio was a couple of blocks away.

  I told Justine that I had been at Blue Skies, and that there hadn’t been any real damage. That was factually true but not entirely accurate.

  I wanted to tell her the rest of it. I wanted her to help me put myself back together. I hoped she would read the trauma in my eyes.

  “I was on Fairfax,” she said. “I pulled into that strip mall off Olympic. Holy crap. Talk about a minute and a half lasting a lifetime.”

  She hardly stopped for breath. She put her briefcase on the table. Yearbooks came out, and Justine showed me a list of names and page numbers.

  “I’m praying that I’m right about this feeling of mine, Jack. One of these kids could be our killer. I’m meeting with Christine Castiglia after this. She’s the key to this; I swear she is.”

  Justine showed me pictures of teenage boys who matched Christine Castiglia’s description of a kid who might have abducted Wendy Borman. I tried to stay focused, but my mind kept shooting back to Afghanistan. I saw Danny, his blood glowing green through my NVGs. Jeff Albert screamed in my mind, “Danny is dead.”

  “Are you all right?” Justine finally asked. “Is Tommy okay? Something happened, didn’t it?”