Back in the Soldier's Bed

“Do you know what they call that?” he asked her.

She shook her head and he grinned. “A warthog.”

She giggled. Shannyn caught his eye. “She’s having a wonderful time.”

“So am I.” His gaze held hers, making the simple words mean more.

“Me too,” Shannyn replied, and meant it. She was glad she’d come along, although from the way Jonas and Emma were getting along, she needn’t have worried about them spending time alone. She’d never seen him so comfortable, and it was clear Emma trusted him completely.

The river quieted as the announcer told everyone to listen. An aircraft was approaching. Still, there was no sound. Jonas’s smile grew with each passing second. He nodded to Shannyn, then pointed at a speck behind them in the distance. It took her a few seconds to find it, but his trained eye had picked it up right away.

Still there was no sound, until suddenly the plane passed in front of them and the boom followed. Jonas’s voice echoed the announcer. “That’s a B1B stealth bomber.”

When the words were out of his mouth, his face clouded over. His jaw tensed slightly and his eyes lost all their warmth. Shannyn could tell he was remembering something. She wished he’d tell her what. What was so painful that the memory kept haunting him over and over? What was it he couldn’t get past?

After the bomber, they looked up high and saw a parachute team jump. Emma’s finger pointed and her mouth made an ‘o’ as the jumpers got closer and closer, their chutes billowing in the wind as they steered themselves toward the ground. Shannyn looked away from the parachute team and examined Jonas instead. Something was wrong. Emma was talking to him but his face looked like it had been carved in stone. His eyes, clear green, focused on nothing in particular and his chest barely rose and fell as he breathed. He was pulling away again but this time something was different, and Shannyn couldn’t put her finger on it.

One by one the parachutes landed in a wide circle that had been marked off and the audience clapped enthusiastically. The speaker started again, remarking on the team’s accuracy and telling the crowd to look downriver. As the team divested themselves of their chutes, a helicopter wound its way up and towards the wide white-marked circumference—waiting to extract the team.

As the announcer droned on about the challenges of a quick extraction in a combat situa

tion, Shannyn never took her eyes off of Jonas. Her heart pounded as his face paled, and his hands started to visibly shake. In a matter of a few seconds, he’d gone from vibrant father to a shell.“Emma,” she said quietly, tugging on the little girl’s sleeve. “Emma, come sit with Mama for a moment.”

At Shannyn’s quiet, commanding tone, Emma did what she was told. Shannyn put Emma by her right hip, so that she was between Emma and Jonas. The helicopter came closer, closer, the syncopated rhythm filling her ears while Jonas remained deathly calm.

One by one the parachute team was loaded into the waiting helo, the end of the performance. But Shannyn felt real fear when she saw a single tear trickle down Jonas’s pale cheek. His eyes never blinked, his lips never moved, but that one tear crawled its way down his cheek and dropped off his jaw.

Chapter 10

Nothing existed beyond the sound.

Heavy rotor blades cut through the air as the Chinook hovered a few feet from the ground. Jonas saw the pilot, close enough he saw the headset over his ears and saw his lips move as he spoke into the mic, the deafening noise of the helo drowning out the nearby voices.

“Let’s clear these men out!” The announcer crowed with enthusiasm.

“Let’s clear out, eh Parker? Or that fiancée of yours’ll get bored and find someone else.” Jonas teased his partner as they bounced along the dirt road.

“Yeah, well it sure won’t be you,” Parker shot back with a wide grin.

Jonas laughed.

The Iltis hit a rut, jostling the soldiers sitting in the back. “Hey, Sergeant Kirkpatrick. There’s something up ahead.”

Jonas leaned forward, peering through the windshield of the Iltis. Before he could open his mouth, everything shifted. He felt himself thrown into the air, out of the back of the vehicle. For a moment he was weightless. And everything went black.

At first he was only aware of sounds. Shouts and skids as the rest of the vehicles in their small convoy ground to a halt behind them. Then it was smells.

The heavy, coppery scent of blood mingled with dust filled his nostrils in the desert heat, but he saw nothing. Sudden weakness caused his eyes to close against the blinding sun. Gunfire echoed, tinny and thin, through his ears along with the dry crackle of fire—the charred, mangled pieces of the Iltis.

Everything was fuzzy, like being underwater.

With huge effort, Jonas turned his head to the left, opening his eyes enough to squint. What he saw was a narrow radius of carnage. Parker was dead, his mangled form sprawled motionless on the hard gravel of the road. Jonas blindly touched his leg, drawing his shaking fingers up and seeing the blood staining the tips as he fought the nausea curling through his stomach. Behind him he heard the shouts of his comrades; rifle fire popping over the ridge.

He heard a shout for a medic. He heard someone calling to get on the radio for an extraction. His eyes slid closed, trying to keep things linear and logical in his mind. Confused shouts echoed all around him.

“Hold on, Sarge.” A steady voice was at his right side but couldn’t distinguish who it was. Hands pressed against his leg and he gritted his teeth. “Help’s coming. Hang in there.”

The syncopated whomp whomp of helo blades reached his ears. He squinted into the sun, enough to see the dark hulking shape of a Chinook hovering several meters away. The feeling was going in his leg, the cold numbness crawling up the rest of his body and he knew it was too late.