Private (Private 1)

I remembered most of it, but some crucial recollection was missing, a gap in my memory from the time the helicopter went down and the moment when I died.

I had pushed the missing memory so far into my subconscious, it was subterranean.

I had to dig it up. Had to find out the truth about that day.

If I could retrieve the memory, maybe I could finally sleep.

I was still grasping at wisps of dream and memory when my cell phone vibrated on the nightstand.

I looked at the caller ID, read “out of area.”

I left the phone on the table, sprang out of bed, and flipped on the house security monitors.

I scrutinized the six monitors and saw nothing out of place, so I left them and did an eyeball check of the grounds. Cars streamed by on the Pacific Coast Highway beyond my front gate. There are high fences between my house and my neighbors’ on both sides. The beach was empty at the back of my house.

I was alone.

The phone finally stopped ringing. Light streamed through the glass, and the Pacific crashed outside my bedroom window.

This was the house I’d bought with Justine.

Talk about memories that can haunt you. I still saw Justine in this room, her dark hair fanned out on the white pillow, looking at me with love in her eyes. And you know what? I looked back at her the same way.

I showered and dressed in chinos and a blue oxford shirt, and then the phone started ringing again. I took the damned thing to the dining table I used as a desk and opened it.

“You’re dead,” said the mechanical voice.

“Not yet,” I said.

I made very strong coffee, then spent the next hour and a half making phone calls, confirming appointments.

By the time I met Del Rio at Santa Monica Airport, it was almost ten.

Time to fly.

Chapter 22

WE BOARDED a Cessna Skyhawk SP, a spiffy and reliable single-engine aircraft, and Del Rio took his place beside me. Just like old times.

I looked at Rick. He looked back, our thoughts on the same track: Afghanistan, our friends who’d been killed in the helicopter, the fact that Del Rio had jump-started my heart and I owed him my life.

I wondered if he could tell me more about what happened that last day in Gardez. I’d gotten a medal for carrying Danny Young out of that burning helicopter. But I couldn’t ignore the nagging dreams. Was my mind doing a head-fake: protecting me from an unbearable memory and at the same time prodding me to remember?

“Rick, that last day in Gardez?”

“The helicopter? Why, Jack?”

“Tell me about it again.”

“I’ve told you everything I can remember.”

“It still isn’t clear for me. Something is missing, something I’m forgetting.”

Del Rio sighed. “We were moving troops to Kandahar. It was night. You were the section leader and I was copilot. We couldn’t see some raghead with his ground-to-air missile in the back of a truck. No one saw him. We took a hit to the belly. Nobody’s fault, Jack.

“You brought the Phrog down,” Del Rio said. “The bird was burning from the inside out—remember that? I got out the side door, and you went through the back. Guys from the dash two were running all over the field. I started looking for you. I found you with Danny Young in your arms. Always the hero, Jack, always the stand-up guy. Then the mortar hit.”

“I see snapshots, not the whole movie.”