Private (Private 1)

“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 Café 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.