Damaged Goods

Prologue

Afghanistan, November 2011

Ten minutes. It was only supposed to take ten minutes to reach our ride home.

Perkins drove. I rode in the vehicle commander’s seat. An electric jolt ran up my spine as our allegedly mine-resistant vehicle bounced down the dusty road. If you could dignify the narrow strip of packed sand as such. The same relentless beige as its surroundings.

Corporal Perkins spat out an oath behind a keffiyeh tied across his nose and mouth. My face was also half-encased with cloth. The idea was to keep from choking on the cloud of sand and dust that swirled around us. But the grit managed to work its way behind our makeshift filters. My face itched with the stuff. Under the desert sun, I squinted behind the dark Eyepro strapped tight to my head. The goggles reduced the glare and kept the dust from blinding me.

Perkins’ oath was swallowed up by the roar of the vehicle and the howling wind.

“Copy that,” I shouted, although he could no better hear me than I could hear him. I gripped my M16A4 rifle a little tighter as I scanned the surroundings.

Perkins, a red-haired, freckle-faced 20-year-old, said something else. I motioned for a restatement, pointing to my ears and shaking my head. The muffled response was, “Erica, are … okay?”

Perkins was one of the good guys. He saw and acknowledged that women were a military asset. Women have aided combat troops for years—unofficially, of course—as far back as the American Revolution. Back in ’04 or ’05, the Marines led the way for women to become more officially involved. When I deployed, they assigned me to the Female Engagement Teams or FETs. This was a highly select group of women who performed valuable back-up to the ground troops and intel-gathering duties. The types of jobs men couldn’t perform because of cultural niceties.

“Erica?” Perkins’ voice pierced my thoughts like a knife.

He’d been asking after my health. I had sustained a concussion while riding at the tail end of a convoy. My concentration still suffered, even after spending weeks in a hospital. I tried to conjure a response, but the wind seemed to blow thoughts straight out of my head. “I’m fine,” I yelled.

I checked my watch. Seven minutes to go.

Perkins was hell-bent on returning to his hometown in Nebraska or Kansas or some other big-ass state full of fields, small towns, and DQs. I think his family raised hogs. Me, I could think of no other place to go except the DC suburbs, where I had lived all 20 years of my life. With the exception of the last two, which I’d spent in Afghanistan.

Perkins had an advantage over me, in that he had a family he wanted to go home to. My parents thought I was insane to join the Marines. Maybe they were right, but their alternative was for me to go to college and marry well. Not my idea of a life plan.

I’d miss the people here, my comrades in arms and the ones we’d served. Even men who had greeted the FET as skeptics were eventually won over by our ability to connect with the locals, gather intel, and watch the men’s backs. Despite everything, I actually felt like we were a force for good. When we weren’t being blown to bits.

I wouldn’t miss the Vietnam War–era equipment the Army had abused and foisted on us, the whipping, grit-filled wind, the inedible food, scorching summer temps, and freezing nights, and especially playing target for madmen.

I scanned the close-in area for signs of movement as the barren desert wasteland stretched for miles around us. My watch indicated five minutes until we reached our ticket out of here.

Then, clear as a bell, I heard Perkins say, “First thing I do when I get home is have a cheeseburger. And a bottle of beer.”

As I opened my mouth to reply, I felt a sudden blast. Day turned into night. Is this death? I thought, before slipping into the void.

Chapter One

I jerked awake in my bed, drenched in sweat. Eight years had passed and I still had the dream. I was alive, Perkins wasn’t.

The room was a dark blur. My head was throbbing, and I blinked rapidly to clear my vision, but that didn’t work. I stared at the bedside clock and forced the numbers into focus. 0430 hours.

I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Was another hour of sleep really worth it? Did I even want to go back to sleep?

“Oh, what the hell,” I grumbled. I turned off the alarm and threw the covers aside before slowly swinging my feet to the floor. I had an important meeting that morning and didn’t want to be late.

I peeled off my sleep shirt and trudged into the bathroom for a warm shower, hoping it would relax me and wash off remnants of the dream. After a vigorous towel down, I put on my robe and went to the kitchen to brew some strong coffee. The paper wouldn’t be delivered for another hour. I like reading an actual print newspaper. Yeah, I’m weird that way.

After filling my coffee mug to the brim, I dry-swallowed two Advil and sipped the hot brew. A poor substitute for the painkillers I was forced to quit, as part of my court-ordered therapy. My aching brain cried out for just one tablet from my hidden stash of leftover Oxy. Excuses and reality bounced back and forth in my head. But it’s an emergency . . . Focus, I thought.

I puttered around the kitchen, making a simple breakfast of English muffins slathered in butter and Marmite (a salty British condiment you either love or hate). After washing the few dishes and utensils, I did a 10-minute meditation to prep for the day followed by yoga stretches to strengthen my back and get my head right. As I went through my ritual, I steeled myself for a meeting with new client—a multi-millionaire no less.