He hit Play and the movie started. The first scene was Jolene, bleary-eyed, holding a baby girl who was no bigger than a half gallon of milk. “Say hi to your fans, little Elizabeth. Or will you be Betsy? Michael? Does she look like a Betsy to you…”
Now Betsy was walking for the first time, wobbling forward, laughing as she plopped over … Jolene was clapping and crying, saying, “Look, Michael, don’t miss this…”
Twelve years of his life, passing in forty-two minutes of tape.
He hit Stop.
There she was, his Jo. Her beautiful face was distorted, pixellated by the stop-motion, but even through the grainy, muted colors, he saw the power of her smile.
He saw the whole of his life in her eyes, all his dreams and hopes and fears.
I don’t love you anymore.
How could he have said that to her? How could he have been so cavalier with their life, with the commitment they’d made?
He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but time and distance separated them now. Whatever he had to say, it would have to wait until November. Would she even want to listen?
“Let’s go shopping tomorrow and send her a care package,” Betsy said.
“Yay!” Lulu said, clapping her hands.
Michael nodded, saying nothing, hoping they didn’t see the tears in his eyes.
*
Strapped in place and weighed down by the thirty pounds of Kevlar plating in her vest, Jolene piloted the Black Hawk toward Baghdad. Sweat collected under her helmet, dampened her hair, ran down the back of her neck. Her skin was flushed; she had a little trouble breathing. Inside the gloves, her hands were slick and damp. Even with the helicopter’s doors open, it was a damn oven in here. The water in her bottle was at least 122 degrees—hardly refreshing. Tami was in the right seat.
They flew a combat spread formation, three helicopters strong, hurtling through the darkening sky. Below, the confusing sprawl of Baghdad fanned out on all sides.
“Blue rain … blue rain…” came the other pilot’s voice through the radio.
It meant that the zone into which they were flying was hot, inhospitable. It could be anything—mortar fire, a missile, an RPG （rocket-propelled grenade）， a gunfight of some kind.
Jolene said on comm, “Raptor eight-nine veering east. ETA to Green Zone, four minutes.”
She moved the cyclic; the helicopter responded instantly to her touch, dropping its nose, picking up speed, hurtling forward.
Ra-ta-ta-tat. Bullets hit the helicopter in a spray. The sound was so loud that even wearing a helmet and earbuds, Jolene flinched.
“We’re taking fire,” Tami said sharply.
“Hang on,” Jolene said, banking a hard left turn.
She heard the tink-tink-tink of machine gun fire hitting her aircraft. One first, then a splatter of hits, close together, sounding like a hard rain on tin. Smoke filled the helicopter.
“There,” Tami said. “Three o’clock.”
A group of insurgents was on a rooftop below, firing. A machine gun set on a tripod spit yellow fire.
Jolene banked left again. As she made the turn, the helicopter to her right exploded. Bits of burning metal hit the side of Jolene’s aircraft. Heat billowed inside, and the aftermath rocked them from side to side.
“Knife oh-four, do you copy?” Tami said into the radio. “This is Raptor eight-nine.”
The helicopter next to them spiraled to the ground. On impact, a cloud of black smoke billowed up. For a split second, Jolene couldn’t look away.
Tami radioed the crash coordinates into the base. “Knife oh-four, do you copy?”
Jolene made a series of fast turns, evading, varying her airspeed, changing her altitude. Up, down, side to side.
When they were out of range, she turned to look in the back bay. “Is everyone okay?” she said to her crew, hearing back from all of them.
Jolene followed the other Black Hawk into Washington Heliport, landing behind it. She was shaking as she unhooked her MCU vest and seat belt.
She climbed out of the seat and stepped down onto the tarmac. The sky was gunmetal gray, but even in the gloom she could see the thick black smoke still rising up from the crash site. She closed her eyes and said a prayer for the fallen airmen, even though in her heart she knew that no one had survived that explosion. Seconds later, the roar of jet engines filled the night sky; bombs exploded in bursts of red fire. As soon as possible, she knew that a medevac helicopter would go to the site and try to locate survivors and victims.
She couldn’t help thinking that if you were alive and hurt in enemy territory with your bird on fire, it would be the longest wait of your life.