“FNGs?”
“Fucking new guys.” He smiled. “And one beautiful young nurse. Our boys’ll clear the airport in no time. Not to fret.”
The plane circled until Frankie’s fingers ached from the pain of her grip on the armrests. Outside, she saw orange and red explosions and streaks of red across the dark sky.
Finally, the plane evened out, and the pilot came on the loudspeaker to say, “Okay, sports fans, let’s try this shit again. Buckle up.”
As if Frankie had ever unbuckled her seat belt.
The jet descended. Frankie’s ears popped, and the next thing she knew, they were thumping onto the runway and powering down, rolling to a stop.
“Senior officers and women disembark first,” sounded over the loudspeaker.
The officers waited for Frankie to exit first. She wished they hadn’t. She didn’t want to be first. Still, she grabbed her travel bag from the aisle and slung it—and her purse—over her left shoulder, leaving her right hand free to salute.
When she exited the aircraft, heat enveloped her. And the smell. Good Lord, what was it? Jet fuel … smoke … fish … and honestly there was a stench of something like excrement. A headache started to pulse behind her eyes. She made her way down the stairs, where a lone soldier stood in the darkness, backlit by ambient light from a distant building. She could barely make out his face.
Off to the distant left, something exploded in orange flames.
“Lieutenant McGrath?”
She could only nod. Sweat crawled down her back. Were they bombing over there?
The soldier said, “Follow me,” and led her across the bumpy, pockmarked runway, past the terminal, and to a school bus that had been painted black, even the windows, which were covered in some kind of chicken-wire mesh. “You’re the only nurse arriving today. Take a seat and wait. Don’t exit the bus, ma’am.”
The heat in the bus was sauna-like, and that smell—shit and fish—made her gag. She took a seat in the middle row of seats, by a black-painted window. It felt like being entombed.
Moments later, a Black soldier in fatigues, carrying an M16, climbed into the driver’s seat. The doors whooshed shut and the headlights came on, carving a golden wedge out of the darkness ahead.
“Not too close to the window, ma’am,” he said, and hit the gas. “Grenades.”
Grenades?
Frankie inched sideways on the bench seat. In the fetid dark, she sat perfectly upright, was bounced up and down in her seat until she thought she might vomit.
At last the bus slowed; in the headlights’ glare, she saw a set of gates manned by American MPs. One of the guards spoke to the driver, then backed away. The gates opened and they drove through.
Not much later, the bus stopped again. “Here you go, ma’am.”
Frankie was sweating so profusely she had to wipe her eyes. “Huh?”
“You get out here, ma’am.”
“What? Oh.”
She realized suddenly that she hadn’t gone to baggage claim, hadn’t retrieved her duffel. “My bag—”
“It will be delivered, ma’am.”
Frankie gathered up her purse and travel bag and went to the door.
A nurse stood in the mud, dressed in a white uniform, cap to shoes, waiting for her. How on earth could that uniform be kept clean? Behind her was the entrance to a huge hospital.
“You need to exit the bus, ma’am,” the driver said.
“Oh yes.” Frankie stepped down into the thick mud and started to salute.
The nurse grabbed her wrist, stopped the salute. “Not here. Charlie loves to kill officers.” She pointed to a waiting jeep. “He’ll take you to your temporary quarters. Report to admin for in-processing tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred.”
Frankie had too many questions to pick just one, and her throat hurt. Clutching her travel bag and purse, she walked over to the jeep and climbed up into the backseat.
The driver hit the gas so hard Frankie was thrown back in her seat; a jagged metal spring poked her in the butt. The nighttime traffic on base was stop-and-go. In snatches of light, she saw barbed wire and sandbags built up around wooden buildings, armed guards standing on towers. Soldiers walking the streets in fatigues, holding guns. A large water-tank truck pulled up next to them, rumbling, and rolled past. Horns honked constantly, and men shouted at one another.
Another checkpoint—this one looked haphazardly thrown together with metal drums and coils of barbed wire and a tall chain-link fence. The guard waved them through.