EXCERPT

EXCERPT

August 2021: Kabul Airport

08/26: 1750

The instructors at the Army's DCC said spotting a suicide bomber was easy. The guy would be twitchy, sweaty, shifty-eyed, maybe mumbling prayers: all small but significant tells an astute observer should grasp. Because the guy was nervous, right? By definition, a suicide bomber was doing this for the first time. If he messed up, not like he was getting any re-dos.

The way their instructors ticked off those tells sounded a lot like a quadratic equation: A + B + C = KA-BOOM. Like, pay attention, Captain Worthy, and you, too, might be a hero.

Another thing the instructors said was that suicide bombers were, like, 99.999 percent guys. Women, they claimed, were rarer than hen's teeth.

John and Roni never quite saw the logic in that. Because rare doesn't mean never. Rare only means a lot less often. For example, Boko Haram routinely kidnaps girls and women and gives them a choice: become a fighter's wife or find yourself made into a ticking time bomb.

So, rare did not equal zero. Although how anyone figured out gender after the fact, his instructors never did say. John and Roni figured this probably depended on whether you ended up with chunks or only red mist.

Something no one, not even Roni, ever asked was if any DCC instructor had actually applied these same datapoints and spotted a bomber before the ka - boom . John figured the number to be just about zero. Honestly, those close enough to succeed at the last minute weren't around to give an opinion one way or another.

So, perhaps there was some truth in all these calculations.

Or the other possibility: that was why it was called fiction.

On August 26 th , Abbey Gate was closed when John came on duty. Their CO gave them all a version of a straight story that morning at changeover.

"Credible threat," their CO said. This was U.S. intelligence lingo for some guy or some guys—probably members of ISIS-K—being willing to strap on and then go out in a blaze of glory and a lot of extraneous body parts while taking as many others with them as they possibly could. "The threat was deemed likely early this morning, but the assessment's been downgraded to maybe. "

Meaning one of two things: maybe yes, maybe no.

All the medical stations around the airport shut down. Personnel twiddled their thumbs while rumors swirled: that Abbey Gate wouldn't be reopened; that the Brits were now safe and sound; that, no, the Brits still weren't ready; that a suicide bomber had been spotted but then, no, he hadn't. Like that, on and on.

After a half hour of nothing to do, he was methodically repacking his medical go-bag after having methodically unpacked it when Roni wandered up. "Hey."

"Mmmm." He'd caught a glimpse of Roni, who'd just squeaked in for early report and changeover at the last second, though he'd willed himself not to look around. Because screw you, honey. Which was something he thought Driver was probably doing with energy and in earnest. So, instead of looking up, he gave a roll of cling gauze far more attention that it deserved and said, "Something on your mind?"

If he'd been hoping for an apology, he didn't get one. "I was wondering if you saw my note."

That note. She'd scrawled, Today. 1730. He'd found the note on his bed after storming into the bathroom and snarling that she'd better be gone when he got out. He debated between playing dumb or telling her to go screw herself. He settled for what he hoped was studied objectivity. "To paraphrase Julius Caesar, I saw it, I read it, I flushed it."

When he didn't continue, she said, "Are you coming?"

"To meet up with Driver and his merry men? Wait, does that make you Maid Marion?"

She ignored the jibe. "Are you coming?"

"If I do, do I get to feel his muscles?"

He was pleased at the sudden flush staining the underside of her jaw. "I'm being serious."

"So was I."

" Please , John." Her clenched fists hung at her sides, though he saw the knuckles whiten. "I'm asking you nicely."

"At the risk of sounding faintly not-so-very nice, why in hell would I do that?"

"Because it's important. The meeting's important."

"To whom? To you? To Driver?" So much for studied objectivity. "Why would I even care?"

"Because you're not an asshole," she said then added, "even if you sometimes act like one. Like now."

"I see." He gave a slow, pensive nod. "Is this where I get to say that it takes one to know one?"

"John." Her voice trembled, though whether from fury or frustration he couldn't tell. "No matter what you think, I have not been doing what you think."

"Oh?" His tone was a lash, and he was pleased when she flinched. "And what is it I think, Roni? You think I'm angry because, as my Yiddisher grandmother might have said, you're shtupping Driver?"

You're not being fair. It was the Jiminy Cricket part of his brain weighing in. You aren't in an exclusive relationship. You are Harry and Sally, only she's Harry, who's suddenly realized that sleeping with you has probably ruined your friendship.

Oh, what a bunch of bull. She had used him. Now she wanted something in return, a sort of payment for services rendered. Well, she could sit on it and spin.

"John." Her cheeks had pinked. "Keep your voice down, okay? I know you're angry at me. But you're angry for the wrong reasons… No ." She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. "Let me finish, okay? I just want to say this."

Against his better judgment, he said, "Which is?"

"I am not the one with secrets, John."

He gave that same angry laugh. "Oh, no?"

"No," she said, her voice calm, her posture telegraphing a certain authority. "I know others' secrets, and I keep them. I'm a shrink; that's what I do. That's why I never pressed you after that night at Emery's. Yes, I asked you to come shooting again. Yes, I hoped you'd trust me enough to talk about what's eating you, what you're hiding. Because whatever's in you…it's like sand in an oyster. You're shut up tight, holding onto what gnaws at your guts because you don't trust that, maybe…just maybe, what has bothered you all these years—what you've hidden away—hasn't smoothed over. That pearl of your past might not be beautiful, but maybe it's not as ugly as you think."

He waited a beat and then another—and then he laughed. The sound was brutal, harsh, corrosive: a bark that ripped his throat. He laughed loudly enough to turn a couple of heads, but he was beyond caring.

"Seriously," he said, shaking his head, "that shit really works with your patients? Because here's the problem with that analogy, Roni. To get that lovely little pearl? The one you're so desperate to wear around your neck?" He drilled her with a look. "You gotta kill the effing oyster."

Her face smoothed; the color fled from her features leaving her skin the color of bone china. When she stood, she did so slowly. For a second, he thought she might say something, but she didn't. She only turned and walked away and never once looked back.

There. He shoved in a packet of quick-clotting gauze with far more force than necessary. Take your psychobabble, honey, stick it where the sun don't shine, and spin on it.

He should've felt better. He'd shown her . Trying to manipulate him… His skin fizzed with rage. That would teach her.

And if wishes were fishes…

Finally, at 1000, Abby Gate reopened. Meaning the usual chaos became only more chaotic because now the air was seasoned with panic, a sense of an invisible clock counting down.

Right around 1250, word again came down from intelligence that there was going to be an attack that day, but no one knew what time and yeah, yeah, there had been false alarms before, but no, really, this was legit. Islamic State was coming; they were getting a video ready and everything.

John and the other soldiers ignored the warning and kept working.

Then, at 1400, intel said a bomb was going to go off in ten minutes. The Marines at the Gate sought cover. Work elsewhere ceased. Their CO ordered everyone to hunker down, but John kept seeing patients. What the hell else was he going to do? Wasn't as if the patients in the tent were going to suddenly go poof and vanish.

1410 came. 1410 passed. A minute or so later, more staff started to take up their stations. At 1430, things got going again.

Well, except for the stampede that wasn't.

Sometime around 1500, word got around that the last planes would leave the next day. This started a general panic. Not a stampede, really, but that was only because there was almost no room for anyone funneled into the one approach road to Abbey Gate to do much more than shift his weight from one foot to the other. Think of a solid, high-walled concrete horse corral topped with razor wire filled with struggling, panicked people instead of struggling, panicky horses, and you've got the idea.

When people panic, they're no different from anyone or anything else struggling to get out of a confined space. They push forward or back or from side to side; they surge en masse the way an ocean wave foams and curls and crashes to shore before dragging itself back to begin the process again.

And people fall. They are trampled. Some suffocate. Others are crushed by the sheer weight and volume of bodies pressed so closely together, there's no room to breathe. Often, the victims are small children. Even babies clasped tight to a parent's chest aren't safe because, well, crush a parent hard enough and then...

John must've seen more than a dozen trampled toddlers and dead babies by 1700.

August 26th was shaping up to be a very bad day.

"Worthy."

Whoever that was, the voice was muffled enough for John to simply ignore it, though he had a good idea who was there—and that guy could wait his turn. Instead of looking around, John held up a hand, the universal sign for just hold your horses , closed his eyes, inclined his head, and listened hard, pressing the bell of stethoscope a little more firmly against the mother's swollen belly. The mom and dad were legit evacuees, or so the Marines who'd brought both parents in claimed. Already woozy and unsteady on her feet, the massively pregnant woman had fainted; the Marine called for a buddy, and the two men had made a seat out of their arms and carried her the rest of the way to the med tent. The heat, John figured, combined with not having anything to drink had caused the woman to nearly black out. She was so dehydrated, it took a med tech, the same corporal from the van, three tries to get an IV going. Mom's heart rate had come down and her color was better, but the dad said the baby hadn't moved at all for the last hour.

And , he'd added, my wife feel pain in back.

Which worried the heck out of John.

Come on, little guy. The last time he'd done anything like this had been in med school during his OB-GYN rotation. Then, they'd had a specialized stethoscope to make hearing the baby easier. The baby's dad, translating for the mother, said the baby was almost thirty-five weeks. So, late enough in the pregnancy, barely, if push came to shove, which he sincerely hoped it wouldn't?—

"Worthy." This time, the speaker tapped his shoulder. The voice was male and now loud enough for John to catch his CO's tone.

This time, he answered. "In a second, sir." He still didn't turn, even though the dad's eyes were now wide with concern. The father, a translator whom the Taliban would almost surely execute, knew about command structures.

Everyone, take it easy. Of course, not hearing anything wasn't necessarily bad. All depended on the placental placement or the way the baby was lying. John listened so hard his ears rang. Come on, I know you're ? —

A sudden wallop under the bell of his scope that was so hard, John jumped as the baby gave a ferocious kick and then squirmed so violently a ripple ran across the mother's belly from left to right. At the same moment, the baby's heartbeat came through his earpieces loud and clear: thumpthumpthumpthump . He counted, checked his watch then beamed at the couple and gave a thumb's up for good measure.

"Sounds good to me." Unplugging his ears, he held the earpieces out to the parents. "Want to listen?" As the father, all smiles now, helped the mom, he caught the tech's eye and held up a finger: One more bag. He wanted this mom as tanked up on fluids as possible before sending both parents for processing.

Now the only thing to figure out was whether he could get the parents on a transport. Should check with the Marines who brought her in. Once the mom was stable, maybe he could grab one to help him walk them over to the State Department guys. Can't let her have a baby here, in this place... He wasn't sure if he meant the airport or Afghanistan, and it hardly mattered. Still thinking how he could swing this, he turned on his heel. That dad's got a bull's-eye on his ? —

"Whoa!" His CO, wearing a scowl, brought up both hands. "Not so fast, Captain."

"Oh!" He blinked, ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, sir. I forgot you were?—"

"Yeah, yeah." The colonel waved away whatever else John was going to say. "Have you seen Captain Keller?"

At the mention of her name, his heart did a somersault in his chest. How long had it been since he'd thought about Roni? Well, since surreptitiously eye-checking her station several times, though for once he hadn't minded being up to his elbows in work. The only time he'd snatched for himself had been ten minutes to take care of nature's call and then hydrate. He'd thought of her then, though, as he uncapped that awful orange drink.

"I honestly haven't been paying attention, sir," he said. This was, as they say, close enough to the truth for government work. "Haven't seen her since this morning."

"I saw her, sir." It was the tech returning from stores with an IV bag in hand. "She was with a bunch of guys. I don't think they were Marines, sir. Hair kind of not regulation, you know. Probably private contractors. I've seen them around here and there."

No. John's heart withered in his chest, and that pissed him off. He didn't care what she did now. He didn't give two sh?—

"Oh." The colonel's eyebrows pulled together in a frown. "Do you know where they were headed?"

He could have stepped in then, volunteered that Driver and his guys hung in a particular hangar. But he kept his mouth shut. Because this only confirmed where Roni's priorities lay, didn't it? She'd chosen Driver, unless she was into group sex...

Oh, grow the hell up. Given that the CO was, well, their commanding officer, the guy probably had a good reason for wanting Roni. "I've seen them, too, sir," he said. "They usually gather at a hangar, on the flight line."

"Oh, they weren't heading that way, sir." The tech was changing out the pregnant woman's IV bag. "They were on their way east to the Gate."

What? John's eyebrows arched toward his hairline. Why would Roni ? —

"Oh," the colonel said again. "Well, look...if either of you men see her, tell her to come find me. I'm heading to get a briefing on logistics for breaking down our operation day after tomorrow, but there's something that's come to my attention..." The colonel looked at his watch. "Worthy, it's 1650. Aren't you rotating off? You're an hour overdue."

"Had stuff to finish, sir." Then, against his better judgment, he said, "If you want, I'm heading down to the Gate anyway." One of the Marines who'd brought the pregnant woman in was a sergeant whom John had seen escorting refugees to the State Department people across base. "If I see her, I'll tell her to find you. I can go now, if you want. I just needed to clear out as much of the mess from the day as I could."

"You do that. As for the mess, well, that's the hell of Afghanistan, isn't it?" the colonel said as he turned to go. "It's like Sisyphus. No matter how much you shovel out, there's always more rolling downhill."

He resisted the urge to point out that Sisyphus's problem had been a very big rock, but he held his tongue. Same diff, really.

Because truer words.

Once outside, he walked the alley toward the Abbey Gate. The closer he got to the actual checkpoint, the worse the stink got. To his right, across the sewage canal and through coils of barbed wire, a line of densely packed refugees stood, patiently waiting their turn on one of the canal's narrow banks. They were the lucky ones. Even more people who were not so lucky stood in the thigh-deep gray water of the sewage canal.

On his side of the canal, a few contract security people stood by themselves, hands in pockets, chatting. About a hundred yards farther, he came on a clutch of Marines standing next to an off-white civilian flatbed. All the civilian vehicles in use had been hot-wired by the Marines first on the ground, seeing as how the Afghan Army had simply melted away and been inconsiderate enough not to leave the keys. (On the other hand, three months earlier, the Americans had turned out the lights and skedaddled from Bagram in the middle of the night and done exactly the same thing. Turnabout only seemed to be fair play.) A big, drippy, olive-green B had been spray-painted on both sides of the vehicle to mark the squad to whom the vehicle now belonged.

He spotted the sergeant who'd brought the pregnant woman to the med tent with a clutch of other, much younger Marines next to the truck. All the soldiers were relaxed, chatting, seemingly on break. Most guzzled from either water bottles or energy drinks. When the sergeant saw him coming, he excused himself, walked over, and asked, "Hello, sir. How's that mom? Is the baby okay?"

"They're fine, Sergeant," John said then added, "For now."

"Ah." The sergeant was about his height, though a little older and with a trim sandy moustache. He couldn't see the man's eyes behind his wraparounds, but he watched his face smooth as the smile slowly slipped from his lips. "But not?—"

"To term? Depends on how accurate her dates are. I'm not an OB, although if I had to guess, I'd say I sure hope so."

"Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, sir."

"Because it's not. She's close; that's baby's definitely dropped. I did a quick exam, and she seems okay for now. It's just..." He shook his head. "I don't think I'd want any child to be born here, especially not now. I know I can't help every pregnant mother here, but she's mine for now. Or, at least, until that next IV bag runs out."

"And then?"

"We got to get her out of here."

Now the sergeant did pull down his shades to give John a look. "They all need to get out of here. Not to sound unfeeling, sir, but what makes her different?"

"You mean, other than being very pregnant?"

"Spend some time on the wall, sir, and you see a lot of that."

"Okay, then, maybe nothing makes her different other than her husband has what seem to be the right papers. Maybe she and her husband sail through the State Department and they're on the next plane to Ramstein."

"But?"

"You probably know the State Department people better than I do. You've been walking people over to those guys for a couple of days. I'm not an expert, but I looked at the dad's papers, and they seem legit..."

When he hesitated, the Marine said, "Except what, sir?"

"Except his employment started back in 2016 but was terminated about six months ago."

He watched the sergeant think about that. "Does the paper say why?"

John shook his head. "Just that he served with distinction but got marked security-ineligible."

"Mmm." The sergeant smoothed his moustache with a forefinger, one side before the other, first the left and then the right. "Usually means that the person fails a polygraph or, maybe, has ties to a militant group. Mostly, though, it's about a polygraph."

"Which we both know, from numerous television shows and movies, is unreliable, especially if the subject is nervous. A guy with a high-risk job and a target on his back and now a newly pregnant wife just might be. Counting backward from the date of the letter, that would've been around the time that his wife could be pretty certain she was pregnant."

"Oh, his head was probably spinning, that's for sure."

"Yeah. I'm thinking a tough break."

"Can't disagree. I have three of my own. It's why I'm shooting blanks now because every time my wife sat me down to tell me something ," he said, inserting air-quotes, "I think my blood pressure inched up another couple notches. What do you want to do, sir?"

"I want to get them on the next plane," John said. "The father seems like a good guy."

"Yeah." The sergeant's head moved in a short nod. "I think so, too. Did you see his leg?"

"What?" He'd been so busy hoping he wasn't about to deliver a baby or send the woman across base to the hospital for an emergency C-section, he'd spared no thought to the man at all. "No. Why?"

"Figures," the Marine said. "Got himself hooked on some barbed wire when the crush started. Bad gash. He tied it up, though, and insisted on carrying his wife most of the way. We only stopped him when he got to limping so bad, I worried he would dump her. He's a good guy, you ask me."

"They're back at the med tent. I can get someone to take a look or do it myself. In the meantime, though, I need a favor."

"Which is?"

"I'd like you to walk me over to the State Department guys and point out who's likely to be a little more sympathetic. If you've got a couple minutes," he said, checking his watch. "It's about 1740. I don't know when they rotate, but since tempus is fugiting ?—"

That was as far as he got.

From behind and to the east, there was a sudden, very loud crump .

The sound—the shock of it—made them all flinch and duck and pull their shoulders up around their ears. John, who'd been looking over the sergeant's right shoulder, saw the sudden red-yellow flash, the fingers of flames and brown dirt spreading from the epicenter, and then an immediate mushroom of dun-colored smoke pillowing into the sky.

A split second later, the screaming started.