The Deep Zone

“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”

“Could you turn it on for me and just put it on my chest?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jeran did that. “I set it on voice activation,” he said. “When you talk, it’ll run. When you stop, it’ll stop. I’ll go now, leave you with it. Check back in an hour or so.”

“Thank you, Jeran.” He nodded and left her alone. Stilwell took a deep breath, let it out, took another. She wanted to do this right, to keep the pain out of her voice, to tell them that it had not been bad.

“Hey, you guys. Doug and Danny.” She saw the little red light flicker when she spoke. “It’s me. I’m not in Afghanistan now. I know you haven’t heard from me for a while, but I also know that’s happened before, so hopefully you’re not too concerned. I’m okay. There have been some things going on that we couldn’t talk about. But don’t be worried. I’m good.

“I just wanted to tell you how much I love you both and how much joy you bring me. I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve you two, but…”

She paused, thinking where she wanted this to go. It was not about her. It was about them. What they meant to her.

“Do you guys remember the time when we went to that dude ranch in Wyoming? You were ten, Danny. On the first day, the wranglers were matching up all the guests with horses and they brought out this little pony for you. And you got mad and said, ‘I’m not gonna ride that midget thing. I want a real horse.’ So they brought you one, a mare named Sophy—remember?—and you rode her the whole time. That was so much fun. I will never forget the look on your face when they walked that pony out of the corral and brought Sophy in.”

She stopped, exhausted. She was up to about seven and a half, still managing, but knew it would not be long before she had to ask for serious meds. It was important that she get this done before then.

FORTY-SEVEN

HALLIE’S FACE WAS TURNED UP TO THE SKY, WATCHING. THE blasts of gunfire and grenade detonations continued, but she heard them as from a great distance. A soft, light breeze touched her face. There were no more thoughts, only a vast stillness enveloping her like mist in the mountains.

Suddenly a new sound, the whole world exploding. She looked at Bowman and knew. A barrage of grenades before their rush. In a moment the narcos would flood over their wall, shooting, killing them. She peeked over the rocks, watching the entire far meadow and tree line erupt in one long, roaring burst. But the narcos were not attacking. They were dying.

“Thirty-millimeter cannons.” Bowman was grinning. “Did you ever hear sweeter music?”

Two Apache attack helicopters were destroying the narcos. The black Osprey was hovering behind them, waiting for them to finish their work.

Most of the narcos were trapped in the open space between the tree line and Bowman and Hallie. The Apaches fired Hellfire missiles and the narcos simply disappeared in red fountains of flame and earth. In less than sixty seconds, nothing was moving, in the trees or the meadow. The Apaches kept watch, circling while the Osprey settled down. A ramp dropped and troopers in jungle- green camo sprinted out and set up a perimeter around the aircraft.

“Go!” Bowman pulled her up with his good arm. They left the shelter of their rocks and crossed the fifty yards to the Osprey at a dead run, Hallie carrying the moonmilk, Bowman the FAFO weapon. She was dimly aware of short bursts of fire from the troopers and the immense ripping roar of the Apaches’ cannons hosing down the forest. She ran up the ramp, its hard metal hurting her bare feet, and blundered straight into the arms of a sergeant, big as a wall, grinning.

“Go easy, ma’am,” he said. “You with us. Safe now.”

He deposited her gently onto one of the bench seats that ran the length of both sides of the fuselage interior. Bowman dropped down beside her. The team rushed back aboard and the ramp door closed with a hiss. Acceleration shoved her down as the Osprey shot up and away from the meadow.

Two medics went to work on Bowman, laying him flat on the deck. The men watched, mildly interested. They had seen wounds before. These were not the killing type. When the medics cut away Bowman’s shirt, she saw the two surprisingly small red holes, one in his right upper chest, the other through the muscle just above his left hip bone. They irrigated the wounds, infused them with antibiotics and coagulants, and gave him a handful of capsules, which he swallowed dry-throated. One of them started an IV transfusion in his right arm. “You want a little something for the pain, sir? We can put it in that other arm there.”

“All good, Sergeant, but thanks.”

Bowman got up and came to sit beside Hallie on the bench again. The medic hung the IV bag from a hook on the fuselage. There were a lot of things she wanted to say, questions she needed to ask, events she had to tell Bowman about. But inside, the Osprey wasn’t so quiet, and she would have had to shout. There were all those troopers, too, at ease now, the day’s work done, sitting on the benches, rifles between their legs like hockey players with their sticks. They were all, to a man, looking at her and grinning.

She grinned back at them, then stood up, stepped across the fuselage, pulled one young trooper to his feet, kissed him on both cheeks. He sat back down, grinning even wider and looking slightly dazed. To the rest of them, standing in the middle of the aircraft bay, she gave a double okay sign, thumbs and forefingers circled. They understood her gratitude and answered: every right arm came up, fist extended, thumb upraised, and they let fly a thunderous “OOH-RAH!”

Hallie sat back down beside Bowman, who had been watching the whole thing with undisguised amusement.

What the hell, she thought. She wrapped her arms around him, careful with the shoulder, looked into his eyes, and kissed him long and hard. The troopers gave another cheer, even louder than the first.

PART THREE Salvation

FORTY-EIGHT

“SO THE NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS SHOT THE BLACK MAN, AND the big man fell into the water. He might have been shot, too. You’re not sure. But you believe he drowned.” The Homeland Security debriefer glanced down at notes she had been taking. She was a petite woman who’d introduced herself as Rosalind Gurwitz. She had brown hair that framed her face in clusters of natural curls, an apple-cheeked face, and a surprisingly sympathetic, unlawyerly manner. The living, breathing opposite of Rhodes and Rivers.

Hallie thought, No, he did not fall in and he was not shot. I pulled him in. But instead, she nodded and said, as Don Barnard had instructed earlier, “That’s correct.”

Gurwitz, in a navy blue pantsuit, was standing by Hallie’s bedside in the room at Walter Reed. A wallet-sized digital video recorder mounted on a tripod at the foot of the bed was capturing the interview. Barnard, looking official and very directorial in a dark gray three-piece suit, hovered around the room, a glowering presence making sure the debriefer did not overstay her welcome.

“And the drug traffickers who attacked the two men took you prisoner.”

“Yes.”

“And it was when they were taking you back to their camp that you managed to escape.”

“What?” They had given her meds. Her head felt weird, filled with a soft buzzing that would not stop, and thoughts floated around, wispy, hard to grasp. What had Barnard said to say about that?