Joey shook his head desperately. “You’re not making any sense. My mother called me. She said she left Chris here. With you people. Did she come get him?”
“No.” The woman’s voice was hoarse. “I pray to God that she had. That all the parents had. But they didn’t.”
“Then where is my brother?” Joey was almost yelling. Jenny put a hand on his arm and stood close at his side. Joey made himself calm down; he wasn’t calm, but he wasn’t yelling, even though he wanted to.
The woman’s voice wouldn’t come. Finally, she took Joey by the hand and led him into a nearby room. The room was filled with beds. A box of preschool toys sat against one wall.
As he entered the room, Joey noticed the empty children’s clothing that had been left in each bed. He remembered the woman in the minivan who had lost her daughter. A rush of pain and confusion spilled over inside him, rising with horrifying certainty. The most horrible sight Joey had ever seen waited in the bed the woman guided him to.
There, in the middle of the bedding, Chris’s favorite PJs were spread out. The little jammies looked exactly like the other stacks of clothing on the beds and in the cribs. Six or seven grief-stricken parents and family members stood inside the room.
“No!” The cry tore loose from Joey’s throat. Before he knew it, his legs went out from under him and he dropped to his knees. “No!”
The Mediterranean Sea
USS Wasp
Local Time 0851 Hours
So many people missing.
The reality of the situation thundered through Delroy Harte’s mind as he entered names on the report he was preparing for Captain Mark Falkirk. He entered name after name, finding time and again a familiar name. And the letter remained to be written for Chief Mellencamp. The knowledge lay like an iron anvil in his thoughts.
USS Wasp was, in effect, a ghost ship. Nearly a third of her crew had inexplicably vanished. Only empty uniforms and personal items were left behind by the people who had been on board a half an hour ago. With the absence of the Marine wing and groundpounders, Wasp seemed to echo hollowly, as if her heart and guts had been ripped from her. The reports from the other ships came through in much the same vein.
CNN and FOX News carried video footage and commentary from a small group of Romanian reporters that had been behind the lines at the Turkish-Syrian border. However, the wisps of information and glimpses of what that area had become were maddening. Not enough information was being received to know what was truly going on over there, and more than enough was being seen to let every crewperson aboard Wasp know that the relief effort had failed, becoming a disaster that further weakened the positions of the Rangers, the U.N. peacekeeping teams, and the Turkish army.
“Chaplain Harte.”
Surprised, Delroy glanced up and found a young ensign standing in the doorway to his office. The Navy chaplain recognized the young man but hadn’t had many dealings with him. Most of the usual staff assigned to him had turned up among the missing. Given what he was beginning to suspect, he found that oddly reassuring and traumatic at the same time. The men who had served with him had been true believers in God, and their faith had been strong.
Stronger than mine, Delroy thought. And for the first time in a long time, he wished that Glenda were there with him. His wife always seemed to be the rock in their relationship. When he fought with his doubts and his fears, when he questioned his own faith in God—when the time came to bury Terry—she had stood resolute at his side and seen that things were taken care of.
Her ability to deal with everything through God’s grace or her own patience had finally made him see what a drain he was on her. When his pain over his son’s death wouldn’t go away, when he saw how his own inability to deal with the grief resonated within his wife, he had left Charlotte. He had used her like a crutch, demanding that she make sense of something that made no sense at all. He hadn’t been able to deal with his own weakness and his guilt over it.
“Yes, Ensign,” Delroy said.
The ensign held up a box. “This was left down in the medical department.”
Delroy looked at the box without comprehension.
“Chief Mellencamp’s personal property. Dr. Thomas asked me to bring this box to you.”
Delroy stood and took the box. During the confusion of the disappearances, he had forgotten about the chief’s personal effects. He had intended them to be shipped back with the letter he had yet to write.
“Thank you, Ensign.” Delroy hefted the box, surprised to find that so little remained of a man. But Terrence’s personal possessions, shipped back after his death, had been few as well. And after Josiah Harte’s death, not counting the house and the car and bank accounts and life insurance, not much had remained of his father either.
Just the memories, Delroy told himself. He only had to close his eyes to see his father pounding the pulpit in front of the congregation, or to take Terrence’s hand when he’d taught his son fishing. Just close your eyes and they’re right there. But when you open them. God, when you open them.
“Is there anything else I can do, Chaplain Harte?” the ensign asked. “Coffee, maybe? You look like you could use it.”
Delroy placed the box on the corner of his desk. Chief Mellencamp’s Bible lay on top of the small pile of family pictures, jewelry, and knickknacks the chief had picked up around the world that Delroy had felt his family would want.
“Coffee would be most welcome,” Delroy answered.
“I’ll get you some.”
Taking the Bible from the box, Delroy studied the simulated leather and gilt lettering. “A moment before you go, Ensign.”
“All right.”
The weight of the Bible
