And in any case, she was there with his two babies when we left by bus for Griffiths Air Force Base. He’d made some questionable decisions in training, but they nearly always seemed to be an effective way of dealing with the situation at hand.
They’d moved to the larger caliber guns, and the aircraft were concentrating their fire better. They were striving for a great opening night. They were desperate for the city’s submission, desperate for perfection.
The Army was out there too, massing to the southwest and the northeast, along the main road that ran down the coast and through the city. We were to gauge the show of force against the level of resistance and report on whether the city was awed enough to accept help in forming some kind of government.
Santiago stepped up behind us, the radio in his hand. “Spectre Six-Two, Spectre Six-Two,” he called. “Spectre Six-Two, Spectre Six-Two, adjust fire ten by ten north.” He set the handset back on the receiver, then crouched behind me for a moment, watching my section of the city. He was careful to stay away from the edge, just far enough to avoid the view of anyone who might be looking up for a sign of us. I peeked over the edge briefly, but I didn’t see a soul in the street below.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” Cooper asked Santiago.
“Don’t ask me that,” Santiago said. “Forever. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll leave you here. What’s it matter to you anyway? What have you got to go home to?” He walked away before Cooper could respond.
“Just wondering,” Cooper said. He was probably thinking about his virgin life and the girlfriend he planned to make his wife. The others gave him a hard time, saying that he had it all, that he had it all lined up the way a man should. It was such a lonely notion up there on the rooftop.
“We’ll be home by Christmas, Coop,” I said.
“That’ll be good,” he said.
“I heard it from Shane, at headquarters,” I said.
“Can you imagine so many cities so close together that you wouldn’t be able to see a single star for all the light?” He took his Kevlar helmet off and rolled over onto his back. “I’ve been there. Think about it,” he added, as Santiago walked over. “One day you won’t be able to see the stars because of all the light.”
Santiago turned back to the bombing. Whenever a bomb exploded it briefly colored the darkness of the desert a bright orange.
“Bullshit,” Santiago said. “You’d still be able to see them from the ocean.” He knelt down and took his helmet off. He ran a hand through his cropped dark hair. “There’s a lot of ocean in this world.”
“If you got enough money to get out there,” Cooper said. “People like us don’t.” Then he took a long breath, as if he were trying to smell the ocean through the city.
If I knew the names of all of the constellations and all those warriors, gods, and poets that they immortalized, I would have rattled them off, one after the other, for the amusement of Santiago and Cooper. But I know nothing about the stars.
Cooper and I relieved Heath and Fizer of guard duty in the building’s only stairwell. It was three in the morning. Just two and a half more hours until dawn, and then we’d be at the stadium. There they’d pick us up in a Black Hawk and carry us out of the city, flying up the long stretch of coast, out over the desert they’d bombed, and back to the main camp a hundred miles to the north. Headquarters felt that getting out of the city would be the hardest part of the mission, so they were picking us up at the stadium, a massive structure no one had used for years. If for some reason they failed to pick us up there, we were to drive the van back out of the city.
The darkness in the stairwell was hard on the eyes. I was trying to see something where most likely there was nothing. Looking over the railing, down into seventeen floors of darkness, I tried to distinguish between the ground floor and all the nothing I was staring into. I wanted to believe that I could see the front door. Finally, I put on my Night Vision Goggles. The wide stairwell was such that you could see clear to the ground floor. They didn’t make stairwells like that anymore.
I’d brought an MRE to try and get some nourishment. I set my weapon aside and tore the package open. It was a slice of ham. I could taste it before taking a bite. The smell of the juices and preservatives made me feel like throwing up. I put it aside and forced myself to eat the crackers, hoping that they would make me thirsty, and perhaps help me hold down some water.
We’d set up trip flares on the fifth floor and grenade simulators on the eighth and ninth, in case someone tried to sneak up on us. Santiago made us repeat this information aloud several times, so that we understood exactly where the traps were set. Fifth floor flares was a mouthful. Eight and nine simulators was easy to remember.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Cooper asked, tearing the top off an MRE. I could smell aluminum and spaghetti. My stomach rose to my throat.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “Why?” I was trying hard to listen to the darkness, but I knew that Cooper was trying
