But the colonel wouldn't issue the order to fire; he just stood there, same as me, and stared the balloon all the way down to the ground. I think we didn't move because it was so quiet: except for the moon, there's nothing in life that big that ever moved so quietly. Even a sailboat makes a sound-the sails, the rigging, the water roiling past. But these balloons, six or seven stories tall, sailed silently. The only sound they made was when they landed, as this one soon did. Its payload scraped into a fold in the hill a few hundred yards off, and for a moment, the balloon floated there, stuck.
“Stand down,” said the colonel. I looked down the hill and saw that some curious soldiers were already climbing toward it. The colonel summoned a pair of binoculars and studied the balloon for a while, until a gust of wind came. The balloon popped free, dragged itself and its cargo a few yards up the hill, and then gave up once more. The colonel handed me the glasses, which I thought generous until I realized he simply didn't want to hold them anymore.
“What the hell can a balloon tell you about weather, Sergeant?” he asked, still staring after it.
“I don't know, sir,” I mumbled, adjusting the focus. Finally, I found the curious soldiers. I scanned up the hill ahead of them, along the path the balloon had torn through the grass and brush, until I reached the balloon itself.
Something had pierced the envelope, and the balloon now lay on its side, seemingly gasping, as if it had beached itself.
“Look like rain?” the colonel asked, and answered himself by laughing once. “Sunny and seventy through the weekend?” he added, checking his watch. “Weather. Five bucks says this is a Navy toy.”
I held my breath as I followed the balloon's shroud down to its pay-load. I'd never seen a hot-air balloon other than in photographs, and if anything, this balloon looked more incredible on the ground than in the air. The soldiers were almost upon it now, and I frowned, realizing that they would soon obstruct my view.
That's when I saw the fuse.
And then another, and another. And then a whole tangle of them came into view as I studied the payload more closely, and realized that each was a carefully wired charge-
“It's-a-bomb-sir,” I said. I couldn't be sure-the soldiers were in the way now, milling about, but-it had to be. I'd never seen a weather balloon, but I'd seen plenty of bombs in the classroom, and they-
“Sergeant?” the colonel asked, as if I'd reported sighting a seagull.
“A bomb, a bomb, a bomb,” I said, the words tumbling out so rapidly, it felt as though they were causing me to fall forward-and then I was-falling, running down the hillside toward the balloon.
I hadn't saved Gottschalk, hadn't even had a chance to.
As I ran, I stumbled, the binoculars caught me in the jaw; I tore them off and threw them away, yelling all the while. Behind me, the colonel must have been yelling, too, but I don't remember that. I only remember thinking, for a split second, that I had indeed fooled time, and that I was the only one moving. The soldiers, the bomb-laden balloon, the colonel-everyone was still, awaiting my intercession.
The first blast-just the noise, not the force-sent me to the ground. When I got up, I saw flames, and heard screams so fierce it was like I could see the sound. I began running even faster until I heard the second blast, tripped again, and lying there, finally realized I was too late.
One of the balloon's incendiaries must have detonated. It was later determined that the first blast had only wounded one or two of the soldiers, but the fire ended up claiming them all. The fire would have caught up with me as well, except that within a minute or so more of scrambling toward the crash, I was stopped by a steep, sharp ravine that had been invisible when I first started out. I picked my way down into it, but then discovered I couldn't climb the other side. Eventually I had to follow the ravine all the way down to the beachhead, watching the smoke billow just above me, out of reach.
ANOTHER RAVINE, on the far side of the crash site, and a fire road- a hopeful name for a swath of bare earth-did more to contain the blaze than anything else. By the time they had figured out a way to pump water up the hillside, the fire was mostly out. That night, the bodies of the soldiers were recovered, and around midnight, a pair of military policemen pulled me from my bunk and drove me as far up the hillside as their jeep would take us.
They delivered me into the care of the colonel. Earlier in the day during the cleanup, I'd offered my services but had been rebuffed. I wasn't sure if the colonel had summoned me now for apologies or blame.
“Turns out we lost two of
“Sir,” I said, looking up the hill, “I'm guessing it was some kind of incendiary-”
“That's pretty fucking brilliant, Sergeant. What was your clue? The six-acre brush fire?”
Another jeep, and then another, arrived.
“Wait here,” the colonel said, and I did, because it looked for all the world like aliens were stepping out of the jeeps. Six men in silver flash-suits and gas masks finished zipping up, checking gear. I'd seen fire-retardant clothing during my bomb disposal training-but nothing like these outfits, this late at night, lit by lights high on a hill.
“Who's in charge here?” said the only one of them not suited in silver.
“I am,” said the colonel.
“You were,” said the man, a captain, closing the distance. “We'll take it from here.”
“I lost five men,” the colonel said. “Is this your goddamn weather balloon?”
The captain nodded his men up the hill, and they began a surprisingly rapid ascent. Then he turned back to us. “It's mine now.”
“Whose was it? Where did it come from? Why wasn't I alerted?” the colonel asked.
“That,” the captain said, “is confidential.” That clearly wasn't good enough for the colonel, but before the colonel could blurt out another question, the captain looked at me and asked, “Who's this?”
The colonel drew himself up. “This asshole, supposedly a bomb man, was the first to figure out that the balloon was booby-trapped.”
“Bomb disposal?” the captain said, peering through the dark. “What's your name?”
“He was a little damn slow,” the colonel said. “A few minutes earlier, he could have saved some lives.”
I looked at the captain: “Belk, sir.”
The captain barked a little laugh. “You don't say? Sergeant Louis A. Belk?” I nodded. “How do you like that? You're mine, too. Wait for me in the jeep.”
I was glad to leave the colonel to him, and watched from a distance as the two officers argued. Finally, the colonel offered up a bit of a smile, and the two of them walked over.
The colonel regarded me, savored, and smirked. “You poor sap,” he said. “Whose ass did you forget to kiss?”
I looked to the captain. He looked at the colonel and then at me. “I am carrying orders to remove you from Camp Sunshine here, immediately, and deliver you to Elmendorf Field, Fort
