I had packed the few belongings I knew I needed into my pack, only to look down and see the giant sweatshirt laying on the floor next to my feet. I didn't want to touch it, but I looked away from it and stuffed it into the pack along with I other clothes, making sure to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn't smell it.
When I finally exited the house, there was no talking the entire bumpy car ride all the way to the Missoula airport, then I remembered David. I wouldn't be returning to work anytime soon, "I need to text my boss," I said.
"David's been told the situation, I can't believe you got a federal job with your military status." I smirked. That had been one of my greatest achievements after I fled Oklahoma.
"Stay as a contractor, they ask less questions, you make more money under the table," I remembered what Laswell had said to me in my little cabin only hours before, that's good housekeeping.
"You're smart," she said, pulling a pen from her ear and writing something in that folder again. "Did David know?"
I recoiled, yes, he did. "David is not a part of this," I said straightly. Laswell didn't push the subject. The three SUV's drove directly onto the airport tarmac, dropping us off at the plane's staircase up. I heard the zip ties and looked at Kate confused, "it's just a precaution. They come off as soon as we get to D.C."
My heart raced the entire time. From Missoula to Washington D.C. was a seven-hour jet ride, most of which I sat looking out the window, weighing my options. If I went to prison, I would serve a few years and then get the court martial. I would never be able to work again. I could help Laswell, even though I doubted I would ever be able to live up to the pedestal that she seemed to put me on. I could run, I had done it once before and I wasn't caught for three years. I could probably get away with it again, but they would find me much easier this time.
There was a small possibility, deep in my soul, that I would enjoy the idea of flying a helicopter again. She was right of course, I had thrived during my time in the Air Force, there were good people that I had become close with, seen the world, the few times I had been dispatched I felt like I was making a difference to people. I couldn't deny that I missed the adrenaline rush of having the cyclic between my palms again. For three years I had hidden away those feelings of missing my teammates, my purpose, that adrenaline. I tried not to think about the rumors that went around after I fled, the kinds of things my friends must have thought about me. Craning my neck on the back of the jet seat, I remembered the memories I had taken and put them into a metaphorical box in my mind.
"30 seconds!" I shouted back to the medical team in the back of my helo. It was my first dispatch on my first tour in Afghanistan. The four years of basic training, technical school, pilots' school, and then helicopter special training had paid off. I heard the boys in the back shout at each other. My co-pilot was new but talented, and another woman, something I had never had the privilege of having since I started in the air force. I smiled over at her, "Jackie, you ready?"
"Always," she said through the headset.
I saw the red smoke from far away, the crew on the ground was in a circular formation, surrounding two bloodied men in the center. There was a medic in the middle tending to the two of them. Adrenaline sparked in my circulatory system, the sound of years of my superiors screaming at me to "go, go, go!"
I hovered in the middle of the circular formation; a full touch down would have been too dangerous in the hostile territory. I needed to get in, get the men, and get out. "Delta team, clear!" I heard Jackie shout over the comms. They worked quickly as I held onto the cyclic between my thighs, keeping an eye on the surrounding area. My head was always on a swivel. Jackie was recording the time on her watch.
Looking back, I saw the injured soldiers, one was far worse than the other. One had his arm, a sling, and a pool of blood on the outside of his thigh on his cargo pants. The other lay on the floor of the helo, unmoving with several of the other men huddled around him. Blood pooled under him while the medic gave orders to apply pressure. He needed to go now.
The sound of bullets hitting metal knocked me out of staring at the mess in the back of my Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk, "we gotta go now!" Jackie said through the comms. I nodded and checked the ground, all the men were packed into the back, strapping themselves into the traplines. I slowly lifted from the ground as more bullets ricochet off my helicopter, "taking fire!" I said into my radio.
"Good copy!" one of the men in the back shouted before I heard a rifle being shot. Pressing on the throttle and raising the cyclic as I continued to raise from my hovering position. Jackie began pressing buttons on the dashboard, looking to me to tell her to return fire. I shook my head and she settled herself into a defensive position in her chair.
"Guns are hot," she said, thumb on the trigger that would release the missiles, I couldn't believe that I was here at this moment. Combat. No matter the training I had for these moments, nothing could prepare me for the first time I interacted with live fire.
"Hold on!" I said, I was still too close to the ground to do powerful maneuvering, especially with a crew in the back. I bent the nose of the helo forward and began to pick up some speed in the opposite direction of the firing. Jackie's thumb stayed upright over the trigger as the sounds of bullets trickled out.
When I returned to the makeshift compound some hours later, I was looking down at the pool of blood on the floor of my seahawk. It would leave a stain if I didn't clean it up soon. Technically it was my job to take care of the bird, but casualty cleanup was not something that I had ever done before. The medic was at my side with a mop and a giant bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I was sweating through my flight suit, too numb to feel the heat through.
If I had just been a little faster, or maybe if I had gotten to them faster the soldier would still be alive. Jackie appeared a few moments later, still in her own flight suit, "let's get her cleaned up." She said, but I had a hard time moving. The medic began to spray the hydrogen peroxide on the floor, wiping up as he went. Jack stepped up into the pit and picked up the bucket of water and began to follow the medic. Looking up at me she turned pale "come on, Hendricks," she said.
Although I was ranked higher than her, I knew that commanding voice in her. I approved. Picking up another one of the buckets of water, I began to wipe the bench on the side of the pit. Blood was everywhere. I felt my eyesight darken as the heat finally took its hold. "Damn it!" I shouted throwing the cloth down and wiping my forehead with the back of my wrist.
"Hey!" The medic looked up at me, then looked over at Jackie, "both of you need to hold it together." The medic was an older man, he had been at this for a while, he had probably lost people before. These things happened, I should have been prepared for this, it's what you trained for.
Jackie looked at me and nodded before I picked up the cloth again. I let my mind fall blank with the sound of scrubbing, but there was one thought that I couldn't let go of: I didn't even know his name. "What was his name?" I asked after some time.
The medic looked up and sighed "Watkins, he was a transfer from the British Armed Services, he wasn't even supposed to be here."
"Jesus Christ," Jackie said, she began to scrub harder. If he had joined right out of high school, that meant he was young, eighteen or nineteen years old. My body was completely numb at this point, the sounds of sloshing water and scrubbing turned to echoes in my head.
"Jamie," Kate said, her hand tapping my shoulder, "we are landing soon."
I nodded at her, my hands were throbbing in my lap, the zip ties were digging deeply into my wrists now. I was grateful to be on the ground, which meant that the zip ties would be able to come off.
I had been to Washington D.C. once before, for a field trip when I was in eighth grade. I had seen the tomb of the unknown soldier and thought the ritualistic movement of the guard fascinating. History was always something I found interesting, so I had relished the trip, taking in the monuments and the thousands of families taking pictures. Now I was walking on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base. It was still freezing outside, but far warmer than the snowy hills of Montana.
Kate walked in front of me, quickly striding towards one of the large structures. Upon entering, she turned to me and held out a knife, cutting the zip ties. I rubbed my wrists, feeling the blood rush back to my sore digits and joints, "listen to me" she said before smacking the elevator button, "let me do the talking, they won't like this situation."
I nodded as the elevator doors opened and I walked inside, "John will hear me out but won't agree with me bringing you here. Gaz will follow me and John if we tell him too," she pulled a phone out of her pocket and silenced a call. She was holding a much smaller manila folding against her check, "Soap will fight me, Ghost won't say anything."
"Strange names," I said under my breath.
"Call signs," as the elevator dinged and the doors opened, I felt my heart begin to race, these men had seen me naked. My neck and face flushed as the memories from the beginning of the week flashed in my head again, "I've made sure to scrub the black portions of your file, no AWOL, no assault reports, you're simply ex-military."
I tried to keep up with her as she rushed down the hall to a glass conference room, satellite images of Kootenai National Forest were projected onto a bright white eraser board. The four men sat in their chairs with their backs to me. I recognized Price with his cigar sticking out of his mouth. Without his beanie on, I could see that the Scottish man had a mohawk that had to be some kind of lost bet or prank. There was one I recalled was named Gaz, he was clean cut and dressed well in a pair of jeans and black button down. Then there was my burglar, sitting in the darkest part of the room, with his skull mask illuminated by the light of the projector.
"Why does he always wear that thing?" I asked as she stopped just outside the door.
"Like I said, anonymity is something we value on our team." Ripping the door open she walked in like she was walking into a combat zone. All four men turned to her, then their eyes landed on me. I wished I was wearing ten layers of clothes right now; self-awareness was dinging around in my head the same way a pinball might ding around in a pinball machine.
"What is this, Laswell?" Price asked, it was calm but stern.
"Your guide," she said. It was a command of attention in her voice that turned the room ice cold at that moment. I couldn't look any of them in the eyes, so I simply watched the white board, studying the trails that I had been on thousands of times.
"You're joking" the Scottish man spoke, slapping his hand on his thigh.
"Laswell?" Gaz's voice was full of confusion.
"She'll be guiding us on the border," Laswell's voice caught as she watched the faces of the man in the room turn to her, enraged. "She saw the Russian helicopters, she knows the area better than our satellite photos can predict, she can track through the terrain easily and effectively."
The room was silent for a long time, shock and awe was something that turned my skin into a path of fire, the masked man finally spoke up, "you want us to take an American civilian on an operation?" His words might as well have hit me in the jaw. Downright humiliating.
"Wasn't it you that said that having American civilians this close to an operation was a recipe for disaster?" The Scottish man questioned.
Kate's eyes flashed to him, and his face fell, "she is not a civilian." My heart skipped a beat as she handed over the manila folder to Price. I prayed that she was telling the truth that she had washed the dark marks away. Price took a few moments to read through the packet before he looked up at me, scanning and confused "well, I'll be bloody damned." He closed the packet and bent over, sliding it across the table to Gaz and Soap. Both took their time to read through it before finally passing it back to my burglar that didn't touch it. Crossing his arms over his chest as he scanned me, this time was far less amusing than the first time. His body language was angry, ruthless, disgusted.
"Why didn't you say anything before?" Price finally said, it took me a few moments to realize who he was talking to.
"I don't know, maybe it was the gun in my face that distracted me," my eyes flicked to the masked man whose brown eyes narrowed. Soap snickered in his chair; Kate's eyes flared at him. "Or maybe the fact that I was dying of hypothermia."
Kate's mouth dropped open and Price rubbed his eyes, "Kate, there are hundreds of other chopper operators we could recruit, good men," his eyes shifted to me "or women, with good experience and fresh training. This is incredibly out of line."
"Laswell, I don't claim any kind of authority here," the Scott said, his accent thick, "but this is what we train day in and day out for. She's been out of any kind of military training for three years," he looked to you sympathetically but sternly. "While she may be fully capable, I doubt she is cut out for the shite we do."
I didn't protest at that; I didn't even disagree. While tracking and hunting kept me in good shape, I would never be able to keep up with special forces, not even when I was fresh out of Air Assault School was I able to fully keep up with the boys. That was just how it was. I could hold my own in a grappling match against my teammates back in the day, but if I got hit in the face by one of these guys, my skull would be cracked. Laswell bent over the table once more and sighed, tired of explaining herself. She seemed to understand what he was saying, nodding her head, "she's got a good enough record and a good streak of anonymity. As a woman she can offer the team a different set of skills that you guys wouldn't be able to."
"Hold up-" I protested, that was not part of the deal, but Kate raised her hand, and it was like the hand of God shut my mouth for me. There was a rash of dissatisfied looks around the room, the silence was awkward as they all looked at me.
Kate looked over her shoulder "can you give us a minute?"
She didn't have to ask me twice; it was easy for me to back out of the door into the hallway. I wanted to run away so badly; I looked out the window that was across from me. The sun had gone down, and the sky sparkled with the last glimmers of the sunset, turning the shadows black. The glass conference room wasn't completely soundproof, I could hear the raised voices. Price had his hands in his beard and Laswell stepped closer to him, Soap and Gaz watched the two of them like they were watching parents bicker over something. Ghost stayed completely still, scanning me like a robot, watching every single movement I made on the outside of the conference room. I wanted to crawl inside myself with how uncomfortable this made me.
Making I eye contact with him a few times, yet always, always forced to look away. He was like a predator waiting for the exact moment to kill, his eyes were like two probes in the darkness of the room, lighting up like signals whenever danger was near, and right now they were tracking me like radar. 'Movement Detected,' his beams of iris seemed to say.
The bickering went on for some time before Price's finger shot over at me and I could hear the shout, "she is a liability and collateral damage in waiting and I won't have that on mine or my team's hands!"
Soap nodded, agreeing with Price. Kate looked down at the folder, nearly defeated but looked at me once more and then to Price, saying something that made the room collide with a rock. Soaps mouth fell open, Gaz placed his hands on the table now listening intently. Price crossed his arms over his chest, and I could read the words coming out his mouth, they were angry. "That's impossible."
There was more talking, more eyes flicking to me out in the hall. It was when Ghost stood at his seat, bracing himself on the table and opening my file at last. He spent a long time reading through it, flipping the pages slowly, looking up at me every few moments. He tossed the folder back to Laswell and sat back down in his chair.
Kate finally looked over to me and opened the door again, "come in."
I entered and it was like walking underneath an iceberg, cold stares looked at me like my skin was rotting away from my bones. Everyone was silent, Price finally spoke up in the most dreadfully defeated tone I had ever heard someone use, "you will report to hangar fifteen at 0500 tomorrow morning."
The stare he gave me was deadly, I nodded and looked at Kate who gave me a reassuring look "welcome to the Team, Ash." I suddenly felt my eyes burn, that was my old call sign. The call sign that had been scrubbed from my vocabulary three years ago. I caused fires, figuratively and legitimately. And I liked to watch them burn.