The Mercenary's Daughter

by Joe Gazzam

  Seconds later, the missile launched across the blue plane of sky above, like a distant jet leaving a smoke trail.

  My heart seized and I closed my eyes. I’d failed...

  Like a ghost, the dream carried me to the scene, where a large crowd of people gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Prague. They would be completely vaporized by what happened next. Somehow I’d seen it before. I knew it was coming. Every cell in their bodies would collapse and disintegrate instantly. And any remaining trace of their existence would be blown away by the ensuing summer wind.

  As they milled about, their last moments passed without thought. Not one of them knew it was the end.

  White clouds migrated across a wide sky. A young couple leaned against the wrought iron Embassy gate and fell into each other’s arms. I recognized the boy. His short sandy curls were grown out and his cherub face had thinned some. I’d met Dobbs a few days after joining the Marines. He’d barely made it, huffing and puffing his way through boot camp, but he was funny and friendly. As outsiders, we stuck together.

  In the dream, Dobbs and his girlfriend stopped lip-locking for a moment to take a picture of themselves with the flapping red, white and blue flag behind them. The girl curled a piece of hair behind her ear and offered a well-practiced smile. As Dobbs extended his arm to take the selfie, the shoulder-launched missile struck the side of the building with an eruption that completely astounded the air.

  The result was unexpected. The missile didn’t explode, but rather imploded, causing the entire embassy to collapse inward. Concrete walls sucked together as the building’s metal structure folded like a closing flower bud. Trees were ripped from their roots and parked cars tossed like toys flicked by the finger of an angry child. Everything in a two-hundred-yard radius crumpled like a beer can as it was pulled into the vortex. And at the very moment of critical mass, the implosion instantly rubber-banded back out at equal velocity, screaming in every direction at once. In a millisecond, all that remained was the resulting tidal wave of dust, ash and debris.

  And then, nothing but silence.

  “Dobbs!”

  I woke, screaming, hunched against the side of my bed, the image of Dobbs lying feet from me under a cloud of raining dirt.

  “Dobbs!”

  We’d lost him in Fallujah, and even in sleep, I couldn’t escape the memory of the last time I saw his face.

  As the dream faded, and I began to snap out of the trauma of reliving the loss of my friend, I sank against the wall. My shoulders shook as I cried and my chest worked hard to keep up. I knew the moment it happened that his death would haunt me. I just never imagined it would follow me home.

  The sound of my bedroom door creaking made me look up. Mitch was there, standing in his plaid pajama pants half illuminated by the moonlight.

  “You okay?” he asked, his voice quietly concerned as he watched from a distance.

  I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there.

  “Yeah,” I said, my hiccupped breath slowing back to normal.

  I expected him to leave, but he came in and sat next to me on the floor.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking over at me. As our eyes connected, a moment of understanding and forgiveness passed silently between us.

  “In the dream or in Fallujah?” I returned my focus to the side of my bed, still haunted by the images.

  “Both, I think,” he answered.

  I rested my head against the wall, and let out a deep sigh.

  “My best friend in the service was a guy named Jeff Dobbs. He shouldn’t have enlisted. He wasn’t cut out for it.” Somehow, I still carried around the guilt for not convincing him to go home early on, like maybe he would have if it wasn’t for me. He knew I’d be alone without him, and deep down I knew it too, which is why I never pushed it. “We were headed out on an easy routine mission to sweep the area for threats in the Humvee. I argued with him about the window seat and made him sit in the middle.”

  My head sank into the top of Mitch’s shoulder. Despite our issues, there was still an underlying closeness between us. He put on a hard front when he was mad, but through all the mistakes I’d made, Mitch had never failed to be there for me when I needed him. I wished I could say the same.

  “We hit an IED,” I finished. “He didn’t make it.”

  Mitch rested his cheek against my messy mop of hair, his silent comfort a gentle balm to soothe my damaged heart.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER DAD LEFT, I SPENT my time binge-watching TV and not getting dressed. At first, sleeping in until 11 a.m. felt freeing, but eventually it just became severely depressing. As I rolled off my mattress in the same extra-long T-shirt I’d been wearing around the house for the past two days, I decided enough was enough. Time to get it together.

  I slid into a fresh pair of cut-off jean shorts and a tight black tank. Maybe I’d see about that Alarm job today. My autopilot routine kicked in, and in less than a minute I made the bed in perfect Marine fashion with ultra-tight corners and razor-sharp folds. As I pinched a stray hair from the pillow, it dawned on me that I didn’t have to make my bed like that anymore. Ever again. I was now a civilian.

  I considered yanking the sheets back out in protest, but instead, headed down the hall and into the kitchen. Putting my foot on the counter and stretching my hamstring, I noticed my long legs were still cut with sharp lines of muscle from forced twenty-mile hikes sporting fifty-pound gear. Special Forces training had been such a day-in, day-out relentless grind, I almost felt guilty for letting myself get lazy.

  I lowered my leg and shook my tank, trying to fan the heat from my body. It had to be in the nineties already, and because Dad refused to use the AC, the air hung thick and humid like the inside of a greenhouse. As I poured cold coffee into a glass of ice, I heard hammering. Outside the kitchen window Mitch was attempting to put trim around the door of the backyard office. I watched, smiling to myself as he tried to hold the wood in place and hammer the nail at the same time. It wasn’t going well.

  My bare feet brushed the thick, shag carpet as I padded back to my room. I eyed my combat boots. They stared at me from the corner like a pair of old neglected friends. Considering the heat, I stepped into a pair of sneakers instead and headed outside where Mitch was still struggling with the trim. I silently grabbed the other end and secured it.

  He paused, but continued to hammer. “Finally decided to get dressed?”

  “Shut up. I’ve earned a day or two of lazy.” When he finished, I grabbed another piece. “So, MIT, huh? You must be psyched.”

  We hadn’t worked through our fight, but Mitch seemed to have the worst of it out of his system. At least he was back to acknowledging me.

  “Yeah. That’s what Dad says too, ‘I must be so excited about it.’”

  “Thought MIT was every nerd’s fantasy.”

  “Not this nerd.” He took a minute to hammer then reached for his water bottle. “I mean, yeah, it’s a great school. But twenty-four-seven classes, lab, study hall, and the library. I finally get out of high school and that’s my next four years?”

  I watched him drink as the sun warmed my bare shoulders. “What else would you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I thought about joining the Marines for a second, but Dad killed that pretty quick.”

  I laughed. “You? A Marine?”

  “Why not?”

  I had a million reasons why not. A million burns, a million put-downs, but I stopped myself. Why not be the cool older sister for once and extend the olive branch? “You know, you’re right,” I said, handing him another piece of trim. “Why not?”

  “You think I could?” he asked, picking through his small pile of nails.

  I tried to imagine him infiltrating enemy camps in the desert, sweat dripping into his eyes, shaky fingers on the trigger of an M16 and bullets waiting around every corner.

  Not a chance.

  “I mean, it’s brutal, but yeah...I think so,” I lied.


  Mitch gave a confident nod as he hammered in the last nail completing the door frame, and I smiled at his back.

  THE LATE AFTERNOON sun turned the office into a sweatbox. After finishing the trim, Mitch and I moved inside to paint, working in complete silence.

  I glanced at him and refilled my tray of paint with a glistening eggshell white. Just tell him everything, I thought to myself. Tell him that you know you’ve been a crappy sister and put the family through years of grief. That you want to fix things and want him to be your little brother again. Just stop being so closed off and tell him.

  “Long, even strokes,” Mitch said, breaking the silence. “I want it perfect for Dad when he gets back.”

  “Long and even. Got it.”

  I zoned out to the rhythmic sound of our paint rollers sticking against the drywall.

  “You know what today is, right?” Mitch asked.

  “Ummm...Thursday?”

  Mitch stopped painting.

  “Mom’s birthday.”

  I let out a breath, but kept working. “So?”

  “I’ve decided I’m done being mad at her. What’s the point?”

  “Oh sure, let her off the hook,” I scoffed, my voice thick with sarcasm. “I join the military and you lose it. But Mom, all she did was cut out and abandon her kids. I mean...I guess that’s cool.”

  “Really? Gonna make this about you?”

  I sighed, refocusing on my section of the wall. The dim light and paint fumes were giving me a headache.

  “She loved us,” Mitch continued with his point. “I know she did. I know whatever reason she had for leaving, it had to be a good one.”

  I redipped my roller. “She had a reason all right. She didn’t wanna take care of two little kids anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Yeah, well, you believed in Santa Claus till you were ten.”

  Mitch tried not to smile, but did. “That just proves you and Dad were good liars.”

  “Ten years old! And you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

  “Shut up,” Mitch said, holding his roller out like a weapon.

  I turned. “I will jam your entire head into that paint can.”

  Mitch slowly lowered his arm and both of us had a good laugh.

  Now’s the time, I thought. Tell him you’re sorry. He’s in a good mood. I looked up, ready to spill my guts but froze as Sasha suddenly appeared in the doorway. The woman’s face was completely ashen and her expression reeked of devastation. My chest hurt before she even said a word.

  “Hey, Sasha,” Mitch said, spotting her. He saw the look on her face too and dropped the roller into the tray.

  Sasha walked inside, avoiding eye contact with either of us. “I...don’t know how to tell you this. I just came from the office.”

  I could already feel the loss lurking in the still air around me. “Tell us what?”

  “Your father...” Sasha said, her voice cracking slightly.

  My heart stuttered. I couldn’t take it. Not Dad. “What about him?”

  “Your father...he’s dead.”

  I stared at her in disbelief, the wind so completely knocked out of me I couldn’t respond.

  “What?” I finally managed, though I was hardly listening. It felt like someone had grasped the soft lining of my stomach and squeezed it like a washcloth.

  “There was a car accident on the way to the plant. It was raining and the roads on the outskirts of Beijing aren’t very good. He was going over a bridge and lost control. The car went into a river and...” Sasha got choked up and let her words fade to silence.

  My eyes filled and my whole body ached. I couldn’t breathe. Beside me, Mitch fell back against the wet, freshly painted wall, marking up its slick surface as he slid to the floor. As he sat there, emotionless, completely devoid of life, I felt the dim spark of rage inside me ignite, building into a wildfire of grief.

  THE SUN BURNED A DEEP red, fighting in vain to stay above the horizon as darkness made its final sweep through the neighborhood. The streetlights had not yet flickered on. Moths lay in wait, ready to rush them as the sky turned gunmetal gray.

  Inside the house, I sat at the dining room table. I had cried all I could cry, until I felt like a sponge left out in the sun for days. The whole thing was so strange and sudden, I couldn’t completely accept it. Dad’s death lingered like an unreachable ache that couldn’t be soothed. Tormenting me. Something wasn’t right about it. I’d known it in my gut the minute they’d received the simultaneous phone calls.

  I stared out the sliding glass doors at Mitch sitting alone in the dark. I could just make out the shape of his body. He was still in the office, sitting on the floor against the wall, in the exact same spot.

  Sasha approached the table with two bowls of freshly made spaghetti and set one in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said, stirring the noodles mindlessly.

  Sasha sat down across from me and nodded in Mitch’s direction. “Anything?”

  I shook my head. “He hasn’t moved an inch.”

  “How are you doing?” Sasha asked, speaking delicately, as if her words were an unwieldy stack of fine china.

  “I’m just numb. Like...this doesn’t even seem real.” I couldn’t piece it all together. The circumstances were too coincidental. Or maybe that was how it felt when someone close to you died. “I keep thinking there has to be more to it. He drops everything, leaves in the middle of the night, and now he’s dead? It’s too weird.”

  Sasha stopped twirling her fork, and our eyes connected. “Life doesn’t play fair. And death isn’t ever something that feels well-timed or convenient. It always hits like a freight train.”

  I nodded, trying to decide how much I trusted her. She’d received the same call he did, but as her gaze stayed locked on mine, there was genuine sorrow in the way she looked at me. We’d cried together. She was grieving, too.

  “How do I get my head around the fact that I’ll never see my dad again?” Saying the words out loud made my throat sting and my eyes brim with tears.

  “He loved you so much,” she said, her shoulders slumping with sympathy. “It just poured out of him. He would talk about you constantly. So much that when you and I first met, I almost felt like I knew you already.”

  “Really?” I asked, pushing away my paranoia and taking the tiniest bite of my dinner. “I thought I was the family’s dirty little secret.”

  “Not at all. I mean, I’d be lying if I said he didn’t worry about you. But that man loved you kids like no one I’ve ever seen. He was so hard on the outside, but inside, his heart just overflowed. I think he told me every story there was about you, three or four times over.”

  “How serious were you guys?” I asked, drying the slow-crawling tears from my cheeks. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “No, I...” Sasha finished her bite. “Very, I guess. I mean, there were certain obstacles that probably would have prevented us getting married, but...”

  “Like what?”

  “Ahhh...nothing I really want to get into. But I’ll tell you this. He was the best man I’ve ever met. I know that’s something people just sorta say...but I mean it. He was someone you could count on. And in this world, that’s saying something.”

  “Trust me. I understand.” I forced a smiled and looked back out at Mitch.

  “He has to eat something,” Sasha said after a moment. “Maybe I should go—”

  “No.” I got to my feet. “I’ll go get him.”

  I headed through the sliding glass doors, across the backyard. As I entered the office, I paused to flip on the lights. To my surprise, they worked and filled the space with an offensive bright white. Mitch squinted but didn’t look up. His blond hair stuck out in places from running his hands through it too many times, and his face was a red, blotchy mess. I finally exhaled and sat down beside him.

  “You should come in. Sasha made dinner.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

&nbs
p; I paused, feeling just as lost. “I know. It’s so...”

  “A whole life, gone. Like turning off a light switch.” Mitch sat quietly for a moment, and finally looked me in the eyes. “It’s not fair.”

  “It’s...” I trailed off. I knew there was no resolution, no rationale I could come up with to make sense of it all. Nothing I could think of to help ease the pain or shock for either of us.

  “We’ve got no parents,” Mitch said. “What kids our age don’t have parents? Think about the future, the next ten, twenty, thirty years? What does that even look like now? No parents at my high school graduation. No mother or father to come home from college to, to share holidays with, to meet my wife, your husband. Our kids will never know their grandparents. The rest of our lives are going to have this giant gaping hole.”

  “I know. I...know.” I lowered my head as the ensuing silence enveloped us. Suddenly I felt completely inadequate. I was all he had left. The only one to comfort him. But how could I tell him everything would be okay when I knew it wouldn’t? My nails dug into my palms.

  Mitch suddenly turned to me. “I want to see his body.”

  I jolted at the break in silence. “I...already asked about that. Sasha told me that because of the current, they couldn’t recover it.”

  Mitch got to his feet, suddenly manic and shaking. “I want to see Dad.”

  “I know, it’s just—”

  “I want to see him!” Mitch shouted, his lips taut with despair, eyes on fire.

  I stood and started to approach him. “You can’t.”

  As I reached out for him, he pulled away and punched the wall. It made a hole, but that wasn’t enough. He reached for the sledgehammer and swung wildly, ripping through the drywall. Again, and again the emotion he’d been holding inside burst out of him. When he finally succumbed to fatigue, he slowly let the hammer slide from his grip.

  I waited for the anger in the air to dissipate before putting a hand on Mitch’s shoulder. He shrugged it off, continuing to stare at the holes he’d made.