Reentry

by Peter Cawdron

  Suddenly, fire bursts across the front of the vehicle. I grip the seat in front of me as the Hummer swerves, mounting the sidewalk. The impact sends a shudder through my body. Smoke billows from the hood. Flames lick at the glass, curling around the side mirrors. A wave of heat lashes my face.

  Over the radio, a soldier speaks with deathly precision.

  “I have a shot.”

  “Do not engage.” Wallace yells into his radio as we bounce with the vehicle, careening over a small mound within the park. “I repeat, do not engage. Evade and escape. Fire only as a last resort.”

  “Copy that.”

  The engine roars. The Hummer races up the grassy incline, cutting through the park. Protestors scatter, dropping placards and jumping out of the way. The suspension shudders as we crush something. I only hope that something wasn’t a person. Looking back, I see a wooden park bench, crumpled and broken. Blue and red emergency lights flash across the trees. Police vehicles herd stragglers from the crowd, clearing the way for us as we come down out of the park, over a steep curb and back onto a road.

  The soldiers are quiet. I’m in shock. Their professionalism in those few minutes is quietly reassuring, but I can’t stop shaking.

  “You’re okay.” Wallace grabs my shoulder with fingers like a steel vise. “We’ll get you back to the hotel. You’ll be fine.”

  I’m not sure I will ever be fine again. I’ve never known such hatred. The anger spilling over from the war is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. What about tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Am I going to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder in fear?

  Our convoy pulls up behind the hotel. The police presence is clear. Barricades block the alley. There are militia and police officers standing around outside, talking idly but armed to the teeth. We’re in a war zone, only I’m not sure who the enemy is.

  Apparently, it’s me.

  There’s chatter on the radio.

  “You’re clear.”

  I take my cue from Wallace and open the door. Soldiers surround the path, all looking outward, away from us.

  As I get out of the vehicle, it’s all I can do not to crumple to the ground. My knees are weak. I’m not sure what’s more overwhelming: Earth’s gravity, appearing before a congressional committee, or being attacked in a Hummer.

  “Hey, I’ve got you.” Wallace is kind, taking my arm, helping me to the kitchen entrance. Several soldiers surround us, their eyes looking outward for any threat.

  Lieutenant Chalmers rushes over to us. “Is she okay?”

  “Cassie.” I’m relieved to see a friendly face. We enter the hotel through the pantry, passing between stainless steel bench tops in the kitchen.

  “We took a Molotov cocktail on the way back. No injuries. No damage to the vehicles, but she’s rattled.”

  I’m in a dream. Shock is hitting hard.

  “Let’s get you checked out.” Chalmers leads me to an armchair in the empty bar, just off the restaurant where we ate breakfast. This morning seems like years ago.

  “What about Wen? Is Wen okay? And Su-shun?” I ask.

  “They’re fine. They’ve been here all day. They met with consulate officials. We’re arranging a debrief for them in New York. From there, they’ll fly home.”

  Chalmers slips a blood pressure monitor over my arm and checks my pulse. She flicks a tiny flashlight in each eye. “You’re a little shaken, but you’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

  Why does everyone keep telling me I’m going to be fine? It’s a lie. I’m not fine now and never will be. There will always be a hole in my heart with the loss of Jianyu. To lose him twice is unbearable.

  Chalmers hands me a glass. “I want you to drink something.”

  “Wh—what is it?” I ask, taking the glass from her.

  “Well, I wish I could say it’s a nice glass of chardonnay, but it’s just water and electrolytes.”

  I sip at the drink as she kneels in front of me. Colonel Wallace has wandered off, barking orders at someone. Several police officers walk into the lobby, talking with some of the soldiers about a security incident, and I’m not sure if they’re referring to what just happened or something else.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes.” I finish the drink, surprised by how thirsty I am. “Thank you.”

  Chalmers packs up her first aid kit. I go to get up, although I’m not sure why or where I think I’m going. “Just relax. It’s been a big day.”

  “You saw it, huh?”

  “Everyone saw it.”

  I glance up at the TV screen over the reception area. There’s an aerial shot from a helicopter circling the Capitol Building. It seems the protestors had largely dispersed during the hearing, as there are only pockets of them dotted through the park.

  There’s footage of our convoy being hit by the Molotov cocktail, although from a few hundred feet up it doesn’t look quite as bad as it felt. Seeing that vision, though, I can still feel the wave of heat that radiated through the windshield when the fuel caught alight. Even our cross-country diversion, traveling through the park, looks quite sedate from up high, almost relaxed.

  The view changes to the inside of a machine workshop somewhere nearby. There’s no sound, so at first I’m confused, then I see technicians in the background using handheld computers to wipe the drives before stacking them next to a high-powered drill press, where soldiers then physically destroy the hard drives. Each solid-state drive is put in a vise. A drill press is pulled down, cutting through the casing. Aluminum shavings spiral away from the blur of the drill bit.

  To watch the soldiers pierce one of the hard drives is like a dagger being thrust into my heart. Once the drill has broken through the drive, it’s quickly withdrawn and the drive is released from the vise, tossed on the bench, and the process is repeated.

  My chest aches.

  Chalmers is kind. “I’m sorry.”

  A tear runs down my cheek.

  “I can turn it off.”

  “No.” I reach out, taking her forearm, not wanting her to leave. “Please.”

  I let go and she sits next to me. Chalmers doesn’t say anything, which I appreciate. It must be strange for her to see someone crying over what amounts to a bunch of busted electronics. I want to sob. I’m on the verge of breaking down, but Jianyu wouldn’t want that. He’d want me to face this with courage. He’d tell me to be strong, and so I am.

  Once the drives have been destroyed, they’re thrown into a fire raging within a forty-four-gallon barrel. Each drive kicks up sparks. Cinders drift through the air, caught in the updraft. Some kind of commentary runs along the bottom of the screen, while in the top left corner there’s a picture-in-picture view of a newscaster sitting in the comfort of a studio, talking about the footage. I’m too distraught to read the text and glad I can’t hear what’s being said.

  Finally, the footage shifts to more aerial shots of the Capitol Building, and I feel the muscles in my body release. Tension falls away. It’s as though I’ve just attended a funeral and only now left the cemetery. It’s not that I want to turn my back on Jianyu, but life thunders on. Clocks tick. Time is relentless, refusing to pause even for a second.

  “We’re always so afraid.” I’m blabbering. I’m not rationalizing what happened, but I am talking to Chalmers as I would to Jianyu, wanting someone I can confide in. “Fear is never good, is it?”

  Chalmers doesn’t reply; she just shakes her head.

  “We’ve spent hundreds of millions, probably billions of dollars looking for intelligent life somewhere out there, wanting to find life beyond Earth, longing to talk to some other intelligence beyond our own. Finally, we find it. Another form of life that arose as spontaneously as we did, but in clean slices of silicon rather than messy biological cells.”

  The image on the screen changes to a view of the hotel. Three Hummers pull up and I catch a glimpse of myself getting out of the middle vehicle.

  “Where did it all go wrong? Why did they
attack us?”

  Lieutenant Chalmers is quiet, but she knows I’m not talking about the protestors.

  “Once they attacked, there was only ever going to be one outcome. They must have known that. You have to meet fire with fire, right? I mean, that’s what armies are for.”

  She nods.

  “So, what happens next? They’re still out there. Will they attack us again? Could they? Why don’t they? What do they want?”

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “I think, deep down, we both want the same thing—peace.”

  “I wish you were right, Doc.” Her choice of the tense is telling. I hope I’m right, but I’m not. Like Wallace said, I’m a naive sympathizer. Oh, he didn’t call me that in so many words. The implication was enough. I guess we read into things what we want to see. Reality is a reflection of what we want. We interpret not what has happened but what we wish would transpire. I’m stupid. Dumb. Eight years of university, and for what? To stare at rocks looking for signs of life that died out billions of years ago—I can’t even grasp the threads of my own life?

  “I’d like to go to my room.”

  “Sure.”

  As we walk forward, soldiers accompany us. I wasn’t even aware they were there behind me, watching, listening, waiting.

  Once I’m alone in the sanctity of my dull hotel room, I collapse on the bed and bury my head in a pillow. Strangely enough, I don’t cry. I’m not sure if it’s because I know I’m being watched or that I’ve cried enough over the past year, but grief takes hold and I feel like shit, tears or no tears.

  After an hour or so, there’s a knock on the door.

  “Hungry?” Chalmers smiles, holding up a paper bag.

  “No, but come in anyway. I could do with someone to talk to.”

  Lieutenant Chalmers follows me inside while one of the soldiers stands in the doorway, holding the door open. He’s wearing a combat helmet, complete with night-vision goggles flicked up out of the way, and a Kevlar vest, and he’s carrying some kind of machine gun along with a holstered sidearm. Grenades hang from his vest, although to my untrained eye they look like the gas canisters a bug exterminator rolls under the floorboards. Funny how such overwhelming firepower can seem commonplace, even normal to me, after such a short time. I’m not sure why he’s holding the door open, but his eyes face forward, which means he’s staring at the far wall of the tiny corridor leading into my room.

  “Please, have a seat.” I’m trying to be hospitable. There’s a tiny round table with a couple of chairs by the window. I grab a pitcher of water and pour two glasses as I sit opposite the lieutenant.

  I know I need to snap out of my lethargy. I went through this when Jianyu, Connor, and Harrison died on Mars. Inaction fuels grief. As much as I loved and respected those men, I had to move on or I’d join them. Seeing Jianyu die again has been torture, if only because it’s surreal associating him with a bunch of aluminum casings, microchips, and wires.

  “I got you some Chinese and some chocolate chip cookies. Not exactly a balanced meal, but I figured—”

  “Oh, yeah, I could do with a sugar rush. Hit me.”

  She opens the bag and hands me a cookie, taking one for herself—a warm, gooey, sticky, moist cookie that bends rather than breaks. I’ve died and gone to heaven. The chocolate chips are huge and partially melted.

  “I can get more.”

  I wave her off, not wanting to talk with my mouth full. This cookie is the size of a side plate. Rather than devour it, I inhale. I guess it’s pretty damn obvious I haven’t seen a cookie in years.

  I finish my cookie and sip at some water. I’m curious about Cassie. As we’re roughly the same age, it’s natural to wonder what led us both down such vastly different paths only to converge here, in a D.C. hotel following a thermonuclear war. “So, what got you to join the army?” Questions are good. Thinking about something other than myself is the best way to move forward.

  Her voice is monotonous. “I guess I wanted to go kill someone.”

  I spit my water, spraying the table. She’s being facetious, I get that, but she caught me totally off guard and I find myself bursting out laughing. She smiles. Mission accomplished. The soldier by the door has a grin on his face. He’s loving this.

  She continues with, “Life’s funny, you know? The choices we make are often bigger than we realize at the time, I guess. Like my dad, I love my country and wanted to serve. A lot of people say they want to make America great again. Few do. Stupid slogans are stupid. For me, the idea was more than words, more than some stupid chant at some stupid rally for some stupid idiot in a suit.”

  I nod, appreciating her candor. “So, have you?”

  “Killed someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  “Then yes.”

  Again, I laugh. She’s got my measure.

  “But not in combat.”

  “You don’t have to.” I hold my hand out, wanting her to pause before continuing. She doesn’t owe me any explanations. “I mean, for me, it’s an idle curiosity. For you, it’s life.”

  She looks into her empty glass. “Life and death. Yeah, it’s pretty sober stuff, huh? It happened five or six years ago. We were coming back from a live-fire exercise when we heard there was an active shooter in the mechanical pool. Some dumb fuck snapped. Shot his buddy. Some friend, huh?

  “We were on the far side of the base. Our driver pulled up short of the armory, talking with base security over the radio. We were supposed to head for the outer cordon as the MPs came in, but as we drove on, our van took incoming fire. I’d had people shoot over me before but never at me. It’s different.

  “Sergeant McAllister was driving. Took a round in the shoulder and we slammed into a lamppost. There was blood everywhere. Some of it mine. We bundled out of the van.”

  Her eyes glaze over as she speaks, reliving the moment.

  “Jones tends to McAllister on the grass. Blood pools on the sidewalk. He’s in a bad way. Me? I’m down by the rear bumper, slipping a magazine into my M4.”

  Her tense has changed. She’s back there, transported through time, tumbling out of the van again.

  “I adopt a crouched firing position, just like they taught us. Head down and lined up with the barrel. Shoulder high. Leaning forward. Straight front leg. Elbow resting on my knee. It’s the training exercise I was just on. Then I see him, running between huts. For me, it’s like shooting game in the woods. He’s ducking between buildings, but for me, it’s like tracking a buck between the trees.

  “I’m easily a hundred yards away, probably more. I fire low. I’m wanting to avoid collateral damage if I miss, firing only when there’s something solid beyond. It’s a brick building. Rec center, I think. There are soldiers in there. People. Don’t miss, Cassie.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat, wondering who dies when she pulls that trigger.

  “I hit him in the calf. He falls, sprawling out across the concrete and losing his weapon. I watch as he scrambles to his knees, arms up, fingers interlocked behind his head, assuming the position, looking for approaching troops to take him into custody, but it’s just me and I’m not coming for him. He never even sees me. He’s looking the wrong way, but I see him. I know what he’s doing. Fucking coward. My breathing slows. I exhale. My finger tightens on the trigger, the recoil thumps into my shoulder, and a hundred yards away, the back of his head explodes. Blood and brains scatter across the road. And that’s it. I killed someone. I killed a stranger.”

  She sets the glass on the table.

  “I was reprimanded, of course, and threatened with a court-martial. My defense was it all happened so quickly, there was no time to deliberate. His rifle was still within reach. I feared for those in the rec center. But it was all bullshit. Truth is, we’re not police. We don’t train to be just or fair. We train to kill. The moment comes and you do what you have to, right? Just like you up there on Mars, huh?” She looks me
in the eye. “We’re not so different, are we?”

  “No, we’re not.” I try not to swallow the lump rising in my throat, but I can’t escape the reflex reaction.

  “You don’t have to like it, but you have to do it.” She pours herself some more water, but it might as well be whiskey.

  “Up there, on Mars, you had no remorse. Don’t have any down here either, Doc. You don’t need that baggage.”

  I nod.

  “You’re all right, Doc.” She gets to her feet. “But don’t forget what they did to us. Sometimes, the only way to achieve peace is to squeeze the trigger.”

  She walks away without offering any pleasantries. The soldier closes the door behind her. The silence that follows leaves me feeling hollow. I open the Chinese. It’s cold, but I eat it anyway. There are two fortune cookies. I throw them in the bin. I’m tired of being a pawn, tired of being manipulated. I simply don’t want to know. I dump the remaining noodles on top of the fortune cookies, wanting to bury them. It’s irrational, but I’m done. I didn’t ask for any of this.

  There’s a knock at the door. I open it to see Colonel Wallace looking exhausted.

  “Wen will be bunking with you.”

  There’s a sheepish “Hey, Liz” as Wen bundles past into my room.

  Five hundred empty rooms in this hotel and we have to share. Ah, stop being selfish, Liz. Perhaps it’s for the best. Having someone else around will help.

  16

  Fallout

  I close the door and we get ready for bed, with only small talk passing between us.

  Neither of us mention my testimony before Congress or what happened to Jianyu. I guess we’re both trying to deal with the grief in our own way. I brush my teeth in the bathroom. There’s muffled talking from the room. Wen has the television on. I walk out to see her sitting on the edge of one of the beds, watching a reporter on the screen. She turns to me with hollow eyes.