Eleven Days

by Lea Carpenter

  “And he knew what to believe. He—the guys at State used to say that your father saluted the flag with his soul.”

  The man tells Jason a story about the last time he saw David, twenty years ago, and how David had spoken proudly about his only son. Jason tells the man that “today,” Valentine’s Day, is his father’s birthday. He says that his dad would call home on this day each year and always said he was calling because it was easier to remember than his son’s birthday. Jason says that every single year when that call came, his mother would give the same speech about how lazy men are, and about the fact that David was Phi Beta Kappa summa cum laude at Yale, and had nominally worked in “intelligence,” but he still could not remember his only child’s birthday. Sara said “intelligence” was not the right word for it; that they should call it “boarding school”—because once you entered it, you got to do a lot of damage under the aegis of forces acting in loco parentis.

  “Did your father ever talk about Skull and Bones?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Skull and Bones is a secret society at Yale. And many of its members, at one time, were tapped to go into service for the government.”

  “Interesting,” Jason says, not finding it interesting at all.

  “Service like working for the OSS.”

  “Yes, I’m familiar with the OSS. But my father wasn’t in that.”

  “No, it was over before his time. But he would have been aware of it. Its lure set a standard for the last bits of lure left, for those who were keen to do something in service to their government at the time when he graduated.”

  “Lure. Well, I’ve read a bit about their training.”

  “Fascinating stuff.”

  “Long marches on country club lawns. And a lot of psychological testing, right?”

  “You never had any psychological testing?”

  “I believe you’re thinking of the Rangers,” Jason says, smiling.

  “You never had—”

  “We’re always offered post-deployment counseling, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Have you ever taken it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It would be—”

  “Respectfully, to be assessed—and potentially benched—by someone who had not served in our shoes, if you know what I mean, is not really—”

  “Not really on.”

  “Correct,” says Jason. “I read something about the training and how it was all conducted in secret.”

  “Well, they didn’t run their trials on public beaches.”

  Jason hated this kind of conversation. And he didn’t know enough about this man to concede what he thought this man thought he knew. While he considered histories of earlier, even international, special operations forces fascinating, it all seemed very different from what his own experience has been throughout the Academy and his tours. Midshipmen don’t spend too much time thinking about Yale. And operators don’t spend too much time thinking about their own mythological prowess. If they considered themselves part of an elite, it was elite as defined very differently from the way it might have been defined by another generation. They were warriors. They didn’t care for country clubs.

  “DNA matters,” the man said. Jason notices for the first time that he’s holding a KSA passport.

  “Pardon?”

  “DNA matters. That’s all I’m trying to say. There’s a line that stretches straight from Omaha Beach to this gate. It’s a genetic line, a line of guys who made a choice to do the right thing. A line of slaughter and service and failed missions and quiet triumphs, of wives waiting at home for husbands to arrive. You’re not married, are you?”

  “No.”

  “A girl?”

  “My mother believes that good things come to those who wait.”

  “And does she believe in love?”

  “She does.”

  And as Jason stands, the man grabs his sleeve, a gesture Jason automatically, physically recoils against; it’s too much, too soon. Then he realizes that his own snapping back was disproportionate to what the old man perhaps simply meant affectionately, like a veteran who lashes out at his wife in the night when she’s simply trying to hold him close. It’s instinctual, an uncalculated response to what his body reads as the presence of a threat.

  “I’m sorry,” the man says. “I was only wondering: is your mother happy?”

  Jason is too distracted to answer. He is distracted by the clock on the wall out of the corner of one eye, and by the appearance—and sound—of movement at the gate flashing by the corner of the other eye. And, formed faintly from yet a third peripheral blur, there is an additional distraction: the impression that the girl at the coffee shop is moving away from her post. Observe, orient, decide, act. These incomplete snapshots fit together elegantly, like a Rubik’s cube. They form a virtual map in his mind, the map he calls What Is Happening Now Around Me. It is a map attended by a conversation about how to interpret and react to it, a conversation he can carry on skillfully with himself without seeming to. He can collate an impressive array of information while still listening to someone else with one ear. And the conclusion of this latest little intelligence report is this: last chance to send an e-mail before boarding the flight.

  “Is she happy,” the man says again, not looking at him this time.

  “I guess that depends on your definition of happiness.”

  When Jason and his teammates are called to board the plane, the man shakes Jason’s hand, hard, and walks away. Jason does not give too much more thought to the encounter, as he is focused on the task at hand. He makes a mental note to tell his mother that he met someone called—but the man never gave his full name. And he makes a mental note to look up the Arc Light strikes. He remembers learning a bit about them, remembers someone—was it a teacher? Could it have been his father?—talking about them as “bomb operas.” He remembered that phrase. The planes, B-52 Stratofortresses, flew in concerts of three per cell, each equipped with up to thirty tons of weaponry. It was all about attrition then, and creating a consistent climate of fear. Unlike contemporary warfare, then we wanted the enemy to see us. We wanted them to hear us, too. We wanted them always aware of the threat, the copter blades always audible overhead, another Charlie company lying in wait just behind the next grove. All this to prop up one domino. Overwhelming force forgave the absence of precision in those days.

  One year earlier Jason’s platoon had been involved with a coded mission, one where people were “read into” planning, where all things surrounding planning and execution were classified around a code name. Now, on the plane when the guys guessed what the upcoming op would be called, someone referenced Churchill. Churchill had a whole philosophy for naming missions. “The heroes of antiquity,” as he’d put it in a memo to a general, “figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the constellations and stars, famous racehorses, names of British and American war heroes, could be used, provided they fall within the rules.”

  CASUS BELLI

  NAVAL AIR STATION, SIGONELLA, ITALY

  MAY 12, 2011

  As the plane hits the runway, Sara thinks about how smooth the ride has been. She would have slept through Sigonella, but the stewardess woke her gently, encouraged her to step outside and “see sun,” while they paused for a new crew. Sigonella, she knew, had been the place where an American president had told a team of shooters to wait as they surrounded a plane filled with hostages. Italian special operators surrounded them. Diplomacy dictated that the home team would lead the terrorists from the plane. So the Americans on the tarmac that day held their weapons down.

  “Il Crisi di Sigonella” was what the Italians called their chapter in the Achille Lauro incident, and Sara knew about it because she was home with her baby that day when the story broke. CNN was new then; it was all anyone in Washington—especially those who were home during their days—watched. She remembered hearing about the “naval aviators” who guided that plane to land. She didn’t really know then
what a naval aviator was, but it certainly sounded impressive. The news didn’t mention the fact that the Italian PM had changed his mind about those Americans on his tarmac, having originally authorized their presence. In changing his mind, he placed them in danger, he compromised the “mission.” He would have done all this from safe, baronial remove in the Palazzo Chigi. All Sara remembered was what felt like yet another flare-up of something called terrorism, something that seemed to involve parts of the world irrelevant to her own. She wouldn’t have connected the dots; she didn’t know the dots existed. Hiroshima seemed closer. Hiroshima had just marked the fortieth anniversary of the bomb. An anonymous bomb: that was a threat that felt more real than men boarding a plane wearing masks.

  When the pilot descends the stairs, Sara is standing there. The godfather had gone into the base, but she was afraid to move too far, as if they might leave without her. The sun is blinding, and she’s shielding her eyes with her hand. She can see a mountain.

  “Ma’am,” he says.

  “Sara,” she says, and offers her hand. “Thank you.”

  “It was a pleasure,” he says. “I know your next pilot. He’s a good man. You’ll have a smooth ride.”

  She doesn’t know what to say. So she just says, “Yes.”

  “Etna,” he says, pointing to the mountain. “She’s active.”

  The new stewardess is walking toward them. She looks vaguely like Anita Ekberg. Is she active, too? Sara thinks, but instead she holds out her hands to the woman and says simply, “Piacere.”

  KING ABDULAZIZ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

  JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA

  Sara has eaten breakfast (eggs Benedict, bacon; why not?) and lunch (tea sandwiches of cucumber and lime) by the time they touch down again; it is almost evening, Jeddah local time. She wonders whether what she is wearing—a black shift and flats—is appropriate. She thinks about how different her son might look now and wonders if she will even recognize him. She thinks about the neighbor’s garden; she knows her son will ask about it, as he always has. “How is the garden?” has become their code for other things too hard to say over and over, like “Are you surviving? Did you see anyone die today?” As the plane slows on the runway, the godfather tells her they are not going to stay here, either; they are simply picking up another passenger. The final destination has changed. The plane lets down its ladder, and Sara sees a man come across the runway. It’s David.

  He is in his mid-seventies now, he has a beard, and he is thinner, but it is him. He is wearing a beautiful suit, his blue collar (always a blue collar) open at the neck just enough that she sees a glint of gold. A necklace. He always liked nice things, an air of disrepair shattered by the presence of a Rolex submariner or a double-stitched Charvet tie. Yet what strikes her first is the fact that with this thinner frame, he looks so much like Jason. He never used to resemble their son more than marginally, but now she sees it. It is the shape of his eyes, and it’s the line of his stance. He has a pair of silver Oakley sunglasses pushed up on his head, giving him the effect of someone much younger, someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously. His gray eyes are still the most beautiful she has ever seen. He hugs, and thanks, the godfather. The godfather says, “I serve at the pleasure of, you fucking bastard.”

  David holds on to her for a long time before saying anything.

  “Where is he?” she asks, not letting go.

  And David looks her right in the eye, and she sees that his eyes are wet. And he holds on to her shoulders and tells her that their son is a hero, and that he will be awarded the Medal of Honor.

  “He’s going to be fine,” he says, letting go of her, stooping to look out the window.

  “I want to see him,” she says. “Look at me.”

  And he stands up and puts his hands on her face.

  “Tell me again,” she says. “Tell me again and take the glasses off.”

  David drops his head just enough that the glasses slip down his nose. “He is going to be fine.”

  “I want to go now,” she says.

  “Here we go,” he says, and tips his head back, quickly, as if he’s been pushed. The action slides the glasses back into place.

  “Here we go where?” she says.

  “Afghanistan,” he says.

  *

  The stewardess offers them drinks as the plane moves swiftly down the runway; they could not have been on Saudi ground, she thinks, for more than ten minutes.

  “Orange juice,” David says. “Shukran.” And then, “Sara, breathe.” He is sitting in front and across from her, leaning over the tiny tray table now newly set with fresh linens and small pots of nuts and jams.

  “I want to know—” she starts.

  “I am going to tell you everything. I promise.” He looks out his window. “We’ll veer west now, right?” he asks the stewardess. “The plane won’t fly over Mecca with us infidels on board. Could I please have some ice with this?” Sara was not sure if he was showing off, but she recognized a gesture, the academic flirt. A dish of ice is placed on the table, and David stirs it into the juice with his fingers. She notices he’s not wearing a ring. “You’ll be able to see the sea.”

  They sit in silence for a few minutes. She considers being sick, or making herself sick; she can feel her body settling into the early stages of rebellion, the sticky pot of fish eggs stirring in her stomach. They were exceptionally salty. Character is what a lady exhibits in a crisis, she can hear her mother say. David takes the OJ like a shot, in one swill, then places the glass on the mirrored chips and wipes his mouth with the napkin. Something about the shock of seeing him is, physiologically, downgraded to an emotional place just below panic, still above apathy. There is something utterly unsurprising about it, perhaps because a part of her never believed he was gone; all the stories felt like simple stretches of other truths he’d stretched throughout the years. There had been rumors, periodically, that he was still alive, and the force of the denials that accompanied them had never quite felt true to her. It was easier, almost, to have him dead. Dead was a tragedy; abandonment was a shame.

  Seemingly more to the air than to her in particular, he says, “Remember Yoni Netanyahu? Sara, you know the story. Yoni was the young Israeli Special Forces soldier—Sayeret Maktal. He oversaw the design of the Entebbe mission, the rescue of the hostages who were being harbored by Idi Amin, in Uganda? The mission was—is—critical to the history of special operations.”

  “David,” the godfather starts.

  “Na, na, na—I have a point.”

  “What is your point?” says Sara sternly. For a moment, she considers that this is the most vivid—and longest-lasting—nightmare she has ever had. This cannot be happening. None of this can be happening. And yet, throughout everything, she has never been able to hate him. Throughout everything, the only thing she ever felt when he appeared was better. He always made everything a little bit better. He seems quite comfortable on the plane. He knows how to adjust the seat. He doesn’t bother with the belt.

  “My point is that the mission was a success,” he says, leaning back, crossing his legs. “Yoni died. But the mission was a success. It still stands as the great psychological and symbolic success for the State of Israel. And Yoni Netanyahu is a hero. He was thirty years old. He led that mission, and he was killed almost before it began.”

  “David—” Sara starts.

  “It was night. Total darkness, excepting the lights on the runway, and they weren’t even expecting those. And they’d landed at Entebbe and come out of the planes in a Benz—you know, so the local guards would think it was Amin. They’d even painted a few of the Israelis in blackface, initially, but then pitched that part of the plan, having decided that if they did run into Amin it would have been a shit-storm. But they came out of the planes, and almost immediately after Yoni left the car he was shot. And no one stopped to help him.”

  “Is this meant to make me feel better?”

  “Why not?” asked the godfather, leanin
g in. “Why didn’t anyone stop to help him?” He was playing along as he considered this monologue a strategic choice on David’s part—a calculated strategy for keeping Sara from asking more questions before their arrival.

  “Why not? Because Yoni’s orders had been that no man down should be attended to until all of the hostages were put back on the plane. And the men followed those orders. And they recovered all of the hostages. All but one, one had been taken earlier to a local hospital. Amin’s people murdered her later. But a nation could say after the fact that that mission was a perfect success, because its brightest mind was killed in action but the objective was still achieved. Peres delivered the eulogy.”

  “Peres was—” the godfather starts.

  “Minister of defense,” David says.

  “What is your point, David?” Sara asked quietly.

  “My point is that loss is …”

  “Loss is?”

  “My point is that … that our son was given a task in the service of his country and he rose to the task.”

  “He is not dead.”

  “I’m simply saying that loss is always part of the equation.”

  “Equation of what?”

  “Of war.”

  “Is this a war?”

  The plane makes another sharp and fast ascent, and David leans back in his chair. As they hit the cloud line, he starts to talk about what he knows of the last ten days.

  But Sara doesn’t care for his history lessons—ancient, near-historical, or of the last week. She doesn’t care about the mission. She doesn’t care that a man that Americans went to kill has been killed, or if and to what extent there were other casualties. She doesn’t care about the maps and the medals and the “framing” of the story for Fox News. She will not care, when she learns of it, that this mission has resulted in the recovery of an unprecedented cache of intelligence, intelligence that might save lives down the line or perhaps even bring about a nearer end to the current conflicts. She doesn’t care when David tells her that the president of the United States is going to call her. “I want to see my son,” she repeats softly while he carries on—just as he always did—with explanations and speculations. He was devout in his allegiance to fact and erudition: everything had a story, and everything could be explained. He did not seem shaken at all by the fact that a child had gone missing and was kept in God knows what conditions for almost ten days. He sees heroism. She sees mindless sacrifice. He has not seen a downside to the equation. Yet. It is at this point that she realized he is not there for her; he is there to welcome a great hero and to claim him as his own.