Back in London, Mimi had told Joel how much she would love to skydive. It was on her bucket list. When they had carefully planned their California honeymoon, he secretly booked the dive as a wedding present to her. She had been so excited, but as she looked out at the short wingspan of the light aircraft and compared it to that of a commercial jet, the contrast felt so great.
What am I doing?
Joel wasn’t a dreamer. He was a go-getter. She had told him what she wanted to do, and he made it happen. If he hadn’t booked the jump, Mimi wondered if she would have ever followed through with her bucket-list dream. That was the difference between the couple—they both had an appetite for adventure, but Mimi always proceeded with some caution, whereas Joel lived each day as if it were his last. He was fearless.
Mimi picked the skin on the side of her thumb until it bled, her nervous habit since childhood. She sucked the blood so it didn’t stain the bright yellow rented jumpsuit she was in.
Joel was the first out of the plane. Her heart jumped out of her mouth. What if the parachute didn’t open? Three others dropped. She heard the faint screams dim as gravity pulled them down, and then it was her turn. She was the last one to make the jump.
Mimi crawled to the open hatched door, her instructor edging her forward with his knee into the small of her back. She looked out to see nothing but sky. Her body felt tense with fear.
Before she could catch one last breath, she was free falling, plummeting through the wide open space. She tried to scream, but couldn’t. Her mouth was open. She was gasping for air, but she couldn’t catch her breath. It unnerved her. The instructor placed his hand on her forehead and pulled her head to rest on his shoulder. The sound of the whooshing air almost deafened her.
When the parachute sprung open, she was pulled back up with fast acceleration. Suddenly there was silence, and the scenery of the unspoilt, rugged landscape stunned her. The instructor steered them toward the ground. He had told her to keep her arms crossed in front of her chest and her legs together and elevated.
Mimi had expected to land with a hard thud, so she was surprised when her bottom touched the ground and it felt as if she had landed on a pillow. Her instructor high-fived her and told her he’d been a little worried, as she had fallen like a rag doll. Perhaps it was that dry sense of humour again. She wasn’t sure.
Joel walked quickly toward her and took her in his arms. He picked her up, spun her around, and gave her a hard kiss on her cheek.
“How do you feel?”
“Oh my God, that was amazing!”
“Told ya.”
“I can’t believe I was up there,” she said, pointing up with her index finger.
“You glad you did it?”
“Yes. Thank you so much, darling. Thank you so much. This was the best present ever!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He pulled her static hair off her face. “So, what do you want to do now?” he asked as they walked back to the hub to change and get their transfer back to the hotel.
“After this, I just want to relax and be lazy around the pool.”
“What, you don’t want to do it again?”
“I do and we will, but not right now.” She laughed
“Maybe we can get you trained so you can learn to free fall,” he said in all seriousness.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was one thing knowing I had an experienced instructor glued to my body. I couldn’t actually get myself out of that plane. I’d die!”
Their honeymoon had been exactly what they hoped it would be—full of romance and exploration, discovering new places as they discovered each other. Mimi watched Joel. She watched how he moved and sometimes couldn’t believe he was hers. She knew him, but she didn’t really know where he had come from, only what he told her.
He was an orphan, which didn’t seem a fitting title to give to a grown man, but it was true. She had never seen the place where he had grown up or sat at the table where he shared his meals with his family. He knew all of her. He met her parents and her sister, seen the old baby album pictures of her sitting in a pool of bubbles and in her highchair with tomato sauce all over her face.
Joel had told her about his father, how he was a pioneer who provided for his family, installing wisdom and morals into both of his sons. His memories of his father had become somewhat faded over the years. He remembered sporadic details, like the time he brought a new Arabian horse home. His mother had gone crazy, as he had spent all the money they had on that horse.
He remembered the winter that they had lost all the heating and electric in their home, so his father made a camp in the garden, lit a bonfire, and toasted marshmallows as they told one another ghost stories. His father taught him how to hold his first gun at the age of thirteen. He remembered how the heavy, cold, metal steel felt in his hand and thought about what the weapon represented, that by just squeezing the trigger hard enough, it was capable of ending a life.
Joel found in Mimi what he had been searching for, and in many ways she was home. Together they were traveling through the most amazing of places, becoming closer by sharing life-changing experiences. They had taken dozens of photos, smiling in front of the tallest of trees, looking like little people.
Toward the end of their trip, they had gone to a bar in LA and danced the night away, challenging one another to shots of vodka and tequila. Joel had let himself go that night. He let his feet move, his hips sway, and, for the first time since they had met each other, he was dancing.
Mimi giggled at her husband. She loved this new, carefree side of him. They nibbled on salted peanuts and the stale crisps that were in chipped, mismatched bowls left on the side of the bar. They woke up in a drunken haze the next morning and learned for the first time what it was like to look after one another as they both took turns throwing up.
They stayed in the hotel room for the entire day and didn’t step into the smoggy city for some proper food until they finally felt ready. They promised themselves no alcohol would be involved. They ate in a small but trendy restaurant called Happy Buddha. It was here that Mimi taught Joel how to use chopsticks. She laughed as she watched his clumsy fingers drop chunks of sweet and sour chicken and flick grains of rice across the table.
She had worn little makeup that evening. She didn’t need much since she had that happy newlywed glow. Joel had commented on the light, sprinkle of freckles that had appeared on her nose. She had playfully thrown a napkin at him across the table, hitting him in his face.
When they left the restaurant, they got caught in an unexpected downpour. Mimi hated to get her hair wet from the rain. It made it frizz. She would have to spend the next morning blow drying it within an inch of its life. They huddled together under a bus stop. Joel pulled Mimi close to him. She looked into his hazel eyes with specks of rich green emerald. He kissed her hard, open mouthed. Suddenly, Mimi pulled back.
“I don’t want you to go,” she sobbed.
“I don’t want to go either, but you know and I know that I have to.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
“Of course I’m coming back. I promise.”
“You should never make promises that you can’t keep.”
“I’m keeping this one.”
“Joel, I watch the news. I see the death tolls. It scares the shit out of me. Are you not scared”?
“Of course I’m scared. Every Marine is. Some of us admit it. Some of us don’t. But I’ll never show the enemy that.”
The rain grew louder. It sounded like the glass ceiling above them was going to shatter into a thousand, tiny pieces.
“I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. Trust me.”
Joel had always dived head first into situations of danger, like the time he heard a loud bang downstairs when he was fifteen. He grabbed his father’s shot gun and crept down the darkened stairway. He was faced with an intruder. They had locked eyes with one anot
her. The intruder had a bag, no doubt stuffed with cash his mother had stowed away under the mattress in the spare room.
The intruder had turned to run when Joel lunged at him and pulled him backwards, knocking him to the ground. He had his neck in the clutches of his powerful arms. His mother heard the altercation. She ran to the phone, violently shaking, and called the police. Minutes later, the uniformed officers were at the door. Their swift arrival had saved Joel from a very different future. If they hadn’t arrived when they did, Joel was certain he would have shot the intruder dead.
There were key moments in everyone’s life, moments which take you to a fork in the road, where the direction you take can define who you will become.
Joel was deploying just a month after their honeymoon. Now the real test for their love was about to start.
Chapter 2
Joel
Afghanistan, 2011
The tinted, beige, underdeveloped landscape with scattered shards of grass and sand was a view Joel could never get used to. He knew there were parts that were beautiful, but here, among the boxed stone buildings, the landlocked area and rugged mountains made him feel a million miles away from familiarity. It made him miss Mimi even more.
The special ops combat team had been out on a mission to rescue a wounded US Marine. He’d been shot in the face and had a punctured lung. A raid had taken place in Khataba Village. The list of civilian casualties was growing. There had been airstrikes and both enemies and bystanders were killed.
Joel had been there for three weeks. There was great variance in the Afghanistan weather, from day to night. He kept a photo of Mimi on the inside pocket of his camouflaged uniform. It made him feel like he was keeping her close to his heart. The days were made easier by the boys’ constant pranks, guy humour, and laugh-out-loud humiliation they inflicted on the “new guy.”
The hunt for Osama bin Laden was the key focus. Special intelligence worked relentlessly to find out his last known movement. President Obama made promises to withdraw troops and end this ongoing war. The procedure of getting information had changed since Obama had been elected into power. He stopped interrogation by tactics of torture. The mission, the beast, had taken on a new life force. The game was still the same, but the rules had changed.
Many people in the outside world condemned the troops for being out there. “What are we fighting for?” they’d say. “Bring our troops home.”
Rumours had reached Joel’s ears that finding bin Laden was just a matter of time. America was getting closer to defeating the man responsible for the murder of almost three thousand people. Joel had been briefed, along with his platoon, that they were on the edge of finding him. There were leads and information from the CIA.
Joel dreamed of being the one to hold the gun to Osama bin Laden’s head and be the hero. He dreamed of taking down the most prolific murderer in recent times after the likes of Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
Joel was naïve when he was younger—gun-happy and prepared to fight in a war. When he got older, he learned not all Afghans were bad. He saw kind faces amongst the crowds of people walking through the dusty streets; he saw the innocence of young children running and playing simply with what they had, an empty plastic bottle used as a football, an old rag being tossed to each other in a game of catch.
Some things were really tough for Joel to deal with, such as the dark shadow of oppression surrounding women. He loved Mimi’s dark, bewitching hair falling down her back seductively and he couldn’t imagine ever asking her to hide it. The slight bump in her imperfect nose that made her so appealing…why should that be covered?
He loved all the things that made Mimi who she was. He loved how her hands would take on a life of their own as she dipped her paintbrush into the vivid colours on her pallet and created something so inexplicably beautiful. He loved that she couldn’t ever fry an egg and transfer it to the plate without making it look like an insect splattered across a windscreen at eighty miles an hour.
All the little things made up the reasons why he loved her. She had the freedom to be the person she was meant to be, her true spirit. But here, women were suppressed, and their eyes were dull and lifeless as if they were already dead, or slaves, beaten and crushed.
***
“So, you reached Mimi yet?” Eric asked. He walked into their shared bedroom and flung his cap across the room, hitting the small lampshade.
“Yup, just now. She’s good. She’s going shopping with her mother.”
“Cool, cool.” Eric nodded
“Have you spoken to Jessica?”
“This morning.”
“How did her doctor’s appointment go?” Joel asked.
“Good. Baby is growing ahead by two weeks.”
“Doesn’t surprise me with you as its father. Let’s just hope he gets Jess’s looks, not yours.”
Eric smiled. He picked up a football and tossed it into Joel’s hands. The room was dim, basic. There was a musty damp smell with a faint scent of cigarettes.
Joel opened a large brown envelope containing photos of Mimi—a mix of snaps from their wedding day and honeymoon. It was here, in his room, that he was able to really allow himself to miss her.
He, Eric, and the rest of his team had been selected by Special Intelligence to move 100 miles from the Afghanistan border to the far eastern side of Pakistan in the next seventy-two hours, where it was believed that the compound of bin Laden was situated in Abbottabad.
“You ready for this?” Eric asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be. You?”
“Yeah. You sure?”
“Yes. I said yes.” Eric tugged at his hair; a nervous habit.
“You’re lying,” Joel pressed. He stood up next to his friend and looked at him face on, almost touching his nose. They locked eyes for a few seconds.
“I’m fucking scared, bro,” Eric admitted.
“Me too. Me fucking too.”
“Things have changed since Jess became pregnant. I think twice about every move I make. I wonder if I’m ever going to hold my kid.” Eric sat down on the edge of his bed. The springs creaked with every slight movement he made.
“I think of Mimi. Who wants to be a widow before they are thirty?”
“Looking back, nothing mattered before. Do you almost wish you had nothing to care about?”
“In some ways, but I’m glad I have Mimi, and Jess is glad she’s got you, although I don’t understand why the hell she does.”
“C’mon, this chick talk is making me sick. Let’s shake this shit off and go for a run.”
***
The sun was hot, the heat relentless. Joel and Eric pounded the ground hard and fast, driven by determination to win the race. They circled the perimeter of the barbed wire fence, the drilling sound of helicopters hovering above their heads. Their muscular bodies glistened with sweat and their cheeks were flushed.
They ran to ignore the storm inside of them. They were about to go to one of the most hostile corners of the world where nobody was their friend. They would have to fight for survival. There would be no mercy.
Joel pushed his torso forward which gave him that last bit of acceleration he needed to beat Eric. They ran under the tails and wings of several planes. They reached the finish line, where the rest of the team were sitting on the beaten and basic wooden tables, having food and drinks.
“Marcus by 1.4,” Lieutenant Parker announced, looking at his black stop watch.
“Jeez, I had him. I almost had him,” Eric complained.
“Almost, but almost doesn’t push you over that finish line, my friend!”
Later that afternoon, they sat and discussed their mission to move into the Afghanistan border, to the far eastern side of Pakistan. “Listen carefully, men. We have been given orders to move you out at nineteen hundred hours.”
“As in tonight?” Sergeant Danny Duran questioned.
“Affirmative!”
The projector showed an image on the wall of a group of Tali
ban with the sound of a baby crying in the background. A small army of men moving through the overgrown bushes were holding guns. Women were cowering their heads and clutching their knees.
“The objective of this mission is to capture and kill Achmed Sharma, senior Taliban. He’s responsible for killing Marines in the western border. He’s a Tier 1 target.”
“Why tonight? We were told seventy-two hours,” Joel blurted out.
“Because we just received positive information he’s there. The CIA is certain bin Laden is just across the border.”
Joel let himself take a long, hard breath. Mimi flashed into his mind. He looked across the table at Eric with his head in his hands. He knew what he was thinking.
“Expect your usual comms problems, boys.”
They were showed the rules of engagement. Each man was paying attention to what was expected from them and how they could survive this mission.
There were questions followed by silence, faces of bravery and of fear. That basic room held top secret information the world was not yet privy to. Today it was classified, but tomorrow it would be headline news. The images would be splashed on every newspaper, and the footage would be in every living room, displaying on millions of screens.
They knew this could only have two outcomes—they would live or they would die. Their hard training had led them to this fight. Every time they felt like their bones would break, their drill instructor had yelled, pushing them to go further. Every bruise that had appeared on their skin and every time they had screamed they couldn’t do it—all the times they almost quit, but didn’t—it was all for this. No matter how afraid they were, all that training had given them one thing. They were now ready for combat.
A few hours later, they walked like an army of ants in perfect uniformity, boarding the helicopter, one by one. Joel’s mind flashed back to Mimi in her bright yellow jumpsuit before they skydived. Here he was now, ready to go into battle.
Till Death Us Do Part Page 2
