But not in our home.
In our home Chapter 11 is a bottle of expensive English-made, single-malt Scotch whiskey that we trot out to celebrate birthdays. We eat a gut-bloating meal and get stupid drunk on Britain’s finest booze. It’s been a Mather family tradition for decades, which was started by my long-absent father, the biggest and most stupid drunk of all. Poops, as I sometimes call him, ran off years ago. He’s in another state with another family. He’s your typical whiskey-guzzling protestant: handsome, charming, broke, lecherous, and so on and so forth. The man doesn’t have a decent bone in his body. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.
The distiller will tell you that Chapter 11 is creamy and smooth with a fruity finish, but don’t let that fool you; going down it burns like napalm. It’s produced at St. George’s Distillery, Harling Road, Roundham, Norfolk, England. Towns in the UK have intriguing names like Roundham, and Blackburn, Lancashire, where the Beatles found ten thousand holes. American towns don’t sound nearly as thought provoking.
“Not a bad tribute for a small-town meteorologist,” Liam said. He was the happy recipient of this particular bottle of proper English-made hooch.
“At least you can predict a hurricane before it hits you in the face.” It’s no secret that most weathermen can’t make a forecast worth a tinker’s damn. I gave him a smooch on the cheek. “You’re on the money as far as I’m concerned, babe.”
We had sated ourselves on roast beef and potatoes, and were now lying about like flu victims without the energy to move … or drink from a glass. Liam passed me the bottle, and I took a healthy slug. I passed the bottle back and felt my eyelids weighing down on my eyes like slabs of ham.
“This old bag has had enough,” Grace said, excusing herself as she stood and yawned. She had properly broken in her freshly painted kitchen by preparing a birthday feast to be rivaled by none, and was now ready for the sandman.
“Aw. Stay a little longer,” Liam said. “Let’s see which of us falls down face first.”
Grace was a far cry from her proper English self as she wobbled over to give Liam a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday, Irishman,” she said with cheer in her voice. No sooner had the words slurred off her tongue when she reached out to brace herself against the arm of the couch. Composing herself, she lifted her head in a highbrow manner, and meandered off toward her bedroom.
“Mamasiits is blasted,” Liam said.
“It’s an act. She could drink us both under the table if she wanted to. Did you see the mess she left for us in the kitchen? She’s a lot craftier than you give her credit for.”
“I’ll be damned.”
It was past ten, and neither of us had the energy or ambition to scrape grease out of the oven. And so the race began to see which of us would pass out first. A mad volley of whiskey passing began. Liam had more body mass than me, but I had some mad whiskey-processing genes in my favor. My father came from a long line of alcoholics, and as I said, Grace could more than hold her own with any man I’d ever met.
Liam’s eyes were closing.
“Hey, it’s your birthday. As custom dictates, you’re expected to put out.”
He was really toasted, beyond-caring-for-sex toasted. He had that telltale stupid grin on his face that said all of the cerebrospinal fluid in his brain had been displaced by alcohol. He didn’t look as if he could stand up, let alone get it up. In the next instant he was asleep with his head heavy on my shoulder.
I’d won. I was the last one holding the bottle. It would certainly entitle me to bragging rights in the morning, but all in all, it wasn’t much of an honor, really—I mean, what did I really win, an alcohol-saturated liver and the certainty of a long and miserable hangover?
I was cozy on the couch with Liam asleep next to me. It only took one last mouthful of whiskey to do me in. I felt my face grow numb and my mind begin to drift.
They say that after you serve in combat, you leave a piece of yourself behind, a piece that has died and is only available to you in nightmares. Like many who have served, my nightmares have never truly gone away. Years have passed, and I’m better able to deal with them on most nights, but not all. There are times when I wake up soaked in sweat, thinking my legs have been blown off. I usually pray before I fall asleep but not tonight. The alcohol had interrupted my routine and, as a snippet from a deadly firefight began to run through my mind, I feared that an awful memory was about to fight its way back to the surface. The bottle of expensive liquor slipped through my grasp and tumbled onto the floor.
~~~
Operation Enduring Freedom, Bagram US Military Base, Afghanistan, Three Years Prior
The air was dead still as we ran across the tarmac to board the MH-47 twin-rotor Chinook helicopter. It was my first call to action since being selected for the Marine Corps Female Engagement Team. The FET program was created because cultural restraints made it virtually impossible for men to search Muslim women for concealed weapons and contraband. Cultural norms in Muslim nations restricted the direct interaction of adult men and women, which reduced the ability of coalition forces to directly communicate with women, and thus focused their military interaction almost exclusively on the male population. It was largely seen as an outreach program, enabling communications with Afghan women and children, but I was still proud of the fact that I had graduated from boot camp with a 49.49 score. I was as close to a fifty-point marine as any woman had ever come, an achievement not to be taken lightly. I was assigned to an active combat battalion, and for my money was the best marksman in the company. Trust me when I tell you that my battalion was counting on me to do a lot more than just hand out pamphlets and grope burqa-and niqab-clad Afghan women for concealed armaments.
Being one of the first women to be deployed on an active assignment, I was nervous about being accepted by my male colleagues during combat. The men had called me Wookie in boot camp because my hair was always coming unclipped, and I guess they thought that I resembled Chewbacca while carrying out maneuvers. My pet name changed to Bam Bam when I arrived at Marines Special Operations Command (MARSOC). Female marines are sometimes referred to as BAMs, Beautiful American Marines. Bigelow, my CO and one of the sassier men in the battalion, pet-named me after a Flintstone’s character because … well, it’s not too hard to figure out.
Bigelow was with me as we boarded the Chinook helicopter. “Let’s do it, Bam Bam,” he shouted as he reached down and yanked me into the chopper. “Ears?”
“Open!”
“Eyes?”
“Snap!”
“Get out of my face, Bam Bam,” he hollered and reached for the next marine.
I smiled to myself because he had treated me like a man. Ears? Open! Eyes? Snap! —preparatory commands and ingrained responses, ditties that had been drilled into the thought process over and over again throughout boot camp. They were designed to keep us sharp and safe.
In my mind the Marine Corps was not a branch of the armed services. It was a cult. Marines were better, tougher, stronger, and faster than our army, navy, and air force counterparts. We believed it, and were willing to bleed over it. The navy and air force were there to give us a lift when we needed it, and the army … they just didn’t measure up.
Everyone had a designation, some had a pet name, but most were called by their last names. There were six of us: Bigelow, Thomas, Waters, Sullivan, Ohio, and me, Bam Bam.
What had started out as a routine mission quickly became something more. Thirty minutes into our flight we were informed that a Chinook helicopter had been shot down trying to establish a vantage point at the Mizri Ghar peak in Afghanistan. It seemed that a reconnaissance plane had failed to pick up any signs of Taliban fighters positioned near the summit. Nothing had come up on thermal imaging, but they were nonetheless there, lying in wait, and had ambushed the slow-moving transport chopper. MARSOC executive officers had watched the operation via monitor back at the air base and deduced that the Taliban soldiers must have been hidden in an
underground cave. The snow cover was a meter deep near the summit, and it probably masked their thermal signatures. One marine was confirmed wounded, and the other men from the crippled chopper were pinned down by machine-gun and mortar fire and were unable to advance their position to challenge the enemy. It was still daylight and unsafe for us to deploy near the hot zone, so we were going to be dropped off further down the mountain, well out of range of enemy fire.
One moment I was on my way to a routine deployment in the Helmand Valley for intelligence collection, and the next on my way to a rescue. “Ooh-rah. Ooh-fucking-rah!” For me the new assignment had the earmarks of a thrill-of-a-lifetime adventure.
I looked around at the team collectively called Razor 2 as we lifted off and headed south to Mizri Ghar. They, like all marines, were good solid men who’d do whatever it took. I studied their faces. Like mine, they were intent on the imminent mission, pondering the assignment, acknowledging but ignoring the prospect of danger and death.
A firefight is not something to take lightly. One casualty had been reported already—there would undoubtedly be more. You go into these things knowing if you might come back in a canvas bag, or worse: blind, crippled, and unable to function on your own. Every one of us was repressing our greatest fears. For me, that meant losing my sight. Thank God we had each other’s backs.
“Marines, stay safe!” Bigelow shouted as the Chinook descended toward the drop-off location.
The battalion responded with a resounding, “Ooh-rah!”
The Chinook put down in the snow. It was soft pack, and I was up to my waist in white fluff. We began to trudge through the snow, knowing how difficult it would be to summit Mizri Ghar under such adverse conditions. I looked up at the peak and wondered if night would fall before we were in position. I plodded through the softly packed snow for another fifteen minutes and became sure of the answer.
The sun was dropping and the temperature along with it. The wind howled. We were less than halfway to the top, freezing and already fatigued. I was used to taking maneuvers with a full pack, but in such deep snow … summiting the mountain was torturous.
Ohio turned to Bigelow. “Sir, I have a suggestion, sir.”
Bigelow came to a stop. He held up his hand so that the battalion could see it and called, “Zero,” the command for us to freeze. He turned to Ohio. “Marine, speak!”
“The Kevlar back plates, sir. That’s seventeen pounds we don’t need to hump up the hill with us, sir.”
Bigelow’s expression went cold, colder than the elements we were exposed to. He screamed, “Are you a pussy, marine? Do you want the death of a fellow marine on your conscience? Make another stupid suggestion like that, and I’ll rip your fucking head off. Now suck it up and get out of my face.”
It was a shitty idea, a terrible idea. Marines had been killed during the Battle of Mogadishu specifically because they jettisoned their Kevlar back plates. Jesus, what made Ohio think we’d always be facing the enemy? I guess he won’t make that mistake again.
The sun went down as we trudged through the snow. It was another ninety minutes before we were in position.
It was cold as hell when Bigelow checked his watch. “Take ten to rest, and then we’ll advance. We should be in the enemy’s blind spot. Eyes?”
The battalion: “Snap!”
Bigelow: “Ears?”
The battalion: “Open!”
“There may be another outpost that we don’t know—” Bigelow dropped to the ground, burying his words in the snow as machine-gun fire broke out. Indeed, there was a second enemy outpost, and they had seen us, six dark images silhouetted against the snow cover—sitting ducks. We dropped on our bellies as a mortar blast landed ten yards to the right. Another landed behind us. I looked into Bigelow’s eyes, sharing the same thought, advance now or die in the snow. He gave his orders and then turned to me. “Bam Bam, you know where I want you?”
I nodded. The snow was less deep near the peak, but there was almost no cover to hide behind. I found a medium-size boulder, barely large enough to shield myself from the enemy. I was to give cover to the rest of the team as they charged on the enemy outpost. I put my M-16 up on the boulder and found the enemy machine gunner in my sights. I gave Bigelow a thumbs-up, and he acknowledged. They charged at the sound of my first shot.
A bullet from my M-16 silenced the machine gunner, but the grenade launcher was still out there and firing. A grenade landed five meters in front of me. The ground shook, and I was pummeled by debris. When I looked up, I saw the platoon charging toward the enemy outpost. I heard gunfire, but it didn’t last very long. I saw Waters circling back, waving to me to advance. That could only mean one thing; the enemy outpost had been taken.
We regrouped amidst dead Taliban soldiers. The ground was stained with their blood as Bigelow gave fresh instructions. “We’ve lost the element of surprise. The other outpost knows we’re out here. This is what I’m thinking.” Bigelow took a knee and slipped a HOOAH! Bar out of his pocket. He ripped it open and took a bite.
I was exhausted from the three-hour hike up the mountain. I ate a First Strike Ration and listened to his instructions.
“I’ll get MARSOC on the phone and advise our position. It’s my understanding that Razor 1 is still combat-able. I think we ought to draw enemy fire and coordinate attack with Razor 1. Thoughts? Objections? Speak now.” Bigelow quickly scanned his men and continued. “Are we marines?”
“Ooh-rah!”
“Let’s do it.”
“Ooh-rah!”
Poker faces all around. We had been lucky once. What were the chances of coming out of the next assault unscathed? Twice in one day? I wondered. I looked up at the dark sky, hoping the Lord was looking down on us. Whose God was up there, theirs or ours? Who will You favor tonight? Help me not to be scared.
“Cold, marine?” Bigelow asked.
“I’ll survive.”
“Atta boy, marine. Nice shooting back there. Ooh-rah!”
“Any time, sir.”
“How is your eagle eye in the dark, marine?”
“I can plug a canary’s ass at three hundred yards, sir.”
He grinned. “Ooh-rah!” He turned and gathered the others. “We’re go on the maneuver.” He checked his watch again. “We’ll attack at nineteen thirty hours. Razor 1 will move as soon as they hear our fire.” He crossed himself. “By the grace of God. Get ready, marines. We move in five.”
The enemy had excellent cover. Sullivan, the medic, fell before I could take out his shooter. Waters and I dragged him into a small crevice, where we were pinned down by grenade fire. Sullivan was bleeding from the leg and shoulder, and curled up in the fetal position, suffering and in agonizing pain. I quickly dressed his wounds. “Rub some dirt on it, Sullivan. You’ll be okay.” No sooner had the words left my mouth when I heard the sound of a soldier cry out in pain. One of ours, or one of theirs? I wondered. “Wait here, Sullivan.”
“Where the hell do you think I’m gonna go?” Sullivan grumbled. “Take those motherfuckers out,” he shouted bravely. “Ooh-rah!”
Waters and I waited for a brief pause in the grenade fire and then charged toward the enemy encampment. I took a knee and fired, and fired again, and fired again. “Squeeze slowly, pull to the rear,” I whispered and fired again. When I was done two Taliban soldiers had fallen, one of which had manned the grenade launcher.
Bigelow and the rest of the unit advanced while Sullivan and I provided cover. I could see Razor 1 closing in from the east. The enemy was caught in our crossfire. I saw grenade after grenade explode and thanked God as the earth shook and dirt fell like raindrops from heaven. He had chosen our side that evening. I looked at the star-littered sky. “I owe you, Big Guy.”
The enemy encampment had been checked and cleared. I called out to Bigelow, “We’ve got a man down.”
He heard me and approached.
“Sullivan, sir. He took one in the leg and one in the shoulder, but he’ll make it.”
He pulled out his radio and called MARSOC. “We need immediate medevac,” he reported. “Two wounded. No casualties.”
A response crackled over his radio, “Medevac on its way.”
“Two wounded? No casualties?” I asked.
Bigelow smiled. “Razor 1’s man is still alive. He hung in there over six hours.”
“Semper Fi,” I said, glowing with happiness. Bigelow and I pounded helmets.
~~~
“Damn it. What the hell?” I saw Grace standing over me with a bottle of aspirins and a glass of tomato juice. My head was pounding, and the room was spinning.
“Cabrera just called,” she said.
“Yeah?” I really felt shell-shocked, as if I had really just come from a combat maneuver.
“He said to tell Gumdrop that she’s needed downtown. STAT!”
Chapter 48
“Psst. Mather, come over here. You’re going to love this.” Cabrera tried but couldn’t suppress a grin as he gestured for me to approach his desk. “What’s black and white and red all over but can’t see a damn thing?”
I had a stack of files in my arm as I walked toward him. I dropped them on my desk, slipped my bag off of my shoulder, and scurried over to Cabrera like a squirrel that had just spotted a stockpile of acorns. “I don’t know, what?”
He handed me a crime scene photo. “Tell me this isn’t the best job in the world.”
Yuck. “Jesus Christ. Who the hell is that?” The photo depicted a man seated at a kitchen table with his face lying in a soup bowl. The black and white marble table was covered with blood, and two human eyes were on the table, facing him. “Shit, I’m going to lose my lunch. Who am I looking at?”
“Dead Eyes Anthony Silvestri is no more.”
Dead Eyes, oh my God, what an incredibly vicious way for someone to send a message. “Linuzzi’s boss?”
Cabrera nodded. “Wallace just dropped this off.”
The Mather Triad: Series Boxed Set (Chloe Mather Thrillers) Page 17
