“Ma’am?” Mic Drop’s metal chair cricks as he turns to me. He’s waiting for me to say one word. They all are. He is respectful now; his words are being transmitted to brigade.
But I stand here, the sides of my throat sticking together. My entire platoon, plus ground ops, is hinging on me giving the order. There’s no hoping for a misfire. Or changing my mind.
I keep looking at the live feed on our screens showing our largest target to date, a building in the variegated greys and greens of night vision. Our drone’s infrared beam, a trail of spider’s silk, is pointing to the roof I have to put a rocket through.
Mic-Drop’s still facing me, mouth open. I’ve got maybe two seconds till my platoon sergeant takes over and I’m staring down at court martial for dereliction of duty. If I don’t say it, Smoke will.
The cameras are zoomed-in so we can get identity confirmation of my VIP’s. But right before my targets ducked through the door, one of them looked up, and it felt like he was looking straight through the drone to me. This isn’t the first time there’s been a tag-along – driver, messenger – an extra so low in the ranks we don’t even have intel on them. Not collateral damage, just one more enemy corpse than we planned for. But this time, he paused just outside the door, looked up like he knew we were there. And now his face is floating in the space between my stomach and lungs. The surprise of it tastes like iron.
One syllable. That’s all it takes.
# # #
My platoon arrived on the border of Turkey and Syria just before winter clawed her way up and over the mountain we crouched on. During the day, we stuffed ourselves into a green canvas tent large enough to fit the twenty-four soldiers under my command, two banks of computers, and a make-shift coffee bench. Because here, exposed skin cracked and split till it bled. Even in the sun, our laundry froze into stiff silhouettes on the line. In our missives home, we asked for thicker socks and hand warmers.
Other than official reports, we didn’t use real names. My troops had all chosen their before I was assigned to the platoon as commander. Specialist Moreno anointed himself Mic-Drop: when he gets on the mic, the bombs drop. He’s twenty-one. My Platoon Sergeant Ulibarri chose Poppa Smoke, an old-school nod to former artillery platoons; makes sense as he was closing in on forty. The rest of them – Diablo (21) and Powder (22), Heisenberg (20), Bear (23), Six-Deep (19), and Scarecrow (21), Venom (19), the Professor (22), Big Daddy (25), Ramrod (19), Punisher (20), Falcon (19), Tank (21), Thruster (21), Reaper (18), D.J. (20), and Boom (19) — stuck pretty close to the obvious.
I memorized their ages and shook the hands of each of their next of kin the day we loaded the buses for mobilization. I made sure to look each parent, or wife and baby, or girlfriend/boyfriend in the eye. I’d grown up watching my father do as much. I parroted him, my voice thin like his had been on those days, repeating the words I’d heard from him a hundred other times, “I’ll bring him back to you.”
I still repeated their ages to myself when I’d assign them to a mission: Heisenberg (20) and Tank (21) were on guard duty; Six-Deep (19), Venom (19), and Boom (19) were moving one of my launchers to a new site. The fabric walls of the POC juddered around us as the wind pushed and pulled at them. Push. Pull. Wap, wap, wap. The noise wedged at the base of my head, behind the ears. Its only competition was our generator’s mechanical whines. I looked at my computer screen again, rereading the message from HQ, “Kodiak inspection imminent.” My stomach fell out the bottom of my boots.
My father, General Tsolinik, was on his way to see me. A privilege only afforded him because we serve in the same branch, and the sum of stars that salute him outnumber those he salutes. In that moment, the POC became unbearably warm. I felt a ribbon of sweat slide past my underwear.
D.J. called out, “Lt., there’s a bird about 15 out.” The general had to spend three hours flying in a Black Hawk from the nearest Forward Operating Base to my temporary post that, other than eyes-only, didn’t exist. My father hates helicopters.
“Roger that. Smoke, we’ve got a VIP visit.”
“Copy, ma’am,” Smoke said.
“D.J., I’m on channel two.” I grabbed my radio.
“Roger, Lt. Channel two.”
I was almost to the tent flaps, prepared to wait in the cold when D.J. mumbled, “Must be nice.”
The bald spot at the top of my father’s head caught the MRAP’s interior lights and acted as a halo. We were alone on a perimeter check at his request. He was beaming, broad and thick, so that his temples pushed gray and white hair further back on his head.
“Our allies,” he began, “ the Turks, are finally ready to play nice. You’re running point on the invasion. I’ve arranged it so you’ll be the first woman to lead a combat rocket platoon into enemy territory in Army history. Your name’s going in the books.”
“Wow,” was all I could muster.
“Has to be a joint-forces thing, so you’ll need to be sweet with the locals. Let ‘em feel like they’re feeding you intel, tell them you’re passing it along to HQ, that sort of thing. Best part is, we come down on non-combatants, we blame local intel. Your ass is covered front to back. Anne,” he looked excited, “this is the big one. With the weapons you’re humping in, you’ll have more body bags to your credit than I did in my first three commands.”
“Queen of Battle, hooah.” I smiled for him.
He put an awkward hand on my shoulder, but MRAPs are wide, so he had to lean way over to the left to reach me. A congenial thump, “That might be true, but I wouldn’t trade my dumbest infantrymen for your best string-puller.” He laughed. “Not a one.”
We made it back to the platoon, and everyone but guard-duty was in the POC; nineteen bodies. The final task before my father’s departure was to meet the local counterparts. Until today, the only military presence in the area had been the United States, give or take a few insurgents. But the funny part was, we were posted up right outside the locals’ permeant post: a large compound with high concrete walls, barracks and unmanned buildings. Our equipment and launchers have been clustered outside these, surrounded by thick, mobile barriers meant to withstand tank rounds and suicide vehicle assaults. As a concession for our country’s protective presence, a door had been cut into the middle of the now-shared wall. The other side opened to a square room, supposedly not much bigger than a two-car garage. I’d seen the drone scout footage. This shed accounted for our only access. I checked it when we arrived; on the inside, the door to their side was passcode locked so we can’t get through. Ours was always open.
I stepped through the door first, tactical security, and blinked away the sun’s film. There were men in the room at various places, leaning against walls and squatting on the floor. Their boots scraped sand into cement as they move. I had to duck so I didn’t hit my head on the door post. My foot caught the lip of the frame and I pitched forward, the other faltered on the same point. My knees hit first, then hands planted on the rough floor in front of a platoon of men that are not mine. Fuck. A hand was in my face before I had a chance to look up. It was not my father’s.
“Saeed Sakalli, I am captain Fourth Platoon, Geyik Company,” the hand’s owner said.
I stood, brushed the dirt from my pants. He was polite enough not to ask if I am alright. On my six, my father kept silent.
“Lieutenant Tsolinik,” I said, hands clasped at my back, “139th Platoon, Thunderbird Battalion. This,” I gestured back to my father, “is Lieutenant General Tsolinik.”
“We are pleased to welcome you, General and Lieutenant Tsoliniks.” His face was leather, smoothed back towards his temples and jawline, where thin breaks incubated wrinkles. “We are happy to know who is at our backs.”
“As are we.” Despite the bone thin air, sweat broke out above my lips.
The captain spread his hands towards the walls, umber eyes squinted, “Everything here, we share.”
Diplomacy is more about the shape than the size of lie. This one’s edges were smooth and pliable. The rest of our introductions proceeded in the same fashion. My father was mute, and yet another platoon full of men were trying to hide the fact that they were laughing at me.
# # #
Missions tangled the days and nights around each other, twisting them until the only difference between each was the temperature inside the tents. Sometimes we shot, other times we were shot at. My soldiers learned to sleep through mortar rounds that were far enough away. I would sit in the joint-forces garage, taut and counting seconds between rounds like the spaces between thunder. It was generally empty, except for the captain. He treated the space as if it was his home. The first evening, he stood to greet me, played host to my guest. “All Americans want our coffee. You will have some?”
It’s hard enough to sleep; the blue of phone and tablet screens disrupted already strained circadian rhythms. Added to that, the barely muffled repetition of skin against skin beneath solitary wool blankets – it’s not like anyone’s going to jerk off in the port-a-johns with everyone else’s shit rags in the trash next to the can.
“Too close to lights out.”
“Tea?”
I was my mother’s daughter. “Perfect.”
I sat on mottled velour cushions, squat against a windowless wall. Sakalli hummed, the notes pricking up in odd steps, pulled a stainless-steel pot from a side table and placed it in front of me on a low wooden trunk that was nicked and pocked at the edges. The captain set a beige mug, tea bag bobbing at the surface, next to a wide gash where the wood had split apart across the top.
He uncovered a pan of honeyed baklava. “My wife,” he said, sliding the sticky triangle into my hand from his. We ran out of paper plates weeks ago and I refused to allow Sakalli to replenish them. “She bakes when she has no sleep.” I laid the crisp taste of his home against my tongue.
His finger shuffled through his breast pocket, then jerked a small square of paper toward me. A woman, face framed by a magenta scarf with marigold embroidery, stood next to a young man who was a replica of the captain, minus a few decades.
“My family,” was his explanation.
“They’re wonderful.” I handed it back. “How are they while you’re here?”
He settled the photo into his pocket again, rubbed a hand over his face. Distant mortar rounds whistled, ended in small whumps. “My son gives hard time to my wife. He is eighteen.” Sakalli’s eyes studied the walls, conjuring his son. “When he is little, my parents come to tea. But my son, he does football inside,” Sakalli mimed bouncing a ball against his knee. “‘Baba,’ son is saying, ‘Baba, see me.’ I am giving the tea to mother, father. My father says son needs to stop. For respect, I want no argument with father, but in street it is too dangerous. Ball hits leg, bam!” The captain clapped his hands together and I jump. “Into father’s face while he drinks.” Sakalli laughed.
“Tea is everywhere. Broken cup. Son is crying. Father yells, says my son needs to behave. Takes mother, goes.” Sakalli looked at the ground between our feet. “I am trapped in middle of father and son. I love both. What is best for bringing harmony to my home? I chose cleaning tea,” he winked, “first making wife happy. After this, to my son I make a rule, no soccer when grandfather inside our home. Then I move table and play with son. I wait for father to call me. In a week, their building hit with Kurdish bomb. Mother’s body buried; but,” Sakalli sighed, “Father we did not find.”
I couldn’t think of what say. Sakalli filled the silence I left. “Son plays no more soccer. Holds great hate for Kurds. He is not happy, is saying Americans help enemies more than us.”
“I’m so sorry.”
When Sakalli spoke again, it was almost an apology. “Young men think they must be big, win all fights. His mother still cries for him each day.”
“I was terrible to my mom, too.” The admission pinched sharp behind my rib. “She wanted me to be like her – marry a pilot, run the wives’ clubs. Basically, make a career out of mahjong and mojitos.” I sipped at the tea, sage and mint coating my mouth. “I told her I wouldn’t waste my life like she did.”
I didn’t bother to lick the honey from his wife’s baklava from my fingertips. They were just resting, curled like dead spiders on my knees when Sakalli asked, “You think mother wastes life?”
“I think we all want to do things that matter.”
“You speak with mother?”
“I e-mailed her tonight. I call on Sundays if I can.”
“Then, there is this.” The quiet sat between us for a moment. “You have picture of family?”
“Just my dog, Lolly,” I said, but my stomach was milky and thick.
The portraits from my childhood were an annual, formal event that everyone dreaded. My father always standing behind us all in his Class A’s, medals dangling from their ribbons and clinking into each other; mother lean and coiled like a piston anticipating a spark. Malcom and I hot and starched, forced to wear our newest clothes. I didn’t realize it until I was older, until my first deployment actually, that those would have been the clothes we’d wear to my father’s funeral if he came home under a flag. My mother updated our formal black at the beginning and the middle of every deployment, as if by her preparations alone, she could hold the line against fate.
I sat across from Sakalli and wondered if she bought a new black dress for my deployment, tucked it away in her closet right over her sensible heals, hoping to wear it to cocktails at the club once I came home.
“She’s a collie.”
Captain Sakalli sat up, hooded eyes not quite smiling, “Show me the collie dog.”
# # #
The snap of canvas as the wind pulls at our tent thwacks in my ears. I need water.
“We have air clearance for the flight path and confirmation of target grid,” Mic-Drop repeats, “L-tee, do we proceed?”
Even in this cold, I sweat. My voice is the worn edge of thin glass. One word. “Fire.”
“Roger. Fire!” The tent crackles, everyone leans toward the drone’s feed. Radios echo call numbers, fire orders repeat; our operator parrots the play-by-play of my rockets’ launch. I am straining toward the screens. Burst of yellow and orange give way to the white smoke pooling on the ground propelling my HiMARs towards that face. First one, then the other. Within minutes, two mechanized javelins will have found the roof of the school-turned-enemy-hub, screaming in with razor accuracy.
Warheads on foreheads.
“Ma’am, rounds complete.” Mic-Drop says. My rockets are airborne. I can’t take them back.
Forty-five seconds. I clamp my teeth together to hold my chin still. I’ve forgotten how to swallow.
Sixty seconds. “Splash,” Reaper says into the radio. Another breath.
The feed shows the first rocket, a puncture wound through the domed roof. Its fuse on a delay so it will punch through multiple floors, stopping right where we want it. Four ticks, a breath; the second rocket follows her sister into the hole, lighting up my screens with silent, white precision. The building heaves out, dust around it leaping into the air, before collapsing in on itself and everyone inside.
He had umber eyes.
“End of Mission,” the voice of the ground crew is reedy and pitched. He can’t be more than eighteen. “Ninety-six enemy KIA.” My tongue has swollen. If I open my mouth I will choke.
“Copy,” Mic-Drop squawks back. “Fire mission Victor Uniform Romeo Niner Seven complete.” I nod, turn from the screens, and focus on taking measured steps to the tent flap as my troops whoop and jump from chairs, chest-bumping, hugging, slapping backs.
Outside, the moment jellies in my lungs. My mouth is full of too much salvia; I bend over, choke, spit onto the frozen dirt. The wind is gone, leaving behind it only the cold that cracks and rattles in the lungs. I lurch toward the joint forces shed, feeling like I’m alone on stage at a dance recital, the time when I’d forgotten all the steps and stood in the spotlight crying, scanning the crowd for my mother’s face. My side of the door burps against the frame protesting my tug. As it swings open, I smell the snap of orange and cardamom
Brown eyes look up as I step through the door. His voice crisp in the night air, “Ah, Lieutenant.” There are deep smears of purple hollow the skin below his eyes. “I will begin the tea.”
“I have to tell you something first.” The words scrape the sand in my throat.
“I am listening.” A beat, “Anne.” I hear his breath as he leans forward, one officer to another.
“Saeed,” the world splits in two, “I have just killed your son.”
# # #
Currently attending Eastern New Mexico University’s Languages and Literature Graduate program, Jenni Kate Baros has lived in Alaska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. A Scuba diver, fourteener-summiter, alpine skier, and theology enthusiast, Jenni Kate has published short fiction in El Portal, and has received the ENMU Writers’ Retreat Top Honors for Poetry. She shares her writing space with her husband, children, and two spunky Labradors.
Photo: Kyle Glenn
