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I clutched the arms of my chair, which bucked as if it were alive and trying to shake me off.
The man in the yellow cardigan had covered the back of his head with his hands. The mural cracked up the center, and red flowers shot out of a vase like rockets. Glass shattered—and then the power went out.
A herd of people ran helter-skelter through reception, shrieking in the darkened room.
I hung on to the chair. It was as if I were paralyzed, but my terror was lashing around inside me like a downed power line in a storm. The room spun, and I was there again. The helicopter whirled in a death spiral, dropping out of the sky. I couldn’t do anything to prevent the crash and all those deaths.
Chapter 83
I KNEW THAT the monstrous dog shaking the building like a rag was an earthquake. Had to be. But in the dark, as the chair jounced and the floor rolled in waves under my feet, I was clawed out of the present and hurled seven years back in time.
I was in the cockpit of the CH-46 when the surface-to-air missile tore through the cargo bay floor and took out the aft transmission. The sound as it blew through the cabin was like the howl of the world coming to an end.
As the helicopter whirled downward, I was pinned to the left side of my seat. I pulled the engines offline to reduce the violent right-hand rotation, but there was nothing I could do to reverse gravity.
I held on to the cyclic, my shoulders nearly ripping out of their sockets, and tried to keep the aircraft level.
I had a single thought, to land the bird in one piece, and the machine was fighting me all the way. I held on to the stick, staring out through the dual tunnels of my night-vision goggles as the swirling abstract pattern of the ground came up to crash into us.
The landing gear tore up through the chin bubble by my feet as we hit. The force was stunning, sickening, and it jarred me through my bones—but the aircraft was intact.
I released my harness, reached over, and shook Rick’s shoulder.
He turned and grabbed my arm, said, “Bumpy landing, Jack. Very fucking bumpy.”
The gunner and the crew chief bailed out of the crew door behind me. Rick went between our two seats and followed them down the steps into the night.
I could have gotten out through my window, but I must have gone back to the cargo bay, because what I remember next was the sight of the ruined cabin, half of it ripped away by the missile. What remained was littered with dead Marines.
It was a horror show, the real thing.
Fourteen men who had been joking and cheering when we lifted off twenty minutes before were now broken and heaped against the left side of the cabin.
Danny Young was lying apart from the others, and he was soaked in blood. I felt for a pulse, but my hands were numb and shaking. I couldn’t feel a thing.
I called Danny’s
name, but he didn’t answer me. Were his eyelids flickering? I couldn’t be sure.
I inched my way through the aircraft, pulling Danny after me. I had him over my shoulder when I heard someone shout my name. I turned and saw Corporal Jeffrey Albert lying toward the rear of the cabin, where he was weighed down by the bodies of the dead.
He was screaming in pain.
Fire had started in the cockpit. As the cabin brightened, my ability to see through the goggles washed out.
Jeff Albert twisted his head to see me. I made a life-and-death assessment. Jeff was not only pinned, his legs had broken during the crash and his bones had torn through his flight suit. I couldn’t get him out by myself.
He screamed, “Get me out of here, Captain. Don’t leave me here to burn.”
“I’ll be back,” I shouted to Albert. “I’ll be back with help. I’ll be right back.”
Albert shrieked, “He’s dead, Captain. Danny is dead. Please help me.”
Chapter 84
THE LIGHTS IN the rehab center reception room flickered then came back on, their white incandescence practically blinding me.
When I took in the scene, I saw that the walls had cracked like eggshells, and the carpet was littered with shards of plaster and glass. I was both at Blue Skies and in Afghanistan, memories still pouring into my head like gasoline streaming over hard desert ground.
