Fade to Black - Proof (22 page)

Jack looked
one last time at the face that stared back at him from the mirror, relieved to
see the long hair of Jack, instead of Casey Stillman’s close-cropped scalp.
This time he saw eyes set with a fiery determination, jaw clenched tightly. He
could do it. He had the power to change all of this. He would stop it before it
started.

Jack dried his
face with another towel then brushed the wrinkles from his shirt and pants. He
sighed nervously and clicked open the lock to the lavatory door.

A young and
agitated flight attendant stood nervously beside the door to the lavatory. Jack
tried to smile and failed.

“Are you all
right, sir?” she asked with real concern, and, Jack thought, a tinge of fear.

“Airsick,” he
said simply and squeezed past her, heading for the aisle.

The flight
attendant looked past him into the bathroom, and seemed surprised that it
looked normal.

“I…I, uh…” she
stammered. Jack walked away up the aisle towards his seat before she could
finish her thought. As he left her behind he heard her whispering to the older
flight attendant beside her, “I could have sworn I heard someone else in there
with him.”

You have no
fucking idea, sweetie.

Jack continued
up the aisle to his seat. He flopped down heavily beside Pam who looked up,
startled from near sleep in her seat. Her eyes got wide as she looked at her
husband.

“Are you all
right?” she asked. “Jesus, you look like shit.”

Jack looked at
her and smiled—a real and determined smile this time. Then he hugged her
tightly.

“Everything is
going to be all right, baby,” he said. “I know I’ve been saying that, but now
I’ve really got this figured out.” He started to ride the wave of his own
excitement at his slowly crystallizing plan. “I know how to make this right.”

Pam pulled
away and looked into his eyes, her own filled with hope and confusion. He could
see that she wanted so much to believe him.

“How, Jack?”

“You’re going
to have to trust me,” he said and put his arm around her in the seat. Then he pushed
the call button with his free hand. Pam looked up at the illuminated call light.

“What are you
doing?” she asked.

“Forgot your
pillow,” Jack said with a tension-relieving chuckle.

“I trust you,
Jack,” was all she said.

Chapter

25

The rest of the flight passed in
comfortable quiet, at least it seemed to for Pam. Instead of the frightened
musing and self-doubting rumination he had become accustomed to lately, Jack
felt a surge of personal confidence, now that he had something to focus his
mind on. No more questions, he promised himself. It was time for answers and
action.

He had no
idea, of course, whether his idea would work, or was even possible. He still
had no clue what this was all about or, he supposed, who he really was. But he
succeeded in keeping his mind away from questions he couldn’t answer (Lewellyn
would have a marathon session on that) and instead started to outline a plan
for his night. Maybe his last night, he thought grimly.

Better to face
it and go down fighting.

Hoorah.

Jack tried to
remember if at any time he had touched any of his images. He didn’t think so,
but wasn’t really sure. He knew he had felt contact when he was Casey. He had
felt the corpsman’s hand in his; felt the pressure in his chest when Doc Barton
did whatever had made him breathe better; had felt Mac touch him.

But what about
as Jack?

He had a clear
memory of the feel of arms and hands on him, pulling him down into the cyclone
of sand that had barfed up out of the hole in the sidewalk, but had he
initiated any contact with any of the images?

Then he
remembered the night in the desert, when Hoag had become hysterical and started
shaking him. Hadn’t he grabbed the commander by the wrists and broken his hold
on him? He was sure that he had. That seemed important. He had initiated
physical contact and more importantly, altered things that Hoag was doing.

Very fucking
important, in fact.

The other
thing that was crucial to the plan was timing. When he had gone to the
nighttime desert that day, he had been with his Marines
before
the
assault on Fallujah. They had been smoking and grab-assing by the berm outside
the city, a moment he vaguely recalled outside of his visit to the event as Jack.
And he was pretty sure that had been the night before they had gone into the
Jolan neighborhood as part of the assault force, and a full day or so before
his squad had been split off from the platoon and pinned behind the wall. In
other words, well before any of them had been injured or killed. That was
critically important, too, Jack realized. He had to be able to get to Fallujah
before they were all shot up, preferably before they even got separated from
the rest of his platoon. The timing was going to be everything.

Lastly, was
his ability to go where he needed to go. He felt pretty good about that one. He
knew he had left Hoag that night, somewhat of his own free will. And he was
certain he had left the dirty street of Fallujah, had willed himself away and
back to the arms of his wife, on at least two occasions. If he could leave Iraq
by a sheer force of desire, shouldn’t he also be able to go there as well? Jack
realized that while that certainly seemed reasonable, he had no way to really
know. After all, he still didn’t really understand any of this. He thought he
had a better understanding of what it all meant, but it was still just his own
personal interpretation.  Jack tried not to dwell on the things he didn’t know.
Hoag had said some things that implied his plan couldn’t possibly work, but
hadn’t the Navy chaplain also admitted that he didn’t understand it all either?
That night in the desert, Hoag admitted he had no idea what came next, but
somehow seemed to believe that they had to “all leave together.” The chaplain
being wrong about that was going to be incredibly important, too.

There were a
lot of uncertainties in his plan, he realized, but he had no other ideas. If
this didn’t work, then he doubted he had any hope at all of staying with Pam
and Claire. He would die in the street in Fallujah and leave Pam a widow and
single mother. That was a thought he couldn’t bear. He would alter his destiny,
and hopefully that of his Marines. Hoag, he assumed, was on his own. He had
bought it miles away in an unrelated IED attack, and Jack couldn’t think of any
way to incorporate the chaplain’s death into his plan. He didn’t let himself think
about what that meant for his hope for success for him, and Bennet, and
Kindrich, and Simmons—especially poor, young Simmons. He felt particularly
responsible for his youngest Marine, whom he had pulled himself helmet to
helmet with that day in Fallujah. He had promised the boy that they would be
fine.

Maybe now he
would have a chance to make good on that promise.

Jack also felt
an incredible press of time on him. Would he even make it to the night, or for
that matter, to the airport? Hoag’s threatening promise echoed in his mind over
and over, interrupting his attempts to focus on the plan.

We will come
for you… We will take you and those around you will suffer…

Jack wasn’t
sure he could tell Pam, even if he wanted to. He was worried that her reaction
to the madness of what was going on, and the insanity of what he was planning,
might shake his own resolve if he were to tell it out loud. He hoped she
wouldn’t ask again for the details, that she would just trust him. He believed
telling her would ruin his chances for some reason.

After they
landed and collected their carry-on luggage, they headed out to the parking lot
hand in hand. Jack felt lucky that his wife seemed content to just hold his
hand and let him work things out. Lucky, but not surprised.

The Volvo was
where they had left it in long‐term parking, and Jack threw their two small
bags into the trunk unceremoniously. They picked up Claire at Bev’s and Jack
felt his heart come alive at the cooing shouts of joy when their little girl
saw them.

Bev assured
them that Claire had been a “joy” and had done very well during her short
sleepover. Having Claire in the car for the brief ride home erased some of the
uncomfortable, surrealistic haze that seemed to envelop his life more and more
the last several days. Jack marveled at how having the three of them together
seemed the only cure, and that when the fantasylike veil was lifted by their
closeness, his fears and anxieties seemed so small, almost petty. Then the
weight of his plan for the night sunk back on him, and he sighed heavily. Might
this be his last night with his family? He shook the thought off violently,
physically shaking his head and making himself a bit dizzy. There was no point
in letting his mind go there.

It is what it
is.

He was trapped
between his family and a world of death and ghosts no one could possibly
understand.

Including him.

Chapter

26

Jack stared at the stubborn and
unwavering ceiling while his wife slept beside him. Nothing was happening. His
body ached with exhaustion, but his mind seemed unwilling to take the hint.

Maybe I’m
trying too hard.

He tried to
let his mind wander, to kind of sneak up on sleep while holding onto his
destination in his mind.

Nothing.

Not a move,
not a flash, not a grain of sand or dust. No sound of gunfire or helicopters.

Just a swirled
stucco ceiling with a slowly turning fan.

Trying too
hard
.

Jack shifted
his mind away from the stubborn and insistently normal bedroom ceiling and
instead tried to map out some details of what he could remember about where he
was going. He had no idea how the fuck this worked (or if it could) and he had
a sudden fear that he would “arrive” at the wrong place, or time, or whatever
the hell it was. So he tried to remember some details about the journey of Kilo
Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, into the hell of Fallujah. It felt
ridiculous to try and remember details of a place and time his memory swore to
him he had never really seen, but it was there. He felt it. Jack forced himself
to relax and settle into the memories. He just went to the memory like he was
making it up, knowing that he was not.

They had moved
into the city on the ninth of November, leaving behind, maybe forever, what he
realized now was the relative peace and safety of the sand berm they had
guarded for the days leading up to the siege on the terrorist‐held city. His
company, Kilo, had been assigned to move into the Jolan neighborhood in the northwest
corner of the city. They had been told to expect violent resistance but had
been asked, nonetheless, to retain fire control discipline. This was because,
despite days of warnings, there was no way to be sure that innocent Iraqi
civilians were not left behind in the city. Kilo and their sister company, Lima,
would take Jolan while First Battalion, Eighth Marines worked to their east.
Several army companies would be between the two Marine battalions and together
they would all push south, eventually pushing the enemy ahead of them and
across Highway 10, which cut across the city east to west. South of the highway
they would join up with other units waiting there, establishing a kill zone
bordered to the north by Highway 10, and to the south by the southern border of
the city. It was a classic, time‐tested, beautifully simplistic Marine Corps
plan.

Jack felt
himself drifting softly, nowhere near asleep, but following his mind along on
its journey.

Casey had been
in charge of second platoon for Kilo Company. He knew his men well and
considered them more than friends. They were a family. Like most families they
didn’t all get along, but when the shit hit the fan, Casey had no doubt they
would come together and fight like a family, taking care of each other. The
first night had proven that. The initial push into Fallujah and the Jolan
neighborhood was nothing any of them had imagined, despite the months—for some
of them years—of training together.

Jack sighed
and stared at the swirling shadow of the ceiling fan.   

Maybe he
wasn’t supposed to make the ceiling change. Maybe it just happened, kind of
crept up on you when you were distracted by other things. Jack closed his eyes
with some difficulty, and he felt himself drifting deeper and farther away…

*   *   *

He woke up
cold. There was a chill in the air that was in no way what his mind told him he
should feel here, in a hammock slung between palm trees, his arms and legs
wrapped around Pam’s warm and wet bare skin. The hammock was the dream he found
while searching for the other, dark reality in Iraq. Not the target, but he
would take it for a few more minutes, he decided. Eyes closed he reached for a
blanket, searching for the corner his wife must have pulled off him in her
fitful slumber. His fingers dug instead into cool sand, fine to the point of being
a powder. He realized that a similar grime coated his teeth and throat.

Jack’s eye
sprung open in realization, but he was met with darkness so complete that he
momentarily thought his mind had fooled him and his eyes were still closed. He
stretched his hands out behind him as he sat up in the dark, his fingers probing
the now-familiar berm. He leaned his weight against it and struggled to his
feet, leaning over slightly to steady himself, the blackness nauseatingly
disorienting.

As his brain
steadied his legs in the dark, Jack let go of the berm and stood up straight,
his eyes scanning a half circle in the blackness, searching for any speck of
light to focus on. As he adjusted to the dark he became aware that the sky
above him, though moonless, was a field peppered with points of light so rich
that he was again swept away to another place, cutting through the Pacific Ocean
late at night aboard the LHD. As his eyes dropped from the sky above he made
out a faint line of yellow light that marked the top of the berm.

I’m here. I
made it
.

He was at Checkpoint
Four, an overstatement of the desolate berm that he and his men had occupied
for the days before they had moved into Fallujah. He was in the right place,
but Jack’s stomach tightened as he realized that he was alone and that could
only mean he was in no way at the right time. Was he early or late? Hours or
days? There was no way to know and Jack felt a growing panic. What the fuck was
he supposed to do now?

Jack scrambled
up the berm, desperate for information. His fingers dug into the powdery sand
and occasionally stung as they caught on bits of wood and metal, trash caught
up in the berm as it had been pushed up into place by the Army bulldozers that
had arrived long before he and his men had called Checkpoint Four a temporary
home. Jack slowed as he neared the top of the hill of dirt and garbage and then
slowly peered over the crest of the berm.

Fallujah.

There were
only scattered points of light, but Jack saw burst after burst of red streaks
lighting up the night—tracers from firefights spread out all over the city.
Jack became aware of sporadic cracks of rifle fire, the burping bursts of
machine gun fire, and occasional louder explosions of mortars and rockets. His
ear was able to discern the subtle difference between the M16A of the American soldiers
and Marines and the higher pitched crack of the AK-47s favored by the
insurgents.

So it would
seem he was late. Maybe by only minutes or hours, but definitely too fucking
late.

He expected
panic to start to well up, but mysteriously it didn’t. Maybe he was just too
damn tired to panic anymore. Instead he watched the glow and flash of his soon-to-be
deathbed and struggled with what to do next. He had gotten here (he realized
now he had always known he would and was surprised at that bit of insight),
without really knowing how. But he knew why and that was why he knew he
couldn’t give up. If he could come here, could he not move about here as well?
Could he not just travel again, back a few hours?

Perhaps ten blocks
from the perimeter of the city, the squeal of an RPG was punctuated by a rumbling
explosion and a burst of light. Jack unconsciously lowered his head, only his
eyes now above the crest of the berm.

“There goes
Bennet,” a harsh whisper choked into his right ear. Jack rolled violently to
his left in surprise, his arms raised defensively, his heart pounding at the
unexpected interruption of his private viewing.

Before his
eyes even focused on the shape beside him, he already knew, of course, who it
was. The glow of the battle for Fallujah a few miles away reflected back at him
from the filthy round glasses on the full and tired face. Hoag turned slowly
towards him, his face pale and sweaty and his eyes even wilder than before. 

“What did you
think you would accomplish here, Casey?” the dead officer asked him. “You can’t
change anything, Sar’n. You see…” Hoag looked down at his stained blouse and
massaged his right hand around the loops of intestines contained there, “All of
this is God’s will.” The crooked smile barely hid a wild hysteria that
frightened Jack in new way.

Another flash
lit up the sky from the city below them, followed a split second later by a
sharp boom, the sound catching up with the light over the few miles to the
source in the Jolan neighborhood. Jack reflexively pulled his head down behind
the berm again. As he did, he saw, or maybe felt, a flurry of motion beside him.
He turned to face the now for sure crazy, and still dead, chaplain. Instead of
the wet and wild eyes, he looked into the cycloptic black gaze of Hoag’s side
arm. Jack tried not to move, hands frozen still beside his head (you got me, Sheriff!),
uncertain what to do. Was this possible, even? Could he be shot and killed by a
ghost of a dead minister in a battlefield in a dream? With a burst of clarity
Jack felt certain that he could.

“It’s God’s
will!” Hoag said again, his voice now rising to a shaky holler. “We can’t stop
the will of God, Casey!” He looked out over the berm, as if scanning across a
riveted congregation that only he could see. The naked black hole of the
handgun never wavered in front of Jack’s face, however, and he stayed still,
trying to figure out what the hell to do.

“I have been
washed by the blood of the Lamb, Casey,” Hoag’s squeaky voice spit at him in
the glow of Fallujah. He peered at him now through those filthy fucking glasses,
and Jack was grateful that he couldn’t really see the eyes behind them. “But
YOU, Sar’n…” The barrel of Hoag’s gun shaking at Jack like a thick black finger
in his face. “You cheated. You fucking cheated, you fucking little CHEATER!”
Jack didn’t like the way his voice rose, and knew what was coming. “I WON’T LET
YOU CHEAT, YOU FUCK! YOU ARE COMING WITH ME! YOU WILL BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF
THE LAMB—WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB—WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB…” Hoag
gripped his gun wrist with his other hand to steady his aim. He peered down the
barrel at Jack, one eye closed and the crooked grin back on his face. Spit
dribbled from the corner of his mouth and his voice fell to a raspy whisper.

 “You are
coming with me, Sergeant Stillman.” The shrill voice choked at him. “You will
be washed in the blood like God meant for you to be and we will leave this
shithole together. You can’t cheat God you fu…”

An image of Pam,
sitting in the glider chair, holding his sleeping daughter to her chest,
flashed in Jack’s mind and both of his hands exploded from his sides. His left
hand struck the middle of the chaplain’s throat and Jack felt a sickening crunch
as the cartilage of Hoag’s voice box collapsed under the blow. His right hand
simultaneously grabbed the barrel of the gun and jerked it downward. The
deafening explosion shattered the stillness of the berm and a blinding flash of
light erased the dark world around him. He felt a terrible burning in his right
hand, which gripped the now-smoking pistol. Jack was sure he was dead, killed
by a dead preacher.

The spray of
dirt beside his face comforted him and announced that he had not taken a bullet
to the head. He jerked the wrist in his grip around in a full circle, feeling
bone snap as the chaplain squealed again, this time in pain. The gun was free
and Jack gripped it in his hand without thinking, swinging it around in a one-handed
grip like he had been born with it. His thumb confirmed the safety was off and
he squeezed twice in the direction of the heavy‐jowled, sweaty face, now
twisted in rage and confusion.

“You must be
washed in the…” And then Hoag’s head exploded under the force of two nine‐millimeter
rounds at point‐blank range. Blood, bone, and something thick and grey
spattered a modern art mural on the trash and sand of the berm. Then the chubby
body collapsed, arms by its sides. Two long loops of pinkish-grey intestines
snaked out from beneath the blouse, seemingly alive and twisting for a moment,
then lay wet and still in the dirt.

Jack took a
deep whistling breath as the last echoes of the gunshot rattled off through his
mind and the acrid and familiar burnt sulfur smell drifted away in the nearly
imperceptible breeze. He dropped the gun beside him in the dirt without looking
down, and for a moment mourned the Navy commander, dead (again) in front of him
on the berm.

Was there any
way around going to hell for killing a fellow soldier, especially a fucking chaplain?
Did it matter if they were already dead?

Jack realized
with some surprise that he couldn’t possibly care less. He had no intention of
going to heaven or hell just yet.

He intended to
go home to his girls.

He wasn’t the
least bit surprised when a gentle wind started spinning around him, pushing up
a growing twister of sand and trash. As it grew Jack held his arms out from his
sides like a snowboarder, ready to ride. He watched with some remorse, but no
real guilt, as a separate twisting cyclone spun around Hoag’s lifeless body. It
picked it up from the dirt and tumbled it about like a broken doll, rising
higher and higher. Then there was a brilliant and blinding flash of light and
Hoag’s body disappeared. Or at least Jack thought it had. He was now totally
blinded by his own cyclone of twisting sand. Instead of picking him up, he was
again being sucked down into the twisting tornado’s center. Down into the berm.