Without warning

The thundering engine and rotors made normal conversation impossible but the four troopers in the cabin with him all needed to talk, to know what was happening back in the real world. In the faint glow leaking through from the cockpit, their faces were hollowed out and haunted. They all knew him, or knew of him. As a former Ranger, Melton was a popular embed. His shit was stowed according to regs and he could be trusted. He was as close to a believer as an outsider could be. Hitching the flight back to 3rd Infantry Division, the questions started as soon as they recognised him.

‘What the fuck’s happening, man?’

‘What about our families?’

‘Is it a fucking attack or what, dude?’

He’d done his best to explain what he knew, but really, what did he know? As Melton had laid it out for them, bellowing over the thump of the rotor blades, the looks on their faces had made him feel like a mental case. They gaped in horror and disbelief as he described what he’d seen and heard – and how could he blame them? He couldn’t really believe it himself. He sounded authentically mad. After twenty minutes they’d all lapsed into silence and the rest of the flight passed in a sort of stunned, half-catatonic state. Melton knew that by the time these guys relayed the news to their friends, it’d be totally bent out of shape, but he didn’t see much point in holding anything back. Everything they were defending was gone. Their homes and loved ones – everything. They had a right to know. In fact, that was the only reason he was still here. He had open tickets back to Paris and could check out any time he wanted, but he could no more fly out to Paris than he could to New York now. He had no immediate family. No steady girlfriend. His relationships had always been short term and contingent. One woman he’d been closer to than most called him ‘commitment phobic’, but she was wrong. Melton wasn’t scared of commitment; he just wasn’t committed to her. Ever since he’d left the army after Somalia he’d had one faith, one love from which he could not be diverted: the telling of soldiers’ stories.

The pilot’s voice came through, a clipped monotone announcing they were five minutes out. Melton craned around on his perch and briefly popped his head out into the slipstream. The 1st Brigade Combat Team’s desert base wasn’t totally blacked out, but it was much darker than the last time he’d come in, three days ago. Even so, under the moon it still glowed as a bed of pearls in the wide vessel of shadows that was the desert at night. On a satellite image, the tent city and masses of equipment would show up as a vast glowing metropolis of blood and iron, but what the hell. There was no sense in making it easy for Saddam, hence the blackout.

They flew in low, flaring and pivoting for the touchdown on a steel-mesh landing pad. A storm of gritty, stinging sand blasted into the cabin, scouring any exposed skin and working its way in through the layers of clothing Melton had drawn tightly around himself. One of the soldiers slapped him on the shoulder and grimly mouthed, ‘Thanks anyway, buddy’, before leaping out and hurrying off, bent double. The Army Times correspondent – or was he a former correspondent now? – followed the others out into the chill darkness, intending to head for the tent where some of the journalists maintained a rudimentary press club with a small stash of carefully hoarded bourbon and beer.

‘Mr Melton? Sir?’

‘Lieutenant Euler?’

Melton recognised him immediately. The platoon commander, who, at six-and-a-half foot, was forced into a very exaggerated stoop by the Blackhawk’s spinning rotors, hurried forward and took Melton by the elbow, steering him away from his intended heading.

‘Captain wants to see you, sir. We’re getting set to roll on fifteen minutes’ notice.’

‘Roll where?’

‘Don’t know, sir. But Captain Lohberger needs you over at headquarters. The squadron commander will want to hear what you have to say as well.’

‘About what’s happened back home?’

‘Yes, sir.’