"ASAP means as soon as possible."
Wes nodded. "Yes, it does. Good job, buddy. You're learning fast."
Mikey beamed, and then, suddenly bashful, hid his face beneath his father's chin.
"I'm glad you're home," he said softly.
Wes wrapped his arms around his son and tried not to think of how small and fragile he felt.
"Yeah, buddy, I'm glad I'm home, too."
As soon as Margie returned, Wes returned his son's favor. With their heads so close together, Margie thought, it was like looking at the large and small editions of the same face. Then she put her hands on her hips and pretended to frown as Wes stuck the other bandage on his little boy's neck.
"Out now, please, before I have to start mopping up any more spilled blood," Margie teased.
Her words set Wes's stomach to turning, but, again, he hid the feeling.
"Come on, buddy. I think we're in Mommy's way."
A short while later, they were all in the car, on their way to the base.
Georgia was beautiful in the springtime. As they passed through their neighborhood, Wes glanced longingly at the lawns of new grass and thought of the endless miles of desert sand and heat to which he would soon be returning. The peach orchards they'd driven past yesterday, with their glorious acres of blooming trees, would set fruit, ripen, go through harvest and lose leaves before he would be back. Mikey was chattering in the back seat, keeping up a running commentary about what they would buy when they got to the base commissary, with peanut butter being at the top of his list.
Everything seemed so ordinary, and yet there was a measure of insanity within Wes that he couldn't seem to shake. As badly as he hated to admit he needed a shrink, if that would help him get a grip on reality, he would suffer it gladly.
Margie rode with her hand on Wes's leg, as if she needed the touch to assure herself that he was really here. Wes understood the emotion. For him, the ordinary act of driving in a car with his family seemed surreal, and he had to admire Margie's womanly skill of being able to answer all Mikey's questions and still carry on a conversation with him without losing her concentration.
Soon they were turning off the highway toward the main gate. Subconsciously, Wes sat up a little straighter and automatically returned the salute from the guard at the gate.
Wes glanced at his wristwatch. Five minutes to nine. He would be right on time.
"Margie, there's no need for you guys to wait on me. As soon as you drop me off at the hospital, go do what you need to do. If I'm done before you finish, I'll just wait outside. The day's too pretty to waste being indoors."
"Okay," she said as he pulled to a stop. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss, then winked at Mikey before getting out of the car. "See you later, buddy. Be good for Mommy."
"Okay, Daddy."
He turned away and headed for the door, but a few steps away, he felt an overwhelming urge to call Margie back. He turned abruptly, lifting his arm to hail the car, but she was too far away. Shrugging off his uneasiness as nothing more than reluctance to spill his guts to a stranger, Wes opened the door and walked in.
A half hour later Wes was trying to find a way to answer Dr. Price's question without admitting how fragile his hold on reality had become, when a loud explosion suddenly rocked the building. A fraction of a second later, all the windows in the doctor's office shattered inward. Wes was belly down on the floor before the glass blew, but the doctor's reaction wasn't as sharp. He was running toward the door when the glass shrapnel began to fly, peppering the back of his head and piercing his clothing and flesh. He fell to the floor, writhing in pain and leaving a blood trail on the carpet.
Before he had time to look up, Wes went into survival mode. He glanced toward the gaping windows, making certain that no enemy was in sight, then got up in a crouch, grabbed the doctor beneath his armpits and dragged him out of the room.
Out in the hall, chaos reigned. People were shouting and running, and he could already hear the sounds of both fire and ambulance sirens. Still pulling the doctor with him as he ran, he was all the way into the lobby before he found help.
"What are his injuries?" one of them asked as Wes gave the doctor up to their care.
"The windows in the office blew inward. I think it's all glass, but I can't be sure."
The doctor moaned as a medic laid him facedown on a cot.
"Easy, sir. You're going to be all right."
Wes's heart was hammering against his ribs as if it were a wild bird trying to get out of a cage. He could already feel the cold sweat running down the middle of his back as he tried to pull himself into a rational state of mind.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Explosion at the commissary," one of them said as they wheeled the doctor toward an examination room.
The commissary? Oh, Lord.
At that point the room started to tilt and Wes felt himself losing control. In a panic, he hit the wall with his fist, knowing that the pain would force him to focus. He bolted out of the building and into the street just as an ambulance pulled away, heading for the site of the explosion.
At that point, he looked over the rooftops, saw an ominous plume of black smoke and started running. Two blocks later, a trio of non-coms in a jeep picked him up. When they arrived on the scene, a perimeter was being set up.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't go in there," a young M.P. said.
Wes tried to push past.
"My family... I need to see if—"
"I'm sorry, sir, but no one is allowed inside the perimeter until the fire chief says so."
Wes took a staggering step backward, then started walking down the line of onlookers without taking his gaze from the fire. The front of the commissary was gone. From what he could see, there appeared to be a very large hole in the pavement right at the loading zone. He didn't need anyone to tell him what had caused it. He'd seen this time and time again, only not on American soil. This was an American army base. Car bombings didn't happen here—and yet, from what he could see, it appeared that one had, just the same.
Suddenly he bumped into a car, then stumbled. He turned then, staring down the long rows of cars in parking spaces, and realized he was in the commissary parking lot.
He didn't see their car. What if their car wasn't even here? What if Margie was back at the hospital, trying to find him right now? God, please let that be so.
He laughed, and the sound seemed crazy, even to him, as he began walking past the cars on his way out of the lot, but his heart was lighter, his stride easier than it had been seconds earlier.
A secondary explosion suddenly sent fire and debris flying up in the air. Wes dropped, his fingers curling around a gun that wasn't there, as he rolled beneath a vehicle. It took him a few moments to realize that the vehicle was a red SUV, not military issue, and that he was flat on his belly in the parking lot of the
"Damn it all to hell," he muttered, and crawled to his feet.
Wes was looking around for his hat when he suddenly stopped. The car in the row across from where he was standing... It was blue, but—there were lots of blue cars, lots of the same make and model of blue cars. That wasn't their car. That couldn't be their car.
Still, he began moving toward it. Then he saw the tiny ding on the right fender, and bile suddenly rose up the back of his throat. He wouldn't look at the sticker on the window, because it surely couldn't have the same number as the one on their car. Then he saw the booster seat in the back and shuddered. It didn't have to mean anything. This was a young people's army. Nearly everyone had kids.
He reached for the door handle, telling himself that the door would be locked. Everyone locked their cars when they got out.
But the door opened.
He moaned. Everyone locked their doors except Margie. She was forever forgetting. He looked back toward the commissary and swallowed a sob. This meant that they were in there. He had to go find them. They would share a laugh over the fact that she'd left the doors unlocked again; then he'd take them out to lunch. An early lunch was a good thing.
His legs were shaking as he began to retrace his steps. They appeared to have the fire under control, but that didn't surprise him. The army was made up of the best of the best.
He walked past a pair of M.P.s, then past a fire truck, unaware that he was walking in water. Heat seared his face, and without thinking, he took off the jacket of his uniform and handed it to a passing soldier.
"Sir! Sir! You can't go in there," the soldier called, but Wes kept moving.
The soldier ran after him, but Wes had disappeared into the smoke.
Inside, soldiers were everywhere, helping the firemen with the removal of victims, shoring up walls about to fall, digging under broken ones for survivors. He stumbled on a can of tuna and barely caught himself before he fell. Someone grabbed his arm, but he pulled free and kept moving.
He could hear people crying and someone moaning in obvious pain. Every time he saw survivors, he ran to their sides, pulling them free of debris while praying they would be Margie and his son, but each time his hopes were dashed.
He ran from corner to corner, past overturned displays, while his panic grew. His heart was pounding so hard now that he could hardly breathe. His belly was churning and his legs were weak. The place was big— so damn big. Whose.. .idea had it been to build a commissary this damned big?
Something loud banged behind him, and he dropped. He was belly down and crawling on the commissary floor when he realized something had just fallen from a shelf. He crawled to his feet, then covered his face with his hands, trying to block out the smell of blood and burning flesh.
Think. He had to think. There had to be something he was forgetting. Something that would tell him where to look.
Then he remembered the peanut butter. Mikey had wanted peanut butter. It was at the back of the store.
He started walking again, this time moving faster, trying to remember exactly where the peanut butter had been shelved. But the shelves were lying one on top of the other, toppled like a child's line of dominoes.
"Margie! Margie! Where are you, honey? It's me, Wes! Can you hear me? Just call out my name!"
But no one answered his call.
A few moments later, he turned a corner and saw several soldiers in the act of lifting up some shelves. When he saw a woman's leg and foot beneath the debris, he realized why. Then his gaze suddenly focused on the shoe, and he stumbled.
"Margie."
He didn't know that he'd spoken aloud until one of the soldiers looked up. Wes was bareheaded and without his jacket, so the soldier had no idea of his rank and spoke without thinking.
"Hey, soldier, give us a hand."
The urgency in the young man's voice pulled Wes forward, although his mind had gone blank. He stood where they put him, but when the shelf came up, he moaned. The finality of his wife's condition was impossible to ignore. Her body had been crushed, either from the shock waves of the blast or from the shelves that had pinned her to the floor. It hardly mattered what had dealt the lethal blow. He'd been unable to keep her safe.
He shoved the other soldiers aside as he dropped to his knees. When he started to slide a hand beneath her neck, her head lolled to one side. He wouldn't let himself think of what that meant, or if she'd suffered before she'd died. He just threw back his head and wailed.
Someone laid a hand on Wes's shoulder.
"Come on, soldier, you need to let us help."
But Wes's hell wasn't over. As soon as they moved his wife, he found his son.
"Please, God...please don't do this," he begged, as he felt just below the Barney Band-Aid in a desperate search for the faintest hint of a pulse.
Nothing.
Then he laid a hand on the middle of Mikey's chest, as if willing a tiny heart back to life.
With an agonizing cry, he prostrated himself upon their bodies, then pulled them close within his arms. The animal sound that came out of his mouth was like nothing the young soldiers had ever heard.
They tried, without success, to get him up, but he wouldn't let go. They didn't understand that he hadn't just lost his family. If he turned them loose, he would lose his last link with sanity, as well. Somehow, despite how careful he'd been, his worst fears had come to fruition. The enemy had followed him home.
Two
It wasn't until more men from Search and Rescue arrived on the scene that they were able to pry Wes Holden's family from his arms.