Sunrise: Wrath & Righteousness: Episode Ten (15 page)

The worst of it was over now.

It was time to get to work.

The chief of staff waited in the background, giving the president time to think. After a few minutes of silence, he stepped forward. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

The president took a deep breath. “We’re going to rebuild,” he said.

“Everything, Mr. President?” The chief of staff  looked at the scarred horizon.

“Of course,” Marino answered. Lifting his foot, he stomped the ground below him, marking the hallowed place. “We’re going to rebuild it all. And we’re going to start right here.”

*******

Sara Brighton stood behind the president, looking out on the same scene. But she didn’t see any of it. Her mind was somewhere else.

She had lost so much. Her husband. Their home. Their lives together. Everything they owned. They had paid the price for years now, giving up their time as a family, driven by the military to foreign lands, moving every year or two, any sense of hometown or stability for their children long past gone. Sara had done her best to raise them, but it had been more or less on her own. Her oldest son lay in the hospital, critically wounded now. Her other sons? Where were they? She didn’t know.

But as she stood there, she thought of none of this. She didn’t mourn the loss of her husband or her home. She didn’t mourn for her children or the world they had faced. She didn’t wallow in the bitterness that she could have so easily reached out and embraced.

The only thing she thought about were some of the soldiers she had known.

The young son of a good friend who had died from his combat wounds after being attacked by a roadside IED. One man had been killed instantly by the bomb. Four other soldiers in the Humvee had been terribly burned; no more skin, no more hair. For months, each of them had fought an agonizing battle to survive but, one by one, they had succumbed to their burns, the last one, her friend’s son, passing away almost nine months after the attack.

Thinking of these young sons, the words of A. E. Houseman’s “Here Dead We Lie” slipped into her mind.

Here dead we lie

Because we did not choose

To live and shame the land

From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,

Is nothing much to lose,

But young men think it is,

And we were all young.

Why were they willing to do it? She didn’t know. She had asked a young soldier once. “We’re just trying to help,” he said.

She thought back to an incident Sam had told her about. One of his sister units had been sweeping through one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baghdad when they came upon a car in the afternoon sun, a little boy inside. The windows were rolled up, the doors locked. Inside the car, the heat was deadly. But they couldn’t get the boy out.

The soldiers started searching, going from house to house, looking for the parents, anyone who knew about the child. No one claimed any knowledge. Realizing they had to do something or the little boy was going to die, and despite some desperate warnings, one of the solders had decided it was time to get him out.

Breaking the front window, he unlocked the door. The car bomb went off, having been rigged to explode when the doors were opened.

Again, she thought of what the young solder had told her.

“We’re just trying to help.”

*******

President Marino turned around and walked to Sara. Seeing the look on her face, he stepped a little closer. “Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her hand.

She tried to smile, but didn’t answer.

The president waited for a moment. “What is it?” he pressed.

Sara shook her head and looked away.

Brucius waited patiently.

“I want you to know that I’m proud of my country,” she finally said.

The entire facility had been designed to hold enemy combatants from various locations around the world, the final stop for terrorists who wanted to destroy the United States. Capable of holding 400 terrorists in individual holding cells, the camp was empty now. King al-Rahman was the only prisoner there.

One prisoner. A couple hundred guards. Cement and steel all around him. Security cameras inside his cell. Quadruple strands of electrified wire outside the wall. A classified location.

No way he was getting out of there.

His cell was sterile, with no protrusions of any kind from which he could fashion a hook or weapon. A simple sink with a recessed faucet was fastened to the back wall. There were no windows. He had no desk. A simple bowl on the floor was his toilet, and it flushed automatically. There were no sheets on his bed and strands of wire had been sewn into the padded mattress to keep him from ripping any of the material into shreds. His prison clothes were made of paper, leaving not a single piece of cloth inside the cell with which he could fashion a rope to hang himself.

How long Al-Rahman had been inside the prison, he didn’t know. All he knew was he was going to die here. If they were merciful, they would kill him. If they were not, they’d let him live, leaving him to rot until he died from old age.

The king thought of his friend, the old man, and shivered in a despair so deep he thought his chest would rip apart. The old man had been ancient, more than a hundred, he was sure. One of the benefits of their oaths and combinations was the gift of living long.

A good idea when they were younger.

But it seemed like a torture now.

Al-Rahman looked around his cell, then shook his head and began to cry like a child. He’d be completely insane before he grew so old.

Caelyn’s mother kept a watchful eye on her daughter. They’d made it through the winter. They made it through the spring. Time had passed. Everything had gotten better.

Everything except Caelyn.

Although six months had passed, there was no more life inside her than on the first day that she’d come back home. Her face was blank, her eyes vacant, her words soft and unemotional. Sometimes Caelyn would smile at Ellie, but even these brief moments of happiness were forced and fleeting. It was as if she had died along with her husband, as if her life was over, as if she was just waiting now, going through the motions, waiting for her time to depart.

It was a tragedy, the way she’d given up. No, it was worse than that. What Greta was witnessing was much worse than a simple death. This was a tortured dying, an unending final chapter to a story that had no end. It was
so
unlike Caelyn, to just give up like this. She was young. So much of life still before her. She still had Ellie, a beautiful and loving child. She had a responsibility to be strong for her and it made Greta angry to see her giving up like this. “Caelyn, please,” she had pleaded time and time again. “I know it’s hard honey, but you can’t give up this way. You will heal. It will get better. I know what you’re feeling, but it will pass.”

*******

Late in the afternoon, Greta opened Caelyn’s bedroom door. “Someone’s here to see you,” she announced.

Caelyn looked up to see Sara Brighton standing there. Sara moved toward her and pulled her into her arms and the two of them held each other as if they would die if they let go. “How is Sam?” Caelyn finally asked after they had moved apart.

“He’s good, Caelyn. In fact, I’d say he’s completely better. He’s on duty now and very happy to be back at work. Those two months in the hospital were, I think, the very longest of his life.”

Caelyn smiled at the good news. “Do you still see Azadeh?”

“Almost every day.”

“I like her so much. She’s one of the nicest people I have ever known.”

“We feel the same way, Caelyn. But the fact is, I feel the same way about you. Both of you have lost so much.”

Caelyn cleared her throat and looked at the open window. “We all have, haven’t we, Sara?”

Sara watched her carefully. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

Caelyn took a step toward the window. Ellie was walking hand in hand with Sam across the yard. Sara moved and stood beside her, both of them looking down on their children, the two things they loved more than anything else in the world.

“She looks happy,” Sara said of Ellie. “Such a pretty little girl. I can see so much of you in her face, but her spirit is so much like her father’s.”

Caelyn nodded as she tugged at the lacy curtains.  

Sara put her arm around her. “It’s been six months,” she said.

Caelyn shook her head violently.

“I think it’s time for you do this, Caelyn. You need to do it for Ellie. You need to do it for yourself.”

“They said I had as long as a year before they had to officially change his status.”

“I know that, honey, but the situation is much more clearer than many missing soldiers. He isn’t missing, Caelyn. We have two eyewitnesses. We know what happened to him.” She hesitated, then continued, her voice a bit softer now. “Caelyn, I’m not sure it’s fair to Ellie.”

Caelyn shook her head again, her eyes filling with sudden tears. “What am I going to do?” she pleaded. “What am I going to bury?! The only thing they recovered was his finger! Am I supposed to bury that?!”

Sara stepped reached out and held her close again. “What other choice do you have? What other choice do you have?”

It had rained all night, thunderclouds rolling in from the Blue Ridge Mountains, the dark clouds boiling with power as they met the moisture from the sea. Lightning and heavy rain pounded the night, then suddenly stopped as daylight drew near. The first line of storms moved off to the Chesapeake Bay and lingered over the sea, caught between the rising sun and the musky coastline behind. The rain wasn’t over. What was already the wettest spring in a century had much more to give.

The day dawned cold and dreary. Another band of dark clouds gathered in the morning light, moving in from the west, blowing over the hill that lifted on the horizon. Heavy mist hung in the air until the morning breeze finally carried it away.

The grass around the freshly dug grave was wet and long, with tiny drops of moisture glistening from the tips of each blade. The pile of dirt next to the grave was dark and rich, loamy with many years of rotting vegetation and now rain-soaked. A green patch of plastic Astroturf had been placed over the pile of dirt and pinned down on the corners to keep it from flapping in the wind. A humble arrangement of plastic roses and baby’s breath sat atop the fake grass.

The six-man color guard waited by the grave. Their uniforms were so crisp, they almost cracked as they moved, their boots so highly polished they reflected the gray light from the sky. Tiny blades of wet grass clung to the sides of their boots and the cuffs of their pants. The sergeant in charge stood in front of his men, giving them one final inspection, straightening a shoulder board and tightening a shirt here and there.

The soft clop of hooves sounded from the narrow strip of asphalt that wound through the national cemetery. Glancing to his right, the sergeant saw the single mare, old and slow, but still proud, her dark mane perfectly curried and braided to the right. She emerged from around a tight bend in the road, drawing a small carriage behind her. Black and shiny, with huge wooden wheels and a leather harness, the carriage carried a single bronze casket on its side-less bed. Seeing the casket, the sergeant took a deep breath and straightened himself. “
Ten-HUT!
” he whispered from deep in his chest, the order nearly silent yet crisp and powerful. His soldiers drew themselves straight, their shoulders square, their chins tight, their hands forming fists at their sides, their elbows slightly bent into powerful bows.

As the funeral procession approached, the team leader placed his right foot exactly behind his left, his right toe pointing down, barely touching his left heel, then turned with precision so perfect it looked mechanical. The wagon drew close and the sergeant felt his heart quicken. This one was special and he wanted it right.

As the wagon passed under a huge oak tree, he caught a better glimpse of the casket, a dark bronze box draped in an American flag. Aside the flag, a ring of flowers, freshly cut and beautifully arranged.

Twenty-four roses. Twelve red and twelve white.

White roses for virtue. Red roses for blood.

See the flowers, the soldier had to swallow against the catch in his throat.
That others might live
, he repeated to himself.

Next to the roses, glistening in the cold, humid air, a copper medallion and white ribbon had been carefully draped over the stars on the flag. For the first time in his life, the soldier saw the Congressional Medal of Honor, the most sacred tribute a nation could bestow upon a soldier.

His squad stood stone-cold still as the funeral procession approached, and though the sergeant avoided eye contact with the mourners that followed the carriage, he couldn’t help but see her out of the corner of his eye.

Young and blonde, the little girl glanced around anxiously, a bewildered look on her face. Her mother walked beside her, a perfect reflection of the child; long blonde hair, dark features and wounded eyes. Tall and slender, the mother wore a simple white dress. No black clothes. No dark veil or mournful hat. The woman was young, perhaps only a year or two older than he was, but there was something about her, something strong and wonderful.

Even in their sadness, the mother and daughter were beautiful. They walked hand-in-hand, the mother matching the small steps of the girl, both of them misty-eyed but determined. The child approached the grave like it was a monster.

Thunder broke behind the soldier and rolled through the trees, deep, sad and somber, the sound echoing across the wet ground as another clap rolled and slowly faded. A cold breeze blew at his neck, raising the hair on his arms. “Please, Lord,” he prayed, “hold up Your hand. Give this family twenty minutes before You let Your rains fall.” Another clap of thunder rolled across the green, rolling hills. Another flash of lightning. But the rains didn’t fall.