First to Burn Read online

  On the counter he’d left a playing-card-size patch of dark fabric embroidered with a poppy. She opened her mouth to call him, but then she understood. For her.

  The silk’s miniscule irregularities caught her dry skin as she traced the stitches of the blood-tinted petals. In her brown-toned world, the red blossom popped with promise. Verdant leaves reached for her as she lifted the fabric to her face. The scrap retained his body heat and caressed her cheek like skin on skin.

  She squashed those thoughts. A sergeant was off-limits. If Colonel Loughrey authorized the medical mission, she could see Sergeant Wardsen again, but she could never consider more.

  * * *

  Monday morning arrived before Theresa felt ready.

  “I am so freaking jealous.” Jennifer leaned against the metal bunk post, watching her quintuple-check the tactical vest spread on her bed. “I haven’t escaped Caddie since we got here. You’re going out on a mission and in two weeks you’re on midtour leave.”

  “Sixteen days.” Theresa tried to ignore her stomach flutters. She was due on the flight line in twenty minutes.

  “Glad you’re not counting.”

  She clutched a sealed bag of surgical gloves and another with antibiotics. “Where should I stuff these?” Four loaded magazines for her Beretta M9 pistol filled the vest’s ammo pouches, her most serious pocketknife and a strap cutter graced chest loops, and her personal first-aid kit and tourniquet attached on the shoulders.

  Her roommate studied the bulletproof vest. “Cargo pocket.”

  She squeezed her left thigh, where she’d stuffed a meal-ready-to-eat. No space. In her right she had a waterproof notebook—as if it might rain this year—and pens, but the bags fit. Even her gear was cooperating to send her packing.

  “You fiddled with this load for two days.” Jennifer crossed her arms. “Time to put it on.”

  Filled with her stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, a portable heart monitor she hoped could detect a fetal heartbeat and every other drug or relevant equipment she could snag from the clinic storeroom, her ruck weighed a thousand pounds. The weight of it and her vest probably compressed her spine a half inch.

  “Here.” Jennifer held out a Tic Tac mints box. “Stick these somewhere handy.”

  “What for?” She leaned forward to create enough slack to snap the pack’s waist belt.

  Her friend shoved the gift closer. “Fresh breath.”

  She must have looked blank because Jennifer continued. “You are single. You are almost thirty. You’ll be spending a day with several manly men, one of whom watches you at meals like you’re an ice cream cone he wants to lick.”

  “He does not.” She didn’t have to ask who Jennifer meant.

  “He does so. Take them.”

  “Fine.” The tiny mints rattled a warning from inside their plastic box. Chhk-chhk-chhk-don’t-think-it.

  “Adios.” Jennifer followed her to the prefab’s door. “And be safe!”

  “Bye, Mom.” She escaped through the dawn and headed for the flight line.

  The normal eight- or nine-minute walk stretched to twelve, then fifteen, as she struggled. Her feet wanted to shuffle, and her shoulders tipped forward despite constant effort to lift her legs and straighten her back. She’d almost prefer a kidney stone to this gear. Almost.

  Trying not to resemble a tent with legs prevented her from absorbing the activity at the flight line until she was seated aboard the Black Hawk helicopter for the crew chief’s safety brief. As she inserted a pair of squishy foam earplugs, Sergeant Wardsen—she couldn’t allow herself to think of him as Wulf no matter how much Jennifer teased—buckled into the next spot. A prudent professional would nod politely, then ignore him.

  Wh-wh-wh-whump-whump. The Black Hawk lifted off, shifting her into his upper arm, the one body part he didn’t have sheathed in a protective plate. Her vest and gear refused to obey her spine’s signal to sit tall; each lurch of the helicopter bounced her against his shoulder.

  Forget polite. She needed to get off him.

  She braced on his solid thigh, another part decidedly without armor, and pushed. The contact lasted a second or less, a blink, but his quad jumped under her hand. It left a brand of hard male muscle that seared her palm even after she’d planted her boots on the vibrating floor and pinned herself to the side of the helicopter.

  Then he spread his legs for stability too and crowded a finger width from her space.

  Maybe her flush could pass as a heat reaction. If she unclenched her fist, could she let go of how strong he’d felt? She had a better chance of the metal decking opening up and swallowing her right now while she counted rivets on the walls, read the yellow warning stencils, searched for a distraction that didn’t include his thigh.

  A soldier clipped to a safety line manned a .60 caliber gun in the open side door. Past him, the land streamed below. She’d flown into Caddie at night. For six months her workday glimpses of summits beyond the camp walls had seemed more like theater scenery than reality, but this morning her flat, orderly world disappeared, replaced by carved and eroded mountains, valleys and gullies. Below the helicopter any green, anything alive or made by humans except this machine and themselves, had vanished. They could be flying through time instead of air, heading for Genghis Khan or an ancient myth instead of a pregnant village girl.

  Her watch said they’d been in flight forty-five minutes when the ceaseless unfolding of mountains was interrupted by a narrow green line where water enabled valley farming. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Caddie anymore. The Black Hawk’s wheels settled on a plateau of packed dirt and rocks above the irrigation canal. At the dusty edge of the rotor wash, a half dozen boys wearing traditional baggy trousers and dress-length shirts jumped from foot to foot.

  She followed the team out of the bird and found herself in the middle of their line formation. At the front, boys clustered around the tank-size sergeant from Hawaii, who doled out oranges and bananas from his cargo pockets. A mud-walled compound hung so precariously from the cliff above that she worried anything dropped from a window would hit her. The walls had turned the exact color of the earth and stones, nearly white with reflected glare if she looked over her sunglasses, pale brown when she looked through the tinted lenses.

  The hike up a winding, rocky track dragged on until the ground shimmied with each step. She blinked to keep sweat out of her eyes, because lifting a hand to wipe her forehead required extra effort. Not even breathing through her open mouth banished this dizziness and nausea. Maybe helicopters didn’t agree with her.

  Sergeant Wardsen came alongside and matched her pace. “You’ll be on your own with the girl. Okay with that?”

  She nodded while trying to conceal her gasps. If she didn’t pull herself together, she’d fail before she had a chance to start examining the patient.

  He grabbed her hand and pressed his thumb to the inside of her wrist. For a moment she stopped her plodding to concentrate on breathing.

  “Damn.” He thrust a blue-and-white canister with a cup-shaped lid at her. “Take a hit.”

  She let her eyebrows ask What is it? because she couldn’t speak.

  “Canned Oh-Two. We’re over seven thousand feet and you’re humping at least forty pounds. You need oxygen.” Mercifully, he flipped the lid over and held it to her face. “Steady, Doc. You’re not acclimatized to this elevation.”

  Ahhh. Her vision cleared and the flutters in her chest calmed with each suck.

  “Better?” His question anchored her in the here and now.

  Hypoxia. She’d succumbed to altitude sickness so quickly she hadn’t recognized her own symptoms. She pulled the face mask off. “Thank you. I—”

  “Move out.” He waved a hand over his head to indicate the others should continue forward. They rose from defensive positions in the rocks. Only she and
Sergeant Wardsen had been standing like sandwich boards, and his body had been positioned between her and the edge.

  She couldn’t let that happen again. She’d keep up or puke trying, and she damn well better remember her soldier skills.

  After circling a boulder, the path ended at a mudcrete wall bisected by a wood-and-iron gate. How long ago trees that size had grown where now she only saw scrubby orchards, she couldn’t imagine. The gate led to an open-air courtyard. More than a dozen men sat on carpets under a cloth shade. One of them, his weathered skin contrasting with his white beard and eyebrows, had a sunken atrophic scar instead of a left eye. When he smiled and rose to welcome them, she noticed he had proportionally fewer teeth. Sergeant Wardsen and Captain Deavers spent enough time greeting this man that she assumed he was the leader whose wife needed medical care.

  “Captain Chiesa, please join us.” Hearing Sergeant Wardsen speak English startled her. She’d been so absorbed in studying the clothing and architecture, she hadn’t consciously processed the fact that he didn’t use an interpreter.

  While they sat on elaborate rugs, the next half hour stretched through introductions to the elderly leader—Dostum—and tea-drinking formalities. The other Afghans studied her freely during the old man’s deep conversation with Wulf and Captain Deavers. She didn’t see any women or girls. Finally Dostum seemed to be satisfied, and everyone, including her, stood.

  “Mir will take you to the women’s quarters,” Sergeant Wardsen said.

  A boy wearing a blue-and-gold vest led her through a door with a labyrinthine pattern of inlaid wood and across a small room, then pushed aside a heavy curtain. She had time for one breath to steel herself—she didn’t know what she’d be able to accomplish alone after she crossed that threshold—before she ducked into a concealed world.

  As if bricks had been left out during construction, square openings well over six feet up the wall allowed in dashes of white sunlight. No windows at person height meant no ventilation. The odors of kerosene, pungent food and stale bodies were strong. Amid the glittery dust motes a dozen women surrounded a young girl curled on a woven carpet. A shawl had been draped across the girl’s belly mound. Her patient.

  The women turned to stare. Their clothing ranged from embroidered and bespangled fabric on the older women to threadbare tunics and dark scarves hanging loosely on the girls. If elaborate clothing denoted household status, her plainly clad patient ranked at the bottom. Her stomach heaved at the idea that this child—was she even thirteen?—was that old man’s wife. Kneeling within reach of the girl, she murmured an introduction she knew no one understood.

  “Ma’am, Dostum requested I translate instead of the interpreter. His youngest wife’s name is Nazdana.” Wulf’s voice penetrated the curtain; she could see his brown socks under its edge. “Dostum would rather an American than an Afghan terp from a different tribe speak to his wife. If you work close to the curtain we won’t need to shout.”

  “Fine.” She readied for the exam while women chattered. Her patient’s topaz eyes barely moved. Dark circles and bloodshot whites indicated exhaustion and pain.

  “You must be doing something very interesting.” Wulf’s voice had the background rumble of a man stifling laughter.

  “Changing from my gear to a sterile jacket.” She slipped the pale blue coat over her standard tan T-shirt.

  “That explains it.” His voice conjured the memory of his smile in her office, the smile that had closed the space between them and made the air take weight.

  “Explains wha-at?” Darn girly lilt. She spread hand sanitizer up her forearms.

  “Not repeatable, ma’am.”

  She glared at the curtain. He had to be sitting, because now she could see pants fabric in the gap between the cloth and the floor. “If you want to interpret for me, you can’t edit.”

  “Your call.” The rising drawl on the end of his statement baited the hook. She knew that, but couldn’t resist.

  “Go on.”

  “They said it’s no wonder American babies grow so tall if their mothers have such admirably big—”

  “Enough.” She’d invited these burning ears. He couldn’t see her chopping gesture through the curtain, but his snort meant he knew he’d scored a point. “Can you ask the women to back away from my instruments?” She’d spread her diagnostic equipment in a row on a sterile sheet, but it was in danger of being contaminated.

  The women shifted to give her space after Wulf spoke. She couldn’t understand his words, but his tone matched the reliability of everything else about him.

  “Please tell Nazdana this black band will go on her arm. It will tighten but it won’t hurt.”

  “Ma’am, use an interpreter by speaking directly to the other person as if I’m not here. I translate what you say to her, then her replies. You don’t talk to me, just through me.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Nazdana’s blood pressure, 160 over 100, displaced her thoughts about the sergeant. The exam result wasn’t good. In fact, it was very bad. To help her patient relax, she slipped the end of the stethoscope under her own shirt and let the girl listen to the steady thumps of her heart. The childlike eyes widened, and Nazdana’s eyebrows rose into her pain-lined forehead.

  “Now I need to check your body and the baby with this,” she said. “Does he kick much?”

  Wulf translated her question and Nazdana’s reply. “He kicks at night and now I am not sleeping. He is taking all the space inside me and I cannot eat.”

  Dark eye circles and rapid heartbeat hinted at anemia, but she couldn’t diagnose that without a blood test. “How often do you eat meat?”

  The girl hadn’t seen Wulf and probably couldn’t imagine the warrior and weapons behind the gentle voice. “I am permitted to eat meat the first wife declines. Two days ago she left a piece of goat, but when devils came in my body she would not feed them.”

  “Please ask what she means by devils in her body.” Theresa pulled a blue exam robe and a cotton sheet, both sealed in sterile plastic, from her pack. “We can put this robe on you, but I have to see and feel the baby, so your heavy clothing must come off.” Theresa had no idea if women disrobed in front of other women, foreign women, or if that was considered immodest. “I’ll give you privacy.” She turned her back and heard giggles and a quick exchange with Wulf.

  “What’d you say that made them laugh?” she asked.

  “I told her the robe is what Americans wear in the hospital. She thinks Americans aren’t as rich as she believed if they can’t buy a full robe to visit someone as important as a doctor.”

  Within minutes Theresa knew the worst would happen to Nazdana. Wulf’s translation of devils in her body sounded like convulsions. Her hands and lower legs showed distinct edema from fluid retention. Life-threatening eclampsia alone justified treatment at an American hospital, but Theresa pressed again on the hard round part presenting far too high on the girl’s abdomen. “Nazdana, I believe your baby’s bottom and feet are coming first instead of his head.”

  Her patient nodded to Wulf’s soothing voice, as if he held her hand through the curtain.

  “I would like to take you to the American hospital to have your baby. We might have to do surgery,” she continued. Wulf hadn’t finished interpreting before the girl’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an O. “We would take good care of you and your baby.”

  Wulf said, “I think we can convince Dostum because he’s desperate for a living son, but a woman can’t go alone.” Conversation flurried between him, Nazdana and the older women. “They want to send the first wife’s youngest—a daughter named Meena—no, he’s a son—ahh.”

  She could hear Wulf’s understanding nod. “Maybe you can share the revelation?”

  “Meena is Dostum’s favorite daughter and attended school two years ago. When his last son died fighting Taliban last summer, they
changed Meena into a boy. Now he’s Mir.”

  “What?”

  “Many patriarchal cultures do it. Cut their hair, dress them like a boy, change their name. Then Dostum has a son for prestige and the women have someone to run errands. Win-win, as long as no one outside the clan knows.”

  “Is it a win for her?”

  “Which would you rather be? Meena, married at eleven, or Mir, outside playing soccer?”

  “Point made.” As a kid she would’ve traded her dolls for a soccer ball, but thankfully in New Jersey she hadn’t had to. She bit her lip. “I need to call for permission to transport.” She’d urge Colonel Loughrey to push the request, but air evacuations of civilians had strict eligibility rules. The army didn’t have the resources to become every Afghan’s ambulance.

  “Negative. The team will take her down in a stretcher and boogie out.”

  “Sergeant, you know the regulations.” Air evacuations didn’t happen as easily as a buzz cut. They had to follow protocols. “We can’t fly a local civilian without preapproval.”

  “Captain, you don’t know Special Forces.”

  She pictured him shaking his head.

  “We never ask permission.”

  Chapter Four

  Knowing that the addition of a patient and a kid would completely change the Black Hawk seating, Wulf hadn’t expected to be close to Theresa on this trip. Shortsighted, because of course she’d sit on the deck next to Nazdana’s stretcher, and he’d have to be ready to interpret. He held out a spare communication headset. Its cord dangled inches short of brushing Nazdana, who lay between them.

  As soon as Theresa replaced her helmet with the noise-canceling headphones, she twisted the plug in the air. Where’s it go, her eyes asked. The brown depths revealed her thoughts to him as clearly as if she’d spoken. He could tell when she focused exclusively on her patient because her eyes turned sharp and narrow, the same expression Cruz had during emergency ordnance disposal. Other times, like on the ride here, he’d catch her with her eyelids lowered and her lips parted, and he knew she shared his thoughts about more personal activities. Being able to read her eyes was dangerous enough; if she read his, he was finished.