The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (14 page)
Beside me, one of my buddies yelled something. I glanced and saw him claw at his neck, his hands red with blood. We were running out of time!
With my gun a
imed at the women, I ordered my
self
: Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!
T
he Arab women looked at me t
hrough the slits in their
burkes
.
It was useless. There was no way
I could
make myself shoot at these women.
Giving up on forcing m
y finger
to
press the trigger, I rolled back behind the Humv
ee. None of my
buddies
could
do much more than keep their heads down, bite their lips, and attempt to tie tourniquets. T
hree
s
eem
ed
unconscious. I had to do something.
Reaching the radio inside the vehicle involved maneu
vering my body to remain as low
as possible, and that’s when
the
pain
really
hit me.
It was a shocking
sensation
, to be torn like this with overwhelming hurt
, like a deafening voice that reached every corner of my brain, ordering
me
to lie down, curl up, and cry.
And I did cry, loud
and bitterly while
I
grabbed
the radio
and
dropped down
to the ground, the spiral cord extending to its max.
Regaining
a measure of self-control
,
I
started calling
for help.
I kept repeating the name of the village and our unit number, but my voice didn’t even reach my own ears
in the middle of this firestorm
, let alon
e
hear
if anyone responded
.
I kept at it until I realized that the
radio had died
.
Sitting with my back to the Humvee, I aimed my gun upward and pressed the trigger, emptying the magazine
so that
the enemy would think we were shooting back. It was then that I n
oticed
that
the fuel
-truck driver at
the gas station across the street was
busy with some kind of a contraption
under
the rear of the tanker. My first instinct was to
yell at him
to
seek shelter before
he got hit b
y
a bullet
, but then I realized what he was doing.
Explosives!
I felt cold fear. It was one thing to get shot
. Either you die immediately or get fixed up by surgeons. But to be burnt alive meant torture, often months of slow, horrible death, or a life of deformity and pain that was worse than dying.
The driver
was done with his preparations and sprinted away from the tanker.
I
prepared to launch myself in a mad da
sh across
the street
to d
e
fuse the explosives. My chances were slim—the area was exposed to the gunmen in the health clinic who, I now realized, were careful not to hit the tanker. How long did we have before it went off?
The sound of helicopter rotors
penetrated through the racket.
Someone had heard me!
It appeared over the school at the dead end
.
The
Seahawk
was
a
common
n
avy
chopper
that could do
reconnaissance and
transportation pretty well,
but its weapons weren’t the best choice for urban combat.
T
he pilot
must have been in the area and
heard my
radio transmission
.
A
single gun
began
blasting
from above
, and the fire from the health clinic
declined
.
I r
olled back to my position by
the front tire
and saw that the
chopper
was spraying the clinic with great accuracy, the rounds poking an almost straight line of holes just above the windows. Not a single Arab wom
a
n was hurt, but they all jumped out and lay on the ground in front of the building, and
the gunmen were no longer
shooting.
The
Seahawk
hovered above us, releasing an occasional burst of bullets
toward the clinic
, while we scrambled to get into the Humvee, the three unconscious Marines thrown in unceremoniously.
We had to get out
of here
before the tanker exploded!
Our driver had been hit in the head
.
The helmet had saved his life, but he
l
ay groaning in the back
, pressing a rag to the wound
. No one else seemed in better shape than me, so I climbed
behind the wheel and lifted
my immobile left leg over the door sill.
The engine was off. I tried to re
start it, but nothing happened.
I tried again.
And then the explosive
s
went off under the rear of the tanker.
The blast
threw up a
small
fireball, but it
failed to
rupture the tanker
. Flames engulfed the
rear section
.
The driver must ha
ve left a fuel line running
, and I could feel the heat on my face.
“Get
rolling, soldier
!” The order came through
a loudspeaker from the helicopter above. The
voice
was
commanding but even, not anxious. He repeated, “Get
rolling
now!”
There was nothing I wanted to do more than obey the order
,
but
the starter revolved freely, the engine not catching.
“
It’s
dead
,” I yelled. “
Can’t get it going!”
As if he heard me, the voice
from the chopper
said,
“Try the other vehicle
.
Tanker’s about to
blow
.”
Moving myself over to the other Humvee wasn’t easy, but I made it, only to find that its cabin was totally destroyed, the dashboard and steering wheel in pieces. Someone must have left the
armored
door open on the side of the clinic, allowing them to shoot up the inside.
Back outside, I looked up at the chopper and passed a hand under my throat. To my right, the fire under the tanker raged audibly, as if exerting itself to
melt
through the steel tank and ignite its content. There was no doubt that the ensuing inferno would turn us into living torches.
Throwing open the Humvee
’s
doors, I yelled, “We
’ve
got to walk out of here.
Right now!
Let’s roll!”
There was no response. My
buddies
were either unconscious or incapable of moving.
Behind me, the
Seahawk
descended.
I gesticulated frantically
. “Get away!”
“Take
cover
,”
said
the calm voice
on the loudspeaker
.
Hovering low over the front of the tanker, the chopper’s door opened, and boots appeared.
Right
above the
truck’s
driver cabin, the pilot maneuvered even lower, and a
slim-built
man in
Marine
uniform jumped to the cabin’s roof. He looked toward me, our
gazes
met, and I recognized the
dark-eyed
captain from last
year’s
beachfront
drill, who
had
show
n
us
his
Jewish tzitz
it.
My automatic reaction was to salute
him
.
He
nodded and
slipped into the cabin
of the tanker
through an open window
.
A
few seconds later
,
the tanker
jerked and began to
move
forward
, at first slowly, then gaining speed as it roared out of the
gas station and up the street, the rear end
trailing flames
. I
followed the truck with my eyes, expecting to see the
captain
jump out
,
but
the tanker suddenly exploded
. Hot air
blast
ed my face
, followed by a thick cloud of bitter smoke
.
Chapter 15
Ben
dropped
Zachariah’s iTouch
on the desk
. He got up, ran
out of the study, and
pulled
open the glass doors to the balcony.
Leaning against the doorframe, h
e gulped in the cold air,
inhaling as deep as
he could
.
In a second-floor window of a townhouse across the way, the blue glare of a TV was a lonely sign of life. Otherwise t
he street was qui
e
t, the air
still.
But in his mind,
there was no peace. T
he
fiery
image
s
from Zachariah’s journal replayed
—
the
last salute
to
the Marine captain, the
gasoline
tanker blow
ing
up,
the
dark smoke
taking over everything
.
Back inside, he opened the
c
ontacts
folder on his iPhone, searched for
mother
,
and
clicked on her e-mail address
—
[email protected]
. He
typed a short message:
Hi Mom,
I heard you’re making soup. Just what I need!
We’ll be at your place around 6 p.m. or so.
Love,
Ben
Chapter 16
Z.H. Journal Entry # 6
:
Writing about it now,
two decades later, the events of
February 28, 1991
,
are still fresh in my mind. The
skeletal remains of the
gasoline tanker w
ere
still burning when
an infantry company evacuat
ed
us
after setting up a perimeter to keep off the Arab insurgents, who tried to come back at us with renewed v
igor
after the tanker failed to incinerate us.
I woke up three days later
in a field hospital. Army s
urgeons had removed three bullets
from my body
, screwed together various bones, and
put
my shattered
right
foot
in a steel contraption
. I asked about the c
aptain who had saved us, and a nurse told me that n
othing was left of him
—not even
his dog tags. She
had heard that
he was awarded a
second
Medal of Honor
in recognition of
his
bravery
.
After a
few weeks
at a
US military
hospital in Germany, I arrived at
the
Bethesda Naval
Hospital
, where Palmyra was wai
ting with our newborn son,
Paul
.
I
began a long process of surgical procedures,
rehab
,
physical therapy
, and endless sessions with a kind navy psychologist.