Protecting the Flame Read online

  “You sure you’re okay?” Kim asked.

  “Perfect.” She forced down more tea. She was dehydrated, that was all. Low blood sugar, too. She could tell from the way her lips tingled. I’ll have to get something down before the flight or I will never last. It would be so her luck to suddenly get an appetite at twelve thousand feet and not a peanut or bag of stale pretzels in sight.

  “You aren’t thinking of backing out?”

  “No,” she lied, running a thumb over the tiny smooth ruby at the heart of her Mogen Dovid. The necklace had been Sarah’s. Emma never took it off, which was stupid in its way because the whole God thing was a non-starter. People never got that, either, that a person could see herself as Jewish but secular, involved in the culture and several thousands of years of history but not the religion. No one could be, say, a secular Methodist. “If I did, I’d have to explain to you and everybody else in the group why I chickened out when there was an alternative.”

  “Good. I don’t mind being the voice of conscience.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not sitting in Minot while Burl Ives gives you a frontal lobotomy.” Although Burl had given way to Bing, who wasn’t bad for a crooner. Her bubbe had loved Dean Martin: And that Frank Sinatra? Those eyes? That man could eat crackers in my bed anytime.

  “Minot won’t be forever.”

  “That’s true.” With her luck, they’d probably be playing Burl Ives on every radio station in Montana. “And dogs are okay. You know, for animals.”

  “There you go. From what I heard, I don’t think this guy…what’s his name, Kurtz?”

  “Kuntz,” she corrected. “Joseph Kuntz. They call him Kujo, though God knows why. Makes him sound like an escapee from a Stephen King novel.”

  “As long as he’s not Jack Nicolson coming at you with an axe, you’re golden. What I was going to say is Kuntz is one of Hank Patterson’s guys. They’re all former military. They get it. They’ve all been through the shit same as us.”

  Except they’re still around. She was also positive none had been through the shit she was still going through. “No, no, I get that. It’s that I can’t see a story about vets and their retired war dogs as, you know, Pulitzer Prize material.” Just her luck, she’d chosen journalism when all the papers were dying. “Besides, there have been scads of books out on these guys and their dogs already, before and after. Pick up any paper, do a half-assed search, and there are stories of vets healed by horses, dogs, cats.” Probably gerbils and turtles. Goldfish. Though she didn’t say that. Kim was also a reporter, though a civilian now. Most military newspapers operated that way, with a largely civilian staff supplemented with a few active duty folks like Emma. Given how Emma’s life had gone these last nearly two years, Kim believed she was doing her a favor by getting Emma the hell out of Dodge so she could get her head on straight and decide on her next move. Kim thought she knew the real story, but she didn’t. Emma had decided she couldn’t be responsible for one more dead person.

  But she also hadn’t been able to resist. When Kim mentioned southern Montana, she thought, a hop, skip, and a jump, and she’d be in Boise and forty miles from the base at Mountain Home. Ben had been working a lead in Mountain Home. That much she knew because she was the one who’d fed him the tip.

  “I am positive I won’t be saying anything new,” she said.

  “You’ll never know if you don’t go. When do you see that veterinarian with the search and rescue?”

  “Sarah Grant?” Grant and a deputy, Hank Cooper, had made big news a year ago when they’d helped stop a band of smugglers transporting girls for the sex trade as well as a fortune in diamonds and heroin across the Canadian border. That woman…she was interested in meeting. Although it probably wasn’t healthy. Ben’s investigation had been shut down for lack of evidence. “Probably right away. We were scheduled for an interview in a couple days, but with the cancellation, I’ll be coming in closer to her. Kuntz said he’d drive up to Lonesome where Grant and Cooper live and then we’ll head down to his neck of the woods, spend a couple days at Eagle Rock. We might also go to a rehab ranch they’ve got down there, but we’ll see.”

  “It sounds great. Dogs, veterans, Montana, mountains. What’s not to like?”

  “Right.” She liked mountains, had never been to Montana, and thought the fuss about veterans was way overblown in a way that was similar to the national obsession with honoring anyone in any kind of uniform. Like every other occupation, the military had some truly stellar people on active duty, some okay people, and some complete and utter asswipes. As for dogs? She preferred cats. Dogs were okay, but they slobbered and were like kids, what with their constant need for attention. With a cat, it was understood that you were staff at best, a can opener at worst, and if a cat were larger, it would eat you. (That’s where a dog really was better than a cat; you dropped dead, a dog would at least wait a couple days.)

  “I’m looking forward to the terrific feel-good story you’re going to turn in,” Kim enthused. “Actually, it sounds like you’ve got enough there for that series we talked about.” When she didn’t respond, Kim coaxed, “Come on, Scrooge, you can’t tell me the potential for some extra cash isn’t nice.”

  “It’s nice.” The Air Force Weekly was footing the bill, although they’d also agreed that since she wasn’t technically reporting on active duty folks, she could take any material she gathered and write up stories for other publications so long as they got first right of refusal. She’d already contacted an editor she knew at The Washington Post who’d said she’d be very interested in finding a home for Emma’s series. Why, play her cards right, do a couple follow-up pieces—Patterson apparently had this whole network of vets she might be able to tap into—and the woman at the Post thought she could become a regular contributor.

  And she did need the work, now more than ever, and especially if she did decide to separate. The military hadn’t paid out for Ben. Not of sound mind, they said, which translated into no insurance and no benefits once she separated. (The military was interesting that way. Kill yourself, and you were automatically considered insane and the military didn’t have to pay. If you tried to kill yourself but failed, they booted your ass out for misconduct. She knew of one Marine…back in 2010, this was…who’d slit his wrists and survived but ended up getting court-martialed because the military decided he’d harmed “good order and discipline” on account of bleeding on a sergeant, using up medical supplies when the corpsmen bandaged his wrists, and not reporting to the brig because, well, he’d been in the hospital.)

  But, seriously, why should she stay in? Unless something radically changed, she would never make promotion and, after a couple of cycles, they’d separate her ass for her and call it downsizing. In fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that was the reason the Weekly was so accommodating about letting her shop stories. Short of a mental ward, it was a way of quietly suggesting she show herself out.

  Of course, they could assign her to a story in a free-fire zone. A bullet at the right time in the right place or a well-placed mortar would do the trick. One second, she was a problem, the next, boom. Pink mist.

  “You there, girlfriend?”

  “I’m here. I was only—” Getting morbid. An occupational hazard when a girl went out for groceries and came back to the functional equivalent of an abattoir. “Thinking,” she said.

  “Yeah, I could smell the smoke coming out of your ears from here. Listen, kiddo, I know this is hard. I know you have a decision to make. But you got this. When are you due back?”

  “Christmas Eve Day.” She’d toyed with jetting back on Christmas, but then she’d feel guilty making people who probably wanted to be at home with their families ask if she wanted cream and sugar with her tea and a bag of pretzels. On the other hand, the upside was that by the time her plane touched down, that excruciatingly long and boring day would be virtually over. Christmas was truly a soul-sucking experience for a Jew. Friends might invite you for a pre-party and eggnog—which ha
d the consistency of liquid snot—but at the end of the day, you were still stuck with empty streets, Chinese takeout, and Netflix.

  “Perfect. I’m having a little party at my place. A bunch of girls, no guys. You come and tell us how it went.”

  “Hey, so long as you hold the nog and got a bottle of Jack.” Not that she was drinking these days, but a girl had to dream. At that moment, her phone chirped. “Hang on, I think this is the pilot…okay, he’s ready,” she said after reading the text. “I got to go.”

  “Safe journey. If you’ve got service, call when you get in. Oh, and wait. Gut yom tov,” Kim said, carefully. “I got that right, didn’t I? Isn’t it the first night of Hanukkah tonight?”

  Despite everything…even Burl Ives and snotty eggnog…she was touched. She hadn’t celebrated since Ben died, not that they’d ever done much either. She was marginally observant (more from guilt than anything else), and Ben was nothing, but it didn’t matter because they’d had each other. Besides, Hanukkah was a minor rabbinical holiday and could be distilled into a fairly simple rubric that informed a lot of Jewish holidays: you tried to kill us; you failed, ha-ha. Let’s eat. Hanukkah was totally hyped in the States, mostly so all the little Jewish kids didn’t feel left out. When they were still alive, her own parents had done the candles and presents thing until Emma was bat-mitzvahed when they decided she was an adult and, nu, enough of this nonsense already.

  She could see why. Light a candle, mumble a few blessings—except for the first night, they were the same two every single night—then round things out with a rousing chorus of “I Had a Little Dreidel” or “Rock of Ages” (sadly, nothing from the musical, although she’d once channeled Pat Benatar for fun; Bubbe Sarah was not amused). Other than unwrapping that night’s present, that was it unless you went to the trouble of making latkes (a true pain, especially scraping your knuckles grating all those potatoes) or sufganiyot, which sounded exotic but was Hebrew for jelly doughnuts, big whup. Oh, and eat her way through a bag of relatively tasteless Hanukkah gelt, which was foil-wrapped chocolate shaped like gold coins. Like almost all kosher candies, gelt was truly disgusting. The stuff looked like plastic and tasted like brown earwax. Bubbe Sarah always did the feh-feh routine when it came to gelt. Hanukkah is about charity, she would say, about tzedakah and giving to others, not about cavities.

  Whatever. In the end, really…Hanukkah just wasn’t all that.

  “It’s the first night, yeah,” she said It was also one of those rare years when the eighth day of Hanukkah and Christmas fell on the same day. “Thanks, Kim. That was nice of you to remember.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now, go. Catch your plane,” Kim said. “Go see some pretty mountains, play in the snow, pet some nice dogs. And, for God’s sake, Scrooge, try to have a good time.”

  Chapter 3

  She had been to worse places than tiny little nothing towns in the middle of nowhere Montana. Like, you know, tiny little nothing towns in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan.

  Though never officially at the front lines, she had come close. At his retirement party, a senior editor once said Afghanistan was like Vietnam. That war had been unlike any the U.S. had fought before. In World War II, there were front lines. You knew where the enemy was because all the armies were organized around the same, well-disciplined principles of front lines, fields of engagement, rear detachments. Other than resistance fighters, Churchill’s SOE, and the American’s own OSS, the war was conventional.

  Vietnam changed all that. Everything remotely conventional was irrelevant in a country where the enemy operated as guerilla units, was everywhere and all around, and could be anyone. American soldiers fought for hills they conquered only to leave because the action had suddenly shifted someplace else, leaving the way open for the VC to return. Some hills changed hands a dozen times because the front lines were that fluid.

  Her former editor also said those were the glory days for journalists, a time when a press card could get you a chopper ride to anywhere in-country. Men and women stringers could go out with the Marines at dawn, photograph them clearing a village or taking a hill, and still be back in Saigon or Da Nang for the Five O’Clock Follies, which was what the press called military briefings, and then head out for cocktails and a nice dinner. After Vietnam, the military clamped down on the press, mostly because the press reported on all the things the military didn’t want civilians to see. Now, they got embeds, her editor had remarked, sourly. They are gonna make sure you see only what they want you to see.

  Combat in Iraq was a lot like Vietnam, and Afghanistan even more so. The enemy was everywhere and everyone. Journalists still made it to the putative front lines but only as embeds, which meant two things: being attached to a particular news organization (no more freelancers) and to one unit, period. No more chopper-hopping.

  There weren’t as many women either. Fembeds, they were called, though she wasn’t that either because she was regular military, a 3N0X5, the MOS for an Air Force photojournalist. Her job was to build up the Air Force’s image, which meant that the time she did a story on women at Bagram and turned in a really nice spread, everyone zeroed in on one picture of a sign over the female head at Bagram Air Base: DO NOT GO TO THE BATHROOM ALONE.

  My God, she’d near about been booted out for that one. A full bird shouted at her for a good fifteen minutes, most of it variations on, What the hell are you trying to imply? Who do you think you are? Are you trying to give the Air Force a black eye, Corporal? She bit back what she wanted to say: Gee, no, sir, only pointing out that combat may not be the most dangerous thing about being a woman in Afghanistan, sir.

  They finally published her spread after gutting…uhm, editing out certain portions. All the interviews with women who described how weird being on a base where no woman went anywhere without a buddy got axed. Of course, that particular photograph of that particular head went into the circular file, too, in favor of nice, safe feel-goods: pics of our guys and gals in blue on 5K “fun” runs (look at us, all grins and giggles, because we LOVE running at five a.m. because otherwise we’ll MELT). Surf ’n turf on Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday movie nights. They published her pictures of the Green Beans Coffee place and the KFC because, gosh, if a soldier had to look at one more lobster tail or fried shrimp or juicy steak, he or she might be forced to do violence.

  If she hadn’t still had time left on her enlistment and a desire to go to college, she’d have tried to get her ass medically boarded out. Seen a military shrink and said she was gay or something because this was back in 2009 and everyone knew that one way to a quick discharge—do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars—was to pull a Corporal Klinger on a shrink whose primary mission was to support the Air Force first and the patient second. (Confidentiality, my ass; a whiff of anything queer and you were gone.) The problem was the reason she’d joined up in the first place was for the GI Bill. She’d never be able to afford college for a journalism degree on her own.

  So, yeah. She was stuck. Which sucked.

  After Bagram, the Air Force pulled her stateside and put her on a short leash. She did nice, safe fluff pieces and was sent places where a photojournalist with a bee in her bonnet and burr up her ass could do little harm. Back then, when she hadn’t yet been a threat, they’d only tried boring her to death and sent her places where nothing remotely controversial was going on.

  One of those was Thule.

  Chapter 4

  Thule Air Base is in Greenland and about a thousand miles from the North Pole. The base was, when she arrived in August 2010 to do a story, and still is a spartan affair of single-story barracks, mess halls, a hospital, bowling alley, various admin buildings, as well as an air defense wing, radar tracking, and missile defense sprawled on concrete and bare brown earth right to the edge of an ice cap.

  The mission at Thule is also as straightforward now as when it was first constructed on the sly back in 1951: keep an eye on those pesky Russians and their even peskier nukes. Over time,
the mission’s expanded to one of space surveillance via NORAD and the Air Force Space Command.

  All of this boiled down to one indisputable fact. Thule was and is one of the most boring bases known to man. A place one sent new cadets and enlisted to see if they’d crack. Because, face it, if anything remotely interesting had happened, we’d have been at war with Russia eons ago.

  Not expecting much—this was a fluff piece, after all—she’d flown in from BWI. She was seated on the right side of the plane, which people said was the “good” side. She had no idea what they were talking about until the plane banked over Baffin Bay and she looked down. There, in the middle of bluer-than-blue water, sculpted icebergs towered. Mount Dundas, an enormous, flat-topped tombolo thrusting up from the water, hulked over the base. She felt her throat constrict and her breath hang because it was all…beautiful.

  She wandered the base in a daze that first day. Although there was still snow in some shaded nooks and crannies, the day was warmer than she expected, the mercury inching up to fifty. The personnel were a mix of Air Force, Canadian, and Danish military as well as civilian contractors. On their off-hours, guys in shorts played softball, and the few women stationed there ran endless loops around the airfield. Each dorm had its own kitchen, but the food in the chow hall was so good, most personnel ate there or splurged at Top of the World, an all-ranks club which hosted bands, dances, and special performers.