by Brad Bailey
Maytember 2008, in what felt like an endless summer, they let us fly during the day. Our habit was to go at night whenever we could so the locals would be less likely to get a shot off at us. Vehicle convoys were only for extreme cases, and neither me nor Salsa Night can ever remember getting approval for that, especially not in the weather we’d been having. Certainly not for a band unit. Sandstorms turned the daytime skies amber and the night skies treacherous, grounding us for almost a week, the grit and gravel and sand keeping us stranded in the middle of the middle of nowhere.
Salsa Night ran the Latin band, by far the most popular performers of any group we fielded; they were guaranteed to get the ladies dancing, and that was as close as the door kickers we played for ever lawfully got to female companionship in the sandbox. That was a kind of power I would never have.
Something I did have was the New Girl. When New Girl arrived in the desert a little over a month back, everyone had an eye on her. Everyone included Salsa Night. She only had eyes for six-stringers, and I was the only one who met the qualifications. Nothing good could come from anyone finding out about us, but we weren’t about to stay away from each other with another six months left on our tour.
After waiting four hours on the flightline at a remote FOB, Forward Operating Base, in Iraq, the Flight Operations guy comes out and tells me and Salsa Night that the Blackhawk helicopter isn’t coming. Salsa Night and I shared a shipping container back at Liberty. Usually I took full advantage of his absences, but he’d tagged me to come along on this mission. I wasn’t playing on this one, no guitar needed in the Latin band, but I figured a couple days hanging with me was better than getting stuck talking to trumpet players. Plus, an extra body hauling speakers and gear never hurt. Understanding that reasoning didn’t help me feel any better about getting dragged along for the ride. We didn’t get a lot of alone time over there, and I was at least four days past being completely over everything keeping me away from my own bed. Which included this mission, the stupid weather, and everything else in the world.
Salsa Night grabbed Flight Ops by the collar, yelling “If you ever want to see the Air Force hotties shaking it in their PT uniforms again, you better get us a flight!” He might have had enough rank on the guy to get away with laying his hands on him, but shaking him, getting in his face, wasn’t going to get a bird out here any sooner.
“Not helping, Roomie.” Salsa Night ignored me.
“Ops is f-ing up!” he screamed, more at Flight Ops than to me. That was a saying we had back at the unit; my ears perked up hearing it, not quite able to grab ahold of why it seemed off.
I wasn’t super excited to get in between them. Salsa Night had a couple inches and about twenty solid pounds on me, and forty easy on the scrawny Flight Ops.
Salsa Night’s demonstration of advanced techniques in “wall-to-wall counseling” looked satisfying, but I had even more reason to be in a hurry. A week ago, I was loading my gear for the mission, checking off my packing list like always, listening to the A/C audibly struggling to move the hot, dry air in the shipping container we lived in. I could still feel New Girl’s breath in my ear, “get back here, soon as you can.” And don’t let Salsa Night find out about us, she’d left unsaid.
I ran to the Operations office, frantically searching for the flight log; Flight Ops was not going to keep me from getting back to New Girl. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Salsa Night still yelling at Flight Ops, oblivious to my movements, no clue to my plan.
Even as the door shut behind me, I could hear the wind picking up outside, sand and gravel pummeling the metal and fiberglass walls. I realized that the conditions might keep us from flying for another few days. We were going to miss our window. Had already missed it, in all likelihood. I felt the frustration and anxiety grow as I searched the office, flipping through books and papers, my heart racing and blood pounding in my ears. This wasn’t happening. I think I already knew it, but it really started to hit me just then: I wasn’t going to get back to New Girl tonight. Then I saw it; the Operations board with our flight number barely visible, erased, and just under it, a large green hardcover notebook. The flight log. I found the page for the day’s records, my brain taking a few moments to process what I was seeing.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, and I was out the door.
Gasping for breath, I race back to the flightline, barely able to see for all the dirt kicked up in the air. When I got there, Flight Ops lay in a heap at Salsa Night’s feet, as best I could tell, unconscious. I stepped closer to Salsa Night and held out the log, holding it open to the most recent entry.
Salsa Night took the book from me and cracked a neon-green chem-light. In the artificial glow, I could see his eyes widen as he read his own name and the order he gave. He looked up at me too late to see the butt of my rifle connect with the side of his head. Sand and gravel blew all around us, only the sound of the generators audible as I dragged him behind the T-wall. Our flight wasn’t coming tonight, but now I knew why. Salsa Night had cancelled it to keep me out, keep me away from New Girl. Put on a pretty good show, knocking out Flight Ops to try and make it stick. After two deployments and two years together, stupid jealousy had gotten between us.
Flight Ops began to stir, picking himself up off the ground where Salsa Night had knocked him down and I knew he was tasting the bitter iron of the blood in his mouth; any hope of another ride out of here lay in a different direction.
Looking back down at Salsa Night I spat, “you should have let me go home, brother.” I turned my back on him, starting the long walk to the motor pool to see if anyone was making the drive to Liberty, knowing that nobody would be going out in this mess. He could find his own way home.
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Brad Bailey, a veteran of two deployments to Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division Band, is a musician and writer in Las Vegas. His story “Asset Inspection” appeared in Revolt. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Mountainview MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University.
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