Part 3 (1/2)

The captain right-faced and marched out of the squadbay. Behind him, Platoon 2128's three DIs didn't bother to contain their relieved smiles.

That night, Jamie couldn't get into her rack. It had been short-sheeted. ”What the h.e.l.l is this?” she protested in a high-pitched whisper.

t.i.tters-soft, almost squealy, unequivocally male-spilled out on her right, then her left, then above her.

”Jeezus, guys.” But she giggled and kicked her feet free. ”I'm not used to this terrible ill treatment, y'know. And now I gotta frigging pee.” Since n.o.body could leave their racks for fifteen minutes after lights-out, Jamie had to wait before scampering to the F-head. ”I call first dibs, fellas.”

When she returned, her rack had been remade. Perfectly. For the first time on Parris Island, Jamie felt camaraderie.

* 30 *

In the days that followed, the squad drilled snap-crackle-pop to the kill hat's new, improved ”No Holds Barred” jody call. Just in time for Final Drill, after which the kill hat only scowled, sign of the squad's success.

Then they faced the culmination of Marine Corps Basic Training- the Crucible, recently intensified into an arduous 102-hour test of field skills, teamwork, and endurance that included 120 kilometers of full-pack marching on little rest or sustenance.

It started with a night march and quickly intensified into a chaos of exhausting live-ammunition combat events alternated with ever more complex problem-solving tasks. They did everything except sleep, eat, and hydrate. Sixty-odd courses in all, but everyone in the squad made it through. Because failure meant having to do boot camp again. And n.o.body wanted to endure boot camp-or the Crucible-twice.

She had done it. Hungry, thirsty, sore, and very tired, Jamie mustered to attention with her squad in a chilly morning drizzle.

”Congratulations, Marine,” the senior DI said when he placed the coveted Eagle, Globe, and Anchor pin in Jamie's hand. ”I've got a rep for picking out winners, Gwynmorgan. I picked you out when you jumped off the bus. You had me worried there for a while, so I'm real glad to welcome you to the Corps.”

”Sir-”

”Call me Staff Sergeant, Marine.”

”Thank you, Staff Sergeant.”

Jamie's victory was short-lived, however.

A brief textmail waiting for her back at the squadbay told her Joe was dead-killed on a road, in a car, just like they said Alby was.

Healthy and alive one instant, dead the next. It happened three days after she stepped on the bus to Parris Island and explained why Joe never answered any of her messages.

Jamie stared at the screen, absorbing the implications of this new reality. She'd thought of herself as pretty close to Joe, but she never was, not really. The textmail came from a son she didn't know Joe had, a son who wasn't aware of her until he got around to cleaning out his father's place and came across her unanswered messages in Joe's inbox.

Now she had no one at all.

The day before graduation, when almost everyone else spent the * 31 *

afternoon with family, Jamie sat at the squadbay comlink, remaking plans for her ten-day leave. Everyone else was going home, so she had pretended that she'd be going home, too. For a while early on, she'd hoped Joe would reply in some kind of okay way to one of those carefully constructed just-friends messages she sent him. And maybe he'd even decide to come down to Parris Island to see her graduate and hang out with some of his old DI buddies...

His unbroken silence suggested to her that he couldn't do just-friends, and that left her in a quandary-go back to Hyannis and at least say hi and thanks and look-I-did-it and hope he didn't try to grope her, or just-? Just what? She'd become accomplished at not thinking about it, at telling herself to just wait a little longer.

Others came through the squadbay with family members. She got introduced, she got congratulated. She smiled-heartily, she hoped, she tried-when they talked about how much they looked forward to going home, and she always said yes, it was a long way back to Ma.s.sachusetts, ain't it always like that.

She gazed at a map of the eastern seaboard, trying to decide what to do, wondering if Joe would still have been her friend if only he had not ceased to exist. It felt black, this domain where everyone but her had someone who cared about them. She tried to light the blackness with memories of Alby. But Alby slid away from her, shrinking to a tiny pinp.r.i.c.k of light that finally flickered out, leaving her with only the blackness.

Jamie graduated with honors. She had the highest marksmans.h.i.+p scores in the entire company and won a trophy for her platoon. This earned her a slot in Scout/Sniper School and the rank of Private First Cla.s.s. But, unlike the other new marines around her, Jamie had no interest in celebrating.

* 32 *

Chapter three.

the MaveriCK heart It'll be all right. You're doing what you have to.” Jamie shot upright out of sleep and scanned the cheap motel room. What the f.u.c.k? The woman who murmured in her right ear couldn't have been more than an inch or two away, but had already disappeared. It'd been real, the voice, no question. And not merely real.

Why do I feel like I know that voice?

She checked the closet. Behind the shower curtain. Under the bed.

But she found only a wayward candy wrapper that had escaped the last vacuuming. The old-fas.h.i.+oned clock radio and television were both off.

She listened for sounds from beyond the room but heard nothing more than the dull white noise of morning traffic on the busy street outside.

The clock radio's display changed from 5:38 to 5:39.

She'd slept a measly thirty-eight minutes past Parris Island reveille.

Shaking her head, Jamie sat on the bed. And then she remembered the dream.

In the dream, she wore cammies. Carrying a couple of weapons, bags of ammunition stacks, the myriad stuff of surviving in a wilderness, she crouched in a forest clearing. Human bodies surrounded her, but she was the only one still alive. Though she had no recollection of it, she knew she had used her weapons to kill them all.

Jamie rubbed the dream from her eyes.

Yesterday's bus ride from Parris Island to Was.h.i.+ngton, DC, took almost ten hours. By the time she retrieved her seabag, walked to the motel, and checked in, the clock radio had showed eleven-something.

She'd stripped down to her skivvies and crawled under the bed's covers into a sleep that had been deep, uninterrupted. But now her body weighed too much, like the dream had followed her into waking.

* 33 *

I locked the d.a.m.n door, right? She pushed off the bed to make sure, to slough off the sluggishness that dogged her. For this first full day of her leave, she had a plan-by G.o.d, she would visit the Smithsonian no matter how s.h.i.+tty she felt.

Doesn't open 'til ten hundred hours, goober. Jamie swung her legs onto the mattress, lay back, and allowed her eyes to close. I'll just hang here a while yet. To celebrate no DIs counting me down.

Yet a moment later, she stood in front of the motel room's scruffy dresser and for the first time noticed the small round object on it. A fat, grinning four-inch buddha with, incongruously, great pendulous t.i.ts like the ones on those ancient headless Maltese statuettes. She couldn't help smiling back at its grin.

”Well, well. Where'd you come from?”

Picking it up, she discovered the lady buddha had two parts that connected at its rotund waist. And she wondered how she even knew about ancient headless Maltese statuettes with great pendulous t.i.ts.

Must've read it. Somewhere. Yet the memory eluded her.

The longer she stared at the lady buddha, the more its vibrant reds, golds, and blues distracted her. As if her hands belonged to someone else, she watched her fingers explore its waist until the two sections detached, one piece in each hand. With caution she peeked inside the piece in her left hand, not sure what to expect.

It was empty. Lined with something cloudy, milky but just slightly gray-pink. Mother-of-pearl maybe? Transfixed, Jamie stared at its s.h.i.+fting depths and tones. Curious how the light in here makes it look like it's actually moving...

And then she found herself up in the mountains, in a high valley surrounded by snow-covered peaks under the bluest sky she'd ever seen.