Our small army moved slowly south and east with Colonel Dan in command. We were coming from the west, avoiding the highest passes and the long spine of peaks between Jackson Hole and Salt Lake City. Far to the east, from the other side of the mountains, the other half of our force was pushing forward as well.
Gideon's army had pulled back in a tactical retreat, fighting and delaying our advance when we caught up to them. They had mined the roads with IEDs, blown entire hillsides onto the road so that our way was blocked with house sized boulders and downed trees. When we could, we went around the blocked areas, and when we could not, we punched through with bulldozers.
At random moments we were ambushed by sniper teams and mortar crews, which slowed our progress and sapped morale. I had taken up the practice of leading squads on horseback up and down our flanks to try to flush out enemy guerrilla fighters. These patrols served to cut down on the attacks some, and it was a good show of force for the men bogged down on the road.
*
“Looks like a machine gun nest,” Chewy said, looking through his binoculars. “Thousand yards on that hilltop.”
We were more than three miles ahead of our forces, following the road from the western flank through the woods.
“That's something new,” I said.
“Let's be quiet about it,” Gonzo said.
I dismounted from my horse, a frisky young dappled mare, and crept to the edge of the tree line for a better look. Through the scope of the HK, I saw sandbags stacked around a rock outcropping, but no movement.
“Could be they abandoned the position,” I said.
“Yeah. Or there could be a lot more of 'em,” Gonzo said.
“Leave the horses,” I said. “Let’s have a look.”
There were only four of us. The last addition to our team was a man from Gonzo's crew, a hatchet faced man from Alabama known as Snuffy. He was small, wiry, and quick, and given to great colorful bouts of swearing.
The enemy position was ideal for an ambush on the road, which snaked past far below. Tall green grass covered the hillside up to the tree line, providing them with a commanding field of fire to the approaching column below.
We cut through the trees, moving as quietly as possible. I winced at the sound of every leaf and twig crunching beneath my boots. To our left, the open grassy slope formed easy waves, kissed by the wind kissed, and the late morning sun was gentle, filtering through the leaves and branches above us and making me think of a cathedral.
We came at the enemy from behind. The forest floor at the edge of the real trees was covered with scrub and saplings and things with thorns. Our approach took more than an hour, and we could not see much until we were almost upon them. We crawled on our bellies, and had to stop every few feet because of the noise.
There were ten of them. An artillery crew was busy unpacking shells from a truck we had not seen. Several snipers knelt with weapons balanced on the sandbags, scanning the road. They were of various ages, a few still teenagers and the rest of them older.
Four wheeler ATVs with wagons behind them were parked off to the right, covered with cut branches and saplings.
“They say those bastards aren't taking prisoners,” one of the younger men was saying. “They're crazy. I hear they're all infected.”
“Yeah, I've seen it,” an older man said. His head was saved bald and he bore the insignia of the Sword of Gideon on his black smock. “Evil is what they are. Bunch of wild heathens.”
“Sir, they're coming around the bluff. They are in range.”
“Wait,” the older man said. “Give 'em time. Hit the rear first and then adjust your fire. We'll box them in.”
We could not risk using grenades because of the live shells. We were too close. We could not go back for reinforcements because by the time they got to us, it would be too late.
I looked at Gonzo, who pursed his lips and shrugged.
“Why don't they just leave us be?” said a teenager with a rifle across his lap. He was leaning with his back to the inside of the rock, facing me with his legs sprawled out in front of him. His hair was so blond it was almost white and his skin was fair. He looked to be no more than fifteen.
“They want our city,” the bald man said. “They want our women. By God we're gonna—”
Two rounds tore through the man's head before he could finish his sentence. I fired at the tightly grouped men from less than fifty feet away. Gonzo, Chewy, and Snuffy were firing as well. The men and boys in front of us tried diving for cover, and two made it over the wall of sandbags. They began firing back, putting their weapons over the top of the sandbags and squeezing off rounds without showing their heads.
Chewy and I retreated, then flanked the last two men from the left. We had them dead to rights.
“Put your weapons down!” I shouted.
One of them spun to face me, an AK-47 in his hands. I shot him in the chest and he collapsed into the last man standing. Except the last man was a blond haired kid.
“Put it down, son,” I said.
His faced was flushed and red and his eyes were full of terror. He dropped his weapon. I stood and began to walk toward him and he reached into his vest and pulled out a grenade.
“No! Don't!”
He went for the pin.
His eyes were locked on mine and time seemed to slow down. The second stretched out and I could see the boy's resolve, strong and brave in spite of his youth. I hesitated while his fingers found the pin.
Chewy fired a burst into the boy’s chest and the bullets flung him into the rock and the grenade fell harmlessly from his outstretched hand.
My legs were shaking and I wanted to vomit.
“We're taking fire!” Gonzo said from behind the rocks and bodies. “Across the other side of the road!”
Chewy was ahead of me, rounding the enemy fire base. I followed and slid behind cover.
“Three hundred yards, opposite us,” Gonzo said. We crouched among the dead. A round smacked into the sandbag behind my head.
Snuffy grabbed one of the sniper rifles from the ground, checked it, and sighted over the top. “There's maybe four or five of them,” he said. “Can't be sure.” In the distance, the first of our tanks was coming up the road quickly from the left.
A high pitched keen filled the air above us.
“Mortar!” Gonzo bellowed.
I pushed myself as close as I could to the rocks. The mortar round exploded thirty yards below us and to our right.
I peered over the sandbags and scanned the slope, zeroing in on the smoke and a muzzle flash, then firing single shots.
“Any chance we can use that artillery piece?” I asked over my shoulder.
“No idea,” Gonzo said.
“Nope,” said Chewy.
Snuffy fired again, and the heavy fifty caliber rifle bucked against his shoulder.
“I got one,” he said. Another mortar round smashed into the earth and sent clumps of grass raining down on our heads.
“You guys pull out,” I said. “They're adjusting fire. I'll put some suppressing fire on them.”
I popped up and fired quick bursts. The enemy fighters were concealed behind rocks. I emptied my magazine and replaced it, began firing again. When that one was empty, I turned and sprinted uphill for the woods, hurtling a bush with vines and sharp thorns. Another explosion slammed into the ground just shy of the bunker. I made it to the deeper forest, where I could stretch my stride. I had gone less than a hundred yards when a mortar round landed amidst the artillery shells and the whole side of the hill behind me exploded. I threw myself forward and put my hands on the back of my neck. Rocks and hot shrapnel zipped through the air as another blast came on the heels of the first. My ears were ringing from the concussion.
I was breathless when I made it back to the men and the horses.
“You okay?” Gonzo said.
“I think so. Is anybody hit?”
“No. Close, though.”
We rode fast toward our approaching armor, called for the first Abrams tank to halt. The machine gunner acknowledged us and the tank stopped.
I dismounted and the driver came out of the hatch. “Tell your gunner to put some rounds on that hill side,” I said, pointing.
“Yeah, we saw it,” the man said. “Didn't know who was who.”
“Thanks for not firing blind,” I said. He was looking at me strangely.
“What?” I said.
“You're bleeding sir.”
“It's not mine.”
He nodded and disappeared back into the tank. A mortar round impacted the road a hundred yards in front of us. The tank's main gun swung about and lifted. I backed away quickly. More tanks were coming up the road.
The main gun fired several rounds, and the machine gunner walked tracers up the hillside. Smoke from the burning trees and grass on either side of the road obscured my view. The tank boomed again, and we did not receive any more incoming mortar fire.
*
“Do you know how to play ‘Amazing Grace’?” Chewy asked me.
We were camped on a barren hillside north of Brigham City, not far north of Salt Lake City. The slopes were arid and rocky and the land itself seemed to resent our presence. He had dug a fire pit and shielded it with rocks, and we had a pathetic little flame of twigs and dry branches. We were ahead of our armor by several miles, with scouts ranging beyond. Gideon's army had chosen Brigham City to make a stand, and the real bloodiness was about to begin.
I was playing a beat-up backpack Martin guitar one of the men had brought along. It was a fraction of the size of a standard guitar, but it sounded sweet.
I nodded silently, played the melody in single notes first and then switched to chords.
Chewy sang softly, his voice a husky baritone, and several other men sat down on the rocks with us to listen. His song was plaintive and full of aching. I looked up at the sky as I played, gazed upon the majesty of the Milky Way, and I felt small and lonely. I thought about my children and the wrecked world and tried to reconcile that with the perfection of God and the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.
When the song was over, I put the guitar down on my ruck and listened to the fire. No one spoke for a time.
Chewy pulled out the Bible that had belonged to his son. “Do you believe in miracles?” he said.
“Maybe. I want to.”
“I think we've seen a few,” he said. He held the Bible in front of him. “You saw that.”
I nodded. “I can't explain it.”
“Not a mark on it from the fire. No burns on your hands.”
It defied my understanding. Chewy had flung the book into the center of a stout fire. I'd grabbed it without so much as singeing the hair on my arm.
“I take it as a miracle,” Chewy said. “A sign.”
“Okay.”
“For both of us.”
“Maybe that's what it was.”
I wanted to say that there was a dark stain on the cover from John Luke's blood, and that if God had decided to give us a miracle, that perhaps turning aside a sniper's bullet would have been a better one. But I kept my thoughts close.
“It's a reminder that there's a better place,” Chewy said. “John Luke's there now. So is your baby girl.”
“I guess.”
“I was lost, there,” Chewy said. “ I'm all right now. More peaceful again. Sad, but all right.”
“I'm glad,” I said. I still felt lost. I was weary of the bloodshed and madness and frustrated by my inability to make it stop.
“I know you didn't want to kill that boy. I saw you hesitate,” Chewy said. “I didn't want to shoot either, but it had to be done. He'd have killed all of us with that frag.”
“Yeah.”
“He didn't have to go for the grenade. He could have stopped fighting.”
“I know. I wouldn't have, though. You wouldn't either. He was just a kid.”
“If we hadn't found them they would have killed a lot of our men,” Chewy said. “Just remindin' you.”
“You're right.”
“And you know it's not your fault about John Luke,” Chewy said. “You had to get the SAW up in that tower. My boy was a fighter and he died with his boots on. .”
“Thanks for saying that,” I said.
Though I knew he was right, it didn't make me feel any better. I got up and walked up the hill alone. I knew my hesitation could have cost the lives of my men. I doubted my ability to lead effectively.
My father and the Colonel had talked to me about the dangers of post-traumatic stress disorder; I had seen men unravel on the field of battle and afterward. I think I had believed myself to be impervious to it, perhaps seeing shell shock as a form of weakness. I knew it to be dangerous.
As I walked up the slope in the night, I faced the truth. I was suffering. It was not weakness, but humanity. I needed to pull back from the front lines, to take a break from the blood and the bombs and allow the fractures in my soul to heal. I also knew this was not an option.
I picked my way through the rocks, trying to pray, heading for the ridge line.
I could not make any sense of things. I yearned for the assurance Chewy felt, that intimate connection with God which drowns doubt with faith and love and brings peace with it. I had lost my certainty.
I sat upon a rock still warm from the sun. I recalled Elijah's sermons about gratitude, how he preached that acknowledging the good things makes one happier, expands your heart, and brings you closer to God. Yet with everything I could think of to be thankful for, anther voice countered with pain.
“Thank you for Crystal....” But what about the way she has been wounded?
“Thank you for my son....” But how can he have a future in this terrible world?
“Thank you for my time with Grace....” But You took her from me.
I felt like a liar, for my prayers were accusations, not prayers of gratitude, and I saw the void of sincerity in me.
The center of my despair was an essential lack of hope. A Bible pulled from a fire reminded Chewy of the promise of heaven. He saw a miracle while I saw only his son's blood soaked into the cover.
Hope is what keeps men alive. Without it we are the walking dead, purposeless husks shambling through the world with hollow eyes devoid of any spark, surviving merely to survive, breathing because we must, eating without tasting, seeing without perceiving, hearing without listening.
Part of me had died.
Shooting stars arced across the sky, a few at first, enough to make me notice, and then the sky was ablaze with streaks of green and orange, more than one at a time, some going from horizon to horizon, bright brushstrokes painted against a dark canvas strewn with diamonds.
It made me remember watching the Pleiades meteor shower with my father at Old Cutler Hammock in Miami on a moonless August night. The lights of the city were not as invasive there, and the celestial display amazed me. I was ten years old then, and armed with my first telescope.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Dad had said.
“Yeah.” I was slapping mosquitoes the size of airplanes.
“And you wanted to stay home and play Halo.”
“I didn't think it would be like this.”
“Well, most people are inside watching TV. They don't even know this is happening tonight.”
“What if one of them hits?”
“They won't. They burn up in the atmosphere. It's a heck of a show. You should see it sometime when you're far away from the city. Maybe one year we'll go out on a boat and watch it from offshore. It's awesome.”
We never did find the time. That night, though, underneath the Utah sky, I felt like Dad was sitting right beside me. I reclined on my rock and gazed with wonder at the sky.
“All right then,” I said aloud.
I knew I sat on a small planet passing through debris in space, that our planet circled a weak star in the suburbs of a backwater galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies, and that my presence on the rock had nothing to do with the Earth's course, driven by gravity as it orbited around the sun.
Yet I felt hope flowing back into me. There was a connectedness with the universe and the Creator, a sense of wonder at both my insignificance and purpose at the same time, knowing that at the moment I needed it most, I was being blessed with a rare gift.
I chose to see it that way, and in that leap of faith, I could see beyond the blood on the Bible. I looked for hope and hope found me.
Many would say it is arrogance and primitive foolishness to think in that way, to feel a part of a plan which spans galaxies, but I needed to believe it, for there was great healing in it.
For me, hope and faith are inextricably bound, and the loss of one is the loss of the other. My sense of hope had been eroded by rivers of blood and my foundation of faith was worn by evil and loss, cracked with doubt. I had been losing bits of myself, pieces of my soul, from the time Grace had been taken. I forced myself to continue through sheer will, and I had been falling apart all along. I felt that a great weight was lifted from my shoulders, and was imbued with wonder again as I watched the meteor shower. I felt a deep peace and renewed confidence, and I felt whole for the first time in a long time.
The choices that flowed from seeing those shooting stars on that particular evening would change the course of history and alter the lives for those who would follow me on this insignificant rock.