No one had missed the fact, of course. The nearer their convoy had come to the water, the flatter the terrain had grown. Over a month before, the Corps of Engineers had completed its work on the ghost towns outside Mobile. Peter Scott had commented that the blackened rubble of hospitals, schools, and courthouses already looked like the aftermath of heavy fighting. But Stephie had scrutinized the pictures of war’s total devastation on the covers of newsmagazines. The selective demolition of public buildings paled when compared to the moonscapes left in Yokohama, Singapore, and Bombay. And Tel Aviv, she thought with a shiver.
Their first sight of the Gulf had come as a shock. The azure horizon visible in gaps between the tall pines had caused Stephie’s stomach to turn flips. After they had taken the coast road, some of the soldiers had stared at the shore as if to confront their inner demons. Others had rested their helmets against the raised front sights of their army surplus M-16s, focusing instead on their boots.
At thirteen, Stephie’s soccer team won the state championship. Stephie played all ninety minutes at midfield. Although she got no goals or assists in the one-nil victory, she ran her heart out from penalty area to penalty area, challenged every header, made crisp passes despite legs that ached from the week-long tournament. Her crowning achievement in life to that time came in the waning moments of the game when she cleanly slid-tackled the ball away from their opponent’s greatest scoring threat. When the whistle blew, the entire team slid on their bellies into a pile on the rain-soaked pitch and hugged, cheered, and cried in equally shared, maximum celebration. At the beginning of the season, the coach had promised them that if they won state — and they had a chance — they would go as a team to soccer camp the following summer… in the south of France! They had practiced five days a week. Played regular season games, then driven to faraway tournaments and played again later the same day. Before the quarter finals in the statewide, all had agreed not to talk about the trip for fear of jinxing it. As they left the pitch after the semis, however, a muddy Sally Hampton shouted into Stephie’s ear, “We’re going to France!”
And she was right. They had won the state championship.
Over the squeals of excitement, all heard their coach’s voice. “Sorry, girls!” he shouted apologetically. They all looked up at him. “We’re not going to be able to go.” There were a couple of cries of “What?” but a half dozen cries of “Why?” He replied that because of the war in the Indian Ocean, the French had canceled the soccer camp. “Can’t we just goanyway?” objected Gloria Wilson, their goalkeeper. “Your parents don’t think it’s safe,” replied their frowning coach. The girls, still lying prone rose to their cleats and descended upon the gathering parents, employing every conceivable argument. “We’re not going by boat, we’re flying over!” tried one. “The war is, like, a thousand miles away!” came another attempt. “You promised!” was the last, plaintive gasp. Their coach held out his hands to quell the uprising. “Everybody’s really sorry, girls, but after the battle Europe lost to China in the Indian Ocean, it’s just not safe to go overseas anymore. Nobody really knows what’s gonna happen next.” The girls were crushed. Some of the holdouts cried and argued all the way to the car. The only thing that prevented Stephie from doing the same was that she spotted her father — her real father — still sitting in the stands. Stephie’s mother rolled her eyes on seeing him and seethed at his mere presence.
Stephie ran to him. He held out his arms and threw them around her, holding her tight. “I’m so proud of you!” he said into her hair as she grinned and pressed her face flat against his chest. “You ran so hard! You won so many headers! Your passes were all right on target! And that steal at the end from the other team’s best player was what won the game!” Stephie raised her face to beam at him, but had to stifle the grin with lips that she curled over her teeth. “You can smile now, Stephie,” her father said, gently grasping her chin and raising her face. “You’re not wearing braces anymore. And you have always been, and are now, the most beautiful thing in heaven or on earth.” She laughed and turned away. He tenderly cupped her mud-flaked cheeks in his hands. “I love you with all my heart,” he said. At the team cookout, Stephie’s angry mother had groused incessantly about her ex-husband ruining Stephie’s wonderful day, and her sullen teammates had vented their ire on their parents about the canceled trip with a preagreed wall of silence. But behind her wall, Stephie had been euphoric. Absolutely euphoric. All was right with the world. Things were great.
Stephie backed up to her heavy field pack, which stood upright on the truck’s tailgate. “You want me to carry some of your gear?” John Burns asked in a low voice. He was stooped forward under the weight of his own eighty-pound pack, and he wasn’t even in Stephie’s squad. Animal wagged his tongue obscenely up and down in the air. Her squadmates snickered at the machine gunner’s crude mockery of John’s offer. “I can handle it,” Stephie said, hoisting the pack onto her back with a grunt. Her legs almost buckled but she clenched her teeth and tried to continue breathing while tightening the harness across her chest and stomach. She then grabbed her M-16, which came with an M-249. The 40 mm grenade launcher, mounted underneath the barrel, looked like a toy. The stubby, bullet-shaped projectiles bulged from sleeves on bandoliers crossed over her torso, making her look like some large-caliber pistollero.
Becky Marsh watched John join the ranks on the road without once offering her his assistance. She winced and grunted as she shouldered her own massive pack. “No, I don’t need any help,” she muttered sarcastically, “but thanks for fucking asking!” Becky glared at Stephie, who chose not to notice.
Third Platoon consisted of thirty-one soldiers. Lieutenant Ackerman and his commo and Platoon Sergeant Kurth stood in front of four; nine-man squads of infantry, which formed ranks for inspection. Of the twenty-seven infantrymen in the four numbered squads, nineteen were men and eight were women. Each squad had two fire teams, and the eight women were evenly distributed: one in each fire team. The squad leaders — three buck sergeants and a corporal — stood at the far right with their squads stretched at arm’s length to their left. The soldiers in the formation raised their left arms for proper, parade ground spacing. The formation extended longer than normal because of the four soldiers added to the end of each squad’s rank. A two-man machine gun crew and a two-man all-threat missile crew from the company’s weapons platoon had been attached to each squad. With the four medics from the battalion medical detachment in the rear, Third Platoon today fielded fifty.
At fourteen, Stephie became obsessed with the opposite sex. And the latest in a series of the-cutest-boys-she’d-ever-seen was at an interdenominational prayer service for the victims of the Second Jewish Holocaust. He looked to be older — sixteen — and had shiny black hair, dark eyes, and smooth skin as white as paper. He must have dermatologists for parents, she marveled. Then, all of the sudden, Stephie realized that he must be Jewish. As the prayers wore on — some familiar, others in Hebrew — an imagined romance blossomed in Stephie’s mind until her stepdad leaned over and whispered, “They brought it on themselves, you know. China warned Israel not to use nukes.” Stephie’s mom crushed her step-dad’s toe in embarrassment. When he hissed in pain, Stephie’s imaginary boyfriend looked back and shocked Stephie straight to the core. Tears flowed from “radiant pools,” she wrote in her journal, down the mysterious boy’s “porcelain skin.” That night, Stephie got on the Internet and read news reports about Tel Aviv. It turned out that China had warned Israel against using nuclear weapons to try to stop their invasion. In retaliation to Israel’s nuclear attacks on their massing armies, China had destroyed Tel Aviv with its population trapped inside. Stephie watched the video over and over. She couldn’t read the Chinese characters in the lower right hand corner, but the countdown on the clock was universal. When the clock struck zero, half a dozen blinding flashes swallowed the city’s skyline.