Hesitation Kills by Jane Blair

Author:Jane Blair
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442208780
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

13

GARDEN OF EDEN

A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.

—The Old Testament

I distinctly remember one of our first classes at The Basic School. Two hundred and fifty new officers all sat in a classroom, expectantly waiting for our instructor. A silence fell over the room when he entered. A selfassured Captain stepped in front of us and said without emotion, “Before your first tour is up, 25 percent of you will get out of the Marine Corps. At least three of you will get DUIs . . . and two of you in this classroom will be dead.” I looked around the room. Could that be true? Here we were, young, healthy Lieutenants with our lives ahead of us, practically indestructible warriors.

When we graduated from The Basic School, many of us would part ways, as we were assigned to different duty stations in the Marine Corps. Thirty of us lucky warriors, including many of my closest friends, got stationed in the infamous Twentynine Palms. But before we could settle in, suddenly we all got deployed to Iraq. There were already those who got Purple Hearts, and indeed, some who did not make it back at all. Our class of 250 already met the statistics.

As the weather cleared, so did our streak of bad luck. The tactical pause had lifted, and soon we were on our way again. The next morning, I was not surprised when we got the FragO to move up to Qalat Sikar. Nervousness flooded me like never before. A clammy sweat covered my skin, and images of us getting ambushed entered my brain. I was sure higher was about to push us through another area they didn’t realize was unsecured. RCT-1 was only at Ash Shatrah, sixty kilometers below the city we had to get to, clearing the way.

We spent the day packing the gear, followed by a late-night mission that I stayed up for. We had only minimal gear out for the mission; the rest of the airfield was in darkness. My small red light illuminated the inside of our enclosed humvee, where I was alone on the laptop doing some research and looking at the current events situation. Lieutenant George, my friend from MAG-39, came on chat again.

“Dash-2, are you there?”

“What’s up, George?”

“Not much. I tracked your husband down on the friendly forces tracker—he’s pushing up Highway 8 right now near Shak Hantush. They’re all right and only meeting light resistance. How’s Iraq?”

“Not bad. Thanks for looking out for me. How’s Kuwait?”

“Hanging in there; I’ll be coming up to Jalibah tomorrow.”

“We’re going up to Qalat Sikar tomorrow without an escort.”

“Already? Be careful. You know that hasn’t been secured yet?”

“Yes, I know, but there’s nothing I can do. I told my CO; we’re trying to work our connections and get us an escort.”

“There’s supposed to be a lot of Fedayeen en route—around Ash Shatrah.

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