Thunder Run by David Zucchino

Author:David Zucchino
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

At Fort Stewart that morning, Wesley’s wife, Cindy, was getting her two oldest children ready for school when the phone rang just before 8 a.m. It was a friend whose husband was in the air force. She had just received a call about an attack on the Second Brigade TOC outside Baghdad. Cindy had been worried about her husband’s safety the entire war, and now her fears intensified. She tried to stay composed as she got her sons Tyler, eleven, and Austin, seven, ready for school. She knew that Tyler, as the oldest, understood the dangers his father faced; he realized when the war began that his dad might never come home again.

With her two boys off to school, Cindy switched on the television. She had recently arranged to have cable installed so that she could monitor war coverage. The news crawl across the bottom of the Fox News program described a missile attack on the TOC, with an estimated seven or eight dead. Cindy felt nauseous. She was afraid that at any moment someone in uniform would be knocking on her front door with bad news. She had memorized the casualty notification hours and knew that the only “safe” periods were after 11 p.m. and before 6 a.m. She was in the danger zone. She struggled to hold back her tears. She feared the worst—Eric was always at the TOC, at the center of things. She got down on her knees and began to pray.

Also at Fort Stewart, Ginger Perkins woke up that morning with the usual assortment of accessories at her bedside—her cell phone, her cordless phone, a notebook, and a pen. She sometimes got calls in the middle of the night, occasionally from her husband, David, and more often from the garrison commander of the brigade’s rear detachment at Fort Stewart. She got up and woke her son and daughter for school, then turned on the television in the breakfast nook. She kept a videotape in overnight to record news reports while she slept. As the children got ready for school, she read the day’s Our Daily Bread devotional aloud. Cassandra, seventeen, and Chad, thirteen, huddled with their mother in the hallway between the bedrooms. They locked hands and repeated prayers for David, for everyone in the brigade, and for all American soldiers deployed in the Middle East. Then the children left for school and Ginger Perkins sat down at the computer.

She checked first for “Velvet Rock” messages—an alert to the spouses of the division’s brigade commanders of any casualty notification within the division. As she read her e-mails, she heard a Fox News announcer mention that correspondent Greg Kelly was broadcasting from Baghdad. She swung around in her chair and saw David standing next to Kelly in front of a palace. She felt elated. The brigade was in downtown Baghdad and her husband was fine, if a bit haggard and dirty.

When the segment ended, Ginger turned back to her e-mail and saw a message about a missile attack on the brigade TOC.

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