Marisa Carroll - Winter Soldier

This time they were going to Vietnam.

“Caleb was so disappointed he couldn’t make the trip. He was looking forward to assisting you.”

Adam continued to scowl at the back of B.J.’s head a moment longer, then shifted his gaze. “I’ll manage without him. But what about you?”

She looked puzzled. “I’ll be fine.”

“I mean, are you up to operating with me? Owens is a general surgeon. You’re probably used to gallbladder and uterine excisions, not keeping someone under and stable while I tinker around in his brain for eight or ten hours.”

“Caleb does a little of everything. Slate Hollow’s a small place. You have to be flexible.” A hint of defensiveness had crept into her voice. Adam suppressed a momentary twinge of conscience. She was a colleague, a professional. They’d be working together for the next three weeks. He was barking at her as if she was a not-too-bright first-year intern.

“Ever scrubbed for brain surgery before?”

“You mean other than bashing a patient on the head with a hammer, while Caleb drilled through his skull with the Black and Decker Two Speed to let out the evil spirits?”

“I didn’t mean—”

She cut him off. “Yes, you did.” She was right. He couldn’t deny it without lying through his teeth, so he kept quiet. Neurosurgeons were considered the glamour boys of medicine and had a reputation for being arrogant and imperious. He’d just reinforced the stereotype, big time. “The answer is yes, Doctor. I have worked with your kind before.”

Your kind. The emphasis on the words was so slight most people wouldn’t have noticed, but he did. He almost smiled. She was a fighter. Good. They would need that kind of grit and stamina where they were going. “I apologize,” he said. “B.J. told me he always gets the best people for these jaunts. He was right. What I should have asked you was if you’d had experience operating under...less-than-ideal conditions.”

He’d almost said battlefield conditions. What had made those words pop into his head? Was it because, below a sleeveless white tank top that molded itself nicely to her breasts, she wore desert-patterned utilities, fatigues to everyone but an ex-Marine, and combat boots—a look that was decidedly military. Or because the past was growing stronger with every mile they flew, bringing long-guarded memories dangerously close to the surface?

She glanced down at the U.S. Marine Corps emblem tattoo on his left forearm, partially visible below the rolled-back cuff of his shirt, a souvenir of his first liberty after boot camp at Parris Island all those years ago. “I’ve been around the block a few times, Marine. I won’t bug out on you.” She gave him a mocking little salute and headed down the aisle toward the front of the plane.

He closed his eyes but could still see the proud tilt of her head, the sway of her hips in the baggy utilities that tried hard but couldn’t completely hide the fact she was all woman. Three weeks in close proximity to Leah Gentry was going to be very interesting. And maybe, just maybe, it would be interesting enough to keep him from losing what was left of his mind.

“MAY I JOIN YOU?” Leah asked Kaylene Smiley, the mission’s head nurse, as she came abreast of the older woman’s seat. She and Kaylene had met for the first time in the lounge at O’Hare the evening before. Dr. Roger Crenshaw, the anesthesiologist Leah would be working with in Dalat, and Kaylene were playing gin rummy on a folded-down tray.

“Of course. Roger just won my last nickel. You’ve saved me from losing another hand and being in his debt,” Kaylene said.

“It’s a good time for a break,” Roger agreed. “I’m going to use the lavatory before the plane lands. If you ladies will excuse me.” The elderly physician stood up, pocketed his small pile of winnings and with a courtly gesture offered Leah his seat.

“What do you suppose it will be like there? Saigon, I mean. The only pictures I’ve ever seen are from the war. And in the movies.” Kaylene was looking out the window as she spoke.

“They make most of the movies in Bangkok, you know. There are parts of it that look like Saigon did during the war.” Shielded by the high back of the airplane seat, Leah tried to shake the feeling that Adam Sauder’s eyes were boring burr holes into the back of her head in preparation for taking it off her shoulders.

“Really? I didn’t know.”

“I have three brothers, all making a career of the military, and my dad just retired after thirty years in the army. So I know about war movies.” Leah also leaned forward and looked out the window at the green tangle of jungle and rice paddies visible below.

“You’re wearing dog tags,” Kaylene observed. “Were you in the service, too?”

“Yes, I’m an army reservist now.”

“My brother was here in 1967. He was stationed near Dalat, where we’ll be staying. I never thought I’d come here.” Kaylene returned to looking out the plane window. “According to the travel books, Dalat’s supposed to be a beautiful place. The brass from both sides vacationed there during the war, but my brother can’t imagine why I wanted to come on this mission. He said he’d never come back—never in a million years.”

THE PLANE ROLLED to a standstill, the stairs were drawn up and the door opened. Brilliant sunlight poured into the cabin as Adam walked out to meet his past. Much had changed. Oh, yes, there was still the same heat, the same stifling humidity, the smell of hot oil, metal and concrete baking in the sun, and the guard posts between the runways he’d manned as a nineteen-year-old Marine corporal still stood. But the sandbags were gone. And the skeletons of crashed and burned aircraft that had made takeoffs and landings so dangerous toward the end of the war had been hauled away. Most of the other buildings he might have recognized were gone, destroyed in the final hours before the airport had been abandoned to the conquering Vietcong.

But it was the sounds that were the most different. In fact, it was the lack of noise that marked the biggest change. There wasn’t another aircraft in sight. Their chartered Air Vietnam jet was the only plane landing or taking off. It was quiet, eerily so. Absent from the scene was the drone of helicopter blades, the whine of fighter jets taking off and landing, the roar of cargo planes evacuating load after load of civilians....

Adam shut down his recollections with an efficiency that was the result of long years of practice, retreating behind the buffer zone of reserve most doctors learned to erect around themselves early on in their careers, or else they risked losing their sanity. From that perspective he could view Than Son Nhut from a place outside himself where he observed, but didn’t participate in, what was going on. He spent a lot of time in that limbolike state these days, and every time he went there he found it harder and harder to come back.

“Damn, Adam. Did you ever think we’d be back?”

It was B.J. at his elbow, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a wondering look on his face. B.J. was a millionaire fifty times over, but you’d never know it from the way he looked or dressed, or from the luggage he carried.

“No,” Adam said truthfully. “I never expected to come back.”

“It’s friggin’ spooky. I half expect a MIG to come screaming out of the sky the way it did that day and strafe the runway, or a sniper to start taking potshots at us when we unload the plane.” His expression darkened as he looked around him, but a moment later his usual good-natured smile returned. He mopped at his red face with a blue bandanna he pulled out of the back pocket of his jeans. Then he tied the four corns of the bandanna into knots and put the makeshift hat on his balding head. “I’m going to have to get myself a cover. I forgot how friggin’ hot the sun is here.” He looked sourly at Adam’s full head of hair. “Some guys have all the luck.”