Chapter 4

I turned onto Michigan Avenue and headed north toward Lake Shore Drive. Large snowflakes filtered the headlights as we made our way through the darkness and slow-moving traffic toward Jessica's parents' home.

She was quiet, trying to repair her makeup and hair, concentrating on the lighted visor mirror. I was hard to believe how much more beautiful she had become. Maybe it was just me seeing the new Jessica and how maturity and self awareness had replaced immaturity and self absorption.

I smiled as my thoughts turned to the absolute wackiness of my life. Here I was six weeks out of desolation and dust of Iraq, driving through a snowstorm with the most beautiful woman in the world. A woman I thought I would never see again. She had hurt me, but that was a long time ago. What I had said in my letter was true ... I wasn't that Matt O'Connell.

Oh no ... the farm boy from Decatur was long gone.

What was even stranger was the fact I was driving a new Toyota Land Cruiser — the vehicle of choice of terrorists throughout the world. For the last few years I had been killing people who were driving and riding in Land Cruisers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

My mood changed when I thought about the fact that six weeks ago I had been in an almost identical silver Land Cruiser, just liberated from a newly dead Syrian official. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time as I sent my platoon smashing into an encampment of Syrian troops just inside the Syrian border.

About midnight we had met a Syrian patrol on the Iraq side of the border. It was not a friendly meeting. They killed my point man Corporal Kidd, and then ran toward the safety of the border crossing as we counter attacked.

I held my platoon at the border until my scouts came back with information about the company sized detachment bivouacked about a kilometer down a dirt track. Against orders I sent my platoon forward. We were all sick of taking casualties from these incursions which the Syrians always blamed on insurgents despite the number of bodies we brought back wearing Syrian Army uniforms. We got no help from the limp-dicks at our own State Department. Seems like the closest that any of those idiots ever got to a fire fight was on their X-Box.

Corporal Kidd was a terrific guy and everyone thought highly of him. He was a dedicated family man with a wife and child at home in London Kentucky. He was also our de facto chaplain. Believers or not, every man in the platoon stopped and gathered around when Kidd took off his helmet and dropped to his knees on the rocky soil and asked God to watch over us.

I watched the Syrians from the slight elevation above their encampment, which was in a small desolate valley. I didn't need my night vision goggles. Electricity for the camp was provided by a noisy diesel generator and large and well-lighted tents were neatly arrayed in three rows. The generator would mask any sound we made but the Syrians were so confident we wouldn't cross the border that they didn't even have sentries posted. Sitting in the darkness, I watched the silver Land Cruiser drive up the valley and stop in front of a tent with a flag posted in front. A large man in a Syrian officer's uniform saluted the man in the dark suit who alighted from the passenger side of the Toyota. They summoned another man who was still carrying his Kalashnikov. He saluted both and it looked like he was giving a very animated version of the recent skirmish with us. He kept gesturing in the direction from which we'd come. It sounded like bragging to me ... bragging about killing my Marines.

I shot him first, and then the man in the suit, then the commander and then the bodyguard driver who died as he leaned against the Land Cruiser lighting his second cigarette.

We fell on them like wolves on sheep and we killed them ... killed them all.

As we quickly moved through the burning tents and vehicles I knew there would be hell to pay when I got back to base.

Out of the darkness a man appeared, his face and uniform bloodied. He was very close, and as I shot him the grenade he was holding fell from his hand and rolled toward me. I yelled "Grenade!" as I dropped to the ground trying to make myself as small as possible.

My helmet and body armor saved me but still the docs pulled over a hundred pieces of metal and bits of rock and dirt from my right arm, ass and leg. One large chunk opened my face to the bone along the jaw line. Blood seeped from my left ear.

The silver Land Cruiser became my makeshift ambulance. Doc Jensen had done his best to patch me but I still bled all over the nice new seats. Peters and Cole from first squad, who took on and destroyed a Syrian armored car coming up the road were also lightly wounded when it blew up. They rode in the back, with Kidd lying between them. With my face white from blood loss and shock, and the bandage up and over the top of my head keeping the skin of my jaw from flapping, I must have looked like Marley's Ghost. Marley's ghost ... that was rich considering the season. I almost laughed but visions of that ride quashed any humor.

"Are you all right Matt?"

"Sometimes ... the transition's a bit jarring..."

I looked at her and tried to smile. I knew the memory of that night would stay with me for a long time.

She put her hand on the side of my face but didn't say anything.

Her reaction was something new. The old Jessica would have never noticed my distress in the first place, or if she had, would have mentioned it then turned the conversation to something about herself.