The thunder of the IEDs pounding against her eardrums slowly dwindled to a throbbing roar. Screams and shouts floated through her confused mind like words shouted underwater. Her legs wouldn’t move fast enough, her lungs burned from sucking in air so hot her nasal passages cracked and bled. Specters, their features obliterated by grime and blood and smoke, beckoned to her.

Medic medic medic. Always the same. Medic medic medic.

They needed her and she couldn’t reach them. Her leg plunged into a blast hole and she fell, pain lancing through her thigh. She caught herself on outstretched hands and muffled a moan. Her pain was nothing compared to theirs. She pulled herself free and tried to stand. Her leg buckled and she fell again. This time she couldn’t smother the cry of agony.

No matter. Pain was her penance. They depended on her and she was too slow. She had to be strong. She dragged herself forward on her forearms, pushing with her uninjured leg, dragging the other.

Up ahead, they were dying. Everywhere around her, they were dying. She wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t strong enough, she wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t good enough. Another crack of thunder and the world exploded. Hell on earth had arrived.

Max jerked awake in the dark. Breath rushed from her chest as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. Her olive drab T-shirt clung to her torso, black with the sweat drenching her hair and body. Her fingers cramped, and she forced her fists to loosen their grip on the thin mattress under her. She mercilessly ordered her muscles to relax and ordered herself to lie still when all she wanted was to get up and run. She laughed, and the desperate sound echoed in the metal box like so many mocking voices. Run to where? There was no escaping her dreams. She’d tried tempting fate outside the wire, but exchanging one hell for another never worked.

She was alive, and the price she paid was guilt. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her that. She pressed her thigh where shrapnel had penetrated when a buried IED exploded on a twisting road in Afghanistan. They’d dug it out in the field hospital, patched her up, and she’d gone back to her unit a few days later. A few inches higher, an inch to the left, and her femoral artery would have been severed and she would have bled out on the road like so many had done before her eyes. She had lived and the man next to her had died. The woman behind her had lost a leg. She descended into hell again and again to atone, but it was never enough.

No matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought the images, struggled to deafen the screams resounding in her head, she couldn’t escape. She slid her hand under the mattress, found the smooth outline of the small flat glass bottle, and pulled it out. She unscrewed the cap with shaking fingers and took a swallow. The whiskey burned like the air that had scorched her lungs, but the fire in her belly promised to settle her nerves in a minute or two even if it didn’t cleanse her sins. She took another swallow, recapped the bottle, and pushed it back out of sight. She held up her wrist and read almost twenty hundred in the luminescent numbers on her watch. She was due for her last twenty-four-hour shift in another six hours.

Even though the medevac callouts this far from the hot zones of Iraq and Afghanistan were far fewer than they had been, she couldn’t risk being less than 100 percent functional. Soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, and allies still got injured and shot and blown up. She still had a job to do. She’d have to tough out the rest of the night without the momentary help of the whiskey.

She curled on her side, drew her knees up, and closed her eyes. All she had to do was hang on for four more days and she’d be back at NYU, where even the most horrendous cases would seem simple compared to the inhuman carnage of war. She was alone, and thankful no one had witnessed her nightmare. CC, a machinist specialist who shared her CLU, wouldn’t be back until after Max left for her shift. Sharing ten by thirty feet for months on end would be unimaginable to most people, but out here, these accommodations were among the best. They had a window air-conditioning unit, a partition between their sleeping areas, and mattresses that weren’t bug infested or grimy with filth. They had hot showers and decent food. She had it good.

She and CC weren’t overly personal, but they shared more than either of them did with those they’d left behind. CC would keep Max’s secrets even if she knew, but Max guarded her privacy ferociously. Her demons were her own.

A sharp rap sounded on the metal door of her CLU, and Max swung upright on the side of her cot.

A voice called, “Commander de Milles?”

“Yes.”

“Captain Inouye wants you.”

Max pushed her hands through her hair, found a plastic bottle of water and splashed some on her face and neck, and strode to the end of the container. She pulled the door open and stepped out onto the top of the two metal steps leading down to the ground. An ensign saluted and she returned the salute.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. There’s a briefing at twenty thirty hours in the com center.”

“Right,” Max said, her mouth suddenly as dry as if she were breathing burning air. Never talk about what might happen outside the wire. Never brag about the girl back home. Never count the days until end of tour.

Anything could happen. Anything was about to.

*

Shivering with a ripple of anxiety, Rachel quickly skirted the two large fire pits in the center of the camp they kept burning day and night. They didn’t need the heat, not when the average temperature ranged above 100°F every day and didn’t fall much lower at night, but they conserved their propane for the generators by using the open fires to keep water boiling and coffee, endless coffee, constantly available. The dozen sleeping tents ringing the encampment, forming a barrier between the jungle and their living space, were dark except for one, where a dim light within silhouetted the hunched form of a man sitting on the side of his cot, perhaps reading or composing a letter. The canvas sides glowed like a giant jack-o’-lantern, and Rachel had the uncomfortable thought that the oblivious occupant made an easy target. Pushing the disquieting image firmly aside, she slipped inside the tent she shared with Amina as quietly as she could. Their days were long, starting before sunrise, and if that wasn’t exhausting enough, fighting dehydration was a never-ending battle. By suppertime, everyone was drained, mentally and physically, and bedtime came early. The first few nights after they’d arrived, everyone on the disaster recovery team had stayed up well past dark, sitting around the fires, getting to know one another, eager to undertake the challenge of their mission. After two months, faced with the endless deprivation of the Somalis caught in the crossfire of a war they did not understand or welcome, the diseases that had long been eradicated in more prosperous countries, and the seemingly endless task of restructuring a society devastated by enemies natural and manmade, their enthusiasm had transformed into weary but dogged determination. No one stayed up late imagining great victories. Everyone went to bed early to conserve their strength for another day in the endless battle.

She’d been in the field twice before as a disaster relief coordinator—once after the hurricanes that devastated Haiti and again following the massive flooding in the central United States—but she’d never been this far from the life she had known in miles or in experience. She could barely remember what it was like to sleep in a bed, to wake to hot showers and brewed coffee, and not to be cut off from the rest of the world for long stretches of time. The constant connectedness of the electronic world was a memory. Here she was as detached from her past life as she could possibly be, and yet she had never felt more herself. Her needs, her goals, her pleasures had been stripped down to the core. Out here what she did mattered, her life had meaning. She made a difference every time she fed a child or gave a bag of seed to a farmer or a loaf of bread to a tribesman. Her work wasn’t done, and if she left before it was, she feared she’d be haunted by the faces of those she’d failed to help.

Rachel sank onto the edge of her cot and, resting her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her hands. She had promised not to leave. What would she do in ten hours when the helicopter arrived for her? None of this made sense. If she thought her father would be more forthcoming, she’d call him back, but she knew him. He’d said all he was going to say and expected her to obey him. Rachel sighed, wanting to pace, furious at her father for leaving her in the dark. He probably never even considered how his authoritative bearing affected her. He was used to everyone in every sphere of his life doing as he wished without explanation. Even her mother rarely challenged his decisions or desires. Her older brother, groomed since childhood to follow in her father’s footsteps, had never seemed to mind. He’d finished law school and had already entered local politics. Rachel had been the only one who refused to follow his orders without question. She had been the only one to challenge his authority. When she’d been old enough, she’d demanded to choose her own path.

“Bad news?” Amina whispered from the darkness.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said, her father’s words echoing in her mind. Do not discuss this. Why? Did he think the doctors, the engineers, the teachers and epidemiologists and translators were spies? His fundamental distrust of everyone’s motives was fueled by a lifetime of immersion in politics and the manipulation and maneuvering that went with it. Even though she’d been only too happy to leave that world behind, she wasn’t foolish enough to discount her father’s warnings. He might be exaggerating the danger for some agenda of his own, but what if he wasn’t? She considered her words cautiously. “Have you heard any news about…anything affecting our security?”