Hellfire

By Kim Hays

There’s a picture of me in the San Francisco Chronicle, eighteen, sitting in the back of an Army deuce and a half, eating an MRE with four Hellfire missiles packed in long neat rows against my back. I don’t remember the photographer’s name, but I do know it was on a day the Santa Ana winds were blowing the wrong way. 

“Private . . .  climb down here,” 
A few moments before, standing atop of a fuel tanker at 5 am taking diesel readings with a wooden measuring stick, I’d spotted two shiny jeeps with flags on the hood roaring into the lot and coming to an abrupt halt at the bottom of my truck.
“Hurry up, Private.” 
I pulled out the stick and closed the hatch, making sure all the latches snapped back into place. 
Once on the ground, I saluted everyone as I’d been taught and got no return gestures. Besides the Major who had been screaming up at me, four Generals and a civilian – taut and white and men, all sat in the jeeps looking like they’d eaten bad seafood the night before. 
“I’m pulling you for special duty immediately, Private . . . Merchant.”
The moment the Major read my name tag, he stepped back a bit and dropped his chin to his chest. Hurried and scattered, he had overlooked the fact he had been shouting up to a female soldier. A few of the men in the jeeps started muttering back and forth, making little snorts and snickers. 

I got into one of the jeeps as instructed and we drove to the airbase a few miles away. The man next to me had a tag around his neck that read PRESS. He wore khaki pants and a Dodger baseball cap with a large camera around his neck. His legs were crossed, and he had an arm over the back of the seat across my shoulder. I remember trying to move away to the right, almost falling out of the open jeep.

“Your mission is to drive this truck to these coordinates – Four-Charlie-Niner Foxtrot,” said the Major, “when you arrive, you wait.”
“Wait for what, sir?” I asked.
He looked as if the top of his head was about to blast skyward, “A fucking Apache Helicopter. . . Private. What else?”

The load was heavy. Even up short inclines, the truck lurched and spat. If the Major knew it was only my first week at Yuma Proving Grounds, he undoubtedly would have driven the truck himself. Every so often I would see large signs saying Keep Out Government Property and a few cow gates I had to stop and open. I pulled off the sandy path to check the map again. The Major had drawn a thick red circle showing my destination which looked to be just up ahead around one more dusty corner.
Once at the proper coordinates, I parked the truck near a squat oak. The other side of the tree was all tumbleweeds and scrub grass and made a perfect landing pad for a helicopter. Across the top of the map, the Major had scratched,
Wait for Blackhawk. Blackhawk team will unload. You drive back to motor pool. 
With the band of my hat filling with sweat, I glanced at my watch. 1pm. I had missed my second chow of the day. The only things I knew about the rockets in the back of the truck were what I’d learned at orientation two days before. The base was conducting a series of experiments to see the accuracy and loading times of the missiles from the field to helicopter to target. The press was here to help promote the hubris. 
“These missions will change the whole way we would do warfare in the future,” said the group of men in charge of the orientation. We were all very important.
Having nothing else to do but be hungry, I pulled out a pack of Camels from my cargo pants. In the middle of an inhale, a sensation creeped up my spine to the top of my head. There was no sound and not a thing stirred.  Over one of the farthest mountains, I spied a slight glare. In midair, perched against the blue sky, something hovered. It reminded me of a horned owl I’d once seen tracking a field mouse for dinner. I froze. The Apache had its rounded nose pointed straight at me. We stayed locked like this, neither of us moving.
During the intense staring contest, I began to shiver. A terrible wind moved the coarse sand in tight circles and blew into my eyes and nose. I sprinted back to the cab of the truck. The canvas tarp on the bed of the truck flapped so fiercely, I thought it was going to rip apart and fly away.
After several mad minutes, the wind left as quickly as it came. I looked back up to the mountain and the Apache was gone. Down the gravel road, I spotted one of the jeeps from this morning thundering towards me. A man in the back was waving both of his hands in the air. I slid the Camels back into my pocket and brushed the sand off my uniform. 
“Private . . .  Private,” the Major had no breath left, “we are so . . . glad, we brought you lunch, Private.” 
All of their faces were so shaken, no one blinked. I thanked him for the food and went to the back of the truck to eat in the shade. Not sure what was going on, I opened the hard crackers and started dipping them into the pouch of cold chicken stew. That’s when the journalist snapped my picture – mid bite. The same picture the world would see with the headline: 

Female Soldier Nearly Killed By Hellfire Missile Blunder at Yuma Proving Grounds.

When the officers went to the other side of the truck and formed a tight circle, spitting and cussing in hushed speech, the photographer slid in next to me, “The map the Major gave you this morning was to the detonation zone – where the Apaches fire the missiles,” he whispered, “You were the accidental target.” 
I could feel him staring intensely so I nodded politely to let him know I was listening and dunked the saltine back into the stew. The cold chicken and peas never tasted so good.
“The only thing that saved you were those crazy winds. The heli was about to launch when headquarters gave the signal to abort.” 
He went on to tell me the soldier who was supposed to be on duty to drive that morning was in the county jail sleeping off a drunk and disorderly with the correct map to the transfer zone still in his pants pocket. 
“We thought you were a goner,” the journalist said, waiting for a reaction, “how do you feel? . . . what’s your first name?”
I felt bad for eating in front of him, so when I ripped open the last package and found a thick fudge brownie, my favorite, I offered him half. He shook his head.
After watching me eat in silence for a few more minutes, he grabbed a notebook from his pocket, scribbled down my last name from the front of my uniform and walked away to be with the others.
I chewed the chocolate slowly, letting it stick to my teeth with each bite. I remember how calm the desert looked again. How a tall jackrabbit the color of sand began racing from sage to sage, stopping under each one to turn its head cautiously in all directions before moving on. At one of the bushes, the hare stood up tall and rotated one of its long ears towards the men talking under the tree. In a flash, it slipped down a slight opening on the desert’s surface and vanished. As if it had never been there before.

****

Kim Hays teaches English in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has published works in The Mid-Rivers Review, The Green Fuse Literary Journal and upcoming Fall Issue of BODY. She is a veteran of the U.S. Army.