It was routine.

  A hand from the passenger side reached over and put the blinker on.  "But 

  "I lost one." 

  Felt like the car turned itself into the next possible turn indicated by the blinker. 

  "You lost an airplane?" 

  Pulling over as a flood of tears came like a tsunami.  Car off.  Hyperventilating.  Paper bag breathing. 

  "An Airman." 

  "I'll call one of my mentors whose not wrapped up in hot." 

  A blurry faced nod and sssshhhh's keep breathing. 

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ri..."Good morning." 

  "I need to speak to," passenger grabbing for phone and a dodge, blurt of who.  "I'll get her.  Here she is." 

  "Good morning?" 

  "No one told us what to do in a relay routine for sig, uh, communicators if one in the action is lost." 

  "Putting us all on speaker." 

  "Here.  Drink your tea love.  It's cool enough now." 

  "They're going to help us." 

"YOU MAKE SENSE OF ME"

  "Okay." 

  "I've had ten different commanders in as many days." 

  "Okay." 

  "They want to know, need to know, exactly what program?" 

  "There are no exactlies right now." 

  "Like in this moment?" 

  "Can you just..." 

  "What's the matter with the person?" 

  A stuffed with gauze nose voice blared speaking for self, "Sommody mroke mymose." The gauze came out with a stream of blood. 

  A fully dressed EMS swiped open the canvas tent flap and hands quit trying to tie it open and dove to the injury.  "I need a recorder," the EMT shouted.  The person with the broken nose started squirming and blaring from chest moooo, moooo. 

  "Where we heading first?" An Overlander asked an assymetrical "team".  "We'll have to split up very soon." People passed an agenda around.  Memorized points.  "Weather is why today." 

"Write ME a war."

  The man was drunk. 

  What he said came out in one slur, all four words one stinkin' belch. 

  "Go to bed." An honorable man admonished. 

  A woman who'd toasted to another day of survival, poured a thimble full of sour mash into her mouth and gargled it like mouthwash, and was walking away, stopped dead in her tracks.  She turned but was too far from the campfire to be lit up well.  "Is that what you think all these people are up to?" 

  The man didn't answer. 

  The woman shook her hair like a jelly fish had come too close.  Looked at the brilliant starry night sky.  "You bloody fool." Was all she said before definitively walking to her tent. 

  Two men with guns got up and went and sat on both ends of the tent. 

  In the morning they were still there.  The fire was still going.  But the drunken, bitter man was gone.

Excerpt from novel,

  The Siege

  Story by Lawrence Wright

  "A van sped down the alley toward Kahlil, its side doors sliding open, two pairs of hands reaching out.  From nowhere a man appeared.  He bodychecked Kahlil, sent him careening into the van, and jumped in after him.  The doors clanged shut; with the howl rubber makes when applied liberally to pavement, the van shot out of the alley, barged through traffic, and disappeared. 

  Hub stared after it, panting, his fists clenched.  Frank ran up, also panting.  'Damn,' he gasped.  'Shit!' 

  'Yeah,' Hub said quietly.  'Yeah.' 

  "Ten minutes later Hub presided over an impromptu huddle in the alley.  Agents gathered around him, their radios making a racket.  Overhead, helicopters circled. 

  Fred Darius spoke up, his youthful face drawn.  'They just found the van.  Doesn't look like they're gonna find any fingerprints.' 

  Hub nodded.  Par for the course in this game; everything had blown up in his face.  Not far away, the agent who'd taken telephoto pictures activated a digital printer in an unmarked car.  A photo slid forth.  The agent brought it to Hub: a clear shot of Kahlil and the handsome Palestinian. 

  'Run him down, bring him in,' Hub ordered wearily. 

  Fred Darius's cell phone buzzed." 

"READ IT!!" The shortest shorty shouted.

  "Divorce papers?" A man standing around waiting for a piece of toast asked of the just past pre-dawn bug up her ass. 

  "Comply with what?!" The man handed the piece of paper grump-barked. 

  "Whatever I say." She crossed her arms after quickly stomping a foot in a ballerina way and taking the posture of a marching soldier choosing not to just grab the rifle. 

  Another end of the run. 

  The hurricane had come and gone.  Scrubbed the summer from concrete now perched on missing underground.  A civilian convoy of caring had mustered who wasn't tied to "day job" that day.  Locals in a tiny "town" in between National Parks were appalled at the type of trash that had blown through Main Street. 

  "Don't just grab shit." One team captain warned but without vigor having told crew that for weeks and watching one person after another do just that.  Stabbed, poked, splintered, rashed, fevered, "SICK!  Leave." 

  "Like sick leave?" The wisecracks. 

  "Like," the typically word-able editor/writer stifled pure anger and took a pull from a flask instead of saying anything.  Trying to preserve people willing to be servicepeople from a world exploding into war and decimated by drugs was proving to be more than trying.  "We'll see." She settled on.  The responses to what should I do had also settled into a kind of roulette wheel of rote. 

  "Hand me the binoculars." A man's voice quietly wandered from buried in a gilly suit.  His love's hand drifted from a two-hand hold of a thermos top worth of sweet smelling one more minute of not awake enough, yet, to follow orders.  But the platform reached for...bare. 

  Tents unzippering, being re-zipped.  

  "Why would it be?" 

  "See, more left on the range." 

  "No." 

  "You're other left." A fellow enthusiast put the parade-wave flag in the left hand of the person trying to understand when nothing much could be said. 

  "I think I see smoke!" 

  "Stand still." 

  "Did we make it in time?"  Healed limb ends on missing forearms shrugged shoulders and bobbed the question.

"Because

  we have to keep the economy going." The man explained of some air travel.  "Especially while the bad guys are doing that," he laid out photographs of the slain on a workbench.  Mumbled to the lead tradesperson on the project, those are somebody's loved ones. 

  "That way when you come back, you can pick up where you left off in this trade," a person coaching young people on how to handle all this sudden responsibility said reassuringly. 

  "Sir, we are going to need you in the field," a casually dressed officer stuck head inside and called out.  Everyone looked to see who was being pointed at.

"That's embarassing."

  The sun hit the ice on the branch tips and made the forest seem like crystal.  "That's not how I would feel about that."  The passenger lit a cigarette, took two puffs, and tapped out the burning end on a can of chew tobacco.  "They didn't even need me.  And clearly, they've got skills I don't, probably won't ever have."  

  "All through here.  These trees," a person in the backseat gulped a chocolate milk drink and explained, "Have some sort of blight." 

  "How would you feel about it?" 

  A thoughtfulness about how to answer and a look away from passenger seat driving.  "I usually have to like actually check in with myself about how I personally feel and like, reckon that with how I'm supposed to feel.  Which is and isn't laid out in some manual somewhere." 

  "Look OUT!" 

  A slight braking to feel for slippery and then a full stop.  The truck of logs seemed okay from behind.

"You're not even eyeTalian,

  why are you talking like that?" 

  "Well hullo pretty little lady." 

  "The girls caught up," word traveled past the Bouncer in the apartment building's lobby. 

  "That's real gangstah Fergie." 

  "And that's a real shorty shorty." 

  "I had to wear my library shoes!" 

  "Wouldya care for an eshcort?" 

  "What's this one?  Not sure I'm up for another funhouse." 

  "Whah, whah, whah this is the northern town samelike of the House of the Rising Sun," a guy took a dame's hand and ashed a cigar in her palm.  "But we call it, see, we cawl it the House of Rising Sin." 

  "Sounds," a girl put her reading glasses into an eyeglass case and snapped it shut.  A stoner jumped at the sound.  "Paranoid are ya?" A look: me seeing you seeing me.  "Vaguely familiar to every other place in this stinkin' city.  Let's go to a movie instead." 

  "Step right up, step right up," a short guy with a thick mass of shortish hair produced a roll of carnival tickets from pants pocket. 

  "Don't you want a preview of the season's coming attractions?" 

  "I'm already drunk," someone groaned. 

  "What's the objective here?" 

  "This is about prerogative my good friends." 

  "Perogis? What time does this shindig really get going?" 

  "So we have to..." An unrolling of a teeny sheet of paper in a drink umbrella.  "Choose between life-and-death knowing or not knowing and presonal choice?!" 

  "That makes sense," a recently Bar Mitvah'd kidboyman with a radiantly dreamy smile and perfectly straight teeth commented. 

  " From here on out whichever islands one visits this evening it will be about 

  A flashbulb went off.  A track running gun was fired.  The crowd gathering pushed forward. 

"A Cape Cod. With, ah, no liquor."

  Bartender didn't turn around.  Glanced in the wall mirror behind the bar stuff and kept wiping dry a tumbler.  "Please." He made sure he caught the girl's eye and real subtle, pointed at the EXIT sign also visible in the wall mirror.  A palm slap on the bar top.  "I'm thirsty." 

  "Duck 'em in here," men's voices said outside the bar entry door.  A couple.  Wedding outfits.  "That might explain the golf clubs with the big bow." The bartender tucked a leather tab book into his waistline.  Smoothed the apron, knee length. 

  Slow, tentative steps towards the lucky couple until halfway there and the tuxedo wrenching the bride-to-be's arm.  Stopped at a table and re-straightened silverware.  A small "clubhouse". 

  Bag of tees and a tee-off time.  Kinda crabby about plans shuffled around.  "But, do you think they really don't know, or...

  "Don't know. 

  "Anything? 

  "The mob's mixed up in all of this. 

  "So, it's too dangerous? 

  "No ice." The man shoved the bag of tees into a skinny pants pocket. 

  "Not even thin?" A sigh.  A sigh back.  

  "Remember what they counseled before the politicians went you know where."  She looked into the golfcart's visor mirror and put her lipstick on.  "Remind me."  The "m" a top and bottom lip together and perfecting of the lipstick.  The man pulled a wood from a golf bag and slouched against the cart beside the lady.  Took the 'frofrilly off the club and put it on the dashboard.  "What I'm going to remind you all day is what Father Trese said about married couples." 

  "And?" She took off a silky, perfumed neckscarf and flopped it over his shoulder.  

  "DAD!  You want pineapple, orange, or tomato?" 

  A long slow, balloon deflating sigh. 

"Don't."

  "Don't turn the lights on?" 

  "And keep your voices down." 

  Not much taller than a lower grade student, sitting in the 2x4 chair.  Someone knelt beside.  Someone moved to empty the ashtray.  A hand sprung for it and claimed it.  "How's your son?" 

  Staring through the picture window at the scavenging.  "We call them zombies," a child sat Indian-style, back straight against a chair leg.  "We don't go out there any more," another child sat the same, wrapped an arm around a leg.  A hand reached up for the flask. 

  "They sent home dirt in a flour sack."  The flask was passed hand to hand to hand.  Lips just wetted.  Gulps.  Almost a dozen people breathing steady, little puffs of steam from mouths opening but no words coming out.  "What's it mean?" 

  Dark figures approached the window and pressed not-saluting hands to glass to peer in.  "More war." 

"Well, whatever it was or wasn't,"

  a mom started to explain.  "IT BLEW UP." A kid told. 

  "How could it? I have the Contract right here." The man fumbled with a leather sports bag on the front seat.  Threw it over the seat as the woman sighed and asked, "Did you put the lid back on the Orange Juice?" 

  "Somebody really told you it was a Timeshare?" Another kid looking through a box of lace and embroidery put with the trash near the curb asked. 

  "Guess we've been duped." The woman got a sad face but the tears stayed in her eyes as she bit her lip.  "Is there a phone around here?" 

  "Downtown." Yet another kid declared.

  "Given to drink?" A gentle girl of a lady asked of a brother-in-law who wouldn't come out of the jukejoint.  Three ears of corn were half ground in a blender.  A shotglass being tapped on the bartop brought a girl bartender not a barwench over with dug up antique bottles on a tray.  More shotglasses placed in groups of five by sausage fingers in each one.  Smelling each liquid.  A serving cart wheeled behind the seated on barstools.  A truck's oil pan and a skeletal engine mounted atop.  A woman with a child clinging to each leg and a bandana covering rainwater washed hair.  "Gimme the matches." 

  "Comes another one!" The groan of a jet plane could just barely be heard.  "Get MOM!  GET A MOM!" A shake of the crusty black soot from garbage bag rain shelter.  Sneaker tracks in the quarter inch of soot covering the sidewalk.  "She's belching hard," the loudspeaker on the tank reported.  Lower and lower, the jet inked a dirty sky meaner.  "See any flames?" A man asked a woman with a blackened face and fleshwhite rings around her eyes.  "Not on that one.  Engines in flames was," clearing black powder dust from a tally sheet with symbols, "FOUR incoming ago." 

  "Is that right son?" The toehead blonde boy had gray hair that day and black in the gaps between his teeth.  "Here, suck on this," the woman pushed a wetted papertowel at the kid.  "And answer the man." A clear space around lips showed a little grin.  He nodded emphatically.  "Correct, Sir." 

  "Stand down Jersey," it came out as a mumble at first in the retelling.  Smelling salts.  WIDE AWAKE then.  Jumped up, hands and feet working themselves into a mix of karate chopping and dancing on a stage with the cane.  The astronaut suit not only deflated but bedraggled.  An iron's burnt crust shape with a white square in the triangle on the arm of the shirt being taken out of the still smoking suit.  "What was you iarnin'?" A metal jacketed syringe plunged into a thigh.  "I'll do that myself next time," the smoldering man grabbed the wrist of the nurse and shook the thing out of her hand.  She smacked him in the face.  Then reached into a black leather medical bag and pulled out a syringe and glass bottle.  Tipped it in the death position.  The man made himself get his other arm out of the suit and jumped his butt off the folding chair and pulled the legs off knobby knees and boxers.  "Get my boots off before they handcuff me," he head butted towards one of us on the floor but turned his whole upper body like catching a punt and knocked his head into the nurse's hands. 

  Wiggle it.  Wiggle it.  "Seems cut in half." 

  "We'll have to see." 

  The medical bag thunked onto broken glass and twisted fuselage part.  Boots and jeans, a sweetly hairy stomach scraped, cutting skin, but a man sliding down the strip of metal between the pilot and co-pilot's seats.  Incinerated. 

  "Who was the first one up out there?" A woozy me.  Shirt neck grabbed, twisted, face coming at...

  BREATHE IT 

 

  "But, but you couldn't have come out of there." 

  "Why?" 

 "There's no there there honey."