Clyde was not sleeping. He had hardly slept in three days, since the ground war had been launched and Desiree’s unit had gone thundering forward into Iraq. Casualties were light. But earlier today he had seen a report that several members of Desiree’s division had been killed when they had hit a mine in their Humvee. They were medics who had been coming to the aid of an armored personnel carrier that had been struck by friendly fire. At least two of the dead medics were female.
As soon as Clyde had heard this report, he had known in his heart that Desiree had been in that Humvee—probably driving it. That would be just like her. He had called the Pentagon hot line for families of servicepeople over and over, but it was always busy. Right now at least a couple of dozen Dhonts were awake around Forks County, hitting the auto redial buttons on their telephones, trying to get through. Clyde had given up and settled into his La-Z-Boy in front of the television, waiting for details to come through on CNN.
So far the Iraqis had not used any nonconventional weapons. Though that shouldn’t have surprised Clyde, of all people. They’d been raining Scuds on Israel, but it seemed that Scuds weren’t accurate enough to do much damage unless they had chemical or biological warheads. The Israelis were controlling themselves, just barely.
His nose had been itching for two days, and he had just become conscious of it. One of those big baling-wire nose hairs had made contact with the opposite side of his nostril. He went to the bathroom, groping his way in the dim light scattered off the TV tube, and got his rotary nose-hair clipper, then settled down in front of the TV again, turned it on, and began to nuzzle the clipper around, waiting for the satisfying click that it would make when it severed the offending hair.
The buzzing of the trimmer almost drowned out the sound of the telephone. He snatched it up, afraid that it might have been ringing for some time as he’d sat there grinding away. “Hello?”
There was a long pause, during which he could hear only static. Then some sound broke through: a deep, rhythmic whumping that got suddenly loud and then quickly died away. The sound, Clyde realized, of a helicopter passing by at high speed.
“Hello?” he said again.
“Hi, it’s me,” Desiree said. “Talk loud, baby. My Humvee hit a mine. My ears are still ringing.”
“Where are you, honey?” Clyde blurted out before he had time to get choked up. “Phone booth,” Desiree said. “Oh, wow!”
A loud whining and roaring sound came through for a few moments, then died away. Clyde could hear a lot of people whooping and cheering at the other end. “That was an M-one tank going by!” Desiree said.
“Where’s that phone booth, sweetie?”
“Some little crossroads in Iraq.”
“You’re in Iraq?”
“Yeah. But I gotta go—lots of people are waiting. I just wanted to remind you to take the meat out of the freezer—some of it’s about to expire.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Clyde said. “You hurry home now, okay?”
“That’s the plan, Clyde,” she said. “That’s the whole idea.”