The First Billion

Gavallan glanced down at the child in his arms, a frail boy swaddled in a sky blue blanket. He'd been awarded the provisional name of Henry, and the name would stick until his mother could come to long enough to provide him a more permanent one. He'd been born one week before, full term, 4 pounds 2 ounces, 14 inches long. To look at him, he was a healthy child. His features were well-formed. Broad nose. Full lips. Dignified chin. His eyes were closed, and a cap of curly black hair crowned his brown skin. But the experienced eye knew differently and ticked off the indicators of the infant's affliction with weary ease. The bluish, trembling lips. The drawn cheeks. The eyes twitching beneath the lids and the head that every minute or so jerked along with them. Ataxic aphasia, they called it, a condition prevalent among children born to crack-addicted mothers.

A tap on the window drew Gavallan's attention.

"Coffee?" asked Rosie Chiu, the head duty nurse, pointing at her own mug. If she was surprised to see a man wearing a dinner jacket beneath his operating gown in the pediatric intensive care ward, she didn't show it. He'd been coming too long for that. Always at night. Always alone.

Gavallan shook his head and said no.

He'd first visited St. Jude's eight years earlier on a Friday evening benefactors' tour. The donors were lectured about the miracle of magnetic resonance imaging, the latest advances in open-heart surgery, and the newest cures in the war against children's leukemia. But it wasn't until Gavallan made it out of the neonatal intensive care unit that he grew angry. His neck grew hot, his suit two sizes too small. Like little Henry, he'd become twitchy all over. He wasn't sure why, but suddenly, he was mad- white-hot, steaming mad. Maybe it was the relentless sunniness of the place- the yellow walls decorated with dancing murals, the cheery nurses, the upbeat smiles- contrasted against the bleak reality of the situation. Even if these kids survived, what did they face? A life lived in medical institutions, state-run homes, or at best foster families. These kids with underdeveloped lungs and diseased eyes, with hair-trigger emotions and chronic aphasia. They had no right to their expectations, he'd railed silently.

But ten minutes later when Nurse Chiu finished her talk about the hospital's need for volunteers willing to come and walk the infants- to help them grow comfortable with the touch of another human being, to teach them to accept the gaze of another set of eyes, and, yes, just to keep the noisy little gremlins quiet- he'd found himself alone agreeing to return. And he wondered whose expectations he was challenging. His or the kids'?

Gavallan shut his eyes. He couldn't handle another body laid at his feet. Oh no. Byrnes's call had freed him of illusions. Konstantin Kirov was just as Cate had described him- "ruthless and conniving, and maybe even more." This time Gavallan could not look elsewhere for excuses. This time he couldn't fall back on bungled intelligence or fumbled orders. This time it was up to him.

"Don't know if I can handle this one, chief," he whispered to Henry's sleeping brown face. "Think you can give me a hand?"

And he marveled in disbelief at how once upon a time he'd been a warrior.

The whine in his ear built slowly, as it had in the plane itself. A steady high-pitched cry that signaled the powering-up of the aircraft's avionics package. He was going back to the Gulf. To Saudi Arabia. To Iraq. To Desert Storm. To the night the infrared cameras on the underside of Darling Lil recorded the tape that sat even now in his flight locker. The tape titled Day 40- Abu Ghurayb Presidential Complex. He was going to his own private little corner of hell, and his familiarity with the territory did little to lessen his terror over the trip.

"Thunder three-six. Red one. How do you read?"

"Roger, Red one. This is Thunder three-six. Ready to copy words. Which way to Wonderland?"

Gavallan is sitting in the cockpit of Darling Lil, far out on runway two-niner at King Khalid Air Force Base deep in the Saudi Arabian desert. It is 01:15 Continental European Time, the morning of February 25, 1991. Day 40 of Desert Storm. Ground operations have begun twenty-four hours earlier and the vaunted Republican Guard is surrendering en masse. Morale is high. But Gavallan is ever cautious. When will Saddam unleash his biological weapons? Is he waiting until the last minute to launch a nuke at Israel? What exactly is the Iraqi dictator keeping up his sleeve?

Despite the cockpit's airtight seal, the desert air seeps in and surrounds him. It smells of jet fuel and sweat and a million square miles of superheated sand. Gavallan loves the scent. Inside its arid folds, he can taste his country's victory.