The bombing started last night. Or should I say this morning? We had a bird’s-eye view from the hotel and it was gut-wrenching and horrific and amazing. It was a gorgeous, starry night in Baghdad and the bombs turned this city into hell. An office tower exploded close to the hotel and the heat was like an oven.

Am being careful.

Love U

J

K—

Seventeen hours of bombing and still counting. There will be nothing left when it finally stops. Back to work.

K—

Sorry it’s been so long since the last letter. The team is out so much on assignment that I can’t get five seconds to myself. But I’m good. Tired. Hell, more than that. Exhausted. The first US female POW was captured last night and I have to say that it hit us all hard. I hope that someday I can tell you how it feels to see all this, but I can’t think that way now, not if I want to sleep. Anyway, there’s talk that the Iraqis are going to ignite oil wells in Kuwait and we’re off to cover it. Kisses to Marah and more to you.

Kate stared down at the last fax she’d received. It was dated February 21, 1991, almost one week ago.

She sat in her living room, watching the war coverage on television. The last six weeks had been the longest, hardest days of her life. She was waiting, always waiting, for a phone call that said he was coming home, for a special report that heralded the end of the war. Now they were saying that the final allied assault should begin any day. A ground assault. That scared her as much as or more than anything else because she knew her Johnny. Somehow, he’d end up on a tank, directing a story that no one else could tell.

The waiting had worn her down to nothing. She’d lost fifteen pounds and hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since their night at the hotel.

She folded the latest fax in half and placed it on the small pile of others. Every day she told herself she wouldn’t unfold them and reread his words; every day she returned to them.

Today she’d begun several chores and left all of them unfinished. Instead, she sat on the couch, watching television. She’d been here for more than two hours.

Marah stood by the coffee table, clutching its wooden edge in her pink, pudgy hands, swaying like a break-dancer and babbling in baby talk. Finally, she plopped down on her diaper-padded butt and immediately began to crawl away from the couch.

“Stay by Mommy,” Kate said automatically. On TV, the oil wells were burning; the air above them was a thick cloud of black smoke.