There was an office telephone console on the desk in front of Luke, and after several tries, he had managed to dial out to an international operator, who had put the call through. The handset was pressed to his right ear, and he inserted a finger in his left ear to drown out the clatter and buzz of typing, conversations, laughter, and just plain noise all around him.

His heart skipped a beat.

Pick it up.

The ringing stopped.

“Hello?”

It was her. Becca.  Amazingly, she sounded clear, as if she were sitting right in front of him. He pictured her standing, or actually, more likely sitting, in the kitchen of the country house, the old phone mounted on the wall, the handset attached to a long, curly black wire.

“How you doing, baby?” he said.

“Luke?”

“The very same.”

She breathed heavily. “Oh my God. I’ve been so worried about you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay. This is the first chance I’ve had to call.”

There was trepidation in her voice. “Did you go on your mission yet?”

“Yeah. It’s all set. We did it this morning. It went off without a hitch. We were back here by lunchtime, had a couple of debriefings, and… you know.”

The air seemed to leak out of her. “That’s a relief. When are you coming home?”

“As soon as we can. Tomorrow, maybe. Hopefully tomorrow.”

“Good. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too,” he said. “I can’t wait to see you.” He meant every word of it. He couldn’t wait to see his wife. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. He wanted nothing more than to get on a plane. He would do it right now, if he could.

A shadow passed across his mind—in an hour, he and Ed Newsam were supposed to get on a helicopter to the western desert and investigate that camp. He had a bad feeling about that. Everything seemed to give him a bad feeling these days. He wondered if there would ever be a return to the time before the Afghanistan mission, a time before this terrible feeling of dread that seemed to follow him everywhere.

“How are you feeling?” he said to Becca.

“Honey, I am very, very pregnant now. It just seemed to hit me after you left. I feel like I’ve gained ten pounds in the past day. I’m eating like crazy. I think this is going to be a very big boy.”

“But no labor pains?”

The thought of Becca going into labor while he was away was another point of dread for him. He wanted to be there when his son was born. He wanted to be with her and support her, and he wanted to witness the miracle himself.

He had seen a lot of death in the past fourteen years. It would be a very nice change to watch life begin.