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It’s supposed to be a relatively easy mission — drop in, scope out the weapons stores just east of the Iran-Iraq border, and then hightail it back to Iraqi territory for exfil. It’s nothing he hasn’t done a dozen times over.
But the moment that his chute opens, Jack knows that he’s in trouble. The lines come out tangled, throwing him into a spin he can’t arrest. It’s a low altitude jump, and the window to open his backup chute passed before he ever stepped out of the plane. By the time he manages to break away from the primary chute and open the back up, he’s damn landed already. With only the barest amount of help from his chute, Jack slams into the ground. In the moment before he passes out completely, Jack knows he’s completely screwed.
Jack blinks open his eyes and recoils. The sun is bright and harsh on his face, the light like knives to his aching brain. Like a wild night with a few too many beers — his stomach rolls, his head spins, and Jack has to lean over to be sick in the sand. Unlike a night out, Jack’s head is bleeding, his leg throbbing, and his left wrist bent at a very distressing angle.
It takes him a minute to recall that he’s lying in the middle of burning hot sand because he’s somewhere near the Iran-Iraq border, and not just loafing around in the desert somewhere outside Barstow. Jack doesn’t even have to look around to know that the mission is already dead in the water, much like him if he doesn’t drag himself out of the sun sometime soon.
He tries sitting up and regrets it immediately, but it doesn’t change the fact that it has to be done. The heat makes the sand look like water and the whole damn thing spins while he tries to steady himself. Knowing that he can’t get up just yet, Jack goes ahead and unclips himself from his parachute and harness. Normally, he’d find somewhere to hide it, but at this rate Jack doesn’t much care if someone knows he was there. His only objective now is to get out and get home by whatever means necessary — he’s not wasting precious energy on hiding an unmarked parachute.
Every step is agony and Jack knows without a doubt that something in his leg is broken. Thankfully, whatever it is, doesn’t seem to keep him from walking, or rather hobbling, so he’ll count it as a win.
Determined not to die in the middle of a damn sand trap, Jack puts one foot in front of the other, and decidedly tells himself that each step is the last step if only he can put his foot out there. Jack knows that it would be a lot easier to get where he needed to be, if only he could remember where that was. But his compass was shattered and Jack can’t remember the coordinates he was supposed to find. The rock that he smashed his head against on impact, the one that was coated in blood when he woke up, well, apparently it knocked everything he needed to remember right out of his head, because now he’s just walking through the desert with no plan except to find somewhere to be that isn’t out here.
Jack blinks and realizes with relief that the bright sun is no longer in his eyes. It’s a relief, especially as the expected knife-like pains fail to materialize. Still, it takes him a minute to focus and that’s when Jack realizes that he’s not outside at all. He’s in a bed.
Now it’s entirely possible Jack got himself to where he needed to be and just doesn’t remember doing it, after all he has one helluva concussion, but something tells Jack that he doesn’t remember doing it because he didn’t.
“Marhaba.”
Jack turns his head towards the voice and groans, his eyes slipping back closed under the onslaught of pain. A cool, wet rag is placed on his forehead, and Jack hopes that this bodes well since he probably wouldn’t get a soft bed or cool rag in prison.
“Shukran,” Jack replies, more of a mumble than a word. Between this person’s “hello” and Jack’s “thanks” he’s now exhausted his entire Arabic vocabulary. It’s a problem, but one that he hopes can wait until later.
Something is touching Jack’s lips insistently and it drags him from a deep, uncomfortable sleep. He does his best to wake up, but everything feels like mud — his body, his brain, even his eyes. Just being is exhausting.
The tapping on his lips becomes more insistent and Jack finally peels open his eyes to find a smiling man — dark tan skin, light brown eyes, wearing a robe and keffiyeh that shows only a bit of his salt and pepper hair — holding a spoon out. Clearly pleased that Jack is awake, he nudges Jack’s mouth again with the spoon and says something Jack can’t understand.
Whatever is on the spoon smells fantastic, though his persistent concussion induced nausea doesn’t agree. In any case, it’s pretty obvious what the man wants, and Jack, for lack of any other options or ideas, opens his mouth. The stew is warm and savory, not something he recognizes, but good nevertheless. He eats as many spoonfuls as he can manage before his stomach starts to rebel, and then he turns his head away in refusal. The man simply nods and sets the spoon back into the bowl, seemingly pleased at Jack’s effort.
He lays his head back down and closes his eyes.
Pain shoots up his left arm and Jack finds himself unwillingly dragged from sleep. He opens his eyes and there are two men above him, both manipulating his left wrist as they press what looks like a splint to either side of his wrist and forearm. He grits his teeth and tries to breathe through the pain. These people, whoever they are, are clearly trying to help, despite their lack of access to medical facilities. He’s appreciative so he’s going to act right, but damned if he wouldn’t mind a handful of ibuprofen right now.
To Jack’s relief, it doesn’t take long for them to set and wrap his wrist and then they carefully lay his arm down by his side, as though he were so breakable that he required them to be delicate. He wonders how they would feel if they knew he broke it by smashing into the Earth from a few hundred feet up, his fall only partially broken by however much the parachutes slowed him down.
Jack’s not sure exactly how long he’s been here but he can for sure count six different days. So he estimates a week, maybe ten days. He’s lost a lot of time from the concussion, but probably not too much more than that he hopes.
Despite his best efforts, the exfil coordinates are still lost to him as is the name of the operative he was supposed to be meeting. But Jack’s managed to get his hands on a map. It’s not particularly up-to-date, but it’s good enough. If he can find transportation, there’s a relatively straightforward path from here — which he’s finally worked out is a small farming town outside Basra — to Jerusalem, which is the nearest American embassy.
Jack waits until nightfall, until the people he’s staying with are asleep. He almost feels bad leaving like this, no goodbye, no way to thank them for saving his sunburnt, dehydrated ass from certain death. But he also knows that they’d never let him go, not while he’s still so banged up. So he grabs a robe from the laundry line and a keffiyeh and hobbles out into the night.
Three stolen cars later — one in Iraq, another in Jordan, and a final car in Israel — and he’s finally in Jerusalem. The map that he took sent him on a few interesting turns, but it got him this far which feels something like a miracle. Now, he just has to find someone that speaks English who can tell him where the damn embassy is. But with all the American tourists, it’s not as hard as he was worried it might be.
Jack looks over the paperwork for his medical leave — skull fracture, grade three concussion, broken fibula, broken wrist. And those are just the ones that made the cut. Jack’s medical chart was a mile long, but thankfully, aside from the whole bashing his head against a rock and breaking his leg, most of that shit cleared up within a couple weeks.
He scribbles his name at the bottom of the page and passes it back across the desk. The nurses were joking with him about his paid vacation and Jack can’t say that he minds, but even if it weren’t paid, Jack wouldn’t mind.
There’s a cabin on a quiet lake in Minnesota. It has a nice little dock, just big enough for a lawn chair and a cooler, and this time of year the weather should be warm, but not too hot. Jack plans to sit out there, thinking about and doing absolutely nothing for as long as possible. Honestly, it sounds like heaven.
As he packs the few things he’s gathered while in the hospital in Tel Aviv, Jack thinks about the family in Basra. He never even learned their names, or if he did he can’t remember them. There’s so much he can’t remember about those days, but he remembers soft voices, gentle hands, and good food. Those people cared for him with no promise of reward — they were kind simply because they chose to be. He hopes they’re safe, that the impending war doesn’t spill over into their little corner of the world. And he wishes, not for the first time, that his job wasn’t so necessary.