Private

One



TO THE BEST OF my understandably shaky recollection,

the first time I died it went something like this.

Mortar rounds were thumping all around me, releasing

what sounded like a shower of razor blades. I was carrying

Marine Corporal Danny Young over my shoulder, and I loved

this guy. He was the toughest soldier I’d ever fought beside,

funny as hell, and best of all, he was hopeful - his wife back

in West Texas was pregnant with their fourth kid.

Now his blood bubbled down my flight suit, splashing on

my boots like water from a drainpipe. I ran across rocky ground in the dark, and I choked out to Danny, “I’ve got you; I’ve got you. Just stay with me, you hear me?”

I lowered him to the ground a few yards away from the

helicopter, and suddenly there was a concussive explosion, as though the ground had blown up around me. I felt a stunning hammer strike to my chest, and that was the end.

I died. I passed to the other side. I don’t even know how

long I was gone.

Del Rio told me later that my heart had stopped.

I just remember swimming up to the light, and the pain,

and the awful reek of aviation fuel.

My eyes flashed open and there was Del Rio in my face,

his hands pressing down on my chest. He laughed when my

eyes opened - and at the same time tears ran down his

cheeks. He said, “Jack, you son of a bitch, you’re back.”

A dense curtain of oily black smoke rolled over us. Danny

Young lay right there beside me, his legs splayed at weird

angles, and behind Del Rio was the helicopter, burning bright

white, getting ready to blow.

My buddies were still in there. My friends. Guys who had

risked their lives for me.

I choked out a few words. “We’ve got to get them out of

there.”

Excerpt from PRIVATE with permission from Little,Brown and Company, New York, NY Copyright ©