I came across his name unexpectedly, while scanning a list of the war dead online during a slow afternoon at work. It was nearly a year after the fact. Whatever my wife might say about my obsessing on Iraq, this reading of names wasn’t something I did on a regular basis. It happened occasionally when one link led to another, and I found myself scrolling down, looking for the names I know. This was a particularly good list. It was organized by date. It included each dead soldier’s hometown, age and the circumstances of his or her death, when available. That was how I discovered who U.S. Navy Lt. Nathan D. White was, and realized I had witnessed his death. ...
And so we were hanging by the track, smoking, when we saw a bright light arc up from the rear, miles back. The Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems always launched four at a time, four streaks that would burn out partway up the sky, the rockets sailing silently several thousand feet over our heads, until they lit up the opposite horizon, a big whitish-yellow glow to be followed a few moments later by distant booms, way over there where men theoretically were dying.
But this was just one streak, burning steadily as it rose way up to the top of the sky. There, it flared briefly and abruptly changed direction. Now it was streaking back in the direction from which it had come, gradually descending, becoming faint. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the vast and utter darkness of a dusty desert night. The dull noise of a distant explosion followed some time after.
“What the fuck?” said Smitty.
“That was different,” Baxter said.
There probably was not much that would have distinguished us at that moment from any Bedouin who might glance up, momentarily transfixed by a shooting star or a mysterious light in the sky heralding the birth of a prophet, then push on through this desert, having other business to attend to. ...
