Chương 109: Playing GI Joe (10/03/1993 | 07:05 AM PST)

DATE: Sunday, October 3, 1993 LOCATION: La Jolla, California | The Sand Castle LOCAL TIME: 07: 05 AM PDT (05: 05 PM EAT in Mogadishu) My name is Heather O'Rourke, and for the last two years, I've been trying to learn how to be a normal teenager. The phone call from Jason came at dawn, shattering the quiet Saturday morning I had finally started to get used to.

"Heather, turn on the TV," his voice had been tight, stripped of its usual easy humor.

"Chad's unit is in Mogadishu, Somalia. A massive firefight broke out this morning. Two helicopters are down. My dad just ordered a full recall at the Arcology, and everyone is gathering at the Sand Castle. I'm pulling down your street right now. Do you want me to pick you up?" I didn't even answer. I just dropped the receiver, grabbed my jacket, and ran out the front door. Now, I was sitting on the center couch in the Tillman living room, my fingers locked completely white into Jason's hand.

The air in the Sand Castle was suffocatingly heavy, thick with the scent of untouched food and a communal panic that seemed to vibrate the very walls. The entire family was clustered around the massive, custom monitor matrix built into the limestone wall. On the left screen, the early morning CNN broadcast washed over us in a sickening, electric green that pulsed with static. On the screen, the world was ending in real-time.

The broadcast layout was a nightmare of low-resolution chaos: columns of oily black smoke rising from burning tires, armed crowds running through dirt alleyways, and the cold, terrifying crawl of the news ticker across the bottom: CRISIS IN MOGADISHU. TWO BLACK HAWKS DOWN. RANGERS SURROUNDED. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Tucked tightly against my side was Chad's eleven-year-old sister, Amy.

She was trembling, her small hands wrapped completely around my arm, while Jason sat on my other side like a literal wall of iron. He kept his thumb sweeping across my knuckles in a steady, reassuring rhythm, keeping me anchored while the world fell apart on the glass. But my own mind was three thousand miles away, trapped in a memory from a Hollywood soundstage three years ago. I could still feel the scratchy wool of the red prop blanket from The Sixth Sense set.

I could still hear the flat, infuriatingly calm cadence of Chad's voice when he dropped the bomb: I'm enlisting. I leave for Army basic training in October. I remembered the raw, blinding fury that had boiled up in my chest. I had screamed at him right there in front of Spielberg's crew.

"You're fourteen! You want to go sleep in the mud and get shot at? Am I just supposed to pretend it's totally normal that you are abandoning me to run off and play G. I. Joe?" And then, my voice dropping to a desperate, broken whisper before I turned my back on him: "Don't become one of the ghosts. Come back." Now, watching the swarming Somali militias converging on the isolated crash sites, a suffocating wave of guilt threatened to crush my throat. He hadn't listened.

He had forged the papers, packed the duffel bag, and marched straight into the meat grinder. I stared blindly at the burning technicals on the news feed, my vision blurring with hot, silent tears. I couldn't see past the smoke. I couldn't see the layout of the streets. And in the chaotic frenzy of the mob swarming the screen, I had absolutely no idea that a lone figure was already moving across the rooftops above them.