Rosario,
By Jacqlyn Cope
The air was thick with salt from our bodies that had been sweating in camo uniforms and flack vests, crammed in a C-17 cargo plane like GI Joes in a kid’s toy drawer. Spit had collected on my shoulder and across my cheek as I roused from sleep and wiped it with the sleeve of my uniform. The staleness of my breath shocked me as I yawned, but I was too tired to care if it had bothered anyone else. I looked back at Avila, the man that had let me lay my tired head on his shoulder during the flight, and I could see a dribble of my spit that marked his jacket.
“Nice sleep Copey?” he asked me with a smile, pushing my crooked helmet back into place with his hand.
“I guess. Thanks for that,” I said, Laughing as I pointed at the slobber on him.
“No big deal,” he waved his palm over it as if he was erasing it away.
The back ramp of the C-17 opened into the darkness of Bagram Air Force base, and I remember looking up into the sky and not being able to see any stars. Even to this day I try to remember a single star, a light in the distance, or even the moon, and my memory fails me each time. Jet engines rumbled in my ear and the only thing that illuminated our existence was the artificial lights from the wings of the plane. Since an IDF (Indirect Fire) attack was underway all the lights had to be shut off and the reflectors on the concrete runway caught their last glint and faded out too. It was only the swallowing darkness of the night that hid us in our fortress and kept us from the possibility of being killed.
On The Edge 
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