Chapter Text
Beneath the plane, vast expanses of terracotta canyons and hills extended out, with the charcoal black tents of the Pashto nomads dotted around like constellations of freckles on a human form. The plane shifted course slightly, tilting in the air swooping downward, and JJ’s attention was drawn to the window, the curves and ripples of the terrain stretched to fill the entire view from the aircraft’s window. It was as though the land was an abstract oil painting one would find in an upscale gallery.
When the plane eventually landed on Camp Bastion’s airstrip, it did so with a bump, desert winds serving as a hostile welcoming committee. JJ felt almost dwarfed by the landscape – what had seen so small from the sky was now indomitable. She was greeted by a plump and ruddy faced colonel from the British forces. Camp Leatherneck, the American contingent’s base, did not possess an airstrip, and so JJ had landed on British territory. He shook her hand dutifully, his hand pressed uncomfortably on the small of her back as he walked her across the strip and to the small convoy of waiting trucks.
Just beyond the airstrip’s looming watchtower, a smattering of ghaf trees stood with their branches splitting against the sky like Neptune’s fork. Underneath the tallest of the trees a group of young men in fatigues sat about languidly, huddled into the pitiful shade provided by the thin foliage.
“Smith! Marshall!” The colonel called out sharply, drawing the attention of two of the men. “You think you could bring yourselves to get off your backsides and escort Agent Jareau over to Leatherneck?”
The men were on their feet in an instant, offering a brief salute to their commander before gesturing for JJ to follow them with a, “Right this way, Ma’am.”
The drive to the American fraction of the military outpost was short. JJ was grateful for the air-conditioning in the armored truck, as though it was November, the sun was relentlessly beating down on the scorched earth with the passion of a raging bull. The rumbling tires kicked up clouds of dust as the truck jerked onward, and JJ watched through a tinted window as the sand and dirt danced peculiarly against the blistering winds. In the distance, russet hills towered over canvas tents and clay-packed structures. The peaks interweaved with the outcroppings of rocks and ochre sand dunes as if they were wedges of clay molded together by the gentle but firm hands of a potter. Only flanks of hardy shrubbery differentiated the crests from the terrain beneath, as the rocky hills reached up as though they longed to be kissed by the cirrus clouds floating peacefully above.
The truck came to a halt in the belly of the American camp and a soldier wielding a gun almost the length and breadth of this torso opened the door for her. Stepping out, a shroud of heat settled around her shoulders, the walls of arid air almost as tall as the hills.
A familiar face weaved its way through the crowd of soldiers and the native Afghanis who had found employment on the base.
“Chief Strauss,” JJ said, confusion furrowing in her brow.
“Agent Jareau,” Chief Strauss returned with a reassuring handshake, her eyes squinting against the sun. “Welcome.”
It was loud on the base. The air was crackling with conversations and movement, and JJ had to strain to listen to Strauss’ words.
“I’ve been ordered to brief you on your new assignment. You’ll be splitting your time between here and DC.”
“So I haven’t been drafted?” The joke was as incongruous within the setting as her business suit. JJ pulled self-consciously at her blazer as Strauss continued with her explanations, before punctuating it with an insistence that JJ get changed.
Introductions followed at a rapid-fire pace. Later, when asked about her first day in Leatherneck, JJ would admit she did not remember everything, but one thing had stuck in her mind.
“Don’t get comfortable. This place changes people. I can’t imagine what it will do to someone like you.”
Those words had rolled around JJ’s head like the tiny silver ball in the cheap fairground maze toys as she stared down at her food tray on the table. She had not eaten from such a tray since high school. The food was not bad; in fact, it had surprised her. There had been barbecue chicken wings, corned beef, rice, beans, and a small salad bar on offer in the mess hall. JJ, who was used to eating gas station food in podunk midwestern towns more often than not, was comforted by the typically American fare. She was sitting alone on a long plastic bench, picking at the remnants of her meal, occasionally stealing glances around the bustling tent, and of soldiers chatting noisily. The words ‘someone like you’ had chipped their way under her skin, along with the way his eyes had scornfully roamed over her attire, her hair, her face.
She was glad for the distraction when Matt Cruz appeared, sitting down across from her and giving her a friendly smile.
“How are you finding it?”
“You know,” JJ smiles back as she speaks, “it sure is different.”
“That it is. I was coming over to ask if you needed to be shown to your bunk?”
“My bunk?”
“Your tent. Don’t worry – it isn’t an actual bunk. As FBI agents we get a little more privacy than the rest of the boys.”
JJ is not entirely sure what she had expected, though she is relieved to see that the tent is single occupancy, a small, fawn colored canvas tent sitting at the end of an assembly line of much larger tents. She had to stoop slightly as she slipped inside of the unzipped entrance, and once she was inside it took her eyes a moment to acclimatize to the dim lighting. There was a small green cot, a standard issue trunk, and a portable electric lamp that had seen better days. JJ gratefully sank down onto the cot. Her knees came up to her chest and she allowed her head to rest atop them. It was a little after 9 P.M. (making it only 11:30 A.M. in DC), and despite the little sleep she had managed on the flight, she wasn’t too tired. She knew she would not be able to sleep just yet, but she lied back against the rough fabric of the cot and stared up at the way the moonlight managed to still filter through the thick cloth of her new, temporary home. She liked that; she was comforted by the dim shine.
After about an hour, JJ wasn’t too sure, she heard the noisy thunder and growl of convoy trucks heading out to patrol for insurgents who used the cover of darkness to place IEDs. And then, it was quiet. JJ waited a little longer before sitting up from her bed with a sigh. She cocked an ear in the direction of the tent’s zipper and was contented that she wouldn’t be disturbed as she stepped out of the tent and made her way towards the razor wire fencing that separated Camp Leatherneck from the wilds of the Registan desert.
JJ looked up at the night sky. The night sky looked back. Thousands of stars were spilled across the darkness above her like grains of rice on black granite. It felt almost dizzying. The light pollution in DC had so selfishly hidden away such views, and the last time she had seen stars like this had been in East Allegheny. JJ’s thoughts skittered away to her childhood, and to her father laying on his back propped up on his arms as he lounged on the tattered picnic blanket in-between herself and Rosalyn. His eyes were cast upward as he explained the constellations hanging over them; he would point out ursa minor, recalling how it had been visible from the hospital room the night Rosalyn had been born. JJ, ever the younger sister, had demanded to know what constellation had been out when she had arrived. Her father would confess that he didn’t know – she had been born in the morning, before the morning paper was even out for press, he would tell her, with a wink and a “You always were in a hurry to get going.”
The stargazing had stopped after Rosalyn had died, and even in the years before her death it had become a moment shared only between JJ and her father. Rosalyn had been holed up in her room, cassettes of Run DMC and Madonna blaring out from the crack under her closed door.
“Teenagers,” JJ’s father would say with a good-natured eyeroll as he rolled the blanket out on the grass in their backyard.
It was thus no surprise that JJ’s first purchase for a not yet born Henry had been the ‘Baby Star’ book. Perhaps the way that those childhood memories had etched themselves so carefully into the way she loved people would have surprised JJ, but she had long since made a commitment to herself to not dwell over thoughts of the father she no longer knew. Her recollections of him were dull now, she had forgotten the smell of his aftershave and whether he was left or right-handed.
JJ could remember Perseus, Orion, Ursa Minor, and her favorite – Cassiopeia. One night, after her mother had drawn the blankets around her and called her goodnights from the doorframe, her father had sat on the bed next to her. He had told her that Cassiopeia was a Greek goddess who angered Poseidon, the god of the sea, with her arrogance and boastfulness about her beauty. The next time the constellation had wandered into their sky, JJ had extended her pointer finger above her, reverently tracing the lightening bolt form of the stars. Later, she had stood upon a small plastic stepstool and scrutinized herself in the mirror. She had stared at the gap in the front of her mouth where adult teeth had not quite grown in, and wondered with a child’s innocence how a woman’s beauty could wield such power.