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couldn’t understand it. Why would Father choose this man? He had to know how difficult this would be for an angel with no experience when it came to dealing with human emotion.
    “ How long?” she asked pushing her doubts aside for now.
    “ Seven days. He must make a decision within that time.”
    “ Then I will go now.”

Chapter 5: Shooting Star
     
    Jackson squeezed his eyes shut against the pain that wracked his body. A high-pitched ringing in his ears vibrated inside his throbbing head. As the smells of smoke and fire filled his nostrils, he forced his eyes open so that he could assess was what going on around him. He could faintly hear the squawking of the radio and the moans and groans of people in pain as the ringing began to subside.
    He slowly rotated his head to the left, and felt his heart plummet into his stomach. Orange flames filled his vision as well as the terrified faces of the men in the back of the flipped Humvee. He forced down nausea and waited for his eyes to focus before his hand went to his seatbelt.
    “ What the hell was that, Sergeant?” asked a voice from the back seat. It belonged to Ed Reedley, an eighteen year old private on his first tour. His wide blue eyes were filled with fear and unshed tears as Jackson turned back around to look at the shaking kid. Jackson noticed that his arm was twisted at an unnatural angle and hanging limply at his side. Blood oozed from a nasty gash on his face.
    “ Deep buried IED,” Jackson said, as he fumbled with his seatbelt. Once he was free, he lifted his arms to brace himself as he fell head first to the roof of the Humvee. “We must have rolled right over it. It flipped us when it went off.”
    “ How’s Scott?” he asked, his voice wavering a bit.
    Jackson looked over at the unconscious driver and frowned. He reached out and pressed his gloved fingers against the base of Scott’s throat. The fluttering there filled Jackson with relief. “He’s out cold, but he’s still alive. How ‘bout you Richards?” he asked the second passenger in the backseat. “Can either of you reach your seatbelts?”
    “ I think my right arm is broken Sergeant,” said Reedley. “But I might be able to reach across with my left. And Richards just passed out.”
    Jackson let out a string of curses as he crawled toward the door on his side. “Work on getting that goddamn seatbelt off, Reed. You’re going to have to help me get Richards and Scott out of here.”
    “ Roger, Sergeant.”
    Grateful that the windows of the massive truck were too thick to have shattered, Jackson slid across the ceiling of the truck and reached for the door handle. As he pushed the heavy door open with a groan, he wondered where the hell the occupants of the other three trucks were. Someone should have come to check on them by now. He had at least been expecting the medic.
    Just as he reached for the door handle, another loud explosion filled his ears and the ground rumbled beneath them. The explosion was followed by the sound of gunshots.
    “ Shit!” Jackson spat as he swung the door open and crawled out through the door. The third truck in the convoy had been hit by a rocket propelled grenade, or RPG. As he struggled to his feet, he fought against the pain that wracked his body and the dizziness that clouded his mind. Within seconds he realized that the improvised explosive device had only been the beginning of a complex ambush. He could see that the Humvee that had been hit was now no more than a flaming hunk of twisted metal…
     
     
     
     
    Jackson tipped the vodka bottle up to his lips as he stepped out onto the fire escape. After his hellish dreams had torn him from sleep at two o’clock in the morning, he had been unable to go back to sleep. The television had been a useless distraction. He had not been able to tolerate it for more than twenty minutes. Push-ups, sit-ups, and the barbells in the corner of his living room had kept him occupied for another hour. Loading