Part I:

The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

1. The sinking feeling was slow...gradual...a centimeter at a time she slipped, down, down, down, to the bottom of the sea.

There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.

There's a hole in the bottom of the sea…a grave.

Was it a shark that brushed against her struggling legs? Pumping up and down, slower and slower…The salt stung her eyes.

They'd rip her to shreds, nothing left for anyone to find, like that surfer last year, vanished near the pier of Folly Beach, nothing left for anyone to bury,remains only in the excrement of fish-sinking slowly to the bottom of the sea.

There's a hole in the bottom of the sea…

She inhaled another mouthful of water, sputtering and coughing until vomit rose in her throat- more chum for the sharks. Stay calm, she repeated over and over again, trying to quiet the fear rumbling within her gut, an instinct which screamed PANIC!!

Somewhere above a gull cackled, laughing at her, a drowning human, alone in the overwhelming ocean. The sky darkened. The water churned. How long had she been treading water? Why hadn't she seen a boat? Why didn't her brother find her?

And she slipped another centimeter.

Never fight a rip current, she'd been told again and again, by her father who taught them to swim, by her mother who took them to the beach every Saturday during the summer, and by her grandfather, who made them swim in the ocean for an eternity each morning. And finally the time had come when her brother surpassed her in strength and endurance; she fell behind him early on, then the tide caught her, charging her like some wild creature. She let it take her away.

Her foot touched something rough. She bit back a scream. Big girls don't cry, her father said. A lady is discreet, Nana Leonard told her, sitting in the old dining room, table perfectly set, she controls her emotions. Now, which fork is for salad?

Another centimeter; there's a hole in the bottom of sea, the sharks chanted as they circled her, there's a hole in the bottom of the sea, round and round, down and down. Big girls don't cry.

The water was some sick color, putrid brown, filthy, polluted. It choked her. A lady is discreet. Her legs cramped. How long had she been out there? Hours? Days? The minutes changed like seasons. Surely her brother knew she was lost. He'd swim to shore and get their grandfather; they'd call the coast guard and search for her by air and by boat.

But she heard no engines, nothing but the waves swelling around her and a cackling gull. You're going to die, Harper, it waited to gobble up any bits of flesh missed by the sharks. You're going to die.

Her legs stopped working. "Don't panic; stay calm," she said aloud, her grandfather's mantra; he didn't panic when he stormed the beaches of Normandy, goddamnit, and those Nazi sonsabitches ran like cowards from the cold steel of Sonny Hatley's rifle. What would he say, the Colonel, if he knew she'd given up? But try as she might her legs would not move. The water slipped up to her chin.

There's a girl in the hole in the bottom of the sea

Memories of that day washed away in the flood waters of the present-another time when she'd been lost…

The copter lay 100 yards to the South, a dying insect, heaving its last breath in the scorching desert sands. Inside Lamb Chop and Percy roasted, like birds forgotten in an oven; the smell of their burning flesh assaulted her nostrils and stomach, causing her to up-chuck and dry-heave until her guts were on fire, and she lay exhausted in the sand. Stew lay beside her, dying. He'd pulled her out of the wreckage, and it'd be the death of him.

Fonzi and Smitty were thrown from the copter when it went down. A mechanical failure, God didn't give them the honor of enemy fire; no, a fucking mechanical failure took them down in the middle of the Afghani desert. Fonzi landed in rocky terrain. She found him easily enough; he'd only been thrown fifty feet, maybe sixty. His neck looked funny; Harper saw that first, then the blood splattered rock by his head, the jagged pieces of bone that'd once been his skull and the gray brain matter seeping into the sand.

Smitty hit the blades, still turning when they crashed into the ground. Already carrion birds were circling, swooping down occasionally to grab a piece of the young pilot, just a kid really, barely 25. His high school sweetheart had gone and fucked some Jody six months prior. Harper and Stew stayed up with him all night, drinking Jack Black. They went around waking up every private on base before finally finding one who could work a tattoo gun (and actually had a tattoo gun).

"I could have killed that Jody," she said suddenly, more angry than she'd ever been in her life. "I should have killed him, Stew. We should have taken a plane straight to Ft. Elemdorf and killed that mother-fucker for Smitty, instead of getting drunk as fuck." The bright sun stung her eyes. Big girls don't cry.

"Cap," Stew gasped, drifting back into a painful consciousness. Third-degree burns seared the majority of his skin, his leg so badly broken, that the femur could seen through a tear in the green fabric of his pants. "Tell 'em I died a hero. I just…I just…" He coughed up blood, wheezing like a dying old man, like Grandpa Leonard who smoked his entire life, emphysema finally catching up to him at 75. They'd knock on the door of his room, a nurse letting them in, and sit with him in silence for hours, just listening to his haggard breathing, while Nana sat beside him, face cold as stone. Even then Harper knew death when she heard it. "Please, Harper, I can't take it…please end it."

She squatted next to him, grasping his left hand-the other was mangled beyond recognition- and spoke the same empty words. "You're going to make it, Stewball. Hang in there. Help will be here soon."

"Just shoot me," he begged, his eyebrows singed clear off his face. When they were five her brother had taken a magnifying glass to G.I. Joe; the plastic figure's head melted and warped into something monstrous, and Harper remembered being afraid that something like that could ever happen to her. Did it hurt him, she wandered, and how would anyone ever love something so ugly? Now she stared at that figure, wishing she had it in her to waste him. It was the right thing to do, wasn't it? She pulled her back-up-back-up weapon from her leg holster, a Smith & Wesson .38 special. Stew deserved to die by a true American gun, not that standard issue Beretta mass-produced piece of shit, not even her SIG P220 Carry Elite-a gun that had never failed her-but a Smith & Wesson, as American as apple pie.

She cocked the revolver, her hand trembling like first time she shot a gun, a petite .22 their grandfather gave her for their 7th birthday; people at the shooting range stared at them in bewilderment, an old soldier and his grandchildren, learning to shoot.

She didn't hit the target at all that day.

Her finger cuddled the trigger. "Please," Stew gasped, her Lieutenant, her friend. Just do it, Harper. It was the right thing to do, to end his suffering, like a horse with a broken a leg, like a mad dog, the only way was a bullet to the head.

But he wasn't some wounded animal. He was a man, Lt. Stewart McQueen. He had a family, a daughter, little Maddie, with light brown hair and darling blue eyes, just like her father. "Please, Cap."

What would his wife say when she found out Harper shot him before help arrived? They'd call her a murderer. She'd be court-marshaled and her career flushed down the drain. Please, Harper. But what kind of life would he have? His right hand had to go, probably his leg as well and his face…how will anyone ever love something so ugly? "I can't stand it, Harper." She'd go to jail. "The pain." Maybe they could still save him. "Please, I can't take it."

"Shut-up!" She yelled, suddenly angry at him for putting her in this position. It wasn't fair. "Just shut-up."

A gurgling sound rose from his throat. His chest heaved one last time. "Stew? Stew I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" Harper looked into his eyes, no longer a clear blue, they glazed over with death. Twice she failed him that day.

She bit back the tears. Big girls don't cry.

The minutes changed like seasons. How long had they been out there? Baking in the roasting sun, smoke still rising from the fallen copter; it was a gradual slide, dying of thirst, a centimeter at a time.

Everything had slipped out of her control. Her friends were dead. They died on her watch. The sand burned her eyes. Someone had to know. Percy must have radioed a mayday call, with all the GPS tracking shit, they had to be looking. Colonel MacAfee, he'd send out another copter, one mechanical failure free, to pick up the bodies and any survivors.

The water was all gone, food, med-packs; pain shot through her right knee. It was always the right knee, since a mid-season game her last year at the academy, when she'd been fouled by a girl from Navy they called Cookie Monster, and her knee, perhaps already weakened from years of pounding up and down the court, twisted sickly beneath her; the year she was supposed to lead her team to the championship, and she was out.

A black snake slithered onto Stewball's body. "Get," she said, subconsciously backing away. The snake's tongue darted in and out of its mouth, as if that were its way of licking its chops. It slid across Stew's chest. "Get off of him!" she ordered. "I'm an officer you little piece of shit, and I do not tolerate insubordination." But the snake didn't care if she was Captain or some grunt, they were all the same. She felt suddenly very silly, commanding a snake like she would an insolate recruit, and she laughed at that-a crazy noise echoing off the sand.

The heat was getting to her. Sweat poured down her face. The snake stared at her; its beady black eyes boring into her own. It occurred to her that she knew those eyes; she'd seen them before, somewhere…where? In and out, the split tongue darted, servant of evil, Harper, it hissed, he's coming for you.

"What?" she stammered, shaking her head as if to snap herself back into reality. It couldn't be real, just a dream. They were still in that little village, where she spoke to the men and women, making friends, searching for military combatants (or whatever the hell they were called now). The children ran about the dirty little huts. She'd fallen asleep was all. The snake laughed. Silly girl, you're wide awake, and he's coming for you. "Why me?" Your brother's not here to save you this time.

She scrambled away, like a coward, a silly little girl afraid of a damn snake-a talking snake-and it was right: Her brother wouldn't be lifting her out of the water this time.

The sand began to shift beneath her, round and round it twirled, like those damn sharks she'd imagined when she was fourteen and drowning-but she'd felt them brush against her legs-round and round, down and down, the sand was going to gobble her up, and she'd be digested for a thousand years, or die a thousand deaths, and Cal wouldn't be there to pull her out, and no Jedi knight would swoop down to save her.

Harper turned her back and ran from the forming pit-if her grandfather had seen he would have snarled his lip in disgust. He didn't run away on D-Day, no, he stormed those Normandy beaches goddamnit, and fifty Nazi sonsabitches, fell victim to his Garand M1(a gun he'd given her brother, but she got the Sauer 38H he pulled off a dead German). Her head lowered in shame.

Harper, it called, a woman's voice, beautiful and terrifying, Harper. That was it; she'd lost her mind, section 8, talking snakes and sand pits. You have to let go, Harper. Tears welled up her eyes.

Big girls don't cry.

A lady is discreet.

In every direction the sand gave way. The sky darkened. You have to let go. Let go? Let go of what, her sanity? If they found her before she died of thirst would they laugh at the sun-burnt little skirt, trying to be a soldier, rambling on about talking snakes and sand pits, section 8-and she hadn't even been in the shit- would they laugh and say, this is why women have no place in the military, listen to this crazy bitch?

He's coming, Harper, the snake hissed.

You have to let go, the woman's voice cooed.

And as she conceded her defeat there in the desert, plopping down in the sand, waiting to be consumed, USAF Captain Harper Annabelle Leonard sang softly: There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.