W.W.
"Josh, stop shouting, I can hear you fine." Donna adjusted her floppy hat, trying to block out some of the rising sun. Nighttime in Washington made it just dawn in Gaza, and alabaster skin does not freckle, it just burns. She repositioned her phone a little farther from her ear.
"Sorry," Josh said loudly but more clearly over the cell. "I just said I've missed you too. So, what kind of trouble have you been stirring up there? You and what's-her-name, Nancy's girl?" She could hear his dimples in his voice.
"Not much trouble, no. At least, nothing that will require CJ spin to fix." She noticed that guy over by the door again. Tall, short hair, intense looking. She thought she'd seen him earlier chatting with Kate in the hotel bar, but she wasn't sure.
"So, Donna, about the house hunting? I found, well, there was one place, you see," Josh was rambling. He felt weird, standing in the empty kitchen, surrounded by title paperwork, trying to explain that he had bought a house.
"Great, I can't wait to see your list." Donna looked around as the CODEL prepared to head off to their cars. She saw he tall, dark haired man eying her coolly as she lowered her voice and blushed into the phone, "I miss you."
"Oh, yes. You too. I mean, I miss you, too." Josh ran his hand through his hair and stopped his pacing. "Listen, I saw this one house that was really different, and I don't know why, but I figured… Donna?"
"What? I'm losing you." Donna frowned as she entered the hotel breezeway. "Call you tomorrow?"
"I can't hear you Donna!" Josh knew that shouting into the cell was useless. Digital cells either have a signal or they don't, not like the old analogue phones. He shouted again, "Love you! Call me tomorrow."
Josh stood in the kitchen, and wondered if he could grab some things from the hotel and sleep in the new house. He had to make a list of all the things to be done before Donna could see it, starting with Astroturf removal and whitewashing the whole place. Normally he'd walk around thinking of things and calling them out. Donna would follow along behind him, recording, organizing and (frankly) improving his list. He'd have to manage without her for this one night.
"Where does she keep those note cards?" he wondered aloud.
W.W.
The Irishman nodded with a tight smile to Kate and Donna as they climbed into the big black Suburbans, so American. Everyone else used Land Rovers, or the new Toyota trucks that were fashionable throughout the Middle East as cheap paramilitary vehicles. But not the Americans. They brought their giant petrol-gulping SUVs with them even to a place as poor as Gaza.
He moved into position, and snapped a couple of pictures. The contrast, the two blonde women, so pale against the giant black trucks, made for a great composition. Over the years, he'd actually become quite good at photography, rather to his surprise. When he'd been scouting locations in London for the PIRA, he'd even won an award, back in '84, for the Harrods bomb pictures. Ironic, that's what it was.
As the vehicles rolled out, the Irishman reached down to his belt, where his cell phone stuck out amid all the meters and batteries and paraphernalia of his ostensible trade. He watched the lead truck roll past the gate, and counted softly under his breath.
"Two… Three… Four… and smile!" His thumb hit the speed dial on his phone.
Even though he knew it was coming, the explosion rocked him on his feet. He let it, not wanting to call attention to himself. He was careful not to be the first to run towards the burning cars, nor to be the last.
He started shooting pictures, a look of practiced grief and horror on his face.
"Might as well pay the bills," he thought, snapping a picture of a floppy hat, soaked with blood, flapping in the wind as smoke rose into the skies over Palestine.
W.W.
Sam Seaborn looked over his wineglass, empty for the last half hour, and finally smirked at his companion. He started to slide back into the jacket he had left folded over the chair.
"Joey, it's late. I appreciate the chance to catch up, but… it's late."
"You always did have a way with words, Sam," she said, trying not to wake her daughter, who was sleeping on a pallet in front of the sofa.
His rueful grin was interrupted by a strobe, a fire-alarm flash coming from a black box by Joey's phone. He could also hear the buzzing of the vibrating alarm pager she always wore, even as she jumped up to read the incoming text message.
The light stopped blinking when she turned on her text unit, but Sam noted her surprise as she tried to read the message. She fumbled for her pocket and emerged with a code card, which she swiped through the text unit, for all the world like a soccer mom paying for gas at the 7-11. Her shoulders went tight and she grabbed for her PDA, texting a message even as she read.
"Sam," she called out a little too loudly, "the TV, put on CNN."
He reached across the sleeping child, and turned on the television just in time to catch the end of the breaking news scroll.
"Americans Dead in Gaza Blast," read the white letters on a deep blue background.
"I need to go as soon as they get here for Samantha," Joey told him, still typing. He waited till she looked up, and caught her eye.
"I'll stay with her. You need to go."
She crinkled her brow. "You don't have to do that. I don't want to cause you any more trouble."
"No trouble," he said, taking his jacket back off and watching the news with half his attention, and the sleeping toddler with the other.
W.W.
Toby sat up suddenly, looking around. It was late, and quiet. Andi's mom had the twins, and his apartment was back to its old brooding silence. He must have nodded off, reading.
He was reading Dickens. It was a guilty pleasure, something he was careful to conceal because it didn't really fit his persona. The truth was, he loved Dickens. The Victorian grandeur of the prose, the wit, the rich language, he savored it all. "A Christmas Carol" was almost as good as pie, or a glass of smooth bourbon and a decent cigar.
He marked his place, and stood up, stretching the kinks out of his back and hips. It was then he noticed his pager, bouncing on the carpet. It must have vibrated off his desk, and that was what had woken him up from his dozing.
He called in.
"Signals room? This is Toby Ziegler."
"Flash traffic from DCOS, please return immediately. No further message."
He rubbed his thumb across his scalp, over his eye, and frowned.
"I'm on my way."
W.W.
The paramedic swept blonde hair out of the woman's face, and grimaced as much of her cheek and what must have been her right eye were revealed, a ruined mess of glass fragments and churned flesh.
"Miss, can you hear me? I need you to hold still, okay?" He checked her other eye, the good eye, and noted some response. Lucky for her, for now, she was in shock. He held her as they cut the door panel pinning her.
He slid her out carefully, and cradled her head as he waited for sound of the saw to fade.
"We've got another one! Another survivor, over here!"
A few meters away, a camera crew was taking pictures, maybe satellite television, of the wreckage. The paramedic did his best to shield the injured woman from their view as she was readied for transport.
"I think you've had enough for today already, don't you, Miss?" he asked her as she was lifted into the armored Israeli Defense Force ambulance.