Striker
Auralia Rochambeau
Sudan, Africa
Monday
Dressed in her night shirt, with leggings that she’d hastily tugged on underneath, Auralia stood next to Remi in the middle of the hotel room. The women draped scarves over their heads, tying them in place to cover their mouths and noses, a small protection against the cloud of dust that powdered the air.
As Remi poured champagne into their plastic cups, the women’s candle-lit silhouettes danced on the walls, distorted by the cracks and bubbles in the peeling green paint.
Outside, bombs screamed out their displeasure as they tumbled from overhead planes. In Auralia’s mind, she conjured up images of sentient missiles shrilling their high-pitched terror as they plunged toward the ground.
Each one ended with the impact, the detonation, and the roaring collapse of some structure.
There was nowhere else for the two women to shelter.
No safer space outside the walls of their hotel.
Their life expectancy at this point was luck of the draw.
Might as well drink the champagne.
Each explosion sent more debris into the atmosphere. Chunks fell quickly back to Earth. The fine chalky particulates thickened the atmosphere like one thickens a gumbo with roux.
An unctuous potage of air.
Unsavory. Unwholesome. Unwelcomed.
Auralia Rochambeau watched her friend and mentor, war correspondent Remi Taleb, closely for actions and reactions. Remi had been in these kinds of situations for most of her career. And Auralia was still getting used to the idea that she was in front of the camera, explaining what was happening to the news audience. Auralia had dreamed of seeing the world—all of it, even the horror-filled parts—since she was a little girl, watching the news with her mom while they washed the dishes side by side. Auralia had practiced her skills in the mirror, lifting her pink bristled hairbrush and annunciating, “Well, Jake, that’s a good question. The situation on the ground is bleak.”
Surreal.
It was easy enough for Auralia to suppose she had the mettle to stand up to a situation like this when she accepted an assignment.
Living through it, though, tested the theory.
Whenever Auralia felt her body giving in to the terror, she’d conjure the image of her brother Gator, a retired Marine Raider who now jumped into hot spots all over the world as a security operator.
Gator was unshakable.
The last time she’d seen Gator, Auralia had noticed a new tattoo, a tiny skull inked in the webbing between Gator’s thumb and forefinger.
“What’s that about, Gator?” she’d asked when she discovered it on their last visit.
“A memento mori. I’m gonna die. We all are. This reminds me to do what I can while I’ve got a breath.”
“Why now?” Auralia had whispered as she painted her thumb over the tattoo. After all, his stint in the war with the American military was over.
“D-Day’s still in the fight.”
Ah, well, that made sense. Gator had met his wife, D-Day, on assignment. Together, they’d battled to stay alive. Now, they battled apart. D-Day was a Night Stalker who flew special ops groups into the fray in the dead of night, mere feet off the ground, at breakneck speeds. One twitch of her arm muscles, and she could be nose down in a fireball in a split second.
Gator, too, still took off on missions that required the finesse of a special operator.
If there was a couple that faced death on a daily basis, it was her brother and sister-in-law.
They were calm and accepting of their potential demise. “We came here and did what we could while we could,” they’d said when Auralia asked for pointers on how to face her fears.
As global hot-spot reporters, Remi and Auralia spent a good portion of their time hunkering under falling buildings to report the news to the world. They didn’t have the same level of hazard as Gator and D-Day’s jobs.
But there was a risk.
Tonight, a bigger risk than usual.
Auralia wanted to be brave in the face of danger like her brother and Remi, but her own brain screamed that she wasn’t ready to die, wasn’t done with life. She needed more time to accomplish something to help humanity.
Maybe that was the difference.
D-Day, Gator, and Remi had been doing this for so long that their accomplishments were undeniable. They’d made their mark.
BOOM!
Auralia squatted with her feet spread wide like a surfer on the wave, riding out the tremble of the building. She covered the top of her cup with her hand. The champagne sloshed against her palm. Auralia chuckled at how ludicrous it was that she’d volunteered to be here.
Remi checked her watch, then leaned over to open her laptop. She placed a pre-arranged video call to the Wombats - Women’s Mentorship in Battle, Achievement, and Trials. Just a handful of women who knew each other from the danger zones. Different skills. Different career trajectories. All of them people that Auralia aspired to become.
One by one, images populated the screen.
Remi leaned in so her face showed up front and center. “I’ve opened a bottle of champagne, ladies.”
They each raised their own glasses, whatever was handy—depending on where they were in the world—from champagne flutes to ceramic mugs to Remi and Auralia’s plastic, collapsible hiking cups.
A bomb whistled its way down.
“Do you hear that?” Remi asked.
BOOM!
The room shook, throwing Auralia off balance. She hovered there, arms outstretched, gasping for air through the dusty cloud, struggling to let go of her hold on life so fear wouldn’t incapacitate her.
Remi calmly stretched out to catch the laptop as it skidded off the table.
“Whew, close!” Hailey said from the top right corner of the screen.
“Too close. But let’s get to it, shall we?” Remi asked. “I have called you all here tonight because I thought this might be the appropriate time, place, and circumstance to welcome a new Wombat into our wisdom.”
A wisdom, Auralia knew, was a group of wombats out in nature.
And the wisdom of Wombats in front of her was an elite group of women who had bonded as they did their jobs in the most desperate of circumstances—reporters, humanitarian aid workers, medical aid workers, engineers, CIA agents, linguists. In that group, the expertise had depth and breadth. They used their resources to help each other accomplish their professional goals. And more importantly, to stay alive.
Remi lifted her champagne with one hand as she turned the video camera toward Auralia with the other.
The women started cheering and calling out welcomes to her.
Auralia’s eyes stretched wide at the honor that they were extending.
Remi’s words weren’t a surprise to any of them. Obviously, the women had discussed and agreed upon her invitation. They had opened the door for her and extended their hands to her; now, she needed to live up to their example.
“We have some rules,” Remi explained. “First, whoever is under imminent threat is the only one to share a hardship. If the threatened sister needs to break down and emote, excellent. If others needed to, they excuse themselves to do that privately.”
“Fear is infectious,” Hailey said.
“Panic, too,” Nicole added.
Remi took a sip of champagne. “The next rule: once the situation is understood, once all resources for aid are exhausted, it is time to collapse into the warmth of our sisterhood. To create an often-false sense of safety. A bit of rest. A webbing of support. Like tonight, there’s nothing more we can do to stay safe. So here we gather.”
“And if worse comes to worst—no sugar coating here,” Julie added, “well, we won’t die alone. Think of it as hospice surrounded by family but without the I.V. meds to bliss you out.”
The women laughed.
“Remi,” Hailey said, “let’s save the rules for when you’re not coughing up bomb dust. Let’s get the distraction going.”
And so, they did.
While Auralia couldn’t completely block out what was happening outside, hanging out with people who understood the circumstances did take the edge off—and time passed, which was the only remedy to the situation.
“Hey, do you hear that?” Nicole pointed upward.
Everyone stopped talking and listened to silence.
“How long?” Auralia whispered.
“Since we started our last round of camp songs.” Nicole grinned.
The all-clear siren shrilled.
Remi filled Auralia’s plastic cup, then hers with her Wombat-welcome champagne. “One last ‘Hurrah!’ Ladies. And then let’s all get some beauty sleep.”
The Wombats whistled and welcomed, then with the customary “see you later,” rather than the fate-tempting “good-bye,” each square on the video grid went dark until only Remi, Auralia, and Nicole were on the line.
Auralia took a gulp of champagne that went up her nose and made her sputter.
“Hey, Auralia, can you stay and speak with me for a minute?” Nicole asked.
“Absolutely.” She dragged the back of her hand under her nose.
Nicole Street functioned as a sociologist for an NGO, studying patterns in women’s reproductive health in both post-war zones and present-day conflict areas. She had seeded her share of journalistic stories by passing on insights and observations to Remi and Auralia, depending on who was reporting in which region.
It was a win-win.
Remi and Auralia knew which stones to turn over. Nicole got the public’s eyes turned toward women’s issues, helping to shape public awareness and understanding with the hopes that the outrage of the circumstances might turn to public pressures where policymakers might otherwise overlook these issues.
Her work in Kabul came to a screeching halt when the Afghan government decided that non-governmental organizations couldn’t employ women. The NGOs, in turn, said they couldn’t operate without their women. Auralia wondered where Nicole might be heading next and if she had a new story up her sleeve.
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