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words tumbling out so rapidly, it felt as though they were causing me to fall forward-and then I was-falling, running down the hillside toward the balloon.
    I hadn't saved Gottschalk, hadn't even had a chance to.
    As I ran, I stumbled, the binoculars caught me in the jaw; I tore them off and threw them away, yelling all the while. Behind me, the colonel must have been yelling, too, but I don't remember that. I only remember thinking, for a split second, that I had indeed fooled time, and that I was the only one moving. The soldiers, the bomb-laden balloon, the colonel-everyone was still, awaiting my intercession.
    The first blast-just the noise, not the force-sent me to the ground. When I got up, I saw flames, and heard screams so fierce it was like I could see the sound. I began running even faster until I heard the second blast, tripped again, and lying there, finally realized I was too late.
    One of the balloon's incendiaries must have detonated. It was later determined that the first blast had only wounded one or two of the soldiers, but the fire ended up claiming them all. The fire would have caught up with me as well, except that within a minute or so more of scrambling toward the crash, I was stopped by a steep, sharp ravine that had been invisible when I first started out. I picked my way down into it, but then discovered I couldn't climb the other side. Eventually I had to follow the ravine all the way down to the beachhead, watching the smoke billow just above me, out of reach.
     
    ANOTHER RAVINE, on the far side of the crash site, and a fire road- a hopeful name for a swath of bare earth-did more to contain the blaze than anything else. By the time they had figured out a way to pump water up the hillside, the fire was mostly out. That night, the bodies of the soldiers were recovered, and around midnight, a pair of military policemen pulled me from my bunk and drove me as far up the hillside as their jeep would take us.
    They delivered me into the care of the colonel. Earlier in the day during the cleanup, I'd offered my services but had been rebuffed. I wasn't sure if the colonel had summoned me now for apologies or blame.
    “Turns out we lost two of
our
three bomb disposal guys in the fire,” he said. “Third's on leave. So we've got you.” He jerked his head up the hill, where gas-powered floodlights illuminated a still-smoking black field. Now I would say that it looked like lava, but back then, I'd never seen hot lava, not even pictures. Back then, it looked like what it was-scorched earth, a little piece of hell. “What happened?” he asked.
    “Sir,” I said, looking up the hill, “I'm guessing it was some kind of incendiary-”
    “That's pretty fucking brilliant, Sergeant. What was your clue? The six-acre brush fire?”
    Another jeep, and then another, arrived.
    “Wait here,” the colonel said, and I did, because it looked for all the world like aliens were stepping out of the jeeps. Six men in silver flash-suits and gas masks finished zipping up, checking gear. I'd seen fire-retardant clothing during my bomb disposal training-but nothing like these outfits, this late at night, lit by lights high on a hill.
    “Who's in charge here?” said the only one of them not suited in silver.
    “I am,” said the colonel.
    “You were,” said the man, a captain, closing the distance. “We'll take it from here.”
    “I lost five men,” the colonel said. “Is this your goddamn weather balloon?”
    The captain nodded his men up the hill, and they began a surprisingly rapid ascent. Then he turned back to us. “It's mine now.”
    “Whose was it? Where did it come from? Why wasn't I alerted?” the colonel asked.
    “That,” the captain said, “is confidential.” That clearly wasn't good enough for the colonel, but before the colonel could blurt out another question, the captain looked at me and asked, “Who's this?”
    The colonel drew himself up. “This asshole, supposedly a bomb man, was the first