Andy Lane (she/her) is born into the binary world of Cold War America. Assigned male at birth, she struggles to come to terms with identifying as female, believing that a colossal mistake has been made. As life goes on, she realizes the gender expectations of her from family and the farming world of the community in which she lives. She learns, early on, to play the part her world has created for her, hoping that being a warrior and finding a forever-love will be a “cure” that will let her live in peace with her body. She chases manhood while moving through the Army as an Airborne Ranger. But a special assignment in Germany with Counter Intelligence leads to a deadly confrontation with a Russian spy operation. Not even the burning love of the beautiful Jordanian woman, Sohaila, is enough to quench Andy’s gender dysphoria. Only one thing remains for Andy, to meet her destiny in the deserts of Saudi Arabia in a desperate battle for the liberation of Kuwait.
Prologue
On the Banks of the Euphrates
1st Infantry Division (Mech)
Gulf War I, 1991
There were only two things I wanted out of life: to be a soldier, and to be a girl. The soldiering came easy. The other? Well, life doesn’t give do-overs. I always thought my life would be a truncated one. Being born into the wrong body does that to a person. So, my plan was simple. When I got into a war worthy of the name, I would let the assault do for me what I had once been too afraid to do for myself.
I had been living with being transgender for over thirty years. A war death worth dying would end all the questions of who and what I was—a man, or a woman. No one near me would have to cope with the upheaval of a gender change just so I could live congruently.
But most of all, my death would make it up to Sohaila, that dark-eyed beauty, for that betrayal, that broken promise. I could have confessed to her earlier. I should have revealed my innermost confusions. But I was afraid. Why? That she would understand, and still love me. After all, we had overcome so much together. Two different worlds, one Moslem, one Christian, one Arab, one American. While she liberated me with her love, making her an outcast, I failed her by keeping my secret. That is how we trans folk lived back then, afraid.
But in my defense, how could I have disclosed what I thought I could overcome? Through soldiering? Through Sohaila?
So, the war. In battle, we sliced through the Iraqis like a razor through fat. Some of the fighting was hard. The greatest slander I ever heard was that the Iraqi soldier was an incompetent coward. No. Many of the men, we rolled over, stayed resisting all the way to the end.
That night, my plan was simple. When combat was most severe, I would rise from the tank. When the melee was hardest, tank on tank, hull on hull, I would pop the hatch. Stick my head out for a look. And zip! Surely swift release would follow. I might even have gotten lucky and have never heard the bullet home in on me. Or maybe a close explosion. Just make it fast and you’ll die a hero. No one would need suspect what I had concealed. A secret that I hid as a kid. That resisted the torture from Colonel Kim. That I kept from Sohaila.
That black morning, entering a maelstrom of fire and cordite, tracers streaking through the blackness. I heard her voice. The way she used to whisper when we were holding one another. A memory, begging me, ‘No.’ I rose out of the hatch. Tracers painting death deep into the night. The main guns from other tanks breaking that Stygian night, like volcanic eruptions accompanied by the hammering clatter of the coaxial machine guns. Nothing could silence her voice calling to me, ‘No.’ Again. As near to me now as she was that day at the little bistro in Tel Aviv. ‘It would kill me…,’ her voice repeated, echoing, yanking my resolve away, and me, back into the tank. I still wanted to live.
Later, after the peace, while watching from the tank turret as that ancient river flowed languorously into the Persian Gulf, I contemplated a new future far removed from my past. While dhows sailed up and down the waters. Around me, my soldiers slept. The radios crackled situation reports. I leaned back on the hatch, and mourned all I had not told Sohaila, and all the years that could have been lived differently.
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