Review: Semper Fi
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2014
What was it like on the doomed airliners that crashed on 9/11, one of the most infamous dates in American history? None of us can know, of course, but C. G. Cooper gives us a pretty good idea how it might have been in "God-Speed," a short story that incorporates characters from his Corps Justice novels.I haven't read any of Cooper's longer books, but this story works on its own, thanks to the skillful way in which Cooper blends the historical tragedy with his fictional narrative. Calvin Stokes, Sr., (whose son, Cal, Jr., is the character from the Corps Justice books) and his wife board one of the soon-to-be-hijacked planes for a flight home with his wife after a visit to their son at college. Over the course of the next two hours (Cooper gives readers a timeline throughout the story), we see him and his wife board the plane, follow along with him as he spots, but dismisses, some signs of suspicious behavior by some of his fellow passengers, make small talk on the plane with his wife and a little boy, and takes a short nap while the plane takes off. Then, of course, everything turns upside down, and Stokes, as a career military man, thinks of what he might be able to do to stop this.Cooper is at a disadvantage in having to create characters from scratch and run them through an emotional wringer in a little over 20 pages, but he manages to do a good job of it, thanks in considerable part to the readers' detailed hindsight knowledge of the events on the plane. We know, but Stokes doesn't, that his suspicions about the handful of fellow passengers who don't seem to be acting quite right are justified (ironically, two of them are held briefly for extra security screening before the flight). But then, when Stokes still boards the plane, we realize just how impossible it would have been for passengers to imagine the enormity of what was to happen.Then, the last third of the story becomes quite powerful emotionally. Stokes tries to keep his wife calm even after he learns (thanks to the cellphones he and some of the other passengers have) of the first two planes crashing into the twin towers. And, as a good marine, Stokes and a fellow retired Marine plan to do something to try to stop the hijackers. The climax is a moving voicemail message he is able to leave for his son.The most surprising aspect of this story is how relatively quiet it is. There isn't mass panic and hysteria or overblown flag waving histrionics. Stokes is a trained combat veteran who reacts as you might expect, and Cooper is too good a writer to fall back on cheap theatrics when the story is powerful enough as it is. Obviously, we can't know how realistic Cooper's portrayal of the events are, but they feel right.This is a story that easily could, and probably should, have been longer. In actuality, Stokes and his wife are, of necessity, a bit stereotyped as characters, and we don't get to know their emotional arc as well as we might in a longer work. However, we as readers can use our own emotional take on those events, which we've built up in the decade since 9/11, to fill in a few of the emotional gaps in the narrative. What we do get is a touching reminder about one of the saddest moments in our nation's history. "God-Speed" takes us back for a few moments to that horrible moment that seems oh so familiar, and manages to give us a fresh, welcome insight into one small aspect of it.