Miller took a step closer to the gate but Vine’s hand was still on his shoulder.
“Hold it, PFC!” Vine yelled at Wheeler, pushing on the gate latches. Vine gripped Miller’s shoulder harder, pulling him back. “We can’t go out there—at all.” His left hand held the radio and he raised it now, showing Miller. “First Sergeant Marcus and the CO are coming now, with Reeder’s squad, but the order is from God himself.” The division commander. “We don’t interfere.”
“Interfere?”
Miller looked away from the lieutenant, back out through the gate, to the crowd beyond. Those closest to the fence were turning now, yelling in Creole at the Americans, begging, crying. PFC Wheeler stood there, waiting for an explanation, or an order. Vine gave him one.
“Step off from the gate, PFC.”
On the LSV’s bow, in Voodoo Lounge, Marc Hall pulled a handheld radio from deep in his rucksack, turned it on, and switched around until he found the frequency he was looking for. Tory kept her eyes on the crowd beyond the port fence, mostly visible from where they stood. She could see two Jeeps, and two FADH officers leaning against them nonchalantly. She wished for binoculars to see if one of them had been in the park for the lynching yesterday, but the bow equipment box was empty. She looked up again in time to see the stick crack down on the man on his knees. A voice behind her said, “Christ.” It was Scaboo, in his engine-room coveralls, cresting the stairs up to Voodoo Lounge in time to see the same sight. Marc Hall glanced over, recognizing him from the convoy yesterday, and nodded absently. He’d just turned up the radio as loud as it would go, so all three of them heard the order as it was given, the transmission from airport to port, the request for verification from the lieutenant on the gate, and then the order repeated again. Hall gripped the rails of the bow, fists tight as he could get them. Scaboo said simply, “Oh man,” and Tory said nothing at all. Behind them the ramp banged as it came to rest in place, fully up, and the foghorn sounded again, right over their heads, the officer and two sergeants almost jumping from their skin with the surprise of it, the air blast drowning out the military chatter from the radio, drowning out what they could hear of the pain and fear and anger of the crowd, drowning it all out.
There was a distance now, between the FADH and what remained of the crowd, those unable or unwilling to run away. A gap of feet and a gap of purpose. Twelve men with sticks could do only so much harm to a crowd of a thousand—could breach the crowd only so far—before being swallowed. Farther incursion was absolutely possible but required guns, and shooting now would cross the gap of purpose: Somewhere out there was a camera crew, or a photographer; the Americans suffered a ridiculous self-imposed impotence, but perhaps not so in the face of obvious massacre.
Elsewhere, throughout the day—in Cité Soleil, in Cap-Haitien—crowds swarmed over formerattachés and the occasional single, unarmed FADH officer and took their revenge. In some places theattachés were pulled from the jaws by American soldiers or Marines at the very last second, eyes wide in fear and bodies shaking violently from the nearness of death, shoved down in the back of a Humvee or five-ton truck for the trip out of their neighborhood. Bleeding profusely from knife sticks and duller wounds, they rolled to fetal positions in the backs of the vehicles, their ordered American saviors wordlessly planted over them, plastic gloves to keep off the blood and plastic faces to show the world. Not a one among them could figure why they were saving these men but they’d been told to so they pulled on their gloves and pulled them to safety. When the occasionalattaché started babbling Creole thanks and assurances of political and moral purity as they were swept from their place of intended destruction the blank-faced soldier keeping a weapon on the crowds around the retreating vehicle would stare at the man without comment—eyes and thoughts hidden far beneath wide, silvered goggles—or sometimes utter a simple, “How ’bout you shut the fuck up.”
And at the port, the Americans stood caged, staring through their fence and locked gate, the organized FADH demonstrating to the people of Port-au-Prince exactly who was in charge, exactly what American liberation was worth and how far it could go, reminding the good citizens of who would still be there when theblancs inevitably left the country.
The FADH commander got into his Jeep, lit a cigarette, and with a twist of his fist signaled his men to fall back. Sticks raised, they backed to the Jeeps, climbed on, and the two vehicles began rolling down the avenue, slowly, the men pointing out faces in the crowd as they passed, one of the troops singing. A group of women moved from the mass of people, sobbing, cries ofdoktè! and pleas to absent saviors, the women lifting the bodies left lying in the street, to get them to a clinic, hoping the clinics were open today.
But most of the crowd wasn’t watching the wounded, or even watching the pull-back of the FADH. They’d turned, turned back to their original focus here: the American soldiers behind the port fence. But no cheering now, or yelling; no dancing. The people stood, mostly mute, mostly numb, looking at the faces under helmets with the powerful rifles in their hands, realizing the score, and as they stared at their liberators the soldiers dropped their eyes, trying to find something else to look at, anything else, turning away, wishing they were anywhere but right here right now.
It was tricky, their position: 274-foot ship head-in to a corner berth in the horseshoe of the port. The soldiers on deck crew dropped and pulled the starboard bowline, then the line midship. Mannino had them leave the starboard aft line as a pivot point and engaged the bow-thruster to slowly kick the nose around. Aft line dropped, alternating small taps on the twin screws and the bow-thruster nudged the LSV the rest of the way, center port, facing out.
The vessel pushed through dirty water, steaming down the long concrete pier, past the harbormaster office on the small island, past the few small rust buckets unable to move under their own power, soon to be towed. In exile at the end of the pier were seven Army Mike Boats from the 1098th, lonely and tied together. Tory had remained on the port bow in Voodoo Lounge when Scaboo showed Marc Hall the way into the ship’s house and up to the bridge to see the Skipper. She sat on a bit, watching as they slid past the Mikes, watching the guys clean their boats up, searching for faces, realizing she was looking for Junior Davis’s face—force of habit. Junior Davis hadn’t set foot on a Mike Boat, or worn a uniform, in almost a year.
Past the Mike Boats lay open water, wide channel to the first anchor buoy. In the time it took the LSV to steam clear of the pier a fresh squad of soldiers was brought to the port gate to relieve Lieutenant Vine’s men, who’d stood their posts most of the day. In the street, the injured had been carried off, and the word was none had died. The man who’d taken a direct crack on the skull was said to be unconscious, his left side twitching like a rabbit, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. The living are not as interesting as the dead—even the bleeding, unconscious, twitching living—and when the reporters descended from their perch up in the bars and hotels in Pétionville they poked around but didn’t stay long. There were small pools of blood here and there, but they would be gone, too, in the evening rain.
Past the anchor buoy, the LSV corrected course for the shipping channel. Its wake frosted white with the order of all-ahead full, twin screws pushing the ship out and away from Port-au-Prince.
Part Two
Under Way
Chapter
17
The rolling of the old ship increased in equal measure with the draining of light from the sky, as if the two were connected, heavy Caribbean sun pressing flat the natural swells and waves until its strength sapped and the ocean current pushed up and through as dusk advanced. It certainly felt that way. The missionary ship rode relatively calm most of the day, against all hope, from their departure out of Jérémie and through the long day beyond. The clouds settled thick across the sky late in the afternoon, wind blowing noticeably stronger approaching sundown. With the total loss of light the ship began rocking, taking hits broadside as it trawled ever so slowly on its crip
pled main.
There was a kid standing bridge watch with McBride. He’d be on the helm soon, if this weather increased. But for now the autohelm was holding steady and the boy stood forward with McBride, eyes out the dark, wet bridge window, both hands wrapped around the bar to steady against rolls. He was college-aged, this boy, raising a question in McBride’s mind—it was September. But McBride had long ago ceased asking personal questions of those who passed through this boat—and more often than not they did just pass through, not many staying aboard more than a couple months, with a few notable exceptions. Early on he’d been curious and asked a lot of questions but discovered the answers were invariably depressing, sometimes extraordinarily depressing, and now he tended not to ask. Instead, he was telling this boy about the green flash, rarest of Earth events, visible only to sailors and then just a handful of times in the course of a life. Not possible on a night like tonight, of course. One needed an absolute absence of clouds, not even a wisp. No atmospheric moisture, and no wind. A completely dry, flat counterpart to the sea.
“At sunset, at the very point where the sun passes under the horizon, it will flash—bright green, very intense. Just for a second.”
“Green?”
“Green.”
“Amazing.”
“Indeed. Nothing more beautiful.”
The boy nodded, thought, then said, “The eye of God.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like the eye of God.”
McBride grimaced. “I don’t think—” he said but was cut off by a large roll to port, out of sequence, catching them both by surprise, the boy losing his grip and falling into the vessel master. He clung to the rail with one hand and held the boy up with the other. “Steady,” he whispered, righting the two of them. It was now too dark to clearly see the boy’s face, but McBride guessed he was scared.
“That,” the older man said, “was thehand of God.”
Pastor had laid below an hour before, to sleep. She was back now, in her thick khakis, working her way slowly across the bridge as if climbing a ladder—one hand out with each step, grabbing something solid and pulling herself along.
“Mister McBride,” she said, breathlessly. “How long will this last?”
“Easily all night. Can’t tell beyond that.” The map from the weather fax had been vague. They rolled starboard and McBride shifted his knees, Pastor gripping tight to the chart table. The kid had wedged himself into the forward corner of the bridge. “Young man,” McBride said, “stand to the helm.”
Pastor managed the last few steps and stood next to him now, a tight grip on the bar running across the front of the bridge. “We’ve never rolled so badly before,” she said. “Even in worse weather, yes?” She was scared.
“No, you’re right. It’s like I warned—” and he paused as they pitched hard to port “—I have very little control over the ship. We have almost no power to maneuver.”
McBride was scared, too, but a vague and detached fear. He found this interesting. He should be scared—they had no business out here. And in a clinical way he knew he was afraid. But it was the same as knowing someone else was afraid; some other person he was observing.
They rolled starboard and it was a long roll, deep, seeming without end. Pastor lost her grip, shuffling sideways across the deck, whispering, “Dear God.” Balance regained, she said, “We can’t survive this.”
“We can,” McBride said. “As long as it gets no worse.”
Pastor was flustered, and he felt for the old girl. She had an iron will, this one. Faith, he guessed. Perhaps stubbornness. But the last few days had shown her just flustered.
“This was a mistake,” she said. “Put her in, Mister McBride.”
He shook his head. “There’s nowhere to put her in. We go on or we turn back, but no other options. There’s no other deep-water ports.”
She nodded, and stood silent a few moments. Finally, she said, “They’re frightened, down below. I’ll go see to them.”
“Good,” he said. “It will make it easier for them. To see you.” McBride turned then, to the kid. He was standing at the helm console, holding on to the sides. “Take her off auto, young man,” McBride said. “Hold tight and listen up for my orders.” They’d been running fairly close to shore through the daylight. Crippled as they were, McBride hadn’t wanted to lose sight of land. It was a comfort, he thought, to everyone on the ship. But it didn’t matter now, and he might get some relief in deeper waters. “I’m taking her out farther,” he said, “and we’ll see what happens.”
Pastor was halfway back across the bridge, and she nodded without turning, holding tight with each step. She stopped at the stairs, and turned then. “You’ll get us through this, yes, Mister McBride?”
He nodded but didn’t answer. One of the few times she put something directly into his hands was one of the few times he felt for sure the outcome would have little to do with him.
In the narrow passage below the stairs Pastor rounded the corner and literally ran smack into someone, both of them thrown to the deck as the ship rolled.
“Oh God I’m so sorry,” the voice said, then, “Pastor! I was coming to find you.”
Pastor squinted in the dim passage. It was a young woman, a silly girl named Lorraine. “It’s all right,” she said, irritated, barely holding dinner down. She put her hand up to the railing but couldn’t seem to raise herself from her sitting position. “Help me, Lorraine,” she said, and the girl reached down to pull her up.
“Itis Lorraine, yes?” she said, grunting as she was pulled to her feet.
The girl ignored the question. “It’s Mister Davis,” she said. “He’s sick, ma’am. Real sick.”
“We’re all sick, Lorraine,” Pastor said through clenched teeth, holding tight as the ship rolled deep. “It’s unavoidable in this weather—”
“No, really sick. He’s passed out, I can’t wake him. He took something, I think. Pills. A lot of them.”
The older woman tightened her jaw. “Where is he?”
“We were in his cabin, Pastor. He’s in his cabin.”
“What were you—”
“I’m sorry, Pastor, I’m so sorry! But please, he’s so sick.”
Chapter
18
Captain Hall merited a solo cabin on the officer’s deck below the bridge but, walking a ship’s tour with Mac, found the top bunk in Bear’s cabin unused. “Good enough,” he said, and heaved his ruck up onto the bed. “I’ll get you a blanket and pillow,” Mac offered, relieved not to be pushed from his own digs. The first mate turned to Xerox, shadowing the two officers, and said, “Get the captain a blanket and pillow.” The bald-headed private scurried down the passage to the linen locker, one hand on the rail as the ship moved with the ocean.
The crew calmed under way, decompressed. They knew what to do out here. No colonels, no sergeants-major. No unanswered questions, no ambiguous missions, no mindless rules of engagement. Instead, a sensible world, logical rules. The ship moved, and you tried not to do too much. Out here, sundown and sunup might pass unnoticed even if you stepped outside, because it simply didn’t much matter. Under way was a different reality—four hours on, eight hours off, four on, eight off, four on, eight off. Every day, twenty-four seven.
On the bridge: a warrant officer, an NCO, and a specialist or PFC on the helm. And Xerox; always Xerox. A similar shift in the engine room. A constant rotation though the three cooks in the galley, a meal always available. On the officer’s deck, Skipper at the ship’s computer, usually playing Doom. Across the passage, door propped open, Chief in blue coveralls at his small desk, buried in overflowing parts catalogs and equipment manuals, somewhere in a never-ending cycle of inventory.
Passages quiet, under way; from the moment they left a pier someone was always sleeping, or trying to. The hushed stop-start waterfall of a sea shower, the faraway bleat of someone’s pillow-buried alarm, quiet chatter of a postwatch card game—cigarettes and cocktails behind a cl
osed cabin door. These were the only underway noises, all muted even more by the ever-present hum of the diesel mains and the generators. The hum made the ship’s air dead, words becoming weighty things that would pass your lips then drop to the floor before arriving at another’s ears. Half of most conversations consisted of “What?” and there wasn’t much to talk about anyway so why bother talking at all.
Give me a cigarette.
What?
Give me a smoke.
Get your own.
But I’m sitting here, man.
What?
Never mind.
On the shelves in each enlisted cabin, strapped down for sea with bungee cords, each soldier’s flak jacket, helmet, M-16 rifle. As they hit open water, Top had ordered all weapons and ammo to be turned in and secured in the small-arms locker down below. Skip had countermanded the order, yelling as he made for the stairs off the bridge. “Am I the only one who remembers we’re supposed to be at war? Thisis the Army, right?” He passed the medic, coming up the stairs. “We are at war, right, Doc?”
“Sure, Skip. Whatever you say.”
“Skipper,” Marc Hall said, rapping his knuckles on the open door of the ship’s office. Mannino, leaned back in his desk chair, computer joystick in hand, came as close to jumping as his squat body would allow before Hall waved him off. “It’s your ship,” the captain said.
Feet on the floor, leaning forward, Mannino said, “What can I do for you, Sir?” He set the joystick on the desk and picked up a pen, tapping it, not sure what to do with his hands.
“I’m going to head down to the deck, talk to the drivers—the Red Cross men. We’ll need to set some guidelines for the trip.”
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