Dress Gray
Page 49
Mace knelt next to the woman, and pinching her nose closed, he took a deep breath and blew into her lungs. Kara pushed hard on the center of her chest, and Mace blew again. They kept this up for several minutes, when suddenly above them came the whap-whap-whap of a helicopter. A long shaft of light from a Xenon spotlight flashed back and forth, searching the water.
Kara stood up, waving her arms. “Over here! Over here!” she shouted as the wind whipped her face with stinging rain.
The Xenon found the Cherokee and moved toward her, bathing her in white light. Kara dropped to her knees and began pressing on the woman’s chest again.
The chopper circled, keeping the spot on them. Then it turned away, hovered, and sat down on top of the hill behind the Cherokee. Two medics jumped out and ran down the hill toward them. As the first arrived, she grabbed Kara’s shoulder, pulling her to her feet.
“How long have you been doing CPR?”
“A couple of minutes.”
The other medic opened a crash-kit and moved in close. As Mace pulled away from the woman’s face to get a breath, the medic placed a mask over the woman’s nose and mouth, and began squeezing a rubber air bladder, forcing air into her lungs. The female medic was across from Kara, checking the woman’s pulse.
Kara pointed to the wound on her neck.
The female medic opened one of the woman’s eyelids with her thumb and shined a flashlight. Her eye was rolled back exposing the bloodshot white. The medic flipped off the flashlight and touched the other medic’s arm.
“May as well put that thing away, Johnson,” she said. “She’s gone.” They both stood up. A third medic arrived, carrying a stretcher. The two men lifted the woman’s body onto the stretcher and headed back toward the chopper.
“You all had better come with us, ma’am,” said the female medic.
Kara opened the Cherokee’s door. “I’m going to move my car away from the water.” She started the Cherokee and backed it up. Behind her, the chopper’s rotors beat the air. She stopped down the hill from the chopper. The passenger door opened. Mace leaned in.
“Mace, they’re gonna want to know what you and me—”
“I’m way ahead of you. Let me do the talking,” he said.
One of the medics walked up. “Ma’am, we got to be gettin’ outta here….”
“I’m with you.” Kara turned off the car and followed Mace and the medic up the hill and climbed into the chopper. The woman’s body was lying on a stretcher across the middle of the chopper between their feet. The door closed, the rotors picked up speed, and with a shudder, the chopper leaned into the wind and banked into a turn, the Xenon writing on the river like a light pencil.
Kara looked down, trying to find the woman’s car in the raging waters below. It was gone.
Lucian K. Truscott IV was born to Second Lt. Lucian K. Truscott III and Anne Harloe Truscott on April 11, 1947, in Fukuoka, Japan, the first baby born to American parents in Japan after the war. Mr. Truscott is a fourth-generation army veteran and the fifth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson. His father was the son of Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., commander (successively) of the Ninth Regimental Combat Team, the Third Infantry Division (famous as Audie Murphy’s division), the Sixth Corps, the Fifth Army, and the Third Army, all during World War II. After the war, Gen. Truscott was head of the CIA in Europe from 1951 to 1955. After his return from Europe, Gen. Truscott became inspector general and deputy director of the CIA, and a special advisor on intelligence to President Eisenhower.
Truscott grew up in the army, living, over the years, in more than ten states, four foreign countries, and twenty-seven different houses or apartments by the time he was eighteen. In 1965, he entered West Point via an appointment from Patsy T. Mink, Democrat of Hawaii, where the family had long ago established residency. He graduated after what might be called a checkered career. In May 1970, he found himself in a dispute with the army over an article he wrote for the Village Voice about the rampant yet unacknowledged problem of heroin abuse in the army—specifically, in the Fifth Mechanized Infantry Division at Ft. Carson. The army refused permission to publish the article, and Truscott refused to withdraw it from publication. What they used to call in the army a “flap” ensued, and resignation from the army came soon thereafter.
In August 1970, Truscott went to work as a staff writer for the Village Voice. He has written for many major magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Esquire, the Nation, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Weekly, Playboy, Penthouse, Metropolitan Home, Saveur, and many others.
In 1976, Truscott wrote and published the bestselling novel Dress Gray, which was later produced as an NBC miniseries, scripted by Gore Vidal, in 1986. After Dress Gray, Truscott wrote the bestseller Army Blue and published a third novel, Rules of the Road, in 1990. Truscott’s fourth novel, Heart of War, was published in June 1997. His fifth novel, Full Dress Gray, published in July 1998, is the long-awaited sequel to his first novel.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by Lucian Truscott Co. Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6350-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
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