The Med

by David Poyer

  “And for that demonstration, I think”—he raised his arm high, pointing—“that tall young man in back, who talks while I am talking—”

  “Michael! No!”

  Moira punched wildly at the first guard to reach them, but the man simply pushed her over; off-balance, she fell into the other hostages. There was a tangle of arms and legs, shouting and crying. Cook did not struggle; he stood up, face paling, but not fighting the men who beat him out from the crowd with their rifle butts. The others shrank back as his guards pushed him forward. Harisah waited, looking grim, and then turned his head to speak briefly to the two men.

  Susan sat rigid, unable to believe what was happening. She could not move, could not speak. She held Nan tight, and wondered that she did not whimper. She felt like whimpering herself.

  “Goddammit—let me up. Mike! Mike!”

  And then Moira was on her feet, running through the still-cleared path behind the guards. Cook turned at her shout. He started to wave her back, and then his arms were twisted behind him and he was pushed toward the stairwell.

  Harisah nodded, and two men stepped in behind Moira. And at that Susan was up too, holding Nan tight and screaming: “Majd! Hanna! Not her, too!”

  Harisah looked in her direction. As they caught hers his eyes became opaque, the gaze of a stranger.

  “Of course,” he said, “the Jewish woman may also die if she wishes.”

  And Susan sat, slowly, unable to think or speak. She lowered her eyes. Fear and guilt rose in her throat. She had thought, somehow, that her sacrifice would protect them. But it had not been a bargain. What had Moira said—you can’t bargain with a terrorist—

  She did not want to look at him again, ever.

  Harisah looked around, at all of them. “There; you see I mean this business. Now you can go back to your rooms. Do not open the windows. Do not leave rooms. The guards will bring the recorder to you there.”

  He paused, looking toward the stairwell. From the open door a shout floated up, but so faint that she could not tell whether it was Michael or Moira, or even a man or a woman. The Majd’s scowl deepened. He turned from the stairwell to them.

  “You should know me well enough by now to know that the Majd does not lie, he does not bluff. Make your messages convincing. It is the only way any of you will escape death.”

  30

  Northern Lebanon

  The way to Ash Shummari was a storm of noise, sunlight, heat, and dust.

  From the high safety of outcroppings of white limestone an occasional lone figure—a shepherd, perhaps—could be seen looking down on the narrow, winding road, clinging to the hills like a snake to its prey, that had made its way from village to village across this ancient land since Hellenic times, since Cretan times, since before there was a Bible.

  The marines in the van of the raid saw Lebanon that morning in an hours-long, jolting blur of speed and heat. They saw it with the clarity of fear at twenty-five miles an hour, more on the downhills; saw it with the hollowness in the belly that comes expecting attack at any moment. They did not talk. They did not watch the road. They watched the hills that marched with their progress, watched ceaselessly the white-shuttered windows of the villages they sped through in a clatter of treads, a howl of engines.

  Will Givens saw it holding desperately tight to the welded manholds on top of an amtrac, so sun-hot he could barely close one hand on them. In the other he gripped his M-16, empty, but with a magazine ready in the unbuttoned pocket of his blouse. His boots dangled over the edge of the rolling tank, over the terrifying squeal of bogies. Beneath him, beneath the other riflemen (for that was all he and the rest of the mortar squad were now, riflemen) who clung to the top of the amphibious tank, the engine roared as if designed to deafen them, and steel treads clawed sparks from the stone. Behind them came a jeep, then another amtrac, and then a long string of them.

  Three-two MAU was on its way to battle.

  The squad had waited out dawn dug in at the LZ. Some time after sunrise the rumble of artillery to the south brought a renewed tension to their breakfast of cold rations. As they waited, since no one had any clear idea of what was happening, they began to invent scuttlebutt. The Syrians were good soldiers; no, they were bums; the Israelis had chewed them up a dozen times. The Russians would be waiting for them across the border; no, they would pull out and leave the terrorists to face the music; no, the Soviet Navy would sink the amphibs behind them and cut them off here in a blazing Chosin. At first they passed the rumors as a joke, but some gained the sound of truth. Will had listened to them with a hollow feeling, gripping his rifle and wishing again he had been able to zero it.

  At 0730 the lead amtracs had rumbled up from seaward and the squad had clambered aboard with the rest, leaving their dug-in positions with a feeling already of regret.

  Will clamped the rifle, still unaccustomed to it, in the crook of his arm. His hand came away from his face gray-white with caked dust and sweat. He could not believe how much dust there was. It came up like smoke from the ’tracks in front of the column, mixed with diesel fumes in an oily stink that overlay the warm smell of the land. He grabbed hastily at the weapon as it started to slide; they were jolting over a particularly atrocious section of road, nearing a town. People … there must have been thousands of them along here, he thought, not long before. But now the invading marines looked fleetingly down alleys where golden heaps of oranges lay in rotting piles, where laundry flapped sun-dried but forgotten. Stores gaped blank-fronted, their windows empty, those that had not been shuttered or barred. There were no cars, there were no people, there weren’t even any dogs. As he blinked past Cutford’s shadowed bulk he saw that the buildings they were passing now—taller, the city center—were hulks, shattered by shellfire.…

  He stared around from the ’track, forgetting fear, seeing what war had done to Lebanon.

  It might have been any of the resort towns along the coasts of the blue Mediterranean. Towns the ships had sailed by, or dropped anchor at briefly, not permitting the men ashore. It might have been downtown Palermo, the better section. It looked most like Greece, though.

  Or must have once. The buildings had been new, in light colors. But now the modern fronts stared empty and the terraces were filled with smashed brick and glittering shards from the empty windows. The black stains of fires stood above them like eyebrows. The streets had been wide here, lined at ground level with shops and offices. Now piles of shattered masonry leaned outward, closing half the road, and the windows were blank and the shops were empty and the cars, those that were left, lay like the husks of long-dead insects: burnt, overturned, flattened by fallen walls. The very air was disquieting, heavy with smoke and the cave-smell of shattered plaster and the chemical stink of recent explosive.

  It was the smell of ambush. He shivered and craned round, maintaining his deathgrip on the hot metal, to look for the others. Hernandez; Harner, looking sleepy, stretched out against the gunner’s cupola on the opposite side of the vehicle; Silky, seated facing aft, his helmet pulled low to screen his eyes from the sun; Cutford, sleeves rolled over heavy muscle, his face lifted toward the upper windows of a four-story apartment block as they rolled by. Washman wasn’t aboard, but Will could make out his pale face, open mouth, through the dust, on the next ’track back.

  And Dippy Liebo. Where was he?

  He decided not to think about that right now. It was too freaking hot; he felt sick from the motion and the jolting, and he had to stay alert. With that thought he realized suddenly what Cutford was looking for, and the knowledge, coupled with the slow thunder early that morning, made him sit up straighter and try to blink the dust and sun from his eyes. Maybe you’ll see some action today, Will, he thought. Somehow the prospect was less appealing than it had seemed in boot camp. Or even that morning, on the ship.

  Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

  Above them, betw
een the building-fronts that walled off the road, a plume of smoke blinked from the hillside. He tightened his grip on the rifle, staring upward; it was dust, not smoke, streaming behind a single vehicle that paralleled their progress along the lower road. A flank guard, most likely. He craned left to look past Cutford’s shoulder down into the valley and saw, yes, a left flank of two jeeps and a ’track below on the dry bed of a river. They stopped as he watched, and men leaped out to clear something from the path; then they rolled on again, the ’track taking the lead, tiny as a green bug from his height.

  The lights on the tank ahead glowed red as it slowed for a curve so sharp the vehicle ahead of it had disappeared. He opened his mouth, but the pause of thought made speech too late, even if the driver could have heard him. He got his legs up just in time. Inertia jerked him forward, almost tearing his arm off, and the hull of the ’track bonged as its snout collided with the rear of the one in front. Glass shattered above the diesels, and when they moved again he saw that their headlights had been crushed flat. Too much noise for communication, even in a shout, but when he glanced back his eyes met Hernandez’; that was enough, to share it with someone else.

  He faced forward again and stared up at the corner building as they edged around it, backing and filling to get past. He inspected each window, watching for movement, for shadows; and beside him the corporal did the same. Though no one stirred behind the dust-filled glass he still felt the coldness.

  But if ye will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the hand of the Lord be against you.

  * * *

  By noon they were deep into the hills, and still had seen nothing and no one. The only sign of human life had been a crack-windowed Mercedes full of local militia, who hastily pulled onto the berm when the lead amtrac came barreling down the middle of the road toward them. The terrain became steeper after that. The ancient folding of the land grew more violent, less welcoming, if any of it was welcoming, until the left flank dropped back out of sight. The villages they clattered through became smaller, the buildings older, and then they were in the mountains and there were no more villages at all.

  The road stayed good, though. It was a new-looking two-laner, and they could see at curves where the rock had been blasted away in white gouges and left to fall toward the river. From atop the ’track the view was dizzying. The elevation was no greater than he was used to back in Western Carolina, but here the hills were unrounded, unclothed with green; they fell precipitously, eroded faces of bare white rock, gullies with thin brown grass over what soil had not been leached away. To him it looked ancient, blasted, barren. The open sky blazed blue light down over them, shimmering the asphalt with heat, the breeze of their motion offering no coolness but only drying their eyes and parching their open mouths. The roar of their engines echoed back from the faces of the hills until it seemed that an army, not half a battalion, was winding its way upward into the highest passes of Lebanon.

  It was a little after midday, and the feeling of danger, of threat, had worn thin. They were toiling in column up a long grade, the overheating engines whining. He was clutching his M-16 between his legs and sipping at his canteen between jolts, letting it swing with his arm so that not a drop of the hot fluid would be lost, when the first detonation sounded far off and faint beyond the top of the hill.

  The mortarmen knew it instantly. Silkworth twisted round in the frozen instantaneity of surprise. Givens dropped his canteen, the water slopping warm over his thighs and crotch, leaving a dark streak down the dusty green hull of the track. It bounced once heavy off the roadway and then splintered, crushed, flattened by the rolling steel of the treads. Cutford slammed his riflebutt on the hull, swinging himself down to the roadway as the ’track began to slow.

  “Incoming!”

  The first round exploded below them, down along the drop of the ravine, blasting rock and dust outward through the clear air. The column slowed, ’tracks slewing sideways trying to stop in time, slamming into one another, crushing in the fenders of jeeps as officers scrambled out. Horns beeped and echoed from the hill. The distant thunking of several more rounds on their way precipitated a general dismount and a scramble for a shallow ditch against the upward slope.

  “Mortars,” he said stupidly to Hernandez, whom he found beside him, leaning against the bare hot stone. “They sound just like our eighty-ones.”

  “Man, we shoot back?”

  “Can’t see anybody to shoot at.”

  “Well, let’s get some fire out, man. Get their heads down maybe.”

  He watched Hernandez pull a loaded magazine from his trou, and it was suddenly the obvious thing to do. They were shooting at you; you fired back. The click of the thirty-round magazine engaging, the slam of the bolt feeding the first cartridge sent stiffness into his spine. With a loaded weapon in his hand he felt like a marine and not like what he had been all that morning—half-tourist, half-target. Behind him one of the ’tracks loosed a burst from its turret machine gun. Craning his head back, he could see it tear puffs of stone from the upper curve of the hillside.

  “They’re on the far side.”

  “Yeah. They got us in defilade. Nice setup.”

  “For them.”

  “That’s what I meant. Wish we had the tube here.”

  “Yeah, toss a few back…”

  “But we don’t,” shouted Silkworth, just behind them, startling them so that Will almost dropped his rifle. “You two fuckups leave your brains on the ship? Spread out under fire! Christ! Hernandez, clamp that chinstrap, you’re losing your helmet. Givens—”

  He ducked suddenly, the two privates half a second behind him to the ground, and the whoosh came down on them and exploded ahead of the lead ’track. Rocks rattled off the hull and skittered along the asphalt toward the stalled column. The shock patted his face and he raised his hand to it, coming a little out of the numbness and unreality that had begun the moment that first faint chug had come from the other side of the mountain.

  “Eighty-one all right,” said Silkworth loudly into the aftersilence, pulling himself to his feet.

  “Sarge—is it Syrians, or Lebanese?”

  Silkworth stared at him as if he were crazy. “I don’t know, and I don’t give a shit. Do you?”

  He had to admit it, the sergeant had a point. He pulled back his head and looked up toward the crest. Nothing showed on the ridgeline. He looked back along the road. Two of the ’tracks had maneuvered almost to the cliff-edge, cupola MGs at maximum elevation, and were firing tentative bursts into the blue. The foot marines, all disembarked except the men actually inside the ’tracks, leaned in the ditch next to the hill-slope, looking upward.

  Another shell exploded into dusty life, still below them, but closer than any before it. Fragments whicked past. “Jesus Christ,” said Silkworth angrily, looking back along the column. “They’re bracketing us. We just going to sit here? Sooner or later one of them motherfuckers is going to hurt somebody.”

  A jeep edged around the firing amtracs, between them and the hillside. A man in back pointed a flexible 7.62 upward, his eyes white in a dust-smudged face. As it neared them, Will recognized the man beside the driver: the Colonel. He had seen him only a couple of times, but he had a face you didn’t forget. At this moment he looked interested, but not excited. The jeep squeezed past their ’track, scraping metal to metal, and went fifty yards farther up the road; then stopped. Haynes stood up in the front seat, looking down into the ravine, and one of the officers ran up from the ditch, not saluting, and began pointing out where each shell had fallen.

  The colonel pointed too, back up the hill, and then a flurry of faint thuds floated down to them and with no lag at all, as if the noses of the shells had distanced the sound of their firing; two flame-hearted tulips of smoke and dust leapt simultaneously out of the hillside fifty feet above their heads. The blue light of sky turned brown, dark, and dirt came down and rocks, flying free down among the crouching m
en, banging off the hulls of the tanks, which fired now steadily up into the dust. Will found himself firing too, blindly, and along the hill the other men lifted their weapons uncertainly.

  “Knock it off,” shouted Silkworth. “Save ammo, fuck-heads. You can’t see a thing. Hernandez! Put your safety back on.”

  “What’s wrong with shooting back, Sergeant?”

  “I didn’t say to, that’s what.” Silkworth glanced toward the colonel, saw that he was still standing, still looking up at where the dust was settling toward the column. Anxiety came suddenly into the corners of his eyes. “Helos … he ought to call for gunships. Where are they? I haven’t seen one all day. Air support…”

  “Unless he know something you don’t,” said Cutford, who had crawled up behind them while Silkworth was talking.

  “What’s that mean, Cutford?”

  “I mean, they ain’t gonna be no helos. No support. Why else they took away the mortars? No, man—this another of those fucked-up political actions. We just here to die, man, just here to die.”

  “Shut up,” said Silkworth. “Just shut that up now, Corporal.” He looked away.

  The colonel sat down; the jeep’s engine revved; the lieutenant ran back toward the lead ’track, his holster slapping, helmet bobbing. The mortarmen watched him run past them, watched as the colonel reached back to take a microphone that the gunner handed him.

  “Into the ’tracks,” the junior officer shouted to Silkworth, not stopping. “Get ’em in.”

  “We movin’ on, Lieutenant?”

  But he was gone, past, shouting and waving at the next knot of men huddled into the hillside. Silkworth looked back toward Haynes, then upward, squinting into the eye-clenching brilliance of the Mediterranean noon; hesitating, reaching out to hold Givens and Hernandez back as they started to stand up, so that they froze too, looking upward.