The Med

by David Poyer

  “Sergeant’s right,” said Cutford. He lowered his rifle, looked up at the blank faces of the buildings, and started back to the left. He ran gracefully for a big man, holding his weapon like a toy. Will followed him, stumbling a little because his legs were suddenly weak.

  “Where’d you get the grenade?”

  “Say what, Oreo?”

  “The grenade, Cutford. Where’d you get it?”

  “Bummed a couple off the riflemen. You better get some, too.”

  “Right,” said Will.

  “When you can.”

  “Right.”

  They came up on the man they had shot. He was face down, moving his arms as if trying to crawl. His left side had been shredded. Casualty drill, Givens thought from somewhere frozen in his mind. Silkworth kicked his weapon away. It was a Soviet-style carbine. Will booted him over, not too gently, then stepped back, drawing in his breath.

  This was their enemy. No more than fourteen, not even a smear of mustache, dark eyes blown wide with shock and fear. Silkworth had aimed his rifle at the prisoner’s head. Now he lifted it. One of the M-16 rounds—Cutford’s, or Will’s?—had hit the boy low in the back. The exit hole was the size of a catcher’s mitt. Will swallowed, unable to look at it, unable to take his eyes away. He smelled blood and shit and powder smoke.

  The major came up with the radioman lagging a few steps behind. “He alive?” he said.

  “Not for long,” said Silkworth. “Look, sir, he’s nothin’ but a kid.”

  “Old enough to carry a SKS. Check him for documents.”

  “What, sir?”

  “Documents, Sergeant!”

  “Aw, Christ, sir, he ain’t going to be carrying any documents.”

  “Don’t tell me that till after you check his pockets,” said the major. “And disable that weapon. The rest of you, keep moving.”

  “Yes sir. Goddammit, you mungbrains, spread out!”

  The sound of renewed firing came from ahead. Oily smoke from somewhere billowed dark and nearly motionless between them and the sky. As they moved forward, faster now, the air quivered from an explosion. Givens ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. It scoured his teeth like steel wool. He was glad to leave the dying boy. He thought of asking the man behind him for a swig from his canteen but was afraid to take a hand off his rifle. A small helicopter roared by low overhead, filling their narrow slit of space with the beat of its blades. The smoke was coming from it. It disappeared on the far side of the complex, dropping slowly toward the ground.

  “Hold up here,” said the major to Silkworth.

  The sergeant signaled and Will crouched. Wasserman huddled with the radioman in a doorway. The men waited, looking up at a building they could see now above them to the right. It was five or six stories, a good deal higher than the others. That, Will thought, must be the hotel. He hoped they would not have to fight all the way to the top. The bamn-bamn-bamn of a heavy machine gun came from the far side, from the smoke. After a few minutes Will turned his head and made a gesture to the rifleman. He got the cap off after a couple of tries, and allowed himself two swallows of water; and then a third.

  The huddle broke; the firing on the far side swelled in volume, became a roar. He could distinguish, now, a rifle-sound different from their own. “Listen up!” shouted Major Wasserman. The men, strung along both sides of the way, turned their heads to show they were listening.

  “Here’s the situation. The main part of the force is at the front of the plaza, where we dismounted. They’ll constitute the base of fire, keeping the hostiles occupied. We’re somewhere around the back of the hotel now. We’ll go in slow till we see where the firing’s coming from, or see some means of entrance; then lead with grenades and go in fast. Assault upward from the first floor. Everybody’ll be in civvies, remember. Don’t wait till it’s too late, but don’t shoot Americans by mistake.”

  “Oh, shit,” muttered Cutford.

  “Don’t use grenades to clear a room unless you’re sure there’s no hostages in it. Estimate is thirty to forty enemy. We’re in a good position to take them. Any questions?” He looked at their faces, then nodded once. “Sergeant.”

  “Let’s go,” said Silkworth. He still looks pissed, Will thought. Maybe he always does in combat. He wondered how he looked himself.

  They moved forward. Givens felt urgency now. The sound of firing grew louder to their right. The men ran, bent low, trying to keep cover from overhead.

  They passed a side entry to the plaza, and for just a moment he saw the hotel plain, framed by the arched doorway like a postcard picture. It looked like one in any town, the upper stories the same gray concrete and glass as any other building of the mid-twentieth century, the lower part of it faced with gray stone. Smoke was streaming out of two of the lower windows.

  He ran on, and lost sight of it; but he could still make out the upper stories, through the smoke, above the building that still masked them to their right. The helicopter reappeared suddenly from behind it and flew in a long tilting curve out toward them, the throbbing drone of its engine blotting out the crackle of small arms.

  A stream of tracers leapt upward from one of the windows. Before the aircraft could alter course the fiery lines met the fuselage, disappeared into it. And suddenly the blurred disc of its blades, the green body, flashed into an orange bloom of flame. The men stopped involuntarily, looking up at it; it was overhead.

  The thunderclap reached them then, ringing out across the desert, and the flame became a ball of black smoke and the helo fell out of it toward them, shedding parts, the smoke whirling downward with it in spirals. The fuselage fell free the last hundred feet and crashed into the alleyway, behind the barricade, where the squad had been no more than two minutes before.

  Will found his legs again and ran after the others. The chopper was fire now, a glowing shell being digested hungrily by flame. Choking smoke swept toward them. They ran within it, trying to hold their breaths, but needing it too much from the running, and at last it rose and they emerged into clear air. He saw Silkworth ahead, coughing, pointing up to where the tracers had come from. The rattle of gunfire was steady now and he could distinguish several calibers.

  The alley ended at a service entrance, the door half-open. It seemed to be part of a lower wing of the main building. Harner and Cutford flattened themselves on either side. The corporal tossed in a grenade. Fire flashed and they hurled themselves inside. Givens ran after them.

  In the interior, glass crunched under their boots. They slowed at a corner, Will and the riflemen, Silkworth, Cutford, then looked round it down a carpeted empty corridor toward what must be the lobby. It was straight and they could see through it to the far side. Several marines lay beyond it in the plaza, behind and beside the fountain. Pinned down, or dead—they couldn’t tell. They had only a second to look. Then the major was among them, shoving and cursing pretty well for an officer, Will thought. “Take it!” he shouted.

  The fire team leaped forward. A face showed itself briefly at the door to an office; someone fired, missed; he bolted across the corridor and disappeared from sight. When they reached the lobby it was empty. Wasserman showed himself briefly at the entrance. Two or three shots from outside starred the remaining glass, then the firing slackened. He reappeared, waving, and some of the men by the fountain leapt up and ran toward him.

  There were at least twenty marines inside the hotel now, with rifles and light antitank rockets, all panting and blowing so hard from the sprint and the heat and their loads, there was no breath for talk. Givens, looking out toward the plaza, noticed two stone lions flanking the entrance. Their heads were pocked and scarred by bullets.

  “That’s it,” said the major. A wet patch showed dark between his shoulders. “Blow all that fatigue out. Gonna go on in a minute.”

  “Let’s go now,” said Silkworth, straightening, his face taking on that pissed-off look again, and Will thought: Is it really the combat he hates? Or is it the officer telling h
im what to do? He sucked air and looked around.

  The lobby was a shambles. Shattered glass, layers of it, lay on torn-up blue carpet, and spent cartridges gleamed amid the sparkling shards. One side of the lobby’s marble wall—it must have been elegant once—showed where flame had licked it. Paper, trash, empty bottles lay inside the door, right where, Will figured, a guard must have stood up till the assault began.

  He was standing there, gazing around a little stupidly, when the thud of gunfire came faintly from above.

  * * *

  On the floor above, standing with his remaining men, Harisah edged his head round a casement to look down at the square. He could make them out: a hundred of them, perhaps more, firing steadily from cover of the tanks. As he watched, a squad of ten or eleven broke cover and dashed forward. He edged the assault rifle around the corner of the window and triggered a burst downward as they passed the fountain. At the same time he heard his men firing from other windows, on this floor and above. Three of the runners fell. The rest disappeared beneath the entrance overhang.

  He caught the movement just in time, the elevation of a turret on one of the green vehicles, and hurled himself to the floor as the windowframe and the wall opposite shattered under a hammering blizzard of heavy machine-gun slugs. Plaster-dust filled the air and flying glass sliced at his back. With the others he scrambled on his belly back into the corridor.

  The Majd considered there for a moment, lying prone, feeling their eyes on him. The barricades had not held. The lobby was open, and perhaps the rear of the building as well. He had left guards at the stairwells, but that was only a holding action.

  It is not my fault, nor that of my men, the Majd thought passionlessly. Someone above me misestimated the situation, or those we thought our friends have turned traitor, as to Ali so many years ago. The enemy came too fast and in overwhelming numbers. Whatever the cause, the result is this: We have lost.

  He glanced up. Intent, sweaty faces stared back; some frightened, some resolute; but all of them alike ready. He smiled. They were good men. Was there a vale of pleasure waiting beyond a warrior’s death, as the mullahs said? He doubted it himself. It was a salutary fiction, no more. But he did not care. This moment was enough. He smiled at them, his comrades, and they smiled back.

  The Majd said, “It is time. Kill them all.”

  The men picked themselves up, still crouching, and began running down the corridor. Doors slammed open. Then the shooting began.

  Harisah got up, his legs disgusting him with their sudden weakness, and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. He no longer understood why he’d given his word to the woman. He wished now that he hadn’t. It was sentimentality, foolishness—and for someone unworthy of it. But as soon as she was safe he would resume the fight. Perhaps he could escape. Most likely he would die. But he could not be taken. No, he must not permit himself to be taken. His cause could use martyrs, but not prisoners.

  A woman ran from a side door, then froze, turned toward him, her hands thrust out imploringly. Harisah recognized her. The American official, Freed. She was in his way. He shot her down and began to run.

  * * *

  “Stairway,” said Silkworth instantly. He looked around the lobby. The men stared at him, then understood, and scattered to search. Harner found it around a corner, past the open but motionless doors of the elevators. Silkworth put his hand on his shoulder as he started through. “Not you, Buck. I want riflemen in the lead. Two little fast guys, with plenty of frags. Volunteers?”

  Two of the riflemen exchanged glances and lifted their hands slowly. “Yeah—you two.”

  “Listen,” said the major, cocking his ear upward. They lifted their heads. The firing above had stopped. Then, as they listened, it burst out again more rapid and sustained than before. Faintly beyond it they could make out shouting and screams.

  “Let’s go,” said Silkworth to them all, jerking open the door.

  Givens started for it behind the sergeant. At the jamb he was pulled back. He jerked around. “What the hell—”

  The lightless face was bent close to his. The corporal held a small green sphere close to his chest. It was a fragmentation grenade, pin out. Givens’ eyes shifted to it. “Cutford—”

  “Hang back,” said the corporal.

  “What?”

  “I’m goin’ first, Oreo. You’re new at this. Listen up or lose teeth.”

  The stairway. The first thing that struck him about it was the smell: It stank like a country privy. Behind the sergeant, behind Cutford and the riflemen, he took the risers two at a time. His heart hammered, dragging leaden legs upward. The air burned in his throat. First flight. Second. The concrete well, unpainted and bare of the carpet and glitter of the lobby, echoed the scuff of boots and the harsh panting of climbing men. A hollow clatter came down to them, and Silkworth and Cutford slowed, holding the rest up. They looked at each other. “What was that?” Silkworth whispered.

  “I dunno, man.”

  “Gimme your frag.”

  “It’s live, careful.”

  “I know that, dickhead.”

  “Christ, hold the fucken spoon, then!”

  Men shouted above and simultaneously with it a burst of fire deafened the marines in the closed stairwell. The bullets blew craters out of the concrete walls, whanged and spun in the narrow well. Givens flinched as one flicked at his trouser leg.

  “This one for the Corps,” said Silkworth. “Ready?”

  “On your ass, Silky.” Cutford turned his head. Givens saw familiar white-rimmed eyes, yellow teeth grinning. “Rest of you fuckheads, we catch one, just keep on going over us. Don’t even think ’bout stoppin’.”

  Silkworth swung his arm back and popped the grenade. It hung hissing and smoking in front of Givens’ eyes for as long, it seemed, as all of boot camp had lasted, and then the sergeant threw it, snapping it hard upward so that it hit the wall and bounced around the corner. An instant later the flat crack hit their ears and fragments slapped the wall.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  The two riflemen screamed together and rounded the landing, clattering upward side by side, both firing from the hip. Givens, his heart bursting from the climb and battle, ran upward after them. An ugly little man lay screaming at the landing doors, a civilian—no, a pistol lay near him on the floor. He had been wounded before the grenade-burst; bandages were wound around his back. Silkworth kicked the weapon down the stairs, shot him, and ran on into a corridor.

  They tripped on bodies. There were three of them. A woman, two men. One of the men was still conscious. Cutford glanced down the corridor, where it took a right angle.

  “Soldier—”

  “What, man,” he said rapidly, bending a little, but keeping his eyes and the rifle barrel pointed toward the angle.

  “Keep going,” the man muttered. “They shot us. They’re going to shoot everybody. I heard them say so.”

  “Let’s move! Down the hallway!” Silkworth shouted. The point team moved forward again, pounding down the carpeted passage, and turned the corner. There were two more bodies, still writhing, and blue smoke in the air. A stout unshaven man looked up from them, startled, and began to raise his arms. Hernandez swept him with a burst; the impact of the 5.56s knocked him down and sent a pistol flying. Another door opened and Givens raised his M-16, ready to kill, and then ran on as a blond woman looked out at them, eyes wide in a chalky face.

  The firing was suddenly close, right down the hall. He saw the two riflemen ahead, and beyond them caught a glimpse of white shirts, green armbands. Flash of gunfire. The marine ahead of him shouted hoarsely and fell to the floor. Will ran past him. There was more firing; people appeared at the doors behind them, and some of the marines stopped, checking out the rooms.

  But Silkworth kept the mortar squad and the two riflemen going, running ahead of their disturbance down the long hall, empty as early morning, toward where the gunfire came loudest. Cutford disappeared around the end of the corridor just as
Will passed the last door on the left. As he ran by it, boots thudding into the carpeted concrete, it swung slowly open, and he saw its interior from the corner of his eye: registered it instantly and completely in that fraction of a second. A man. A woman.

  Saw it, and understood. The man had a weapon. He glanced ahead. The others were far down the corridor now, or lying where they had fallen. There was no one else near.

  He turned in mid-stride, glanced off the wall, staggered a step, and ran back for the open door, checking that the safety was off his M-16. The door started to close and he hit it running, kicking it in and going down rolling in the same motion, the way they showed you in combat town. He came up weapon ready, facing the woman. Asian! He almost fired but instead froze. No, she was dressed American, one of the hostages. But where was the man? He swung the barrel to check the room. Gone.

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?” she whispered.

  “The guy, the guy.” He gestured impatiently with the rifle. She wasn’t bad-looking. Dark eyes, heart-shaped face, makeup smeared. She was hugging a child, he saw suddenly, a small girl with startlingly wide eyes; she was staring at him, Givens, in terror. His mind jerked back. “Come on. These people is shootin’ hostages. They was a man in here. He one of the Arabs? Where’d he go?”

  She hesitated, said nothing; but her eyes slid, inadvertently or not he could not tell, to the open window. Following the look, he took two steps and shoved the curtain aside with the flash hider of his rifle.

  A story below, a man looked back up at him from the roof of an attached building. He had, Givens saw, an assault rifle of some type in his right hand. He was swarthy, dark-haired, tall. An open, dirty white shirt. Will felt his breath stop as the man’s eyes steadied on his, and he saw the fear and challenge in them.

  This was the enemy he had traveled so far, waited so long, to meet in the hot deadly silence of a strange land.

  He was stepping out onto the balcony when the woman, behind him, said, “Wait. Please.”