“Anything else I can do for you?” asked Major Hammett.
Lannie looked at Randy. He was staring at the door to the general’s office. He hadn’t heard a word the major said.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I think we’ve seen enough.” She grabbed Randy’s arm and pulled him away. He stumbled through the door into a cold wind. Lannie pulled on her gloves as Randy stared straight ahead at the observation tower, his BDU jacket unzipped, a blank look on his face.
“Let’s get out of the cold.”
Randy just stood there, shivering.
“What’s the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Did you used to work for Ranstead? He was sure looking at you funny, like he recognized you from somewhere.”
“No. I’ve never met him before,” Randy lied.
“C’mon.” She pointed. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”
A diesel heater glowed in the corner of the empty mess tent. Randy grabbed a couple of cups and filled them with coffee. They sat down at a picnic table near the heater.
“You sure you don’t know him? There was a moment there when I thought you two were going to start going over old times.”
“I've heard of him. I think I read something about him in the Army Times.”
“Yeah. There was a big article about him a couple of weeks ago. Did you see the way he zipped out of his office when he heard that battalion was captured?”
“Yeah.”
“Every one of those scorekeepers works for him. He could throw this thing either way, and I’m betting against him giving the Third Army a break.”
Randy broke his spell and turned to her. “Why do you say that?”
“Something Beckwith said about him. He doesn’t trust General Ranstead.”
“General Beckwith doesn’t trust anybody.”
Lannie laughed. “That’s true.” She drained the last of her cup and stood up. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. Are you going back to Headquarters? I’ll get you a ride.”
“I’ve got my POV.”
“Well, this thing will be history in another fifteen hours. I guess I’ll see you around the campus when we get back.”
“Yeah. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. Watch yourself on these back roads. It’s getting slick out there.”
“I will.”
Lannie pulled the mess tent door closed behind her. Randy checked the chow line to see if there was anything to eat, but even the cooks had turned in for the night, so he scooted a folding chair closer to the heater and sat there sipping his coffee. Lannie suspected he and General Ranstead knew each other. She would probably tell Beckwith. That meant he would have to come up with a good excuse for the awkward moment between them. He racked his brain. Maybe they had shared a military flight once, a couple of years back. Both he and Ranstead had been in Haiti at the same time. So, yeah, maybe he caught a hop on a C-130 out of Haiti, and who was on the flight but Ranstead? The Army Times article reported that Ranstead had flown back and forth to Haiti on inspection tours for the Chief of Staff. It was plausible.
Lieutenant Parks stopped at the top of a shallow saddle between two hills. Mace crept forward. Parks removed a pair of binoculars from a case clipped to his web gear and peered into the darkness. He swept the binoculars back and forth and handed them to Mace.
“You see a way out of this, Sarge?”
“I’ll have a look, sir.”
Mace trained the glasses down the hill. To the east was a swampy area that was bound to be a real mess after the rain. To the west the going was easier, but there was another problem in that direction. The boundary of the live-fire zone was less than a mile from their present position, leaving them only a narrow corridor through which they could move. The surprise appearance of a peacekeeper company made Mace wonder if other enemy units had been moved into their area. He knew the chance of the peacekeepers setting up a position in the swamp was a slim one, so he handed the glasses back to Parks.
“Sir, I think we can avoid them if we head east, but I’m not real sure.”
“Maybe we ought to stay put for the time being. It’s going to be light in a few hours. Just before dawn I want to double back and try to make it to the positions we occupied last night. If we can get there by first light, we can hole up and wait this thing out. I’m sure the peacekeepers have moved on and our old position will be safe.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell the men. I’ll wait here.”
Mace crept back to Radley and spread the word. When he returned to the front of the patrol, he found Lieutenant Parks huddled under a tree, wrapped in his poncho.
“Sometimes the Army can be a real shitty place, you know that, Sarge?”
“Yes, sir. Like tonight.”
There was a long pause. In the distance he could hear the distinctive caaaaruuump of 155mm artillery impacting the live-fire zone.
His words came in a whisper. “You know, they think I killed Sheila.”
Mace remained silent, waiting.
“They think because we were lovers, I killed her. Can you believe that?”
“No, sir.”
“I didn’t kill her, Sarge. You’ve got to believe that.” He paused for a moment. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m worried. They were asking me about where I was. I told them I was at home, but I wasn’t.”
Mace tried to find his face, but it was too dark.
“I followed her that night. I knew she was going to meet him, because she told me. So I followed her, but I lost her in the storm. She went around a corner and when I turned the corner, she was gone. You believe me, don’t you, Sarge?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They all but told me to get a lawyer.”
A barrage of artillery hit the live-fire zone, shaking the ground they were sitting on.
“I’m afraid they’re going to start asking around at the apartment complex where I live, and find out I wasn’t at home that night like I said. I think they’re going to charge me, Sarge. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t!” He reached out and grabbed Mace’s arm. “I didn’t kill her! I loved her!”
Another huge barrage hit the live-fire zone. Mace waited for him to release the grip on his arm, but he didn’t let go. He just sat there whispering, “I loved her, I loved her, I loved her. . . .”
Chapter Twenty
Mace had dropped off to sleep and awoke when he heard them. He quickly signaled the platoon to lay low.
A force of maybe fifty men was moving through the trees downstream from them. He pulled out his binoculars and adjusted the eyepiece. More troops, a larger enemy force this time, was moving slowly toward them along the far side of the stream.
Lieutenant Parks crawled up next to him. “How long have we got to the end of the exercise, Sarge?”
“Maybe six hours, sir.”
“You see any way around these guys?”
“Yes, sir. We could make our way east. We’d have to go through the swamp, but I think we’d still make it.”
“We’ll never get through the swamp before daybreak, Sarge. I want you to head us west.”
“Sir, I don’t know about that. We’re awfully close to the live-fire zone, and going west is going to take us straight into it.”
Parks reached in his pocket and pulled out a copy of the ops order. “They call off the live fire at 0400. It’s 0415 right now. We can get around these guys by going through the edge of the live-fire zone. It’s over, Sergeant. Look. Right here in the ops order. 0400.” He handed the sheet of paper to Mace.
Mace studied Parks. He looked cornered, desperate. “I don’t like it, sir. I’ve been on a bunch of these field exercises. I’ve seen guys get killed messing around close to the live-fire.”
Parks’ lips drew tightly across his teeth in a brittle smile. “I’ll tell you what, Sergeant. We’re going to skirt the edge of the live-fir
e zone, and you’re going to follow me or I will bring you up on charges when we get back to the barracks.”
The guy had a death wish. Mace was certain of it. He made a vow not to lead the platoon into the live-fire zone. If this zoned-out lieutenant wanted to cash his check, so be it. But he wasn’t going to take the platoon with him. He let Parks move out ahead a good distance before he gave the order for the rest of the platoon to follow. They were just starting down a hill when he saw the distinctive yellow flags marking the outside edge of the live-fire zone. Lieutenant Parks brushed past the first flag and kept going.
He heard some Apaches and looked up. They were gaining altitude, a whole formation of them, a deafening whine of turbine engines and beating rotors. Then they were directly overhead, and one after another they unleashed pods of 3.5-inch rockets that streaked through the night, impacting with fiery explosions that lit up the sky.
He heard the distant sounds of an artillery barrage being fired. Overhead, the 105 rounds whistled through the dark sky and exploded in the distance. There was another series of explosions as more artillery was fired. This time the whistling of the incoming rounds was sharper.
It was going to come in short!
He tore downhill, slipped, tumbled down the slope, regained his feet, and kept running. He saw the lieutenant stop and turn. There was a huge explosion as several of the rounds hit maybe two hundred yards away. Mace started screaming, Get out of there! Get away! There was another whistle of artillery, and suddenly a blinding flash of light. A huge pine exploded, knocking him to the ground. He shook his head, trying to focus his eyes. The acrid aroma of cordite filled the air. He looked through the smoke, trying to find the lieutenant.
He was gone.
Mace looked down at his arm. There was a long gash from elbow to wrist, and blood flowed freely. He looked up and saw Radley’s face, and he heard his voice as if he was a mile away.
“You’re gonna be all right, Sarge . . .”
Then darkness closed in around him and he felt cold. Very, very cold.
Chapter Twenty-one
The phone rang just as Kara was going out the door to work. She had decided to let the machine get it when she heard the voice of a young man, insistent, frantic: “Major Guidry? Are you there? Pick up, please, ma’am!”
She rushed to the phone. “This is Major Guidry. Who’s calling?”
“Ma’am, this is Corporal Radley. I’m one of Sergeant Nukanen’s squad leaders. The sarge has been wounded, ma’am. He told me, anything ever happen to him, I’m supposed to let you know, ma’am.”
She felt her lungs heave as she took air in short, shallow breaths. She paused for a moment, trying to catch her breath. “What happened? Can you tell me?”
“It was out in the field this mornin’, ma’am. Lieutenant Parks, he was takin’ us pretty close to the live-fire zone. Then he just took off runnin’, and the sarge, he went after him, and this artillery barrage come in, and Lieutenant Parks, he’s dead, ma’am, and the sarge, he got shook up pretty bad, but I heard one of the dudes come to get him in the chopper, and he said the sarge’s gonna be okay, ma’am.”
Quickly: “Where is he?”
“They choppered him straight to the hospital, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Corporal. Thank you very much.”
“No problem, ma’am. Uh, ma’am, I think you oughta know the sarge is a pretty tough old bird. He’s gonna pull through okay.”
“I know he is. Thanks again.” She hung up the phone and found herself staring out the window at the wind-whipped branches of the trees, remembering. She’d had pride as a plebe at West Point, that they had never made her cry. She saw herself standing in the colonel’s office, her face flushed and hot, as he told her she’d never get a Blackhawk squadron command because she was a woman. Even when she got home, sad, confused, enraged, emotions whirling within her, she never cried. And she remembered her father’s funeral at the National Cemetery at Fort Leavenworth, standing beneath the tall oaks in the hot shade of August, watching them lower his casket into the ground. She hadn’t cried there either.
Now she knew that her tears when she heard that Mace had been wounded meant she loved him the way she had never loved anyone before.
He was lying on his side, and he was moving. When he opened his eyes, he saw pale green walls rushing past. He got it now. He was in a hospital on a gurney. He looked up at the sweating face of the young corpsman pushing him. He could see that the corpsman was talking to someone, but his ears were ringing, like his head was hollow and somebody was blowing a whistle in there.
The gurney made a turn and he saw curtains being yanked back and he came to a stop under a huge white light. People were yelling. He felt someone pressing on his good arm, pressing, pressing. Faintly he heard a male voice:
“I’ve got a live one.”
He felt a needle and then he felt the warm rush of whole blood flowing into his vein.
A big guy was giving loud, sharp orders. He could barely hear him.
“Suture.”
It was funny. They were sewing up his arm, and he couldn’t feel it. The ringing was turning into a hollow echo. Everybody sounded like they were yelling at him from the bottom of an empty quarry.
“Suture.”
The man’s face. He could tell the big man was yelling, but his voice sounded far, far away. “Sergeant, can you hear me?”
He nodded.
“You remember me? I’m Captain Taggert.”
Taggert. Taggert. Yeah, he remembered. The night they found the body. Nice guy. Doctor.
“I want you to know you took a pretty rough pounding out there this morning, but you’re going to be A-okay, you hear me?”
He nodded.
“That’s the spirit. Hang in there.”
The big guy’s face disappeared.
A new voice. A woman. Young.
“Pressure’s coming up.”
The big guy: “Let’s put a drip in. He needs fluids. Give him some morphine.”
Somebody started pressing on his thigh, and he felt another needle go in.
A man’s voice: “We’ve got the stitches in him. He’s stable. Let’s move him.”
They were moving him again. He was on his back watching fluorescent lights rush past in a blur. They pushed him into a small room, and hands lifted him from the gurney and slid him onto a mattress that felt like the softest place in the whole world. He heard a faint beeping, and slept.
He woke up as the door opened and Captain Taggert walked in, a stethoscope dangling around his neck. He flipped open a metal chart folder, scanned it briefly, and looked up, smiling. “How are you feeling, Sergeant?”
“Kind of fuzzy. Everything seems real far away.”
“You might have a slight concussion. We’re going to keep you here awhile and check you out. What do you think about that?”
“Okay, sir.” He tried to sit up, but was overcome by a wave of dizziness and nausea and flopped back against his pillows.
“Room swimming a little bit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You lie there and rest awhile, Sergeant. It’ll pass. We’re going to get you fixed up, you don’t worry about that.”
The door opened, and Captain Long walked in. “How is he, Doc?”
Taggert squeezed his hand and turned away. “They don’t make ‘em much tougher than this one.”
“Can I ask him some questions?”
“A few. Don’t take too long. He’s got a concussion, and I want him to rest.”
Captain Long came around to the other side of the bed. “How are you feeling, Sarge?”
“Kind of here and then there, sir.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. Sergeant, we’ll be doing a full investigation later, but right now I’ve got some preliminary questions. You feel up to it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you tell me what happened out there?”
“I’m not real sure exactly what happened, sir.”
“Well, just do your best, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir. What happened . . . it’s still kind of fuzzy to me, sir. Parks . . . he was going into the live-fire zone, because he thought all the live-ammo stuff was over. I saw him at the bottom of the hill, then all this ordnance started coming in, and I heard this one round coming in short, and I tried to get to him, but . . .” His voice trailed away.
“That’s okay, Sarge. You just rest. You’re going to be okay.”
He closed his eyes and he thought he could hear them whispering at the door, and then he passed out again.
It was dark outside when he awoke. He wondered what time it was. Late, probably. The chugging, factory-like sounds of the hospital had died down to a whisper. He sat up. The nausea was gone. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood there holding on with his good hand. His other arm was bandaged, in a sling. He wondered if he could make it to the bathroom. He took an unsteady step. Another. He let go of the bed’s foot-board. A couple more steps, and he was there. He was running water to wash his face and hands when he heard the door open. He dried his hands and walked into the room. Kara was standing with her back against the door. She was wearing jeans and an old jacket and a scarf.
“You shouldn’t have come. What if somebody sees you?”
“Nobody saw me. It’s quiet as a church out there.” She slipped the scarf from her head and kissed him. “I was so worried. Your corporal called me this morning. This has been the longest day of my life, waiting to get in here. How are you feeling?”
“Better. My head still hurts pretty badly. The arm’s okay, though. The doc says the wound isn’t deep, and it’ll heal right away.”
“What happened?”
“It was a short round, I guess. Parks had us right on the edge of the live-fire zone. The live-fire exercise was supposed to stop at 0400, but for some reason they kept firing.”
Heart of War Page 20