Enemies c-15

by Keith Douglass

  One day after Little League, when Smith had sat on the bench almost the entire game, Gramps had seen the unshed tears shining in his grandson’s eyes. “It’s not fair,” Smith had whined, kicking up the dirt as they’d trudged off to the bus stop. “Coach isn’t fair.”

  “Life’s not fair, Greg,” Gramps had said. When they got to the bus stop, Gramps sat down on the chilly wooden bench and took his grandson’s small hand in his and placed it gently over his left knee. Smith could still remember how the flesh curved away so abruptly under his hand, the cold metal artificial leg that cupped the stump. “Stop thinking that it ever will be. But in America, what matters is how the team does. Not whether you play or score. Not whether you lose a leg and another man loses his life. It’s about the team, about how the unit does. You know how I’ve told you about the war, about why it mattered that we were there, right?”

  Smith had nodded. “We had to stop the North Koreans from killing people.”

  Gramps nodded. “That’s right. And America was the only country in the world that was willing to step up to the plate and put an end to it. And I told you why we won, too. Do you remember?”

  The young child had sighed. “Because we were on the right side. Because God wanted us to.”

  “That’s right.” Gramps fell silent for a moment, then sighed heavily. “Someday you’ll see what that has to do with warming the bench. Maybe not now, but some day.”

  Later on, there’d been more lessons, most of them drawing on Gramp’s military background and his grounding in traditional American values. Without even realizing it, his grandson had absorbed those things that Gramps said were American ideals. And when Smith had turned eighteen, shortly after his graduation from high school, he’d gone with Gramps down to the Navy Recruiting Station and enlisted. Later, when he’d told his mother, she’d cried. Gramps had explained things once again, but for some reason his mother hadn’t agreed. Smith, however, did.

  So why weren’t they explaining to him what it all meant, the way Gramps would have? Why was Jefferson here? Where was the team spirit, the unit integrity that Gramps had always talked about?

  He touched the pocket again. This whole UN business — Gramps was right about that, too. They shouldn’t be fighting for someone else like this.

  “Hey, asshole,” a voice called down from overhead. He looked up and saw Airman Quincy Trudeau, his running mate, staring down at him. “Better get your ass up here. The chief is looking for you.”

  Smith sighed and took one last longing look at the water. A few minutes of peace and quiet between launch and recovery cycles, that was all he wanted. Maybe one night to sleep all the way through and not get woken up for a watch, some problem with his aircraft, or just because the other guys in the compartment were making too much noise. A little sleep, a little time off — was that too much to ask for?

  “Okay, okay. I’m coming.” Smith turned his back on the ocean and started up the ladder. It led to the catwalk that ran immediately below the level of the flight deck. Trudeau was waiting for him there, pointing out at the ocean on the other side of the ship.

  “What?” Smith asked.

  Trudeau smirked. “Made you look…”

  Smith punched him, letting his fist fall a few inches short of its target. Trudeau dodged out of the way and they spent a few minutes sparring, hidden from the handler’s view by a couple of Tomcats parked side-by-side. Screwing around on the flight deck wasn’t allowed, not even for the guys who knew it better than they knew their own berthing compartment.

  “So what’s really going on?” Smith asked, finally collapsing. “I thought you were asleep down in the chain locker.”

  Trudeau groaned. “Don’t even talk to me about chains, asshole. Not after yesterday.”

  The two of them had spent twelve hours hauling sets of tie-down chains up to the flight deck, on the rumor from the meteorologist that heavy weather would be setting in. Each aircraft had to be tied down with eight chains for foul weather, and each chain weighed twenty pounds. The airmen hauled them up in sets of ten, up four ladders and down three passageways just to get them to the flight deck.

  The storm hadn’t materialized, but both men could feel the strain in their backs and legs. One more day with eight-point tie-downs, and then they’d be humping the chains back down to the locker. Why the hell couldn’t they store the chains somewhere closer to the flight deck, anyway?

  “I had to get back up here anyway,” Smith said. “We’re on the flight schedule this afternoon.”

  Trudeau yawned. “Me, too. Hey, did you hear the latest? We may be going to Greece with our birds. The squadron is sending a detachment ashore.”

  “No shit? Man, I could go for that. Join the Navy and see the world — so far all I’ve seen of it is Great Lakes, Illinois, and Jefferson. One day ashore in Italy doesn’t count. Greece — now, that would be a good deal.”

  Trudeau punched him on the arm. Even the light contact stung his overworked muscles. “Be okay with me, too. Guess we better not get caught at anything for a couple of days if we want to go, you know. They don’t send liberty risks on good deals.”

  Smith nodded. Both of the young sailors had been classified as liberty risks at their last port call, based solely on an innocent misunderstanding with an Italian police officer. Of course, the possibility that it had been their fault and that they’d been drunk out of their minds had occurred to the chief petty officer they worked for. They ended up with an ass chewing and an early curfew.

  “Flight quarters, flight quarters. All hands man flight quarters to recover aircraft,” the 1MC bleated.

  “Whose bird?” Trudeau asked.

  “Rogers.”

  “He getting any better?”

  Smith shook his head. “Still one dangerous son of the bitch on the flight deck. He’s got no common sense, no matter how many times you tell him. He’s going to get someone killed someday.”

  Trudeau got to his feet. “Well, it’s not going to be me. If it’s Rogers’s bird, I’m staying out of the way.” He started off toward the island.

  Smith watch him go. That was probably the smart thing to do, although he found himself reluctant to leave the flight deck. Rogers and his bird were part of the squadron, part of the team.

  Maybe he’d go over the procedures one more time with Rogers, see if he could knock some sense into him. At least he could keep an eye on the other airman while the engines were still turning, make sure he didn’t walk into the jet intake. Rogers was an accident waiting to happen, and everybody knew it.

  Greece. Let me go to Greece. I swear to God, I won’t screw up. Just give me a few days away from the ship, and I’ll be good for the rest of the cruise.

  Smith trudged aft, toward where Rogers would be waiting for his bird, careful to stay outside the green lines to avoid fouling the flight line. Halfway there, he felt a familiar elbow in his ribs.

  “Guess we’re in this together,” Trudeau said as he fell into step next to Smith. “My luck, you’d get yourself killed and I’d have to haul twice as many chains alone.”

  FOUR

  Friday, 5 May

  Macedonian transport helo 3

  1000 local (GMT +2)

  Pain was her entire world, all-encompassing and demanding. It ate at the edges of her consciousness, blocking out everything beyond shattered nerve endings and damaged flesh. Time ceased to exist except as a continuum of the agony pounding in her body.

  She heard words, could not make them out. One small portion of her brain insisted that she pay attention, that this was very important. She dismissed the thought, too consumed by the agony ripping through her. Nothing mattered but the pain.

  But gradually, she became accustomed to it. Pain became a part of her, and faded, if not to the background, at least to a level that might — just might — be endurable

  Now she could hear the words, the individual sounds. Someone touched her shoulder lightly, and she groaned.

  “The morphine, it is w
orking now?” the voice spoke English, although with a heavy accent running through it. She catalogued it immediately — Greek, probably from the northern area. It was not a conscious analysis, this instantaneous compulsion to peg accents and voices to nationality was just a reflex born of years spent overseas.

  “You’re still in pain?” the voice asked. She tried to force an answer out between battered lips but could only manage another groan. There was a light prick on her thigh, barely distinguishable from the rest of the pain, and she felt coolness float up her body. “There. That should help.”

  It did. She found she was at least able to open her eyes without screaming. “Yes, I can see it’s helping. It is, isn’t it?” the voice said, the words soothing.

  “What…?” She heard the word come out, and was unable to recognize the harsh croak as her own voice. She tried again. “What happened?”

  Evidently the man leaning over her was accustomed to listening to injured people try to talk. He nodded reassuringly. “There was an accident with your helicopter. Do you remember?”

  She tried to think. Had she been in a helicopter? Lord, she seemed to spend half her life in the air, so it was entirely possible. But a crash? How? And why?

  “Your helicopter went down,” the voice continued. “A mechanical malfunction, perhaps. We don’t know what happened.”

  “How bad?” she asked, forcing the words out.

  The voice was serious, though not unkind. “You are the only survivor.”

  Mike. Brett. And the cameraman… she had never even gotten to know his name.

  “You’re still in pain,” the voice said.

  Pamela squinted, trying to bring his face into focus, but he remained a blur. She moved as though to touch the face and gentle pressure restrained her.

  “Do not move,” the voice continued. It bothered her more than she could say that she couldn’t see his face. She made her living judging people by their body language and expressions, the way they looked away when they lied to her, the unflinching stare that was even more damning evidence of falsehoods.

  “I can’t see,” she said.

  “You’re badly hurt,” the voice said. “Please, do not try to move. We’re taking you to doctors, to the hospital.”

  “Who are you?” Her curiosity gnawed at her, competing with the pain. A few details from the crash were starting to come back. They’d been coming back from taking some stock footage of the camp inside Greece where the rebels were supposedly headquartered. It had been an easy flight, no sign of trouble. No one was worried about the trip. As in many international conflicts, the news media seemed to have an unspoken guarantee of safety.

  “You must not move,” the voice said, more sharply now. “There may be serious injuries. Please, you cannot — here.” There was another pinch on her thigh, then massive waves of cool blue relief spread throughout her body from that location. She could still feel the pain as a pressure, knew it was there, but it no longer matter. Nothing mattered except the velvet midnight blue darkness that drew her down.

  “What…?” She tried to frame a question, but could no longer make her lips move. Nor could she remember exactly what she had wanted to ask. It wasn’t important, anyway. Nothing was.

  A flash of strong denial inside of her. No, there were some things that were important. Tombstone Magruder. The face materialized in her mind again, a reassuring source of strength.

  Tombstone would come after her, she knew. He always had. He always would. She slipped back down into darkness, comforted by that certainty.

  Macedonian HQ camp

  Five miles inside the Greek border

  1035 local (GMT +2)

  Colonel Takia Xerxes, the commander of the Macedonian insurgents inside Greece, stared down at the still form on the stretcher. He was lean, with wiry muscles corded on a tall frame. His dark hair was clipped short but still curled into tight half-circles over a high forehead burned dark from hours in the sun. Brilliant green eyes peered out from beneath shaggy eyebrows.

  “Why did you bring her here?” Xerxes asked. “Don’t you know how many people will be looking for her?”

  The medic shrugged. “She was on her way here, wasn’t she?”

  “Not to this location. To the other one, the one we let leak as our headquarters. No one is supposed know about this camp — no one except those who have to.”

  “She’d been out there for almost two days. Another couple of hours and she would have died,” the medic said. He knelt down by her body, stroked a stray lock of hair back from the battered face. “Is that your idea of good relations with the international press? Letting Pamela Drake die when you could save her?”

  Xerxes shook his head impatiently. “No, of course not. But there were other options. If you’d radioed ahead, even asked for instructions, I would have—”

  “You would have chewed me out for breaking radio silence,” the pilot chimed in. “Admit it. Besides, as long as she doesn’t know where she is, she can’t tell anyone, can she?”

  “It won’t work,” Xerxes snapped back. “During the Cuban crisis, she was taken hostage by the guerrillas there. They held her as a human shield at their missile site. Everyone will think we’re doing the same thing.”

  Xerxes sighed. How was he to have known of the range of problems he would have to deal with? It had all been so simple when they started out, a question of national pride and their honor as Macedonians. But the details, ah, the details. The devil was in the details.

  They’d made plans for logistic support, chosen their allies carefully. Somehow, they’d managed to assemble a credible fighting force out of the disparate aircraft, weapons, and equipment that they’d been able to beg from other countries.

  But when had he had time to decide what to do about a pregnant freedom fighter? Or about conflict between his troops, the need for some form of military discipline in this People’s Army of equals? Or about a SAR mission that brought an international reporter to his secret headquarters inside enemy territory? All these things and more had never even crossed his mind.

  It had been so simple, back when it was just a matter of national honor.

  “How is she?” Xerxes asked finally. “Do not tell me she’s going to die in my camp.”

  “She’s badly hurt,” the medic kneeling beside her said. “I need X rays, access to diagnostic procedures we don’t have in the field here. She needs a hospital.” He looked up at Xerxes, concern evidence in his face.

  Xerxes shook his head. “We can’t take the chance. It’s dangerous enough flying the surveillance missions. I can’t risk the men or the equipment to get her into town.”

  The medic sighed and looked down. “She might be all right,” he said. “If there are no internal injuries, no bleeding. I can’t tell that now. At the very least, she’s got a concussion, and it could be a lot worse.” He pointed at her right leg. “Broken. I set it.” He pointed at her right shoulder. “Dislocated. And the cuts and bruises are simply too numerous to catalog. But at least she’s hydrated now. It’s a miracle that a pack of wild dogs didn’t find her while she was unconscious.”

  “How did she survive?” Xerxes asked. “And more importantly… why?”

  Tavista Air Base, northern Greece

  1040 local (GMT –2)

  “What do you mean, they’re not there?” General Arkady snapped. “Where could they have gone?”

  The helicopter crew stood ranged before him in a rough semicircle. Clearly, word of Spiros’s fate had traveled quickly among the ranks of the aviators. These looked to be the juniormost officers and enlisted flight technicians to be found in their squadrons.

  Arkady turned to Colonel Zentos. “Do my orders still mean so little?” he asked. He pointed at the men. “Finding this reporter was our top priority. I made it clear, did I not? And yet we send these… men who can’t even locate the downed helicopter in two days. An explanation. Now, if you please.” His tone of voice made clear that this was not a request.

 
His chief of staff swallowed hard, uneasy. Nor was it the first time since he had joined Arkady’s staff.

  Colonel Zentos was a career army man, with all that that implied. He believed in order, discipline, a regulated way of life that made it possible for a nation to deploy its military power on a moment’s notice. The question of Macedonia and Greece was not one that he thought much about. He had his orders — detect, track and destroy Macedonian forces inside Greece, interdict supplies flowing into Macedonia, and maintain air superiority using primarily army assets. This assignment to General Arkady’s staff had been a vote of confidence, and he’d looked forward to serving under the command of the brilliant tactician whose rise through the ranks was virtually legendary. Colonel Zentos was well aware that he was regarded as a strong, methodical officer, the perfect chief of staff. By serving with General Arkady, he’d hoped to expand his reputation as a tactician and planner.

  Zentos had thought in the beginning that the rumors about General Arkady’s brutality were simply discontented murmurings from staff officers not accustomed to working for a demanding flag officer. He had dismissed the worst of the accounts as too clearly implausible to possibly be true.

  But in the past weeks and months, Zentos had started to experience doubts. With the execution — and there was really nothing else that it could be called, could it? — he’d had his worst fears confirmed. General Arkady might possess an awesome intellect, and might be just the person to control the Macedonian problem, but he was a brutal, atrocious human being.

  “I will look into this, General,” Zentos said carefully, all too aware that his own life hung in the balance. Yet he was unwilling to take the coward’s way out and try to shift the blame to the squadron commanding officer, or even to these pilots. The essence of command was the trust and confidence one’s subordinates felt in their commanders, their conviction, however unwarranted by the facts, that the commander knew what was best. “I apologize for wasting your time with this. Give me a chance to get to the bottom of this before I have you briefed.”