The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 3): Lost Time

by White, Samuel Ben

  "Understood, sir."

  "I want you to let me go, Private," Bronwyn said in as calm a voice as she could muster under the circumstances.

  "Ma'am," the young, bullet-headed private told her, "There's no where you could go. The search and rescue teams have already left."

  "I know as well as you that there will be more going," Bronwyn seethed. "I have to get to my people. They're my family, Private."

  "I understand that, ma'am," he nodded, but still holding his rifle in front of him. The barrel was up, so it wasn't necessarily a threatening posture but it was definitely a "means business" posture. "But I have my orders and I'm supposed to keep you here until the General or some other officer tells me otherwise."

  "I'm another officer," she smiled grimly. "What if I order you to let me go?"

  "Then I will have to disobey that order, ma'am." Trying to be friendly, or at least conciliatory, he said, "Now, why don't you just go get you a cup of coffee and sit down. Relax a little bit. You're not going anywhere."

  Bronwyn wondered if the one semester she had taken of judo would be enough to overpower the guard, but finally decided she had better not try. She glared at him again, then finally sighed and went over to the coffee urn. She poured herself a cup then set it down none too gently on the nearest table, sloshing coffee out of the cup. Not bothering to wipe up her mess, she stared sullenly out the window.

  The dusty caravan of two ambulances, four heavily armed jeeps and a potato truck full of soldiers pulled up in front of the field hospital in Marathon in a cloud of dust and grime. Orderlies had the ambulance doors open almost before the vehicles had come to a complete stop. Carter and Whitey were unloaded with rapid precision and whisked inside.

  Clark's gurney was unloaded expertly and Davies refused to leave her post at Clark's head until they were inside the hospital. Major Sherman stepped over to Davies just as they were wheeling the gurney through the door and put a hand on Davies arm, saying gently, "You can let go, Sergeant."

  "No ma'am!" Davies replied, almost viciously.

  "Let go, Sergeant," Major Sherman commanded.

  "No!" Davies almost wailed, though she did let go.

  "Sergeant, she's already gone. There's nothing we can do for her now."

  Kerrigan came over to see what was going on. Before he could ask, he saw an orderly putting a sheet over Private Clark—including her head. He was about to ask an obvious question when Major Sherman told him—and all the rest of the Crockett contingent, which were standing behind the Captain, having followed him in almost lock-step, "She passed away about five minutes ago, Captain. Just before we got to Marathon."

  Avery objected, "But Whitey told me she was moving her legs!"

  "She was Lieutenant. And I thought she would be fine. But she went into shock and, well, we couldn't get her out of it. Without an autopsy I couldn't tell you how she died—or how she lived. I really think now it was only the force of her will that kept her alive as long as she was. Most people would have died when that blast went off."

  "A lot did," someone muttered.

  Kerrigan looked and saw that Davies was so distraught she was probably on the verge of collapse. "Doctor!" he called out, just as Fernandez and Miller caught her by the arms and helped her over to a nearby wheelchair.

  Chapter Three

  "Captain Kerrigan?"

  Jason turned around to find a corporal in a freshly pressed uniform behind him. "Yes," he replied warily.

  The corporal saluted and said, "Command has sent me to bring you and your men to a debriefing."

  Kerrigan nodded at everyone from Crockett that wasn't in the hospital and said, "All right. Let's go."

  After Kerrigan had told everything he knew about the attack—which was next to nothing as he had apparently been unconscious for all but the last few seconds—and the effort to get the survivors away, he asked, "Did I hear that Lieutenant Dalmouth survived?"

  "Yes. We've already debriefed her." The colonel, whose uniform showed him to be on loan from the Navy (and wildly out of place in Marathon where there was barely water from the tap), turned to one of his aides and said, "And she has let us know in no uncertain terms that she is ready to return to action."

  "I am too, sir. But I would like to ask your permission to speak to her."

  "Did you know her well, Captain?"

  "Actually, I've never met her, sir. She was with the 187th and she's only been at Crockett for less than a week. When she was flying, I was usually asleep or doing paperwork—and vice-versa. I probably would have met her at the Friday conference—or maybe some sort of flyers get-together at the oficer's mess. But no, sir, I never actually met her. Don't even know what she looks like other than that the one time I saw her from a distance she seemed short. We're the only two walking flyers left from Crockett—that we know of—and I would like to speak with her. I knew most of the 187th pretty well—if not her."

  "To tell you the truth, Captain, I was going to ask you to talk to her before you brought it up." The colonel wiped a hand over a bald and sweaty head and said, "You being a flyer, maybe she'll talk more readily to you."

  "What does that mean, sir?"

  Besides being short of hair, the colonel had the look of someone who fought a constant battle to keep his weight down. Marathon was a good place for people fighting such battles because they tended to sweat away any excess fat. It crossed Kerrigan's mind to wonder what the man had looked like before—not that many people put on excess weight during wartime. The colonel shrugged, then said, "Don't get me wrong, Captain. She gave a very detailed description of the sortie—over Crockett this morning—if it can even be called a sortie—and what you've told me makes me think everything she said was true." He held up a hand at Kerrigan's defensive scowl and said, "I believed her when she said it. I generally take any officer's word when given it. I'm just, um, trying to prepare you."

  He looked up at the ceiling as if searching for words and Kerrigan realized it was no time to interrupt or ask questions, so he waited. Finally, Colonel Downs explained in a drawl that pegged him as being from somewhere around New Orleans, "Lieutenant Bronwyn Dalmouth graduated at the top of her class at A&M two months ago and received her officer's commission upon that graduation. After graduating on a Friday she reported for flight school on the following Monday. Didn't even take us up on the standard offer to spend a week at home. She completed flight school in eight weeks—standard these days, as you know—but again at the top of her class. That was last Friday. Monday morning she reported for duty at Crockett Army Air Base, again without even going home, and today—Thursday—she took off with a squadron of twelve and watched the other eleven get shot out of the sky and her first post bombed out of existence."

  "Geez," Jason mumbled breathlessly. "How is she?"

  "Physically, she's fine. We've found six bullet holes in her airplane so far and one mark on the tail that my chief mechanic tells me looks like she may have collided with another plane in the air and flown away from the encounter. When it was obvious the air battle was a loss before it even got started she displayed the better part of valor but even then had the presence to fly west—not straight here. Neither did she break radio silence. Excellent officer thinking.

  "She landed her fighter," the colonel continued, slowly and precisely, "Here not too long before your Luis got here on the motorcycle. She was flying on fumes when she landed. My chief mechanic says she probably did a no power landing."

  "She glided to a landing in a '38?" Jason asked with true admiration.

  "That's how it appears. She had no sooner than exited her airplane before she reported what happened and asked for a refill so she could go back out and look for the men she saw parachuting to safety."

  "Sounds like quite a wo—officer, sir."

  "Captain, do you think a person who has been through that should be given immediate leave to return to the skies?"

  Jason hesitated, knowing the right answer but desperately wanting up there himself
. "Where is she now?" Kerrigan asked.

  "Probably trying to overcome the MPs and chew her way out of the officer's mess if she has to before stealing an airplane and heading south. Word is, the matron who 'escorted' her to the showers thought she was about to climb the shower walls and hop on one of the search and rescue caravans that was leaving the post," Colonel Downs replied. "I admire the woman more than I can possibly express with mere words. Had I been through what she had, I would probably be curled up in a ball somewhere and flinching at every sound. Or, more likely, I would be a spot on the desert like those other pilots. To have survived an ambush like that when no one else did—and take out at least two enemy planes, I might add—took a level of skill I am sure you can appreciate, Captain."

  "I can begin to," Jason nodded.

  "I'm no doctor, Captain, but I saw a level of stress in that woman like I have rarely seen—even in the Gulf when we fought the Germans for Cuba. But I don't want to medicate her or put her on some sort of leave if I don't have to. She's too good of a flyer for me to keep her on the ground. Some people go to the gym and punch a few rounds and they’re fine—knew a fellow who'd look like he was about to spit nails then would play a round of golf and be pleasant as you can imagine. Find out if something like that will work for her. With this war heating up on this front, we're going to need her. I want you—a flyer—to go talk to her. I was going to ask before you offered."

  Kerrigan forced a smile and said, "Sir, I'm half-inclined to help her break out of there and go with her back to Crockett to find those pilots."

  "I know you are. But I'm trusting the other half of you to see the sense in calming down and taking up this fight another day. Besides, we have some excellent men and women who are trained in recovery already out there. What we need, is to get you two back up there as pilots—not as basket cases."

  The colonel stood up and Jason took that as his cue to stand up as well. Downs offered his hand and said, "You did a hell of a job out there today, Captain. I'm putting you and all the rest of the Crockett survivors in for commendations."

  Jason took the hand and shook it with a firm grip. As he let go, he said, "Sir, if I may, I'd like to ask that you put in for one of those for Private Clark, too. She fought more than anyone today. And, well, she did survive Crockett—even if not for long. She almost died alone under that pile of rubble, but—" he choked and could go no further.

  "I will do that, Captain. If the Army doesn't award her a medal, I guarantee the Navy will."

  "And sir, unless Major Sherman requests it, I'd like the honor of writing her family."

  "It's not a pleasant duty, Captain."

  Jason nodded, "I know sir. But that young woman's courage is just as responsible for saving the survivors of Crockett as anything I or anyone else did. We got out of there as well and as quickly as we did because we were all . . . trying to save her life." At the colonel's nod, Jason turned and left.

  Outside in the office where the gunnery sergeant sat, Jason approached the desk and said, "Sergeant. Could you do me a favor?"

  "Anything, sir," the young man replied, as if actually anxious to do so.

  "See if you can get word to all the Crockett survivors. Tell them all to meet me at Whitey's at nineteen hundred hours this evening."

  "Whitey's?"

  "They'll know where to go, Sergeant."

  "Yessir. I'll get the word to them."

  Jason stepped out into the hot Texas afternoon. It was hard to believe it was only five o'clock. It seemed like the day was already a week long. His conversation with General Wright seemed like it had happened in another life. Maybe it had, he thought.

  As he realized how exhausted he was, he almost collapsed on the spot. He made his way to a bench nearby and sat down. He put his head in his hands, with his elbows on his knees, and almost passed out. His whole body shuddered and, for the first time that day, he really faced the images he had seen but had been able to ignore in the name of duty.

  General Wright's insignia had been the easy one. He suddenly flashed back to seeing Captain McConnell's crushed body under the table; the arm without a body he had pulled from beneath a sand pile; the upper half of Major Derling, who he had played in ping-pong just the night before.

  As the images of the bodies and body parts he had seen rushed up at him as if he were standing beneath a dam that had just burst, he threw up. He hadn't eaten anything since that early breakfast, but he spewed everything he had in him on the parade ground. With a weird sense of military decorum, especially considering he was covered with dirt and his uniform was ripped, he moved his shoes so as to make sure none of the vomit landed on them.

  He walked across the parade ground, chewing some stale gum he found in his pocket but glad to have it. Surrounding him was a hive of activity as the post prepared for another possible attack and readied more crews to go to Crockett and search. One team had already returned, Jason had learned, but had only been able to confirm what Jason and the others had found: no survivors. These secondary crews were mainly going down to explode any left-behind ordinance—after making sure there were no others like Private Clark, buried under the wreckage but still alive. Other crews were being dispatched to search the wreckage of the airplanes from the 187th, most of which had been spotted by earlier recon flights. There was word that two pilots had been found alive, but it hadn't been confirmed, yet. Lieutenant Dalmouth’s two kills had been confirmed, it was said.

  He came to the officer's mess and was greeted at the door by a pair of MPs. As soon as they saw his captain's bars, they parted to let him enter. There had been a moment of hesitation, however, as he was covered with dirt from head to foot and—while neither guard would have mentioned it—didn't smell very good. He returned their salutes with a sharpness that was incongruous with his appearance and walked inside.

  The immaculately clean room reminded him just how dirty he was. He had taken off his hat upon entering the building, of course, but he reached up to straighten his hair and found it as grimy as his clothes were. He realized he hadn't seen a mirror since that morning and figured his face was probably a sight to match the rest of him. While he had taken pains to make sure he didn't throw up on himself, he had the feeling that what he had done somehow showed. When he spotted a tray of mints by the door, he grabbed one and quickly popped it into his mouth to join the gum. He doubted that it was enough to help, but psychologically, it was an improvement.

  At the sound of the door closing behind him, a figure by the window jumped up and saluted. "Captain!" a female voice said quickly.

  "At ease, Lieutenant. We're in the officers mess. You don't salute me here." Trying to smile, he said, "And the way I look right now, I wouldn't expect you to salute me outside this room, either."

  She was silhouetted against the bright light of the west-facing window and all he could tell about her was that she was probably about five-foot-three or four (as he had thought earlier) and was still wearing her flight suit. He’d heard she had taken a shower, but he guessed the suit was the only clothes available to her afterwards. The flight suits pretty much reduced anyone's curves so that male or female could only be determined by looking at the head or hearing the voice. Her voice was soft, yet with an edge. Definitely feminine and unquestionably . . . he was about to think "sexy" but quickly avoided the thought.

  "I thought this was the brig," she quipped, the bit of an edge to her voice becoming more pronounced.

  "I said, 'At ease, Lieutenant.' Have a seat and let's talk."

  She hesitated, then sat down at one of the tables. He went around to the other side and was finally able to see her, though the glare of the window was still leaving spots on his eyes. What he saw was an attractive, though not really beautiful, red-haired young woman. It was the sort of dark red hair that could have served as a representation of fury, or passion. She had smooth skin and a very determined look on her face. She seemed to suddenly recognize him and asked, "Captain Kerrigan?"

  "Yes. I wasn't sur
e if you'd know me."

  "I've seen you from a distance, sir." She tried to smile as she said, "And you've looked better."

  "No argument there." He held out his hand and said, "It's Jason in here. Um, I can't keep calling you Lieutenant and Dalmouth doesn't sound right, either. What is your name? your Christian name?"

  "Bronwyn."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Bronwyn. It's Irish."

  He tried to give a genuine smile as he said, "So the red hair is for real, huh?"

  "It certainly is, sir—Jason. And so is everything you've heard about red hair and fiery Irish tempers. My great-grandfather immigrated from Ireland and his son married a fresh off the boat Irish lass and I inherited every bit of both their tempers. You're going to see it, too, if they don't let me out of here and back to my plane soon."

  "I could use a good release right now—even if it's vicarious—so I'm tempted to turn you loose. Anyway, I can probably take you over to see your plane but you're not going anywhere in it." When she started to object, he said, "You've got six bullet holes in the fuselage that they've found so far and one scratch they tell me looks like you collided with someone up there."

  "Collided?" she asked, most of her anger replaced by some sort of disbelief that seemed to take a lot of wind from her sails. Her hand on her chest as if to hold her heart in—which was practically true, she stammered, "An-and six bullet holes?"

  "Yeah. You want to go see?"

  She jumped to her feet, slamming her thighs into the table, and practically shouted, "Yes! Ow!"

  "First thing, Lieu—Bronwyn. You're going to have to calm down. They're not going to let either one of us fly a plane until we can prove that we're stable enough to be in one." She nodded but he wasn't sure how serious she was as he followed her to the door. "So just take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and let's try to walk out of this room like two people who haven't been through what we've been through today."