by Ahern, Jerry
"I wish John weren't—"
"Doctor Rourke?"
"Yeah—John. I wish he weren't. I remember reading something once that doctors aren't supposed to operate on family members—or people they're close to. Too much of a stress situation."
"I asked Doctor Rourke the same thing myself," Gundersen nodded, sipping at his coffee. "He said he'd checked with our doctor—Harvey Milton. Doctor Milton told Rourke he'd never worked on a gunshot wound before. He hadn't. He's fresh out of medical school two years ago and before the Night of The War at least, we didn't have many gunshot wounds in the Navy. Now, of course, we don't really have a Navy at all. All the surface ships are gone or at least gone out of contact. Not many of us in the pigboat fleet left either."
"Pigboats?"
"Old submariner's term—real old. But I'm an old submariner," Gundersen smiled.
"Guess that's why it doesn't bother me to use it. Naw, but—ahh—anyway, Dr.
Milton never had worked on gunshot wounds before and your friend Doctor Rourke said he had. Guess there wasn't much choice. Bumped into Milton outside the sick bay just before Rourke began transfusing Major Tiemerovna—Milton seemed to think Rourke was good. Only hope Harvey was right."
"Harvey?"
"Doctor Milton's first name—"
"Ohh—oh, yeah," Rubenstein nodded.
"Brought this along—figured you might be needing it. Sometimes the waiting gets harder than the doing." From the seat beside him Gundersen produced a small slab-sided bottle. "Medicinal liquor—I've drunk smoother. But there's more where it comes from," and Gundersen handed Rubenstein the bottle. Rubenstein downed his coffee, twisted open the bottle and poured two fingers into the cup. He offered the bottle to Gundersen. "Never touch the stuff when we're underway."
"What's that mean?"
"We've been underwater and heading north for—" he looked at his wristwatch.
"Fifty-eight minutes. They don't really need me up there until we get near the icepack—and that'll be a while yet. Should be tricky—imagine there's been a lot of shifting in the pack since the Night of The War."
"Ice pack?" Rubenstein coughed—the medicinal liquor was strong, burning as he felt it in the pit of his stomach.
"As to the running of the submarine here and the welfare of my crew, I give the orders. But for the actual operation it's Captain Cole's say so. He ordered us underway before they put him out to take out the two slugs in his left arm."
"Ohh, shit," Rubenstein muttered, taking another swallow of the liquor. It burned less this time.
Chapter 11
A long mid-line incision was made in order to expose the internal organs. Rourke began exploring the stomach.
Dr. Milton's voice sounded nearly as labored as the respirator. "Why are you going through the gastrocolic omentum, Doctor Rourke?"
Mechanically, his mind on his hands and not his words, Rourke answered. "To open the lesser sac of the stomach." The membrane was a loose fold. "Suction" he called, Milton himself assisting. The greater omentum covered the anterior stomach surface and intestines like a drape, Rourke stopping, noting a hematoma at the mesenteric attachment. "We have to evacuate this hematoma." Evacuating, Rourke inspected the stomach wall between the leaves of the greater and lesser omentum. There was damage, a whole bullet, not a fragment, partially severing the connection to the rear wall of the abdomen. "Gotta get that sucker out,"
Rourke remarked, exhaling hard, feeling ready to collapse. As each bullet or fragment was removed, Rourke carefully repaired the organ damage with continuous locking chromic sutures.
According to the clock on the surgery wall—he supposed bulkhead would be more appropriate since they were on a naval vessel and—likely—already underway, he had spent more than an hour and a half sorting through the mess that was Natalia's stomach, finding bullet fragments and piecing them meticulously together—if he left even the smallest fragment, the complications could be legion—could be mortal.
"Do you have your closing sutures available?"
"You're ready to close her?" Dr. Milton asked.
"No—just thinking ahead—you have what I need?"
"Yes."
"Fine."
"Are you sure there were seven bullets?"
"Yes," Rourke nodded. "Somebody gimme a wipe, huh?"
A hand reached out—he didn't see who it belonged to, his eyes bothering him with the light as well, the glare—he needed a smoke, needed sleep—but Natalia needed life. "Damnit—" Rourke almost spat the word. In the fat of the greater omentum he found what he had not wanted to find. The sixth bullet had been intact—he had hoped that the seventh would be.
It was not.
He had the jacket, the gilding metal—but the core of the bullet—the core had separated and was still somewhere inside her.
As Rourke held it up, trying to determine if anything other than the core itself were missing, Milton asked, "Is that it?"
"Unless a bullet is made of lead alone, it usually has a whole or partial jacket surrounding it. These should be full metal jacketed if they were standard G.I.
Ball—and all the others have been. Somehow the jacket peeled away from the lead core and the lead core is missing in there still—and you can see the way the jacket peeled back that it was ripped—a lot of force bearing on it. Looks like there are pinhead-sized fragments of the jacket missing as well. Pll need someone standing by with a microscope so we can piece this thing back together as we go—can't afford to leave any pieces behind."
"I'll get someone on that," Milton murmured.
Rourke closed his eyes for an instant—he thought of the eyes beneath the closed lids beyond the surgical tent. "Natalia," he whispered.
Chapter 12
Paul Rubenstein had given up on the medicinal liquor—he had no desire to get drunk. And the coffee—good by anyone's standard—had proved too much for him as well—two trips to what he'd rapidly learned was called "the head". He had given up smoking many years before—so he sat now, staring at the wall, wondering. And he knew it wasn't a wall—he remembered editing an article years ago that had dealt with ships and boats and a wall was a bulkhead—he thought.
He wondered if Rourke knew—knew that the ship was underway. He realized that even if Rourke had not been told, he would have suspected as much. And he wondered even more about the welfare of Natalia.
He found himself smiling at mention of her name—that a major in the KGB would have found such a warm place in his heart amazed him still. His parents, not directly involved in the Holocaust, had told him of relatives who had been. The SS, the Gestapo—and he rationally realized that the KGB was essentially the same. But the woman—she was different.
If he felt such torture waiting for the outcome of the operation—six hours had passed since it had begun—he could not even imagine what it was Rourke himself felt. A slip of the knife, a misjudgment and a woman that Rourke obviously loved would be dead. Rubenstein shivered—not with cold.
He sat bolt upright. "The operation's over."
He turned around—it was RourKe. "John—is—"
She was dead, Rubenstein thought—otherwise—
"She should make it," Rourke nodded, his face haggard-looking, leaner seeming than Paul had ever seen it. Under the most bizarre conditions, Rubenstein had secretly marveled that Rourke always found the time to stay clean shaven when there was sufficient water available to do so. But now, his face was stubbled, deep lines etched there heightened by the shadow of beard.
"You look like hell," Paul said quietly.
' 'Matches the way I feel—the last bullet. Nine fragments, some of them almost as small as the head of a pin. Had to reconstruct it under a microscope. Made me realize the last time I performed major surgery was a long time ago. The hands are just as steady, but the reflexes I'd learned weren't there."
"We're underway—like they call it. You know that," the yo
unger man told him.
"I felt it—yeah."
"What are we going to do, John?"
"If I got everything and did everything right, Natalia could be up and around in about a week. We can't do anything until then. You meet the captain?"
"Commander Gundersen—yeah—seems okay."
"It's Cole we've gotta worry about—those orders of his—something doesn't sound right about them."
"He wants to start a nuclear war all over again? That's crazy."
"I'm going to see if there's some way this Commander Gundersen can contact President Chambers or Reed. But in the meantime, we're stuck."
"Gundersen's men took my guns—I didn't see any way of arguing it—six of them and no running room."
Rourke nodded soberly. "I took off my pistols when I scrubbed—most of them anyway," and Rourke smiled.
' 'But you were right—trying a shootout in a metal skin in the water—under it now—would have been stupid."
"You're not gong through with this—to find the missiles. Are you?"
"I don't have much choice. We'll be there anyway when this thing surfaces—and if I can contact Chambers and he confirms that Cole is acting in his behalf, then I'll have to. And if I can't contact Chambers—my gut still tells me there's something wrong. Something really wrong with Cole and his outfit. And if Cole is some kind of crazy—or maybe a Russian Natalia wouldn't have known about—or something else—we can't let him get his hands on those six missiles. He was talking about them—eighty megaton capacity for each missile. Nearly five hundred megatons combined."
"What started it between Cole and Natalia?" Rubenstein asked.
Rourke sat down, holding his head in his hands for a moment, then looked up. He picked up the bottle of medicinal liquor—"Looks like it tastes great."
"You get used to it," and Rubenstein felt himself smile.
"Yeah—well—after Natalia's suction has been working for a while—"
"Her what?"
"Got a Levin tube suctioning her until peristalsis resumes—but there's always a chance the suture line I made wasn't complete enough and I might have to open her up again—I should know in about six hours or so—gonna try and sleep."
"I could feel for you, John—doing that—holding her life in your hands."
"A lot of things I've been thinking about lately," and Rourke smiled. "I always get the impression you look to me as the problem solver—don't you?"
Embarassed slightly, Rubenstein only nodded.
"Well—if I'm so smart, how the hell come I'm in love
with my wife and I'm in love with Natalia at the same time, huh?"
Rourke said nothing else, reaching into his shirt pocket and taking one of the dark tobacco cigars and lighting it, his face more lined and tired than before.
Chapter 13
Sarah Rourke opened her eyes, her eyes, her face warm in the shafts of brilliant sunlight coming through the screened open window, the curtains blowing softly in the warm breeze. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes once, then stretching, feeling too warm in the nightgown.
"Spring," she smiled. She had inured herself to the insanity of the seasons since the Night of The War. Today it would be spring—tomorrow it might be winter again. "Tomorrow—" She laughed as she said the word.
She pushed down the sheet and the quilt and swung her legs over the side of the bed, standing up, barefoot, the nightgown's hem hiding her feet. She walked to the window. There was quiet—the dog not running madly with the children yet. She would shower later, she told herself.
She stepped away from the window, standing near the dresser, conscious of herself as she pulled the nightgown over her head and put it on the bed. She looked at herself—her breasts weren't exactly little anymore. Nursing two children had seen to that. But there was, as best she could tell, barely an ounce of fat on her body—the constant running, fighting—all of it since the Night of The War had seen to that.
She wondered absently—taking a bra from the dresser drawer and starting to put it on—if time in the future would be reckoned from the Night of The War—like it had been since the birth of Christ?
The irony was not lost on her.
Peace versus war.
She stepped into her panties, dismissed the idea of wearing a slip and pulled the yellow dress from the hook inside the wardrobe cabinet doors and took it from the hanger. She puHed the dress on over her head, starting to button the back of the dress mechanically, without watching, as she stared out the window.
It would be a beautiful day—perhaps so beautiful that Mary Mulliner's son would come back and bring word of contacting John—that he was well, that he was coming for her and for the children.
She began to brush her hair, her hair longer than she had kept it in years—somehow she was unwilling to cut it. She set down the brush, opened the top drawer of the dresser and began to search for a pony tail holder to keep her hair back from her face. The old blue T-shirt she had worn—it was washed, folded neatly—She looked under it. The terminally rusted . her husband had left for her, that she had carried next to her abdomen since the Night of The War.
She picked it up, her reflexes automatic now as she pushed the magazine release catch button, dropping the magazine on the bed clothes, then with her stronger right hand, the gun held in her left, drew back the Government Model's slide.
The Colt's chamber was empty. She knew it would be—but had learned never to trust to that.
She pointed the emptied gun at a safe space of exterior wall and snapped the trigger, the hammer falling with a loud "click", an infinitesimal amount of oil felt sprayed on the web of her hand as the hammer fell.
"My God." She simply shook her head, looking at the pistol; the sunlight and the yellow dress she wore somehow no longer the same to her.
Chapter 14
Rourke saw them—Michael and Annie. They were running—but running happily. There was a beach—they were running along it in the surf, barefooted, their pants legs rolled up but stilt hopelessly wet as the foaming water lapped against their shins, the children only half-heartedly running.
He looked at himself—the weight distribution o*f his shoulder rig felt odd to him and he lifted his shoulders under it, searching the beach—Sarah had to be there too.
He wanted to shout to Michael and Annie—but even more than holding them he wanted to watch them run—to play. Hear them laugh. Annie had grown—but somehow she hadn't changed at all. The wild-eyed little kid—the happy girl, the girl who made you laugh. He laughed at himself.
Sarah—he still couldn't see her.
He watched Michael—his face was more serious than it had been—tanned more deeply than it always seemed to be, even in the dead of winter. He was somehow taller and straighter than he'd been just before the Night of The War, and even disguised under the T-shirt Michael wore, he could see the boy's musculature—how it had changed, matured.
Rourke stopped, seeing someone lying further along the beach. He brought the Bushnell xs out and focused them. The figure was a woman, wearing a bathing suit—she lay sunning herself, pale seeming under the bright sun on the sand.
'Sarah,'' he whispered. He started to run, the binoculars bouncing against his chest as they swung from their strap. "Sarah!" The children would hear him he knew.
The sand was hard to run in, slowing him. "Sarah!"
He was there suddenly, beside her. She didn't turn around.
"Sarah—I tried to make it back sooner—you'll never know how I tried. There were so many battles to fight—and—"
She didn't answer. She didn't move. He dropped to his knees in the sand. The body was so familiar to him—the patterns of the tiny freckles on her shoulders, the way she pushed her hair from the nape of her neck when she lay in the sun.
The flesh was cold as he touched it.
"Sarah—" He drew his hand back, then touched gently against her back. Still col
d—clammy to the touch.
Swallowing hard, feeling his muscles bunching tight, he bent closer to her and felt at the neck for a pulse. There was none.
"Oh, Jesus," he rasped.
He took his hands away for a moment, then placed them both on the shoulders, turning the body.
Michael and Annie were standing beside him.
"Why didn't you come," Michael asked, his voice serious sounding, hurt sounding—like Rourke had heard it when he had been too busy to play, too busy to talk. "Why didn't you come, Daddy?"
Rourke couldn't answer—he knew they wouldn't understand.
"Your mother, he whispered, then looked back at the face as he finished rolling over the body.
Dead.
Lids open—the eyes a brilliant blue.
"Natalia." He heard himself whisper it.
Annie said. "That's why Daddy didn't come, Michael."
He turned to look at the children, to say, "No—that's not right—" But they were running off toward the surf again, laughing.
But the laughter somehow sounded forced to him, hollow.
It was Sarah's body as he drew it into his arms, but somehow Natalia's face and he asked himself if he were insane.
"What—"
"John!"
"Michael—please understand—"
"John!"
"Damnit!" Rourke opened is eyes, light in a yellow shaft coming through from the companionway. The face over him, shaking him—Paul.
"John—you all right—you were—"
"What's the matter?"
"That's why I came, John—it's Doctor Milton—he says Natalia's dying."
Rourke sat up.
"Michael," he murmured. Then he pushed himself from the cot and started into the companionway, Rubenstein beside him.
Chapter 15