THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  Then, as if it had suddenly been conjured up out of thin air before her very eyes, Hilary Cole saw it. At a distance of only twenty, maybe thirty, meters was the wreckage of some kind of overturned vehicle, half hidden by the wild chorus of trees that had been both a prison and a safe haven to Cole. She realized that she had spent the entire night not more than a few simple steps away from another human being who was probably as lost as she was. That she could have, in the state of mind that she was in the previous night, walked right past the man and his vehicle didn't dawn on Cole. The only thing important to her at that moment was that there, within easy reach, was another human being, a human who needed help, something that Cole was trained to deal with.

  With a few easy bounds, Cole began to make her way to the overturned vehicle. As she drew near, the wreckage began to take on the appearance of a humvee. It was then that Cole realized that she hadn't paused to determine if the voice had been German or American. No matter, she thought as she weaved between the tree trunks. It was another person, a real person who was alive, and that was all that mattered. Only when she came to within a few feet of the vehicle did she slow down and then stop. Trapped under the vehicle, a hardtop humvee with a machine-gun mount on top, the gunner who had been manning the machine gun when it overturned lay silent, crushed to death. The sight of the body, still pinned beneath the humvee, drew Cole near. The soldier, a young man who couldn't have been more than twenty, still wore his helmet and web gear. His hands clutching the rim of the hatch and the grimace on his face told Cole that he had not been killed outright. Rather, he had survived the crash and had in his death throes struggled to free himself.

  Cole turned away from that image but found no relief when her eyes fell upon the corpse of another soldier. This one, several meters away from the humvee, was that of a woman, a mere girl from the looks of her. Slowly Cole approached her, following the bloodstained snow that led from the humvee to her. When Cole reached the female, she slowly knelt down, reaching out to touch the face that was stone cold to feel. The female soldier, whoever she had been, was dead. Slowly Cole turned the body over. As the corpse came to rest on its back, strands of long red hair were caught by a slight breeze that stirred through the woods. A few wisps of hair fell across the dead soldier's face, now frozen in a sleeplike serenity. Were it not for the ashen color, it would have appeared to a casual observer that the young female soldier had fallen asleep instead of bleeding to death in the snow. For a moment Cole allowed herself to reflect on this tragedy and wonder why a girl who looked like she should have been at a prom instead of a battlefield had been shot and had died like this.

  "She lasted most of the afternoon before she died."

  The words, spoken by an unseen observer, startled Cole, causing her to jump back away from the female body and begin to scramble in panic back into the woods. Only when the voice spoke again, a hasty plea, did Cole manage to slow down and look for its source. "No! Don't go. Please don't go."

  When she finally managed to stop and look around, she saw where the voice came from. Another soldier, a black man in his early thirties, sat against a tree across a small paved forest trail that she hadn't noticed before. He wore no helmet. His web gear and field jacket were pulled open in front, exposing his uniform shirt and a massive dark stain that covered his entire abdomen. As she looked, Cole could see that the field dressing that rested on the abdomen had turned colors and now was the same color as everything else that the soldier's dried blood had touched.

  While Cole was still staring, the black soldier spoke again. "She lasted most of the day yesterday. Was able to get out of the humvee and crawl some." He paused, gasping for air while holding back a sob that threatened to cut off his story. "But she couldn't make it over here. And I..." There was another pause, now more to hold back the tears and sobs that so much wanted to come out. "I just couldn't, just couldn't get to her. So she just laid there, talking to me for nearly an hour before she finally stopped talking and..." Now there was no more stopping the tears. They just came. "...And she died. Right there. Right in front of me. She died. And I didn't do a damned thing. Not a damned thing." The last comments were angry ones, angry words spoken through tears that flowed down the black soldier's face.

  With one quick rush Cole ran up to the black soldier, knelt down, and began to wipe the tears away with her bare hand. "It's okay," she said automatically in the same tone, in the same manner, that she used to talk to patients as they were carried into triage. "It's going to be okay. Now please relax, just lean back and let me look." Without waiting for a response, Cole, with one hand on the soldier's face, reached down and carefully began to pull the blood-soaked field dressing away from his abdomen. There was some resistance as she started, because some of the dried blood held the field dressing to the bloodstained shirt and the wound itself. Slowly, gently, Cole managed to free it slightly, pulling it away so that she could see what was behind it.

  Just as she succeeded in freeing the field dressing, the black soldier stiffened as sudden spasms of pain racked his body. Cole felt this but continued until she could see behind the field dressing. When she could, she knew why he had jumped. Even before she had moved the dressing a fraction of an inch, dark red blood slowly began to ooze around the dressing and run down across Cole's hand. Though she wanted to stop, Cole eased the dressing a little further away in an effort to see how bad the wound was. This, however, stopped as soon as she saw a section of intestine fall away from his abdomen and against the dressing.

  Having seen all that she needed to, Cole carefully eased the dressing back into place. Though she tried to do so without causing the soldier any further pain, that was impossible. With the same effort that Cole put into being as gentle as possible, the soldier fought off wave after wave of pain and the urge to scream. When she had finished and the soldier had managed to compose himself, Cole looked at him, face-to-face. "I'm a nurse. And you're hurt real bad. I don't know what I can do, but I'll do what I can. Okay?"

  Still not recovered fully from the pain and his efforts to keep from yelling out at the top of his lungs, he merely nodded. He couldn't even open his eyes, still tightly shut. "Okay, soldier. I'm going to go over to the humvee and see if I can find an aid kit. Okay?"

  Placing the soldier's left hand over the dressing in an effort to keep pressure on it, Cole looked at him one more time. "I'll be right back. I'm going to go over to your vehicle and look for a first aid kit. Is that okay?" Again there was no comment. Just another nod. Without waiting, Cole stood up and looked at the soldier one more time. Taking off her parka, she carefully laid it over him, turned, and hurried back to the humvee. There she got down on her hands and knees and crawled through the open door that both the dead female and the black soldier must have escaped through. As she searched the humvee for an aid kit, Cole worked her way around the lifeless legs of the machine gunner and a varied knot of personal gear, equipment, ammo boxes, maps, and sundry other items that made her search difficult. But Cole prevailed, finding not one but two aid kits. Pleased, she backed out of the vehicle, ignoring the dead machine gunner, got onto the road, and stood up.

  Just as she did, a new voice from down the road shouted, "HALT!" Spinning about, she saw less than fifty meters away a pair of German soldiers, one of whom held his rifle up to his shoulder and pointed at Cole. It was the enemy. They had returned. Taking a step back, Cole glanced over at the black soldier.

  Seeing Cole's action, the soldier had managed to turn his head enough to see that she was in trouble. With every ounce of strength he had left, he pushed away Cole's parka, grabbed the dressing with his left hand again and pushed it as tight against his abdomen as he could. With his right hand he reached down to his side, grabbed the M-16 rifle that had been lying there, and laid it across his lap.

  The German who had been in the lead had also seen Cole's reaction and, looking over to where she had turned her head, saw the wounded black soldier, now preparing to bring his rifle to bear. The German, seeing
that he himself was in danger, swung the muzzle of his rifle away from Cole, took a quick aim at the black soldier, and fired a short three-round burst.

  At that range, the German's volley found its mark. Cole watched in horror as the first round struck the black soldier's left shoulder. The second round, due to the climb of the German's rifle muzzle, hit the soldier in the head. With the muzzle still climbing as the third round left the barrel, the bullet hit the tree just above the soldier's head. But Cole didn't see that. After watching his head jerk after being hit by the second round, his lifeless eyes rolling back into his head, Cole dropped the two aid kits she held, turned, and fled back into the woods followed by random shots from both Germans that missed her but kept her going.

  When she finally stopped running, Cole found herself alone again, lost in the woods and more frightened than ever. What shreds of rationality she had managed to hold to until that morning were now gone. Dripping with sweat from her exertions but with no parka to protect her from the chilling winds that began to sweep through the woods, Cole slowly began to wander about without any thought, without any purpose. Only total physical exhaustion stopped her. At the end of her strength, Cole simply dropped onto the ground, curled up into the fetal position, and went to sleep.

  It wouldn't be until the spring, when the forests shone in a wild blaze of lush greens and vibrant colors and the last of the melting snows had long disappeared, that Hilary Cole's body would be found.

  "The chances of pulling this off, Madam President, are almost nonexistent. There's just no way in hell I can support you in this."

  Peter Soares's reaction didn't surprise Abigail Wilson. For days, despite the fact that he was still her Secretary of State, Soares had been looking for a way to distance himself from Wilson's administration. That he was using her recent decisions as a pretext for leaving it was both logical and, after his recent lack of support for her, a relief. "Do you, Mr. Secretary, see any reasonable alternatives?"

  Like a slap in the face, Wilson's response caused Soares to recoil. The expression on his face changed in an instant from one of anger to a blank, almost embarrassed look.

  Without asking for an explanation or making even the slightest effort to pursue the subject with him, Wilson looked down at some papers before her. There was, as she began to speak, the slightest hint of satisfaction on her face. "I find it strange, Mr. Secretary, that the same man who less than a month ago came into this very room and campaigned vigorously for this administration to invade a sovereign nation in pursuit of a more ambitious objective should, in the throes of an international crisis, back away from an operation which is aimed at doing nothing more than saving the lives of our fellow countrymen. This just doesn't make sense to me."

  Soares resented having Wilson turn on him like this. He had watched her treat other men of power as if they were children, embarrassing them and making them so angry that they reacted in a manner that made them look like fools. In the past he had enjoyed watching his political enemies squirm under Wilson's subtle and manipulative attacks. He had on many occasions engineered such scenes during Wilson's climb to power. Now that he had become the target of just such a setup, Soares couldn't deal with it. "Madam President, I will let the American voters be my judge."

  That Soares at a time like this should put this issue into political terms was to her distasteful. How could someone, she wondered, even think about elections and politics when the lives of Americans and the role of the United States as the leader of the free world hung in the balance? There were times, Wilson believed, when leadership, true leadership, demanded that hard decisions be made, political consequences be damned. Leaning forward with her arms resting on the table and her hands joined before her, Wilson responded with a voice that was clear and confident. "I, Peter, will trust to God to be my judge."

  From the end of the table, Ed Lewis, who had been watching this outbreak building up for several minutes, finally added his own fuel to the flames that Soares was fanning. "You do understand, Mr. Secretary, that both the British and the French, not to mention the rest of NATO, agreed to support our expanded operations in Germany only if we would go in and secure the nuclear weapons that we lost control of after your failed adventure. Though we would have preferred to wait until the Tenth Corps had made it to the coast, it was decided that—"

  With fire in his eyes, Soares leaned across the table and turned to face Lewis. "Who in the hell do you think you are, you little bastard, to come in here with these half-assed schemes and act as if you were the Secretary of State?"

  Unable to resist the opportunity to take a slap at Soares, Lewis leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Well, it seemed to me, Mr. Secretary, that someone needed to act like the Secretary of State."

  With that, Soares's face flushed with rage. Before Wilson could say anything, he was on his feet and shaking his fist at Lewis. "You bastard! You little slimy bastard!"

  Wilson, upset by Soares's reaction, slammed the flat of her hand down on the table. "MR. SECRETARY! I will not have this meeting turned into a locker-room brawl. Now sit down and let's get on with this. There is much to do."

  Eyes still wild, Soares turned on Wilson. "If there's more to be done here, you'll do it without me. My resignation will be on your desk within the hour."

  With the measured control that had seen her through tough elections and had made her an effective governor, Wilson pushed her anger aside. Without any hint of disappointment or regret, she looked up at Soares. "I am sincerely sorry that you find it necessary to leave this administration at this time." Her emphasis was lost on Soares. Instead, he stood, growing madder by the minute as this woman sat there barely concealing a smile, talking to him in this manner. Still he let her finish. "I cannot tell you how much your wise counsel and support in the past have meant to me. For that I thank you. I do, however, understand your position on this matter and accept your resignation." Then, as if the whole incident had never happened and Soares was no longer in the room, Wilson turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Now, General, you were saying that General Malin has accepted Operation En Passant as reasonable and is already taking steps to prepare his corps for their role?"

  Without so much as a second glance at Soares, the Chairman responded to Wilson. "Yes, Madam President, he has. I was on the phone to him just before we adjourned and ..."

  While the general spoke and everyone at the table listened, Soares realized that somehow, somewhere, he had lost control. He had suddenly fallen from being the power behind the throne to becoming an object of scorn. As the conversation went from one member of the Security Council to another, Soares's heart sank. He had for the moment lost. Now all that remained was to play out this hand, sit back, and watch what happened, hoping that somewhere along the line Wilson would stumble and leave him free of stain to pick up the party's political leadership and in a few years nomination for President. Without another word and with no one except Ed Lewis paying any attention to him, Soares left the room.

  * * *

  There was a light knock on the door, followed by the appearance of his aide's head. "General Malin, General Prentice has returned, sir."

  Malin, who had been mechanically reading a stack of messages and requests for information with no great enthusiasm, looked up. "Great. Tell him I would like to see him as soon as possible, if not sooner." Then he added, "And tell the chief I need to see him after I finish with General Prentice."

  Knowing that the first thing the corps chief of staff would ask was if the aide knew why Malin wanted to see him, the aide asked, "Sir, any particular subject you want to discuss with the chief?"

  With a sweep of his hand across the scattered messages and reports sitting on his desk, Malin grunted. "Yeah. I want him to do something about all this bullshit the Pentagon dumped on us after we reopened our channels with them. Half of this stuff is pure crap that has no relevance to what we're doing, and I have no intention of providing a response."

  The aide, who had or
ganized the general's incoming correspondence, knew exactly what Malin was talking about. Though "officially" the Tenth Corps had severed communications with the National Command Authority when Malin had declared himself a renegade and begun his march north through Germany, selected channels had been maintained. In this manner, intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency freely flowed into the Tenth Corps and had given Malin information he needed that his own corps couldn't gather. Since this intelligence was sent out over a network that the Tenth Corps, like all the other major American commands scattered across the world, had access to, there was no compromise of Wilson's administration. The only direct two-way communication was between Malin himself and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was limited to a single phone conversation made each evening after Malin had received his last formal update for the day. This timing allowed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to report to the President in the late afternoon every day. The number of people who were involved in this chain was held to the bare minimum. Though no one had any doubt that the Wilson-Lewis-Malin conspiracy would eventually come to light, the longer they maintained the renegade corps commander story, the better, especially when dealing with other nations.

  The commencement of hostilities, the refusal of the German Chancellor to open reasonable negotiations with Wilson, and the internal German conflict, with the Parliament demanding that Ruff accept a UN-mediated armistice and his refusal to do so, had altered the international political landscape. Careful manipulation of the stories fed to the media and well-worded press releases, not to mention round-the-clock discussions with members of NATO, were slowly shifting popular and official thinking. Malin, rather than being an insane and uncontrolled maverick, was now being viewed by many as a hero, a man with the foresight and courage to stand up against an aggressive and resurgent German leader bent on altering the political, military, and nuclear balance in Europe. This, coupled with Wilson's pledge to the American public that she would not sit idle while the Germans destroyed the Tenth Corps, allowed her to broaden the conflict with the consent of the American public and all major NATO allies.