While Time Can Wait

by J.J. Mainor

  Chapter H-2

  To say we should’ve never entered the Arctic Wars is wrong. It was the Russians that invaded us. It was Russian troops landing in Alaska, so what was we supposed to do? Just let them have one of our states and give up our claims to the Arctic seafloor? Of course not! We certainly didn’t want America going down in history as a pushover in the last war over oil.

  America never backed down from nothing. Sure we didn’t always win and we earned a lot of bloody noses over time, but we didn’t make our place in history by taking our ball and going home. We didn’t hold onto our sovereignty by hiding behind our borders and keeping our people home.

  No, we taught the world not to mess with us by playing the bully. But like most bullies, sometimes you’re targeted by another bully as we was by Russia. Other times, your victim stands up and fights back like Canada did.

  Our mistake in the wars was underestimating our neighbor’s weakness. President Montefering thought we could parade into the northern territories and seize the Canadian coastline before Ottawa knew what was what. He thought if we took over their claims to the seabed, it would strengthen our position against the Russians.

  He had no idea that our neighbor was already at war with the Russians. The Kremlin seized some stupid island in the Arctic Ocean as a launching pad to opening a second front in Alaska. The Canadians almost pushed them out, even took some prisoners, but mostly they sat back and waited. They thought the Russians was gonna to walk all over us. If they secured Alaska, they was sure to push eastward into the Yukon. Canada was secretly building up for that invasion; they wasn’t preparing to fight us at all. But when Montefering sent the Marines in, Canada was prepared to defend itself anyway.

  The Canadian campaign was a total disaster. The country turned against Montefering, but he wasn’t ready to admit defeat. He doubled down our forces and chose to maintain a two front war rather than admit his mistake and grovel for Canada’s forgiveness. But he needed more troops and he did something even more unthinkable. Montefering reinstated the draft after more than two hundred years!

  It looked bad for him going into an election year. The draft proved so unpopular, it looked like he was going to lose his most reliable states to Avery. When absentee ballots failed to arrive at the front, rumors went up that he stopped them from going out. It was even suggested the draftees was selected from likely Avery voters to keep them away from the polls. Problem for the President was, finding a Montefering voter was like searching for a unicorn. No matter how many didn’t get to vote, there was no way he was winning that election.

  Unfortunately for us in the Arctic, it would be three more months before he left the White House. Montefering was desperate to salvage a legacy for himself. He was the first President to be voted out of office in a long time, and he didn’t want to become a joke to history. He thought if he could do something drastic, something rash to win that war quickly, the future might be kind to him.

  What we didn’t know when they brought us to Prison Camp Hudson, was Montefering ordered bombers across the border. Two days before we was taken prisoner, we bombed Montreal.

  None of that mattered to us though. We spent days marching across the snow and tundra. No telling how many since the sun hardly showed itself, but we must have been heading south since it felt like it actually got warmer and the thick snow gradually vanished.

  The camp sat near a massive lake surrounded by nothing but open, empty space. Miles off in the distance we saw some low mountains ringed with the green of the evergreen fields, but that was too far away to worry about.

  A wall of chain link surrounded the entire site with a row cutting through the middle, separating their half from ours. They pushed us into the prisoner section and lined us up in the central courtyard, wounded and healthy alike.

  There was already a dozen other prisoners, Russians, working out in front of one of the barracks, and they stopped to watch us, curious. Was they studying us? Sizing us up and judging their odds of stealing our parkas and boots? If they was, they would have a fight on their hands. We outnumbered them almost four to one – only forty-two of us survived. Even if half of us was injured, half of those severely, we could still put up one hell of a fight if those Ruskies wanted to try anything.

  The Canadian guards stood around us with their rifles held ready across their puffed-out chests, trying to look more intimidating than professional. And when they had us sufficiently intimidated, three individuals stepped out from the office and passed through the gate from their side to ours.

  They took position beside their guards, and one took a couple steps forward to let us know he was the important one. The man was thin and gangly, especially for his age. We could see that through the thick parka. Not to say he was weak, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a strong wind knock him off his feet. French was his first language, but he spoke good English through his thick, French accent.

  “I am Colonel Stahl Levesque,” he told us. “I am the commander here. You are to be held under my authority in accordance with the Revised Geneva Accords, Amended 2164 until we determine if you are to be tried for crimes against the State.

  “Make no illusion about your time here. This is not a country club as many of you expect. The road in and out of this camp will be inaccessible by the end of the month and we are unlikely to receive supplies until spring.

  “You should also know with the war going on, priority has gone to the troops on the front. We get all the water we need from the lake, but food will be tightly rationed. There is nothing I can do about that, but the more you complain, the more I will cut your rations. You will find the more cooperative you are, the easier your stay will be.

  “Once you are all settled in, Sergeant Fournier will collect your information and assess any special needs you may have.”

  Sergeant Luc Fournier was the man standing to his right. A short stocky, guy, he was one strong motherfucker. He seemed suited to this cold weather, but worse, he was suited for his real role as Chief Interrogator. His stare alone got information from the weakest of our troops, information that would have earned time for treason – if those men and women lived to face a tribunal.

  A man of our own stepped forward from our ranks as if to challenge our captors.

  “Sir, under Article 14 of the Revised Geneva Accords, Amended 2164, I hereby request immediate medical attention for some of the men and women under my command.”

  A flash of anger overcame the Colonel, but he forced it away. Then he took his careful steps toward this fool, standing face-to-face with him while he sized him up.

  Our so-called commander swept the hood from his head to show off the pretty boy hidden beneath. He was tall with blond hair and blue eyes, and skin as pale as the snow. With his square jawline, he looked like he might have stepped from an underwear ad instead of a military formation. I looked across, expecting to find a yellow bar on his insignia patch. I was mildly surprised to see a silver one instead – only mildly surprised.

  The Colonel cocked his head, unimpressed by his act of bravery.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Corey Johnson of the United States Army.”

  Colonel Levesque cocked his head the other way, chewing it over. Johnson wasn’t Lewis’ LT, and he certainly wasn’t mine, but as the only officer to have survived with us, the unfortunate burden of command (for what it was worth) fell on his shoulders.

  At the time I wasn’t impressed by the guy. He looked like one of those taken seriously only because of his height. That’s not to say you couldn’t trust tall men with command, but too often we saw men promoted into authority because of one physical characteristic or another, without any thought to ability.

  Your platoon sergeant might have looked like he walked out of a recruiting poster, but when he walks the men into an obvious ambush, you realize he shouldn’t have been lifted to corporal, let alone sergeant. If not for fuckers like that, we m
ight have stood a chance in those parts in those first months. If NCOs and officers alike had been selected on combat ability instead of charisma and charm, the Canucks might have been knocked out of the war before I ever signed up.

  When that hood came off and I saw another charming, pretty boy, I almost considered switching sides there and then. Thank the Lord I didn’t or I would never find out how much honor that man truly had.

  “Well, Lieutenant Corey Johnson of the United States Army,” the Colonel finally answered, punctuating each and every one of his words, “it seems my country faces a huge humanitarian crisis because of your government. Unfortunately for you and your men, our medical supplies were needed elsewhere. I will have the camp doctor look over your men, but you should know there is not much he can do for them.”

  That should have been the second sign we was in trouble, the first being the absence of all English Canadians. We didn’t realize it then, but the camp was manned entirely by French Canucks; the English was all transferred elsewhere. Levesque was French, Fournier was French, even Major Emrick Lavoie, the silent partner in that triumvirate was French.

  Then again, we didn’t know there was an entire French Canadian city lying in ruin with millions of civilians still pulling themselves from the ruble. All we thought about was the long rest we thought we’d get until that war was over.

  The draftees, those who wasn’t crying in self-pity or suffering from their untreated wounds, couldn’t have been more delighted at the thought. They didn’t want to fight anyway, and those cowards knew a POW camp meant they’d just hang out as far away from the front as if they was still in the United States. Before we saw the insides of those barracks, they had this idea they would just lie in their racks all day and let the enemy take care of all their needs.

  Yeah! Before we saw!

  There was four barracks on our side of the camp, crudely thrown together with nothing but thin sheets of plywood between us and the elements. They put the women in one and split the men up into two others. The Russians had the fourth.

  We stepped inside and it was freezing! What did we expect though if they wasn’t used? A few of the privates went right for the electric heater in the center of the room while a few more swarmed the crude woodstove made from an old oil drum.

  With no wood around, we didn’t know what we was supposed to burn anyway. The inside had not one speck of soot, and whatever furniture was supposed to be in there was gone. We knew there used to be wooden bunks because we saw the nail holes where they was ripped from the studs. And four small impressions in the floor told us where a table once sat. But it was all gone, probably taken by the Russians to warm their own barracks.

  “It doesn’t work!” we heard from one of the privates. Our eyes turned toward that heater, and Sergeant Lewis marched over as if he was a drill instructor and his recruit done messed up up.

  “Did you plug it in?” He stressed it, hoping the poor private knew how stupid he was, but he wasn’t. Of course it was plugged in! We had no lights inside or any other electric equipment at all to tell us there was electricity to the building, but that private swore he felt a mild shock when he unplugged the heater and plugged it back in.

  “Maybe you need to let it warm up,” another said optimistically.

  I drifted to the back of the room where I wouldn’t be noticed, and just watched them play with that thing.

  “Don’t take it apart,” someone complained. “What if you can’t put it back together?”

  “I did this for a living back home!”

  Right away, I recognized that as the man whose place I took in the trenches. I thought I was keeping him alive, but I got the poor bastard stuck here with me anyway.

  His name was Patterson and from what he told the rest of them, he was an HVAC technician back in Reno. I would never think he’d get experience working on heaters in Nevada, but seems I was wrong. He pulled out some sort of circuit board and shook his head.

  “It’s completely fried. It can’t be fixed.”

  No one wanted to hear that. Winter was only a couple weeks away and it was already freezing as balls. Without heat, there was going to be a lot of casualties before spring came, and up there, spring came a hell of a lot later than it did back in Chicago.

  “Can’t you bypass the damage or something? Anything can be fixed!”

  Patterson jumped up and just about shoved that board into the other private’s face. The wires are fried! The diodes and cathodes are fried! The whole thing looks like it was set on fire! It cannot be fixed.”

  It was then, Lewis stepped in to calm everyone down. “This isn’t the only barracks. I’m sure the heaters in the others work just fine.”

  That was when the Lieutenant made his reappearance. He popped his head through the door with the same desperate look all those privates had.

  “Do you have heat in here?”

  “Thing’s a piece of shit,” the Sergeant told him. “Can we move in with the rest of you?”

  “I think we have to. None of them work – not ours, not the women’s. All we have is our own body heat.”

  The moans was loud enough to drive out all noise. It was just as bad as having all those bombs blowing up around me again, and the Sergeant had to shout to be heard over it all.

  “What about the Russians? They got heat?”

  The noise didn’t get any quieter. The disappointment only turned to outrage. After all, the Russians was a bigger enemy than the Canucks. It was the Russians that attacked us and started this whole mess. It was the Russians who tried to take American land and resources – we had no interest in landing on their shores.

  But like many messes you find yourself in, sometimes you have to turn to your enemy to get you out of it. Besides, they was probably just grunts and soldiers like us, fighting America because Moscow told them to. Right now they was in a Canadian prison camp, not American. Why, we was practically brothers in arms at that moment!

  …At least that’s how the Sergeant painted it. He and the Lieutenant marched out of the building with many of the privates crowding nervously in the doorway. I stepped in behind, standing on my toes to get a glimpse. I wasn’t an NCO, but something nagged at me to go with them, but I didn’t. Something just as powerful held me back, and kept me at the back of that nervous crowd, and made me glad I wasn’t going out there with them.

  All I did was watch with the boot privates as Johnson and Lewis approached the Russians. It seemed friendly enough and whatever they was saying to each other, they took their time to say it.

  Still, I felt almost ashamed for not wanting to be a part of it. I guess it’s easier to put yourself on the line when it’s your life. There really isn’t a lot of responsibility involved in throwing yourself on a grenade. Death does not take a lot of work to achieve and it’s surprisingly easy. It’s the living and all the responsibility around staying alive that’s hard.

  I spied that private who took the grenade in my place. He sat in the far corner alone, cradling that arm. The Sergeant’s belt remained tight around the stump, but without anything to cover it, the whole mess was rather disgusting. He may have been a private, but he thought faster than I did. That could have been me sitting there suffering, but if it was, I would have been in worse shape and in a lot more pain.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, taking a seat on the floor next to him. I could see it plain as day on his nametape, but it made for a better introduction than “How do you feel?”

  “Trujo.” He was about to add a “sir,” until he saw my lone chevron.

  “I’m Freebourne. Where you from?”

  “Lansing.”

  “Michigan? Then all this isn’t too bad for you. I’m from Chicago myself, so I know how bad the winters can be around there.”

  “You have a girl waiting for you in Chicago?”

  I was taken aback. I was there to comfort him and let him know he had a friend, and there he was aski
ng me about a girl as if he knew I was the one that needed that comfort.

  “Naw,” I told him. “I signed up for this. Not a lot of girls stick with you if you leave them for the Marines. It’s a different story if you hook up in the service, but not if they came first. What about you? Anyone to look forward to when you get home?”

  “Maria. A fine girl. She went out with me when no one else would. Would laugh at my jokes, watch the fights with me, even put up with my artist phase.”

  “Bet the girls will be jealous now when you return a hero.”

  “I don’t care. She could have had Bobbi Fernandez, but she turned him down for me. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty.”

  I caught his eyes falling to that missing hand and I knew what that poor guy was thinking.

  “If she chose you over Bobbi Fernandez, she sure as shit won’t leave you over this. At least you didn’t lose something more important. A hand? They’ll get you fitted for a prosthetic and she’ll never know the difference. I heard they’re able to connect sensors in the fingers to the nerves in your arm so you can actually feel when you touch something. Only downside is you’ll still hurt when you’re hanging a picture and miss with the hammer.”

  Trujo smiled briefly while he rubbed what remained of his forearm.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m afraid I won’t even make it back.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I told him. “Of course you’ll make it out of here. We all will. And someday, when this is over, you’ll get to tell the little Trujos all about what daddy did in the war.”

  “I lost a lot of blood man. Do you know what that does to your body when it’s cold? I’ll die of hypothermia before the rest of you feel it.”

  “Don’t talk like that! You’re no doctor. And I know the medic didn’t tell you that.”

  “The medics didn’t make it.”

  I really had nothing to say about that. I was feeling sorry for him, and now he made me feel sorry for those nameless medics. They wasn’t fighters. They didn’t sit beside us in the trenches with rifles in their hands, fighting back. They put themselves in danger to save lives. Our lives.

  I never thought about it until Trujo brought it up. I assumed they was to the rear of our position treating the wounded Marines – my buddies. I never thought about it…I never noticed they moved through the trenches with the corpsmen stabilizing the wounded before pulling them to the rear. And those who was back there with the few surviving Marines…I guess I just assumed they took the injured and pulled out before the ground assault. I know a few of my buddies was taken to the other building, but if Trujo was right that none of the medics survived, that meant the rest of their patients didn’t make it either.

  In a way I became angry at Trujo. If my buddies didn’t make it, and here he was, one of the lucky ones, already talking about dying and giving up. It made me think their sacrifices, and the sacrifices of those who didn’t get a chance with the medics…it made me think everything was for nothing.

  But I couldn’t think that way, and neither could Trujo. But I sure as hell couldn’t be mad at him or he might truly give up. I took a deep breath to calm myself while he was occupied with that stub.

  “You heard the Colonel,” I finally told him. “They have a doctor.”

  “But he said they don’t have supplies.”

  “But I’m sure they have heat. Look, when their medic looks over our wounded, I’m sure he’ll keep you over there in a nice warm ward while your body replenishes that blood of yours. Maybe there’s not much they can do, but you’ve already passed the worst of it. You stopped the bleeding, and you survived it. The rest is easy.”

  It was then our officer and his new sergeant returned with news from the Russians. The privates at the door cleared the way, hounding them for news, while I looked up hoping for Turjo’s sake and for his morale the news was good.

  Lewis was about deliver the news after he saw Johnson struggling to speak, but the Lieutenant stopped him. It was his duty, and it seemed he wasn’t going to shirk it onto someone else’s shoulders.

  “Their heater doesn’t work.”

  It only outraged the privates some more.

  “How do you know? You didn’t check.”

  “Those bastards could have been lying!”

  “I bet they broke ours just to see us suffer.”

  Anger flared from the Sergeant and he couldn’t keep quiet, no matter how much the Lieutenant wanted him to. “That is enough. We know they’re telling the truth because they insisted we all bunk with them.”

  It made little sense to a group of no-nothing privates already allowing suspicion and paranoia to drive them. In a way we was lucky to have Sergeant Lewis because those boys would have found some pitchforks and torches and gone out there to lynch those Russians. He just froze them to silence with a glare and told them all how it had to be.

  “Without those heaters or any wood for the stoves, all we have is our body heat. And it’s not gonna keep us warm if we’re all by ourselves. Every one of us, men, women, Russian, American…we’re all gonna have to put aside our inhibitions and pool our warmth if we hope to survive in this camp.”

  “They can’t do this,” one of them complained. “This goes against the Geneva Convention!”

  Johnson held up his hands to bring the attention back to him. “In the morning, I will demand a meeting with Colonel Levesque. Maybe they can’t do anything about the heaters, but they can sure as hell get us some wood for those stoves. You all saw the trees, and I’m sure some of you saw the Bearcat on the way in. If they won’t send a unit to go bring some back, I will demand they let us go out there to get some ourselves.”

  The low grumbles seemed to spell acceptance. Maybe it was easy to be that close with the enemy if it was for one night. And if it didn’t work out, at least it would dispel the suspicion that they was lying about having a working heater.

  Anyway, I think it was that moment when I realized the Lieutenant wasn’t such a bad guy. He managed to secure a truce with the Russians, and he promised to stand up to the Canucks if they thought they was going to freeze us out. All I was worried about then was making sure Private Trujo stayed warm through the night. If he could survive with all the doubts bringing him down, then surely those of us still sitting on two hands and two feet could make it through this winter just fine.