Arc Light (53 page)

Mouth said, “No pris'ners, home boy!” Mouth then turned to the neighboring Second Squad, each of the two squads standing behind their own Amtrac. They were archenemies normally and opponents in brawl after brawl on the sports field, but when Mouth shouted, “Kill 'em
a-a-a-l-l!”
the shout brought forth the animal sounds of
“A-a-r-r-u-u-g-g-a-a-h!”
from their rivals in which Monk and his squadmates now joined, whipped up by the ritual. The deep
u-u
sounds of the shout, more of a bark from deep in the men's diaphragms than a voice, rippled throughout the cavernous deck as the thousand marines all suddenly joined in. The barks could not, however, drown out the commands boomed from the more accomplished lungs of the gunnery sergeants.

“Mount up!”
they yelled from various parts of the deck, and the men began scrambling through the open rear doors of their armored assault craft.

When Bailey was finally off on his next errand, Chandler fished out of his pack the manual he'd been waiting impatiently to read. He noticed that Barnes eyed the book's cover, “NBC Handbook,” then caught Chandler's eye.

“NBC,”
Chandler thought. Letters that strike fear into soldiers' hearts.
“Nuclear-Biological-Chemical.”
Chandler opened the manual and read.

“Biological agents are microorganisms that are used to cause disease among personnel, animals, or plants. They are capable of covering extensive areas with minimum munitions expenditure because of the small quantities of biological agent required for an effective dose. CB agents are generally released as aerosols that are carried over the target area by the prevailing winds.”

He'd heard it all before in lectures, but had not paid it much attention. The stuff had been around in the last world war but hadn't been used.

“Nerve agents produce their effect by blockage of the normal muscle relaxation that takes place as a result of a chemical process at the nerve-muscle juncture. Because of constriction of the muscles involved in respiration, death usually results through respiratory failure.” Chandler looked over at his gear. The atropine injectors were visible on the side of the pouch. It would help slow the action of a nerve agent, maybe even save you.
Maybe.

Difficult to detect, Chandler read. Colorless, odorless, tasteless. Effectiveness dependent on meteorological and terrain conditions—temperature, wind, humidity, terrain contours, etc. Best usage—
“best”
Chandler thought, shaking his head—is at night, against unprotected troops in hollows formed by terrain into which
the heavier-than-air gas would settle.
Insecticide. Killing by insecticide. And it would be best at night, of course; evaporation is limited then. It also happens to be when troops are frightened and alone—in the dark.

Nerve gas penetrates through the skin. A tiny vapor droplet—one single, invisible droplet on your arm, or hand, or face—and you're dead. Maybe a minute or two, maybe you don't even know anything is wrong for almost an hour, depending on which of the two principal concoctions is used: “GB” or “VX.” But sooner or later, pinpointing of the pupils, flushed skin, sweating, tightness of the chest, dimness of vision, and then, the first tremors. Chandler put the book down.

Please God, don't let me see this,
Chandler thought. Bailey came back to his seat from the forward galley, stopping in the aisle to acknowledge something that Jennifer was saying, and smiling. Chandler quickly dived back into the manual, less to avoid having to talk to Bailey in particular and more to avoid talking to anyone at that moment. Bailey obliged, content to take his seat and gaze at the bulkhead ahead, smiling to himself.

Bailey's new notepad was, Chandler observed out of the corner of his eye, faintly pink in color. Up at the top, buried amid swirling green vines and red flowers, was the letterhead of “Jennifer M. Sims” with her Dallas address beneath.

Just a coincidence that her address and phone number are on the piece of paper she gave him,
Chandler thought with amusement. Bailey folded up the blank piece of paper and put it in his pack, ending the move just as Jennifer appeared and poured Bailey some orange juice, a broad smile on her pretty face. Bailey smiled back, but couldn't hold his eyes on hers for long.
Bailey thinks he just pulled a fast one,
Chandler realized, shaking his head ever so slightly.
Melissa was right. Women eat men for breakfast when it comes to shit like this.

He looked back down at his book. “Blister Agents.” Chandler pressed on, reading as rapidly as possible. Warning signs of an attack: shells hitting with no explosion.

Protective gear, whose usage is prescribed by the MOPP level—Mission Oriented Protective Posture—each with its own number, one through four. The suits were hot and you couldn't wear them for long.
Ours, at least, are “breathable,”
Chandler thought—charcoal filtered and more comfortable than the Russians' rubber outfits. The charcoal in the Americans', however, would get saturated and you would have to get a new suit.

Overpressured vehicles that keep the harmful vapors out, decontamination, first aid, reporting and area-marking procedures,
even how to read the signs that the unnamed enemy—“The Threat”—would post delimiting contaminated areas, interestingly always shown as being in the Russian language.

When Chandler had finished the manual, he was agitated and stood up, looking around for something to do. He felt drawn to the cockpit, and knocked on the door. The door opened just wide enough for Gator to see him. “It's the major.”

“Go away,” Golding said, and in his agitated mood Chandler prepared to meet Golding's repartee with a sharp remark. He hesitated, however. The pilot and copilot were staring intently out of the cockpit, both of Golding's hands on the wheel and the left hand of Frazier, the copilot, on the throttle. “Go away, Major,” Golding said. “I'm not kidding.” He was tense, he was intent on his job.

“Come left,” Frazier said, dipping his head and looking up out of the windshield on the sunny day. Golding turned the wheel slightly to the left. “Okay, okay!” Frazier said, throttling back with the most delicate of movements as his gaze remained fixed on the sky above. Golding was steering left and right and Frazier was adding or reducing power.

The flight engineer did not seem particularly busy by comparison, and Chandler asked in a hushed tone, “What're they doing?”

“We're in formation with the other six aircraft,” Gator said, and Chandler bent down to look out the windshield.

The massive forms of two wide-bodied airliners filled the sky just a few hundred feet above. “Jesus Christ!” he said as he stared at the undulating formation, every plane rising or falling in slow motion in its position relative to the others.

“Shut the fuck up, okay?” Golding said, sweat coating his forehead and brow.

“Why this close?”

“Only gives 'em one radar signature,” Gator said. “It's a mother of a return, but their Intell guys can't sit down there and count us as we fly by Iceland.” “Orlando,” Chandler read on the flight engineer's nameplate.
Orlando—“Gator”—Florida. Or was it “Gator” as in “Navigator”?
Chandler wondered.

“We just went solo,” Gator said. “No more fighter escort. The Tomcats are headed home.”

The first beep sounded from a small device crudely taped on the dash just below the windshield. When the series of tones quickened to a constant, rapid beat, Golding said, “Turn that thing off.”

Frazier reached over, and the device fell silent, a red light blinking in place of the tones.

“What's that?”

“Up fifty,” Golding ordered, and Frazier's hand moved the
throttle forward a millimeter, the engines sounding only slightly higher in pitch.

“Is that. . . ?” Chandler looked down at Gator, who stared sullenly, unmoving, at the map of the trackless blue ocean at the very top of which, Chandler saw, was the island of Iceland. “Is that a radar detector, like for your car?”

“Yeah,” Gator said, not looking up. “We're lit up like a Halloween pumpkin.”

He didn't appear overly concerned, but Chandler felt a rising tide of fear as he watched Gator slump dejectedly in his chair.
Resignation,
Chandler thought,
but to what?
He looked up at the rapidly pulsing red light on the simple car radar detector.

“What happens if we get jumped?” Chandler asked, his voice kept low in the tense cockpit.

“We die,” Golding said.

“No, really,” Chandler asked, but Golding said nothing more.

“The most recent orders are to ditch,” Gator elaborated. “It worked for a Federal Express jet—picked up fourteen survivors.”

“Out of how many?” Chandler asked, and Gator shrugged. “Glad it's a proven method,” Chandler mumbled.

The men in the cockpit were quiet, still, but with every glance at the radar detector's flashing red light Chandler grew more agitated. “You mean you just put the nose down and fly into the fucking
ocean?”

“You keep your gear retracted,” Golding answered, “and settle down right over the top of a wave—down the backside into the trough. It's a crapshoot. If you hit the uphill side of one of them forty-foot North Atlantic swells you might as well fly into the wall of the Grand Canyon.”

“They're callin' this the Iceland Triangle,” Gator said, “ 'cause the Russians know just where—”

“Shut up!” Golding ordered, followed quickly by, “Acknowledged, Niner One. Navaho Six Five Seven Two Seven breaking low. Good luck. Out.” Chandler suddenly felt light on his feet as the plane's nose dropped and he grabbed onto the bulkhead, the background noise in the aircraft rising with the increasing speed.

“Gator, we got bandits—small contact—bearing two niner one, angels one point five at seventy-two miles,” Golding said, his voice an even monotone. Gator scrambled to jot down the information. “They got the heaters on, nine hun'erd and fifty knots. We're bustin' formation; we drew the deck. I'm takin' her to five hundred, maybe lower—you give me a course.”

Chandler watched in the strangely calm cockpit as Gator's pencil flew in straight lines on the map to connect dots he had just
drawn. As the whine of the descent increased in pitch, Gator held up an odd-shaped clear plastic card like a ruler. He made marks and punched numbers on a keypad built into his instrument console. “Second point?” he asked while his pencil still flew.

Golding said, “Last was bearing two eight niner at seventy.”

Gator repeated his marks and calculations and sat back saying, “Come left to zero one seven.”

“Say again?” Golding said.

“Zero one seven!” Gator snapped, and Golding began his bank left. Chandler felt the weight on his legs and his ears pop.

“Uh, Gator,” Frazier said. “Zero one seven is, like, north, right at Iceland.”

Gator, with his maps spread out in front of him, tossed his plastic ruler down and snapped, “North! No shit—really?” He huffed and stretched his neck. “It's the fastest way outa the interception envelope,
if
they hold course a minute or two more on afterburner.”

Golding reached forward and tapped a button on the dash, which illuminated to say
SEAT BELTS
. He picked up the microphone. “Flight attendants prepare for ditching,” he said in a low voice, obviously intentionally mumbling so the passengers might not hear what he said, and panic.
Little good that'll do,
Chandler thought as he stared down at the gray ocean, white spray whipped off the caps of swells and sliding by at the ever lower belly of the Delta jet.

“Five hundred,” the copilot announced, but Golding kept going down.