Ralph Peters (3 page)

Taylor cried out in pain as he regained consciousness. There was a hammering at the back of his skull that made it painful to breathe, painful to move, painful to keep still. His eyes felt as though he had been punched with pepper-coated fists, and his head felt too large for the flight helmet clamped around it. Then he realized that his back ached deeply, as well, commanding him not to move.

But he did move. Jumping madly at the thought that the aircraft must be on fire. He tore at the safety harness, screaming, hurling himself out of the cockpit in a panic, a frightened child. His pant leg caught on the frame, and he fell facedown, the force of his weight sending a shudder through the remnants of the airframe. He tore wildly at his leg, struggling to free himself, almost dragging the wreck behind him until the fabric of his flight suit gave way, freeing his calf to cut itself against the sharp metal. The world seemed to have no end of pain in store for him, and he curled into himself, whimpering, imagining that he was screaming, still waiting to die.

There was no fire. The tattered aircraft frame sat erectly in the churned grassland, its Gatling gun loose as a hangnail and its snout nuzzled against a leathery dwarf of a tree. The tail section was missing, and the rotors looked like broken fingers. The multipurpose missiles were gone, perhaps fired off in the last moment, or stripped away as the machine skidded through the undergrowth. Taylor was so amazed that he was alive, unburned, and that his bird, at least, had held together the way it was supposed to, that it took him a long moment to remember the weapons officer.

None of it had been the way it was supposed to be. You were supposed to outfly and outfight the enemy. You were supposed to fly home in triumph. And if your heroics and sacrifice caused you to crash, the first thing you were to do was to think of your comrade. But Taylor had only been able to think of his own pain, his own fear, overwhelmed by a terror of burning alive.

The weapons officer sat slumped in his subcompartment. Not moving. As still as the inert fuselage.

A young warrant officer, hardly out of flight school. When asked why he had taken the most inexperienced man in the troop to be his gunner, Taylor always replied that it was his responsibility to train the man properly. But he also wanted someone who was malleable, who would do as he was told. Not some cranky old bastard who had seen a dozen troop commanders come and go.

Taylor hardly knew the man. As the troop commander, he always kept a bit of distance from the others, and the leadership technique was compounded by Taylor's essentially private nature. Now, dizzy and sick, with his eyes tricking out of focus, he looked up from the ground at the slumped figure in the aircraft, shocked at the summary of his failures.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. He had done nothing correctly, failing in everything. His troop lay squandered across the wastes, and the man for whom Taylor bore the most immediate responsibility had lain dead or unconscious or unable to move while his superior, the swaggering cavalry captain, had rescued himself without a thought for any other living thing. It was not the way it was supposed to be.

At the same time, Taylor could not suppress a physical joy, inexplicably akin to sex, at the knowledge that he was really alive, that he had
survived.

He lifted himself up, half cripple, half crab, and began tugging and slapping the cockpit. The frame was bent, locking itself shut. Finally, Taylor had to smash it with a rock. All the while, his gunner's only movement was a slight shudder of the helmet and torso in response to the waves of energy Taylor's clumsiness sent through the machine.

"
Ben?
"

Nothing.

"
Ben? Are you all right?
"

The gunner did not respond. But Taylor's eyes had acquired enough focus to see that the man was still breathing, however faintly.

A few dark stains decorated the chest of the gunner's flight suit, and, as Taylor watched, a large fly settled near the gunner's name tag.

"
Ben?
"
Taylor unfastened the man's oversize helmet, lifting it off, trying not to hurt him.

As the clam-shaped sides of the helmet cleared the gunner's temples, the man's head fell awkwardly to the side.

His neck was broken. So badly that he should have been dead. Yet, now, at last, he moaned.

"
Oh, God,
"
Taylor told him, unsure what to do or say.
"
Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. Oh, God.
"

The man's eyes didn't open. But he moaned again, and Taylor could not tell whether it was from sheer pain or in response to his voice.

"
Ben? Can you hear me? Can you understand?
"
Taylor was weeping in shame, failure, frustration.
"
I can't get you out of there. Do you understand me? You've got to stay strapped in. I can't move you. Do you . . .
"

Another fly settled on the gunner's face, strolling down a cheek to the dried blood painted under the man's nose. Taylor flicked at it, careful not to touch the head, not to do any more damage than he had already done. Looking at the caked blood, Taylor realized that they must have been sitting there for hours before he himself had come to.

Where were the rescue aircraft? The world was utterly silent.

The gunner made a sound that was more like that of a badly wounded animal than of a human being. Then without warning, he spoke one distinct word:

"
Water.
"

The hopelessness of it all made Taylor begin to cry again. He could find no trace in himself now of the superpilot, the fearless cavalryman.

"
Ben ... for God's sake . . . you can't drink. I can't give you anything. You mustn't move your head.
"

The gunner moaned. There was still no evidence of genuine consciousness in the sound. The single word might have been an eruption out of a coma's dream.

"
Please . . . water.
"

Periodically, throughout the afternoon and evening, the gunner would call for water, or mumble the word
"
drink.
"
His eyes never opened. Taylor rigged a bit of shade for the man out of scraps, but there was no practical way to reduce the heat in the narrow cockpit. Taylor tried to fan his broken companion, but the effort was so obviously ineffectual it became ridiculous. Soon, he settled himself into the meager shade on the side of the wreck away from the sun, flare pistol ready to signal at the first sound of search helicopters. He tried to be stingy with the emergency water supply, but it was hard. He grew thirstier. Yet, invariably, after he allowed himself a taste of the sour wetness, the gunner would begin calling for water, as though he were watching as Taylor drank, accusing him of drinking his share too. Occasionally, Taylor would get up and chase the flies away from the injured man's face and hands. But they soon returned. The gunner's lips were already swollen and oozing.

In the night, the younger man's voice woke Taylor. The sound was a horrible rasp. But the man did not beg for a drink now. He spoke to a third person:

"
Can't make me go off there. I won't do it.
No. I'm not
. . .
going off of there
...
"
Then he moaned back into his dream.

Taylor made one of his periodic attempts to bully the radio to life. But there was nothing. And the emergency transponder had gone astray somewhere in the course of the crash landing. He was afraid to light a fire, afraid that the wrong party might see it, afraid that it would attract animals rather than keep them at bay. He found it impossible to go back to sleep after the gunner's ravings had awakened him. All of his body seemed to hurt. But, far worse, he seemed to be thinking very clearly now. He realized that, although he wanted the gunner to survive, wanted it badly, he would unhesitatingly choose his own survival over that of the other man, if a choice had to be made. He had always imagined himself to be selfless, ready for sacrifice. But now it was very clear to him that he wanted, above all, to live, and that his own life was more important to him than was the life of any other man. His year of service in Colombia, during the drug-war deployment, had not truly tested him. Beyond occasional small-arms fire from the jungle or a hilltop, the greatest enemy had been boredom, and he had imagined himself to be fearless, a real stud. But the captain's bars on his shoulders, all of the words he had spoken in dozens of ceremonies, his cherished vision of himself ... it was all a joke. In his moment of responsibility, he had failed, and there was no rationalizing it away. Even now, if he could have chosen to be in the warm, safe bed of any of a dozen girlfriends instead of here pretending to nurse the injured weapons officer, he would have made his decision unhesitatingly. Sitting afraid in the African night, under a painfully clear sky, he found that he had never known himself at all in his twenty-nine years. The man in the mirror had been a dressed-up doll.

A sharp new pain woke him from his doze, and, in the morning light, he could just make out the ants scouting over his body, feeding on his tom calf. He jumped up, slapping at himself in fresh terror. He danced wildly, smashing at the tiny creatures with his fists, scraping at his ankles and boots, tearing at the zipper lines of his flight suit as he felt the bites moving along his legs.

After stripping himself half-naked, he won his battle. Gasping and shaking, he went to check on the weapons officer.

The man's face was covered with ants. The eyes were open, their blinking the only sign of resistance against the swarm. The pupils never moved, staring straight ahead at the wrecked console. But they were unmistakably alive. Sentient.

"
No
,
"
Taylor screamed. He tried to be gentle in his frenzy, scooping away the copper-colored ants. But he felt as maddened as if they were plundering his own face.

Despite his best efforts, the gunner's head shifted on its skewed axis, and the man moaned. Then the eyes moved, staring up at Taylor with perfect clarity from a face swollen so badly it was almost unrecognizable.

"
It's no good, sir,
"
the gunner whispered, his voice incredibly calm.
"
They're all over me. I can feel them.
"
He paused, as though he were merely discussing a minor disappointment.
"
I was just afraid you were gone. I thought you were mad because I didn't fire.
"

Taylor carefully undid the zipper in the front of the man's flight suit. As he pulled it down, ants began to spill down the teeth onto the outer fabric. The cockpit floor, the man's boots were invisible under a coppery mass.

"
Please give me something to drink.
"

Taylor could feel the ants working at his own ankles again.

"
Just a drink.
"

"
Ben ... for God's sake . . . if I . . .
"

"
I know
...
"
the gunner said. Tears were seeping out of his swollen eyes now.
"
It doesn't matter. I want to drink.
"

Taylor hastened to fetch the double canteen.

"
Ben
...
"

The gunner closed his eyes.
"
Can't talk . . .'' he said. He seemed to be clenching himself against an unimaginable pain.

As gently as he could, Taylor put the canteen to the man's lips. But the mouth was already dead. He carefully tipped the water as ants began crawling up over his own hands.

With a jerk, the gunner gagged. His head lolled forward, throat gurgling, unable to accept the water.

Taylor almost dropped the canteen. But the
self-preservation
instinct in him was still too strong. He pulled back, spilling only a little of the water. With ants chewing fire into his hands and forearms, he carefully screwed the cap tight. Then he drew his pistol and shot his weapons officer through the forehead.

The map was useless at first, since the landscape was all the same, and he simply followed the compass. North. Flying above the earth, it had been easy to find beauty in the rugged grasslands and bush, but now, on foot, the country was a monotonous nightmare of heat, thorns, vermin, and snakes. It took him a full day of steady, pained walking before the waste hills of the mining complex swelled up in the distance. Then his water ran out. Maddeningly, the waste hills refused to grow larger, and the bush clutched at him, as if determined to hold him back. His flight suit shredded away from his arms, and sweat burned down over his opened flesh. In panic, he fired his pistol at a rearing snake that appeared immediately in front of him. He began to shake, and to dream. In his lucid moments he was uncertain whether he was suffering from fear or dehydration. He forced himself to focus on his goal, to remain focused, and he refused to consider the possibility that he might finally reach his squadron's field site only to find it evacuated. He thought about water and about safe rest in a place where nature's wretchedness would not crawl over him as he slept.

As he finally approached the bivouac site in the twilight, he scanned desperately for signs of life. He had not seen a single helicopter in flight. No vehicles stirred the dust along the portage roads. Crazily, he walked faster, almost running, staggering, his damaged back stiff, as though the spine had been fused into a single piece.

Surely, they would not have left him behind.

Water.

Rest.

He trotted dizzily around the spur of waste that shielded the field site from view.

And he staggered as though punched hard in the chest. Then he sat down in the dirt, staring.

The support site had been turned into a blackened scrapyard. Wrecked helicopters and vehicles sat in jagged repose amid shredded tentage and camouflage netting.

They had not heard his broadcast warnings. Or they had not reacted in time. Or they had been caught out by the same technological imbalance that had swept his troop from the sky.

Eventually he picked himself up, dizzy, and wandered about the ruins of his army. Not everything had been destroyed. Vehicles, a field kitchen, miscellaneous field gear, even a precious water buffalo had simply been left behind. No bodies, though. In the American tradition, the survivors who had pulled out had taken their wounded and their dead. But precious little else. Atop the two-story administration building, a red and white cavalry pennant hung limply from its pole, forgotten.

Taylor realized that it must have been very bad. But he could not quite feel sympathy for them, or outrage. He simply felt sick, with all the self-focus illness brings. He drank water too quickly from the tap of the water buffalo, then let the liquid stream over his head. He could tell from the pain the coolness produced that he was badly sunburned. But it seemed so minor a problem that he wasted no further thought on it. He wanted to rest.

The African darkness fell with the swiftness of a heavy curtain released from above, and Taylor stumbled through the litter of the administrative building up onto the flat roof where the cavalry guidon hung. He hoped that no creatures would pester him there. He had degenerated into a childish terror of all small crawling things, even of flies. He felt as though he had been overloaded with nature's horrors, and he wanted only to be left in peace for a little while.

The sun woke him. He jerked up from the concrete bed of the roof.
Helicopters.
He heard helicopters. But, even as he struggled to his feet to search the sky, he realized that the sound was only the buzzing of flies.

His legs were very weak, and he had to go down the stairs carefully. He drank more water, tasting it now, sour and warm. Stacks of ration cartons had been knocked about by the kitchen trailer. But the thought of food sickened him. Still, the day seemed hopeful. He was alive. And he could take his choice from a number of vehicles in operative condition. He could take a truck if he wanted. Or a lighter utility vehicle. It struck him that he might just survive after all.

He moved slowly, but he tried to move methodically. He loaded a light, all-purpose truck with boxes of rations, I with ten-gallon fuel cans, with water cans. He worked through the wreckage of the helicopters, searching out forgotten emergency kits. Ammunition, matches, first-aid kits, flare guns. It was possible to salvage something from even the worst wrecks. But he could not find a working radio. The late-model sets that had been left behind had been cleared, deprogrammed. Someone had been thinking about operations security.

There were civilian phone lines in the administrative building, but they were dead. Still, he was able to lift a decent set of maps from the abandoned stock, some outdated, others with broad expanses where there was no detail, yet far better than the single local flight map disintegrating in his pocket. He made a plan. No point heading for Kolwezi without adequate knowledge of the combat situation. Better to head north, roughly along the Lualaba, as the backcountry roads and trails allowed. In the wreckage of the tents, he sifted through the burned duffel bags and kits. His own oversize aviator's bag had burned, but he found stray uniform pieces of the necessary sizes where the enlisted tents had stood. He could even have taken a supply of pornographic magazines, but he settled for loading a sleeping bag onto the truck.

He was ready to go. He still felt weak, but he was convinced that he was going to make it. He could almost feel a spark of his old fire, thinking: George Taylor versus Africa, round two. He folded the local map sheet and tucked it in by the gears. He had loaded himself down with pistols and knives like a cartoon cowboy. He started the engine. But a last glimpse of the abandoned cavalry banner on the roof stopped him.

Laboriously, he reclimbed the stairs. He grabbed the fabric in one hand and cut it free from the pole with a sheath knife, noticing with his first smile in days that some young soldier had inked into the fabric, in small block letters, the informal cavalryman's motto: