The Day Before Midnight (25 page)

“Uh, Six, we’ll keep on picking our way along.”

“Go to it, Alpha. We’re counting on you. How’s your partner?”

“She’s real stable, Six, wish I could say the same for myself. Out, now, Six.”

“Roger that and out, Alpha.”

He flicked his beam back on.

“Are you ready, Sis?” he said in Vietnamese.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go on.”

“Brother Dee-gard-ahn, why do you come? Why not just stay here? I’ll go on. You’re very scared, Brother, I can tell. I know my way. I won’t get lost.”

“I have to work the radio, Sis.”

“Brother, tunnels are no place for terror. Fear, yes.
Fear, always. Fear, importantly. But terror, no, because terror leads to panic. Not many people can fight in a tunnel. Not being one of them is no disgrace. We learned it because it was the only way we had against your flying demons and terror bombers.”

“I’m not one of them, you’re saying.”

“I can tell, Brother. I can sense it.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s just walking, I can handle it. There’s no fighting, it’s just walking.” He smiled with a great deal of effort.

“Then let’s go, Brother American,” she said.

Alex, in the lull after the failed attack, scampered over his position checking on his men, telling them how well they had done.

“Is that all they’ll send, do you think?” he was asked.

“No, they’ll come again. And again. And again. I think the troops they send against us next will be better. Finally, they’ll send the very best. It’ll be a night fight, great fun.”

Morale was high. The boys seemed to be holding together very well. Down in the missile silo, the general reported good progress on the cutting. It would be sooner than everybody thought. He’d lost only ten dead and had eleven wounded, this from the terrifying air assault and the infantry assault. He had ample supplies of ammunition left. He was in an excellent situation, all things considered. Only two things really bothered him. First, the loss of one of his two light machine guns in the infantry assault, and second, that he had used so many of the Stinger missiles in defending against the air attack. He had only seven left.

“Sir, great shooting on that last bird,” someone called. “You can still see her burning down on the plain.” And you could: the smoke rose still from the wreck, drifted up through the bright sky, where it shredded and dissipated in the wind.

“No, nothing,” said Alex. “It was just luck.” Of course it hadn’t been. When the last plane came in by itself, it had been Alex with the M-60 who alone had refused to dive, even when the cannon shells were cutting away at him. He’d tracked the pilot all the way, and when the plane had ruddered
hard to the left, he’d jumped up from the gun position like a duck hunter and held the weapon in his arms, pumping his rounds into the craft. He’d seen the tracers flick into the bubble cockpit, seen the bright glass haze as they tore through and the plane began to wobble, then never gathered enough altitude to make it out of the dive, and sank to the ground.

Alex had never shot down an airplane before. He felt queerly pleased.

“Now, back to the digging,” he said. “Enough congratulations. Time to get back to work. Whose turn is it? Whose shift? Red Platoon?”

“Blue Platoon,” the call came. “Red Platoon’s already dug down to hell.”

There was some laughter.

“All right,” Alex said, loving them, “Blue Platoon, in the trenches under the canvas. Red Platoon’s turn to sunbathe on the perimeter.”

“But Blue Platoon shot down the helicopter. Don’t we get a reward?”

“Lucky shot,” yelled one of the boys of Red Platoon. “Now you’ll dig till you’ve blisters the size of coins, just like—”

But Alex interrupted the horseplay.

“You said the helicopter went down? I didn’t see it crash.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Sir, we shot down a helicopter. It went over the hill and crashed.”

Alex listened carefully. He remembered the medevac chopper taking off at the beginning of the assault, but it should have hovered downslope. It clearly wasn’t a gunship, because it hadn’t brought any fire to bear on his position. But why would a medevac chopper have ventured over the firefight, particularly when it was so easy to avoid it? The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Then he said, “Everybody who fired on the helicopter, fall in on me, please.”

In the end about twenty men from Blue Platoon came over and gathered around Alex.

“Tell me about this helicopter,” Alex said. “One of you. Slowly. Not all at once. The man who spoke first.”

“Sir,” the boy eventually said in slow country rhythms. “Sir, during the last run of the aerial attack, a helicopter flew low over the trees. We saw it only very late in its approach, because everyone was undercover from the airplanes. Naturally—” he clapped his rifle, a Fabrique Nationale FAL, “I fired on it.”

“What kind of helicopter?”

“UH-1B. The Huey, so famous from Vietnam.”

“You hit it?”

“I—I
think
so, sir.”

“How many rounds?”

“Sir?”

“How many rounds did you put into it? What kind of sight picture did you have? Were you leading it? Were you in the full or semiautomatic mode? Where were you firing?”

The boy was silent, baffled.

“Please be honest with me,” said Alex. “I mean you no disrespect. You are a brave and dedicated man. But I have to know the answers to these questions as completely as you can tell me.”

“Sir, then the truth is, I fired hurriedly. I had no time to really aim competently. I was firing semiautomatic and perhaps I got off seven or eight rounds.”

“Did you see any damage? I mean, ruptures in the steel, smoke, flames, blown rotors, that sort of thing?”

“Not really, sir. It was so fast.”

“How about any of you others. Who else thinks they scored hits?”

A few hands rose.

“Full-auto or semi?”

The answers were all semi; the stories were all the same: jerked shots fired desperately at a flashing target, no real sight pictures, less than a magazine apiece fired at the machine.

“Yet
it
crashed?”

“Yessir. It crossed the crest, whirled down the mountain,
out of control. We lost sight of it from here. But there was an explosion at the base of the mountain.”

“Did you see it hit?”

“No, sir. It hit behind some trees. Down there you can see how thick the trees are. It hit right there. A few seconds later there was an explosion.”

“Was the explosion exactly at the point of impact?”

“Sir, it’s hard to say. It seemed to be more or less at the point of impact. Perhaps the machine bounced when it hit, then exploded. It’s—”

But Alex was already gone.

“Sergeant,” he shouted, “I want you to put together a team of ten of your very best men. I think something’s up, something I don’t like. I don’t know what. I want you to go down the hill and check out that helicopter wreck.”

“I don’t know,” said Delta Three. “I hate to go in blind. It’s against everything they teach us.” He was looking through binoculars from well back in the room of a house on Main Street, in Burkittsville, at the front of Jack Hummel’s place some two hundred yards down the road.

“We don’t have time for a recon,” said Jim Uckley. “Listen, it’s even possible there’s
no one
in there except the mother and her two sick little girls.”

“Then what happens,” said Delta Three, “if I get a peripheral cue, turn and fire and blow away a child? It’s no good, Mr. Uckley. I’m not going to risk civilians like that. I couldn’t live with myself if—”

Some Delta! thought Uckley.

“Look, man,” he said, “we don’t have a lot of time. We got to help those guys on the mountain. We’ve got to improvise something.”

“I’m not going in without a floorplan, sure information on how many guys there are and a good idea of where they are in the house and where these children might be. And I’m not going in without multiple simultaneous entries. You’re too fat a target. I don’t mind taking chances. I was hit twice in Vietnam, in fact. But goddammit, I’m not going in and risk kids’ lives.”

Delta Three was a sanctimonious Southerner in his late thirties with the righteous jaw set of a zealot. He was raw-boned and tough, a master sergeant. Uckley hated him. The other three Deltas—he didn’t have time to learn their names
so he’d simply christened them Deltas One through Four—seemed like decent kids. But goddamn this adult!

“Officer,” Uckley called to the Burkittsville cop who was with them in the house. “Any chance you could, uh, get us a floorplan or something. So we knew—”

“No,” said the cop. “That house is one hundred years old and they didn’t make floorplans in those days, they just built ’em and built ’em a damn sight better ’n they do now.”

Great. Another zealot who loved to express his opinions. The cop was about fifty-five and plainly pissed off that all this government beef had come gunslinging into his town. But in a phase four emergency, federal officers called the shots, and he’d buy the idea that young Uckley was calling these.

“Neighbors,” said Delta Four. “They’d have been in the house, right? Maybe you could round one up and get some kind of a drawing or diagram. Then we’d at least have some idea.”

The cop chewed this one over. Finally, he allowed that Kathy Reed lived next door.

“Call her,” said Uckley. “Tell her it’s an emergency, ask her to walk down the street to us.”

“That’s good,” said Delta Four. “Maybe we can rock and roll after all.”

In a few minutes, Kathy Reed, her twin boys, Mick and Sam, and a scroungy mutt that turned out to be named Theo showed up. Kathy was in her housedress still and looked as though a few days had passed since she’d last washed her hair.

“Bruce is away,” she began to explain, “I’m sorry about the way I look, but it’s so hard to—”

“Mrs. Reed?” Uckley asked. “I’m James Uckley, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. These men here with me are a special assault team from the Army’s Delta Group.”

He watched her mouth lengthen, then form the perfect rictus of an O. She was a woman who at one time or other might have been attractive but had been ground to a nub by the trenchwork of motherhood. She swallowed, her eyes going big, then said, “Is this about the mountain. There’s something going on on the mountain, right?”

“Yes, this does have to do with the mountain. Now, what I wanted to ask you about was your neighbor, Mrs. Hummel.”

“Beth? Is Beth in trouble?”

“Well, that’s what I want you to tell me. Did you talk to her today?”

“Yes, sir. About an hour ago.”

“And how did she seem?”

“Uh, the same.”

“The same?”

“It was just Beth, that’s all. I was the scared one. Because I thought there was gas or an atom bomb on the mountain. She said she’d drive us out of here if there was an evacuation. Bruce has the car. He travels a lot.”

“Did she invite you in?”

“Uh, no.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Well, we have coffee nearly every morning. Beth’s my best friend. She’s
everybody’s
best friend. I guess it was.”

“Was she nervous? Unsettled?”

“Come to think of it, yes, I suppose she was.”

“What about her kids?”

“What about them?”

“Did she say anything about them being sick?”

“Sick! What have they got? Sam was with Poo all yesterday. That means Sam will be coming down with it. Did she tell you they were sick?”

“They’re not in school. She called in.”

“That’s peculiar. I
know
she would have said something about it. But she didn’t mention it.”

“Mrs. Reed, I’d like you to talk to the sergeant here. I want you to draw us a diagram of Mrs. Hummel’s house. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go down there and knock on the door and see what I can see.”

“Be careful,” said Delta Three.

“Oh, I will,” said Uckley.

The knock on the door surprised them. Herman looked at his men, then at the lady and her children. Goddamn! Who could this be?

“All right,” he said. “As before. Remember, no fancy stuff, lady. These men here are with your children. You don’t want anything happening, do you understand?”

Beth Hummel nodded gravely.

“Don’t hurt my children.”

“Nobody gets hurt,” said Herman.

He knelt at the foot of the cellar steps, crouching in the darkness. His silenced Uzi covered the entrance. He watched the lady walk to the door, peek out, then open it.

“Mrs. Hummel?”

“Yes.”

Herman could see a bland young man in a sports coat and tie under a bland black raincoat. He looked to be about thirty.

“Hi, my name’s Jim Uckley, I’m with Ridgley Refrigeration, we’re putting in the plant out in Keedysville. Listen, I had an appointment with your husband today at two and he wasn’t there. I was just wondering if—”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Uckley. Jack’s in Middletown. There was a breakdown in the high school heating system. The main duct split and he had to go weld it up. I’m real sorry if he missed his appointment, but sometimes these emergencies come up and—”

“Oh, listen, that’s all right. I understand. Would it be all right if I came in and—”

Herman put his hand on the Uzi trigger and drew the weapon to his shoulder. Let this man come in and he’d squeeze off a three-round burst.

“Mr. Uckley, have you had the flu this year? It’s horrible stuff. Would you believe that
both
my girls are down with it. Why, Bean’s been vomiting for
two
days. It’s a horrible thing. And the house is a disaster. You can imagine, with two sick children, how terrible it is.”

“Well, ma’am, I sure don’t want to add to your difficulties. Maybe you could tell your husband I’ll call him in the morning. It’s a pretty big job we have in mind, and we’d like to talk to him soon as we can.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Uckley. I’ll see that he gets the message.”

She closed the door.

Herman slithered to the window, peeked over the edge, and watched the young man mosey down the walk and climb into a little blue car and drive away. He raced to the back of the house and followed the car after it had turned up the block and headed on down to Route 17 and out of town. All right, maybe it’s just a man about a job, he thought as he lost track of the car.