The Med (66 page)

He was bent over him, slamming the rifle butt into his face again and again, when the marines came round the corner of the building.

*   *   *

Will Givens came back.

He thought, surprised, that the action must be over. He could hear no more firing. No more shouting, the deep short brutal “Oo-rah” of marines in assault. No more screams. Only the low sobbing of a woman, and hoarse breathing from above as Cutford found the duct. Combat boots scraped hollow metal, and then the familiar, hated face was close above.

“Oreo. How is it, blood? You fall?”

“No. Hit.”

“Hit bad? Feel numb, like?”

“Yeah…” The sky beyond Cutford reddened to scarlet and a wave of dizziness supplanted the emptiness in his chest. He wanted to cough but was afraid to. It might jar loose the heavy, numb thing on his breast.

“We'll get you medevacked,” the voice came faintly through the dark. Behind it, now, he could feel the thing, hear it. Thud. Thud. Maybe it was his heart, but it felt different. Slow. Thick. The thing in his chest was heavy on it, drifting over it like fog over the deep valleys of the Smokies in the cool nights of October.

“Hear, man? You got to hold. Hold that old fuckah Death back. Don't give in, Oreo. Can you hear me, brother?”

He could hear, but he did not respond. It was Cutford. He hated him. Cutford had broken his guitar.

And he was thinking. About a lot of things. About the woman. She had tried to stop him, tried to save his life. Or … had she screamed for him, or for the other? Her eyes … so dark, so full of secrets.

Eyes; the eyes of the child, the woman, the eyes of the terrorist, of the corporal. Secrets, all of them, deep as the sea as you hung over the rail of a ship, staring into depths you would never know, that no one knew.

His book said it all turned out to be math. Equations. The world was all in books, and all you had to do was learn it. And if you studied, learned hard enough, you would not be a nigger. You would not be a small-town laborer in North Carolina. You would be a college man, and never be poor again.

He was remembering the feel of a guitar, the smoothness of the wood and bite of strings, the way that first chord sobbed out in “Amazing Grace.”

And then, as if a curtain had been ripped apart, he knew what he was meant for.

He was not an engineer. There were enough engineers. He was not a guitar player. He had not been meant for that.

He had the Call.

“Oreo. You got to hold on, man. We gettin' a corpsman. Open your eyes. That's a fucken order!”

That Cutford. He had to grin, at least inside. Won't he never let up on me?

No. He wouldn't. He was like Someone Else. He called and called, patiently, never taking no. And when you were ready, you had to understand.

Finally, finally, Will Givens understood why he had been set apart. Made different from the rest.

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place.…

“Givens! You son of a bitch, answer me!”

Cutford. Another of the lost, those whose lives were endless, goalless, whom he had been sent to help. Had he helped them? Had he brought them to certainty? He had not. He had not even tried. And now his journey was at an end.

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord … and be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

“Will!”

I guess I better answer him. He sound like he almost care.

“Okay, brother,” he whispered.

Or only thought he did. For within him, somewhere, the dark hand of Jesus had already joined his. Despite himself, despite his failure and sin, he was loved and accepted and taken. And with joy in it, joy and surcease from pain and fear, he yielded to a delight that passed anything, anything, he had ever known.

VII

THE AFTERIMAGE

34

U.S.S.
Ault

So the old polish-irish luck still held, Wronowicz thought, relaxing back into the bunk after the doctor left.

Still held—kind of. He knew he was in bad shape. His head swam with the dry-mouthed euphoria of morphine and he could think only in snatches. His legs were heavy as ballast pigs and there was no way to move them. He was busted up bad. But alive, that was the kicker! And that was goddamned lucky when a two-ton gear casing had ironed you out twice before the black gang got it wedged down with shoring and lines.

Kelly Wronowicz looked up at the distant blue overhead of after officers country, and wondered where he would be now if he had died. Or if you died would you ever know it, would the only way you knew it be that you didn't?

With the thin silver song of the drug in his ears even that did not seem too awful.

When he woke again the song had gone away and he came up hurting. He stood it for a while, then whistled. A minute later the long, professionally blank face of the
Ault
's corpsman, a first-class whose name he ought to but could not recall, leaned in. He watched Wronowicz for a minute or two, then his glance went to the dripping bottle that tilted with the gentle sway of the ship. Gentle? Storm must have eased off, Wronowicz thought. Or else I been tits down longer than I thought.

“How you feeling, Chief?” said the medic at last, edging the rest of his body into the room.

“Not too good.” He tried to push himself up and caught his breath. “Whoo … that smarts.”

“Lay down, damn it. You remember what the doc said?”

“Doc? I remember somebody … don't remember what he said. Wait a minute. We don't have a doc aboard.”

“Shock, probably.” The corpsman sat on the bunk and reached for a pulse. “He came over in a gig from the
Guam.
You got three broken ribs, hip, leg in two places. Internal bruising, some hemorrhage. You got blood in your urine, too.”

“I guess that's why I feel so rotten,” Wronowicz whispered. It was getting worse; he blinked sweat out of his eyes. He tried to concentrate. Broken ribs. Hip. Leg …

“Yeah,” said the corpsman, wiping down his forehead, “time to put the quietus on that old pain again.”

“A shot?” said Wronowicz. “Forget it. I can take this.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I don't want no more of that dope.”

“Well, how about some aspirin, then? At least?”

“That would be okay.”

When he had them on his tongue he could taste that they weren't aspirin. He'd been tricked. But he swallowed them anyway. He twitched his fingers and then dug them into the sheet. “Hey. How long I been here?”

“It's 1700. Five in the evening.”

“Oh. Landing…?”

“It went all right. We even got to fire the guns. If you're wondering why you haven't been medevacked, Foster was on the horn as soon as we pulled that thing off you, but they were warming up to launch the air assault and there just weren't any to spare. He was cursing a blue streak but the commodore wouldn't give him one, said to stabilize you and he'd divert one when things calmed down.”

“So when's that?”

“When's what?”

“When am I going?” Wronowicz muttered. It was getting bad, worse than he thought it could be. Whatever the white pills were they weren't working. “This goddamn tub … hurts every time we roll.”

“Should be pretty soon. Kind of sorry you woke up, though, 'cause getting you up those ladders and through the hatchways is going to hurt like hell.”

Wronowicz closed his eyes.

“Tell you what. I'll give you a reduced dose. How's that? You'll still be awake, but it won't be as bad.”

“Oh … all right,” said Wronowicz, reluctantly and gratefully.

*   *   *

Strapped like a mummy into a Stokes stretcher, he sweated his way up the ladders, fearing with every jolt that they would drop him. But they didn't, and once they hit the 01 level, four men could carry him horizontal and that was better. On the
Ault
's little helo deck Polock and Steurnagel and Blaney stood around him, watching the dusking sky. It was warm and windy, the flags on the signal bridge snapping above them, the turbulence aft of the funnels snatching down stray streamers of stack gas. The throb and hum of the blowers was music. He moved his fingers and the first-class bent down.

“Stewie. How's the engines doing?”

“Passable, Chief. We was busy as a dog with two dicks for a while, but we dropped the cover back on, bypassed the aux steam line, soft-patched the condensate line and a couple of others, and welded up the bulkhead. She's running, for a while, anyway.”

“Did Foster get his thirty knots when he wanted them?”

“I had them flat out flank for three hours,” said the first-class. “I didn't hear him complain.”

“You done good, Stewie.”

“
You
done good, Chief. That fuckin' casing would have wiped out the whole engineroom.”

They looked at each other in the warm wind, and the gas from the stacks made Wronowicz's eyes tear.

“Bird's incoming,” said Lieutenant Jay, coming up to the stretcher and rubbing his hands. “You'll be on your way in five minutes, Chief, a nice clean hospital and sweet little nurses. By the way, before you shove off—skipper can't leave the bridge, but he said to tell you the yeoman's looking up the requirements for a Navy Cross.”

“Thanks,” muttered Wronowicz. He was feeling drowsy. That tricky bastard had fooled him again, given him a full shot.… “Sir?”

“Yeah.” Jay bent to hear him over the roar of the approaching chopper.

“Steurnagel … he done a damn nice job of work getting that plant back together.”

“I hear you,” said the lieutenant.

“ON THE DASH DECK. EVERYONE BACK OF THE LINE EXCEPT FOR PATIENT AND CORPSMAN.”

The amplified voice was familiar. He rolled his head to see Ensign Callin's hand lift inside the control booth. Strange. He hadn't known Callin was helo-deck qualified.

“Well, so long, Chief.”

“We'll see you back aboard in a couple of weeks.”

“Yeah. Yeah, g'bye.”

They retreated, waving. The swollen hugeness of the chopper settled warily toward the stern of the destroyer. It hovered over the after gun mount, gauging the motion of the ship, and then lowered the last few feet. It touched, bounced, and then was down, leaving not an inch of room to spare. The engines drummed at his ears. He was lifted and slid in with a click. A crewman leaned over to strap him in, and then he was heavy with the upward rush of the floor.

*   *   *

“Want to see out?”

He could barely understand the gargoyle in helmet and throat mike; there was no hope of his shouting back loud enough to be heard. So he only nodded. The crewman loosened a strap and edged him over to the window, and he looked down from three thousand feet on the entire operation.

Land, and the sea. The beach was gold, fringed with white lace of surf, an arch of gold from horizon to horizon. Far to their left were a few fishing smacks, the same ones you saw all over the Med, and the haze of a small city. Below, though, it was almost vacant; just gold, and that fine, fine lace.

Then he saw the boats.

Or amtracs, either one. He looked for but couldn't see the ships of the task force; they were on the seaward side of the chopper. All he could see were the boats, coming out. Fine lines of white, the wakes, each one arrow-tipped by dark gray or green. They crept with painful slowness over the intense purple of the sea, leaving behind the golden arc of land. They were no longer in formation; they were just sea-trucks now. The backload must be starting.

Jarheads down there. As the helo crossed the surf line he could look down on them, the spiderweb crisscross of wheeltracks on the sand, moving jeeps and a bulldozer with its blade lifted, the tiny dots of men. Another dozer was working at the dunes, scraping out a ramp. Beyond that amtracs were coming down the road from the hills, their treads throwing a plume of dust that the wind spread silently (from this height) along the beach.

The helo banked, for some reason; Wronowicz heard the sound of rotors change; the drug told him not to worry.

He looked out, blinking as the sun wheeled through his line of vision, and then saw the ships.

They lay dark against the blue sea, gray against blue. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Nearest him the foam-waked silhouette of a frigate rolled, her missile launcher pointed inland; beyond her was the tubby hull of an attack transport, hove to or at anchor; he couldn't see a wake. Beyond her were more amphibs, all hove to or moving slowly. His eye picked out an LST; was that
Newport,
or
Barnstable County?
Boats clustered around her stern.

Then he saw her: low, fine-hulled, gray, riding close in, her six guns pointed shoreward. The sea glittered around her, the declining sun showering her with powdered gold. It's her, the goddamn
Ault,
he thought. So suddenly was he parted from her. He knew her better than any other thing on earth, more intimately than his own body. She was his home. He wondered if he would ever be back. Stove up as he was, it would be months before he could climb a ladder, scramble into the bilges, take a strain on a line. Maybe longer. At his age …

He pushed the thought away, but it came back. Maybe they won't find me fit for sea, he thought. This time fear cut through morphine. Maybe they won't give me another ship at all. Shoreside duty …

He could not imagine it. The idea of Kelly Wronowicz beached in West Ocean View was so incredible that he was able to stop thinking about it. His eyes moved on to a grander silhouette, high and square, the gnat-flickering of helicopters between it and the beach, and recognized
Guam.
And beyond her, tiny against the flaming western horizon … a cruiser, one of the nukes. That meant there was a carrier out there somewhere, far out to sea from the toehold, but ready with all her power to strike wherever it was needed.