Leon Uris (33 page)

“You’re right. It has gotten late. Do you know the private road alongside the Burton estate?”

“I can find it.”

“It’s an access road to the houses farther down the bluff and it bypasses Onde la Mer. I have a private entry off it. Tomorrow, say two hours after the cannon sounds at the yacht club.”

“I’ll be there.”

Their departing kiss and the sudden freedom of her hand to wander left no doubt.

It was a long day for Zach. He imagined that she was going to have a change of heart and cancel their rendezvous. The Barjac family seemed to know what one another was thinking.
Lilly won’t be joining us for dinner.
Would a raised eyebrow from Papa George or Fifi be enough to tell her not to make a fool of herself?

Easy, Zach, he cautioned himself, and stop thinking bad thoughts. Surely Lilly knows the rules of conduct of Onde la Mer, but would she be overreaching with a lad so young? His yearning for something tugged at him.

When the cannon boomed from the yacht club, the shell seemed to land at Zach’s feet.

He opened her garden gate. Lilly was framed in a scarcely lit doorway in a lush emerald gown that set off her black hair, brushed down straight on white shoulders.

They came together softly into a room of candlelight flitting under a breeze that sent shadows bounding to and from the white walls.

She held a finger to her lips—say nothing—she let him see her all. Zach was stunned. Lilly was white ivory and rounded like a Grecian statue. He’d never looked upon her likes.

She gracefully slipped his jacket off and shirt buttons open and she saw the likes of arms and chest she had only seen on powerful men working in the fields. Oh, rock of Zachary.

He could be rightfully vain of his body but was not so. This was Lilly’s place and Lilly’s sporting ground.

Lilly was nearly unable to fathom the tenderness of how his eyes watched her breathe and move her cheeks under his touch like a dancing feather. He kissed her eyelashes. His patience and wise fingertips were not what she had expected.

“You are very strong,” she said.

“You’re the boss.”

Who was this lad? How much of his cool demeanor was a ploy? He was waiting so calmly for her to set the tone and the cadence, but he was going clear through her by touching her shoulders.

All right, she accepted his silent dare. Let’s see what you’re made of, Lieutenant.

No explosions, now, but a lover’s test . . .

The lovers’ room took him in and the lovers’ place laid him down on silk. Lilly sat above him and glided him in a fraction. Her hands pinned his shoulders still, her face came close to his so they stared in each other’s eyes. She lowered herself every several seconds a fraction of a fraction, lower, and their eyes daring each other to retain sanity.

. . . each tick now whirling their heads, the room. Their eyes never unlocked. And farther and farther until they both looked half mad and beaded into sweat.

. . . and she finally could come down no farther . . . and they locked and played each other with tiny pulsations.

“My God,” Lilly managed as the sweat now burst. They remained locked. “Where did you learn this?”

“From a very wise woman, tonight,” he answered.

It was clear to Zachary that Lilly Villiard came from a tribe of Parisians for whom pleasuring a man was a way of life.

The main path offered little detour after little detour. In another time, Lilly could have been a ranking member of the sisterhood of courtesans. There were so many new delights; an enchanted seascape of diversions.

They spoke to each other, offering wise entreaties, and found a level of humor and fun, glad to see each other and to handle a clumsy moment with laughter.

Zach discovered what he already knew by instinct. He enjoyed giving pleasure often more than he enjoyed receiving it. A lover such as that was rarely come upon by her. Lilly Villiard became ambivalent about how much pleasure she was supposed to take. She began to regard each new set of sensations as dangerous and she grew afraid of where wild abandon would lead.

They came to a level of very happy lovemaking but avoided the thunder and lightning on the horizon.

Lilly and Zach spent their time together judiciously, inconspicuously joining the family’s social life. Zachary was popular but hardly invasive, and came and went from her villa so no one really knew or seemed to care.

From time to time he acted as her escort away from Onde la Mer. There didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot of gossip. Barjac was the Catholic and the Marine family of Newport.

Although there was diminishing return as lovers, they greeted each other smiling, never found the other boring, and lost any awkwardness over the difference in their ages.

There were times, wonderful for them both, when he just wanted to rest his head on her bosom and be held, even till dawn.

This was the first and only moment of Zach’s life that included serenity.

. . . close your eyes and rest, Lieutenant, but let us stay clear of dangerous places.

They had gone full circle. The wall he had built against Amanda Kerr was eroding even as he made love to Lilly Villiard.

Alone at night in his quarters, the ache for Amanda returned, punctuated by every sounding of the ship’s bell and the mournful foghorn.

•
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The day of reckoning had come upon Ben Boone sooner than he expected. A draft of the protocol with the British was initialed by Rear Admiral Richard X. Maple.

Ben had hoped for more time so “Random Study Sixteen” would be further advanced. It held the core reasons for a Marine takeover of the Amnesty Islands’ garrison.

Maple was the key man to sell the idea to the commanding officer of the navy, Admiral Langenfeld. If Maple could get the boss aboard, the secretary of the navy and the president would certainly agree.

Zach was ordered to quickly draw up a list of preliminary conclusions from “Random Sixteen
.”
Telling the flat-out truth as they saw it at this early stage was apt to ruffle the dander of many of the top brass.

The major had hoped the Corps would get the islands first, then come along with “Random Sixteen
.”

The opposite was happening. And there were still those, led by Commodore Harkleroad, who wanted to put the Corps out of business.

Ben stopped under the eucalyptus tree, midway on the daily exercise run, dug into his kit, and reread Zach’s initial thoughts. He shuddered.

Zach ran up the path to him, took a towel he’d left in a crook of the tree trunk, and wiped the sweat off.

“I didn’t realize when you came out of AMP I was getting the new von Clausewitz.”

Zach was exhausted. He had worked most of the night through and started the day on three hours’ sleep.

“I knew it,” Zach muttered.

“ ‘Conclusion,’” Ben read:

‘Naval gunfire used as artillery in advance of a Marine assault has severe limitations. Guns of warships are designed to fire flat projectiles against enemy naval vessels. A missile running parallel to the water cannot give the offensive artillery support required to move troops inland (as can a land-based howitzer cannon, which arches its shots) . . .

‘Naval gunfire can force an enemy on the beach to retreat temporarily, but fire must cease once the Marines reach the waterline, otherwise ship guns could be firing too close to landing troops.’

“ ‘Conclusion,’” Ben said:

‘The navy must turn over command and control of the landing force to the landing force . . .

‘A beachhead is a place of tremendous activity, landing troops and supplies, beaching landing boats, gathering the wounded, etc. . . .

‘At the present time, communications—blinkers, semaphore, flags, flares, message boats—are too slow and cumbersome to allow prompt reaction to conditions on the beach.’

“ ‘Therefore,’ says von Clausewitz, ‘until a system of hardwiring from ship to shore or a system of voice projection over space is developed, closer integration of the sea force and the land force is not possible.’

“ ‘Conclusion,’ and it’s a honey: ‘The navy must turn over command and control to the Marines, at the waterline.’

“Shit,” Ben said. “Those people would use tom-toms and carrier pigeons for communications before they’d turn over command and control to us.”

“You forgot smoke signals,” Zach said.

“Let’s see. ‘Conclusion,’ here we go:

‘From the waterline, the Marine force will seize territory inland and hold it till relieved. This could be the second or even the third day.

‘Therefore: A Marine must carry sufficient ammo to fight with for three days. The present single-shot, heavy-caliber 45-millimeter ammunition is not suitable for an assault . . .

‘Assault Marines should be armed with a five-round bolt-action thirty-caliber rifle of the highest accuracy; namely, the Krag Jorgensen already issued to the army . . .

‘Moreover, every Marine should be qualified as a sharpshooter or expert, so he will expend his ammunition wisely and accurately from distances up to five hundred yards.’

“What are we going to do with those smoothbore, single-shot forty-five-caliber elephant guns?”

“Shove them up a museum’s ass,” Zach said, coming to his feet.

“Don’t get your shit hot, I haven’t finished, yet. ‘Conclusion: calls for the development of automatic weapons as an urgent priority.’”

“Ben, where did I hear it said that the invention of a fully automatic weapon will be the greatest killing machine in all warfare? Which of your lectures did I pick that up at? A couple of sets of machine guns on either flank of our beachhead in an elevated place will go a long way to assure the success of that beachhead.”

“ ‘Conclusion,’” Ben read on:

‘Nothing is more imperative to the future of amphibious warfare than a proper, self-propelled landing boat with a crew of three capable of holding twenty or more assault troops . . .

‘Such a landing boat, of shallow draft, with flat bottom, and armor-plated, must be able to handle breaking surf and deposit the marines at the waterline . . .

‘The boat will not be beached. It will take on wounded, have reverse capability, turn around, and go back to the mother ship for more men and weapons.
A continuing line of boats from ship to beach and back is the heartbeat of expeditionary landings.
’

Zach folded his fingers together like a sinner at prayer. “It all depends on how far away from home the eagle wants to shit. Islands are going to be fortified, Ben, as outer defenses. We’re not always going to be able to make soft landings. And we’re not going to dump men halfway around the world without the support of the nation, advance bases, naval protection, and the basic weaponry . . . and men.”

“We are at peace, Zach. We are a democracy. Military planners will be very cautious, that’s human history. They learn too late that these theories should have been developed before we’re standing ass deep in wet cement waiting for it to dry. ‘Random Study Sixteen’ has too much truth in it. It shakes up too many stagnant doctrines.”

At that moment Ben Boone felt an anxiety of the kind he’d felt before only when being shot at. It all came to a head so damned fast. It wasn’t the end of the career that half paralyzed him now. It was the realization that these basic ideas were going to be rejected and the price might be a lot of dead American fighters.

He wanted to plead with Zachary O’Hara to modify things, slip around with the usual dodgy language of a military study. He saw Zach and he saw right. He could not ask this young officer to change his conclusions without losing his own beliefs.

Well, now, not much left to do but continue to turn it in and pray for Richard X. Maple.

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