The Med (62 page)

“We can't see anything. It's coming from out in the mountains. Harisah says there might be an attack.”

Their eyes sought hers for a moment; then the falsity of hope, the futility of it, struck them all at the same moment. There was a small space for silence. Susan looked down at the desktop; Moira looked away; Cook played with the dial of a rusty safe, left and right, left and right.

“How's Nancy?” muttered Lieberman.

“All right … she's all right.”

“She's the one you have to watch out for,” said the Ox. “This can really scar her, Betts. Forever. Trauma—”

“Right now, I'm going to worry about keeping her from physical danger, Moira. That's enough for me, right now. And there isn't anything I wouldn't do for that.”

Her friend lifted her head, and for a long moment they looked at each other across the desk. Susan knew what she was thinking, knew what Moira thought she meant. Well, that isn't the way it is, she thought. But it's a simple way to explain. And one not even the Ox can fault. Let it stand.

“Betts. I want you to be real careful with him.”

“I will be.”

“He's a murderer. He—”

“You've said all that before, Moira. And I'm not disagreeing. I know you're right, now. I don't think he's all bad. But what's good in him is enlisted in the service of evil—like all the Germans who fought for Hitler.”

“All right. I won't argue about that. But there's one more thing. What are you going to do about Dan?”

“Dan?”

“Remember him? What are you going to do when this is over?”

“I guess … I guess, Moira, maybe that's over, too.”

It was the first time she had said it, even to herself.

The Ox narrowed her eyes at her. “If that's your decision. But I want you to do something for me, if we make it through this. Because I care about you. And that's this: Think about it again, later, when this is over. Just be sure. To find someone you can love through … good and bad, well, that's not so easy anymore.”

She and Cook turned back to each other, and Susan stood for a moment in the hot silence, feeling suddenly excluded, left out. She watched their hands creep together across the desktop, creep and meet and intertwine again, tight, tight.

They were still together, waiting, when the sound crept into the room. At first it was a humming, a far drone, just below the threshold of hearing. But it grew. Cook noticed it first, as if his senses were more finely drawn than theirs; he lifted his head, turned toward the window.

“What is it?”

“I don't know. There's something out past the airstrip. Raising dust. A car, maybe—”

It grew swiftly, climbing the scale as it neared. Grew, and then was lost in a popping vibration that made them all look at one another, suddenly, and then jump forward to the sill.

Out of the southern sky a moving thing buzzed forward, drawn as if along a wire from the open desert valley toward the hotel. It grew swiftly, and then, suddenly, resolved itself into a small helicopter. It dipped, and as their eyes followed it, a gout of smoke blew free from its engine and unrolled toward them. But then their eyes dropped from it to something beyond, moving across the desert beyond the airstrip.

“It's a goddamn tank or something,” said Cook.

“Where?”

“Beyond the plane. We couldn't see it coming because it was behind it. Wait. There's a whole fucking line of them! Jesus! Do you think they're ours? Do we have green things with pointed noses?”

At that moment the clatter of the aircraft turned to a roar as it passed over the square, and the world outside disappeared in a whirling storm of dust and black smoke.

“Susan!” Moira turned to her, her face white. “Get upstairs. Get with Nan! Now!”

And with the sound of beating wings in her ears, terror in her heart, she fled through the empty corridors of the hotel, tears streaming down her face.

33

Ash Shummari, Syria

The strike element entered Syria that afternoon without knowing it. Baked within steel boxes, jolted half-unconscious over mountain roads, there was no way they could have known.

Will Givens couldn't tell. In fact he was asleep. Fatigue, heat, and the reaction to his first hostile fire made a powerful soporific. He snored through the last miles, slumped against another trooper on the hard bench inside the 'track. At times he would open his eyes, on the worst stretches of downhill road, but he never came fully awake. Only halfway, to a fevered place of dreaming, where he would linger and then slide back again into the hot maw of darkness, seeing again and again a bloody scrap of flesh.…

He did not see the border station, its white-and-green-striped crossing-guard down, but its windows empty, abandoned; did not see the lead amtrac take it at full speed, smashing the poured-concrete guard post, tearing through wood and glass and barbed wire.

At some indeterminate time Cutford jerked him awake in the roaring din of the 'track's interior. No. Not roaring. The engine was at a high idle, and they were squatting stationary on level ground. As Will realized this the ramp banged down aft. He ducked his head to look out, catching a breath of hot fresh air, and said “Where are we, man?”

“I think it's the place we're going to,” said Hernandez seriously to the whole interior of the 'track.

“Better stay inside,” the A-driver called back, as Cut-ford made a move for the hatch. “They're talkin' on the radio. They ain't sure this is the right coordinates.”

“Fucken officers. They sure it's the right country?”

The driver straightened back into the turret, his back stiff. Cutford turned round once more, like a dog about to lie down, and lowered himself unwillingly back onto the seat, glaring out the open rear, of the 'track.

Givens watched him briefly, nodding, and then curled back into sleep. Or tried to. But the change of air had brought him back to wakefulness. As he peered past Cutford's shadowed bulk he saw mountains in the distance, the range they had crossed.

“Noncoms dismount,” someone shouted outside. “Muster for precombat brief.”

“They love to jerk their jaws, don't they,” muttered Silkworth. Will looked back at him. The Silk grinned for just a moment, just as he had in a cathouse in Sicily; and then he swung on the rest of the men and was a sergeant again. “Come on, Cutford. Rest of you boys, hang tight.”

Will saw the corporal pause for a moment at the hatch, as if unwilling to leave the shelter of metal walls, and then move into a lope, lifting his M-16 to high port. Through the open rear hatch, as if in a frame, he could see the noncoms from the other 'tracks arrive two by two and form a rough circle around the command jeep. Silkworth and Cutford joined them as the colonel, with two other officers beside him, spread a map out before them on the hood of the vehicle.

Will looked at the sky. It was still blue, still clear except for smoke a few hills over. He relaxed for a moment, glancing at Harner, who had lit a cigarette and was sucking smoke into his nostrils, and then looked out again at the sky. On the ship it had meant freedom, the only thing in his life that was the same as home. Now he found himself remembering how the projectiles had appeared against it, nothing more than specks, like the negatives of stars, but aimed at him.

As if to reinforce his unease the popcorn rattle of automatic weapons sounded some distance off. The marines, packed close, yet drew slightly closer. Givens began to feel a primitive need. He was debating jumping out of the vehicle, just for a moment, when the sergeant reappeared in the open rampway. One of the colonel's staff officers, a major, had come back from the jeep with him, and now stood behind him.

“Listen up!” Silkworth shouted, staring in at them. “We're two miles past the border, and three miles from the objective. This is all the briefing you're going to have preattack. So listen good.

“We're in Syria now. The Syrians have backed off to let us in. We don't know for how long. Looks like we'll be alone with the terrorists, for a little while at least. But everything has got to go fast, and I mean fast.

“Assault will go as follows: Over the crest of this last hill is a two-mile-wide valley plain. Airfield on the far side. Plane on the field, probably deserted, but one rifle squad from 'track seven will take it in combat order. On the far side of the airstrip is an old resort compound. The hotel itself is the tallest building. That's probably where the hostages are.

“We'll stay in the 'tracks the whole way to the buildings. Dismount there in cover. Most of the force will provide a base of fire from the front. That's the holding element. The maneuver element—that's us, this 'track and two others, with Major Wasserman here in charge—will flank left in open order and carry out an assault through and into the objective proper, which is the hotel. We don't know the layout, so keep your eye on me and the major. We'll move fast and hope we don't hit anything we can't handle. Any questions?”

“What about when we get in the hotel?” asked Cutford. The men looked at him. He had reversed his rifle so that it hung upside down by the sling, and Will remembered the way the men in Nam used to hold them on TV. In Nam, when he had been a child …

“Major?” said Silkworth.

The officer moved forward, a radioman moving with him, as if they were attached. “There's been no time to plan that,” he said, folding a map and stuffing it into his blouse. His eyes were slits in the sunlight. “Squad leaders will have to act on their own initiative. Coordinate your men with those of the other units. Normal urban-combat procedures.”

“Okay.” said Silkworth, taking their attention, their obedience, back with the single word. “Weapons loaded, safeties on. Out fast and take cover instantly when the ramp comes down. Driver! Close this fucking barn door and put her in gear!”

*   *   *

At that moment, sweeping in great circles a mile behind and three hundred feet above Givens' 'track, Dan's back suddenly prickled.

He leaned forward, his forehead touching the windscreen, and swept with his eyes the entire column. The vehicles, strung out along what had become no more than a dirt track. The knot of men around the jeep, breaking and scattering as their briefing concluded. The dry hills, the mountains behind, ahead the last rise before Ash Shummari. And all around them, above them, open and empty sky.

He had not stopped to think after he left Sundstrom and SACC. Instead he had gone straight to the
Guam
's helo deck. He knew the air plan. He'd written it. His orders had been no armed aircraft over the beach; but Haynes had asked for two of the unarmed observation choppers, fitted with smoke generators, to be over the hotel when the column hit. He had gotten to the flight deck to find only one warming up. The other had a casualty to the transmission. Dan had sprinted across the deck, yanked the hatch open even as the crewmen turned, surprise on their faces, and thrust himself behind their seat. One of them pushed aside his throat mike.

“What's going on? Who are you?”

“I'm on the squadron staff, and my wife is in there.”

“I don't have any—”

“Get going, damn it! Look at your operation order!”

That stopped them; he knew damn well none of the pilots read anything but their own flight schedules. The man turned his head front and began flicking switches.

Then, quite suddenly, they were in the air.

The chopper passed low over the inshore ships, barely higher than
Ault
's mast. Low, gray, grim-looking, the old destroyer rode seemingly close enough to touch the land; from the helo he could see sand ridges fingering out toward her under the glittering surface. Then she flashed past, and he was over the beach. He looked down on the rear guard, digging in among the dunes a mile inland. Machine-guns and antitank missile launchers, here and there a tank crouched in cover, ready to hold a beachhead through which a retreating force could withdraw.

Beyond that Lebanon seemed empty of life. But through the whole flight inland the pilot and copilot swiveled their heads, searching that blue sky. After a while, his back itching at the thought of a Syrian fighter, or an antiaircraft missile, he started doing it, too. They kept low, flashing so close over hill and valley that sheep scattered beneath them on the crests. Sometimes he had to look up to see them. Despite that there was no guarantee they would not be fired on, and he knew that now, as they hovered almost exactly over the border, they were in as much or more danger as any of the men in amtracs below them.

His back prickled again. He leaned forward and reached up to slap the copilot on the shoulder. The man turned.

“Are we going in?” he shouted.

“Any minute, soon as we get the—”

“Smoke!” the pilot shouted at that moment. The copilot started and reached up to thumb a switch. The helo tilted forward.

They leapt over the last crest no more than fifty feet up, and at two hundred miles an hour Ash Shummari burst into sight.

*   *   *

The 'track's engine roared and its treads dug into the sand. Will's rifle was jerked from his hand and clattered on the deck. He snatched it up, feeling sick, and checked it. It looked okay. He loaded, as Cutford had ordered, pointing it at the overhead as he put the safety on.

The nose rose, and then dipped. The engine roared, cut as the driver shifted, and then howled again at maximum rpm. The men inside couldn't see a thing. Givens tried desperately to visualize what Silkworth had said. An airstrip—a compound—a hotel—

At every moment, as they swayed and roared across suddenly flat land, he expected the jolt of an antitank rocket. How well armed were these terrorists? He had no idea what a terrorist looked like. Did they wear uniforms? Beards?

Were they black or white?

*   *   *