by John Hart
Rick’s men took off as directed and immediately disappeared into the thick undergrowth, as Oakley instructed, “This way” and made tracks. Izzy hesitated.
“I’ll stay here with you, give me something to stitch up the wound with—”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Rick snapped. “I’m fine. Mikel, get him out of here!”
And Rick loped slowly north, well outdistanced by his men but even wounded, refusing to let them fight without him.
Oakley gestured impatiently and kept going while J.D. seemed to pause before giving Izzy a push forward. Gregg hit the ground running right behind Izzy. He still felt woozy from whatever J.D. had put in the canteen and maybe Izzy too since he was struggling to run with all the gear on. His bandolier slipped off his shoulder, slid down his legs and tripped him.
Izzy fell forward, hard. Gregg hit Izzy from behind, and J.D. ran into Gregg so they all fell like dominoes, the three of them tangled with limbs and gear on the ground. They were still getting themselves extricated to get back up and run when an explosion went off on the trail Oakley was leading them on and it was like a bad, bad flashback of one of Izzy’s first nights when they ran from the villa and the soldier with no name who tried to help them got blown into a gory cartoon character where they should have been, only Izzy was too busy pissing his pants to get up and run with him.
As Oakley’s arms and part of a leg sailed through the air and landed within reaching distance, Izzy tried to focus on breathing, but he did not piss his pants or vomit. Not even when a tremendous series of explosions immediately to the north went off, close enough to see pieces of bodies and limbs flying in the first blush of dawn did he do more than blink.
All was silent. There was only the call of a morning bird, the wisp of a breeze carrying the acrid stench of enough gunfire and smoke to destroy a small city. Izzy wondered how many dead there would be in Manhattan within the same perimeter of explosions. Countless, countless, and not just from the explosives, terror and hysteria would create a stampede and countless more would be dead from that; surely enough bodies to fill two hospitals.
Judging from all the body parts there would not be anyone remaining to take to the hospital.
“Can we stand yet?” Gregg asked in a voice like a flat line on a heart monitor. “Or do we just play dead and wait for the bogeymen to show up if they won?”
“You and Izzy stay here. Hide inside your helmets and don’t move. I’ll—what the hell? Never mind, get up.”
J.D. was already up and trotting in the direction of a limping Rick Galt, holding his bleeding side with one hand, with his other a raised M16—and on the tip was a large fragment of something white that looked like part of a ghost mask.
Izzy got to his feet. Gregg, too. They ran towards Rick, who staggered then collapsed, but even as he lay there he kept the butt of his rifle to the ground, the barrel pointed skyward. The mask-like white thing lightly moved in the breeze as if it were the American flag holding the promise of freedom.
Izzy, Gregg, they picked up their pace. All around them was destruction: Blown up earth and pieces of bodies hanging from the broken plants and flaming, smoking trees. But in spite of it all there was a flicker of hope, that somehow at least one other person had survived, and that someone was a friend who just might not go home in a body bag, and pray god whatever Rick had signaled them with meant an escape from this nightmare that had sent J.D. here like some dark angel of death.
28
Rick was barely semiconscious when they got to him. J.D. immediately examined what did appear to be a portion of a shattered mask, as Izzy inspected the physical wounds and Gregg did his own kind of triage.
“Rick, Rick? We’re here for you, buddy. Izzy’s going to patch you up as best he can with. . .Mikel, can you go get the medic bag? We should have whatever painkillers you didn’t put in our water along with a suture kit.”
J.D. hesitated maybe a second then for once took his orders from Gregg. “Fine,” he curtly agreed. Then no doubt needing to be top dog issued the directive: “Stay put.”
As J.D. left them with Rick, Gregg noted several things:
J.D. didn’t ask why they were suddenly not on a first name basis.
Nor did he bother denying his little doping trick.
And he didn’t try to defend his actions by saying it was to keep them safe.
Yeah right. Gregg suspected if Rick hadn’t come running with J.D. on his heels to get them out of the camp maybe his and Izzy’s throats would be slit wider than the bloody gash in Rick’s torso and J.D. wouldn’t do more than shrug. Gregg hated jumping to such ugly conclusions but J.D. wasn’t giving him much reason to think otherwise. And why? Because J.D. didn’t explain himself to anyone, and that included a couple of pawns drafted into a chess match by a high level player who thrived on intrigue and subterfuge and drove a 57 Chevy when it suited his purposes to impress, rather than a jeep like the rest of the poor slobs who were counting the days to go home.
Jesus. You only had a Chevy here if this was your home.
Rick gripped Gregg’s wrist and pleaded, “Forget about me, can you go see if any of my guys are still out there, if you can help them. . .if you can find more than this—this. . .” He managed to hurl away the fragment of the mask J.D. had left behind. “There were three. . .I saw three of them. . .maybe more I didn’t see. Need to know we got them. Need. . .to know. . .”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Gregg said soothingly, glad to have someone to care for besides his completely fucked up self. “Once Mikel gets back, we’ll go look, but let us tend to you first.”
“Not. . .right. Captain goes down with his ship. Please. . .” Rick’s voice was broken, his grip lax. “Please just do this for…me.”
Gregg looked at Izzy. He gave a small nod. There was, after all, nothing they could do for Rick until J.D. got back with the medical necessities and if they could do this one thing then they had paid Rick back in some small way for quite possibly saving their lives, not to mention the lives of how many others if the Ghost Soldier/Boogeyman psyops initiative was finally, finally, over.
They left Rick lying alone and went in the direction from where he had emerged. Just more body parts, more blood and bone fragments and—
“Look!” Gregg picked up more pieces to a shattered mask, then quickly found another. Suddenly he understood Rick’s earlier glee of going on an Easter Egg hunt for the bloody bastards.
“I found some, too,” Izzy said excitedly, ignoring the very disturbing bits of bloody body debris surrounding what he lifted from the ground. Then he really hit the jackpot with an AK47 Soviet rifle and shreds of blown apart Chinese Regular Army uniforms. “Wow, it’s all here. Everything is what Rick was saying all along—which we did concur with, of course. But. . . there’s just one thing that bothers me.”
“What?”
Izzy shook his head, as if trying to clear it from the massive amounts of hallucinogen and whatever else they had consumed since arriving for this second trip to the Highlands, compliments of J.D. Sure, Rick had invited them but J.D. had made sure it happened.
“Oakley. He got blown up, too. We should have gotten blown up with him, right?”
“Right. Maybe not J.D., though, if he was far enough behind us.”
“Rick thought it would be safe in that direction. Maybe I imagined it, but it seemed like J.D. hesitated before pushing me in Oakley’s direction.”
Gregg was amply paranoid himself to latch onto Izzy’s train of what-if?
“You think J.D. may have wired something up without Rick knowing it?”
“I don’t know what I think any more. But I can’t fathom what motive J.D. would have in killing off Rick’s troops.”
“Yeah, even if he decided we’re less dangerous being permanently quiet than just really sleepy. He drugged our water.”
“What?” At Gregg’s nod, Izzy snort
ed in disgust. “Why would he do that?”
“Supposedly to keep us and everybody else safer while he was doing his thing out here.”
“Maybe he did some extra wiring while he was out and about.”
“Yeah. Or maybe Oakley veered off from where Rick said to go, or maybe Rick thought wrong and just made a costly mistake. Who knows? Shit happens, man.”
Izzy nodded. “You’re right. Shit happens. And I’d rather that be the case than think J.D. had something to do with Oakley or these guys getting taken out while he used his own methods to get rid of—” Izzy lifted the remains of evidence in his hands.
Gregg couldn’t dispute the fact that if the trap had been J.D.’s doing, even if his methods were morally reprehensible, the results were indisputable and that was something J.D. would consider perfectly justified. Like doping their water.
“We’d better get back before he shows up,” Gregg said.
“Right, and puts us in a corner for not staying put.”
J.D. beat them back after all and was lightly slapping an unconscious Rick on the cheek when they arrived, trophies of shattered masks, Chinese uniform shreds, and firearm in hand.
J.D. stopped his ministrations, such as they were, and glared at them both.
“You tampered with the crime scene?”
For a moment Gregg couldn’t find his voice, but when he did, it was the low and lethal roar of an awakened dragon.
“Crime scene? Crime scene?” he repeated, beyond incredulous. “This whole goddamn war is a crime scene. It’s criminal. And you are nothing but a whore for the crime bosses with enough innocent blood on your hands to burn in hell for. . .eternity is not long enough for any of you motherfuckers.”
Gregg won the staring match but not the final call.
“Better not let mom hear you talking like that, Gregg, or she might wash your mouth out with soap instead of letting the babysitter take you to the boardwalk. Dr. Moskowitz, would you please do your best stitching work on Captain Galt while I radio in for help?”
Gregg was rendered speechless. Surely Kate hadn’t. . .
No, he refused to believe her capable of breaking their sacred trust, especially with the bastard who had become his worst nightmare.
A nightmare with a radio. One J.D. could have used to spare him and Izzy from any and all of this, though apparently he had kept them around in case they might be of further use.
Because he was apparently still keeping them around. . .
J.D. walked in the direction of the “crime scene” and came back shortly to announce, “Pick up is on its way.”
Izzy had just finished his emergency field stitching of Rick’s gaping wound when Rick groggily asked, “Where are my guys? Did you find any of them you could help? Oakley. . .?”
Izzy nodded to Gregg. This was his job.
“I’m sorry Rick,” he said gently. “We looked but they’re. . .I’m afraid they’re all gone.”
“All?” The agony in Rick’s voice was so visceral that Gregg had to swallow past the lump in his own throat as he solemnly nodded. “But they were my men,” Rick protested. “My best men. There must be someone left.”
Rick struggled to rise and Izzy pressed him back down.
“You need to rest until we can get you out of here and into a proper medical facility, Rick. I’m really sorry about your guys, but there’s nothing you can do for them now except take care of yourself. They would want that, I’m sure.”
Rick covered his face with both hands and kept shaking his head. It was hard to know how to console such a tough guy who was so broken up. When he spoke, his voice was choked.
“Okay, I want to get my guys bodies back. It’s important they go back home. And,” he swallowed deeply. “I’ve got a lot of sad letters to write. But I don’t want to do it in a damned hospital. I’ve got some LRRP buddies near the firebase in Ban Me Thuot, so just take me there. You did a great job stitching, Doc. I’ll heal up fine.”
“You need antibiotics,” Izzy said firmly. “And you need more medical care than what I could manage here. I cannot in good conscience allow you to return to any firebase, Rick. That’s a breeding ground for infection, and enough has been lost today without you ending up in ICU or worse.”
Izzy then hit Rick with the painkiller and he relaxed, confessing, “I don’t like hospitals. Goes back to a bad experience I had as a kid.”
Gregg had an idea but he couldn’t get clearance on it. J.D., however, could and should even consider it an appealing alternative for other reasons: there was bound to be extensive debriefing for a proven Chinese psyops, plus there was the matter of all Rick’s dead Special Ops guys. Messy stuff that J.D. and the military would want kept off the record. There would be fewer ears to hear outside a military hospital.
“Hey, Mikel, what do you think of taking him to the mission? He could recover and do his writing there. Kate and the Donnelly’s and their staff, they’ll take extra good care of him.”
“Not to mention it’s a good, quiet place for the soul to heal, as well,” Izzy added.
Gregg expected an immediate agreement but J.D. stroked his chin and looked away, seeming to debate what should be a no-brainer.
At his curt nod, Gregg reassured Rick, “You’re going to like this hospital. Kate and the Donnelly’s will make you feel like you’re part of the family, not in some sterile ward.”
“Really?” Rick asked hopefully. “Would they really take me in?”
“They turn no one away.” Izzy patted Rick on the shoulder, using his best bedside manner. “And we would come down to see you. Even bring Nikki over. Right, Gregg?”
“Absolutely. Just what the doctor ordered.”
Rick smiled weakly, and Gregg wondered why it was okay for him to imitate Izzy but not J.D. As Izzy smiled along, all of them just borrowing what humor they could to offset the overload of trauma, Gregg realized it was because he wasn’t doing it behind a friend’s back and on top of all the other issues he had with J.D., he did not feel safe turning his back to him. A part of him wanted to trust J.D. even now, that itsy-bitsy molecule of naiveté that still wanted to believe in Santa Clause, still hoped on some desperate level that J.D. would find a way to redeem himself, that he wasn’t the whore Gregg had accused him of being. That J.D. wouldn’t just as easily shoot them from behind as slap them on the back and say they were all on the same team.
“I have one more favor to ask,” Rick whispered. “Could you get me all my guy’s dog tags?”
“I have them right here.” J.D. pulled them out, dangling them on their standard issue ball chains.
When Rick reached up to touch them, J.D. held his gaze and didn’t give up the tags. “I will take care of getting these back with the body bags.”
“Thanks, man,” Rick said.
“Strike hard. Strike first,” J.D. said like a eulogy.
“Damn straight,” Rick confirmed and slumped back on the ground, eyes closed.
29
Nikki opened the front door and immediately wished she had a peep hole because she sure wouldn’t have opened up for Don, not after his last visit.
Too late, the door was open and there he was, down on one knee and extending flowers, a big box of chocolates with a fat red bow, and a fancy bottle of wine.
“Peace offering?” he asked, sweet as you please. “I’m willing to beg.”
Nikki folded her arms. She knew she was a soft touch but not this time.
“Go away, Don.”
“But if I do then I can’t properly apologize for the last time I was here. I just hated the way we ended things. My behavior was deplorable, and I want us to at least be friends. Besides, I’ve been working on my Elvis, just for you, because you know. . .” Then he launched into, “I ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog—”
“Stop it!” Despite herself, Nikki smiled. She was still floating
on air from her visit with Rick at the mission. And, she had to admit, she really hated the way she and Don had ended things, too, so if he just wanted to be friends. . .
Well, she didn’t want him hearing through the grapevine she had an official new boyfriend. That was just plain tacky and she wanted to deserve what Rick had said when she visited him at the mission hospital today: Kitten, you are one class act.
They had kissed. It gave her tummy butterflies. Just remembering must be why she felt that strange fluttering in her stomach when she went against her better judgment and said, “Okay, you can come in. But just for a minute and you have to promise to behave.”
“I promise.” Don got up and gave her a kiss on the cheek just before sailing through the door, which he promptly shut before she could do it herself.
His breath had a strange smell, like he had tried to cover up whatever was really on it with Listerine. And he had another smell that was, um, feral. She knew that fancy word because she was educated, but her real understanding of it came from growing up where predators went after more vulnerable prey, like those weasels that killed their chickens in a coop.
She wasn’t a chicken. Nikki knew underneath the cotton candy surface, she was tough. So why she had this frantic urge to run out the door Don had just shut was beyond her. Especially since he was so gentlemanly the way he went about getting them wine glasses, saying, “Let’s toast to letting bygones be bygones,” opening the bottle with the corkscrew, and putting her favorite Elvis 45 onto the stereo. But as “Are You Lonesome Tonight” began to play, and Don poured a big glass of red merlot for her, then him, Nikki just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not right. The feeling grew even stronger as he patted the place beside him on the couch where they had “done it” the first time and she felt kind of cheap since bad girls did and nice girls didn’t. At least not in the buckle of the Bible belt where she came from.
