Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Oh, God, Mace, I was so worried!”

  “I thought about trying to get word to you, but they don’t even have a phone in here.” He pointed at the empty bedside table.

  “When do you think they’ll let you out?”

  “I don’t know. A day or so.” A wave of dizziness came over him, and he stumbled backward. She caught him around the waist and helped him to the bed.

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  He heard the faucet running in the bathroom. She opened a drawer at the bedside and found a straw. He rolled over on his side, trying to reach the straw.

  “Oh Jesus, that hurts.”

  “Wait. I’ll help you.” She shoved an extra pillow behind his back. With some effort, he leaned forward and she slipped the straw between his lips. The water was cold, the best thing that had ever passed his lips. He leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  She rested her hand on his. “Do you feel better?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to go. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  He opened his eyes. She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the forehead. As she was putting her scarf on, there were voices in the hall outside the room. He pointed at the bathroom. “Quick!”

  She closed the door just as General King walked into the room with Captain Taggert. Mace sat up stiffly in bed.

  General King held up his hand. “At ease, at ease, Sergeant Nukanen. How are you feeling?”

  “Better, sir.”

  The General sat down on the edge of the bed. “Your company commander has interviewed the members of your platoon about the accident, Sergeant. That was a fine thing you did out there. I’m going to recommend you for the Soldier’s Medal, for heroism not in conflict with an enemy.”

  Mace didn’t know what to say. He swallowed, and the words “Thank you, sir” escaped from his mouth. He glanced at the bathroom. You could see light at the bottom of the door. Captain Taggert idly studied his watch as he took Mace’s pulse.

  “Pulse is good. How’s the head?”

  “I’ve still got some dizziness, sir.”

  “Bed rest will fix that right up.”

  General King stood, pulling on his gloves. “It was a tragic accident. Tragic. I’m glad you’re okay, Sergeant Nukanen.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “We’ll let you get some sleep now. I’ll stop by your platoon some morning after they let you out of here. Maybe you could fix me up with a cup of coffee.”

  “Yes, sir. Be glad to, sir.”

  General King and Captain Taggert walked out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  Mace whispered: “It’s okay. They’re gone.”

  Kara took his hand. “That was close.”

  “Too close. You’d better wait a minute before you go. They might have stopped down the hall.”

  She pressed his hand between hers, gently stroking his fingers. “Mace, I . . . I . . .”

  “Ssshh.” He saw a tear slowly making its way down her cheek. “I’ll call you when they let me out of here.”

  She kissed him lightly on the lips and walked across the room and cracked the door. The hallway was darkened and empty. She slipped out the door.

  The conference room was on neutral ground, in the Infantry School headquarters, which by a quirk of the Army bureaucracy was under the command of neither General King nor General Beckwith. Everyone snapped to attention as General Carson strode into the room, followed closely by General Ranstead and Major Hammett. General Carson opened his briefing book and looked up. “At ease.”

  Everyone sat down. Lannie, who was sitting next to General Beckwith and directly across the table from General King, opened a notebook and wrote “Post-Operation Briefing” across the top of the page.

  “I’m going to make this short and sweet,” said General Carson, slipping on a pair of reading glasses. “It was very, very close, but General Beckwith, you won.”

  Beckwith smiled widely. King was impassive.

  “Bill, your boys did an excellent job out there. The capture of Bernie’s Second Battalion was a stroke of pure genius.”

  He turned to General King. “Bernie, with the exception of the Second Battalion, your partisans did an excellent job of escape and evasion. You would have scored much lower except for the fact that overall, you captured more of Bill’s troops than he captured of yours. But the loss of an entire battalion determined it.”

  General King cleared his throat. “Sir, can I ask how you figured I lost an entire battalion? The assessment of my commanders doesn’t square with that.”

  “I’m aware of the discrepancy, Bernie. That’s why right from the beginning, I decided that in the event of discrepancies, we would go with the figures of the neutral party, which are those of the scorekeepers. Any more questions?” He looked quickly around the room. “Excellent.” He closed the briefing book and stood up. “You will each be provided with copies of the scoring assessment. It’ll be sent to the office of the Secretary of the Army this afternoon for further disposition.”

  With that, General Carson and his entourage walked briskly from the room.

  General Beckwith waited until the door of his staff car had been closed before he exulted. “Did you see Ranstead’s face when Carson announced the winner! Jesus, that was sweet!” He leaned back, smiling. “I’m calling Senator Maldray this afternoon. I want to make sure he knows we won.”

  Lannie touched him lightly on the arm. “Sir, you are the next chief of staff of the Army. It’s a done deal now.”

  Beckwith’s face darkened. “I wouldn’t be too sure, with a Democrat in the White House. It could still go either way. That’s why I want Maldray and his Republican troops lined up. They still control the Senate. If the President is afraid the Senate won’t confirm his nominee, he’s going to appoint the man who will be confirmed, and I want to make sure he understands from Maldray that person is me.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They were at speed on the interstate through the sandy, wintery Mississippi flatlands of the Gulf Coast. Kara was driving. Mace had talked his way out of the hospital. Thanksgiving in New Orleans was less than two hours away. The doc had changed his bandages just before they left, and Mace absentmindedly rubbed his arm.

  She passed a slow-moving car and looked over. “Still hurt?”

  “It itches.”

  “Taggert said it would take awhile before your arm is back to normal. He wants you to keep squeezing the tennis ball. Where is it, anyway? Did we forget it?”

  “Here it is.” He reached for the ball down on the floor and squeezed, wincing at the pain.

  “Your arm is going to get better and better. You’ll see.”

  “It’s funny. I get a piece of shrapnel in me, and it’s from a shell made right here in Mississippi.”

  “Only you would know that.”

  “Come on. How could you not? It’s stenciled on the ammo boxes in big black letters. Made in Picayune, Mississippi. By patriots, no doubt.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure.”

  “It feels good to be out of there.”

  “I hate hospitals.”

  “I meant Fort Benning.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye. “Did you hear about how they scored the exercise?”

  “No.”

  “Beckwith won.”

  “Well, I guess he’s the next chief of staff.”

  “I’m not so sure. Beckwith’s still running scared. He called Hollaway and pressured him to close the case. Hollaway had turned in an interim report naming Parks as our number one suspect. The provost marshal forwarded the report to Beckwith, and now he wants us to hang the thing on Parks and be done with it.”

  “You still think Beckwith did it.”

  “All I know is, he’s pressuring us to use Parks’ death to close out the case.”

  “Maybe you ought to just do it.”

  “Do what?”

  �
��Close the case.”

  She glanced over at him incredulously. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Parks was acting really weird out there in the field, Kara.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he committed suicide. That last night, he was sitting there in the dark, hanging onto my arm, muttering, ‘I loved her, I loved her,’ over and over.”

  “You’re saying he ran deliberately into the live-fire zone?”

  “I know he did that. I was right there. There’s another strange thing he told me. He said he followed Sheila that night.”

  “He told me he was at home,” Kara said.

  “I know. He was afraid you were going to find out he lied.”

  “Do you think he killed her?”

  “I don’t know. He could have. He was ready to get us all killed out there. He wanted to take the whole damn platoon through the live-fire zone.”

  “That sounds crazy.”

  “I told you, he was acting very strangely.”

  She drove in silence for a moment. They were coming up on Biloxi. The interstate was lined with gaudy billboards for casinos. Turn signals were blinking all over the place as traffic swerved over and piled into the exit lane.

  She pulled around an eighteen-wheeler and stepped on the gas. “This place sure has changed.”

  “That’s what happens when you repeal a hundred years of prohibition.”

  “What do liquor laws have to do with this crap?”

  “It’s the old slippery slope. The rednecks got so crazed behind the liquor, they voted in a bunch of yahoos who let the floating casinos in, screaming about lowering taxes and taking in all those gambling revenues. Now they’re in real trouble. The rednecks are gambling away their paychecks every month, and nobody’s got any money left to buy ammunition for hunting season. The ducks are the big winners. Population is up by record numbers. Deer are breeding on people’s front lawns up in Jackson. The rabbits are hanging out at the Seven-11, nibbling Doritos and sipping Cokes.”

  She laughed out loud. “You sound like you’re feeling better.”

  “I’m just trying to make conversation. I’m beat to shit.”

  “There’s a pillow in the backseat. Why don’t you lean your seat back and take a little nap? We’ll be there in an hour or so.”

  “I think I will.”

  “You ought to, with what you’ve been through.”

  He closed his eyes. The wind whistled sweetly, and the Cherokee’s tires sang along, and he was asleep before the last exit to Biloxi disappeared behind them.

  General Beckwith closed the door to his study and switched on his desk lamp. The number was around somewhere. He rummaged through his top drawer and found it clipped to his homework from the office. He dialed the phone. It answered on the third ring.

  “Major Hollaway.”

  “Major, this is General Beckwith. How are you?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “I hate to bother you at home like this, but I was in meetings all afternoon. Did you get a chance to speak with Major Guidry before she left for Thanksgiving weekend?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She believes closing the case at this juncture is a bit premature, sir. The evidence we’ve got on Lieutenant Parks is far from conclusive at this point, sir, and I agree with her.”

  There was a long pause before Beckwith spoke.

  “Major Hollaway, I thought we had an understanding.”

  “We did, sir. I told you I’d speak to Major Guidry, and I did.”

  “I mean getting this case closed and out of the way. I’m not sure you understand the downside if this thing gets strung out. We’re coming up to a meeting of the base closure commission, Major. The fate of Fort Benning itself will be on the line in that hearing room. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “An open murder investigation is one problem I don’t need when I go before that commission, do you understand me, Hollaway?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Listen to me, Major. We can treat this thing as a formality. If you take what you’ve got on Parks today and close the case, there’s always the possibility that you could reopen the case later, after the base closure commission hearing is over. Do you get what I mean?”

  After you're in the chief of staff’s office in the Pentagon is what you really mean, thought Hollaway.

  “Yes, sir, I understand.”

  “So you’ll reconsider your decision?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll speak with Major Guidry the moment she gets back from her weekend leave, sir.”

  “Excellent. I appreciate your cooperation, Major. You’ll report back to me next week, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. I’ll look forward to your call. Good evening, Major Hollaway.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  Outside, the sky over the French Quarter had turned a strange ocher color, flooding the room with yellowish light. The room was small, but there was a balcony overlooking a pool in the courtyard. She threw open the French doors. From the bed she could see the old brick buildings of the Quarter cloaked in a low-hanging fog, and above the fog, the tops of ships passing on the Mississippi only two blocks away. The river’s aroma mingled with the smell of fried shrimp from the restaurant next door, filling the New Orleans air with the essence of the bayou that had been there nearly three hundred years before. Her mother used to say you could land-fill all the dirt you wanted raising a city out of a swamp, but you couldn’t take the swamp out of the city. Not in Louisiana you couldn’t, anyway.

  Mace stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his face flushed from a hot shower. She took his hand and traced her finger along the scar on his arm, red and still swollen. There were a couple of small scars on his chest and stomach, where splinters of wood had penetrated his BDU’s and left their marks. He sat down on the edge of the bed and ran the towel between his toes.

  “Remind me and I’ll teach you a thing or two about picking hotel rooms, lady. I spit with more water pressure than that shower has.”

  She unsnapped the front of her bra, cupping her breasts with her hands. “I’ve got a thing or two to teach you, mister.”

  He pulled her on top of him and she shrugged off her bra and he held her around the waist and kissed her breasts, lingering, caressing her nipples with his tongue. He looked into her eyes.

  “You were saying I could learn something from these breasts of yours. Like what?”

  “They could teach you lots.”

  “Where’d they get so smart?”

  “Experience.”

  He laughed and rolled over. “Geez. I keep forgetting I’ve got to watch that arm.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see.”

  He held out his arm, and she started kissing at the elbow and worked her way down toward the wrist. “Feel better?”

  “Much.”

  She slipped out of her panties and stretched out on the bed naked, arms above her head. “Your turn.”

  He started kneading the soles of her feet, kissing her toes. “There must be, like, a whole book’s worth of knowledge in this big toe here.”

  “More like an encyclopedia.”

  “And how about this leg?” He was kissing her ankles, working his way up to her knees. “I bet it’s seen some action, knows some stuff.”

  “Like you don’t even know.”

  He had his hands on her knees and he was licking her calves. He spread her legs and kissed the insides of her thighs. The top of his head brushed against her pubic bone. “What about here?”

  She looked down at him. “Where?”

  “This sweet little spot right here.” His lips found her vagina, his tongue darting inside. He sucked softly. She drifted into a reverie of sweet longing and bliss as the moments passed. He looked up. “What’s this nooky got to teach me?”

&nbs
p; “About life. About love.” She reached under his arms and pulled him on top of her. She felt him inside her. “See? You’re learning.”

  He laughed, burying his face wetly in her neck.

  She raised her knees and locked her ankles around his back and felt him going deeper. He was kissing her neck and her breasts and she felt his rough chin on her breastbone and she kicked her feet higher and he rose up and arched his back and she felt him go deeper In her dreams she felt him inside her and she felt him inside her getting dressed in the morning and she felt him inside her sipping coffee and she felt him inside her in meetings and she felt him inside her driving home in the evening and she felt him inside her feeding the cats and she felt him inside her when she slid between the sheets at night and she never ever wanted that feeling to go away not ever ever ever ever ever ever.

  Eddie’s Restaurant was a nondescript wooden building on a residential block in the city’s Seventh Ward. There were Cadillacs and Lincolns double-parked the length of the block. A couple of chauffeurs stood in a knot down the street having a smoke.

  Their cabbie pulled to a stop. “Big night. You got reservations?”

  “No.”

  “You be okay. Eddie’s never turned away a payin’ customer I heard of.”

  Mace paid the cabbie and they stepped out into the chilly night air. The door swung open and a clutch of well-dressed men and women exited laughing. They pushed into the narrow foyer. There was a bar on the right, lit by what looked like a permanent display of Christmas lights. A large woman in an apron filled the inner doorway.

  “You got a reservation?”

  “No, but we drove here today from Atlanta and we were hoping—”

  “Atlanta? Darlin’, you must be hungry. Come on in.” She led them to the back room and took down Kara’s name on a clipboard. “We having a buffet tonight, it bein’ Thanksgivin’ and all. Ya’ll just help yourselves and see me on the way out.”

  “Thank you.”

  She left them in the door and turned to greet a new couple coming in. Eddie’s was a typical New Orleans neighborhood joint, studiously plain, its walls covered with travel posters for distant and exotic lands interspersed with photos of local political figures. A well-heeled Seventh Ward crowd filled the place to capacity. The women had big hair and even bigger earrings, and the men were resplendent in dark double-breasted suits that shone in the dim light. A few tables in the back room had been shoved together for a buffet piled with Creole delicacies—deep-fried turkey, boiled crawfish, fried shrimp, red beans and rice, fried chicken, and of course, oyster dressing, an aromatic mash of oysters chopped with the Creole trilogy of peppers, onions, and celery, all of it dusted with a nearly fatal dose of cayenne pepper.