by John Dalmas
Meanwhile all he had for clothes was a ridiculous little green hospital gown with his bare ass hanging out. By then he'd had visitors himself—the battalion didn't train all the time— and when Cavalieri and Luoma showed up that evening, he asked them to smuggle a set of his class A khakis to him.
Their expressions changed from cheerful to unhappy. It was Cavalieri who answered him. "Jesus, Macurdy, I'd sure as hell like to, but—"
"But what?"
"They—they took your clothes. This morning."
"What! Who took them?"
"We weren't going to tell you, but you've been transferred."
"Transferred! Where?"
Cavalieri could hardly bring himself to say the words. "To the MPs. It's in your records that you were a deputy sheriff, and the sawbones said you won't be able to jump anymore, or anything like that, so..." He shrugged. "They latched onto you. Your khakis went to your new outfit, your jumpsuit and boots to supply. Maybe I could get your boots back though, and bring them to you."
Macurdy seemed to collapse for a moment. "Shit." He paused. "I've got to think about this." Then he changed the subject, asking what the battalion had been doing, and didn't mention the matter again, except to take up Cavalieri's offer on the boots. He'd like to have them for old times sake, he said.
The best thing he could do now, it seemed to him, was act resigned to it.
After Cavalieri and Luoma left, he wondered briefly if maybe he should resign himself to it. MP duty was unpopular—at least MPs were—but someone had to do it, and it was relatively safe. As an MP, he'd likely return alive to his wife, while as a paratrooper, his prospects were doubtful.
On the other hand, he wondered, not for the first time, if Mary might not be better off if he didn't come home. Their future as a couple held decades of relocations, while she grew old and he remained young.
But his decision didn't grow out of that. It simply seemed to him he was supposed to be airborne. For better or worse, he'd spent most of his life heeding his deeper feelings, and for better or worse, he'd follow them now.
So he had a serious discussion with Keith, their voices scarcely louder than whispers. When it was over, he gave some attention to Keith's leg again. The thread-like lines of energy around it looked pretty much normal, so he concentrated on increased blood flow. He didn't pay much attention to his own leg anymore. It seemed to him he didn't need to.
* * *
The next day the company supply clerk sent out Macurdy's boots, by a guy pulling fatigue duty, Cavalieri was off on a training problem. After checking the boots for a bottle, the duty nurse told him to put them under Macurdy's bed.
Roy Klaplanahoo stopped by that evening as early as he could. The three troopers plotted briefly in undertones, then he left. Two hours later he was back. He could never get away with bringing in a package; the nurses and orderlies would suspect booze, and search it. But inside his Class A khaki shirt—required wear on pass—he wore a second, both tucked into the outer of the two pairs of khaki trousers he had on. He carried the hacksaw blade in two belt loops of the inner pair; Macurdy would have to make do without a frame for it. All in all, Roy felt both conspicuous and uncomfortable, but it was twilight out, and no one paid much attention to him. After looking around nervously, he took off the outer pants, then the outer shirt, and put them under a sheet. The blade he tucked under the edge of Macurdy's mattress.
"Can you cut off the cast yourself?" he murmured worriedly.
"I'll manage. Later, when it's darker."
Both Macurdy and Keith shook hands with Roy then, and the Indian left.
* * *
It was after midnight when Macurdy did it. The leg didn't look as bad as he thought it might. His healing actions had done more than repair bone, muscle, and connective tissue; they'd reduced the discoloration to a pale greenish yellow, and atrophy was minor.
In the small ward, he was the only man fully awake. Roy's pants and sleeves were a little short, but beyond that, the fit was decent. After cloaking himself with his invisibility spell, Macurdy left carrying his boots. The saw blade he'd left with Keith. No one looked up as he padded barefoot down the corridor and past the nurses' station.
Getting out of the building was not so straightforward. The exit had a screen door, and a sentry was posted by it. If the door were suddenly to open beside him, it seemed to Macurdy the sentry would surely see through the spell. For just a moment he considered using a choke hold on him, but slipped instead into a quiet ward, unhooked a window screen, let himself out, and pushed the screen shut behind him.
Leaving behind a round-eyed patient, who despite seeing the screen open, then close, had failed to see anyone doing it. The spell was better than Macurdy realized, better than Varia's had been, or Maikel's.
* * *
Once away from the hospital, he deactivated his cloak, and following Roy's instructions, found the road to camp without any trouble. He didn't even need to walk far before an airborne lieutenant in a jeep picked him up. "What regiment, sergeant?" the lieutenant asked.
"The 509th, sir."
"Ah. Them." The officer shifted out of neutral and started down the road. "I don't smell any booze on you, sergeant. What's the story?"
"I've got a girlfriend, sir. She doesn't drink."
"Did you use a pro kit? We don't want men hospitalized with VD."
"She's the daughter of a French major, sir. We hope to be married." The lieutenant's eyebrows raised, and Macurdy felt pleased with himself. It wasn't the sort of lie he'd think of, ordinarily. He felt as if he could do anything that night.
At the company area, he walked into the orderly room—a tent—and wakened the CQ, who stared at him as if he were a ghost. "Manny," Macurdy said, "I'm back. Got my transfer cancelled. Can you get me into Supply? I need my jumpsuit and gear."
"Jesus, sarge, you took me by surprise! I can get you into Supply, but I don't know where anything is there."
"That's all right. Let me in and I'll find it."
He did. He'd been prepared to take anything that fitted, but there was his own jumpsuit and helmet, with his own name on them. After putting them on, he folded Roy's khakis, put them in a pillow case and left with it. Stopping at the orderly room tent, he thanked the CQ before leaving him mystified and unsure. He hadn't asked Macurdy about his leg, but Doc Alden had supposedly said it looked like a blood sausage the size of a duffel bag. And that had been only—how long? A week ago? Week and a half?
* * *
Macurdy then went to the 505th's bivouac—it wasn't far— went to the regimental CQ, learned where he could find Roy Klaplanahoo, then went there and woke him. As planned, Roy had gotten Keith's boots and a set of his khakis, which he gave to Macurdy. Macurdy gave Roy his khakis back, put Keith's in the pillow case, then shook hands with his old friend and started back to Oujda and the hospital.
It was a fairly long hike, with time to think. He preferred that Keith not know about the cloak; it might spook him, and the ward in the middle of the night was no place for explanations. Then he remembered Varia that first night: They'd walked hand in hand, and he could see her just fine despite the spell; they'd both been inside the cloak. So hopefully physical contact would do it; contact and his own intention.
By the time he got there, his right leg was tired, and it was getting daylight. He'd have to wait till the next night to spring Keith. Finding a place to hide out promised to be tricky, because he wasn't sure the spell would persist if he slept. He waited by the door until the morning shift came in, and went in half a stride behind an army surgeon.
Then he snooped some rooms that were not wards. One held big bags of clean linens, and on top of one, a surgeon was having sex with a nurse; they never noticed the door quietly open and close. When they were done, they tidied themselves, then quickly dressed, kissed, and departed. Watching them had stimulated Macurdy. He wished he was back in Nehtaka, in bed with Mary.
Apparently this room was reasonably private. He made a place
for himself between a wall and big bags of linens, and went to sleep there. It was chancy, but he couldn't think of a better place. And there was a window not four feet away. If he was discovered, he'd leave through it.
* * *
Several hours later he awoke hungry, and drew energy from the Web of the World. It didn't help his grumpy stomach, but at least he wouldn't get wobbly from hunger. While he'd slept, someone had dragged out the bag of linens he'd been behind. Obviously his cloak had persisted in his sleep. Meanwhile he wasn't sleepy any longer, so he meditated—it was the first time in years—and after a while, slept again.
* * *
Even so, it was a long day and evening. No more lovers came in, only orderlies a couple of times for linens. After 2200, everything was quiet, and he slipped down the corridor to the ward, where he wakened his friend and freed his leg from its cast. When Keith had dressed, Macurdy murmured to him not to worry about being seen. "Just hold on to the back of my shirt, walk softly and say nothing. I've got everything taken care of." Keith frowned. Hold on to the back of your shirt? But he did, and Macurdy activated his cloak. There was no reaction from Keith; apparently the man still saw him as before. They walked together down the corridor, then left by the same window Macurdy had used the night previous.
As Macurdy went through the window, he deactivated his cloak, and Keith followed him. Then they walked together to the road. They'd gone a hundred yards or so before it really struck Keith that he was walking. When it did, he just stood there and laughed, guffawed, for about a minute.
After that, they talked while they walked. There'd been a big flap that morning when a nurse discovered Macurdy was missing. "The MPs arrived quicker than you'd ever imagine, and before lunch a guy from the CID showed up, with lots of questions. I told him I'd assumed the medics had moved you, but that I wasn't surprised; those cocky bastards in the 509th would do anything." Keith laughed again. "He told me you'd gone back to the 509th and gotten your jumpsuit, or someone had gotten it for you. The guy who'd been on CQ there said you'd walked in as if you a never been hurt. The docs here said you couldn't have walked anywhere, in or out, for three or four months. The CID guy thinks there was a conspiracy by your buddies to spring you, but where the hell they stashed you was a mystery. They're probably checking all the whorehouses in Oujda. That's where guys would hide somebody."
Macurdy didn't laugh. Keith had given him food for thought. He hoped no one got into serious trouble over this.
On the road back to camp, they'd thumbed a ride, in a jeep with two officers from the 504th, heading back to camp from a bout in a presumably better class of brothel. They'd drunk enough they weren't worried about anything, and if they heard any strange stories the next morning, weren't likely to remember the two sergeants, or at least wouldn't volunteer it. They didn't even ask Macurdy why he was in his jumpsuit, which in town was "out of uniform."
Meanwhile Macurdy and Keith learned something from the officers: the 504th's 1st Battalion was to ship out that morning—the officers didn't say where to—and the rest of the division was sure to follow shortly.
They were let out at the 505th's area, and went to Keith's pup tent. Keith crawled inside, but Macurdy sat outside briefly, and with his pocket stiletto picked away at his 509th "Gingerbread Man" unit patch until he got it off. Then both lay waiting for sleep, each silently considering the morning to come. Belatedly, both felt ill at ease about it. Getting out of the hospital had been the easy part; if the MPs had been at the 509th so quickly after Macurdy's disappearance, they'd be at the 505th by breakfast.
They should, Keith thought, have holed up somewhere for a day or two before coming here. Maybe they still should. But then he thought to hell with it; he'd stay and see what happened. Shit! Here he was, walking around. They wouldn't hardly take him back to the hospital and put another cast on him, for chrissake. Even the army wasn't that stupid. They might take him away, but he'd be back before the day was out.
Hell, he told himself, something like this is so weird, they won't even put it in my service record. They'll be afraid to.
* * *
Macurdy wakened at dawn, and went to Roy's tent to see if he could get hold of some mess gear. A guy in Roy's squad had gotten arrested in Oujda two nights earlier for slugging an MP officer, so Roy loaned Macurdy his.
They were sitting on the ground eating breakfast when the MPs arrived with the company commander, who spotted Keith and took the MPs to him. The three sergeants got to their feet as the C.O. approached, Macurdy wishing he dared cloak himself. As it was, there he stood, less than four feet from Keith, with the name Macurdy above his left breast pocket, and stenciled on his helmet. It seemed to him he might as well be wearing neon lights and an alarm bell.
But when the MPs took Staff Sergeant Fred Keith away with them, Macurdy was still there, ignored.
Except by the CO. "Sergeant," he said ominously, "I don't believe I know you." He peered at the name on Macurdy's helmet. "What's your outfit, trooper?"
The name on the C.O.'s helmet was Szczpura, and he had a trace of accent. The scars on his face, and the broken nose, suggested years in the prize ring; probably, Macurdy thought, as a middleweight. And almost certainly he'd never seen West Point. OCS probably. His mien as well as his aura reflected not only competence but integrity, a man who acted according to his convictions.
So Macurdy sketched out the whole story for him, except for the invisibility spell, with Roy Klaplanahoo supporting the parts on healing. "It looks like the 505th could be leaving here without one of its platoon sergeants," Macurdy finished, "and I'm a good one. I jumped at Youks les Bains, and was in on the capture of Tebessa and Gafsa." He neglected to say there'd been no Germans at either of them. "I've done recon patrols of German and Italian outposts in Tunisia, fought at Faid Pass, and commanded a jump in German territory to rescue a couple of our people. And got them out alive." He paused, then added in German, "Ferner spreche ich ganz gut Deutsch"—(Also I speak rather good German)—hoping it would make him more attractive.
Szczpura laughed drily. "Das ist nicht gutes Deutsch. Das ist baltisches Deutsch," he answered. ("That's not good German. That's Baltic German.") The captain's German was a little rough but easily understood. "I was born in Poland, in Olsztyn. There are a lot of Germans around Olsztyn; I had a German grandmother that lived with us."
His gray eyes appraised Macurdy coolly, then Klaplanahoo spoke again. "Captain, Macurdy and I are friends from way back. We logged together in Oregon, on opposite ends of a saw, and got bonuses for cutting more than anyone else in camp. And I saw him kill a guy with a knife throw, a guy that had just killed a deputy sheriff and shot the logging boss. He's not afraid of anyone, and he's even stronger than me. He's somebody guys like and respect, and..."
Szczpura cut short the plaudits. "Where did you get that nose, Macurdy?"
"A couple of places, sir. Before I joined the army. I'm not a drinking man or troublemaker, sir."
"You're AWOL from the hospital and the MPs."
"Yessir, I am sir."
The captain pursed his lips thoughtfully, then said, "Come with me, Macurdy," and led him to the orderly room. Inside, the captain spoke to the 1st sergeant, who sat at a desk with his breakfast in front of him. "Sergeant Barker, this is Sergeant Macurdy; he just arrived as Keith's replacement. His transfer papers are delayed or lost, but they'll turn up sooner or later. Have someone take him to Lieutenant Murray, then post him on the roster."
He turned to Macurdy. "Glad to have you with us, sergeant." Then added softly: "I hope you don't make me regret this."
"Thank you, sir. Glad to be here, sir."
Almost the last thing Macurdy wanted to do was disappoint this man. As he followed the company clerk to meet his new platoon leader, it seemed to him that in the Army, this miraculous salvation could have happened only in the airborne, and even there, the odds against it had been heavy.
* * *
Though neither Macurdy nor Captain Szczpura realized
it, Fred Keith might soon have returned, not that day as he'd hoped, but within three or four, and at worst with only a reprimand on his record. But it didn't work that way, not because of the MPs, who in his case didn't really care much one way or the other. But because of the surgeon in charge of his case, who insisted he be assigned to a month in a rehab company. As a physician with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he felt wronged and insulted that the trooper had made him look bad.
19
Sicily
A few days later, the 505th loaded onto trains and rolled out of Oujda eastward, with twenty men and their duffel bags to a small boxcar. It could have been worse—the official capacity stenciled on the cars was forty men or eight horses—but they had eight hundred miles to go, and given the traffic, and the state of the equipment, tracks and bridges, it would probably take them four days or more. Twenty to a car was more than enough.
The trip ended in eastern Tunisia, where they camped near the holy Muslim city of Kairouan. The countryside wasn't as desolate as that around Oujda. It actually had trees, even if some of them did resemble cactus.
