Bayonet Skies

by John F. Mullins

  You pull a poncho from the rucksack, get underneath, and flick on a penlight. Study the map. Hard to tell if you are exactly on track; there are no prominent terrain features close that you can guide on. But up ahead, four hundred meters away, there is a wide break in the trees where the pylons march away from the power station. Each pylon will be numbered, and by correlating that number with the distance from the station you can get a good fix. It is a hell of a danger area, over two hundred feet wide and no vegetation higher than your knees, but the team has to cross it anyway. Might as well make the best of it. You turn off the light, fold up the poncho. “Saddle up,” you whisper to the team sergeant.

  The break is exactly 440 paces away. You allow yourself a small feeling of satisfaction at your navigational skills. The team stops. Everyone knows what to do. Ten men fan out, taking covering positions. You and Jerry will cross first, get to the other side, and make a box recon inside the treeline. If you find no one, the remainder of the team will cross in one rush. If there are bad guys on the other side, perhaps the covering fire of the team will allow you to get back. It sounds good in theory, but you hold little hope that you will be able to cross two hundred feet of open ground without being shot to pieces by one side or the other. Still, it’s better than sacrificing the whole team. In the planning for the movement the team sergeant had tactfully suggested to the captain that he might want to remain behind while two lower-ranking people went across. To which you had replied that the lower-ranking people were far more important than yourself, because it is they who will be setting up the demolitions on the target. Your only mission, once they get there, will be guard duty. And everyone could see the logic of that.

  Besides, you’ve never asked anyone to do anything you wouldn’t yourself do, and are not about to start now.

  You and Jerry shed your rucksacks, leaving them with the team to carry across. Through the starlight scope you detect nothing on the other side, but that doesn’t mean a lot. Anyone there, if they are any good, won’t be moving. They will be lying quite still; uncomfortable, cold, and stiff. They won’t stir, even to take a piss. And they’ll stay that way all night. You’ve done it often enough yourself. After a while you look forward to the terror of battle, just because it seems infinitely preferable to this miserable wait.

  You nod to Jerry, who walks forward in a crouch. You follow, slightly to the left and behind. You feel terribly exposed. Out of the forest the night is uncomfortably bright, the moon having finally come up. It is not full, and for that you give thanks, but it still sheds enough light to silhouette you clearly. Each step takes you farther and farther away from cover, from safety. The sour taste of bile rises in your throat. What the hell am I doing here? you ask yourself. This is remarkably stupid behavior.

  Halfway across and nothing. Jerry holds up while you quickly check the pylon. Number 69. That should be about right. Forward again, the dark treeline looking ominous. The familiar pain in the pit of your stomach gets worse. Right about where the bullet should go in, you think. The old wounds ache. The new ones wait to happen.

  Close now and as yet nothing. Just a few more feet.

  The clearing is suddenly and blindingly flooded with light. Jesus Christ! you have time to think, spotlights. We’re fucked. Jerry, quicker than you, lets off a burst at the nearest light. It had absolutely no effect. You turn to run, get less than twenty paces when you hear, then see, the armored car roaring toward you, machine guns blazing. You yank a smoke grenade from your belt, pop it, hear it hiss as it spews dark smoke. Not enough to screen you, but maybe it will help the guys on the other side.

  Jerry stumbles, goes down in front of you. Reach down, jerk him to his feet. “Run!” you scream.

  The armored car is almost atop you now, the 7.62mm machine gun in the turret still blazing. People are dropping off the sides, running toward you. Turn and fire a burst at them, the first time you have used your weapon. Another car comes from nowhere, gets around behind you. Surrounded. You and Jerry stand back-to-back, ready to fight.

  From one of the figures, wearing the white band of an umpire around his hat and sleeve, comes the words, spoken in a heavy German accent, “For you, gentlemen, I think the exercise is over.”

  “Shit!” you swear, lowering your rifle. Jerry does the same. Two of the figures come forward, take your guns. Their uniforms are those of the Bundesgrenschutz, Border Guards. They pull your hands behind you, roughly tie them.

  “Where is the rest of the team?” one of them demands.

  “Captain James NMI Carmichael, 445–16–9379,” you reply.

  The man laughs. In German he says, “Pack these two up and take them to the compound,” he says. “The rest of you, fan out! There are more of them out there.”

  During the debriefing back at the Special Forces Operational Base, SFOB, you again make yourself popular with the brass. “And what, in your opinion, went wrong with the operation, Captain?” asks the general from the Pentagon.

  “Simple, sir. We were the wrong people on the wrong mission in the wrong place. If we had been in our wartime AO, it would have been a hell of a lot worse. There would have been more than just a couple of battalions of BGS looking for us. The team wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to the power station. The Army would have lost a strategic asset, for a mission that the Air Force could have done, and done more effectively.”

  The colonel from the SFOB, who is also your commander in Bad Tölz, reddens. Colonel Casey had been on the planning committee that had set the policy of using Special Forces teams for direct action missions. “And your recommendations?” he asks, clearly thinking that a mere captain obviously has no idea of the overall picture.

  “Leave the teams with the mission they were trained for. As you know, our AO in case of war is the southern Ukraine. In the first place, whether we can get in there or not is problematic. If we wait until after the balloon goes up, there aren’t going to be any civil flights we can hitchhike on. It’s sure as hell too far to walk. That leaves air infiltration, from a military aircraft trying to evade the most sophisticated air defense system in the world. And once we’re in, we’re not going to get out. Not until the war’s over. So you send the team in for one strike, and whether or not they make it, you’ve lost them. They’re not coming back out.

  “Whereas if we manage to get in, or better yet, if you allow us to infiltrate before hostilities start, we can set up a hell of a guerrilla army. Every report we get from assets in the area tells us that the ordinary people are fed up with the Soviet government. Just like they were before the start of World War II. Even as badly as the Germans treated them afterward, the hatred they felt toward Moscow was such that many of them fought on the side of the Nazis.”

  You see the deep frown on the face of the commander, the bland indifference on the countenance of the general from the Pentagon. You’re really screwing yourself, Jim. Grimly you press on. “And that guerrilla army could strike all sorts of targets. Keep thousands of troops tied down where they won’t be in breakthrough armies, heading through the Fulda Gap on their way to the channel.”

  You wait for the ass-chewing you know you’ll get. Generals didn’t like to be lectured on tactics by captains. But the man disappoints you.

  “Very interesting,” he says, looking at you speculatively. “I’ll remember your points.” He gets up and, followed by a whole retinue of aides and colonels, leaves the hangar.

  The group commander doesn’t disappoint you. Colonel Casey wants to make general, and having one of his captains speak up, telling the Army chief of staff for Intelligence that his plans are all wrong, is not the way to go about it. Especially when the colonel had a hand in formulating those plans.

  Chapter 2

  He would a thousand times rather have had the ass-chewing he got from the colonel than the one he knew he was in for from Alix. She started almost as soon as he closed the door to their quarters.

  “I’m not going to put up with this much longer,” she said. �
�I’m damned tired of you being gone all the time. When are you going to put in for the staff job? You promised me!”

  “God, it’s great to see you too,” he said dryly. “I’ve missed you. You look great. Gained a little weight, though, I think.”

  That was when she threw the glass at him. Not for the first time he was glad for adequate reflexes. She was wickedly accurate. The glass smashed against the wall behind where his head had just been.

  She collapsed on the couch, crying; ashamed, once again, at letting her temper get away. It was happening more and more often. In a way he could understand. She was not taking the pregnancy well. And he was away a lot. Unfortunately, he’d told her that Germany would be an easy tour. The peacetime army. Nothing much to do but occupy time. And, it was true, he’d said that he would try to get a staff job. But every time he thought about it he just couldn’t force himself to make the move. God, to sit around in an office all day, pushing papers! It was bad enough, this playing at war while there was still one going on.

  He moved to her, put his arm around her. She tried to shrug it off but he persisted. Her rigid body trembled. So much anger in such a small frame! He felt helpless against it. And he, who had faced death on so many occasions, who had been wounded more times than he cared to count and had still kept going, was afraid.

  “I love you,” she said in a whisper after he held her so long his arm had gone to sleep.

  “Me too,” he replied, glad that the storm had passed. It would be okay now, as long as he didn’t say something stupid to set her off again. He kissed the top of her head, all he could reach. She had her face tucked into his chest.

  “Don’t you think you ought to take a shower?” she asked. She looked up at him and wrinkled her nose. “You smell like you want to be alone.”

  He kissed her, tentatively at first, then with growing fervor; was aware of aching need. It had always been thus, from the moment they had met in Monterey.

  He’d been browsing the racks at the local bookstore during lunch break from the language school, aware as usual of the disapproving looks his uniform attracted from the locals. Not that he’d cared. Bunch of damn hippies anyway, he thought. If they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to look. Look and make whispered disapproving comments were about the only things they felt courageous enough to do. He’d only been spit on once since being in Monterey, and that by a foolish young man with long hair. Who had instantly, and almost permanently, regretted his actions.

  But her look had been different. Frankly appraising, then, as he smiled at her, interested. And he had felt that vaguely uncomfortable heaviness at the pit of his stomach, just as he was feeling now.

  “Guess I better,” he said finally. “Didn’t get the chance before we left the U.K. Damn near had to run to catch the plane. You want to join me?”

  “No,” she said, frowning. “I don’t want you to see me fat like this. You won’t love me.”

  She was inordinately sensitive about her body. Sometimes he caught her at the mirror, staring at the gently swelling belly as if she hated it. Yet, he knew, she wanted the baby. Had wanted it from the beginning. Even before he had.

  “You, my love, are full of shit. I think you’re even more beautiful. And I could never not love you. Come on.”

  He scrubbed himself quickly the first time while she was still getting undressed. It would take more than one time to get the field dirt off. The water ran brown down the drain, little leaves and pieces of bark swirling briefly in the whirlpool. By the time he had rinsed she got in, keeping her face turned away. He smiled, pushed her under the water, gently soaped her back. Scrubbed, using his nails just slightly. She arched like a cat. He ran his hands around to the front, the soap slick on her small breasts, her nipples hard under his palms. On down, over the swelling stomach, feeling its roundness. It was true what he had told her; the pregnancy only added to her attractiveness, made what had been a hard little body honed by dancing into something more womanly. Something softer. Something infinitely more desirable. He touched her breasts again.

  She turned, pushed his hands away. “Not yet, you horny bastard,” she said, a smile in her voice. “As usual, you come home with a rucksack full of dirty clothes and a hard-on.”

  “Guilty,” he admitted.

  “Let’s get some of this grunge off you first.” She soaped him, scrubbed hard at his chest. “Did you have to bring half the countryside with you?” She pulled a dead insect from his hair, flicked it toward the drain. Her face was comically serious, set in a little frown as she worked at getting him clean.

  He gave himself over to the pleasure, letting her move him about as if he was an inanimate object. She scrubbed hard, pleasure almost pain, his skin red and glowing. He became aware of how tired he was, how bone-tired. Almost dozing there in the shower.

  Until with a wicked little grin she started soaping lower and lower down his stomach, reaching the hair, grasping his suddenly responsive hardness. Being quite thorough there too, making sure everything was scrupulously clean.

  “I think,” he said, his mouth dry, “that’s quite enough. Unless you want this to end right here.”

  “Not on your life, soldier,” she said. “Let’s get to bed.”

  “Don’t go to sleep yet. Talk to me!” she said later.

  “Mphh,” he groaned, flinching from the sharp little fist in his side. He had been in that ecstatic state just between awake and sound asleep, thoroughly satiated, warm, feeling good. Now there wouldn’t be any sleep for a while. “I’m awake,” he lied.

  “I’m ugly, aren’t I?” she asked. “And a bitch, and a real pain in the ass.”

  “No, no, and sometimes, yes. But I love you anyway. You make the doctor’s appointment last week?”

  “Mmh hmmh. He says everything is fine. Just like it was the time before. That I’m not gaining too much weight. Did you tell him to say that?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “Nobody could tell Beau Huckaby anything,” he said. “Only person he pays attention to is himself. And that’s only in the mirror.” The group surgeon, a former football hero from the University of Alabama, was widely considered to be almost as vain as the group commander, who kept ten-by-fourteen glossies of himself posted conspicuously throughout his office: Captain Casey with General Westmoreland, Major Casey receiving the Silver Star, Colonel Casey pensively looking out over the wall in Berlin.

  “And when are you going to go see Colonel Casey?” she asked, switching subjects with the speed that always left him befuddled and slightly behind. “About the staff job,” she continued. “Nora Benson told me her husband isn’t going to extend his tour. You’re senior enough. You could be the S-4.”

  He tried to show no outward sign of the inward shudder that ran through him. S-4. A fucking supply officer! Hell, being in the staff would be bad enough in the S-3 (Operations) shop. At least there he’d get to plan operations, update the Warplans, pretend at least that he was doing something worthwhile. Even the S-2 (Intelligence) job wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe he’d get to use the Russian he had so painstakingly learned in the course of a year at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey. But the S-4? No way.

  “I’m not sure the colonel is going to want to see me any time soon,” he said, and explained what had happened back in England. “I don’t think he’s real happy with me right now.”

  “Then he’s stupid!” she said. “You only told them the truth.”

  It was one of the features he loved about her, the way she defended him against outsiders. She might be pissed off at him, think he was doing things in an incredibly stupid way, but God help anyone else who thought that.

  “Yeah, well, that’s been said before. But it doesn’t really matter, because he’s the colonel, and I’m not. Told you before, I’m convinced that as soon as you make major they trephine a hole in your head and suck out half the brains. After you make colonel they go after the other half.”

  “I think you’ll be cute with
half a brain,” she said, playful again. Her moods shifted with bewildering swiftness. “What would that leave you, about two ounces?”

  “No worry about that anytime soon,” he said, ignoring the jibe. “Hell, I’m lucky I haven’t been riffed, much less make major. Promotion lists are gonna stretch out forever. Probably won’t even have a new selection board for a couple of years. Not too much use for a soldier, once the war is done.”

  “Poor little whatever-its-name,” she said, patting her belly. “He or she’ll never see its daddy, because he’ll always be in the field. He’ll be this stranger who walks through occasionally. Poor little thing will say, ‘Mommy, who is that strange man?’”

  He realized that she was joking, but it hurt just the same. Was he being selfish, allowing his own feelings to get in the way of familial responsibilities? He wasn’t the heedless bachelor officer any more. The decisions he now made affected more than just himself.

  “I’ll go see the colonel,” he promised, “after he’s had some time to cool off. Now can we get some sleep? Else I’ll be AWOL tomorrow, and it’ll take him a hell of a lot longer to get over that.”

  She was still asleep when he left the next morning. She’d never been one to get up and fix coffee, stating early in the marriage that if he wanted to persist in keeping such a ridiculous job and getting up so early in the morning, there was no reason for her to suffer too. He didn’t mind, liking the early morning solitude. He fixed his own coffee, drank it while staring out the window. The Braunick Mountain, where he had learned to ski, was hard to see in the autumn fog. He shivered. It would be an early, and cold, winter. Despite being here for over a year, he was still not used to the cold.