Bayonet Skies

by John F. Mullins

  He passed over another photo.

  “Son of a bitch!” Carmichael swore. He looked first at the general, then at Sloane. “I never really had a choice, did I?”

  He looked at the photo again. Glenn Parker looked a great deal the worse for wear, but then that was to be expected after spending a couple of years in a POW camp.

  I grieved for you, Glenn. Of all the people we lost over there, all the friends, all the waste, your death was the worst of all.

  He felt, at one and the same time, exultation and sorrow.

  He was going to have to go.

  But first he was going to lead them around by the nose a little bit.

  “Since I’m to be the man on the ground—if I decide to go—there’s going to have to be some things we get straight,” Jim said.

  Both the general and Sloane relaxed. Carmichael had decided to go, despite his qualifier. That was the important part. Now it was all negotiations.

  “Begging your pardon again, gentlemen,” he started, “but I’ve been the victim of intelligence lashups before. I don’t know how you had command structure planned, but in my view, it has to be a special operations show all the way. I want an Army voice on the other end of the phone, and preferably someone who’s done it before. That means a Special Forces type.”

  “I don’t see that as a problem, do you, Captain Sloane?” General Miller asked. “The CIA will be involved, of course. Has to be. They’re the only ones with assets still in place, meager though they are. And we’re depending on them for ELINT, electronic intelligence.”

  “Good,” Jim said. “Now, I don’t see any need for a split A-team. Too many people, too much chance of something going wrong. Three people. I started out as a medic. I’ve kept up in cross-training over the years. I can handle that aspect. I need a good commo man. And since these people are armed with whatever they could capture, it’s likely their weaponry is going to be in pretty bad shape. I know a weapons man who is also one of the best demolitionists around. That’s it.”

  “You’ll have the pick of who you want. They’ll have to volunteer as well, of course,” the general said.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any problem with that. I also want to plan the entire operation, including infiltration and exfiltration. And I don’t want to hear a bunch of shit about how we don’t have the assets for whatever I come up with.”

  The general stiffened. Jim wondered if he had gone too far. It wasn’t every day that a three-star general got talked to like that by a mere captain.

  But then it wasn’t every day that a mere captain was asked to do what they were asking, either.

  General Miller relaxed. “Done,” he said. “I suppose you’re going to want a little time to take care of personal things? You’ve got three days.”

  Jesus Christ, Jim thought. Three days. How am I going to explain all this to Alix?

  The mission itself looked easy by comparison.

  Colonel Casey had been taken off to the side by General Miller and told that Captain Carmichael was going to be detached from his command for a short time, that the captain was on an extremely sensitive and highly important mission, and that he would not be at liberty to disclose what he was doing. This had been at Jim’s suggestion. Otherwise, he knew, Casey’s anger at being left out would have been hard to bear. As it was he was barely able to restrain his curiosity on the ride back to Bad Tölz, asking just enough questions to make things uncomfortable.

  But that he could deal with.

  Maybe it would just be easier to take off, let Colonel Casey deal with her?

  Coward! You’ve got to face her, try to make her understand why you have to do this.

  And why is it that you do, Jim? You were all set to turn them down, before they mentioned Glenn Parker. That’s something to be proud of, I suppose. Back in the old days I would have jumped at it right away. Just the sort of thing I liked.

  Like Alix has said, and others before her, you’ve done enough. There were few people who could have claimed to have done more. You’ve given copious amounts of blood, pieces of your body, and a large part of your younger life to that cause. It’s over. Why can’t you let it go?

  Because my best friend is still there. I owe my ass to Glenn, wasn’t for him my bones would be scattered all over a hillside in Cambodia.

  He and Parker had started Special Forces Training Group together, way back when. They had become fast friends, sharing bar fights and drunken sprees and enough combat over the years to satisfy even the worst crazy. Their paths had diverged when Jim had decided to accept a direct commission, while Glenn made his feelings for dog-ass officers clearly known.

  Then there was one very bad day in a place where neither of them should have been. Jim had already resigned himself to dying, not seeing any possible way of escaping the noose of North Vietnamese troops who had already killed everyone else on the team.

  Thus he had looked up in absolute disbelief to see Glenn Parker’s homely face hanging out the door of a Huey, the bird shuddering from the dozens of AK-47 hits.

  Somehow he’d scrambled the last few feet, grabbing Glenn’s hand and being pulled onboard, the chopper pulling pitch so steeply it looked like it was going to stall.

  It hadn’t, and they had limped back across the border.

  “Thanks,” was all he had been able to say when they landed.

  Glenn had shrugged. “You’d a done it for me,” he said.

  I can’t leave him behind. Not and stay sane, anyway.

  Now all I have to do is convince Alix of that.

  To avoid thinking about it he occupied his time by planning the mission. He’d already had EUCOM send a telex to Bad Tölz, telling SFC Jerry Hauck to stand by. Jerry wouldn’t refuse him. And he could think of no better man to have at his back.

  He had two good commo men on the team, but they had a common problem. They were married. He intended to carry no one with him who had such responsibilities. It was bad enough that he did. He would not screw up someone else’s life as well.

  He had the perfect candidate. SFC Ezekiel “Dirty Dick” Dickerson. SFC Dickerson had been divorced for years, had no children, and chafed under the restrictions of the peacetime Army as badly as did Jerry Hauck. He was also the best commo man Jim had ever known, and in a unit possessed of virtuosos in communications, that was something indeed. He was also cross-trained as a medic and a weapons man. He was HALO qualified, and Jim had already decided the only feasible method of infiltration would be by free-fall parachute.

  Would he go?

  Get serious, Jim. There’s not a man in Bad Tölz, or indeed in the Special Forces as a whole, who wouldn’t go. It was probably a good thing the mission was so highly classified. If word ever got out he would be swamped with people.

  And the wives of Bad Tölz would probably get together a lynch party. Why couldn’t women understand how important such things were to their husbands?

  Because they’re women, Jim. And the day you think you start to understand how a woman thinks is the day you better check yourself into an insane asylum. Because you’ll be clearly delusional.

  Ah, shit. I’m not looking forward to this.

  “I’ll divorce you. I swear to God I will.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he pleaded. “Can’t you understand that I have to do this?”

  “I understand only one thing. That you can’t love me very much. How can you think of such a thing? Leave me here, alone, pregnant! My God, the baby may be born before you get back. I can’t believe you’d even consider it.”

  This was not going well. Even worse than he had anticipated. He had gotten permission from General Miller to tell Alix at least the broad outline of the mission, knowing that she would be the last one to consider a security risk. He had hoped it would help.

  It had not. Alix had brushed aside his justifications like cobwebs from a corner. She had homed in on the one thing that was critical.

  Who was more important? The Army, or her? The fate
of two men, or his family? Because, she assured him, if he did it, he wasn’t going to have a family.

  “That’s not fair,” he said, knowing as the words were uttered that fairness had nothing to do with this.

  It was obvious how deep her anger ran. She was not throwing anything. Her little flashes of anger usually came and went like lightning, and the inevitable result was smashed crockery. Now she was ominously calm, only the heightened tone of her voice giving away what she felt inside.

  And there was nothing he could do about it. He was caught between two imperatives, and was going to lose something no matter how it went.

  He sank to the couch, a curious feeling of numbness spreading from his chest all the way to the fingertips. Ah, God. This was too hard.

  “I have to do it, you know.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Admit it. You want to do it. You want to run back off to that war, even if it means leaving me behind. Even if it means you’ll lose me, and your child.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, wondering all the while if it was. Was he that irresponsible? If so, perhaps she would be better off without him. Find herself someone who would stay home day after day, work in a nine-to-five job, give her all the things she deserved. Could he ever be that man? Probably not. He suddenly felt very sorry for himself, and at the same time cynically detached. Yeah, go ahead and feel sorry for yourself, Jim. Blame the whole goddamned world for your problems. You’ve brought all this on yourself.

  And you don’t know how to stop.

  “You’re very sick, Jim,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft. “You need help, and you won’t admit it, certainly won’t make any effort to get it. So you’re going to go on, until someone puts you out of your misery, and you don’t even know why. I suppose I should hate you for what you’re doing to me, to us. But I can’t. There’s nothing I can say or do that’s going to stop you. I love you, James Carmichael. But I can’t live with this. Never knowing from one day to the next whether you’re going to be alive or not, never knowing what you’re doing. I can’t stand the pain.

  “I guess I knew this would come, way back when you asked me to marry you,” she said, sitting down beside him and taking his hand. “But I thought you would change; thought that I might be able to change you. Let you experience love, instead of war and hate, and you would see how much better it was. But I never had a chance, did I?”

  Her eyes were luminous with unspilled tears. He loved her more at this moment than ever before, could not bear the thought of losing her.

  But he knew he would.

  The next three days passed between them as if nothing had happened. Alix resolutely refused to listen to anything he had to say about it, telling him that there was no use causing each other more pain. She went around with a faraway expression, already detaching herself from him. Nights she would stare off into space, her hands on her swelling abdomen, communing, he supposed, with the baby. Sometimes a mysterious smile played over her face. She was so beautiful. Ah, God, it was just too hard.

  Thank God for the days, he thought. There was so much to do it kept him, for a little while at least, from thinking about it.

  As anticipated, there was no problem with getting Dirty Dick Dickerson to volunteer. Jim told him only the barest outline of the mission, all that he would be able to impart before they went into isolation. It was enough.

  “Goddamned right, sir,” he said. “Things are gettin’ a little sticky around here with the ladies, anyway.” SFC Dickerson was well known around Bad Tölz for his abilities in the bedroom. More than once he’d left from the back window of someone’s quarters as the husband came in the front door, unexpectedly coming home early from a mission. On one of those occasions the window had been three stories up, and there hadn’t been the usual cushion of snow beneath. Despite a belated attempt at a PLF, Dickerson had fractured his ankle. Well-deserved, said many of the husbands, who suspected that their wives, too, had enjoyed the attention of Dirty Dick but could not prove it.

  Thereafter Dickerson had confined his attention to the ladies downtown, and now had at least three frauleins who were determined to marry him. The father of one of the girls was a former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer, who was equally determined that his racially pure daughter was not going to marry an American black man, even if he had to kill him to prevent it.

  “I thought you’d see it that way,” Jim said. “You’ve got two days to clean up your personal affairs.”

  “Way I figure, that’s about forty six hours too long,” the sergeant said. “Who’s goin’ with us?”

  “Jerry Hauck.”

  “Blanket-ass Jerry? That’s good. Get him away from the bottle. Get me away from the women. What you gettin’ away from, Cap’n?”

  Not what I’m getting away from, Jim thought. It’s what I’m getting back to. Aloud he said, “You don’t need to take anything with you, even uniforms. Travel will be by commercial air, in civvies. Everything we need for the mission is supposed to be on site.”

  “An’ you trust ’em to have it there?”

  Jim smiled. The habitual distrust of every operator in the Special Forces for anyone outside the unit was something he also felt. He’d drawn up a list of needed equipment in Stuttgart, told them that those items absolutely must be there. He had been reassured when General Miller told him who the operational base commander was to be. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Petrillo, who had recruited him for the Phoenix Program so long ago, could be trusted to make sure the logistics for the operation were straight. Anything else was up for grabs. Jim still hadn’t completely forgiven him for the way he had been treated in that assignment, but knew that Mark really hadn’t had any choice.

  “Yeah, they’ll have it there,” he said. “Mark Petrillo knows if they don’t I’ll cut his dick off.”

  SFC Dickerson looked at the captain speculatively. He didn’t know if the officer was joking or not, thought that he only partly was. He’d never been in combat with Captain Carmichael, but had heard stories. He didn’t think he would want the captain as an enemy.

  He stood up, stretched. “An’I bet you were sure enough of me to have them stock uniforms in my size, weren’t you?” SFC Dickerson was six feet four inches tall and very thin. Standing he looked wispy, almost insubstantial. But like most Special Forces men, what he lacked in muscle he made up for in endurance.

  “I sort of figured you wouldn’t be able to resist,” Jim said. “Hope I’m not putting us into something we can’t get out of.”

  “Yeah, well, it don’t matter nohow. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ve got some serious partyin’ to do. Some a these ladies, I’ve been sort of holdin’ back on. You know, for safety’s sake. Now it don’t much matter. What are they gonna do if they catch me? Send me back to Vietnam?”

  “Al, I’ve got a real big favor to ask of you,” Jim said.

  Al Dougherty took a hefty swig from his stein. They were sitting in the Woodshed, a tiny gasthaus in the town of Bad Tölz. There were only four tables, and at this hour of the day they were the only patrons. Jim had chosen it as a meeting place for precisely that reason. Besides, they had the best beer in Bavaria.

  “Name it, Jimmy. Long as it doesn’t have anything to do with sex, you’re on. You’re not my type.”

  Trust Al to come up with a joke for anything, Jim thought. Of course, you could trust him for a hell of a lot more, too. That was why he was going to ask. But it was a hell of a thing to ask of someone.

  “You probably ought not say that until you find out what it is,” Jim warned.

  “Get serious!” Al said, slightly miffed. “I don’t want to get all blubbery about this, but I do owe you my tired-ass life. Why don’t you just cut through the bullshit and tell me what you want?”

  “Okay. I’m gonna be out of town for a little while. Like maybe two or three months. Can’t tell you where I’m going, so don’t ask. Anyway, Alix is just real goddamn unhappy about it.”

  “I just imagine she is,” Al inte
rjected. “I’m surprised you’re not walkin’ funny. I would have expected her to kick your balls right up into your belly.”

  “That would have been a relief. It’s got way past that, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I’d like you to sort of keep an eye on her, if you would. Colonel Casey has promised to appoint an assistance officer to make sure she gets taken care of, but you know how that shit goes.”

  “What you mean is, you want me to go to the commissary and PX for her, chauffeur her around, that kind of shit. Sort of act like a surrogate daddy. Is that it? A goddamned Special Forces, Ranger, Infantry, Baby-killing snake-eater, acting like some sort of fucking nanny?

  “Of course I will. You don’t even need to ask. Herr Ober! Nach zwei, bitte,” Al said, ordering two more beers. “Christ, Jimmy. You do get yourself in a load of shit.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Jim said; rather sourly, Al thought. “Hell, with any luck at all I can piss away my entire life like this.”

  “I can’t promise you anything,” Alix said, the night before he left. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I do understand, even though you still think I don’t. But you’ve got to understand me, too. I just don’t think I can live like this.”

  “This is the last time,” he said. “I’ll quit after this. Do what you want me to do.”

  “Hush,” she said. “Don’t go making promises you can’t keep. You don’t have it within you to make that kind of commitment. I don’t think you’ll ever change. Don’t even, sometimes, know if I would want you to. I fell in love with you as you are. It’s not your fault. I should have known better. Now I just have to decide if I can live with it or not.”

  “That’s fair,” he said after a moment. He was very aware of her weight there next to him on the bed, felt already the ache of being away from her. How could he be doing this? It was only going to cause misery and pain for the both of them.

  Because if you don’t, there will be more misery and pain than you could ever imagine, the answer came. You’ll hate yourself, knowing that you could have been the one to get those guys out of there. You’ll blame yourself for their deaths, as you already blame yourself for the deaths of so many others.