“Cover me, Sarge!” he shouted into the man’s face, “I’m going to get Teejay.”
“Lieutenant!” Wilson protested, but it was too late. O’Keefe was already scrambling over the edge of the hole. Gunfire erupted in even greater volumes as the Marines strove to keep their enemy’s heads down, and protect their leader. In two strides O’Keefe reached the prone body of his wounded grunt. Teejay would not have been heavy under the best of circumstances, but after several months in the bush, he had been reduced to a wiry man of all catgut and sinew. O’Keefe’s adrenaline-soaked muscles hoisted him easily over one shoulder. He turned back toward the fighting hole, but even as he did so he could see the ignition of several B-40s; a parting gesture from the retreating VC.
The firing points of the rockets were pulverized with Marine lead, likely killing whoever had launched them, but that meant nothing to O’Keefe. The RPGs were already on the way. They streaked toward the Marines’ position as O’Keefe lifted his booted right foot to run back to shelter, his body moving in agonizing slowness in comparison to the meteoric approach of the grenades. One of them found the earth directly behind him, where it would have blown Teejay into pulp had he not been moved. The explosion sprayed shrapnel through the air, many pieces heading straight for O’Keefe. Teejay absorbed most of the hits, his body acting as a shield while still slung over his lieutenant’s shoulder. A few small bits inconsequentially peppered the back of O’Keefe’s legs. But one larger, fiery hot piece of razor sharp metal buried itself in O’Keefe’s back, wrecking his spine only inches above the buttocks.
The impact dropped him to his knees just in front of the hole that would have meant safety. He tried to push himself back to his feet with his one free arm, to no avail. He wanted to crawl, but his legs no longer answered the call to push him forward. He tottered for a moment on knees he could no longer feel, balanced by one arm, his wounded comrade still held tightly in the grasp of the other. Suddenly another blow struck him from behind, knocking both he and Teejay forward and into the bottom of the now crowded fighting hole. Thor had come from behind, using a flying tackle to launch all three of them to safety. He landed in a heap with Teejay and O’Keefe, his long arms still locked around the two of them.
“They’re hit,” O’Keefe heard him yell, his voice in a panic. “Sarge, they’re both hit! Teejay’s fubared, man. My God, his blood; it’s all over me, man!”
The sergeant took over. “You,” he grabbed Baker by his flak jacket, “go find the doc. Thor! Calm down, and gimme some light over here. We’re gonna patch up the lieutenant, then do what we can for Teejay.” His tone suggested that he had already decided the enlisted man was beyond help, his decision to address O’Keefe’s wounds first a crude form of battlefield triage. As the sergeant spoke and the nearly hysterical Thor fumbled for a flashlight, O’Keefe began to feel an expanding agony growing in the small of his back. It quickly ballooned in intensity, welling up through his torso until it ripped an involuntary and utterly primal scream from his throat.
Wilson ignored it, turning him roughly and using his knife and hands to slash and rip O’Keefe’s uniform away from his wounds, and attempting to stanch the bleeding with field dressings. He was almost finished bandaging when the corpsman slipped into the hole and quickly injected O’Keefe with a syrette of morphine. The pain began to subside and momentarily O’Keefe found he was able to control his screaming. Soon he was bandaged and propped against the side of the hole, his awareness blunted by the narcotic effect of the drug.
He sensed everything around him, but it seemed dreamlike and far away. Events faded in moments from his memory. He could see the doc working feverishly on Teejay. He heard the sarge on the radio, calling for an immediate dust-off and knew the medevac was for Teejay and himself, but he thought no more of it once he had heard the call.
In the first gray light of the oncoming dawn he witnessed Teejay die, knew that the doc and Thor tried to hide it from him, but did not know why as he openly sobbed—or maybe he only cried in his mind; he could not say for sure.
Later he saw the Huey float down from above, the tips of its rotors sculpting great coils in the morning mist as it descended. He and the body that had once been a Marine—his Marine—were quickly trundled aboard atop stretchers before the chopper hurriedly lifted into the sky. O’Keefe watched as the platoon seemed to move farther and farther away until he felt terribly lost and alone. At last he could no longer see them, and he was flying higher and higher as the wind buffeted his face. He closed his eyes, and his awareness was reduced to only the beat of the rotor above his olive drab savior drumming repetitively on his opiate salved mind. He hadn’t an inkling that he was headed back to the World.
PART ONE:
THE ABERRANT
CHAPTER FOUR:
Hell on Wheels
2011 A.D.
He sat in his chair, its wheels locked, anchored before his computer, watching as subject lines and senders popped up in his inbox. Suddenly a familiar name appeared amidst the strangers advertising weight loss, male enhancement, mortgage refinancing, and pornography; a Bill Verba. O’Keefe sneered crookedly; it was the closest thing to a smile he could manage. He hadn’t had many reasons to smile in a very long time.
“Okay,” he said to no one, “let’s see what you’ve got for me today, Colonel.” Verba was army—career army. O’Keefe had met him in a stateside hospital during rehab, and they still kept in touch despite the years. But this contact was no friendly missive. This was yet another round in their unremitting battles.
O’Keefe opened the game folder, inserted the e-mail, and started the simulation. The screen immediately filled with an overview of a barren piece of snow-covered Russian landscape, circa early 1944. A road ran horizontally across the north side of the map while a deep stand of trees ran north to south on the east side, bisecting the road.
O’Keefe’s German units occupied the western and more open side of the screen. Most of them were placed atop two hills that were the dominating features on that side of the map. The only enemy units he could see were two burning Russian tanks that sat astride the road as it exited the forest. O’Keefe had destroyed them previously with some Mark IVs that were dug in along a short swale west of the trees, and two eighty-eights he had positioned on the northernmost hilltop.
He cycled the turn button, chuckling to himself as more than a dozen T-34s clanked out of the woods south of where their wrecked counterparts sat in flames. “Oh, you army puke, you,” he breathed, shaking his head. “You are so predictable. I knew that first move was a feint; I knew you would never try to force the road.” O’Keefe’s hunch as to where Verba’s main assault would come had paid off. He had taken the chance of leaving the road, the easiest path to victory; relatively unprotected. All of his Tigers were dug in on the southernmost hill, directly overlooking the spot where the T-34s were exiting the trees. His best tanks were in perfect firing position.
Yet still he stared at the monitor indecisively. The colonel may have been predictable, but the man was good. He was sending what looked like the entirety of what remained of his forces directly toward the high ground to the west because he knew something would be up there, he just wasn’t sure what. If O’Keefe opened fire immediately, Verba might simply withdraw back into the trees with minimal losses and the knowledge of where O’Keefe’s Tigers were dug in and camouflaged. And if he attempted to move them after the T-34s retreated, there was always the possibility that Verba could catch them in open ground if he anticipated O’Keefe’s move and returned directly to the attack.
But if O’Keefe waited until Verba was unalterably committed to the advance, that might work in the colonel’s favor as well. Waiting might make it impossible for O’Keefe’s heavily outnumbered force to disable enough of the Russian tanks to even the odds before the T-34s advanced far enough to negate the advantages his Wehrmacht machines held in both range and accuracy. If that happened the battle would be lost, early and decisively. Perhaps, O’Keefe t
hought, I should wait to fire and then retreat, fighting a delaying action.
He was still debating what course of action to take when both his dogs suddenly and nearly simultaneously erupted into frenzied barking from what sounded like to O’Keefe to be the living room. The abruptness of their outburst caused him to flinch noticeably. A string of fireworks lit surreptitiously behind his chair would not have startled him any more.
For what he was hearing from the dogs was not the whine tinged baying that indicated some sort of wildlife had been sighted through a window, nor was it the sound of their somewhat tentative canine exclamations that meant a strange noise had been heard. No, the fierceness and rapidity of the dogs’ vocalizations indicated clearly that they had seen and could still see someone approaching the house. Either Melissa was very early or some person unknown and unannounced had come up the mountain early on a Sunday afternoon to bother him. Both of those possibilities were so rare as to be nearly inconceivable.
After quickly saving the game and tossing his reading glasses to the desktop, he flipped forward the levers that held the locks to his wheels, grabbed the push rims and, pushing one wheel forward while pulling the other back, expertly spun the custom-made sports chair around and away from his desk. Faster than any walking man could have moved, he sailed through the oversized doorway that led from his office out onto the hardwood floor of the hall. A slight, three-fingered pressure on the left rim that spun beneath his hand easily pulled the wheelchair through almost ninety degrees and set him on a course to roll directly down the center of the hallway. In seconds he had traversed nearly the length of the house and came gliding to a halt in front of the high picture windows of the living room, in front of which both the dogs still barked excitedly.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, jostling each other as they bellowed out their warnings. They were so close to the windows that their wet noses touched the glass from time to time as they yammered on crazily, leaving smudges that O’Keefe made a mental note to wipe away later. It took him several moments to quiet them.
As they had many times before, his pets had once again proven their vigilance as sentries. Below and far down the drive, O’Keefe spied a car moving through the trees, making its way cautiously up the winding stretch of asphalt toward his home. It was not a vehicle he recognized, but rather a well used, fire engine red Camaro that O’Keefe was certain he had never seen before. He reached for the pair of binoculars he kept on an end table next to the sofa and trained them on the intruding machine, but there was nothing to see. The view from the side was blacked out by privacy glass and the rakishly angled windshield showed nothing save sky and bits of leafy canopy reflected onto it from above.
O’Keefe’s heart rate increased as he watched the vehicle approach. He was fully cognizant of the fact that he was paranoid to a certain degree. He had suffered from that mental affliction for forty years, ever since his first few weeks in southeast Asia. But he, like many Marines, justified, or perhaps more correctly rationalized, his feelings with the old saying “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” At any rate, the self-awareness of his middling psychosis did little to quell the expanding urge in his brain to take precautions. He rolled to the rear of the house, down an inclined ramp and into the large den, where he ordered the dogs; who were, as was their wont when strangers approached, hovering protectively around his chair; out into the yard.
Bismarck, a German Shepherd whose name had, over time, mutated into the more apt and descriptive moniker of Bizzy, was eager to comply, bounding through the pet door apparently hopeful of getting a better look at whoever was approaching. His ferocious, deep throated bark and his menacing appearance belied his true nature. He was always overjoyed to see guests, apparently in the belief that what few there were came exclusively to visit him rather than to see O’Keefe or conduct any business. He was, in short, a large and furry teddy bear. O’Keefe believed it highly likely that he would welcome a mafia hit squad into the house if he thought it possible that he would get a treat or an ear scratching as part of the bargain. At least, O’Keefe reasoned, he made a formidable racket.
Ajay was wholly different in temperament. O’Keefe had named her after his boyhood canine companion and the big Weimaraner, although far from vicious, was no less protective of him now than her namesake had been of the then child O’Keefe. She approached the door reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder with imploring eyes. It was clear she wished to stay at his side.
“I know you don’t want to go out, but you have to,” O’Keefe said gently. “Now go on.”
The dog stepped hesitantly through the door, but almost immediately her face appeared at the bottom of a nearby window. Her large gray-green eyes gazed intently into the room for a short time until her head dropped below the sill. Moments later, the eyes reappeared at another window from where she again surveyed the interior of the home. O’Keefe understood from experience that this behavior would continue until she was certain that he was in no danger. She was so overly protective that O’Keefe had been forced to have an electronic barrier installed around a wide swath of area encompassing the circular head of the driveway in what passed for his front yard. It was the only way to allow people access to the short concrete walkway that led from the driveway to his door without subjecting them to a close encounter with the dog’s seemingly vicious warding behavior. Even so, packages were still apt to be dropped on the driveway at the end of the walk rather than by the front door as the sight of Ajay stalking along the edge of the invisible fence, staring at the offending truck maliciously and remonstrating with various growls and snarls, was enough to convince many delivery men that discretion was the better part of valor.
O’Keefe almost smiled in wonder, never ceasing to be amazed by the dog’s behavior. He was touched, as much as he could be touched this late in his life, by her devotion. His heart, long since hardened by the emotional desolation of his existence, softened slightly for an instant, until he was called back to himself by the sound of a creaking car door opening and then slamming shut in front of the house.
He maneuvered his chair back up the ramp, the low knap of the carpet there seeming to claw at his wheels, and then out of the den and into the hallway, heading for the master suite. There, he rolled up to the bedside table and took out the loaded, military issue forty-five caliber he kept in the top drawer. He removed it from its holster and ejected the clip. Finding it filled, as always, with cartridges; he shoved the magazine back into the stock and pulled back the bolt, releasing it to chamber a round. Then he engaged the safety and reholstered the gun before shoving it into a pocket made into the outside of the right armrest of his chair. He whipped the conveyance around just as the doorbell rang.
Take your time, he told himself, intentionally slowing the pumping action of his arms. Let them wait, whoever they are. Several long seconds later, he leisurely rolled up to the door and pulled it open.
A strikingly attractive young woman stood on his porch, standing several feet back from the door’s threshold. She was tall and slender with straight brown hair and wore a short black dress that might have been expensive. Her legs were encased in sheer black hose while on her feet were shiny black pumps that looked brand new. Under one armpit she carried a large, wide strapped, taupe colored bag that had the appearance of being constructed of a fabric only slightly more elegant than canvas. It seemed out of place, to say the least, hanging from her shoulder. O’Keefe had no idea who she was.
The two appraised each other for a moment over the threshold, the only sound being the dogs barking in the background, while O’Keefe primarily wondered why a woman so provocatively dressed who was not Melissa would be driving a rattletrap car so far up into the hills only to come knocking at his door. Something was obviously not right, but his sense of foreboding quickly vanished; now he was merely annoyed. “Well,” he finally asked brusquely, “is there something I can help you with?”
The girl fidgeted nerv
ously, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I was looking for… Hill?” she asked cautiously. Her focus moved from his eyes to the floorboards at her feet to the doorjamb and back to his eyes.
“That would be me,” O’Keefe said levelly, his gaze steady on her face.
“I thought so,” she said, forcing a slight smile, all the while biting her lower lip. “But the mailbox at the road said A. A. O’Keefe. You know, no H. So I wasn’t sure.”
“My given name is Achilles Aeneas,” O’Keefe said sheepishly. “My mother had a thing for the classics.”
The girl stared at him with her lips parted and her brow slightly furrowed, with questions in her eyes, obviously having no comprehension whatsoever of what he had just said.
O’Keefe was suddenly angry at himself, not only for giving out a personal tidbit, but also for the way he had done it. He scowled without meaning to. “Look,” he almost snarled. “My name’s Hill. You’ve found who you’re looking for, now what the hell do you want?”
“I’m Julie,” the girl said, sounding wounded. “Melissa couldn’t make her appointment and she asked me if I could cover for her. I know I’m early, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get here. I mean, it’s not like I drive around way out here every day.” O’Keefe simply stared at her until the girl continued. “I’ll leave if you want me to, but it’s a long drive just to turn around and go back.” The girl again looked down at the boards of the porch floor, tracing and retracing a small semicircle in front of her with the toe of one shoe.
“What happened to Melissa?” O’Keefe demanded, still unsure of the situation.
The Empty Warrior Page 6
