"Do you know who got hurt?" she asked. "How bad is it?"
"No, Ma'am, I don't know"-Coffee had gotten much more polite since dumping Phillie in the mud- "but if myself or one of my apes would have done the trick, I'm sure Colonel Stauer wouldn't have asked for you."
Phillie arose from her cot and, bending, grabbed the medical kit bag underneath.
Coffee grimaced. Ooo, that's nice.
"Sergeant Coffee," she said, straightening up, "if you would be so kind would you ask Sergeant Island to hold some lunch for me?"
"Be happy to, ma'am," Coffee replied as he ducked his head out of the tent. "By the way, the colonel's ATV is outside. You can take that."
"Wouldn't know how to drive it, Sergeant Coffee. And the dock's not far."
***
There was no one dockside or on the sole landing craft tied up to it. Phillie supposed the other two were downstream, either at Manaus or bringing another load of supplies in. She swung a long leg over the sheer hull and climbed down, calling out, "Is anyone aboard." More softly she muttered, "If this is some kind of joke . . . "
A strained sounding Wes' voice called back, "Over here, Phillie." She looked around to the stern, from whence came his voice, and began to walk across the ribbed deck. Where the cargo deck ended there was a steel wall, mostly blank except for one ladder inset into it. She elbowed her bag behind her and climbed up. As her head arose over the wall, she saw another deck, mostly flat, with a upright steel housing and an open hatch in front of that. "Down here," Wes called again. His voice sounded urgent, as if the emergency was dire indeed.
She began to scramble down, first swinging her leg until it connected with another ladder. Halfway down, with her head and torso still above deck level, she felt strong hands on her hips lifting her away from the ladder. Thereafter, she sank into the engine housing so quickly she could barely register a surprised "O."
Her feet touched the metal deck below and Phillie felt herself spun around bodily. One large hand slithered up her back, unhooking her bra with practiced ease, even while another frantically undid the buttons on front of her battle dress jacket. She was about to scream "rape" when a quick sniff told her nose, "Stauer."
The latter hand pushed her T-shirt and bra up and out of the way, even while the other one did something overhead that caused a clang that was shocking inside the close confines of the oil-smelling engine room.
Both hands then struggled with the buttons of her trousers before hooking thumbs in them and her panties and pushing downward. Phillie kicked to try to get the trousers off completely but, as they were bloused into her boots, she failed and remained with her ankles bound together by trousers.
She felt herself picked up again, this time by her bare buttocks. She pulled her legs up and rested them on the forearms that held her. When she was released again, it was to rest her bare skin on the cold, cold block of a very large diesel engine. She squealed at the shock.
"Shhhh," whispered Stauer into her ear as he gently stroked her smooth flanks. "Shhhh. Doctor's orders."
Doc Joseph and Sergeant Coffee watched the boat from the jungle nearest the river. They really couldn't tell if the boat's gentle rocking was from the current, from Phillie boarding, or from her being boarded. It didn't really matter anyway.
Coffee pulled a pack of cigarettes out of one corner and held them out, offering one to the doctor. Joseph declined at first then said, "Ah, what the fuck. Gimme."
He took the cigarette and then puffed it alight in the flame from Coffee's proffered lighter. He coughed a couple of times, then his lungs settled into the smoke.
"You really wrote him a prescription?" Coffee asked, just before lighting his own cancer stick.
"Nope," Joseph said. "I wrote her one, and told him to deliver it."
Coffee snickered. "You don't think it will be a problem with the boys, the colonel having his honey to . . . ummm . . . to hand?"
Joseph shook his head. "No, not if they're reasonably discreet. The troops won't care as long as Stauer doesn't play favorites and doesn't flaunt that he's dipping his wick when the boys can't."
Coffee rocked his smoke-wreathed head from side to side before agreeing, "Yeah . . . probably."
A hundred meters away the landing craft continued its gentle rocking, waves forming from the current as it passed around the stern.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Of all branches of military science, military sketching
and reconnaissance is perhaps the most practical.
-Lieutenant Colonel A.F. Mockler-Ferryman,
RMC Sandhurst, 1908
D-80, Beach Green Two (tentative),
west of Bandar Qassim, Ophir
Waves washed up on the low tide beach, just west of the city that was named-so local legends said-for its founder's camel. All the way out, as far as the eye could see, there wasn't a rock bigger than two fists held together. The slope was smooth and gentle. A Marine would have had an orgasm, just looking at it.
The city to the east had grown tenfold in recent years, the result of its original tribesmen, scattered all over what had once been the country, returning to the safety and security of their own tribe. For all that it now housed nearly half a million people, it was still a low-built city of mostly mud brick with wide swaths of tent townships around it. Animals still walked and grazed in the streets, to the extent there was much of anything to graze from. Mostly, the streets were just mud and garbage and general filth.
At the center of the northern edge of the city, where road and building met sea, was a double port mildly reminiscent of old Carthage in that it had a major harbor area partly enclosed by jetty, and a small one almost completely enclosed that led off from the major one. To both sides were beaches. Though the sand of the beaches was smooth, generally, just behind them was a series of rough wadis which cut the area of the beaches into segments as little as one hundred feet across. This was common in the area. The wadis presented both difficulties and opportunities. They were difficulties in that they would tend to disorganize and separate any attacker doing a landing and could provide good cover for any defender, opportunities in that if one were to land, and were it not defended, one could take cover quite quickly from casual observation. At least from the ground. Air was another story entirely.
"It's a pity," said Buckwheat Fulton to Wahab, as they walked along the shingle, stopping occasionally to take a digital photo, "that this isn't where we're intending to land the major force. It's the best beach I've seen. Even better than Green One, to the west of here." The camera had an integral GPS, Global Positioning System, to it, so there'd be no doubts about where any given picture related to.
Wahab agreed, saying, "You know more about such things than I do, but even I can see the advantages of the gentle rise of the sands. That said," he pointed with his chin toward the almost rectangular port-it was a rectangle but with one corner nipped off, "they may have something to say about that."
Since returning home, Wahab had barely had time to see his wife and children. He and Fulton had arrived, briefed Khalid, spent a single night at Wahab's house, and then headed north. Still, one night is better than no nights. I missed her . . . and ours.