“We were on the ground four days. Harboring up during oh light hundred in swamps and brush piles and moving on a mile or so at night, mostly crawling on our bellies. You’d lie in a pool of your own piss all afternoon because a Serbian sentry was standing three feet away from you and you couldn’t move to take a leak, and you went hungry because you didn’t dare crinkle the wrapper on a ration bar.
“By day four we’d documented as much as we could, and we weren’t helping anything by hanging around. Besides, I was getting leery about the Serbian security operations in our area. They were acting as if they knew somebody was in the neighborhood who shouldn’t be there. I called for extraction and a recovery package launched at first light the next morning.
“Problem was, the only landing zone we could reach was near a highway. That couldn’t be helped because of all the activity in our sector. We couldn’t risk moving cross-country to another LZ. At any rate, we were at the extraction point by first light. The recovery helo, an Air Commando MH-53 Battlestar covered by a couple of A-10 attack bombers, was inbound and everything was looking good. Then we heard the trucks on the road.”
Quillain hesitated, crumpling the empty cup in his hand. “I’ll always wonder about the call I made next. Whether I should have aborted the extraction and tried to escape and evade through the woods. But hell, the helo was on final approach and I figured we could beat ’em out of there. Besides, I’ll admit it, I was getting a little bit scared about then.
“The A-10s circled the area as the MH-53 set down and we started across the field to the helo. And just about then half of the Serbian army came charging out of the forest on our flank, screaming and yelling and firing AKs from the hip.
“The A-10s opened up. The door gunners on the Battlestar opened up. Me and my boys opened up. All of a sudden the whole damn world was shooting at each other. We fell back to the tail ramp of the lift ship, emptying magazines as fast as we could fit them in our weapons.
“We didn’t have the little Leprechaun transceivers back then. We were still using the old backpack PRC-119s carried by a dedicated radio operator. My radioman had been sticking right with me through all of this. A real nice young Puerto Rican kid from New Jersey. Anyway, he and I stopped for a second at the foot of the ramp so I could call one of the strike aircraft in on a hot target. And all of a sudden my RT just sort of went ‘uh’ and folded up on me. I grabbed him by the harness and dragged him aboard the helo and we got out of there.”
Stone flipped the crumpled cup into the trash basket, his expression shielded and impassive. “Our Corpsman worked on him, but it wasn’t no good. The kid was dead. Caught a 7.65 round right on the zip of his flak jacket. Took his heart clean out. I can remember sort of holding his head and shoulders in my lap all the way back to Aviano and thinkin’, ‘I’m this boy’s officer! I got to do something about this!’ But there wasn’t anything to do. Nothing at all.”
He nodded toward the envelopes on Amanda’s desk. “I didn’t even get to write one of them letters. They just listed it as a training accident and sent him home.”
Amanda nodded slowly, her own thoughts drifting back over times of blood and fire. “I lost two back aboard my old destroyer. One of them was in the Drake’s Passage fight, a rather sweet Midwestern boy who’d joined the Navy because he couldn’t get a football scholarship. The other was in the Battle of the Yangtze Approaches. I didn’t know him very well. He was a new hand who’d signed aboard just before we sailed on that cruise. I doubt I ever exchanged more than a dozen words with him. But he died obeying my orders.”
The interior of her quarters shifted in and out of focus, and Amanda found herself having to be deliberate in the choice and forming of her words. “Funny… though. I can remember their faces… every detail. I guess it’s because they keep coming back.”
Quillain frowned. “How’s that, Skipper?”
Amanda looked back at him owlishly, the hidden words she’d never intended to say to anyone slipping from her. “I mean, they keep coming back, Stone. At night, after lights out, when I’m alone. I mean, I don’t really see anything, I guess… I just know they’re there. I can feel them standing there in the dark… just watching me.”
“What d’you reckon they want, Skipper?”
Hazily she considered. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re angry or that they blame me. That’s not what it feels like. It’s more like they… want to remind me about why I can never be wrong. About what the price is when I mess up…”
Her eyes were closing now, and she tried and failed to fight them open again. “Tonight… for the first time, there’s going to be three of them. I think that’s why I don’t want to sleep…”
“You got to, though, Skipper,” Quillain said quietly. “You got to.”
Funny, she hadn’t noticed before how gentle the big man could make his voice. Her empty cup slipped from her hand, but she didn’t hear it clatter to the floor.
Stone Quillain took his feet down off the desk and hoisted himself out of his chair. That was a job done, even though it had cost his last stash of decent sippin’ liquor to do it. Stone had talked and boozed more than one C.O. back down after a tough operation, but this little gal had been a chore. She had a head on her like a steel towing butt. That, plus a whole lot more caring than was likely good for her.
Coming around Amanda’s desk, Quillain found the deck seemed a little unsteady underfoot. A sea kicking up, no doubt. He hoisted the slumbering woman out of her chair and into his arms. He turned to lay her on her bed, only to discover that as he had her oriented, her feet would be at the head of the cot and vice versa.
A degree of backing and filling proved this to be an insurmountable engineering problem, so with a muttered “To hell with it” he laid her down and shifted the pillow to the appropriate end, slipping it under Amanda’s head with clumsy care. Lost in sleep like an overtired child, she didn’t even move.
Crossing to the door and switching off the overhead light, Quillain stepped out into the night. As darkness filled the little room behind him, he hesitated for a moment, then looked back.
“You boys go easy on the lady. You hear?” he murmured. “I reckon she’s trying about as hard as she can.”
In the moonshadow of a platform gun tower, Steamer Lane leaned against the steel cable deck railing. His slashed forehead itched abominably under the butterfly sutures, and he had to fight down the urge to scratch. He found himself envying the characters in the old World War II movies he’d watched as a kid. Back then, before they’d invented lung cancer, a guy who couldn’t figure out anything better to do with himself could always light up a cigarette. Flicking an imaginary butt over the side, he looked out to sea to the northwest.
One or two stars seemed to ride a little below the distant coastal horizon. An entire constellation had glowed there once, the lights of the city of Monrovia. One by one they’d been going out over the past months. But not quite fast enough.
The railing cable swayed slightly as another’s weight came onto it. Snowy Banks leaned silently beside him now, her slender silhouette pale against deeper shadow. Neither spoke. They had been a team for so long, they no longer needed to fill in every little patch of silence with idle conversation.
“It’s funny,” she said after a time. “But back in NROTC, I can’t recall them talking much about your people being killed.”
“They talked about us taking casualties in the Academy enough. They even had a shrink in a few times talking about traumatic and post-traumatic shock syndrome and that kind of deal.”