The officer looked helplessly around, but there was no one to help him decide. He knelt down in the wind that was whistling wildly through sheared metal and over the bodies littered all around, and placed his hand on the boy’s forehead, making the sign of the cross, trying to remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer, trying to decide whether the boy should be a priority case or not.
“I can’t move my legs, sir. I can’t feel nothin’, sir, nothin’ at all.” It was Johnson, lying on a stretcher near a starboard davit. “I can’t.”
“It’s all right, old chap,” said the gunnery officer. “You just lie there. We’ll get you off on the next chopper.” Nearby, a bosun, overhearing the conversation, turned to his mate. “Don’t see much wrong with ‘im.”
“Shock, I expect,” said his mate. “Poor bugger’s spine probably crushed, paralyzed from the waist down. That’s why he don’t feel anything.”
“Thought I saw him walking out on deck,” said the bosun. A wave smacked the starboard side of the Peregrine, a black wave suddenly incandescent, angelic in the cone of the chopper’s belly light, water streaming frothily through the scuppers, the ship rolling very slowly now, the water sloshing back and forth, gurgling through buckled decking. “Least I thought it was him,” said the bosun, still looking at Johnson.
“Nah,” said his mate. “Must have been another bloke. Christ, I ‘ope they send more helos. I don’t fancy this lot.”
Next to him the bosun was zipping up the body bag in which they’d laid the cook.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The cavernous troop deck aboard the LPH Saipan rang with the general’s voice.
“My name is Douglas Freeman and I’m here because, like you, I was considered the best for the job. First thing I want to tell you tonight is that I have no intention of dying.”
There was a ripple of strained laughter.
“Neither, I trust, do you.”
More laughter.
“Secondly—” The general’s eyes were taking in the whole hangar with such intensity that every private, section, platoon, and company commander thought the general was staring at him. “I’m not about to lead any dope-heads into battle. I don’t give a goddamn what the doctors say, or the surgeon general says — there isn’t such a thing as a goddamned calming pill that’ll let you go into battle like you were going to church — which, looking at you sons of bitches, I seriously doubt you’ve ever done anyway.” In the first row, Al Banks, arms folded, was looking at his shoes. He had personally authorized the issue of.5 mg sublingual Lorazepam before it was known who would be commanding the hastily assembled mobile force.
“Now,” continued Freeman, walking, hands on hips, across the small podium, stopping, facing the men, his voice reaching every corner of the hangar deck, “I know you’ve all been through the drills, the maps, the platoon assignments.” He paused. “But there’s something else you should know. When you go into battle I want you to know who you are, where you are, and what the hell you’re doing. I want you shooting gooks, not one another. So — before you disembark, indeed before you dismiss this evening, you will dispense with any pills you were issued with and any other pills you may have in your possession, depositing them with the padre.”
The padre, in the front row, looked up, surprised.
“If he runs out of pockets, put them in his helmet. I don’t want any space-head shooting up his section because he popped a pill too many and thought you were all gooks — even though you’re better-dressed than any gooks I’ve ever seen, and that includes that runt, Kim Jong II, who—”
The troops were loosening up, the laughter coming more easily now.
“An evil piece of shit,” continued the general, “who, by the way, when you were trying to get your first piece of ass, was trying to figure out how to murder innocent civilians and who is as evil a bastard as Qaddafi, Hitler, that shit Pol Pot, or any other son of a bitch ever hoped to be.” The anger in Freeman’s eyes was so intense, Al thought the general was about to jump right off the stage, his forefinger sweeping across his audience, his lone star glinting in the hangar light. “It is our duty to go in and give that son of a bitch such a shake-up and hopefully kill the bastard, so that his henchmen will think twice about ever attacking the United States of America again.”
The general paused again and, glancing along the front rows, saw the padre was not at all fazed by the profanity. “To teach them a lesson,” Freeman went on, “namely that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew because the United States of America will not — I repeat, not — give up the ghost in Korea and that if they persist in their butchery, we’ll get tougher still and nuke the sons of bitches into oblivion!”
There was a roar of approval. The padre, Freeman noticed with satisfaction, was distinctly uncomfortable. The general’s voice dropped.
“Now, I’ve heard that someone says this is a hopeless mission — a suicide mission, politically motivated. Well, I don’t lead suicide attacks, and I won’t give you any BS about minimum casualties. We’re going into the enemy’s belly and I expect casualties to be heavy. But we’ll be coming out!” There was still silence.
“As for it being politically motivated — hell,” said the general, shaking his head, “I don’t know what that means. All I know is anything we don’t like — don’t care for — becomes politically motivated. We are instruments of national policy. Our profession is not peace, it’s war. That’s what we’re paid for — to go in there — not to walk softly and carry a big stick but to give ‘em the stick right up their heathen ass.”
Some whistles and a smattering of laughter. The padre was clearly angry.
“Another thing,” Freemen continued. “I know some of you have been wondering why an airborne assault when we could launch bombing runs. Two good reasons. One — Pyongyang, which here on out will be referred to in all directives and communications as ‘Crap City,’ is festooned with surface-to-air missiles and MiGs on alert. Our choppers will be going in low, and the SAMs, which are most effective at high altitude, will have extreme difficulty discriminating among low-flying aircraft with ground clutter thrown in. And we’ll be hill-hopping all the way. Furthermore, we’ll have fighter cover from Salt Lake City to help confuse the SAMs when they scramble their MiGs to meet our boys. But the most important reason for sending in this force is that we have learned, contrary to all the armchair experts, think tanks, and God knows what else, that bombing fails to cut the head from the snake, including Miss Jane Fonda.”
“Give it to her, General!”
“No comment!”
A roar of laughter. The padre’s face had now turned from anger to disgust.
“What we have repeatedly found out, and here I don’t wish to malign our comrades in arms in the air force — they do a damned fine job — but we have repeatedly found, most spectacularly with that dung heap Qaddafi, that you can send in the whole damned air force, with ‘Smart’ bombs to boot, kill everyone, and miss the son of a bitch in his tent. That is why the prime target of this foray is to take that runt out of circulation. Permanently!” The soldiers were clapping and stomping now.
“So that your families, your children, no longer have to live in a world where slime-balls rule the roost.”