Arc Light (66 page)

And the applause grew. It grew, and grew, and grew to a crescendo of applause. No shouts could be heard, no breaks piercing the steady torrent of claps, and Lambert turned to look at the people of Charleston with a heartfelt relief that he truly was not alone as he had so long felt among the hundreds of people with whom he had worked, none of whom, it seemed, had lost a loved one. He had not realized how much had built up in him in the weeks since finding Jane, and he had forced his feelings into a bottle, had fled from the few brave souls who felt comfortable enough in quieter moments to ask him how he felt.

“You okay, Greg?” the President asked as he faced him only inches away.

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

Costanzo nodded, and loosed Greg from his clench.

“It was an honor and a privilege, Mr. Lambert,” Clerk Ree-show said, shaking his hand. Next came an old lady, whose cool hand reached up to cup his face as she said, “Dear boy,” shaking her head. He saw on her dress above a carnation four red hearts, tiny stickers that people had taken to wearing. Four deaths in her family.

The President had already left the podium to work the crowd from within his cordon of wary Secret Service agents as the local dignitaries shook his hand one by one, each with words of thanks and sympathy. Sol Rosen suddenly appeared between Lambert and the next local to say, “Thank you, folks,” and guide Lambert with a strong grip on his elbow to join up with the President, who was at the front edge of the crowd meeting a group of men and women wearing dirty white lab coats.

As Rosen thrust Lambert to the President's side, putting him in position for the camera to take in the scene, Lambert heard President Costanzo saying, “And I would like to take this opportunity to say, to the people of France, that it is groups like your Médecins Sans Frontières that show that the true depth of feeling between our two peoples remains great and unchanged despite the differences expressed between our two governments.”

Lambert saw the big grin as Costanzo pumped the hand of the lithe, bespectacled woman—a doctor, Lambert presumed—who was trying to say something in a voice that barely carried over the noise and commotion that surrounded the President.

“What?” he said, leaning closer to the woman.

“We have a team, Mr. President, in Grodno,” she shouted up toward his ear on tiptoes, her thick French accent making understanding even more difficult, “that cannot get supplies through your forces, which surround the city!”

“Well, fine! Fine!” the President said, moving on deeper into the crowd to shake the hands thrust over heads at him. Lambert could not tell whether Costanzo had heard the woman.

“Can I help?” he asked, and she repeated her statement. “Who do we talk to get this straightened out?” Lambert asked. “Do you have a telephone number and a name?”

“Yes, yes!” she said excitedly, and she pulled out a pad and pen and wrote the name and number down, carefully reading them out in case he had trouble reading her handwriting. Before she could hand the slip of paper to him, Lambert felt a strong tug at his arm, pulling him off in the wake of the President. He pulled his arm forcefully from the grasp of the Chief of Staff, who glared at him and nodded in the direction of the President, in the direction of the cameras.

Lambert took the slip from the woman, who wrapped both of her hands around his with a touch that seemed to him to be the first human contact he could recall since he pulled himself from Jane's arms in the restaurant.

“Sergeant Monk?”

The pain flooded in. He opened his eyes. It was so bright that he could only look down at his body, curled and twisted in the small hole, instead of up at the voice and into the sunlight.

Oh, man,
Monk thought. His head pounded and his rib, broken by a bullet glancing off his body armor, ached with each breath. As he stirred, every muscle screamed, and his legs, arms, neck, and especially his back hardly moved from the stiffness. Squinting and looking along the slope of the hill, he could see the other heads and shoulders protruding up from their fighting holes as he arched his back.

“O-o-o-w,” Monk said tiredly and looked up at the five men. “Who the hell're you?” he asked, the steely taste in his mouth adding to his general misery.

“We were told to report to you, Sergeant,” said the man in front, a kid really.

Monk looked them up and down. Fresh uniforms, all their equipment neatly hung in all the right places on their bodies, M-16s and SAWs all at the ready.

Monk closed his dry eyes and rubbed his temples.
It's daylight,
he thought. “What time is it?” Monk asked.

“Thirteen zero two hours, Sergeant.”

Monk struggled to get up, groaning and cursing with every new pain. When he got to his feet, the group stiffened. Their eyes, Monk noted, darted here and there but mainly up to his face and then away sheepishly.

“Who are you?” Monk asked the talkative one, a private first class. They were all privates or PFCs, Monk noted.

“They told us we were in your squad.” Monk looked at the hill-side around his hole. Nothing but black bloodstains and a few scraps of equipment remained of the Russians, whose bodies had obviously been removed from the slope in the night.

“Hey!” one of the new guys said with a grin, picking up a Russian
Army helmet as if he'd found a souvenir of great value. “Don't touch anything, shithead,” Monk said, not knowing his name. “You'll go home with hooks stickin' out your arms.”

Monk led the small group to the top of the hill where they found the first line of fighting holes from which the marines had withdrawn. Monk said, “Be careful up here. There's mines all over this forward slope.” The men froze where they were, a step or two behind Monk. Russian helmets were everywhere, and in them were Russian soldiers lying twisted and splayed all along the ground down the hill and into the flats below. Fat black birds walked the earth around them, not yet straying close to their unripened prey. The few vehicles they had brought with them still smoldered in the distance. The last leg of their journey of life had been on foot.

As the marines behind him pointed and whispered in muted tones at the sights and scenes of the battlefield, Monk spotted his first fighting hole, littered with empty brass cartridges. He remembered. Flashes from the Russians' muzzles as they fired on the run. Muzzle flashes from Monk's own SAW lighting patches of the ground in front of his hole, spoiling his night vision. Black shapes moving in the dark, not betraying their positions by firing but suddenly illuminated for killing in the phosphorous fires from grenades rolled down among them.

“Mornin', Sergeant Monk!” Gunnery Sergeant Dirks said. “Enjoy yer beauty rest?”

The new guys laughed until Dirks glanced their way. Monk reached up and ran his hand around the various cuts and stitches that crisscrossed his face, the result of shattered glass at a window some days before, and only then got the joke.

From out of the woods behind the ridge came the deep rumble of armor. Monk's heart skipped a beat until he saw that they were Army M-109s—self-propelled 155-mm howitzers. Atop each one of the eight lumbering guns a man in an oversize Combat Vehicle Crewman's helmet and sunglasses stood at the .50-caliber machine gun raised high in front of his hatch. As the vehicles pulled to a stop at the base of the ridge about forty meters away and the rear doors opened, three ammunition handlers emerged from each gun. The section leader roamed around the guns giving orders for the fire mission, but inside the gunner and driver remained at their posts, ready to “shoot and scoot” before the first sign of Russian fire being returned.

“I s'pose that's the end of our boys' naps,” Gunny said to Monk, who snorted a laughing response as they watched the guns begin to elevate and slew, the last of their movements minute.

The stunning BOOM of the first M-109 firing its shell at a target almost twenty thousand yards away caused even Gunny to flinch. Just one gun fired, but the barrels of all eight pointed in the same direction. In the distance, one gun from the other section of eight in the army's battery let loose a single round.

“Gunny!” his RTO yelled from his fighting hole. “CO's on the horn!” Gunny walked down the hill to his hole.

“What's that stink?” one of the cherries asked.

The day was growing warm, and Monk smelled the faint odor in the breeze for the first time. The new guys were all sniffing the air like a herd alerted to some danger. They looked around. The smell of death and decay was everywhere.

“You'll get used to it,” Monk said.

The eight M-109s fired in volley all at once, and the new men slapped their hands over their virgin ears. Monk felt only a faint itching from his own tortured eardrums, then saw the men of his squad stir in their holes below.
“Shi-i-t!”
he heard Mouth whine.

“You guys come over from the States?” Monk asked.

“Yes, Sergeant,” one answered. “Pendleton.”

“How bad is it—back home?”

“Oh, man. It's the radioactivity now.” Bone, Mouth, Smalls, and some of the other guys rose from their holes, slowly heading up the hill and looking groggy from their sleep.

Monk let the barrage from the M-109s finish up, the shots becoming more scattered as the gun crews operated the weapons at different speeds.

“You know anything about Detroit?” Monk asked.

“They hit a coupla places in Michigan,” one said, “but Detroit looked okay. They got these maps, like weather maps, they put up on TV all the time that shows the fallout an' stuff. Hell, ya know that Weather Channel they got on cable's like the most popular channel on TV. I don't think Detroit got any of the shit, though.”

“Na-a-aw,” another said. “I gotta cousin up there. It's okay.”

“What about Tulsa?” Bone asked. The guns erupted.

None of them seemed to know. Finally one said, “There was some shit comin' down from Kansas and . . . and from Colorado. Goin' southeast. Ain't that where Oklahoma is?”

“You're damn
right
it is!” Bone said, growing wild-eyed and reaching up to twist the scraped skin of his forearm in sudden agitation. Monk kept his eyes on Bone:
he's dangerous now,
Monk realized. Bone began to interrogate each of the cherries in turn, grabbing their webbing with both hands and not letting go until he had extracted all information pertinent to Oklahoma.

Bone shoved the last of them back roughly and said, “Mo-ther-fuck-er!” His eyes were wide now and the cords in his forearms tensed as he balled his fists. Monk was relieved to see that the cherries picked up on the danger, like a herd sensing the presence of a predator. They shifted on their feet and shied away as another round of shots blasted out of the howitzers below. These shots were separated widely enough for the other men to get in snippets of conversation—questions and answers, really.

“Memphis?”

“Don't know”—
BOOM!
—“pro'bly okay.”

“Columbus—Ohio?”

BOOM!
“It's okay. Ohio's okay.”

BOOM!

“Kansas City, Missouri?”

BOOM!

“What about Kansas City?” Smalls asked again.

Nobody said a word. Bone stepped up to the closest man and grabbed his body armor. The man's face showed defiance and he grabbed Bone's wrists saying, “Hey! Let go'a me!” but he did nothing about it.

“Tell the man about Kansas City, fuckhead,” Bone said in a low voice.

“It's . . . They got fallout! A whole thick dose of the shit, okay! Now let me go! Come on!”

Bone let him go, and everybody remained silent for a few seconds. Smalls looked stricken, and his upper lip peeled back over his teeth and began to quiver. It took a second for Monk to realize that he was beginning to cry. Bone went over to him and said, “Hey, man,” and then nothing, his usual gift for words failing him.

Monk walked over to Smalls, and he and Mouth both rested their hands on his shoulder momentarily. But it was Bone who swung into action. “Look, man,” he said, grabbing Smalls by his shoulders. “We're gonna tear these bastards up. You an' me—on the sixty. Ain't gonna be nobody left when we get through here, man. Shit, some'a that shit landed in Oklahoma, man. Don't nobody mess with Oklahoma. Gonna take a little walk in the woods, just you an' me an' the sixty. Gonna find ourselves some Russians, man, gonna clean up them woods.”

As others walked up to ask about their homes, the army guns began to move. It occurred to Monk that Russian counterbattery fire might be incoming, but the holes were close enough so he didn't issue a warning to the marines on the ridge. He listened for the sound of splitting air overhead that would presage the Russian shells' arrival
as he looked down at the gory display on the slope and valley below. Off in the distance to the north lay trees as far as the eye could see. Looking at those woods, some almost certainly filled with Russian soldiers, evoked a shudder.
Bad shit happens in woods,
Monk thought.