Cadet 3 (9 page)

“Don’t explain and don’t apologize, Kate. You
showed up in time, and that’s all that counts,” Jodie interrupted.
She started to dig her fingernails into the knotted rope around her
ankle, then glanced up to see Kate still kneeling at her side,
staring at her anxiously. She waved her hand in a shooing motion
and said, “I’m
fine
, Kate. Thank you for saving my life. Now
I need you to go help the others. That’s an order.”

“Yes sir,” Kate said, reluctantly rising to
her feet, “I’ll go right now.”

“And the second you make sure the girls are
all right, go look in the tent. Murphy’s in there, and I think he’s
in pretty bad shape. Do whatever you can for him, then report back
to me,” Jodie added.

After a brief struggle, Jodie was able to
work the knot loose and remove the rope around her leg. She spent a
few seconds massaging life back into her foot before she stood up.
She intended to go check on her people, but she had forgotten how
badly Billy had beaten her up.

As soon Jodie got to her feet, she was hit by
a wave of nausea and dizziness. Her head throbbed where Billy had
kicked her, and there was a stabbing pain in her side. She came
close to blacking out before she hastily sat back down. She stayed
on the ground for a while before attempting to rise again, and the
second time she rose much more slowly and cautiously, while holding
one hand pressed to her side.

By then, the other girls had been set free by
Kate. Steph and Robin had their arms under Merry’s shoulders, and
were half-carrying, half-walking her to where Jodie waited.

“What did that bastard do to you, Merry?”
Jodie asked anxiously.

Merry smiled wanly. “I’ll be fine, Jodie. I
just turned my right ankle trying to dodge, while my late boyfriend
was waving that flaming branch around. I probably could walk on it,
if I had to.” She put a little weight on the right leg, winced, and
exclaimed, “
Oww
! Well, maybe not just yet.” She gallantly
failed to mention the burns, although the angry red patches on her
left thigh, abdomen and right shoulder must have been very
painful.

Steph had sustained some bruises and a nasty
rope burn around her neck while being double-penetrated by the
Carson brothers, but she assured Jodie that other than these fairly
minor complaints and being somewhat sore, she was in good
condition. Jodie was relieved to learn that Charlie had done
nothing worse to her partner than what would have been considered
no more than a light workout by a veteran “Cadet Cunt” like
Robin.

They squatted on the ground near the tent
where Billy had tossed the unconscious Dick Murphy. While they
waited for Kate to come back, Steph and Robin went into the empty
tent and brought out sleeping bags to cover their nakedness, as the
clothing of all the women except Kate had been destroyed by Billy’s
gang, and the nighttime air in the mountains was quite cool, even
in May. They were huddled together under the opened sleeping bags
quietly comparing their experiences with the hillbilly gang, when
Kate came out to report on Murphy’s condition.

“It’s not good,” she said. “They hit him very
hard with something, and he has a serious blunt force trauma. I
would guess he has a fractured skull, a concussion and possibly a
cerebral hemorrhage. He’s still unconscious, which may be for the
best. My best guess is that if we don’t get him to a hospital
within the next twelve hours, it’ll be too late, but…” her voice
dropped “… if we try to move him the way he is now…” She left the
sentence unfinished, but her face and the hopeless way she shook
her head spoke volumes.

Murphy was closer to awareness than Kate
suspected, as they discovered when they heard his voice coming from
the tent, although it was too weak for any of his words to be
comprehensible.

“Dick!” Kate exclaimed. She scrambled back
into the tent and knelt beside him. He whispered something that
only Kate could hear. She looked out from the tent and caught
Jodie’s eye. “He wants to tell you something, General,” she
said.

Jodie scuttled into the tent and knelt next
to the stricken captain. His face was unnaturally pale in the glow
of the flashlight. His eyes were closed and his breathing was
uneven and shallow. “It’s Jodie. I’m right here, Dick,” she
said.

“General Lawrence,” he said in a barely
audible voice, “you have to get out of here, now. The gunfire and
all the noise…” he trailed off.

Jodie waited to see if he was going to
continue on his own, then gently prompted him. “Yes, Dick, you were
saying?”

“There’s a chance we were heard… you can’t
wait until morning to leave… too risky,” he said, pausing every few
syllables to gather the strength to continue.

“Kate says it’s not safe to move you now,”
Jodie answered, “so we’ll have to stay a little longer and wait
until you’re strong enough to travel.”

He did not speak again for so long that Jodie
thought he had lost consciousness again. She started to tell Kate
that she was going back out to consult with the rest of the group,
when injured man stirred. His voice was even weaker than before. He
lacked the strength to control his tongue and lips well enough to
form clear words, so that his speech was both labored and slurred.
It did not require medical training to see that Cafferson’s
intelligence man was almost at the end of his strength. His entire
body strained with the effort to produce a few words. “Gen’ral, I’m
not… gonna get… stron’er. I’m… done. Jus’ leave…” He faded out,
then drew in a shuddering breath, and continued. “Leave me here…
coun’ry… nee’ you…” He fell silent, and his tense body relaxed as
he passed into unconsciousness again.

Jodie picked up Kate with her eyes and
signaled with her chin to step out of the tent. They stood together
by the entrance, and far enough away from the others that they
could talk quietly without being overheard. Jodie said softly, “I
can’t leave him behind if there’s the even smallest chance he might
make it. You’re the only one of us who has any medical
training…”(she had found this out during the long trip from
Washington) “… so it has to be your call.”

Kate’s eyes went to the tent where Murphy was
lying, then returned to Jodie. “Christ, General, how am I qualified
to decide a thing like this? I took a three-week course in
battlefield first aid. I know how to sew up an open wound, splint a
broken bone, administer a shot of morphine, start an I.V., things
like that. You’re asking me to make a decision that’s way above my
paygrade.” Her voice, which was already low, dropped even further.
Jodie had to move her ear close to Kate’s moth to make out her next
few words. “Even if I knew enough to give you a reliable answer,
I’d be the last person you should ask. Dick and I… we were… we’ve
been…” She hesitated and fell silent.

Jodie was mystified for a moment, but she
quickly worked it out. “Oh. Oh,
Jesu
s, Kate. How serious was
it?” she whispered, her eyes studying her friend’s face.

Kate’s face was set in an unreadable mask, as
if she was working hard to suppress any hint of the emotions that
tore at her inside. “We were going to be married in the fall, sir,”
she answered, addressing Jodie as her superior officer rather than
her friend, to keep the pain at bay by hiding behind military
formality. “So you can see why my judgment can’t be trusted in this
case, sir. So, with all due respect, I think it has to be
your
call, sir. I want you to know you can count on me to
back you 100 percent, whatever you decide, General Lawrence.”

Jodie understood what Kate was trying to do.
She patted the tall blonde’s shoulder and said, “Go back in the
tent and stay with him until we decide what to do. I want to
consult with the others and see what they think before we make any
decision.”

“Yes, sir,” Kate said, looking up at the sky
and all around, as if she detected something. “But I should remind
you that every second of delay increases the chance that…”

“I’m pretty sure that five minutes won’t make
much difference, one way or the other,” Jodie cut in. “Now, get in
there with him, and stay there,” she said, pointing at the
tent.

Kate nodded and ducked down to re-enter the
tent, while Jodie returned to where Merry, Steph and Robin waited
for her, and squatted down among them. She quickly summarized what
she had seen and what Murphy had said, leaving out any mention
Kate’s personal relationship with the intelligence man. “The floor
is open for suggestions,” she concluded.

“I think he’s right. We should get you out of
here right away, Jodie,” Robin said. “One of us can stay behind
with Dick Murphy, but you’re the important one.”

“I agree,” said Merry. “I volunteer to stay
back with him.”

Steph surveyed the others and shook her head.
“Forget it, girls.
We’re
supposed to protect
you
, not
the other way around. If anybody would be left behind, it would be
me or Kate. But we’re not leaving anybody. Murphy knows the risks;
we all do. We knew there might come a time when we would have to
put our lives on the line to carry out the assignment. Anyway, as a
practical matter, how would we get him to the hospital in time to
do any good, if the only means of transportation is gone? I agree
it’s too dangerous to stay around here any longer. We’ll put Dick
in the vehicle and take him with us. Whatever happens to him after
that is out of our hands.”

“I told Colonel Bransom that I would put
myself under the orders of my security team, so I guess that means
you and Kate are the hostesses of this cotillion, Steph,” Jodie
said. She rose to her feet. “Let’s rig up a stretcher for Dick and
get out of here, posthaste.”

“Never mind,” said Kate, who had returned
unheard. In a voice as empty of emotion as the vacuum of outer
space, she finished, “He won’t be needing it. Dick Murphy is
dead.”

Jodie stood up and stretched out her arms to
hug her grieving friend. “Kate…” she began. She stopped in her
tracks when Kate held up her hand.

“He’s dead and that’s it, General,” she said
harshly. “We have to go on without him, and we need to go
now
. There’ll be time later to remember absent friends.”

“You’re right, Kate,” said Jodie. She
surveyed the clearing. “But we can’t run off and leave this mess
behind.” She waved her hand at the campsite and the bodies of
Billy’s gang. “The second anybody finds this place and sees all the
Army-issue gear, they’ll know we were here, and after that all
they’ll have to do is follow the SUV’s trail to find us. We need to
get as long a head start on pursuit as we possibly can get.”

“It’s not going to take Sherlock Holmes to
figure out that somebody with a M-63 cooled all these hillbilly
assholes, either,” Robin pointed out. “We need to do something with
all the dead meat before we leave, stash it somewhere out of sight,
at the very minimum.”

“Right, and we have to do it all on the
double,” Jodie said, automatically taking command again, as she had
on the first day at the Academy. “Robin, you break down the tents,
and pack up all of our stuff. Steph, you go around and clean up any
traces of Billy’s gang: their loose gear, the ropes, blood,
whatever. The rest of us will drag the bodies…”

Chapter Seven: Lipstick on a pig

Suddenly the night was transformed to day, as
blindingly bright searchlights lit the hilltop clearing. They heard
the sound of rotors beating the air directly overhead, and a small
tornado seemed to have settled on the campsite, making the tent
walls billow out and blowing scraps and trash wildly in every
direction. Out of the glare from above came instructions in a
harshly amplified voice. “Do not attempt to escape. This area is
surrounded. If you have any weapons on your persons, throw them
down immediately, then place yourselves face down on the ground,
with your hands on your heads. Move slowly and keep your hands in
sight at all times. Anyone who fails to follow these orders may be
shot without notice. There will be no further warnings.”

Kate slowly and carefully went through her
pockets, and tossed away the extra magazines of rifle ammunition.
Then she unbuckled the gun belt that held her holstered automatic
and dropped it to the ground as well before she joined the others,
who already lay prone in the dirt.

“This is the second time I’ve done this
tonight,” Jodie told Merry, who was beside her, “and you’d think
I’d be smart enough to put a sleeping bag down first, this time
around. There’s one good thing about this, though,” she continued
as a helicopter landed in the clearing and uniformed men began to
leap out and run towards them.

“What’s that?” Merry asked, glad to hear that
Jodie could see anything good in their current situation.

“After the way Billy and his boys dragged us
around already, we can’t get much filthier,” she answered.

The soldiers had now surrounded them, and
were roughly pulling their arms down behind their backs and locking
handcuffs around their wrists.

“Yeah,” Merry agreed, as two of the men
hauled her to her feet and began to march her away to the ’copter,
“that
is
good.”

Whoever was in charge of the operation seemed
to know exactly who they were after. Jodie, Robin and Merry were
immediately placed together in the back of the helicopter,
accompanied by four white-clad members of the Shore Patrol, the
naval equivalent of the MPs. The helicopter lifted off without
waiting for Kate or Steph.

“What happened to the rest of the people?”
Jodie demanded. “Where are Lieutenant Swenson and Lieutenant
Carroll?”

“None of your goddamn business, traitor, so
shut it,” answered the Petty Officer 2nd Class on her left.

The leader of the squad, a grizzled Master
Chief Petty Officer with three stripes, a rocker and two stars on
his sleeve said, “Collins, you are speaking to a Lieutenant
General, and whatever she’s charged with you will address her with
the respect due her rank. Is that understood?”