Part 28 (1/2)

Somewhere up ahead, a machine gun started chattering. Armstrong Grimes threw himself flat. Bullets cracked past overhead. Any time you could hear bullets cracking, they came too d.a.m.n close.

Armstrong shared a stretch of brick wall near the southern outskirts of Salt Lake City with Yossel Reisen. ”Don't these Mormon maniacs ever give up?” he demanded-more of G.o.d, probably, than of the Congresswoman's nephew.

G.o.d had nothing to say. Yossel did: ”Doesn't look like it. Long as they've got guns and people to shoot 'em, they're going to keep fighting.”

”People.” Armstrong made it into a swear word. Yossel was too right. Some of the Mormons who carried rifles, pistols, and grenades were women. Some of the Mormons who crewed mortars and machine guns were women, too. From everything Armstrong had seen, they fought just as hard and just as well as their male counterparts. He didn't know if that old saw about the female of the species' being more deadly than the male was true, but in Utah she sure wasn't any less less deadly. deadly.

Mormon women usually fought to the death whenever they could. They had their reasons, most of them good. U.S. soldiers who captured women in arms were inclined to take a very basic revenge. That went against regulations. Officers lectured about how naughty it was. It went on happening anyway. Armstrong didn't see how to stop it. If he caught some gal who was trying to kill him . . . It was more interesting than thinking about shooting a guy the size of a defensive tackle, that was for sure.

Down in the Confederate States, some of the black guerrillas were of the female persuasion. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in b.u.t.ternut who caught them served them the same way. U.S. propaganda said that only went to show what a bunch of cruel and miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.ds the Confederates were. Armstrong didn't doubt the Confederates were cruel and miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; they'd come too close to killing him too many times for him to doubt it. But raping captives wasn't one of the reasons he didn't, not anymore. He understood the enemy in ways he hadn't before.

That sparked a new thought. He turned to Yossel Reisen and said, ”You ever get the idea we're more like the a.s.sholes on the other side of the line who're trying to kill us than we are like the fancy-pants f.u.c.kers back in Philly who give us orders?”

He realized he could have picked somebody better than the Jew to ask. Yossel's aunt was one of those fancy-pants folks. If he'd wanted to, he almost certainly could have got out of being conscripted. That he hadn't either spoke well for him or said he was a little bit nuts, depending.

But he nodded now. ”Oh, h.e.l.l, yes. I wonder how many guys in the War Department have ever had lice. Maybe a few in the last war, when they were lieutenants or something.”

”Not many, I bet,” Armstrong said. ”People like that, they would've found cushy jobs back then, too.”

”Wouldn't be surprised.” Reisen took a pack of cigarettes out of a tunic pocket, stuck one in his mouth, and offered the pack to Armstrong. Once they were both smoking, he went on, ”Did I ever tell you my Uncle David only has one leg?”

There weren't a whole lot of families in the USA that didn't have a wounded or mutilated male relative. Armstrong said, ”Maybe you did. I think so, but I'm not sure.”

”Aunt Flora could have kept him out of the Army if he'd wanted her to. Same with me,” Yossel said, his voice matter-of-fact. ”But you've got to do what you've got to do. Otherwise, how can you stand yourself?” After a moment, he added, ”Did I ever tell you Uncle David's a fire-breathing Democrat?”

”Yeah, I think you did,” Armstrong answered. Because Reisen seemed to expect him to, he asked, ”How does your aunt like it?”

”She doesn't,” Yossel said, as matter-of-factly as before. ”They still get along with each other well enough, but they argue whenever they talk about politics.”

Before Armstrong could say anything, a horrible screech filled the air. ”Screaming meemies!” he yelled, and folded himself as small as he could, down there in the foxhole that was now suddenly, horribly, on the wrong side of the fence. Yossel Reisen did the same.

The spigot mortar burst with a roar like the end of the world. A lot of the rounds from the Mormons' weird makes.h.i.+ft artillery were duds. The ones that weren't packed a h.e.l.l of a wallop. The ground shook under Armstrong. For a horrid moment, he thought the foxhole would collapse and bury him alive.

What if it did? The headline would be FORMER FIRST LADY'S NEPHEW KILLED IN COMBAT! FORMER FIRST LADY'S NEPHEW KILLED IN COMBAT! Armstrong would make a one-sentence add-on to the story- Armstrong would make a one-sentence add-on to the story-Another soldier also died-if that.

When he could hear anything but the thunder of the explosion, he heard people screaming. There in the bottom of the hole, his eyes met Yossel Reisen's. He knew exactly what Yossel was thinking, because he was thinking the same thing himself. Oh, h.e.l.l, Oh, h.e.l.l, or words to that effect. or words to that effect.

He wanted to come out of the safety of the foxhole about as much as he wanted to dance naked in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City wagging his p.e.c.k.e.r at the gilded statue of the Angel Moroni. That might get him shot faster than this. On the other hand, it might not.

But you had to pick up your buddies. That had been drilled into him since day one of his abbreviated basic training. He'd seen the sense of it in the field, too, which wasn't true of a lot of the c.r.a.p they'd fed him in basic. If you didn't help your buddies when they needed it most, they wouldn't help you if you did-and you were liable to.

”Come on, dammit.” He and Yossel said the same thing at the same time, as if they were an old married couple. They'd both been around this particular block often enough, that was for d.a.m.n sure.

Up they went, keeping their bellies rattlesnake-low on the ground. Rex Stowe was out there, too. The sergeant made no bones about disliking several of the new men in his section. He came to help them anyway. They were part of his job-and, again, he expected them to do the same for him.

That d.a.m.ned Mormon machine gunner opened up again after the spigot-mortar round went off. He knew there'd be wounded-and that there'd be guys trying to do what they could for them. Spray enough bullets around and you'd get some more wounded, maybe even some dead.

Armstrong and Sergeant Stowe reached the closest injured man at about the same time. They looked at him and then looked at each other. Armstrong was pretty sure his face wore the same horrified expression as Stowe's. That a man could make so much noise when so little of him was left . . . War was full of nasty surprises, and it had just pulled another one on Armstrong Grimes.

”Cavendis.h.!.+ Hey, Cavendis.h.!.+” Stowe said. When he got a momentary lull in the screaming, he asked, ”You want us to bring you in, or you want to get it over with right now? Your call.”

Had that been Armstrong, he would have wanted it over and done with. He had no idea how Stowe knew the wounded man was Cavendish; there sure wasn't enough left of his face to tell by that, and one guy's shrieks sounded a lot like another's. But Cavendish seemed perfectly coherent when he said, ”For the love of Mike, take me in.” Then, hardly missing a beat, he went back to screaming again.

Stowe looked at Armstrong and shrugged. ”He might live.”

He didn't sound as if he believed it. Armstrong sure didn't. He looked at what was left of Cavendish. No, he wouldn't have wanted to go on if he looked like that. But if the other soldier did . . . ”Gotta try, I guess.”

They bandaged and tourniqueted Cavendish's wounds, stopping the worst of the bleeding. Stowe closed the one in the man's belly with a couple of safety pins. They weren't much, but they were better than nothing. Both Armstrong and Stowe gave him a shot of morphine. ”Maybe he'll shut up,” Armstrong said.

”Yeah, and if we gave him too much of the s.h.i.+t, maybe he'll shut up for good,” Stowe said. ”That's easier than going out the way he was.” Armstrong grunted and nodded. His hands were all b.l.o.o.d.y. So were Stowe's. The sergeant asked, ”You want to take him back, or shall I?”

No corpsmen were in sight. They did the best they could, but they couldn't be everywhere. Armstrong considered. Taking Cavendish back would get him out of the front line for a bit, but the Mormons might shoot him while he did it. He shrugged. ”I'll take care of it if you want me to.”

”Go on, then.” Stowe could make the same calculation as Armstrong. ”I'll get him on your back-you'll want to stay low.”

”f.u.c.kin'-A I will,” Armstrong said fervently. He'd stayed as near horizontal as he could while working on Cavendish. So had Rex Stowe. They'd both spent a lot of time-too much time, as far as Armstrong was concerned-up at the front. They'd learned what tricks there were to know about staying alive and not getting hurt. The only trouble was, sometimes all the tricks in the world didn't do you a d.a.m.n bit of good.

With what was left of Cavendish on top of him, Armstrong crawled away from the Mormon machine gun. At least the dreadfully wounded man wasn't wriggling so much. Maybe the morphine the two noncoms had given him was taking hold.

Even half a mile back of the line, they acted a lot more regulation. A soldier in a clean new uniform stared at Armstrong and said, ”What are you doing bringing a body back here? Leave him for Graves Registration.”

”f.u.c.k you, Jack,” Armstrong said without heat. ”For one thing, he ain't dead. For another thing, he's worth two of Graves Registration and four of you. Point me at the nearest aid station before I kick your worthless a.s.s.”

Armstrong wasn't small, but the other man was bigger. Fury wouldn't have worried him. Armstrong's complete indifference to consequences did. Maybe he thought Armstrong would just as soon kill him as look at him-and maybe he was right. He said, ”There's a tent behind that pile of bricks. It s.h.i.+elds 'em from small-arms fire.”

”Thanks.” Armstrong headed that way, carrying Cavendish now. The wounded man was a lot lighter than he had been before he got hurt. A corpsman came out before Armstrong got halfway there. ”Hey!” he called. ”Come give me a hand with this guy.”

The corpsman trotted toward him. When he got close enough to take a good look at Cavendish, he stopped short, his boots kicking up dust. ”Jesus!” he said.

”Tell me about it,” Armstrong said. ”You should've seen him before my sergeant and me patched him up. But he said he wanted to live if he could.” He shrugged. ”What are you gonna do when a guy says that?”

”Jesus.” The corpsman looked green, and he'd seen some of the worst things war could do. ”Well, I guess we've got to try. I'll help you get him to the tent.”

”Thank you.” Cavendish's voice was dreamy and far away. Armstrong had thought he'd long since pa.s.sed out. The corpsman looked as if he'd just heard a ghost.

The surgeon in the tent did a double take when he saw Cavendish. Armstrong got out of there before the doc went to work. Watching would have made him sick. That was crazy, but it was true. He went back up to the front line. There, at least, death and mutilation came at random. You didn't know about them ahead of time. That made them, if not tolerable, at least possible to bear.

Jefferson Pinkard wondered why the h.e.l.l the vice president of the Cyclone Chemical Company wasn't in the Army. Cullen Beauregard-”Call me C.B.”-Slattery couldn't have been more than thirty. He was obviously healthy, and just as obviously sharp.

”Oh, yes, sir,” he said. ”Anything alive, this'll s.h.i.+ft. You don't need to worry about that at all.”

”You make it for bugs, though.”

”That's right.” Slattery nodded.

”But it'll kill rats and mice,” Jeff said. C.B. Slattery nodded again. Jeff went on, ”And cats and dogs?” Another nod. ”And people?”