Part 30 (1/2)
”Blow me. Hey, Lieutenant!”
”Lt. Grale! You gotta try this.”
”I really don't,” Grale said.
”He just doesn't want to see the words 'old age' in print.”
Everyone laughed. An explosion and the sound of wrenching metal pealed through the open windows, a distant and painful reality check.
”Gearhead,” Grale said, ”Take ten men and go see who killed who.”
”Yes, sir!” the skinny youngster said, snapping gum that'd been in his mouth since morning.
The rest of the men kept joking about the machine's one-line fortunes, and Simmons, with a half-smile plastered on his face, said, ”Come on, Lieutenant. It won't hurt you to see what it says.”
”Yeah, Lieutenant, come on.”
A chorus of ”come ons” and ”yeahs” broke out, and Grale couldn't see the harm in a little fun.
He stepped up to the machine-it was such a humble thing-and Paula showed him how it worked. It reminded Grale of a slot machine. Maybe that was why it'd been in a casino.
A tiny slip of paper curled out.
Grale ripped it free, read it, stared at it for a moment, and then let it fall to the floor with a shrug. Like jackals, Grale's men fell on the sc.r.a.p and gaped at it, horror-struck. By nightfall, everyone on base knew how Lieutenant Grale was going to die.
The change came the next morning. Some of the men wouldn't talk to Grale unless they had to. Overnight, he'd become the most beloved and still (somehow) least-popular man on base. And anyone with something bad to say about Lt. Grale: Watch out!
Everywhere Grale went, his soldiers looked at him with wide, wet eyes and the color would swirl out of their faces. They'd utter ”yes, sir,” as if the post had arrived with a thousand pounds of Dear John letters.
What harm could a little fun be? Grale snorted at the thought.
Aside from bringing morale to an all-time low? Not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing.
”I want that d.a.m.n machine turned into sc.r.a.p.”
”Yes, sir.”
”You hear me? If it stays on this base, it'll be reincarnated as a locker.”
”Yes, sir.”
”Now! I want to see you do it, Marine!”
That caused some grumbling. Word went out that ol' Grale was afraid of the death machine. ”And who can blame him?” they'd say.
What the h.e.l.l did they know?
Grale crouched behind the billboard and watched the disaster unfold across the street. His boys (and girl), the whole lot of them, in an instant, decided that they were going to defy fate, to prove Grale's slip of paper wrong. He couldn't hear what they were saying over the gunfire, and they weren't signaling anything.
A bullet sliced through the sign and sent bits of brick from the building behind Grale into the air. The d.a.m.n thing almost parted his hair. He pressed himself against the ground.
He saw Gearhead on the radio. Calling an air strike. Good boy.
Simmons put a new mag in his gun and s.h.i.+fted his legs.
No, d.a.m.n d.a.m.n you, you, Simmons, Simmons, stay stay put. put. Grale gestured for him to stay down. Grale gestured for him to stay down.
He didn't.
”No!”
But Simmons charged around the corner. Gearhead looked across the ruined street at Grale and Grale shook his head. Gearhead stopped the others from following. Good boy.
Grale ground his teeth. Once, his daughter had left at seventeen hundred hours, back at the base in Germany, and never reported for dinner. She'd come home at oh-one hundred, drunk and battered. Grale knocked a few heads in that night, that was for sure. But the time between seventeen and oh-one hundred hours? That excruciating wait? That was how Grale felt when Simmons turned the corner and charged toward the ruins of the office building.
A crack shattered the other sounds of the urban fighting and Grale knew what'd happened, even before he heard Simmons cry out. Just like he knew what happened that night, so long ago, before his daughter had opened her mouth to start crying.
Grale peered over the sign. Simmons was down, hard. The sniper had shot his leg. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was hoping to draw out more.
Grale made a gesture at Gearhead.
Gearhead shook his head.
Grale made ready to spring, putting his back against the sign and shouldering his rifle. This was his job, d.a.m.n it, these were his children. Screw that miserable machine and its miserable opinion.
”Covering fire!” Gearhead screamed. NATO rounds poured upward toward the office building. Grale turned at the edge of the sign and dashed into the street. Throughout, the sniper was silent. Good boy, Gearhead.
Grale reached Simmons, and winced. The boy's leg was mangled badly-he'd be lucky to keep it. Have Have to to carry carry him, him, Grale thought. Grale thought.
”Lieutenant?”
”Shut up. You gotta live so that cow can kill ya.”
Grale squatted and hefted Simmons up. Boy could use a meal or two extra. d.a.m.n, it was hot out.
Grale's eyes were glued up to the building.
He saw the sniper.
He could see into the sniper's eyes, all the way from the ground. They were like brown gla.s.s, and the man behind them-the man behind the rifle-hated Grale, hated Simmons, and he'd hate anyone else that stepped into the street. The NATO rounds weren't keeping him down anymore.
Grale knew what was going to happen. He always did. He turned away from the sniper, Simmons curled on his shoulders, and started running back to cover. If the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was going to shoot Grale, he'd have to do it from behind.
A puff of dirt flashed up between Grale's legs, as if to say, ”I don't mind that.”
But Grale was almost there.
Gearhead and the others were still firing, trying to keep the sniper down. But the man behind the rifle had a pair made of bra.s.s. Another round zipped past Grale's ear.