Whatever Gods May Be Part 32

"Climb, Jamie!" yelled the voice. "Climb!" So, somehow, Jamie climbed.

Her chosen track angled between forty-five and sixty degrees straight up the face of the craggy bluff, and just one side of her body had to do most of the work. Her right arm pulled, her right leg pushed, then she flattened against a ragged cleft, wedging her nearly helpless left arm and leg for stability and leverage, groaning reflexively with the effort. She waited a few seconds-it seemed like only a few seconds-for the light-headedness to pa.s.s, for the pain to be less addling, for her breathlessness to be less desperate, and she did it again. And again.

All her awareness narrowed to this minute time and place-the protrusion just over her head that her hand could grasp, the spur from which her foot could push, the tenuous balance threatened by the pain so eager to steal what was left of her sweet reason. Finally, panting, twitching, Jamie crawled onto the level ground of the ledge and collapsed, unable to answer the imploring voices on her comlink.

There she remained until yet another round whizzing too close rallied her. She dragged herself to shelter behind a worn limestone boulder and looked up.

* 261 *

"Oh G.o.d." Jamie had known all along that this precipice was much higher than the last. She needed to climb at least twenty meters this time. How? Her head flopped back against the rock. She let her eyes close. Just for a minute, that's all. They startled open again when somebody touched her.

Sherman. Smiling like she'd never seen him smile before.

She grinned. "Could use a lift. Think you're up for it? So to speak."

"h.e.l.l, yes. All aboard."

His impressive strength amplified by adrenaline or delirium or both, Sherman belly-crawled up the steep switchback path with Jamie on top of him, using her body and the pa.s.sive-identifier cammies she wore to obscure his visibility to the enemy.

It was an invaluable, strength-restoring respite. From it she got a chance to gulp some water and figure out that although they were painful, her wounds hadn't damaged anything vital. She could still think, probably still shoot. From the ops center she learned that a new horde of PIA now pushed toward them from the south. Aerial visuals also showed PIA activity to the east on Mount Landargun, just eight hundred meters away and nearly four hundred meters higher at its peak than Prancer-Dog Three.

The low-key pickup Jamie hoped for had blossomed into a major battle, the first significant exchange in two months, perhaps the most decisive of the entire Palawan conflict. And at its epicenter hunkered Prancer-Dog Three, no longer much of a fortress as its defenders, who already faced fire from enemy helicopters, antic.i.p.ated new fire from enemy weapons on Mount Landargun.

Embry had deployed the better part of two regiments. Marine helos now attacked PIA positions from the air, and soon infantry would land at several spots to the north and move toward Prancer-Dog Three as fast as possible. The four POWs there and the sixteen guys on the Rubyfish team would be extracted as soon as prudence allowed. The new extraction site-Ruby X-ray-was a barely helo-accessible spot on the ridge about fifty meters southwest of Prancer-Dog Three, to which Rubyfish would withdraw.

Meanwhile, Jamie, Sherman, Vargas, and Tibay would have to hold the high ground at Prancer-Dog Three. Somehow.

* 262 *

v Prancer-Dog Three reminded Jamie of the positions her fire team had used those many months ago during Operation Squeeze Play: An irregular encirclement of boulders and jagged outcrops and shallow cavelets. A zion of natural cover.

Once the guys plugged the holes in her, she found her spot-high enough, protected enough, the right fields of view. So she functioned pretty well, in spite of bouts of light-headedness and lack of decent mobility.

Jamie didn't understand why the PIA wanted the ridge, but want it they did. Maybe they thought they'd cornered the senator and the POWs there. Maybe they saw it as a chance to keep the truce talks from resuming. So many maybes...

For the first hour after Jamie reached Prancer-Dog Three, helos parried above them, keeping each other busy. So Jamie and the others at Prancer-Dog Three got no help from the Barracudas while they staved off PIA attacks coming mostly from the south and southeast.

PIA poured in from the southwest, too, but the sixteen Rubyfish guys managed to cope with that as they withdrew up the backside of the ridge to Ruby X-ray.

Everyone at Prancer-Dog Three spent their ammo carefully and well, using Trajsat downlinks to follow the sleek red filaments back to the PIA fighters who fired at them. Even so, they had to keep scrambling, keep shifting position. And, of course, the enemy knew exactly where they were.

Then, as Marine infantry approached from the north, more PIA contingents arrived, too, and the fight escalated.

"Vargas, cover your nine!" Jamie yelled. "Enemy's on Landargun, eye-to-eye with us!"

Worse, the PIA started firing long-range rocket grenades.

"Thank G.o.d they can't aim worth s.h.i.t," snarled Sherman, his finger rubbing the trigger of one of the SAWs.

"Find your target, Lieutenant," Jamie warned him. "Not much ammo left."

"Incoming!" shouted Tibay.

A Barracuda attack helo exploded against the ridge a few seconds * 263 *

later, shaking the ground; the two-man crew never had a chance. Next came a PIA rocket grenade. It detonated just beyond the largest of the east-facing Prancer-Dog Three outcrops, but shrapnel from it sprayed around them. Vargas screamed when chunks of metal peppered his right arm. The PIA on the slopes of Landargun were finding their targets.

Here we go-the endgame. Sherman helped Vargas while Jamie and Tibay did what they could to slow down the PIA. As she fired her sniper rifle, Jamie called in helo support for what she knew would be the last time. "It's now or never, boys and girls." She had Sherman move with his SAW to slightly higher ground a few feet from her and point the weapon eastward. "There. Eleven o'clock, fifteen degrees up."

Vargas picked up an E19. He had to prop his right arm into position with his left hand to use it. "Might as well spray 'em while I can, right, LT?"

She would've answered, but before she had a chance, Tibay thudded to the ground and rolled, clutching his left side.

"Tib!" screamed Vargas. "Tib!"

Tibay lay still for only a few seconds and then, incredibly, rolled onto his hands and knees, blood seeping across his left b.u.t.tock and down his leg. "I'm okay," he said like he'd stubbed a toe. Then he crawled to his SAW, aimed it, and kept firing the last of his fifty-cal ammo.

"Hey!" crowed Sherman, pointing north. "About frigging time!" Jamie counted nine Barracuda attack helicopters coming in fast, then spotted more following those. They had already started to fan out.

Soon a small fleet of Barracudas would surround Prancer-Dog Three, soon a Shark transport would hover just fifty meters away to extract them.

My G.o.d, we're gonna make it.

Beside her, Sherman grunted hard and dropped, his chest already bathed in blood. Jamie yanked him away from a spray of fire that chipped the rock around them. How the h.e.l.l?

Then she knew. "They're at the top of Landar-" A red-hot poker drilled through her right thigh, stealing her breath.

"LT, I'm outta ammo," called Tibay.

Jamie gulped for air as she clutched her leg. "Ahh s.h.i.t!" she screamed. "s.h.i.t!"

* 264 *

Tibay got to her and Sherman first.

"Get me up," Jamie said. "Hurry." She pointed to the SAW.

"There."

"LT," Tibay said, "I think-"

"C'mon, Tib," she insisted, "help me get to the SAW." Vargas leaned over Sherman. "He's alive."

"You guys take Sherman and go now," Jamie ordered as Tibay propped her behind the SAW. "Fifty meters to the pickup. Grab E-nineteens and go. Rubyfish, do you copy? We need covering fire p.r.o.nto for three coming at you from Prancer-Dog Three."

"Roger. Rubyfish copies and will cover."

Vargas shook his head. "LT-"

"Now, dammit! You're the only chance Sherman's got." Vargas and Tibay glanced at each other, then at Sherman. "Yes, ma'am," they said in unison.

"Double-time, guys," Jamie called to them as loud as she could, then took up the SAW and started shooting.

It wasn't easy. It hurt, and her aim- Well, she couldn't aim.

Not anymore. But she might be able to suppress enough PIA fire that Vargas and Tibay could get Sherman to the Rubyfish corpsman. Only fifty meters.

The first of the Barracudas were above her and she thought she heard the heavier thwack-thwack of a Shark transport helicopter, though she couldn't see it. Her vision had tunneled too much. But the SAW still had some rounds in it. She pulled, pulled on the trigger, felt the ferocious recoil- And then somebody gut-punched her, an invisible fist that plowed all the way through her twice over. Jamie fell gasping, robbed of air, robbed of everything. The dissonant tumult of destruction faded as she fell, and Jamie heard her mother's voice, soft and calm: From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever G.o.ds may be That no life lives forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river * 265 *

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Jamie recognized the epitaph she'd tried to remember but never quite could, and she knew it was the last of her emptying out.

The ground took her without cruelty-she was aware that it could have been so very cruel-and she was shown a blue, blue sky. That deep, pure blue she'd seen only in a dream once. All she had to do now to be Safe was get rid of the shadowscreen between her and the blue.

She willed her right hand to crawl across her chest and up, up to her face. Her fingers found the eyewraps that trapped her and clawed them away.

The blue came for her then, and Jamie went to it...

* 266 *

Chapter thirty-one.

still here She didn't want them to disturb the motionless, crimsoned creature sprawled below her. She hovered over it, at once imperturbable and protective, marveling at this body so familiar and yet so strange, so consummately still, so exquisitely tranquil.

Having leapt energetically toward her, they suddenly seemed to hesitate, as if adhering to her wishes, and she dared to look away, allowing herself to be riveted by the dazzling, infinite blueness above her.

Oh yes, that's where I'm supposed to be.

And she slid further into the blue. Safe was there, in the blue.

"No, no, not yet."

The sound surprised her. She didn't expect sound.

"It's not time yet."

Time? No such thing anymore. I'll just keep looking at the blue, falling toward the blue, and... She convulsed when the loudest noise she'd ever heard boomed through her body, pounding on every cell, vaulting her back off the blood-soaked ground as her heart was forced to resume beating and her lungs heaved and grated, reluctantly resuming their quest for air.

She moaned her immeasurable disappointment and faded away from the din of shouts and machines into another kind of oblivion.

v "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, this is the second time." There's that word again-time.

* 267 *

The misery in the voice attracted Jamie's attention, but it seemed so far away, and through the window she could see a sliver of blue sky.

She didn't look toward the voice, or at the body on the bed, or at the green-clad people trying to torture it back to life. She wanted only the blue and wondered what she must do to get beyond the window.

"Please, Jamie. Oh G.o.d, please come back." Who could possibly care that much whether I'm around or not?

Jamie yearned for the blue, but she had to know. So she turned toward the lament. It came from a figure hunched on a chair in a corner of the room. I'll be d.a.m.ned...

She turned back to the window, but the blue had gone, replaced by a sallow, claustral light. She was trapped, barred now from the blue, a prisoner again.

The prisoner tumbled then and kept on tumbling. Helpless, she stood witness to the current that sparked her heart to beat, the caustic oxygen that scourged her lungs, the numerous st.i.tched incisions still raw and angry, the myriad tubes and patches and needles and probes- all the gathered forces that cornered life back into the body on the bed.

This second return was soundless for her and mercifully painless.

Yet she felt tears slide out of her closed eyes and trickle down the sides of her face.

Jamie Gwynmorgan had missed her chance again.

v She liked the view from this corner, high up and away from everyone. When she wanted to, she could dip down just a bit-all it took was a thought-and look out the window. Sometimes she'd see a blue sky, and the sight of it provoked a yearning so profound that she forgot everything else and didn't remember again until the pain tugged on the tether now binding her remorselessly, inescapably to the body on the bed.

Her body, ripped up by chunks of enemy metal, racked by injury and infection and malnutrition and exhaustion. Her body, unwilling to give up but incapable of sustaining wakefulness for more than a few minutes at a time.

* 268 *

"Jamie."

The sound of her name emerged out of soft, soothing murmurs and a delicate stroking of her cheek that brushed away images of Arnoldt lying dead in a pool of blood. She wanted to respond and managed to open her eyes. But the world had become too white, too glaring. Her eyes closed again.

"Hey, Jamie, welcome to Okinawa."

She heard the cautious elation in the voice and persuaded her eyes toward the sound, trying to focus. Eventually, Lynn Hillinger's face floated into view, tearful and smiling and so, so worried.

Jamie attempted to smile too through the escalating discomfort.

"Sti' here?"

"Sure am."

"Mmm," Jamie gnashed, her eyes closing against the scald throbbing larger, faster, growing more and more shrill. She didn't want to succ.u.mb to it yet. Not yet. "Mmm. Swamp's got gators, y'know." She open her eyes again but slid away from Lynn's face, away from Lynn's soft, sweet scent, into the clemency of unconsciousness.

v "No, the docs haven't decided...In a day or two probably...

What?...Absolutely not. If I see even one reporter, Springer, you are dead meat."

Though it was m.u.f.fled, Jamie recognized who was speaking. And then the pain returned, but maybe not so much as- As before? When I saw- Nah, must've dreamed it. Might still be dreaming.