Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary (19 page)

Goldman opened his eyes, and the blur between dream and reality vanished. There was no mistaking where he was; the click of the air conditioning coming on and beginning its interminable throbbing was familiar enough proof he was sitting in a hard, government issue chair in the hospital room at Nha Trang, Vietnam. Yet, his clothes were soaked with sweat, and a chill went through him as the cold air moved in the room.

And there was another, more important, detail that was not right.

The hospital bunk was empty. Casey – Casca – was gone...

A cold wash of fear ran over Goldman. Momentarily his mind filled again with the sights and sounds and smell of that last great battle on the Parthian plains.

Or was it the smell of blood coming from the hospital morgue next door? There were, of course, rational ways to rule out hallucinations.
After all I am a doctor, forcing the emerging panic back to the dark where it came from
. He made a controlled unhurried visual survey of the room. It was precisely as he had remembered it. Nothing whatever had changed except that Casey was no longer on the bed. And, considering where his chair was placed, no one could have rolled a stretcher into the room and taken the wounded man while he slept. He looked at the bed. Had the man never been there in the first place? No. There was the indentation a body would normally have made, and the top sheet was pushed aside much as it would have been if Casey had simply gotten up of his own accord and left the room.

Goldman bent over the bed and absently ran his fingers lightly over the surface. He felt a lingering trace of warmth. He looked back at the door. Closed. Feeling a little foolish, he bent down and looked under the bed. He could see all the way to the shadowed wall. Nothing. He made a careful search of the entire room. Empty of any human life other than his own.

Odd. Damned odd.

He snapped the fingers of his right hand. He could hear the sharp noise distinctly. He moved his hand against the light. No. He was in full command of his own senses, a rational human being.

Yet...

He opened the door and stepped out into the hall and found himself stumbling, his body functioning as though all the energy had been drained from it. The lethargy weighed down his limbs as he made his way down the long hallway to Colonel Landries's room. He felt a little as though he were drunk
– but he had no memory of drinking. As he passed the mess hall, an outside door opened, and he saw that dawn had almost come. He checked his watch: 0430 hours. Solid reality. Inside the mess hall the cooks were cussing out the Vietnamese kitchen help. Normal. Familiar.

He beat on Landries's door.

"What the hell is it now?" came the grumbling sleep-filled response from inside.

Goldman pounded again.

"All right: All right! Knock off the noise. I'm coming."

Landires opened the door. He was wearing only Bermuda shorts, and sweat trickled down the thin gray hairs on his chest.

"Goldman?" He saw something in his surgeon's eyes. "It's Casey, isn't it? He's dead?"

"Dead?" Goldman laughed. "Dead? Casey dead? No, Doctor, that is the one thing he's not." He roared with laughter that bordered on the hysterical.

They were in Landries's office, the door locked, and the bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey nearly empty on the desk. Both men had been oblivious to the passage of time.

"That's all of it, Colonel," Goldman concluded. "That's it. His bunk is empty, and he is gone. I don't know if perhaps I am not relieved that he is."

Landries moved his glass between his thin, artistic fingers. Silence hung in the room. Finally Landries reached for the bottle, divided the remaining whiskey between his glass and Goldman's, and threw the empty bottle in the wastebasket. The gesture had a kind of routine finality to it... as though the whole matter was settled.

Landries took a long pull from his glass, letting the sweet burning of the Tennessee sipping whiskey settle into his stomach. "Perhaps you're right, Goldie"--it was the first time he had ever called Goldman anything but Goldman. "Perhaps it is just as well. So... We will just turn it over to the military police as an AWOL from the hospital report and hope that's the end to it. Somehow I don't think the MPs are going to find him. And, as for the records, both you and I know how often medical records get lost or destroyed in a war zone. I've raised enough hell about it in the past. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened to Casey's records. All his records, including his 201 file you sent for. No, Goldie, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised at all if that happened. Would you?"

Goldman nodded in agreement.

"Now, as for the whole thing," the colonel continued, "what we saw and what he told you
– that is another problem." He was silent a very long time. "Any suggestions?"

“
No."

"Then let's just assume that it's none of our damned business and let it go at that."

"Agreed."

"However..." A slow, slightly malicious smile began to form at the edges of Landries's mouth. "Next time I corner the chaplain I think
I'll have some interesting questions to put to him."

On the Sinai Peninsula an American-made half-track roared and grumbled its way over a bank of sand dunes and settled into a wadi at the base of a small outcropping of rock. The driver wheeled the vehicle around, locking one tread so that it would spin in tight circles, the act of a hot-rodder that the young Israeli soldiers in the back thoroughly enjoyed. They yelled their approval, their tanned faces flushed with the excitement of victory and success. As the half-track spun, the Star of David was clearly visible on its side.

The only soldier not exuberant or laughing was the squad leader, but the young Israelis did not hold this against him. They considered themselves lucky to have such a leader. Perhaps he was a little too dour and sober at times, but they all agreed that he had an uncanny instinct for doing the right thing at the right time. That instinct had saved their asses more than once in this last bout with the Egyptians in their Russian-made armor. Yet, they really knew nothing about the squad leader. He was one of those who had come from nowhere to aid the Israelis in their struggle against the Arabs; Israel in turn had asked no questions.

The Israeli troopers quickly dismounted and fanned out to take a careful look at the area and the surrounding terrain features. The radioman had already set up his equipment and was prepared to send or receive. The squad's assignment was important; twenty miles to the west, on their right flank, the Egyptian forces were reeling back in confusion and panic after an initial success; the half- track's crew was to keep the Egyptians in sight and radio back the Egyptian position. Along with other units similar to theirs they were to keep the Egyptians canalized into as narrow an area as possible. This would make it easier for the Israeli Air Force to pick the Egyptians off. The secondary mission of the half-track squads was to take care of stragglers once the main body of the Egyptians had passed. They would either kill them or herd them back into the cauldron of sunburned sand and rock that was Sinai.

Evening was coming when the squad satisfied themselves that the area was secure. The driver of the half-track, a smiling, curly-haired young man of twenty, unslung his 9mm UZI submachine gun and squatted in the sand. Grabbing a handful between his fingers, he let it fall in separate streams to the earth. He looked up at his squad leader and said – in a voice that had Brooklyn all over it: "Shit, man, ain't there nothing out here but this?" He threw the last of the sand down. "This ain't no fun, man. I wish to hell I hadn't let my old man hype me on that return to Israel jazz. I wouldn't be out here now trying to blow up a bunch of ragheads." Pausing, he licked his dry lips. "I wish we had more water. It might get thin if we're out here too long."

The squad leader turned to him. The man's face was as rugged as these ancient hills. He oriented his square-set body to the north, waited a moment as though considering something the young driver could not know, then pointed. "There used to be a spring at the base of two hills about two clicks from here," he said. "It never ran dry. It's probably worth checking out later."

When he took his helmet off the scar by his hairline showed white in contrast to the deep tan of his face. The thin scar running down from his right eye to the corner of his mouth was almost invisible as it molded itself into his crooked grin.

The cocky young driver looked at him. "Is that right? You been out here before?"

Before Casey could answer, Isaac, the rabbi's son, called the squad to evening prayer. After all, it was the Sabbath.

Casey watched the young warriors pray to their God in the evening light, the sun letting red streaks break over the Sinai. He heard again the sound of the ancient Hebrew litany coming from the throats of these young men: "It is written in the Law: for the Lord your God, he is God of the gods, and Lord of the Lords, the great God, the mighty and the terrible... and it is written afterwards: He doth execute the judgment..."

Casey stood still, letting the terrible isolation of this, land envelop him. He answered the Brooklyn Jew's question in a voice that was just a whisper that only he heard:

"Yes. I soldiered out here a long time ago. A very long time ago..."

He was galley slave and gladiator, warrior and vagabond, living by his wits and his skills as a fighting man.  For he was Casca – the eternal mercenary, the soldier condemned to fight forever.

Now his travels have taken him west, to the savage land of the Teotec.  And atop a storm-shrouded pyramid of Mexico the priests prepare to sacrifice Casca.  The knife plunges – and the man who cannot die rises from the altar stone to reclaim his beating heart and to proclaim himself Casca, God of Death.

For more information on the entire Casca series see
www.casca.net

The Barry Sadler website
www.barrysadler.com

By Barry Sadler

Casca 1: The Eternal Mercenary

Casca 2: God of Death

Casca 3: The Warlord

Casca 4: Panzer Soldier

Casca 5: The Barbarian

Casca 6: The Persian

Casca 7: The Damned

Casca 8: Soldier of Fortune

Casca 9: The Sentinel

Casca 10: The Conquistador

Casca 11: The Legionnaire

Casca 12: The African Mercenary

Casca 13: The Assassin

Casca 14: The Phoenix

Casca 15: The Pirate

Casca 16: Desert Mercenary

Casca 17: The Warrior

Casca 18: The Cursed

Casca 19: The Samurai

Casca 20: Soldier of Gideon

Casca 21: The Trench Soldier

Casca 22: The Mongol

By Tony Roberts

Casca 25: Halls of Montezuma

Casca 26: Johnny Reb

Casca 27: The Confederate

Casca 28: The Avenger

Casca 30: Napoleon’s Soldier

Casca 31: The Conqueror

Casca 32: The Anzac

Casca 34: Devil’s Horseman

Casca 35: Sword of the Brotherhood

Casca 36: The Minuteman

Casca 37: Roman Mercenary

Casca 38: The Continental

Casca 39: The Crusader

Casca 40: Blitzkrieg

Casca 41: The Longbowman