Danger Close (Shadow Warriors) (16 page)

“Fremont,” Arnley growled, hunkering down on his heels outside her hootch, staring at her. She was pale, even in the dusk light, he decided.

“Sergeant?”

“How you gettin’ along so far?” He draped his arms across his knees, trying to ignore the fact she was attractive.

“Fine. I can’t believe the difference between the utilities I wore at Delta and the ones I’m wearing now.”

“Yeah, well get the rest of issue washed before you wear them out on patrol. Softens them. Also, make sure you keep those raw spots on your calves smothered in that antibiotic ointment Zorro gave you for the next few days. Hear?”

He looked like a grizzled old bear, his face set, mouth hard and glaring at her from beneath those bushy black brows. Despite his appearance, Cathy relaxed. Arnley cared and that counted with her. “I will,” she promised fervently.

“Then why the hell didn’t you take care of yourself at Delta? I won’t be your babysitter, Fremont. I’m not going to come by every night and check those raw spots on your legs to make sure you’re doctorin’ them up right.”

She stopped oiling the trigger mechanism, holding his stare. “They never gave us anything over at Delta to take care of things like that, Sergeant Arnley.”

“You’re screwing with me.”

Cathy tried to keep the anger out of her voice. “Look, things are run a lot differently at Delta than here. Our officers don’t care like yours do. My sergeant wasn’t concerned with a few cuts or abrasions. Our job was to show up and successfully run two patrols a day. If we got sick, it was our responsibility to crawl over to the medical bunker on our own time.” Her nostrils flared as she saw the surprise in Arnley’s leathery face. “If you want the truth, I feel like I’m being pampered here. I never had an air mattress at Delta. We didn’t get ointment for cuts or oil for sunburn. So if I look a little shocked, maybe now you’ll know why. And don’t worry, I don’t need my hand held. I’m used to holding everyone else’s. You give me an order, I’ll carry it out.”

Arnley rubbed his jaw, gauging the quaver in her voice. “That’s good to hear, Fremont, because I only give an order once.”

She tensed, her eyes flashing. “I know you don’t want me here, Sergeant. No one’s sorrier that it happened than me. But this is out of our hands. We’re both good at carrying out the orders given to us. I’ll try to fit in with your team. We’ve got a common enemy out in the field to fight. I don’t want to fight back here with you or any other Marine in this team. All I want is to try and fit in for this thirty-five-day period as smoothly as possible. I don’t want trouble. I’ve got enough….”

He fought to hold on to his anger toward her, but the pleading quality of her voice got to him anyway. That and the look in her eyes. Dammit, she had a way of reaching inside him and he didn’t like that. No doubt Billy, Chesty and Gomez were already under her spell. Disgruntled, he grumbled, “It’s not important that I like or dislike you, Fremont. I’m interested in one thing—your combat capability. Now be a good girl and tell me what your function over in Delta was so I can try to figure out what the hell to do with you.”

Cathy ignored that he’d referred to her as a girl, not a woman. Arnley’s face remained impassive as she listed her responsibilities in her squad and platoon for Delta.

Buck listened to her closely. He was secretly pleased that she didn’t try to embellish or brag. Every now and again his gaze flicked to her hands and how she expertly cleaned her rifle while carrying on a conversation. He could tell she had done it hundreds of times, her motions economical. The way she caressed the weapon further impressed him, as if it were an ally. A combat Marine treated his piece as if it were his only friend.

“You’ve got me in a real fix, Fremont,” he told her after she had finished. His eyes narrowed speculatively. “You’re a cherry on my team. We’re going to end up having to protect you plus do our own assigned jobs.”

Cathy swallowed hard, automatically reassembling the lightly oiled parts of the rifle. She bristled at being called a cherry, a term used to denote someone with no previous combat experie nce. “I know I’m not a Recon, Sergeant. And I realize my combat experience is limited. And there’s no sense in me trying to sit here and convince you that I don’t need a babysitter, as you call it.” Cathy stilled her hands. “If you never know anything else about me during this next month, Sergeant, know this—I care deeply for the people I work with, man or woman. Nothing is more important to me than harmony and working as a team. It’s the only thing I have to cling to while I’m over here. I’ll try to get along, fit in and cause as few problems as possible. But I am human and I do make mistakes. Don’t expect perfection from me, Sergeant. I’ll give you my very best. That’s all I can do.”

He slowly stood, his hands resting on the webbed belt around his waist. The darkness was stalking the dusk, the shadows deepening around them and the sky growing old. “Get some sleep, Fremont. If we start getting shelled, you know which bunker to dive into?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Her heart sank as he turned away without another word, melting into the darkness. Well, what did she expect by being honest with him? His face would crack if he ever smiled. Cathy rubbed her aching eyes with the back of her hand. God, how she missed Lisa and her squad. Lifting her face to the night, she wondered if Boland would allow her to see Lisa. Did any of the women know about the transfer? They had to. Looking up the hill, Cathy made a decision.

JIM WAS BUSY at the planning board with Captain Greer when Cathy entered the CP.

“Cap’n Boland?” the sergeant called, pointing toward the entrance.

He lifted his head. Cathy stood unsurely at the open flap, her cap clutched nervously between her hands. She looked like hell and he immediately put down the grease pencil and straightened up. Glancing at Dick, he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Fine, take your time.”

Cathy managed to give him an apologetic look as he approached. “Is it too late to see you for a moment, sir?”

“Of course not. Come on, let’s go to my office. It’s around the corner here. Coffee?”

Cathy declined his offer, following him. She noticed that the few Marines manning the radios gave her discreet looks of curiosity.

“How are things going?” Jim asked, motioning her into the small, cramped confines of the office. The room was nothing more than three canvas walls with maps and charts hung all over them. An aluminum desk sat in the center, the green paint cracked and peeling from its abused surface. Two wooden chairs occupied the area.

“Okay.”

“You look tired.”

“I’m all right.”

Jim poured some coffee into his battered tin mug and sat down. “Take a seat,” he invited, pointing to the chair in front of his desk. Her movements were slow and he saw the skin pulled tight across her cheekbones. He took a sip of his coffee and met her gaze. “Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Level with me? If I ask you how you’re feeling, tell me the truth. Don’t cover it up with some flip comeback. Okay?”

“My nature, Captain. I learned a long time ago to never complain because it never did any good anyway.”

“Might get you some chicken soup if you did.” He grinned a little when she offered him a tired smile in return. “How are you doing in Buck’s team?”

“Three of the guys are great. Townsend is reserving his opinion and the sergeant thinks I’m a pain in the rear, to put it bluntly.”

Jim nodded. “With time, Buck will come around,” he assured her quietly. “How about you? You’re looking pretty washed-out.”

Cathy rubbed her face, feeling a light layer of grit on it. “I’m hanging tough. The sun sapped me today. A good night’s sleep will help.”

“Maybe we ought to have Crossly, the platoon medic, take a look at you,” he said, more to himself than her. The first week after a sunstroke was critical because a relapse was possible. He had given Arnley express orders not to push her too hard because of that potential.

“I’m really okay. Thanks,” Cathy added softly.

Jim hung on to his reaction, his mouth compressed slightly. “What did you want to see me about, Cathy?”

A warmth flowed through her, as it did every time he said her name with that husky inference. She licked her lips nervously, staring down at the cap in her hands. “I’d like permission to go see some of my friends over at Delta. Especially Lance Corporal Lisa Gardner. She’s like a sister to me.” Cathy cast a covert look up at his composed features. “I know Lane won’t let them come over here. I thought maybe if you would allow me…”

“Let’s see what I can do. I have no personal objections to your seeing them or going over to Delta.” He frowned and set his coffee cup on the desk, making a note of it on a yellow legal-size pad of paper. “I can’t promise you anything on this until I talk to Captain Ingram or Major Lane about it.”

Cathy stood up, relieved that he wasn’t going to deny her request. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you.” She drew herself up into attention. “Request permission to be dismissed, sir?”

He gave a negligent wave of his hand. “Forget the military formality, Cathy. We use that stuff back in boot camp or if a colonel’s hanging around.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling. “I know. Delta does it. It’s written all over your face.” He watched her relax and give him a sheepish smile.

“In the Marines we operated pretty much like your company.” Cathy shook her head. “God, six months in the WLF has erased everything I ever knew or did in the Corps. Talk about getting brainwashed.” She lifted her hand as she stopped at the flap. “Good night and thanks…for everything.”

Boland nodded and watched her disappear around the corner. Immediately, a scowl dropped over his features. He had a nagging gut feeling that Delta would deny Cathy’s request. He’d find out the next morning.

The morning had barely begun, the slant of the sun not yet topping the jungle, when the radio transmission from Alpha had arrived. There were other, more important things on Louise’s mind this morning, but she couldn’t afford to ignore Boland’s request, either.

“I don’t want Fremont back over here,” Louise said to Kay. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

With a mirthless grin Kay said, “Think she’s homesick for us already?”

“She misses her friends, not us. Turn down Boland’s request.” Her eyes turned angry. “If I never see Fremont again, it will be too soon.”

“According to the daily planning from regiment, Alpha’s first platoon is riding shotgun on a convoy up to Ban Pua.”

With a snort, Lane sat up in her chair. “Good. Maybe she’ll get shot by a sniper.”

“Better yet, the truck she’s riding on will get hit by rocket fire.”

“We should be so lucky, Kay. All right, that gets rid of the first problem of the day,” she muttered. “What’s next?”

Kay sat down, her features serious. “We need to cut back to four patrols a day,” she said, watching Louise wince. “The women are tired. We don’t have the replacement capability a normal company would have. Once we run out of our field-experienced personnel, we’ll have to start rotating the office pogues out there. I don’t think that would be a wise move. We would incur too high a KIA or WIA if we did that.” Kay looked up and studied the tally boards on the tent wall. “We’ve proven enough to the military and the American public with our stats for the first three-and-a-half months.”

“You’re right about the replacement problem. We’re going to have to do some maintenance by giving the women more rest.” Louise gripped the pencil, doodling absently on a piece of paper. “I don’t want to, but the facts are staring us in the face. And I don’t want more causalities—we’re still five percent below the normal patterns being set by the rest of the regiment. I want it to stay that way.”

“How do you think the press will take our cutting back on the number of patrols we’re running? We don’t want them to read the move as weakening on the part of our women.”

Louise shrugged. “First, we’ll keep this move quiet. When Mackey’s paper pushers finally realize what we’ve done, then I’ll state the facts—we have no reserves like the Marines. They’ll understand that.”

“I hope so,” Kay said fervently. “Another thing. Rogers reports Lisa Gardner is bitching more than normal. She’s stirring up a tempest in a teapot about Fremont being missing and has asked Rogers twice what happened to her.”

“It’s Friday. I’ll address Fremont’s transfer this morning with them at general assembly at 0800. That ought to quell any further problems.” Her eyes flashed with disgust.

“I think if you tell them we’re cutting their patrols, that will overshadow Fremont being transferred. Hell, they’ll soon be getting in-country R & R by rotation. They ought to be fat, dumb and happy.”

“I hate it when there’s so much gossip, Kay. And I know Gardner and Amato are stirring up their share of it about Fremont. I want it stopped, do you hear me? In the next few days, if they don’t button up their traps on their own, you talk to them. Understand?”

Kay reached for the oak swagger stick that sat on the edge of Lane’s desk. She ran her fingers down the smooth grain of the wood. “Perfectly.”

“HEY, EL Gato!” Gomez shouted, “grab your flak jacket and helmet. We’re mounting up!”

Hastily, Cathy left her hootch, the morning sun making her squint before she settled her cap and then the helmet on her head. After the housewarming yesterday afternoon at her hootch, Gomez had grandly announced that he would call her El Gato, or the cat, in Spanish. He said the feminine version would be La Gata, but the rest of the squad said they’d remember El Gato easier. So the name stuck. He smiled happily, toasted her and said it was because of her big, green catlike eyes. She toasted back and thanked him. Her heartbeat quickened as she crested the hill to join her team and the rest of First Platoon.

Cathy tried to avoid the stares of the other curious Recons, and Gomez rescued her by pulling her to his side and placing her next to Chesty. He looked down and grinned.

“Cap will be here in a minute,” he said in a deep baritone, “and we oughta be on our way in less than an hour.”

Cathy nodded. She tried to take the Recons’ stares in stride, but her stomach knotted anyway. In a few weeks, she hoped, she would no longer be a curiosity and they’d accept her.

When Jim Boland arrived, the platoon quieted. With a map spread out on the red earth, he rapidly covered the route and other pertinent information. Afterward, the platoon broke up, moving to a line of forty convoy trucks that sat on the road between the hills. Gomez, who was short and had to make two strides for Chesty’s one, filled her in as she walked between them.

“The ROKs up at Ban Pua have been getting a lot more shelling. I guess the colonel thinks they’re due for a big push from the LA,” Gomez explained. “You ever ride convoy, El Gato?”

Cathy shook her head, staring at the line of green camouflage two-and-a-half-ton trucks that were covered with heavy canvas tarpaulins to protect the contents carried in their beds. “No. I’m the new kid on the block.”

Arnley came out of nowhere and stopped the three of them. “Fremont, you go with Gomez on truck five.” He gave her a hard look. “And don’t screw up or I’ll have your ass.”

She watched him shoulder by them, shouting at the next team farther down the line. “Damn, he’s hard to like!” she muttered.

Gomez grinned. “Forget it, El Gato. If he didn’t care at all, the Sarge wouldn’t have said a thing. It’s his way of caring.”

Wonderful
, Cathy thought. She climbed into the cab of the truck while Gomez took a position on top. A platform extension had been welded off the cab and a fifty-caliber machine gun placed on it.

Boland halted at their truck, his cursory inspection missing little. Like everyone else, he was wearing his helmet, flak jacket and the M16 slung across his broad shoulder. He looked up at her.

“Ready, Fremont?”

“Yes sir,” she shouted above the roar of the trucks.

“Okay, no heroics,” he ordered over the deafening roar.

She watched him continue up toward the head of the column, stopping at every truck, inspecting it, talking to his men. He cared, she realized, a warm feeling flowing through her. He really cared. Cathy felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Gomez kneeling down on the platform and looking at her through the rear window that contained no glass.

“If something happens, you get down, El Gato.” He patted the weapon next to him. “If I turn this baby loose, we’ll rock ‘n roll. It’s called gun and run, El Gato.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll duck,” she promised.

With a lurch, the truck jerked forward, gears grinding torturously because of the heavy load it carried. Orders came down for forty miles an hour. Tying a green handkerchief, which Gomez had supplied to her earlier, around her nose and mouth, Cathy gripped her M16. The dust would be suffocating. One of the easiest targets was a convoy; even Cathy knew that. Once outside the perimeter, the convoy knit together. Red clouds rose skyward as they trundled up a dirt road called Highway Two. The blistering sun bore down on them and Cathy felt the familiar chafing of the fifteen-pound Kevlar flak vest she wore against her skin, the helmet beginning to jam her neck down between her shoulder blades. She blinked constantly, the gritty particles of dust irritating her eyes until it looked as though she was crying.

By the time they safely reached Ban Pua, a series of small hills clumped together at the end of a grassy plain, Cathy understood why the Marines hated convoy duty. Once inside the perimeter, the trucks snaked back to the rear to the ammo dump, and ROKs began to off-load their cache. Gomez slid down off the platform, opening the door for her. Then he wiped his dirt-encrusted face, taking off the handkerchief.

“Welcome to Ban Pua, El Gato.” He turned, surveying it. “We spent six months up on this hill. It’s a real graveyard.”

Cathy looked round. The gentle swell of three hills that surrounded them was heavily pockmarked with the acne of mortar and rocket rounds.

“Gomez, Fremont!” Arnley roared from a distance.

They both turned.

“Get over to the mess area and pick up five-gallon tins of water for the rest of the platoon. We’re digging in on the west side of Hill 8.”

Gomez grumbled. “I hate getting water. Come on, El Gato.”

FOR THE NEXT three hours, they carried water to and from the latrine area. Townsend, Chesty and Billy joined them later, to speed up the process. On the way up the hill, Cathy stumbled and almost fell.

“What’s the matter, you a little wobbly?” Strike goaded.

Cathy managed a tight smile. “My legs would make a good ad for Jell-O products.”

Strike said nothing, walking easily with his tins at her side for a moment.

“You look a little worse for wear.”

“I am,” Cathy admitted.

“Makes two of us,” Gomez added, giving Strike a look that said to back off.

Crossly, the medic, jogged up. “Anybody need purification tablets for their water? Cathy?”

She shook her head and pulled to a stop, setting the tins down so that her aching arms could rest for a moment. The sun was overhead and sweat was running freely off all of them.

“Zorro?”

Gomez dug out his canteen. “It’s better than dysentery.”

The afternoon was spent getting situated in the zigzag of five-foot-deep trenches that wound around the hill, since the convoy wasn’t returning to the regiment until the next morning. Toward evening, Cathy found herself with her team. They joined her for a dinner of MREs. She sensed an unspoken camaraderie between them and their hesitant acceptance of her.

“Hey,” Strike spoke up, “I got goddamn peaches. Anybody got strawberries? I’ll trade for them.”

“Watch your language,” Gomez chided, “there’s a lady present.”

“Peaches,” he repeated. “I hate these things. They taste like cardboard. Come on, somebody trade me.”

“I’ll trade my blueberries for them,” Billy drawled.

“They’re worse yet.”

Strike craned his neck toward Cathy. “You got ’em!”

“Just luck, I guess,” Cathy said, smiling.

Strike gave her a hurt-puppy-dog look designed to persuade her to trade.

“I’ll share them with you, Strike,” Cathy offered finally, unable to stand him watching her eat. “But you keep those ugly peaches. I can’t stand them, either.”

His eyes lit up and he knelt in front of her. Cathy held out her mess kit so he could scrape some of the fruit into his. Scowling, she looked up, her face inches from his. She scraped some of the strawberries back. “Half, not three-fourths,” she muttered to him in warning.

Grinning sheepishly, he climbed back up on the dirt bank. “Thanks, Fremont.”

“Call her Cat or El Gato, you stupid jarhead,” Gomez admonished, “Fremont sounds so…”

“Unladylike,” Strike completed, smiling. He held up his hands. “I know, I know…but I can’t help myself….”

Cathy smiled. “I think fighting one war is enough, don’t you?” Cathy knew there were women who would take the medic’s comment as sexual harassment; but she didn’t. She knew the difference and these men were not in that mode.

Crossly grinned broadly. “Yeah, more than enough.”

Strike was too busy slurping down his portion of the strawberries to pay much attention to what was being said. “Huh?”

“Do we go around calling you asshole just because you might be one?”

Gomez demanded. “No. We call you something nicer.”

“Yeah,” Chesty rumbled, “dingleberry.”

Cathy choked. Gomez patted her on the back in a fatherly fashion.

Strike glowered at all of them, hoarding the fruit in his mess kit.

“I don’t care what you call me, Strike,” Cathy told him, trying not to laugh. “Just as long as it isn’t derogatory.”

DUSK SETTLED into Ban Pua and Cathy nestled down in the large slit trench that wound like a sidewinder around the hill. The trench was located halfway between the perimeter of concertina at the base and the bunkers above them. Individual firing positions had been cut into the walls. The trench served as an interconnecting pathway to a series of fortified bunkers in case they got shelled and had to run for safety.

Arnley had placed her between Gomez and another Recon team. There were six to ten feet between them. To her right, a young Recon smiled but kept his distance. Cathy understood his reaction. She was a type of woman the eighteen-year-old Marine had never encountered. Every time he’d steal a glance at her, he’d blush. Although he was built like Chesty, he reminded her of Billy, and Cathy gently returned his unsure smile when their eyes finally did meet once in the dusk. Soft footfalls caught her attention and she peered out over the rim of the trench, immediately recognizing Jim Boland. His face was grim and shadowed beneath the helmet he wore.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said by way of greeting, descending into the trench beside her.

She watched as he crouched down, a few feet separating them. “You have?”

“Yeah. How’d things go today?” Even in the dying light, he could see that she was exhausted.

“Okay. My kidneys need new suspension.”

He laughed quietly. “Convoy duty sucks, to put it mildly,” he agreed. “How about physically?”

“Tired but stronger. I felt better today.” Cathy studied his profile and sensed he was worried. “What’s up? Attack tonight?” she hedged softly.

He scowled. “Count on it. We spent six months up on this coffin and coming back here is too soon as far as I’m concerned.” Lapsing into silence for almost a minute, Jim found himself wanting to simply confide in her. His voice was low as he spoke. “When I first saw the color of your eyes they reminded me of one of my favorite places.”

Cathy warmed to the intimacy he always established with her and rested her head against her drawn-up knees. “Tell me about it, this favorite spot of yours?”

“Back home on my parents’ farm in Nebraska, there’s a big pond behind the house.” He picked up a clod of dirt, hefting it in his hand. “It’s quiet. Someplace where you can go to think.”