Reckoning (27 page)

Kertzman shifted, his mind playing out a dozen different scenarios of how it could work. But immediately he knew it would be a close thing.

Too close.

Wiping a cold, sweaty brow with a hairy forearm, Kertzman glanced down again at the Colt.

Frowning, he flicked the safety, locking the hammer back. Now if he thumbed down the lever of the .45 he would have one good, fast shot.

He released a deep breath.

It'd have to do.

* * *

TWENTY-SIX

A white, distant shade shone through the cold.

The softest rustle of noise; faint, invisible.

Sarah opened her eyes, saw everything at once. The glow in the distance behind the windows, a large dark form, a... black man ... moving carefully around Gage's bed.

Instantly she was on her feet, her hands searching for something, a weapon. But even as she stood she realized, in the space it took for her to move, that the big man was not an enemy. She knew, she understood it all so well with the necessary speed of thought forced upon her by the situation who the black man was.

Moving carefully, gingerly, the big man lowered Gage's arm. And as she reached her feet he turned his head towards her—a smooth, dark, ebony face, masculine and dignified, quietly strong and instantly reassuring by its complete lack of any threatening intent. And for a split-second as he looked towards her, he smiled. Then he turned back to Gage.

With expert deftness he checked the wounds
as Sarah moved closer with quiet, careful steps. She knew they had locked all the doors and windows. Everything was, as Gage would call it, secure. But the black man had found his way into the cabin in the dark, past Malachi and Barto sleeping soundly in the other room and to Gage's bed where she slept in the chair.

Silently, as if he did not want to stir Gage, the big black man removed something from a small black bag. Sarah recognized it instantly. It was an IV from an Army-issue trauma kit.

The big man attached the IV to the wall beside the bed and expertly inserted the needle into Gage's arm, causing him to stir slightly. A subsequent series of injections were forced into the IV, the drip released at what Sarah thought was full-flow, and Gage was immediately sleeping soundly again. Then the man moved to the table, with Sarah, dazed and still somewhat afraid, only steps behind him.

At the table, the big man removed rows of encapsulated medicines
and syringes. Then quickly, with a completely casual and even comforting manner he turned towards her, silently holding up one of the medicine capsules. Gingerly she reached out and took it, somehow certain of who he was.

"Sandman?" she whispered, searching the wide, sensitive eyes.

The black man smiled, nodding.

Sarah closed her eyes for only the most fleeting, glancing second, surrendering to the hazy, comforting sensation that fell over her. Then she looked at the capsule—a strong, very expensive all-purpose antibiotic designed to fight a wide array of infections from blood disorders to pneumonia. In a glance she noticed the other capsules, identifying them by color coding: cephalexin, chloram-phenical, dicioxacillin, and gentamicin.

It was everything Gage would need. It was even more than she had in the desert.

The worst was over. He would recover with this.

Sandman looked down on her. He was extremely tall, well over six feet, taller than Gage and much, much heavier. Yet his enormous size did not seem imposing, but reassuring. The close-cut black hair was unimaginative, unannouncing; a practical cut for a practical person.

It was the face that captured Sarah's attention; muscular, strong, promoting the impression of granite but somehow benign and serene with calm, comforting eyes that seemed to constantly smile.

He moved with a limp, as if his left leg were deadened at the knee. In her initial shock, Sarah hadn't thought of it, but now she understood. He was crippled and wore a prosthesis from at least the knee and possibly higher.

Silently he motioned for them to sit down in the two chairs. Sarah obeyed, moving silently with him. Sandman sat down heavily beside her, reaching down with massive hands to bend his knee, positioning the leg. Apparently, the prosthesis began in an area higher than the knee, possibly mid-thigh or even at the hip.

Sandman nodded his head, winked at her.

"He'll be alright," he said in a warm voice.

Against her will, Sarah felt the tears begin, moved her hands to her face. She would no longer have to rely upon her judgment alone. But she didn't want to cry, refused to truly release her fatigue or her fears. She wiped the silent tears away with the heel of her hand as they crept from her eyes.

Sandman's comforting hand was on her shoulder, and then his deep voice, "Everything's gonna be alright
... Ol’ Sandman is here ..."

It was their soft conversation that awoke Malachi and Barto, who entered the room in the late dawn to find them together. Barto made a bizarrely heroic move to do something, but Sandman's unassuming presence instantly defused any adverse reactions. Malachi seemed to take the arrival, even at first glance, with utter calm, and gazed upon the big black man with the attitude of someone experienced at dramatic surprises.

Over coffee at the kitchen table, Barto and Malachi seemed as relieved as Sarah at Sandman's arrival. In low tones they discussed Gage's condition and Sandman assured them that he would be on his feet in a few days.

"Yeah, he'll be alright," he said easily as he walked, with painful slowness towards his coat. "I've seen him get out of a lot worse. I was the medic for our old unit. Navy trained me. Gage was trained, too
, but he wasn't a regular medic. He never really liked it that much." He looked at Sarah. "Those are some good sutures. Regular ol' square knots. They work as good as anythin'. You got any more silk left?"

Sarah shook her head.

"That's alright. I got plenty." Sandman nodded. "I'll fix up Gage's infirmary. It looks like he might need it." He paused. "Yeah, it looks like you did alright. Good decisions. But you didn't have any antibiotics to fight the infection. You didn't have enough to work with. You do now, though, and I'm here, so everything gonna be alright."

Sandman reached quickly into his coat, and Sarah's heart reflexively skipped a beat. Then his hand came out of the coat clutching a large metallic radio. Hardly breaking the rhythm of his words, he spoke into the device. A small red light blinked on as he pressed a lever on the side.

"Sandman to Snake. It's clear. Come on in." He set the radio on the table. "Yeah," he continued casually, "it was a real shocker when that big ol' message came across my computer screen last night.

"Gage and me touch base on the tenth and the twentieth of every month. Nine o'clock at night. Just a little ol' status check kind 'a thing. Sometimes there's somebody in a little trouble. But not for a long time. It's been pretty quiet for a year or so."

Sandman shook his head, smiled easily at Sarah. "Then that big ol' message comes across my computer last night and I think, 'Oh no! My boy done done somethin' big! And it looks like he got himself shot to pieces doin' it!' I was so shocked I didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure if it was a trap or what so I came in real quiet, checked things out real good before I waltzed in here."

Malachi spoke warmly, "You are a good friend for him."

Sandman nodded, almost pensive for the first time. "I should be. He set me up, helped me a lot. And he'd do anythin' for me. There ain't too many like him no more. He don't care about money and he's got all the money in the world. He don't care about nuthin' except his friends. There ain't much more, he says. He wasn't always like that. He used to be hard." He paused. "But he ain't like that no more. He's changed a lot. But even in the old days he was always
semper fi
."

He nodded again, as if agreeing with his own words, and tapped his knuckles on his leg. A hollow plastic echo sounded in the kitchen.

"My leg is still in Colombia," He laughed heartily, easily. "It was Gage who carried me to the bird. And not everybody would 'a done it, I can tell you. Not in a firefight that was lightin' up Maicao like a Christmas tree. It was mean, boy, let me tell you. It was like the sky was on fire." He motioned with his hands, a sliding motion. "We had gone in to hit an airfield flyin' dope up from the coast up through Mississippi. Green light on everythin'. Orders to just go wide open, do whatever it took. Don't leave nuthin' standing. But they were ready for us, a hundred of them crackhead gunboys. We thought it might be a tough hit, and it was, boy, it was."

Sandman shook his head, stared for a minute. Sarah was still wondering about the radio transmission.

"Anyway," he continued, shrugging, "we was in the meanest firefight you ever seen. I got hit by so many rounds I lost count. I just saw my leg layin' over there." He pointed vaguely with his hand. "And I thought, 'Well, I'm gone.' And I guess I would 'a been." He pressed his thumb and forefinger of one hand together, an image of pressure. "But sometimes that ol' femoral artery will clamp itself off when you get hit in the leg like that. It'll just do it by itself. Stop the bleeding. That's what happened. That ol' femoral artery just collapsed, shut down, stopped the bleeding all by itself, or, least ways, enough of it. Gage finally got to me, called a bird, hauled me to the bay. Then he went back, takin' it to them. He was mean, boy, I'm tellin' ya. I ain't never seen nuthin' like that. Never. He was everywhere, killin' people left and right. Stackin' 'em up, boy. There was some judgment done that day, son, some separatin' the sheep from the goats. And I don't think it went too good for a lot of them drug-runnin', bushwackin', murderin' scumbags." He shook his head emphatically. "No sir, I don't think it did. Now, if you ask me—"

A shuffling noise in the door made everyone turn. As soon as Sandman saw the form standing in the cold light of midday, he
returned to his amiable discourse but Sarah's eyes remained on the second man.

Alone, mean-looking and obviously freezing, a lean, wiry Mexican was poised in the open frame, carefully holding a short black rifle. Though overall small in size, the man had powerfully sloped shoulders with long, simian arms that carried the large weapon easily. Another rifle, much longer and with a scope attached to it, was slung over his back. He was dressed in dark, dirt-caked civilian clothes, but carried a canteen and an array of military weapons. Sarah saw a radio, an exact duplicate of the one that Sandman had laid on the table, attached to his left hip. A wire extended from the radio to a listening device he wore in his left ear.

Beneath his long, thin black hair the Mexican's face was disfigured and unsightly. Obviously pockmarked from youth, it had been hideously scarred by fire leaving a ragged, reddish mass of burned tissue on the right side of his face and forehead. A traditional black patch concealed his right eye. The other eye focused on Sarah for a moment with the indifferent, calculating gaze of a snake, before sweeping the interior of the room, eventually settling on Sandman.

Sandman looked blandly at the Mexican, then nodded towards the room where Gage was lying before resuming the momentum of his story, which Sarah could no longer follow. Slowly lowering his weapon, the Mexican moved towards the bedroom. Barto glanced quickly at her, wide-eyed, wondering. But her nervousness vanished when she looked at her father. Serene and steady, surprised at nothing, the old man calmly watched the events unfold.

Malachi couldn't wait for Sandman to finish his speech on what seemed to have transcended into the current geopolitical crises of the world.

"Who's that?" Barto interrupted.

"Oh," said Sandman, waving a hand, "that's Chavez. He don't talk much. You'll get used to him." He paused a moment, focused on Barto. "We came in together. Chavez was in the woods, watching. If something had gone down he would 'a taken care of it, best he could."

Barto seemed transfixed. "What would he have done?"

Sandman shrugged. "I don't know, for sure. He's got that M-79, that big ol' grenade launcher. And on top of that, he's just maddog mean. I guess he would 'a just shot a couple of APGs in here and blown us all to kingdom come, then killed everybody else with that 40x sniper rifle before slidin' into the woods. If it was a trap, he couldn't have got me out. We already knew that. But he would 'a caused some real serious misery while he was here. He knows that both me and Gage would rather die 'cause 'a him than 'cause of some scumbag out for revenge."

Malachi spoke again. "Does Gage have need to fear revenge?"

"Oh, yeah, for sure," said Sandman. "Somebody out there would like to do him in, no doubt. He's lucky he ever made it out of the desert to begin with." He hesitated, looking around the table. "Do ya'll know what any of us used to do?"

“I
do," said Sarah.

"Yeah, I figure you do," Sandman replied with a short laugh. "I know about you. He's told me. I know he would a' told you even if he never told nobody else."

Sarah smiled slightly, leaning back.

Sandman gestured with his hand. "You guys know?"

Malachi nodded, "I know a little."

"I'm catching on quick," offered Barto eagerly.

Sandman seemed to contemplate, silent for almost the first time. "Where's the priest?" he asked suddenly. "That old man who saved Gage in the desert?"

Sarah and Barto said nothing. Malachi's face tightened for a quiet moment before he replied, "He is dead. He was murdered by the same people who are hunting us now."

Sandman leaned back in his chair, face slightly shocked. His large black hands rested on the table and he gazed about. "So ya'll are holed up here," he said. He glanced toward the room where Gage lay. "Boy, I'll bet you somebody pays for that!"