The radio nets were a cacophony of traffic, everyone from every corner of the outpost talking on top of everyone else, crosstalk clashing in the speakers, all of which appeared to have been turned on at once.
The panicked kid had been in the CP by himself for who knows how long, trying to juggle it all. He’d been expected to monitor the radios and read his book during the quiet times, and step out of the way for his platoon leader or platoon sergeant when something real was happening. From the look of the brick-size paperback lying on the floor next to the cot, that’s exactly what he had been doing. He hadn’t been expected to do this.
“Yeah, I know!” the kid shouted into a handset. “I’m getting it!”
He was trying to secure ammunition for one of the guard towers that was nearly out. Every other radio was clamoring for his attention simultaneously.
“Take them to Two!” he yelled at one walkie-talkie, shoving another under his arm.
The medic squatted and tried without success to place his cargo carefully on the cot. Black sloughed off his shoulders and tumbled heavily onto the rack. The room upended itself and he clung to the cot rails, stomach turning, head filled to bursting.
“Ohhhhh,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
The medic stood, stretching his back, and surveyed the situation dubiously.
“What the fuck, sir?” the frazzled sentinel cried between transmissions.
He snatched up the walkie again.
“No, take them to Two!”
“Go,” Black said to the medic, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Get back and do your thing.”
“You sure, sir?”
“Yeah,” Black replied, though he wasn’t.
“Just stay still and rest, sir,” he said. “I’ll be back to check on you, whenever I can.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Right, sir.”
Someone hurled profanities at someone else over the nets. The medic gave a last skeptical look at the two of them and disappeared.
Black opened his eyes, blinking hard to clear the splotches in his vision. It was hardly quieter in here than it had been in the open air. The dissonant chorus of individual sounds outside was just buffed or dulled to sharper or rounder edges.
The kid was shouting into his radios.
“Where’s Sergeant Caine?” Black asked the ceiling.
“What?”
He juggled handsets.
“No, to Two! I don’t fucking know, sir!”
“Where did you last see him?”
“I don’t know! Hours ago.”
“So he’s still gone.”
“He’s what?”
“What about Sergeant Merrick?”
“You tell me, sir!”
“He hasn’t been by here or checked in?”
“No, he hasn’t fucking been by here!” the kid shrieked at him. “Nobody’s been by here!”
He craned to answer a different call.
“Two-forty ammo, not fifty cal!”
He tossed the handset.
“I’ve been here by myself the whole fucking time! I don’t know where anybody is!”
“Has there been any traffic on the patrol net?”
“The patrol net?”
The radio channel used by personnel when they left Vega on foot.
“Yeah, the patrol net!”
“I’m not monitoring the patrol net! Why would I be monitoring the—”
Black cut him off.
“What is Battalion headquarters saying about getting us help?”
The kid looked at him like he was crazy.
“Battalion ain’t saying shit, sir!”
“Why not?”
“The retrans!”
The retrans.
A pit opened in Black’s stomach.
“We’re not talking to anybody!” the kid hollered. “We’re just talking to ourselves!”
He’d forgotten. The antenna hadn’t been repaired yet.
“mIRC chat!” he countered.
“They put a rocket in the fucking dish!”
Their attackers had done their homework.
“The sat phone!”
“I told you, sir, it don’t work down here!”
“That was true?!” Black exclaimed, flabbergasted.
“Yeah, it was true! Sat phone doesn’t do shit!”
Black closed his eyes.
“Where the hell is Sergeant Merrick?” the kid cried desperately.
Battalion didn’t even know they were under attack.
“Somebody,” the soldier spat as he snatched up a handset, “needs to get him the he—”
“Sergeant Caine and Sergeant Merrick are not on the COP.”
The kid gawked at him slackly. The radios, jabbering for his attention, went unanswered.
“What?” he cried. “Where the hell are they?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Black said urgently. “You need to check the patr—”
“Well, who the hell is in charge of this place?”
“You are.”
“What?!”
In the noise and chaos of the fight, probably no one had figured out that both senior sergeants, one of whom would be expected to fill in for Lieutenant Pistone, were absent and the kid was in the CP all by himself.
“Stay cool,” Black replied unconvincingly.
Or things had just been too desperate for anyone to stop what they were doing and go help him.
“Oh, we’re fucked,” the kid declared.
All the radios clamored at once.
“Oh, shit,” he said, ramping up. “Nobody knows.”
Black tried to sit up. The room promptly went sideways. Back down.
“Answer your radios,” he directed, eyes pinched shut against the nausea.
“Nobody knows! Nobody’s gonna come!”
“Answer your radios!”
The kid snatched another of his handsets suddenly.
“No, don’t try to go to the mortar p—”
Someone stepped on his transmission. He cursed.
“I said don’t go to the mortar pit!” the kid hollered, kicking the desk.
“Calm down.”
“Fuck that, sir!” the kid yelled, his voice going shrill. “What are we gonna fucking do?”
“Calm down.”
“You calm down, L.T.! I’m trying to—”
He lowered the handset and crammed the walkie-talkie full against his mouth.
“Just hold on! I’m almost with you guys!”
A blast nearby shook the room.
“Goddamn it!” the kid yelled as the radio speakers doused him in feedback.
“CALM. DOWN,” Black shouted, his voice painfully loud in his head.
The kid threw all the handsets and walkies down onto the desktop at once. Black twisted to his side and pawed the big paperback off the floor. The kid made fists and hollered at him goggle-eyed.
“STOP TELLING ME TO CALM D—”
Black threw overhand. The book went splaying through the air in a straight line and made square contact with the middle of the kid’s face.
He staggered backward, hands treading air, and gawked at Black wide-eyed.
“What the FUCK!” he screeched.
Black collapsed back onto the cot, dizzy from the effort of throwing.
“What’s your name?” he asked the ceiling through squinched eyes.
He’d never seen the kid wearing his actual coat with his name tape on it. Just a T-shirt.
“What?”
“What’s your name?” Black shouted, causing the kid to flinch.
“Hubbard!” he shrieked.
Black exhaled. The racket outside was unreal.
“Hubbard,” he said, holding the cot rails. “Look at me.”
His eyes were still closed against the dizziness.
“Are you looking at me?”
“Yes!” Hubbard retorted with all the petulance of a grounded teenager.
“Your compound is getting breached tonight.”
He heard the kid among his maps and radios, panting.
“You gotta calm down and hold this place until help gets here.”
“What help?” Hubbard shouted. “There’s no help! No one even knows we’re—”
“The convoy.”
“What?”
He opened his eyes and looked at Hubbard.
“The convoy,” he repeated. “It’s Sunday.”
It was a day for forgetting the obvious.
“Shit!” Hubbard exclaimed in wonder. “The convoy!”
“Yeah, the convoy. Now get your radios up and put the patrol net on the speaker.”
Hubbard looked at his watch.
“That’s not for, like, six hours!”
“Don’t worry about the time. Just get on the radios.”
Hubbard kept staring until Black gave him a Well, come on! with both hands. He turned to the squalling radio racks, fumbling with a speaker cable and blowing out a long breath.
Black lay on his back on the cot, listening to the cacophony.
“Oh, Jesus,” Hubbard muttered, shaking his head as he fiddled with the radio. “Oh, we’re fucked.”
“Probably.”
“Screw you, L.T.”
“One thing at a time.”
The speaker clicked on, its static joining the throng.
“Try to raise Sergeant Merrick.”
Hubbard took up a fresh handset. He seemed to be calming.
“Vega Seven, this is Vega X-Ray, over.”
They waited, Hubbard shifting his weight back and forth between his feet.
“Vega Seven, this is Vega X-Ray, how copy, over.”
Clear static was all that returned. Hubbard looked at the radio expectantly.
“Leave it,” Black directed. “Can you raise the O.P. without the retrans?”
Hubbard froze in place. His jaw went limp as he turned slowly to Black, a look of dawning horror in his eyes.
Black covered his face with his hands.
“Oh, shit!” Hubbard shouted, color leaving his face.
He twisted a handset cable free from one radio box, cramming it frantically onto the stubby output plug of another box sitting dormant at the bottom of the stack.
“Shit! Shit!”
—
Fucking lieutenant.
He splashed through a running creek at the bottom of a broad ravine and started upward through the pines on the far side.
Fucking Corelli.
He would have been cold had he not been working so hard.
Goddamn pussy God freak. I told him and told him that I’d take care of him.
The rumble over the mountains behind him continued unabated, calling him back to where the rest of his soldiers were trying to not die.
Brought this all on myself.
Not only himself.
What I get for doing the right thing.
It would all be over now, whatever happened today.
Sorry, Traynor.
He was getting closer.
Wanted to come get you, buddy.
Caine drove higher into the mountains.