The survivor (3 page)

Gloria was certainly going to be surprised when he appeared in this cockeyed uniform. But, as he looked down at the two-piece fatigues with the big pockets starched flat against the cloth he decided that he now looked like a man of mystery off on a dangerous mission. He could tell Gloira a real sea story about how all this came about.

The silent sergeant was waiting for him in the hall. "I like the uniform," Adam said, **but I dont think ni join up."

The sergeant handed him a long slim piece of stiff cardboard, a short black brush, and a bottle of black ink. Adam saw now that his name. "A. Land* had been pionched out of the cardboard. "Stencil that on the back of your jacket," the sergeant said.

**! prefer the gold one with the wings and my rank," Adam said.

"They don't," the sergeant said, motioning him toward the jeep.

Adam got in again, his stiff clothes crackling, and the sergeant drove him to another building, where they got out and again went up to a desk occupied

by another sergeant. "This is the lieutenant," Adam's sergeant said. "I'll wait."

"Ah, the lieutenant," the other sergeant said. *'Right this way, Lieutenant"

The sergeant led him into a huge, somewhat dim, and cavernous room that smelled of moth balls, oiled leather, grease, and mildew. A low, wide counter ran the length of the room, and behind the coimter were rows of shelves such as those in a library, row after row, v^dth, dimly in the back of the room, bins and boxes. The sergeant leapt neatly over the counter, did an about-face, and produced a low, narrow shp of paper with a list of printed entries on it. "Let's see now," the sergeant said, checking the Hst. Then he frowned. "Be easier wdth the field kit full," he said and disappeared into the gloomy rows of shelves. In a moment he reappeared, banged two empty canteens down on the counter and, as he disappeared again, said, "Canteens, two, with stopper."

He came back in a moment with two stiff, folded hunks of canvas and dropped them on the counter. "Canteen covers, two, canvas, with belt hooks."

As the sergeant moved away again Adam picked up a piece of canvas and, with some effort, got it unfolded and read the black letters USMC stenciled on it. The thing was much too small to fit around a canteen, he decided.

The sergeant came back with a three-inch-wide canvas belt, stiff as a board and dotted with brass gronmiets into some of which black metal hooks

had been forced. "Cartridge belt, one, with grom-mets and hooks. Right.''

"IVe aheady got a belt," Adam said, raising the stiff blouse to show him. He pushed the other belt toward the sergeant.

The sergeant seemed offended. 'Xieutenant, sir, I have here a Hst of items to be issued to you. It is not part of my duty to know what you will do with them or why you need them. But, being government property, it is your duty to take care of them and it is your duty to return them to me when you finish with them. The only excuses I can accept for not returning them are: you get yourself killed, or you get yourself wounded, or you are reported missing —in action, that is, not AWOL—or you are reported a prisoner of war. Sometimes I'll also let guys get away with it if their ship gets sunk. But only by the enemy. Other excuses—and IVe heard 'em aU, sir —wiU not do." He disappeared again, to return with two brown bottles. "Halazone, one bottle of twenty-four tablets."

"I know all about your best friend won't tell you," Adam said, "but what's this Halazone for? B.O. or something?"

"The government is not interested in your personal problems, sir," the sergeant said. "But it is interested in keeping you alive so you can fight Halazone is for purifying water."

"Oh," Adam said.

"Atabrine, one bottle, twenty-four tablets," the sergeant said, putting the otiier bottle on the counter.

Adam knew about atabrine. "So now youVe got me fixed up for pure water and no malaria. But what does the government give me for, say, a bullet holer

"That's not my responsibihty," the sergeant said. That's the responsibility of the Medical Depart-ment.** He went back into the stacks and turned up with his hands full of more of the stiff, folded canvas. He dumped this on the counter and checked his list. "Ammo pouches, six . . . No, no," he said, taking two of them back. "OflBcers only get four. Enlisted men get six. Ammo pouches, four. Sheath knife, one," he added, tapping one of the canvas objects. "Meat-can cover, one."

Adam waited as the sergeant disappeared again. The counter was littered now with the strange little objects, and as he looked at them his amusement began to die. This was taking the whole afternoon.

"Canteen cups, with handle, two," the sergeant said, clanking them down on the counter. "Meat can, vdth knife, fork, spoon, one." And he clanked that dov^m. "Grease, black, one."

^'What?" Adam asked, looking at the Httle packet about the size of a cake of soap.

"For the face and hands, sir. Camouflage. Man of distinction."

Adam had to laugh as he picked up the black grease and looked at it. That was one good thing about the Marine Corps—a surprise a minute.

The sergeant came back with the wickedest-looking dagger Adam had ever seen. The hilt was sHm and checkered all over, there was practically no

guard, the hilt going directly into a blade in the shape of a long tapered pyramid, sharp on aU edges and with a dagger point. The knife was thickly coated with a pale brown grease.

"Good tool," the sergeant said, "particularly for the throat and ribs. Lot better than those old butcher knives the Navy gave us. It would take you five minutes to get one of those into a fellow."

"This is quicker?" Adam asked, looking at the greasy dagger.

"Oh, yeah. And comes out fast, too. Lets you get on with your work."

"Absolutely," Adam agreed, eyeing the dagger.

"Not good for much else, though," the sergeant said, "so IVe given you the navy sheath knife, too."

"IVe always wanted to be a two-knife type," Adam told him, "Any switchblades?"

"For kids," the sergeant said. "We dont issue them. Now, if you'll pardon the expression, sir-being an oflBcer you don't get a real gun. You get a httle peashooter."

"Don't bother," Adam told him. "I've got a real gun. Lots of 'em. Big ones. Fifty-caliber."

"Ah, so," the sergeant said, disappearing. He came back carrying one of the short-barreled .30-caUber carbines still wrapped in grease with this, in turn, wrapped in brown paper. The sergeant stripped the paper away in one section, rubbed the grease clear and pointed. "Serial number," he said, writing on the sHp of paper. "This one, with this serial number, is the only one you can bring back, Lieutenant. You can't just pick up one off the

ground and bring that back because, you see, you do that and you foul up some other guy, and so he gets himself a gun and so until finally the whole Marine Corps is fouled up.**

**What are we waiting for?** Adam asked.

"Ammo, eight clips, sir." He dropped them on the counter and stood a moment, checking his fist **Oh, yes. Helmet."

"Come onr Adam objected. "No helmet. How can I get the earphones on wearing a tin bucket?'*

The sergeant looked worried about this and checked his hst again. Then he smiled contentedly. "Look there. Lieutenant. Right there, Hne eighteen. You see, it says: 'Helmet, combat, with liner and netting—one.'"

"Forget it," Adam told him, but the sergeant was already on his way back with a helmet, which he put on Adam's head. The liner had not been tied, so the helmet plunged down over his eyes and the steel dome of it clanked down on his skull.

This was too much, entirely. Adam wrested the helmet off and dropped it, clanging, down on the counter. "Look, Sergeant," he said, "let's you and I forget the Marine Corps for a moment and act like two human beings. Okay?"

The sergeant looked as though he had just seen a ghost. "In the Marine Corps, sir, there are no human beings, only marines."

"I know, I know," Adam said. "But just you and I can pretend for a moment. Now, I don't want all this gear. I don't need it. I can't use it. There isn't room in the airplane for it. So, you take it all back."

Adam pushed the heap of stuff across the counter toward the sergeant.

At last this sergeant did look like a hinnan being. He pushed the stuff gently back toward Adam. "Keep it Lieutenant. You may need it. Where you're going."

This was interesting. **Where am I going?*

**You don't know?**

"No, I don t know."

''Neither do I,** the sergeant said, '^but this is combat gear, so you draw your own conclusions. So—good luck." The sergeant walked away but turned and added, "I hope you bring it back."

"Thanks a lot," Adam said, gathering up the pieces, the dagger and the gun oozing grease all over him, the helmet, back on his head, obstructing his vision.

THE NEXT STOP with the silent sergeant was the Navy Dispensary. Adam left all the gear in the back of the jeep, although the sergeant didn't think it was a good idea, and went into the dispensary ready, at last, to fight for his rights and, at last, to put up some resistance to all this pushing around.

"I just had my annual physical," Adam told the young doctor.

"Strip," the doctor said.

'There's nothing wrong with me," Adam argued. "I just went through the whole physical two weeks ago"

"I know," the doctor said. "Strip."

*Tou medics think you know more about us than our mothers," Adam said.

*We do. Strip."

There were two things, Adam remembered, that even the marines couldn't whip—the medical department and the pay oflBcer. He stripped down to his dog tags and the doctor went to work on him. By the time Adam got through jumping up and down on one foot, saying "ah," giving with the hollow cough, lying down, standing up, bending over, getting thumped, prodded and Hstened to, the doctor said, "Youre in pretty good shape—for an aviator. Okay, shots."

This was too much, **I just had all my shots, Doc All of 'em."

"Shots," the doctor said, and began, first in one arm, then the other. "All right," he said, at last, "put on your clothes and come back here."

As Adam got dressed he had to admit now, to himself, that when the CO. ordered him confined to quarters it shook him. Shook him bad. He couldn't remember doing anything particularly wrong, at least nothing wrong enough to rate being confined; but he had heard stories of guys who had talked a little too much or said something they weren't supposed to say and, wham, they disappeared. There were intelHgence and security people all over the place. (He remembered the posters with the girl's face and the ships sinking in the background and the line Tms Mouth Sank These Ships.)

He'd been shook, but now, as this nonsense went

on and on, he was sure that the whole thing was just a mistake. He wasn't in any real trouble. Somebody had just pulled the wrong name or the wrong serial number. Pretty soon they'd fine out about it and maybe even apologize for ruining his day.

"Here's a first-aid kit for you," the doctor said.

"There's one in the plane," Adam said, thinking about the pile of gear he already had waiting for him in the back of the silent sergeant's jeep.

"You may not be in a plane," the doctor said. "And this one's a Httle different. Now look, if you get shot, don't fiddle around with the wound. If you think there's a bullet in you, leave it in there. Just sprinkle some of this power around where it went in, and if it comes out, where it came out; don't wash it, no matter how dirty you think the place looks. Powder it, wrap it up, and forget it. If you get around some spare water, soak the bandages in that too."

"I thought aU this was what the medical department was for," Adam said.

"No," the doctor said, "we take care of bad colds, low back pains, and athlete's foot. Now—how much pain can you stand? I mean by that, how much pain can you take and still function?"

"Doc, I don't know," Adam said helplessly. "I never had much pain, I guess."

"W^ell, let me put it this way: When the pain is so great that you don't think you can handle it, wait untQ it gets twice as great. If it does that, then use this. But, remember, this is morphine, a drug, and becoming a drug addict is a lot more painful than

anything you'll get in combat. So don't use these things unless you think the pain is going to take you out. Now the rest of the kit is just common sense. A lot of people who get hit aren't killed by damage to something vital but by loss of blood. Try to stop that if you can. Or get your buddy to stop it for you." The doctor put the stu£F carefully back into the canvas kit and handed it over to Adam.

**Don 11 have to sign for it?" Adam asked.

*1^Jo, it's a gift from the grateful taxpayers. I hope you don't have to use it"

'Thanks. I'll take it along every time I go surfing in anything big."

*Tou do that," the doctor said, dismissing him.

Now, outside, it was dark—pitch-black dark, for every light in the Hawaiian Islands was blacked out except for dim, hooded lights on official vehicles. As Adam walked toward the dark waiting jeep he looked up toward Honolulu and could see nothing except black moimtains with dark-gray clouds gathered around their peaks. In the blackness you could not tell that a city crowded along the coast and spread up the sides of the mountains.

Adam was hungry now and remembered that all this foolishness had started before lunch—so he had missed that—and it was now weU past dinnertime. "Chow down. Sergeant, clear the mess decks. Let's go out to P. Y. Chong's and I'll buy you a steak dinner." Then he suddenly remembered that the Marine Corps had taken every dime he owned. "Belay that," he added, "the Marine Corps'

got all my loot. So what are we going to do for chow, Sergeant?"

"Get in, Lieutenant,** the sergeant said, starting the jeep.

Adam got in, tossing the first-aid Idt into the back with the rest of the gear. "Home, James," he said.

THE HUGE NAVAJL BASE at Pearl Harbor was weird in the wartime night. This night, dark clouds were poming down from the Pah. There were no moon, no stars; the sky and the earth were dark, and there should have been silence in such darkness or at most only the small sounds of natural things in the night, but all around Adam as he sat in the slowly moving jeep, there were great sounds. Hammers were pounding on bent and twisted steel, the sound of their blows reverberating against the mountains. Riveting guns were slamming slugs of red-hot iron against the backup tools. Enormous saws, their blades running with oil, were cutting through armor plate, and cranes were taking these slabs of steel and carrying them, whirling in the black sky, to some ship which needed them to patch a wound made by the enemy in some far-off engagement.