Numbered Account

Eight marines loose the fury of their weapons at the hidden enemy. The air is afire with exploding shells. Ortiga launches a grenade from the snout of his rifle. Nick empties a clip into the grove and advances toward the beach. He can hear the scream of his enemy above the shooting. He rejoices in the tumult.

The first landing craft is on the beach. "A" squad sprints toward it, free hands clamping helmets to their heads. Nick and Ortiga provide covering fire. The first landing craft is away, the motor opened to full throttle, white wake trailing.

A second craft slides onto the sand. Nick pulls Burke onto his shoulders for the final dash to the beach. Emerging from the underbrush, he stumbles in the sand. Ortiga motions for him to hurry, putting the M-16 to his shoulder and spraying the jungle with disciplined bursts of fire. Nick grunts as he pushes his boots into the fine white sand. He sees the craft, waves to the skipper. He is there. And then he is sailing through the air, a hot wind lashing at his back. He has been swallowed by a mighty roar, enveloped in a blast furnace of fire and grit. Air is sucked from his lungs. Time stops.

Nick's face is buried in the sand. Ortiga is lifting his shoulder. "You kicking, sir?"

"Where's Burke?" Nick yells. "Where's Burke?"

"Ain't nothing left of him," Ortiga screams. "We gotta get to the boat, Lieutenant. Now!"

Nick looks to his right. Burke's torso sprawls in a patch of sand black with blood. His legs and arms are missing, cropped off neatly at the trunk. His back is pocked with chunks of shrapnel, flesh sizzling with molten lead. The smell makes Nick vomit. He tells himself to hustle to the boat, to get off his butt and motor to the landing craft, but his legs refuse to obey his commands. There is something wrong with him. He looks at his right knee. Oh God, he thinks. I've been hit. The fabric of his uniform is torn in a hundred places, the flesh ripped into too many jagged strands and burned black as coal. Blood, this time his own, jets in a small but determined geyser. A band of moist cartilage glimmers in the afternoon sun. Nick grabs the Kentuckian's rifle and rams the barrel into the sand, an impromptu crutch. He stands and sees only white, and then a fuzzy curtain of gray. An internal shrieking more deafening than any noise he has ever heard fills his ears. Ortiga's arm is around him. Together they stagger the last paces to the landing craft. The craft's skipper drags the black stump that is Burke's body to the rubber dinghy.

They are away.

The shooting has stopped.

The pain begins a hundred yards to sea.

Lying in the prow of the craft, Nick dodges unconsciousness for the long ride to the Guam. Every wave crested means a spasm of agony, every swell, a rip current of nausea. His right knee is torn apart. His lower leg shattered. A shard of ivory bone pushes through the flesh as if anxious to test the warm afternoon air. Nick does not moan. For a few minutes the pain clears his mind. It allows the implications of the day's events to take form.

The assassination of Enrile. The murder of his wife and daughter. The failure of the Guam to respond to Nick's emergency calls. All were planned. All were preordained.

Nick envisions Keely hidden inside the radio room for eighteen hours; he hears Keely relaying news of Enrile's arrival, promising that the insurgent would be alone; he imagines Keely turning off the radio, refusing to respond to the rescue call of nine marines, one gravely wounded. Why? Nick screams. Why?

Rocking in the prow of the bucking craft, he vows to find the answers. He promises to make responsible those who have sanctioned the murder of Enrile and the betrayal that took the life of Johnny Burke.

***

At first, Nick did not hear the light knock on his door. His eyes were open, staring at the papers on his desk, but he saw only blurred images of his past. When the knock came a second time, this time louder and more insistent, he blinked and told the visitor to come in. He looked up to see the door to his office already open, and the blond head of Sylvia Schon peering anxiously round the corner.

"Are you okay? I've been knocking for ten seconds."

Nick rose to greet her. "I'm fine. Just have a lot on my mind. You can imagine. Come on in." He wanted to tell her it was nice to see her and that she looked great- but he was afraid of appearing overly friendly. He didn't know what to make of her phone call yesterday morning. First she'd acted like she hated his guts, her voice barren. Then she'd called back to apologize, sounding sincere. Before she cut him off, that was.

Sylvia closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She was carrying a faded yellow file under her arm. "I wanted to say I'm sorry about the way I acted yesterday morning. I know I sounded crazy. It's hard for me to say this, but frankly, I'm a little jealous. I don't think you know what you've got here."