Dead Hand

Chapter 17

When he opened his eyes, Stanislaus Dombrowski was only vaguely aware of where he was. Unlike many of his companions, the Polish NCO was not the type who benefited from brief catnaps or a few stolen minutes of sleep. Once he shut his eyes and went down, he needed to stay down for four hours, minimum. Anything less than that only seemed to exacerbate his fatigue.

Slowly, Dombrowski struggled to rise up off the ground he had thrown himself onto scant hours ago. In the process of prying his eyes open, he noticed that it was considerably lighter. It must be day, he told himself as he finally managed to peer above the level of the fallen trees he had nestled in before drifting off. At first he could not see anything or anyone in the thick arctic fog that clung to the ground. Were it not for the sound of subdued voices piercing the chilly veil, the Pole could almost have convinced himself that there wasn't another living soul anywhere near at hand.

With a shake of his aching head. Dombrowski endeavored to collect himself. Lifting one hand to his chest, he instinctively groped about until he felt his FA MAS assault rifle. Since he could never rely on having enough time to properly wake, he always hung his weapon around his neck when he lay down to rest. That way, no matter what the circumstances were when roused, he'd at least have handy his primary means of defending himself.

Comforted that all seemed to be in order, Dombrowski cleared his throat, forcing up a mass of phlegm in the process. Leaning over, he spit the disgusting wad of mucus out as far as he could. He was still in the process of wiping a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth, when Ingelmann's voice cut through his early morning stupor.

"Ah, there you are. my friend." the cheerful Austrian called out.

"If it weren't for that quaint practice of yours, I'd have never found you."

Coughing and clearing his head, Dombrowski grunted. "Ingelmann, you're the only man in the Legion who gets lost going to the crapper."

Emerging from the thick, cold mist, Ingelmann groaned. "Now that happened only once, and only because there was a sandstorm brewing."

Looking up at his companion, the Pole saw that his fellow legionnaire was carefully balancing two steaming mess cups as he navigated the jumble of fallen trees and debris in which they had come to rest. "Twice," Dombrowski countered. "You somehow managed to do so twice."

When he reached his comrade, the Austrian offered one of the cups to him. "Oh, that," he replied dismissively after handing over the cup. "I was drunk."

Not in the mood to carry on this exchange, at least not until after he'd enjoyed some of the warm beverage that he had been handed, Dombrowski brought the cup up to his lips. After taking a sip, he looked down into the black, steaming liquid, then up at the smiling Ingelmann. "Where in the hell did you find this?"

The Austrian chuckled. "The American signal section had a whole pot of it brewing. They were guarding it like it was gold."

Quickly, Dombrowski took another sip, savoring the taste of genuine American Army coffee and relishing the feeling the warm fluid left in its wake. "My friend," he sighed as he closed his eyes and held the steaming cup with the same reverence that a priest would a chalice of sacrificial wine, "this is gold." Opening his eyes, he looked over at Ingelmann. "How did you manage to liberate it?"

The Austrian legionnaire pulled back the hood of his cold weather parka and tapped the unadorned front of his beret. "The Americans are suckers for souvenirs." Then, as if this comment triggered another thought, Ingelmann stuck his hand into a pocket of his parka. When he pulled it out, he was holding a foil packet, which he presented to Dombrowski.

Taking this second gift in his free hand, the Pole turned it this way and that until he could read the label. "English biscuits? You have been a very busy lad this morning."

"Well, you know what the Americans say: The early bug finds the bird."

After using his teeth to rip the package open, Dombrowski set it down on his lap before fishing out one of the biscuits. "I think it's the bird that gets the worm."

Waving his cup about, Ingelmann reached over and snatched one of the biscuits from Dombrowski. "Whatever you say, mon sergeant." After taking a bite, he looked down at the remains of his biscuit. "Our SAS friends are far more accommodating than the Americans."

"And how did you manage to pry these from them?"

The Austrian legionnaire looked over at his companion, affecting a long, sorrowful face as he did so. "I told the Brits that we had lost all our rations in the drop, that the only thing we had to look forward to by way of food were American combat rations. After expressing their sincere regrets, one of their officers rummaged around in his rucksack and gave me these."

Dombrowski shook his head in disbelief. "You may be an idiot as far as land navigation is concerned, but you more than redeem yourself when it comes to providing for life's little necessities. Now all we need is a bottle of wine and all will be right with the world."

Looking away from Dombrowski, Ingelmann glanced furtively first to his right, then left. When he was sure that no one was watching them, he reached down inside his parka and began to rummage about for something. When he had found what he was hunting for, he slowly pulled out a metal flask. "Later, mon ami."

After a hearty round of laughter, the two legionnaires settled back to savor their unexpected windfall. Eventually, when he noticed that he had almost drained his cup, Dombrowski tried to recall if he had remembered to bring his beret. "Do you think," he asked innocently, "they would be willing to part with another cup?"

The Austrian gave his friend a sly smile. "I'm sure that if you personally went over there and asked the female sergeant nicely, you'd be able to talk her out of, or into, anything."

"Coffee would be more than enough," Dombrowski replied before enjoying the last sip of his second-most-favorite beverage.

"But, Sergeant, she is just your type. A healthy, full-figured woman who looks as if she could knit a tank out of steel wool."

The Polish legionnaire gave his companion a dirty look. "Fuck you."

After Ingelmann's laughter died away, the two men sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in his own thoughts as they enjoyed this moment of quiet. It was Dombrowski who finally broke the silence. "So," he said, "we're still in Russia."

Ingelmann shook his head as he looked about. "Yes, we are still in Russia."

Several seconds passed before Dombrowski asked, "Is the adjutant up and about yet?"

"Oh, yes. For some time," the Austrian explained. "He was over with the American command group, sniffing about for information."

"Are they still talking about sending us out on another mission?"

"Oui." Ingelmann's responses had grown uncharacteristically solemn. "When I left the adjutant, he was talking to the American colonel. With the element of surprise gone, the American is waiting until he has enough men and materiel on hand to ensure success."

While Dombrowski knew that this was a wise move, he had no doubt that the longer they waited, the more difficult it would be. No doubt the Russians were scrambling in an effort to muster up every man they could lay their hands on to protect the last of their missiles. As brutal as the operation had been to date, the upcoming phase would be, in the Pole's mind, even more so.

Abandoning that train of thought for the moment, Dombrowski turned his attention to more immediate and personal concerns. Though he knew he didn't want to hear the answer that he anticipated, he had to ask about the third team of legionnaires that they hadn't heard from before he had gone to sleep. "Any word from Team Claire?"

"No." The sad, mournful tone in Ingelmann's curt response was all Dombrowski needed to hear.

Eighteen men had jumped less than twenty-four hours before, the Polish legionnaire knew. Now there were only seven of them left. In time, the names of those lost out there in the frozen wastelands of Siberia would be honored and revered. In the annual ceremony in Corsica during which the Legion recalls its past deeds and fallen heroes, their names would be added to a long and glorious roll. The sacrifice that those men had made would be heralded and held up as an example to the young, unbloodied recruits striving to follow in their footsteps. At the moment, however, Dombrowski could find nothing to rejoice over. First he would need to mourn the loss of so many of those who had become his brothers.

Patrick Hogg was up long before the pitch-black of night grudgingly gave way to a cold, foggy morning. He spent the better part of an hour conversing with Colonel Hightower, going over the operational details of the plan that was being cobbled together to deal with the two remaining Perimeter missiles. Not once during the time Hogg spent with the American did that officer volunteer any hope that one or more of the teams dispatched to eliminate those targets would still, somehow, manage to accomplish their assigned tasks.

It was light when Hogg returned to his teams. By the time he arrived there, the NCO's were in the process of rousting their charges. After pausing only long enough to wolf down a few biscuits and a cup of freshly brewed tea, the SAS captain personally checked each British commando in an effort to assess his condition, inspect his weapons, and provide the sort of command presence that was so essential in a unit such as theirs.

When he was satisfied that all was in order with those who were fully mission-capable, Hogg turned his attention to those who had been wounded. Alone, he made his way over to the American medics, who had set up an open-air aid station. Twice along the way, as he stumbled about in the fog, he had to stop and ask others he came across for directions. While the assembly area in which all the teams were resting was relatively small, the sameness of the broken terrain and the thick fog was disorienting. Only when he came across a bloody pile of discarded field dressings and torn medical packaging did he know he had found the aid station.

The original operational plan for Tempest had not included provisions for a medical team. It had been envisioned that each team, which included its own highly trained medics, would take care of its own. Colonel Hightower, however, had wisely chosen to add a qualified combat surgeon, a physician's assistant, and a pair of medics to the troop list for his forward operations command-and-control team. As Hogg made his way into the spot they had staked out, he came to appreciate the wisdom of this move.

When they had reached the assembly area earlier that morning, the SAS captain had thought that the experience of the other Tempest teams had been like theirs: a few men lost, a couple of casualties, and a lot of bumps and bruises. He was quite taken aback when he found out that the SAS teams had been, in comparison, lucky.

Hogg found Sergeant Kenneth McPherson straight off. A medic was in the process of removing the dressing Hogg had hurriedly applied in the predawn darkness after having picked out the worst of the splinters and shrapnel from his NCO's face. With the light of day now available, and all those who had more serious wounds tended to, the medics were going back to check work that had been done in haste.

Not wanting to interfere, Patrick Hogg stood off to one side and watched. "Now keep your head still while I change the dressing and clean you up," the medic warned.

The sight of McPherson's face shocked Hogg. Though he had known the man's injuries were bad, he had thought that there had been but one big gash and a few smaller, superficial ones. The light of day, however, revealed that much of the skin on the left side of his NCO's face had been peeled back. Strips of shredded flesh clung to the old dressing as the medic lifted it away. The cavity where there had once been an eyeball was now a torn, bloody hollow. Upon seeing this, the medic gently eased the blood-soaked dressing back into place. "I'm sorry, man, but I'm gonna have the surgeon look at this."

The tone of the medic's voice reinforced McPherson's worst fears. Still, the Scotsman put up a good show. "That's okay, lad. Why don't you run off and tend to some of the others. I'll just rest here a bit and wait for the doc."

Glad that he had didn't have to deal with this particular wound alone, the medic asked McPherson to hold his own dressing in place before heading over to report his observations to the surgeon.

When the medic was gone, Hogg stepped forward and squatted down next to his NCO. "There you are," he exclaimed in a cheery voice, pretending as best he could that he had just happened along at that very moment.

Because of the pain, McPherson was unable to open his one good eye. The best he could manage was to tilt his head in Hogg's direction. "Is that you, Captain?"

Hogg forced himself to chuckle. "Well, I should hope so. After all, how many Irishmen do you suppose are foolish enough to be out and about in Siberia?"

"How'd the other lads make it last night, sir?" McPherson asked. "I sort of lost track of things when that tree came crashing down on me."

Hogg finally managed to gather up the nerve to reach out and lay his hand on the stricken man's shoulder. "Don't you worry about the others. They're all fine. A wee bit tired and sore, but otherwise unscratched."

McPherson did his best to sound cheerful. "I guess I more than made up for them."

For the briefest of moments, Patrick Hogg felt a pang of guilt. It had been his plan, as well as his order, that had resulted in McPherson's suffering. Despite the Scotsman's warning that the spot they were in was too close and the reason for diverting the Russians was gone as soon as the silo had been blown, Hogg had made a snap decision to execute the ambush anyway. That he himself had been less than half a meter away from the Scot during the whole time didn't help. What Hogg was experiencing was akin to what many a survivor goes through when he asks himself, "Why him, and not me?"

It took Hogg a few moments to put things in their proper perspective through the use of hard logic and a large dose of rationalization. They were soldiers, he reminded himself. They all knew what sort of odds they faced during operations like this. Last night, his NCO had paid the price many a man who follows the profession of arms must pay.

The silence that had descended upon them was broken by the appearance of the surgeon. "Looks like you're next on my list of things to do," the American doctor said as casually as he could while preparing himself to go to work under conditions that were not even marginal. Though he was exhausted after tending nonstop to the wounded cluttered about him, the American managed to give Hogg a wink before starting on McPherson. "Your captain tells me that you can do without the benefit of any sort of anesthetic."

Though it pained him to do so, the Scottish NCO forced a smile. "He's Irish. Don't believe a bloody thing he says."

Giving McPherson a comforting pat, Hogg prepared to leave. "You'll be as right as rain in no time. These Americans are pretty good."

The Scotsman choked out a weak laugh. "No offense, sir, but 1 hope they'll be a bit more tender when it comes to dressing a wound than you are."

Hogg didn't need to force his laughter. "Well, now you know why I took up arms instead of the scalpel." Then, anxious to check on his major, Hogg stood up. "Is there anything I can do for you before I leave?"

"Yes sir, one thing, sir."

"And what would that be?"

McPherson, swallowed hard as the American surgeon began to peel away the frozen dressing from his face. "Take care of yourself."

Hogg found Major Thomas Shields a few feet away, tucked up against a fallen tree that served as a windbreak. Opening his eyes when he heard the sound of crunching snow nearby, Shields smiled when he saw it was Hogg. "Well, I'm glad to see you're still in one piece."

The same could not be said for the major. With his right arm in a sling and his left ankle swollen to the point where the baggy pants leg of his uniform had to be cut to relieve the pressure, Hogg wondered how his commanding officer had managed to make it all the way to the missile silo, then into the assembly area. Still, Hogg played along with Shields just as he had with McPherson. "I don't recall you telling me," he stated blandly as he dropped onto the ground next to Shields, "that you had been injured during the jump."

Shields shrugged his one good shoulder. "I did mean to tell you, but the topic simply did not come up in our conversations."

"No," Hogg responded, fully understanding the major's point. "I guess we did have other things on our minds." He then proceeded to fill his commander in on what he had accomplished thus far that morning, on the status of each of the men, as well as passing on the gist of the conversation between himself and Hightower. "Our lads will make up the majority of one of the two teams going out after the last two missiles. The rest of our team will be American as well as a handful of legionnaires."

"The American colonel came by earlier," Shields added. "He was hoping that my condition wasn't so bad as to keep me from leading that team."

"I imagine," Hogg enjoined, "he thought better of that after seeing you."

Shields nodded but continued on with the thought that Hogg had interrupted. "I suppose he told you that he is going to lead one of the two teams himself. The other will be led by his major. I'm to stay here as ranking officer."

Hogg found this difficult to believe. "I'm sorry to say, sir, but you're in no condition to be in charge of anything."

"No choice, Patrick," Shields countered. "We're a wee bit short on officers. Everyone who can walk is going after the last of the silos. Only the medical team, the signal detachment, and of course the sick, the lame, and the lazy are being left behind."

The Irish captain look around at the fog that showed no sign of dissipating. "I can't say that I don't envy you. I'm not looking forward to going back out there, stumbling about across this god-awful landscape. I never thought I'd say this, but this place makes me homesick for the Scottish moors."

Shields gave Hogg a long, hard look. "Are you sure the tree that bonked Sergeant McPherson didn't hit you in the head as well?"

Even though the major's comment was meant to be lightheaded, the mention of his NCO's name brought a pained expression to Hogg's face. When he saw this, Shields quickly changed the subject. "While we were discussing the new mission, Colonel Hightower asked me about you."

"Uneasy about my credentials?" Hogg asked as he turned his thoughts away from the events of the night before.

"No, not at all," Shields was quick to say. "On the contrary, it's his major he is a bit unsure of. While Colonel Hightower has all the confidence in the world when it comes to him as a staff officer, he admitted that he had not had the opportunity to observe him in a leadership position."

"This is one hell of a time to conduct leadership training," Hogg snickered.

"The colonel told me this in the strictest of confidence," Shields quickly explained. "While he went on to state that he had no reason to doubt his own major's abilities in that regard, he wanted to satisfy himself that if things got a bit hairy out there and his major didn't quite measure up, there would be another officer close at hand who could take up the slack."

Hogg could not believe what he was hearing. As if things were not bad enough, a question of competency on the part of the man selected to lead them was being thrown into the mix. "Since it seems that 1 have forgotten to bring my copy of Mutiny on the Bounty to guide me in this matter, how does the colonel envision me stepping up and lending a hand without causing all sorts of mischief and chaos?"

Reaching out with his good hand, Shields patted Hogg's arm. "Colonel Hightower informed me that he would make sure his major understands that you are a crackerjack SAS officer, one who's opinion is to be taken into account in all operational matters."

"Well," Hogg replied dryly, "that's sure to smooth things out and serve as a foundation for a healthy working relationship."

"You're not going to marry the bastard," Shields snapped. "You're both professionals. Hightower is doing what he can to make sure that his subordinate understands that and conducts himself accordingly. I expect the same from you."

For a moment, Hogg wasn't sure which part of his commander's reprimand cut the deepest, the rebuke itself or the comment about marriage. For as hard as he tried, the memory of his recent separation from his wife was never far from his mind. Seeing that there was little more to be gained by spending time here, he stood up. "If there is nothing else, sir, I need to get back to the men."

Not realizing how personal his remarks had been, Shields smiled. "Yes, of course." Then, just as Hogg was about to turn away, the major called out. "By any chance, do you have a roll or biscuits handy?"

Hogg looked back at Shields and shook his head. "No sir, sorry.

I gave my last to a poor legionnaire who was wandering about this morning in search of food."

After waiting while his commanding officer mumbled a response that he did not pay attention to, Patrick Hogg turned his back on the distressing scenes of pain and suffering that permeated the open air aid station. Lost in thought, he made his way back to where his men were waiting for word of their next assignment. While their thoughts were on what the immediate future held for them, those of the Irish captain were focused on what, for him, lay beyond the completion of this mission.