Numbered Account

CHAPTER 29

For a few seconds, all is calm. The incessant chatter of the jungle canopy is no more. Ortiga lies sweating behind the dirt berm. “It was a clean shot,” he says. “He was dead before he hit the ground.”

Nick relieves Ortiga of his grisly trophy, trying hard not to think of the severed thumb wrapped in the sticky cloth. He signals for his men to withdraw into the foliage and form up. A thirteen-mile retreat through the steaming jungle beckons. One by one the marines slide on their bellies backward toward the protective sanctuary of the jungle.

A woman’s scream peels through the morning air.

Nick yells for his men to freeze where they are, to keep out of sight.

Again, the woman screams. Her fear dissolves into a guttural cry. Sobbing.

Nick raises his binoculars and scans the clearing but can see only the shape of Enrile’s corpse. The sun shines directly on it, and already a circus of flies is congregating near the pool of blood under his head. A small brown woman emerges from behind the white farmhouse. She runs, then falters, then runs again toward the body. Her shrieking grows with every step. Her arms flail around her head, then descend to beat her sides. A child totters from the house seeking its mother. Together they stand above the dead man, wailing.

Nick looks to Ortiga. “Where the hell did she come from?”

Ortiga shrugs. “Must’ve been in the truck. Recon said the house was deserted.”

Nick feels a new presence at his side. Johnny Burke is back from the dead. He has appropriated the binoculars. “Can’t tell if the kid’s a boy or a girl,” he says. “They’re both crying themselves to death.” Burke raises himself on one knee, still studying the clearing with the binoculars. “You killed that old boy. He’s dead, ain’t he?”

Nick pulls on the newbie’s shirt. “Get your ass down flat.”

Burke resists. “Ain’t nobody but that poor mother and her little kid out here in the jungle, Lieutenant. Nobody but that woman and…” His face is pale. Nick realizes he is delirious. “You killed her husband, Lieutenant.”

Timber cracks. Halos of dust spring from the berm to Nick’s right and left. Puffs of smoke appear in the jungle like quickly blooming flowers. A smattering of small arms fire pours from the dense wall of foliage opposite the skirmish line.

Burke is standing and screaming, “Hit the dirt, lady! Get your kid down! Lie down, goddammit!”

Nick grabs the seat of Burke’s pants and orders him to fall behind the berm. The young officer knocks away the offending arm and continues beseeching the lady and her child to lie down on the ground.

A wet slap lands in Nick’s ear.

Burke drops to one knee. A sheet of blood spreads rapidly across his tiger-striped utilities. He is gut shot. He coughs and a gob of blood arcs from his mouth.

“Heads down! Do not return fire,” yells Nick, who then lifts his own head above the berm. The woman and child stand motionless next to the corpse, their own heads covered by their arms.

“Get down,” Nick wheezes, his cheek pressed into the warm dirt. “Goddamn you, get down!”

Bullets whiz by, some pounding into the dirt, others passing inches overhead. Burke is moaning. Nick looks at him, then jumps to his feet, his hands cupped to his mouth. “Get down!” he yells. “Lady, get down!”

A bullet slices the air near his ear and he drops to the ground. Still, the woman and child refuse to move. They stand like statues, cowering above Enrile’s body.

Then it is too late.

Nick hears the shots that kill them. A collage of pops and bangs no different from the others, but suddenly, the two are no longer standing. They lie sprawled on the dirt near Enrile. Bullets pound into their bodies. Mother and child twitch with the entry of each slug.

Nick signals the retreat. He looks at Burke. Blood pours from his mouth. His shirt is wet and black. Ortiga pulls it open and applies a sulfa bandage. Frowning, he shakes his head.

High noon in the Philippine jungle. Nick and his men have covered eight miles along the path to their extraction point. They are pursued by an unseen foe. The only testament to the marauders’ presence is the occasional crackle of ammunition fired in the marines’ direction. Now the men must rest, Nick most of all. He lays Johnny Burke on the slope of what the map signifies as the Azul River. Burke is conscious and momentarily lucid.

“Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant,” he tells Nick. “I ain’t gonna be going much farther. You just as well oughta leave me here.”

“Keep that mouth of yours wired tight,” says Nick. “We’re gonna get you home. Just keep squeezing my hand. Let me know you’re still here.”

Nick scrambles to his “0330,” a corporal charged with carrying the team’s radio. He takes the compact transmitter and keys in their operational frequency, hoping to raise the Guam. Three times he’s tried to contact the ship to set up an emergency helo extraction. Again, the Guam is silent. Nick changes the frequency and picks up the tower at the Zamboanga Airport. The equipment is not faulty. His calls are being ignored.

Four o’clock in the afternoon. The strip of beach that will serve as their extraction point lies a quarter mile ahead through a clump of tangled undergrowth. Burke is still alive. Nick kneels next to him. His entire being is painted with his comrade’s blood. His ear monitors the wind, seeking the faint wash of two landing craft inbound from the Guam. An hour ago, he had managed to contact the ship by speaking with an air traffic controller in Zamboanga, who on an open frequency relayed his call to Colonel Sigurd Andersen.

All there is left to do is sit and wait. And pray that Burke will survive.

Ortiga spots the boats one half mile out. A shout goes up from the exhausted men.

Johnny Burke looks to Nick. “Semper fi,” he says weakly.

Nick squeezes the Kentuckian’s hand. “You’re home, kid. Be on board in no time.”

Ortiga orders “A” squad to form up. The men must remain inside the line of vegetation until the boats are on the sand. As they move out, a hailstorm of fire erupts from a grove of bent palms to their left. More shots come from a stand of rubber trees behind them. The marines are caught in a classic enfilade, effectively cut off from the beach.

Nick yells for his men to dig in. “This is the last dance! Fire at will!”

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.”

Nick swung an arm around the windowless office. It measured eight feet by ten feet. Bookshelves covered two walls and a credenza the third. “What, this?”

“You know what I mean. The Fourth Floor. Working with the Chairman.”

He knew exactly what she meant. “I guess I’m pretty lucky, but right now we’re so busy I haven’t had time to congratulate myself.”

“Consider this a present to celebrate your promotion.” She took the yellow folder from under her arm and tossed it playfully on his desk.

“What is it? Don’t tell me. A questionnaire to be filled out in triplicate asking how I like my furniture?”

She smiled impishly. “Not exactly.”

“A listing of every school I attended, days absent, and what I did for every summer vacation.”

She laughed. “Now you’re getting closer. Take a look.”

Nick picked up the file and turned it sideways to read its title. United Swiss Bank, Los Angeles Office. Monthly Activity Reports 1975. “I should never have asked you to get these for me. I wasn’t thinking of your position here at the bank at all. It was unfair and rude. I don’t want you to put yourself in a bad spot for me.”

“Why not? I told you I owed you a favor and besides I want to.”

“Why?” he asked, a little louder than intended. He was afraid one day she’d help him and the next turn him in.

“It was me who was being selfish the other day, not you. Sometimes, I can’t help it. I’ve worked so hard to get here that even the smallest bump frightens me.” She raised her head and addressed him in a forthright tone. “Frankly, I’m embarrassed about my behavior and that’s why I hadn’t called you back. I thought about what you asked me and I decided that a son has every right to know as much as he possibly can about his father.”

Nick appraised this providential turn of fortune. “Should I be suspicious?”

“Should I?” She took a step closer and laid a hand on his arm. “Just promise me one thing: that soon you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

Nick laid the dossier on his desk. “All right. I promise. How about tonight?”

Sylvia looked taken aback. “Tonight?” She bit her lip and stared directly at him. “Tonight would be wonderful. My place at seven-thirty? You remember where it is, don’t you?”

“Deal.”

A minute after she had gone, Nick stared at the place where she had stood as if her presence had been an illusion. On the desk lay a faded yellow folder with a neatly typed title, and next to it, a bin number and a coded reference.

All neat.

All proper.

And for the next twenty-four hours, all his.