He was sitting on a swing, gently rocking back and forth. He looked at his watch—0700. Morning of the new day. The early light was pale, almost incandescent. It played off the snow in peculiar textures, almost turning blue. The sky above the mountain also looked to be blue, blue and pure, without a cloud to mar it anywhere. He shivered, drawing his coat around him; it was very cold. He had a headache and felt older than the blue mountain that humped up before him, benign now, and remote. If there was a lesson in this, he didn’t know it. It was no parable; it was just a battle.
He watched now as a young man left the command center and shuffled across the snowy field toward him. No, it wasn’t Skazy, or poor Uckley, or Dill, or God help him, Peter Thiokol — all his boys who had not made it through the night. Poor Peter, he might even have been the bravest, braver than any soldier. He certainly was smart. Or Uckley, down where he shouldn’t have been, standing out there, drawing the fire that came for Peter. And Frank. Frank, you were a prick and a hothead, and maybe even a psycho, but we needed a man to lead the assault, to go down first, knowing exactly the consequences, and you went without a second thought.
Puller saw that it was the junior Delta officer McKenzie, commander of the last attack on the Soviet strongpoint. He’d be the inheritor of it all.
“Sir, I thought you’d like to know the President is on his way. He’ll be arriving shortly.”
“Umm,” was all Puller could think to say. The news filled him with terrible weariness. He hated that part of it the worst, where the bigshots came by after the battle and asked the kids who’d survived where they were from and told them their folks would be proud of them. Well, he supposed it would mean something to the kids.
“Do you have final casualty figures, Captain?”
“It’s pretty bad, sir. Bravo lost seventy-six killed, maybe another hundred to hundred twenty hit. Delta lost twelve men in the initial assault; then, of the one hundred five we got into the tunnel, we lost sixty-five dead, the rest hit. Only seven guys in Delta came out without a scratch. Of the first squadron, twenty-two guys, you got one hundred percent fatals. The Rangers lost fifty-one KIA in the assault, maybe another seventy-five wounded. Third Infantry came out with only some mussed hair. Eleven KIA, thirty-one wounded. We lost six helicopter aircrew from the two crashed birds. Then there was that FBI agent Uckley. Also sixteen state troopers went along on the final assault. Seven of them were killed, most of the rest hit. Brave guys, those country cops. They grow ’em tough in this state, I’ll say that. Three of the four people we sent into the tunnels, including that poor Vietnamese woman. Jesus, we found her back in the tunnel by the silo access hatch with an empty automatic and seven Russians around her. She did some kind of job, let me tell you. Without her, Walls doesn’t get close to the LCC. Then the fourteen men on the mission to open the tunnel for the tunnel rat teams, we lost them all. Then there were three National Guard pilots. And the sixteen men in the installation security complement. And the two officers on silo duty. So we’re looking at two hundred sixty-seven dead. Maybe four hundred wounded. I suppose it could be a lot worse. Hell, at Beirut the Marines lost—”
“All right, Captain. What about that poor welder? The one who burned Pashin?”
“They think he’s going to make it, sir. He’s stable. Lost a lot of blood, but he’s looking good.”
“I’m glad. What about the Soviets?”
“Well, we figure their strength to have been about seventy. We’ve got sixty-two body bags and eight badly wounded.”
Then, absurdly chipper in the morning light, McKenzie suddenly smiled. His face was giddy with innocent enthusiasm.
“Sir, you did it. I mean, you really outfought that guy. You had him outsmarted at every step of the way. I have to tell you, in Delta we were pretty pissed off at you yesterday. But you knew what you were doing. You won. Goddamn, you kicked Aggressor-One’s ass.”
There was such indecent worship in the young man’s voice, it filled Puller with nausea. The stupid little prick. Puller snorted.
“Peter Thiokol did it, McKenzie. I just pointed the soldiers up the hill.”
But he was an argumentative little son of a bitch.
“No, sir. Respectfully, sir, you beat him. And Delta beat him, sir. That’s the lesson. You got a problem, you call the professionals. Your professional, hell get it done, sir, your elite soldier.”
No, that was not the lesson. Puller saw that now. In the end it wasn’t Delta on the mountain. In the end it wasn’t the professionals. It was the regular people. A black convict. A Vietnamese refugee. A young federal officer. A neurotic defense consultant. A welder. An Air National Guard pilot. A gym teacher, an accountant, a housewife.
He looked at the huge mountain that sat atop the surface of the earth and realized then what you had to do to get to the top of it and stop the madness.
It wasn’t the professionals. It was the regular people, the Rest of Us, back in the world. It was our mountain, and we had to get up there. If we didn’t, who would?
Suddenly, the pulsing sound of helicopter engines rose above him. Three huge Sea Stallions in green and white had appeared over it and were beginning the descent. Even from the distance Puller could make out the seal of the President of the United States.
“Sir, we ought to be down there. The Joint Chiefs will be along too. And I bet the press will be here soon. They’re going to be all over this mountain by noon. It’s going to turn into a carnival.”
Puller rose, threw away his cigarette, and said yes, yes, the captain was right, they had better go to meet the President.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEPHEN HUNTER was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1946. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1968 and spent two years in the United States Army. He joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun in 1971, where he has been a copyreader, a book review editor, a feature writer, and a film critic. He is also the author of The Master Sniper, The Second Saladin, The Spanish Gambit, Point of Impact, and Dirty White Boys. Mr. Hunter is married and lives in Columbia, Maryland, with his wife and two children.