D-89, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp,
Amazonia, Brazil
Well, thought Phillie Potter, laying on her back on a narrow cot, lonely and, as near as she could see, forsaken, I expected to be staring at a tent roof but not all alone. Bastard.
Stauer had met her and Cazz, along with eight other late arrivals, at the airstrip. The tall, skinny black, the one she knew of as Sergeant Major Joshua, had been with him as had another, shorter and stouter black man. The shorter of the two and Cazz had wandered off conversing heatedly on some issue she had not a clue to. Joshua had taken the other eight in hand, marching them off into the jungle gloom. The sergeant major had given Stauer a very odd, almost pitying look over one shoulder as he'd departed.
Stauer had held one hand up to keep her from throwing herself into his arms, pointing at an odd vehicle with the other hand. 'Jump in,' he'd said.
Wes Stauer wasn't the subtle type, nor the hesitant sort who beats around the bush. 'There's no romance between us until the mission is over,' he'd said. 'Unfair to the troops, if I'm the only one getting his tail wet.'
'But what about me?' she'd asked. 'I've got my needs, too, you know.'
'So?' Stauer's voice had really sounded as if he hadn't understand the issue, or even that there was or could have been an issue. 'You have a job. Fulfilling that is the only need you have for the next several months.'
Bastard, she thought again, moving her hands up behind her head while continuing her upward stare. Now I understand why you like that asshole, Reilly. You're just the same.
Phillie's moping was cut short, suddenly and unexpectedly, by a subdued and highly artificial cough coming from the opposite end of the tent. The question, 'Nurse Potter?' followed the cough. She sat up and faced the man asking.
'I'm Phillie Potter,' she announced to a man she could have sworn she'd seen in a movie. 'And you are?'
'Doctor Scott Joseph,' the man said. Phillie was sure she'd seen him in a movie, but clearly not as the leading man. 'You'll be working for me. Come on, I'll show you around sick bay.'
She turned away and lay back down on her narrow cot, resuming her hands-behind-head stare at the canvas above. 'Not interested,' she said.
'I see,' Joseph said, very calmly. Then he shouted out, 'SERGEANT COFFEE!'
'Sir?!' answered an eager voice from someone Phillie hadn't seen.
'Nurse Potter seems to be having a morale problem. See to it, would you.'
'Sir. . . .'
Phillie never heard the footsteps. All she knew was that one side of her cot suddenly lifted up and she found herself flying through the air before impacting on the muddy ground. And then a mean looking white dude, not so much large as amazingly broad shouldered and solid was standing above her, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. 'The doctor gave you an order, Nurse Potter. Get on your feet and follow him to the aid station.'
Phillie was too frightened even to cry. She never figured out how she managed to get to her feet so quickly. But cry she didn't and stand she did.
'HURRY, Nurse Potter!'
Behind her scurrying posterior, Sergeant Coffee smiled his broadest and happiest smile. She'll work out, he thought. Nice ass, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They rise in green robes roaring from
the green hells of the sea Where fallen skies and
evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 'Lepanto'
D-88, Gulf of Mexico, Patrol Boat
The sun was but a distant memory. Conversely, the rain and spray were a miserable present reality, coming in horizontally and driven at better than a hundred miles an hour sometimes, between boat speed and wind. The boat was on a water roller coaster, with some of even its hard-bitten, sea-legged crew vomiting occasionally. Simmons, who never got seasick, and Eeyore, who was able somewhat to control it, huddled behind the windscreen, Simmons' hands gripping the wheel firmly. Biggus Dickus Thornton, a line running from waist to a stanchion, was further aft, looking forward generally, while inspecting the deck for a minor leak that was making life in the engine room a misery.
Worse, the liberated slave girls below were doing their best to fill the crew dayroom with vomit, to the extent that Morales and Mary-Sue couldn't keep up with emptying the buckets over the side . . . when they and the girls managed to hurl into the buckets, that is.
The girls all wept and prayed and screamed, in between bouts of vomiting. Though they didn't exactly share a language, but only a language family, Morales didn't have a doubt that they were invoking the aid of the Almighty. That, or perhaps praying for death.
Above, straining to make himself heard over the roar of wind and sea and engine, Antoniewicz said to Simmons, 'I fucking told you we should have put in at Havana, you asshole.'
'Chief says we push on, we push on,' the latter answered calmly, if loudly, likewise to be heard over the roar of the gale. Indeed, he answered amazingly calmly considering the boat was riding through waves almost as tall as it was long. 'The last place he wants us or we ought to want to be is Cuba. That's enemy territory, still. Besides, Eeyore, we've made it fine so far. What makes you think it'll get any worse.'
Antoniewicz's face, already a pale green, suddenly assumed a truly ghastly look. 'That,' he said, pointing astern.
Simmons looked over the stern and saw looming what was absolutely the biggest wave he'd ever seen. His hand automatically reached for the throttle and pushed hard. 'Oh, fuck; rogue wave . . . CHIIIEEEFFF!'
Waves at sea, like radio waves and other electro-magnetic waves, operate at a frequency. Moreover, different waves, even in near proximity, will operate at different frequencies from other waves. Occasionally, a series of waves, all normally at different frequencies, will meet. At that point, there can be created an enormous wave, holding within it the mass, and rising to about the height of all the waves operating at the different
