Десмонд Бэгли: Wyatt's Hurricane

‘I’m fine,’ he said nonchalantly.

Wyatt switched his attention back to the tree. ‘I’ll see if I can pull her out now.’ He crawled under the branches and was silent for some minutes, then said in a muffled voice, ‘It needs one more swing.’ He came out. ‘If you can get under there and pull her out while I lift this damned tree, I think we’ll do it.’

He carefully chocked in the rocks he had already inserted under the trunk while Dawson got in position, and when Dawson shouted that he was ready he swung again on the lever. Nothing happened, so he swung harder, again and again, leaning his whole weight on the branch and pushing down until he thought his bones would crack. The thought entered his mind dizzily that he had gone through all this before in the prison cell. Well, he had done it before and he would do it again.

The tree-trunk did not move.

Dawson called a halt and came out from under the branches. He had been close to Julie’s body and was now certain that she was dead, but whatever he privately thought of the uselessness of all this did not show on his face for one moment. He said, ‘What we need here is weight — not strength. I’m sixty pounds heavier than you are — it may not be all muscle, but that doesn’t matter. You pull her out while I do the lifting.’

‘What about your hands?’

‘They’re my hands, aren’t they? Get under there.’

He waited until Wyatt was ready, then leaned on the branch and thrust down with all his force and weight. He almost screamed at the cruel torment in his hands and sweat beaded his forehead. The trunk moved and Wyatt gave a shout. ‘Keep it up! For God’s sake, keep it up!’

Dawson went through an eternity of purgatory and for a fraction of a second he wondered if he Would ever be able to use his hands again — say, on a typewriter. Hell! he grunted to himself, I can always dictate — and pressed down harder. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wyatt backing out, drawing something with him, and it was with exquisite relief that he heard a faint and faraway voice say, ‘Okay, you can let it go.’

He released the branch and flopped to the ground, thankfully feeling the flaming hell centred in his hands dying to a welcome numbness. With lacklustre eyes he watched Wyatt bend over Julie, rip open her shirt and apply his ear to her chest. And it was with something approaching shock that he heard him shout exultantly, ‘She’s alive! She’s still alive! It’s faint, but it’s there.’

It took a long time for them to signal a helicopter, but when they did action was swift. The chopper hovered over them and swirled the dust while Wyatt lay over Julie and protected her from the blast. A man was lowered by a winch and dropped to the ground, and Dawson lurched up to him. ‘We need a doctor.’

The man gave a brief grin. ‘You’ve found one — what’s the trouble?’

‘This woman.’ He led the way to where Julie was lying and the doctor dropped to one knee beside her and produced a stethoscope. After a few seconds he fumbled in a cartouche at his waist and drew forth a hypodermic syringe and an ampoule. While Wyatt watched anxiously he gave Julie an injection. Then he waved back the helicopter and, speaking through a microphone at the bottom of the dangling hoist, he gave terse instructions.

The hoist was reeled in and presently another man came down, bearing a folded stretcher and a bundle of splints, and the helicopter retreated again to continue its circling. Julie was tenderly bound in a complex of splints and given another injection. Wyatt said, ‘How is... will she...?’

The doctor looked up. ‘We got to her in time. She’ll be all right if we can get her off this hillside real fast.’ He waved to the helicopter which came in again, and Julie was hoisted up on the stretcher.

The doctor surveyed them. ‘You coming?’ He looked at Dawson. ‘What’s the matter with your hands?’

‘What hands?’ asked Dawson with tremulous irony. He thrust bandaged claws forward. ‘Look, doc, no hands!’ He began to laugh hysterically.

The doctor said, ‘You’d better come with us.’ He looked at Wyatt. ‘You, too; you look half beat to death.’

They were hoisted up by the winch one at a time, and the doctor followed and tapped the pilot once on the shoulder. Wyatt sat next to the stretcher and looked at Julie’s white face. He wondered if she would consider marrying a man who had failed her, who had let her go into the storm to die. He doubted it — but he knew he would ask her.

He stared down blindly at the receding hillside and at the broad waters of the flooded Negrito and felt a touch on his hand. He turned quickly and saw that Julie was awake and that her hand touched his. Two tears ran down her cheeks and her lips moved, but all sound was lost in the roar of the aircraft.

Quickly he bent down with his ear to her lips and caught the faint thread of sound. ‘Dave! Dave! You’re alive!’ Even in the thin whisper there were overtones of incredulity.

He smiled at her. ‘Yes, we’re alive. You’ll be back in the States today.’

Her fingers tightened weakly on his hand and she spoke again. He missed something of what she said, but caught the gist of it. ‘...come back. I want house... overlooking sea... St Pierre.’

Then she closed her eyes but her fingers still held his hand and he felt half his burden taken from him. She was going to be all right and they were going to be together.

And so he went back to Cap Sarrat Base and into fame and history. He did not know that the headlines of the world’s newspapers would blazon his name in a hundred languages as the man who saved a whole city’s people — as the man who had destroyed an army. He did not know that honours awaited him, to be bestowed by lesser men. He did not know that one day, when he was a very old man, he would be the one who was to show the way to the taming of the big wind — the hurricane.

He knew nothing of all this. All he knew was that he was very tired and that he was a professional failure. He did not know how many soldiers had died in the trap of St Pierre — many hundreds or many thousands — but even if only one had died it would serve to proclaim to the world his failure in his work and he felt miserable.

David Wyatt was a dedicated scientist, unversed in the ways of the world and very young for his years.