John Ringo: Yellow Eyes

“Chief?” he asked, uncertainly.

“She’s still a beaut’, ain’t she, Skipper?”

“Chief Davis ?” McNair asked again of his very first boss aboard Des Moines .

“Hard to believe, ain’t it? But yeah, Skipper, it’s me. And recognizing you was easy; after all, I knew you when you were seventeen.”

McNair started to move forward to throw his arms about his former boss and later subordinate. He started, and then stopped himself. This was the by-God Navy, not a reunion of a ship’s company in some seedy, seaside hotel or at the Mercer farm in Pennsylvania. Instead, the captain extended a welcoming hand which Davis took and shook warmly.

“You been aboard long, Chief?”

“Maybe a week or so, Skipper. Long enough to see the mess below.”

McNair took a deep breath to steel himself for the anticipated blow. “How bad is she?” he asked.

“Structurally she’s as sound as the day she was launched, Skipper. But nobody’s given a shit about her in over thirty years and it shows. We’ve got water — no, not a hull leak, just condensation and weather leakage from topside — about three inches deep down below… plenty of rat shit; rats too, for that matter. And the plates are worn to a nub. They’re all gonna have to be replaced.”

Davis sighed. “The argon gas leaked out. What can I say? It happens. Wiring’s about gone — though Sinbad says he’s got a special trick for that. Engines are in crappy shape, take six months to get ’em runnin’ again, if we’re lucky. And then the guns are shot, o’ course. Some stupid bastard left ’em open to the salt air. Rusted to shit, both in the tubes and deeper down.”

Nodding his head slowly in understanding, McNair keyed on one word Davis had dropped in passing. “Sinbad?” he asked.

“Sinbad’s just what I call him. His real name’s Sintarleen. He’s an… Indy? No, that’s not it,” the chief puzzled. “He’s an… Indow… um, Indowee. You know, Skipper, one of them fuzzy green aliens. He’s a refugee and he sort o’ got drafted too, him and another twenty-seven of his clan on this ship, another thirty from a different clan to the Salem . Real shy types, they are. But hard workin’? Skipper, I ain’t never seen nobody so hard working. Only the twenty-eight of ’em, well twenty-seven actually ’cause Sinbad’s been doin’ other stuff, and they’ve already got nearly an eighth of the ship cleaned out. Only problem is they can’t do nothin’ about the rats. Can’t kill ’em. Can’t set traps for ’em. Can’t even put out poison for ’em. They’ll even leave food for the nasty little fuckers if you don’t watch ’em careful. I asked ’em though, if they could feed somethin’ that could kill ’em and then dispose of the bodies. Sinbad said he and his people had no problem with that. Funny bunch.”

As if to punctuate that, a furry-faced, green-toned Indowy, face something like a terrestrial bat, emerged from below, straining under an enormous weight of a capacity-stuffed canvas tarp. The Indowy walked to port and dumped a mass of organic trash, rats and rat filth to splash over the side before returning wordlessly below.

Davis paid no more than a moment’s attention to the Indowy before turning back to McNair and continuing, “So anyways, my own cat Maggie had a litter of kittens about a month before I went into the tank; you know, rejuv? Under their mom’s guidance, they are taking pretty good care of the rat problem. There’s eight of ’em. Maggie drops big litters.”

Laid out on the helicopter’s litter, Digna expired not twenty minutes flight from their destination, her chest rising suddenly and then slowly falling to remain still. The paramedic in attendance had at first tried to revive her, using cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then, when that failed, electric shock. Finally, after half a dozen useless jolts, he had shaken his head and covered her face with the sheet. He shrugged his regrets at Digna’s son, Hector, then politely turned away as Hector covered his face with his hands.

The inspector’s face remained impassive throughout.

Hector had managed to gain control of himself by the time the helicopter touched down on Ancon Hill overlooking Panama City at what had once been officially know as “Gorgas Army Hospital,” and was still commonly referred to as “Gorgas.”

At the helipad, Hector was surprised to see an ambulance still waiting for his mother. What did they think they could do for her now? She’s gone. He was even more surprised that the ambulance sped off, sirens blazing and tires lifting from sharp turns at a breakneck speed, once his mother’s body had been loaded.

Another car, a black Toyota, was left behind as the ambulance raced away. Into the back seat of this vehicle the inspector peremptorily ordered Hector, before seating himself beside the driver. Hector’s pride bridled but, realistically, he knew that the reach of the Miranda clan’s power stopped well short of Panama City. He went along without demure.

Hector Miranda hated the antiseptic stink of hospitals. Worse, this was an ex-gringo hospital where the smell of disinfectant had seeped into the very tile of the floors and walls. It didn’t help matters that his mother had just died. Almost as bad was uncertainty over his own future. A conscription notice at his age seemed too absurd for words.

And then there was that heartless bastard, the inspector. Did he have a word of sympathy over Digna’s death? A kind gesture? Even minimal civilized politeness? No, he just sat unspeaking as he pored through one file folder after another.

Hector was a proud man; as proud of himself as he was of his lineage. He could not weep for his mother here in public. Had he done so, and had she been there to see, she would have been first with a none-too-gentle slap and an admonition that “men do not cry.” It had been that way since he was a little, a very little, boy.

Once, his mother had caught him crying over some little-boy tragedy; he couldn’t for the life of him recall just what it was. She had slapped him then, saying, “Boys don’t cry. Girls are for crying.”

Shocked at the slap, he had asked, sniffling, “Then what are boys for, Mama?”

His mother had answered, in all seriousness, “Boys are for fighting.”

He had learned then to weep only on the inside.

So, dry-eyed, he paced, hands clasped behind his back and head slightly bowed. People in hospital greens and whites passed by. He thought some of them were gringos. Hector paid little attention to the passersby, but continued his pacing. Ordinarily, even at his age, he would have at least looked at the pretty, young nurses. He knew he looked young enough, perhaps thirty years less than his true age of eighty-seven, with a full head of hair and bright hazel eyes, that the girls often enough looked back.

One girl did catch his eye though. A lovely little thing she was, not over four feet ten inches, her shape perfection in miniature, and with bright blue eyes and flaming red hair. It was the hair that captured Hector’s attention; that and the bold, forthright way she looked at him. He had no clue what it was about him that caused the pretty redhead to walk over and stand directly in front of him.

She stood there, quietly staring up into his eyes, with the tiniest of enigmatic smiles crossing her lips. This lasted for a long minute.

Something… something… what is it about this one? Hector thought. Then his eyes flew wide in shock.

“Mama?”

Sergeant Major McIntosh sneered, showing white teeth against black lips. The place was a shambles, disgusting to a soldier’s eye. Never mind that the golf course was overgrown, riotous with secondary growth jungle. The sergeant major thought golf was for pussies anyway. But the barracks? They were a soldier’s shrine and that shrine had been desecrated ! Windows were broken in places, missing where they were not broken. Wiring had been ripped out, unskillfully and wholesale. The paradeground had gone the way of the golf course, and that did matter in a way that a silly pursuit like golf did not. Trash was everywhere. The only buildings still in half-assed decent shape were the post housing areas that had been sold to government functionaries, their families and cronies. And even those needed a paint job.