Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

“We’ll get most of that cleaned up,” Comfort said. “Keep your shades drawn, just use the dim lamp until you adjust. You’ll be fine in a few days. I’ve done every wound in the book, but you take the gold, Gunner. A one-eighty between your skull and skin and hair.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“In my line of work we don’t see too many breaks from God. He must have you lined up for something big.”

When they left, Quinn held Mandy’s hand, kissed it, and thanked her for her kindness. What the hell! Mandy wanted some memories. Why not?

“How about dinner when they let me go out?” he asked.

“You don’t have to,” she said, reddening.

“I want to,” Quinn retorted strongly. Once said, he saw a certain loveliness in her. Every woman is beautiful, he had often said to himself.

The phone broke the awkwardness. “It’s for you, Gunner,” Mandy said, and left the room.

“Gunner Quinn,” he said.

“Hi, son,” Dan’s voice rasped.

“Hi, Dad.”

“What the hell are you doing in a German hospital? I thought you were at Pendleton.”

“I got a little messed up on a training exercise. Just some scrapes and bruises. Greer was here. Thank you for taking care of her in New York.”

“She’s a wonderful woman,” Dan said.

Quinn stepped in to stop the coming apologies. “Dad, let’s start anew. Let’s just put the past behind us. I want to come home, soon as I can.”

“Do you forgive me, son?”

“Of course I do. You’re my dad.”

“Marine gunner, huh?” Dan said. “Now, you just had to go and get a higher rank than me, didn’t you?”

Quinn laughed. It hurt his scar. “Is Mom there?” “She’s right here. I’ll put her on. I love you, Quinn.” “I love you, Dad ... I love you.”

Quinn spent a restful night, the sleep of the reprieved. There had been many women since Greer, but none had put out the Olympian flame he held for her. He felt now that there could and would be life after Greer.

How well he slept after he had spoken to his mother and father! They slept well that night, too.

There was a knock on Quinn’s door.

“Come in,” he called from the easy chair.

General Keith Brickhouse, commandant of the Marines, entered.

Quinn came to his feet. The general waved him back into his seat, hung his hat and riding crop on the door peg, turned a chair around so he could lean his arms on the back.

“Army treating you okay here?”

“Everyone’s been great, sir.”

“That’s a pretty damned good job Dr. Comfort did on your head.”

“I’m lucky I still have a head.” “We need to talk a few things over. In another day you’re going to be very big news. Please speak up now, and let’s keep it informal. You’re up for a big medal. I’d say the Congressional Medal is indicated, but it’s peacetime and there’s politics. So you’ll have to settle for a Navy Cross.”

Quinn shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I cry a lot these days, more in the past week than all my life combined. I can’t accept a medal.”

“Why?” Brickhouse demanded, then added, “As if I didn’t know.”

“If you know, then don’t ask.”

“Gunner, the RAM team, to a man, wants you to wear it on behalf of all of them. The President is going to issue a special unit citation medal for the rest of the men. The raid was one of the great chapters in Marine Corps history.”

Quinn spoke nothing in return.

“You’ve a brilliant career ahead, Gunner. Before all the hoopla starts, I wanted to thank you personally. Will my smoking bother you?”

“Not at all, sir. As for my future, I’ve reached my capacity as a Marine. General, I cannot live with such violence. Funny to say after Urbakkan, but I’m not made of the stuff to take more hits like that. The cockpit was filled with brains dripping from the bulkheads and roof. Someone’s eye was pasted against a window and stared at me all the way back. And I must add, sir, I got no sweet feelings about the Iranians I killed. I must have gotten over a hundred of those poor devils in their sleep. General Brickhouse, I’m grieving far too much for Jeremiah Duncan and the others. Sorry, sorry.”

Brickhouse followed his cigarette smoke to the window, sat on the deep sill, and commented on the nasty weather of middle Europe. “We all reach a saturation point, all of us.”

“But there’s a difference. You know—and General Duncan knew—what to do with your saturation points. That’s why you’re a general.”

“You think so?”

“I know how Jeremiah Duncan was all but destroyed by Nam, but he had the guts to—to gut it out. The Corps is in my being, and I can take its spirit with me. I’m starting to get some idea where my future worth may lie,” Quinn said.

Brickhouse weighed the proposition of cajoling, arm twisting, sweetening the pot. Gunner O’Connell was one powerful man. Guts enough to cry. God, the times he’d wished he could weep. God, the times he’d turned away from his wife’s breast. Go till you fall, that’s what.

“It will be a great loss to the Corps,” the commandant said at last.

“But we have some other business on the table.”

(t\7 . t>

Yes, sir.

“Everything surrounding the formation of the RAM Company and the SCARAB was secret. The raid was of extraordinary importance in proving we could retaliate virtually within hours at any point in the world. It also proved the great stamina of that aircraft. Now then, Gunner, you are aware of the nature of the raid being a military operation and not a CIA operation, which would be under the surveillance of a congressional oversight committee.”

“General Duncan trained me very carefully.”

“How so?”

“He schooled me on the political ramifications of the military in a democracy. He drilled it into me that the Corps does not drop their pants and bend over before the other services or Congress. Democracy’s daisy chain, he called it.”

“You’ve heard of Senator Sol Lightner of North Carolina?”

“Mr. Powerhouse, undefeatable. Heads the intelligence oversight and is the hit man on armed services. Not friendly to the Corps,” Quinn replied.

“That’s him. He’s been in the Senate over twenty years. Well, he’s on the way to Frankfurt with one of his dobermans. Senator Sol is pissed off that he wasn’t advised of the raid in advance. Our position—the President’s, that is—is that it was not only a strictly military affair, but that the need for security overpowered the need to share. The inference is that the senator’s office leaks copiously.”

“But, General,” Quinn interrupted, “the President didn’t ask me if it was okay. He said raid; so we raided.”

Brickhouse smiled. “Just giving you the gist. What the senator is going to try to hit us with is twofold. One, the raid smacks of a massacre. It was overkill. Second, there’s a big no-no. Autopsies performed on our five dead show them all to be riddled with shrapnel from an American cluster bomb.”

“What the hell were we supposed to do, sir? Sit down and hammer out the rules of engagement with the Iranians?”

“Senator Lightner has the magic buzz word to create a media feeding frenzy, namely, our men were killed by friendly fire! TV goes ape shit interviewing the weeping loved ones of the deceased. The print people will unlimber their big verbs on the “We didn’t play fair’ theme by using cluster bombs, and the Marine Corps is going to get busted for our blood lust.”