Ahern, Jerry - The Savage Horde

"Pigboats?"

"Old submariner's term—real old. But I'm an old submariner," Gundersen smiled.

"Guess that's why it doesn't bother me to use it. Naw, but—ahh—anyway, Dr.

Milton never had worked on gunshot wounds before and your friend Doctor Rourke said he had. Guess there wasn't much choice. Bumped into Milton outside the sick bay just before Rourke began transfusing Major Tiemerovna—Milton seemed to think Rourke was good. Only hope Harvey was right."

"Harvey?"

"Doctor Milton's first name—"

"Ohh—oh, yeah," Rubenstein nodded.

"Brought this along—figured you might be needing it. Sometimes the waiting gets harder than the doing." From the seat beside him Gundersen produced a small slab-sided bottle. "Medicinal liquor—I've drunk smoother. But there's more where it comes from," and Gundersen handed Rubenstein the bottle. Rubenstein downed his coffee, twisted open the bottle and poured two fingers into the cup. He offered the bottle to Gundersen. "Never touch the stuff when we're underway."

"What's that mean?"

"We've been underwater and heading north for—" he looked at his wristwatch.

"Fifty-eight minutes. They don't really need me up there until we get near the icepack—and that'll be a while yet. Should be tricky—imagine there's been a lot of shifting in the pack since the Night of The War."

"Ice pack?" Rubenstein coughed—the medicinal liquor was strong, burning as he felt it in the pit of his stomach.

"As to the running of the submarine here and the welfare of my crew, I give the orders. But for the actual operation it's Captain Cole's say so. He ordered us underway before they put him out to take out the two slugs in his left arm."

"Ohh, shit," Rubenstein muttered, taking another swallow of the liquor. It burned less this time.

Chapter 11

A long mid-line incision was made in order to expose the internal organs. Rourke began exploring the stomach.

Dr. Milton's voice sounded nearly as labored as the respirator. "Why are you going through the gastrocolic omentum, Doctor Rourke?"

Mechanically, his mind on his hands and not his words, Rourke answered. "To open the lesser sac of the stomach." The membrane was a loose fold. "Suction" he called, Milton himself assisting. The greater omentum covered the anterior stomach surface and intestines like a drape, Rourke stopping, noting a hematoma at the mesenteric attachment. "We have to evacuate this hematoma." Evacuating, Rourke inspected the stomach wall between the leaves of the greater and lesser omentum. There was damage, a whole bullet, not a fragment, partially severing the connection to the rear wall of the abdomen. "Gotta get that sucker out,"

Rourke remarked, exhaling hard, feeling ready to collapse. As each bullet or fragment was removed, Rourke carefully repaired the organ damage with continuous locking chromic sutures.

According to the clock on the surgery wall—he supposed bulkhead would be more appropriate since they were on a naval vessel and—likely—already underway, he had spent more than an hour and a half sorting through the mess that was Natalia's stomach, finding bullet fragments and piecing them meticulously together—if he left even the smallest fragment, the complications could be legion—could be mortal.

"Do you have your closing sutures available?"

"You're ready to close her?" Dr. Milton asked.

"No—just thinking ahead—you have what I need?"

"Yes."

"Fine."

"Are you sure there were seven bullets?"

"Yes," Rourke nodded. "Somebody gimme a wipe, huh?"

A hand reached out—he didn't see who it belonged to, his eyes bothering him with the light as well, the glare—he needed a smoke, needed sleep—but Natalia needed life. "Damnit—" Rourke almost spat the word. In the fat of the greater omentum he found what he had not wanted to find. The sixth bullet had been intact—he had hoped that the seventh would be.

It was not.

He had the jacket, the gilding metal—but the core of the bullet—the core had separated and was still somewhere inside her.

As Rourke held it up, trying to determine if anything other than the core itself were missing, Milton asked, "Is that it?"

"Unless a bullet is made of lead alone, it usually has a whole or partial jacket surrounding it. These should be full metal jacketed if they were standard G.I.

Ball—and all the others have been. Somehow the jacket peeled away from the lead core and the lead core is missing in there still—and you can see the way the jacket peeled back that it was ripped—a lot of force bearing on it. Looks like there are pinhead-sized fragments of the jacket missing as well. Pll need someone standing by with a microscope so we can piece this thing back together as we go—can't afford to leave any pieces behind."

"I'll get someone on that," Milton murmured.

Rourke closed his eyes for an instant—he thought of the eyes beneath the closed lids beyond the surgical tent. "Natalia," he whispered.

Chapter 12

Paul Rubenstein had given up on the medicinal liquor—he had no desire to get drunk. And the coffee—good by anyone's standard—had proved too much for him as well—two trips to what he'd rapidly learned was called "the head". He had given up smoking many years before—so he sat now, staring at the wall, wondering. And he knew it wasn't a wall—he remembered editing an article years ago that had dealt with ships and boats and a wall was a bulkhead—he thought.

He wondered if Rourke knew—knew that the ship was underway. He realized that even if Rourke had not been told, he would have suspected as much. And he wondered even more about the welfare of Natalia.

He found himself smiling at mention of her name—that a major in the KGB would have found such a warm place in his heart amazed him still. His parents, not directly involved in the Holocaust, had told him of relatives who had been. The SS, the Gestapo—and he rationally realized that the KGB was essentially the same. But the woman—she was different.

If he felt such torture waiting for the outcome of the operation—six hours had passed since it had begun—he could not even imagine what it was Rourke himself felt. A slip of the knife, a misjudgment and a woman that Rourke obviously loved would be dead. Rubenstein shivered—not with cold.

He sat bolt upright. "The operation's over."

He turned around—it was RourKe. "John—is—"

She was dead, Rubenstein thought—otherwise—

"She should make it," Rourke nodded, his face haggard-looking, leaner seeming than Paul had ever seen it. Under the most bizarre conditions, Rubenstein had secretly marveled that Rourke always found the time to stay clean shaven when there was sufficient water available to do so. But now, his face was stubbled, deep lines etched there heightened by the shadow of beard.

"You look like hell," Paul said quietly.

' 'Matches the way I feel—the last bullet. Nine fragments, some of them almost as small as the head of a pin. Had to reconstruct it under a microscope. Made me realize the last time I performed major surgery was a long time ago. The hands are just as steady, but the reflexes I'd learned weren't there."

"We're underway—like they call it. You know that," the younger man told him.

"I felt it—yeah."

"What are we going to do, John?"

"If I got everything and did everything right, Natalia could be up and around in about a week. We can't do anything until then. You meet the captain?"

"Commander Gundersen—yeah—seems okay."

"It's Cole we've gotta worry about—those orders of his—something doesn't sound right about them."

"He wants to start a nuclear war all over again? That's crazy."

"I'm going to see if there's some way this Commander Gundersen can contact President Chambers or Reed. But in the meantime, we're stuck."