The Eternal Mercenary c-1

  The Eternal Mercenary

  ( Casca - 1 )

  Barry Sadler

  Barry Sadler

  The Eternal Mercenary

  ONE

  Nha Trang, Vietnam, 1970…

  A flight of three Dust Off Med Evac helicopters was bringing in the remnants of an infantry platoon that had been ambushed a little south of Nui Ba Den two hours before. The Cong had really ripped their ass on this one, but had screwed up by hanging around a little too long-long enough to get caught between a unit of the First Cav and a company of South Korean Rangers. The copters were bringing out the broken and dying humanity that had been the American platoon; the dead and wounded Cong were left to become part of the mud.

  Such are the benefits of a modern nation's technology: the Americans were even now being placed in an air-conditioned hospital clearing room at Nha Trang where rosy-cheeked young nurses could tell them how brave they were and how proud they made the free world with their noble sacrifices. (And on occasion the nurses might sacrifice a little of themselves by sleeping with such wounded heroes-but only, of course, if they were officers…)

  Colonel Robert Landries, tall and ascetic looking, the senior surgeon of the Eighth Field Hospital, personally supervised the sorting of the wounded by the degree of severity. He was assisted in this humane endeavor by Major Julius Goldman. The two directed which men would receive immediate treatment and which would have to wait-or take second best from some of the orderlies.

  Goldman was examining one of the head wound casualties when he stopped suddenly, straightened up, shook his head as if confused, and called to Colonel Landries.

  "Colonel, you better come over here and confirm what I'm looking at-or get ready to put me in the rubber room."

  Landries swore at him. "I have been ready to do that ever since you were assigned to this unit, but I'll look."

  Landries made his way over to Goldman, stopping occasionally to give instructions about the disposition of a particular patient, or to answer a question from one of the braless nurses. (The heat made bras develop a rash, so Landries had authorized the only braless uniform in Indochina.)

  "All right, Goldman, what the hell are you mumbling about now? Have you finally pickled your brain with specimen alcohol?"

  Goldman nodded, consternation written across his face. "I hope that's all there is to it, Colonel. At least it would explain this." He indicated the prone figure lying before them.

  The casualty was a stocky, powerfully built man, not unusual as human beings go. What was unusual about him was the wound. According to all the known laws of medicine he had no right to be living.

  Around the corners of the battle dressing on the left side of his head the brain itself could be seen. Protruding from the exposed brain was a piece of shrapnel, a shiny sliver of Russian steel about a quarter of an inch in diameter sunk to an unknown depth in the exposed vital organ. The open area of the brain was about four inches long and three inches wide and ran up to where the part in a man's hair would normally be. This section of the skull had just simply been blown away; an adjoining section was held on by a flap of skin. A Chinese-made 60-mm mortar, firing Russian ammo, had obviously scored a direct hit.

  Landries bent over to take a closer look at the wound and the shrapnel. Blood covered the man's face and the tails of the battle dressing holding the bandage to his head. Landries squinted, looked closer, took out his glasses, and looked again.

  "My God!" he exclaimed, face paling, as he turned to Goldman. "What…?"

  Both men turned their attention to the exposed brain.

  A wound like that, in the incubator climate of Vietnam, meant almost certain death, or, at the very least, that the man would be a vegetable if he lived. But…

  This wound was different. God, how different!

  Slowly, but surely, as the two surgeons watched in disbelief, the open wound was taking steps to protect itself. The slender piece of shrapnel was being isolated and encapsulated by what appeared to be the same kind of calcification process that isolates TB bacilli in the lungs. For TB, it was known as a ghom complex, but what the hell this was was something else. The dura mater, pia mater-the meninges-protective coverings for the brain and spinal cord, were making slow butvisible progress growing back over the exposed regions of the brain.

  Visible…Good God! Landries turned to Goldman.

  "Get this man prepped and into surgery immediately." His voice rose to a piercing shriek. "Move! Get X-rays of every centimetre of this man from every angle-and do it now!"

  The nurses and orderlies jumped at the commands, but Landrie's voice still followed them: "I want blood work. I want urology and hemoglobin. I want every damned test this place can make-and some it can't. Move, you slugs! If this man dies I will transfer every one of you to the paratroops and send you fine young ladies to clean open sores at a leper colony. Move, damn it, move!"

  He turned to Goldman.

  "Goldman, you found him-so you can stay with him every second of every hour until I can personally relieve you."

  The major nodded and followed after the wounded man, telling the aides to get an IV started. He ordered the nurses to get the man cleaned up and into isolation, told them he wanted sterile technique to be observed, that if any of them contaminated any of the specimens taken from this man there would be hell to pay.

  They took the soldier quickly to a bed in the isolation room of the hospital. The only other patient in the room was an elderly Viet farmer in the final stages of a bout with typhus, no longer contagious, so Goldman had the orderlies throw him out with a gift of fifty American dollars. The sudden windfall delighted the old man, and he quickly grabbed his few meager belongings and sprinted out the door like an Olympic hurdle-jumper as if he feared these crazy Americans would change their minds and take the money back. He went through the main gate so fast the A. P. standing guard shook his head in wonder at the old timer's agility.

  As the nurses and orderlies stripped the wounded man, Goldman called for an IV of sterile saline to be startedstat. For the first time he now looked at the man's dog tags to check his blood type. O positive. No problem there. The most common type of blood. Vital signs were next. The man's temperature was 97.9-almost a degree lower than normal. It shouldn't be lower than normal; he should be running a fever. Respiration: 18 to the minute. A little rapid, but not bad. Pulse: slightly faster than normal. Blood pressure: 140 over 90. Normal.

  But there was nothing normal about this; nothing about the wounded man was as it should be…

  Goldman left, taking the man's dog tags and wound tag. Again he read the legend on the dog tags: "CASEY ROMAIN-TYPE O-POSPROTESTANT." It told him nothing about who the man was. He stopped by his chief orderly's office to drop off the wound tag.

  "Get this man's medical records in here ASAP and tell the commanding officer of his company to get me his 201 file. Also, I want all information on his personal history and background. And have it for me by tomorrow afternoon."

  The chief orderly had a bland look in his eyes, so Goldman went on:

  "Sergeant Ferguson, you have been bragging about how you talked your way into a cherry assignment here. I am not particularly fond of your ass anyway, so I am going to tell you that if you don't have that info for me by tomorrow I have just the place for you. There is a Special Forces camp on the Laos border that has lost its last three medics from KIAs in the last month, and it looks like the shit is really going to hit the fan there. If you don't deliver that information for me, you will find yourself reassigned as their Temporary Medical Specialist by 0800 hours day after tomorrow and on your way to join the Green Berets by noon. Goodbye, Sergeant."

  As Goldman turned and left, Ferguson sat there in sh
ocked silence. He had thought of himself as secure in this safe slot, and now this lousy Jew doctor was on the verge of screwing everything up for him. Another three months of dealing penicillin and other drugs on the black market and he would have enough to set himself up with a nice little bar when he got Stateside. Ferguson rubbed his nice, round, beer belly and then ran his hands through his thinning, mouse-colored hair, grunted disgustedly to himself, and reached for the phone. His survival was at stake. Green Berets! Who in his right mind would want to be assigned to duty with those madmen? Shee… it! If those suckers weren't being attacked, they were always out looking for trouble. No, he thought, Iwill get all the trash he wants, but I'll have my day…

  When Goldman returned to the isolation ward, Casey had been cleaned up and was lying nude beneath a set of clean white sheets. His body had been scrubbed down until it glowed a rosy pink. Goldman inspected the head wound again and swabbed it down with an antiseptic solution. The progress of the membraneous lining in its attempt to recover the exposed brain tissue was now obvious to even an untrained eye. Even more startling was the fact that from a very close examination it was clear that new bone was being grown around the perimeter of the injury.

  The major pulled the covers down from Casey's body to get a look at the rest of him. He whistled softly under his breath. Casey's body was covered with scars, many of them deep, and others with puckered edges as if they had healed irregularly by themselves. The wounds were a blend of old and fairly recent, but many of them had faded almost white from age, and others seemed to have crisscrossed several times until it was impossible to tell which was the oldest wound.

  Goldman called for an orderly to take Sergeant E-5 Casey Romain to the X-ray room for his series and to keep an eye on his vitals. If there was any change, Goldman was to be notified immediately. In the meantime he would go and get ready for surgery.

  By the time Casey had been X-rayed, Goldman and the colonel had finished their scrub and were waiting for their patient to be rolled in along with his plates.

  Placing Casey under the sterile sheets, Colonel Landries again inspected the wound and remained silent for a moment before saying to Goldman:

  "Has there been any sign of infection?"

  "Negative," responded the major. "There is no sign of any infection at all. We should have his blood work in a few minutes. Perhaps that will tell us more."

  The two doctors stood discussing the possible explanations for their strange patient's condition until the X-ray plates were set up on the display. They went over the plates one after another, and then repeated themselves, consulting the X-ray tech's report on the unusual conditions present in the patient. One particular item caught their special attention. A thick mass of tissue in the patient's left thigh surrounded a piece of foreign matter of unknown nature. Because of the angle from which the X-ray was made it was difficult to make out exactly what the object was. They decided to go in for it after they tried to remove the piece of shrapnel from the brain.

  As Landries prepped the area around the head wound and painted it with antiseptic, he commented that the shrapnel seemed a little longer than it had been when they brought Casey in. Taking a pair of forceps, he gently tugged at the piece of metal. Almost without any effort on his part it came free from the surrounding brain tissue.

  Casey was obviously in no distress, so Landries told Goldman to go after the unknown object in the thigh.

  Surgery over, the two doctors retired to the coffee room, Goldman taking the object he had removed from Casey's thigh with him. While Landries sipped hot black coffee, Goldman removed the membraneous tissue surrounding the object. Slowly the form took shape… until there could be no doubt as to the object's identity.

  An arrowhead. A metal arrowhead.

  Landries spilled his coffee as the object was dropped in front of him on the table. Picking it up, he turned to Goldman.

  "Bronze?"

  Goldman nodded.

  "Goldman, your hobby is ancient history. When would you say the last time an arrowhead like this was made?"

  Goldman took the piece from Landries, turning it over and over in his fingers.

  "Colonel, this is handmade and not cast. It resembles very closely some of the bronze artifacts I've seen in museums in Jerusalem and Istanbul. You know, I went there with my uncle, the one who's the curator for the Judaic Arts and History Museum in New York."

  He was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the arrowhead.

  "How old? Oh, I don't know. It looks a lot like some of the arrows I have seen from the period of, say, 300 BC to AD 400. They didn't change very much among most of the primitive-and some not so primitive-tribes during that time. Bronze was still very popular-and a lot easier to work than iron.”

  "Doctor Landries, that man in there, Romain. Those wounds on his body look like they were made by edged weapons like he had been sliced up by swords and axes. We have treated almost every conceivable type of injury since we have been here, and nothing-I repeat, nothing-even remotely resembles those wounds. The blood work on him is normal except for one thing: his white blood cells are hyperactive. The phagocytic action is unbelievable. I set a smear of his blood in with a preserved sample of the old Viet's-the old man who had the typhus-and Romain's WBCs attacked and destroyed the typhus bacilli as if they were at a picnic. That's the reason there is no sign of infection in his body. Furthermore, there are no detectable foreign organisms present in his system other than those that are necessary for the maintenance of life. Colonel, I do not believe that a harmful bacteria or virus can survive in Romain's body. He doesn't even have any cavities." Landries nodded. "Anything else?" Goldman hesitated a moment and said, "Yes… I injected two cc's of a whole blood sample into a guinea pig, and the animal died in convulsions less than ten seconds after the injection. Sergeant Romain's blood is poison, deadly poison."

  Landries shook his head, tired and confused. "We are faced with something outside our experience, Major, and I am not sure I really want to find out what it is. You stay with him and monitor him until midnight, and then give me a call, and I'll relieve you."

  The next shock came in the quietness of the isolation room where the orderlies had brought Casey after surgery. Major Goldman had been sitting by the bed, studying Casey's face in the single light of the bedside lamp. There was nothing unusual in Casey's features. His age was indeterminate. He could be anywhere in the late twenties to the late thirties.

  Goldman closed his eyes and nodded. The exhaustion of the day crept over him, dragging him unaware into sleep. He dreamed… but it was one of those dreams that wake one with a jerk as though falling.

  Casey was moving restlessly on the bed, beginning to mumble to himself, jerking his head back and forth as though denying some accusation. And for the first time Casey spoke, the words coming forth clear and unhesitatingly though his breathing had been troubled up to this point.

  Latin!

  Not the Latin of the textbooks. Casey was speaking the Latin of the Caesars. Perfectly. Fluently.

  As a doctor and historian, Goldman realized immediately that what he was hearing was something only a few classical scholars could speak with any case. Goldman knew them all by name-and Romain was not one of them.

  He bent closer and listened. His eyes grew large with wonder, and then he gently nodded his head as understanding finally came…

  The time to call Landries came and passed, and still Goldman sat and listened to the words of the man on the bed.

  Listened and wondered…

  TWO

  Major Goldman sat beside the bed of the man whose ID tags read, "Casey Romain," watching his patient and listening to the sounds of the air conditioners straining to keep the hot night away. Air conditioners in a war zone. Time progresses… Goldman sat quietly, occasionally taking the vital signs of the casualty on the bed. A timeless unreality hung in the room like strange music probing the edges of the doctor's mind, the ironic symphony of some incomprehensible deity who ble
nded the air conditioner noise with the rales-the crackling, rattling breathing-of the man named Casey and periodically punctuated both with volleys of distant artillery fire crumping its way through the surrounding mountains in search of an unseen enemy.

  A vague uneasiness troubled the doctor… as though there were apresence in the room.

  Watching the still figure on the bed, Goldman let his thoughts run over the events of the past day and night, troubled and amazed by what had come from the mouth of this strange man whose body was covered with scars, whose wound should have been fatal. He had no right to be alive.

  Casey moved slightly as if dreaming. The rales slowed. Goldman focused on the sleeping man's face, and a stark clarity burst in the doctor's consciousness.

  Iknow you, he whispered silently within his brain. Iknow who you are. There have been legends written about "the one who must wait." I know that you are him, that you are the one who waits for the Coming. Yes, Sergeant First Class Casey Romain, I know who you are.

  He was not prepared for the real words. When they came, clear and loud, they were like a splash of ice water across his consciousness:

  "You do, do you? You really think you know me. Doctor?"

  Casey had sat straight up in the bed, nude from the waist up, that scarred body a shocking sight in the room. But it was not the scars that caught Goldman's attention, it was Casey's eyes. They had an overwhelming power over Goldman. He could not tear himself away from that glowing gaze.

  "You really think you know me and know what I am? Then look closer, Doctor, and see that which no man but me has seen in almost two thousand years."

  Hypnosis? Goldman's mind told him there was hypnotic power in his patient's eyes, a power he could not tear himself away from, but even in the thinking his mind seem to split, one part alert and knowing the reality that was happening, the other part…