Reckoning by Huggins James Byron

Author:Huggins, James Byron [Huggins, James Byron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: James Byron Huggins
Published: 2013-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-NINE

It was a white, bitter winter cold, and it seemed like it was all there would ever be; a still, silent, depthless cold force that starkly smothered the hills surrounding the cabin.

Sarah took another sip of coffee, stared through the wide, plate-glass window towards the tree line, where two small distant figures, barely visible, moved easily through the barren stand.

Sandman stepped up beside her, holding his own steaming mug. He had just come in from the cold, having taken a turn at guard duty.

"Cold," he boomed heartily. "Cold out there. Ain't fit for man nor beast."

Sarah glanced at him, smiled, cozy in her black flannel shirt that she had bought on a discreet trip into Monticello. She'd also purchased an extra pair of jeans and boots. It was warm, rugged clothing, fit for the forest, or the cold. She focused again on the tree line. It had been three weeks. Gage had come around within two days of Sandman's injections of antibiotics and the saline IV. In another week, she had removed the sutures, over 200 of them. Now, two weeks later, he had begun moving over the hills with Chavez, patrolling, seemingly as strong as he ever was. But something was different with him, ever since he had healed. Sarah's face hardened in concentration as she studied the faint form on the hills, leading the lean shape of Chavez, moving with grace through the gray stand of timber.

Sandman was speaking. "You alright?"

"Sure. I'm fine. How do you think Gage is?" She hoped that her question wouldn't arouse suspicion in his mind.

"Oh, he's gonna be fine," Sandman said. "He's as tough as they come. And his cuts weren't that bad. Like you said, it was that venous cut on his forearm that did the real damage, threw him into shock. Anyway, I never did see a man so hard to kill. He's been through stuff that was a lot tougher. At Norfolk in '82 we went through drown-proofing at advanced scuba school. Now that was tough.

“They tied our hands behind our backs, threw us in a fifteen-foot pool, told us to survive. If we could. No gear, no airtanks, no nuthin'. Stay alive, they told us. For six hours. We'd kick our way to the surface, get a quick breath, then sink right back down to the bottom again cause we couldn't use our arms to tread water. Gage was right there, stayin' alive, laughin' about it. He'd look at me on the bottom of the pool, smiling. We'd hold our breath as long as we could, kick to the surface again, get a quick breath, sink to the bottom again. For six hours." He shook his head, whistled softly. "The instructors told us it would make us drown-proof. Unkillable. 'Cept a couple 'a guys did drown. The DIs brought 'em back, but they were out of the unit after that. That's how it worked. If you died, you were out of the unit. No second chances."

Sarah laughed. "It sounds tough, alright.

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