Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 47

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But he knew he could not let this terrible fire enter his body and he

ran on without screaming.

The women from the orchard were brought up short by the sudden forest of

flame and black smoke that rose up in front of them, engulfing the

squashed-insect body of the aircraft, and closing around the running

figure of the pilot.

It was a solid impenetrable wall of heat and smoke that blotted out all

ahead of them, and forced them to draw back, awed and horrified, before

its raging hot breath.  They stood in a small group, panting and

wild-eyed.

Then abruptly a freak gust of wind opened the heavy oily curtains of

smoke, and out of them stumbled a dreadful thing with a scorched and

smoking body and a head of flame.

Blindly it came out of the smoke, one arm hanging and its feet dragging

and staggering in the soft earth.

They stared at this thing in horror, frozen in silence, and it came

towards them.

Then a strapping girl, with a strong brown body and a man of dark hair,

uttered a cry of compassion, and raced to meet him.

As she ran, she stripped off her heavy voluminous skirt of thick wool,

leaving her strong brown legs bare.

She reached David and she swirled the skirt over his head, smothering

the flames that still ate into his flesh.

The other women followed her, using their clothing to wrap him as he

fell and rolled on the earth.

Only then did David begin to scream, from that lipless mouth with the

exposed teeth.  It was a sound that none of them would ever forget.  As

he screamed the eyes were open, with the lashes and brow and most of the

lids burned away.  The eyes were dark indigo blue in the glistening mask

of wet scorched meat, and the little blood vessels, sealed by the heat,

popped open and dribbled and spurted.  As he screamed, the blood and

lymph bubbled from the nostril holes where his nose had been, and his

body writhed and heaved and convulsed as spasm after spasm of unbearable

agony hit him.

The women had to hold him down to control his struggles, and to prevent

him tearing with clawed fingers at the ruins of his face.

He was still screaming when the doctor from the kibbutz slashed open the

sleeve of his pressure suit with a scalpel and pressed the morphine

needle into the twitching jumping muscles of his arm.

The Brig saw the last bright radar image fade from the plot and heard

the young radar officer report formally, No further contact.  And a

great silence fell on the command bunker.

They were all watching him.  He stood hunched over the plot and his big

bony fists were clasped at his sides.

His face was stiff and expressionless, but his eyes were terrible.

It seemed that the frantic voices of his two pilots still echoed from

the speakers above his head, as they called to each other in the

extremes of mortal conflict.

They had all heard David's voice, hoarse with sorrow and fear.

Joel!  No, Joe!  Oh God, no!  and they knew what that meant.  They had

lost them both, and the Brig was still stunned by the sudden

incalculable turn that the sortie had taken.

At the moment he had lost control of his fighters he had known that

disaster was unavoidable, and now his son was dead.  He wanted to cry

out aloud, to protest against the futility of it.  He closed his eyes

tightly for a few seconds, and when he opened them, he was in control

again.

General alert, he snapped.  All squadrons to "Red" standby, he knew they

faced an international crisis.  I want air cover over the area they went

down.  They may have ejected.  Put up two Phantom flights and keep an

umbrella over them.  I want helicopters sent in immediately, with

paratrooper guards and medical teams - Command bunker moved swiftly into

general alert procedure.

Get me the Prime Minister, he said, he was going to have to do a lot of

explaining, and he spared a few vital seconds to damn David Morgan

roundly and bitterly.

The airforce doctor took one look at David's charred and scorched head

and he swore softly.  We'll be lucky to save this one.

Loosely he swathed the head in Vaseline bandages and they hurried with

David's blanket-wrapped body on the stretcher to the Bell 2o5 helicopter

waiting in the orchard.

The Bell touched down on the helipad at Hadassah Hospital and a medical

team was ready for him.  One hour and fifty-three minutes after the

Mirage hit the irrigation canal David had passed through the sterile

lock into the special burns unit on the third floor of the hospital,

into a quiet and secluded little world where everybody wore masks and

long green sterile robes and the only contact with the outside world was

through the double-glazed windows and even the air he breathed was

scrubbed and cleaned and filtered.

However, David was enfolded in the soft dark clouds of morphine and he

did not hear the quiet voices of the masked figures as they worked over

him.  It's third degree over the entire area - No attempt to clean it or

touch it, sister, not until it stabilizes.  I am going to spray with

Epigard, and we'll go to intramuscular Tetracycline four-hourly against

infection, It will be two weeks before we dare touch it.  'Very well,

doctor.  Oh, and sister, fifteen milligrams of morphine six hourly.  We

are going to have a lot of pain with this one.  Pain was infinity, an

endless ocean across which the wave-patterns marched relentlessly to

burst up the beaches of his soul.  There were times when the surf of

pain ran high and each burst of it threatened to shatter his reason.

Again there were times when it was low, almost gentle in its throbbing

rhythm and he drifted far out upon the ocean of pain to where the

morphine mists enfolded him.  Then the mists parted and a brazen sun

beat down upon his head, and he squirmed and writhed and cried out.  His

skull seemed to bloat and swell until it must burst, and the open

nerve-ends screamed for surcease.

Then suddenly there was the sharply beloved sting of the needle in his

flesh, and the mists closed about him once more.

I don't like the look of this at all.  Have we taken a culture, sister?

'Yes, doctor.  'What are we growing?  'I'm afraid it's strep.  'Yes.  I

thought so.  I think we'll change to Cloxacillin see if we get a better

response with that With the pain, David became aware of a smell.  It was

the smell of carrion and f 3ings ong dead, the smell of vermin in dirty

blankets, of vomit and excreta, and the odour of wet garbage festering

in dark alleys, and at last he came to know that the smell was the

rotting of his own flesh as the bacteria of Streptococcus infection

attacked the expose tissue.

They fought it with the drugs, but now the pain was underlined with the

fevers of infection and the terrible burning thirsts which no amount of

liquids could slake.

With the fever came the nightmares and the fantasies to plague and goad

him even further beyond the limits of his endurance.

Joe - he cried out in his agony, try for the sun, Joe.

Break left now, Go!  Go!  And then he was sobbing from the ruined and

broken mouth.  Oh, Joe!  Oh God, no!  Joe.  Until the night-sister could

no longer bear it and she came hurrying with the syringe, and his

screams turned into babbling and then into the low whimper and moan of

the drug sleep.  We'll start with the acriflavin dressings now, sister.

When they changed the dressings every forty-eight hours it was under

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