Читать книгу Damage Control - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 49

Rafe came to with the notion that he had overslept. His dreams were colorful, even ornate, and he felt as if he had spent too much time in bed. The feeling of the wrappings and bandages came to him slowly, followed by the claxon of the pain.

He could get only one eye open, and even that required a struggle. The eye was gummy, and once it was open he could feel his eyelid as a pain separate from all the others, the worst in his left leg. He looked down, but his head wouldn’t move much and the leg was too far away.

“He’s awake!” someone called in the distance.

He opened his mouth. It was dry sandpaper, as if he’d gone on a bender and this was the hangover day. That thought crossed his feeling that he’d slept too long and took him down a corridor of waking dream about life in his first squadron, until something else pressed at his abbreviated senses.

“Sir? Admiral Rafehausen?”

He opened his eye again, saw a blur. Someone pushed a straw into his mouth, and the rush of water was a pure joy like few things he’d ever felt. He drank greedily.

“That’s a damn good sign,” said a voice in the background. “Give him all he’ll take. Dempsey, see if you can swab that eye. It looks like it still has some particulate matter in it.”

“Sure thing, Doc.”

Rafe felt something on his eye and he blinked. There was a burst of stinging pain more intense than the pain in his leg, but it didn’t last. When he blinked a few more times, the figures around him grew more distinct.

“Dempsey, get the admiral’s flag lieutenant. I think he’s coming around. Let’s back off that drip a little now that he’s awake. You with us, Admiral?”

Rafe moved his head a fraction.

“Good. Lot of folks waiting to talk to you. You’re pretty shot up and the boat ain’t sinking, so don’t waste your energy. Give him more water.”

“Wathitus?” he croaked.

“What’s that? Listen to me, Admiral. I’d like to do this differently, but I know you’re waking up. I had to amputate your left leg a little below the knee, and I’m not sure I can save your left eye. You have some burns, none of them really bad, but the aggregate—well, you ought to be in a burn unit, but I have a lot of worse cases.”

Amputated leg? “Leg hurts!” Rafe said, quite clearly.

The face by him wandered back and forth. Rafe realized he was shaking his head.

“That’s just nerve memory. I’m sorry.”

Rafe gathered himself. It was hard to concentrate, but he had things to do. “What hit us?” he hissed.

“I’ll let your flag lieutenant fill you in. He’ll be right up.”

Time passed.

“Sir?” Madje’s voice.

God, Rafe was able to think, he sounds like hell. His eye blinked open. “Report!” he croaked. Someone pushed the straw back into his mouth.

Madje made a short and brutal report and finished by saying, “We’re still picking up aircrew who punched out from the deck.”

Rafe took a deep breath, which tightened the bandages and hurt him more than he had expected. He coughed water and mucus and his eye blurred.

“Doc? He’s coughing.”

“Raise the level on the drip. Sorry, Lieutenant. He’s in rough shape. I’d rather you didn’t use him up.”

“No!” Rafe tried to shout, coughed again. “Planes aloft? Bingo?”

Madje’s head moved. “The TAO is trying to get them into Sri Lanka. The Indians aren’t responding, sir.”

“TAO?” Rafe’s whole body moved. “Who’s—in charge?”

“There’s an O-5 in reactor who’s the senior man we can find, sir, but he doesn’t feel he can leave the engines.” That was a short form for an argument that had dragged Madje away from a firefighting team and into a labyrinth of the fears and hesitancy of an officer who clearly couldn’t accept the reality that he was in command.

Rafe snorted. It sounded like an abbreviated cough. “TAO,” he said.

Madje nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Get—planes down. Cats working?”

“Cat two’s down but shows green. The fire hasn’t touched it.”

“Madje—have to know!” Rafe was looking down an increasingly colorful tunnel. He hated it. Drugs. “Get planes down. Report.”