Read Silversword for Free Online Page A

whistles, the clinking of equipment, the sound of a mass of armed men on the move.
    Moving toward us.
    â€œThey’re in the wire!”
    A rash of gunshots, the rippling long stream of an M-16, the heavier, throatier bark of AK-47s.
    Two ghostly figures approach the tangled razor wire, sappers come to blow a hole in our defenses. I shoot them both, my carbine on semi-automatic, carefully placing rounds only where the rounds have to go, conserving my ammunition, knowing there are more of them out there. Many more.
    Too damn many.
    Five or six more sappers follow, slithering up the muddy slope like lithe naked serpents. Covering fire from unseen infantry and a heavy automatic weapon keep my head down, bullets cleaving the air, a swarm of deadly bees. Streams of green tracers focus on my place of refuge, a lethal light show slicing through the darkness.
    I lob a grenade over the edge of the trench. The sappers never see the
baseball-size bomb as it tumbles toward them, lighting up the night, shredding their bodies.
    The machine gun coughs a steady stream of fire, the gunner focusing on my muzzle flash. A flare rockets up from somewhere and hangs like a tiny white sun below the clouds, casting shadows in its weird pendulum light. I duck and move half a dozen meters away and catch five more men at the wire, freeze-framing them in the last moments of their lives. The machine gun finds me again, pulverizing the earth around my body at the edge of the trench, forcing me back down into the pit, making me crawl like a worm through a cold black ooze.
    They keep coming. I can’t kill them fast enough to make a difference. When one goes down, two more take his place.
    I kill them and they fall away.
    I kill them.
    Still they come.
    I turn to meet the man charging up the slope, now a huge target only a few feet away. He’s carrying a long rifle with a fixed bayonet. I focus on the blade. It is aimed directly at my heart.
    The blade keeps coming. It is a foot long, both sides sharp.
    I see a hate-twisted face, deformed by emotion, exertion, fear, and determination, a man who wishes me dead, as frightened as I am, and as young. His bayonet reaches out for me. I shrink away and pull the trigger.
    My gun clicks empty .
    Â 
    Â 
    â€œMr. Caine!”
    â€œWha?”
    Felix took my hands in his and held them tightly, squeezing them gently to bring me awake. “You were crying out in your sleep. You were having a bad dream.”
    I nodded, the image still vivid, the fear leaving a bitter metallic taste in my mouth. I had had that dream before. An old acquaintance, but no friend, it visited me every few months, more or less, a souvenir of a living nightmare from many years ago. It was the first time I had come close to death. Really close.
Inches. Less. I suppose it’s like sex. The first time is always memorable.
    â€œWhere are we now?”
    â€œAlmost home. Look out the window.”
    Honolulu sparkled from the air, a thin stretch of white high-rises wedged between lush green mountains and a topaz sea. I leaned forward in my seat to watch my island passing below.
    â€œI was going to wake you, but you had that bad dream and started crying out before I could get there.”
    I must have looked strangely at him, because he went on explaining. “Not loud, but kind of a soft wailing. I know a nightmare when I see one.”
    â€œHave some of your own?”
    He smiled. “Once or twice. You okay?”
    â€œI’m okay. It’s something that comes up from time to time. It’s from a long, long time ago. Probably before you were born. You’d think it would be over by now. But it doesn’t seem to want to let go of me.”
    â€œThe moment of your death.”
    â€œYou know, huh?”
    â€œIt causes the wailing. I have had it, too. Have you had it long?”
    I nodded.
    â€œYou must have very nearly died once before. You must have been on the very threshold and defeated it. Part of