Read Online Orders Is Orders by L. Ron Hubbard - Free Book Online Page B

protection of a ditch and jumped up again. Toughey
     was almost out of the car, dragging the reverend with him.
    A small, hurtling shadow flashed across the earth at Mitchell’s feet. He cried, “DOWN!”
     and threw himself flat on his face. An explosion battered the air over him. Dust geysered
     high, fragments hung for an instant against the sun, turned and dropped lazily down
     in a wide circle, pattering like hail.
    Three shadows in quick succession spread their wings over Mitchell and then were gone.
     His ears began to roar in the descending silence. The three planes had gone.
    Mitchell got up, spitting bits of highway from his mouth. His right side felt numb
     and damp but he had no thought for it in that instant.
    The car was spewing smoke from under its punctured hood. The reverend was standing
     stupidly on the running board looking down and saying, “Dear me, dear me,” over and
     over in a toneless voice.
    Toughey was trying to sit up, his big face gnarled with pain, recovering from shock.
     He looked down at his torn canvas legging and his ripped green pants and swore through
     clenched teeth.
    Mitchell was instantly at his side. “Hit bad?”
    “M’leg. Those ——— ——— ——— ——— ———!”
    “Dear me,” said the reverend.
    “Shut up,” snapped Mitchell, glaring at his father. “Dig out my pack and be quick
     about it.”
    The reverend stood where he was, staring down at the pool of blood which began to
     grow about Toughey’s foot.
    Goldy came up out of the ditch, a dazed expression on her smudged face. Now that she
     was wholly awake, it seemed to her that time had telescoped the group before her into
     the walled mission yard. She saw Toughey stretched out and Mitchell’s command penetrated
     to her.
    Swiftly she hauled Mitchell’s pack into the road. He pulled it closer without looking
     up and fumbled for his brown first-aid packet.
    “You hurt bad?” she whispered to Toughey.
    “Naw,” he growled between pain-clenched teeth. “You . . . you can’t kill a Marine.”
    Mitchell had Toughey’s bayonet and was slitting the legging. He cut the laces of the
     shoe and pulled it off.
    Goldy swallowed hard and knelt beside Toughey. The reverend started to get down beside
     Mitchell but the sergeant thrust him away.
    The bone was broken above the ankle in a compound fracture and Mitchell looked at
     it with hopeless eyes. He pulled the ring of the first-aid packet and then seemed
     to remember something.
    “Lemme see,” begged Toughey.
    Goldy held him down. “No. It’s not as bad as it looks. You’ll be all right, big boy.”
    “Father,” said Mitchell in a hard voice. “You used to be good at this sort of thing.
     Patch him up.”
    The reverend knelt down and took the bandages. Mitchell poured water out of his canteen
     into the dixie and looked around. Gasoline was leaking from the tank and he saturated the cushion
     stuffings with it. Over the green blaze he boiled the water.
    Toughey’s face was the color of limestone. Mitchell reached into his pack and pulled
     out the Canadian whisky. Nobody noticed its presence or remarked it when he forced
     the amber fluid down Toughey’s throat.
    The reverend set the bone and splinted it with bayonet and scabbard. Mitchell gave
     Toughey another drink and then put the bottle back into his pack.
    “Sarge,” said Toughey, sitting up. “I . . . I can’t walk with this thing. You and
     Goldy and the reverend—”
    “Shut up,” said Mitchell angrily.
    “But I can’t . . .”
    “You’ll walk,” said Mitchell.
    Toughey looked at him with contracted brows. “But I’ll slow you down. I think—”
    “Never mind thinking. I’ll do the thinking around here. Get up!”
    Toughey tried and Goldy looked on, horrified.
    “Get up!” snapped Mitchell.
    “Ain’t you got any heart?” cried Goldy. “Good God, if he tried to walk on that—”
    “Pipe down,” said Mitchell. He put his arm around Toughey and pulled him