35

Jack Sullivan saw the bright light again. This time, he wasn’t about to march blindly ahead. Screw the light. With superhuman effort, he willed himself awake. His eyelids going up felt as if someone was dragging sandpaper over his eyeballs. It hurt to breathe.

“Welcome back, Jack.” Bing’s face swam into focus.

“Captain.” He cleared his throat, then tried for something better than the weak whisper. “What happened?”

“Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill out every time one of my men gets injured?”

He blinked at the hospital room around him—white walls, green sheets, strange-looking medical equipment—and wrinkled his nose at the smell of iodine. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it. I’m fine.”

“You might think differently when the painkillers wear off,” the man said in

a voice that leaned toward gentle. Not something Jack had heard from Bing before. He had to be dying.

He tried to sit up. Couldn’t. What the hell? “Take it easy, son.”

Nobody had called him son in at least a decade.