Cold Allies (22 page)

“I can’t help that, sir, I—”

The colonel’s voice was quiet, shorn of tone. ‘The penalty for desertion during this war is death by firing squad. General Lauterbach asked me to remind you of this.”

Gordon’s thoughts fell out of his brain and rolled along the floor like scattered marbles. “Sir?”

Firing squad? Surely the colonel was joking.

God. Gordon couldn’t think. He saw FIRING SQUAD as though it-were written on Day-Glo billboard.

“Just a moment;” Pelham said. He opened his door wider and shouted down the hall “Major Kelly?”

An instant later, the major appeared, his face questioning

“I wish you to remain here as a witness in case a court-martial is to be convened.” Pelham’s eyes connected with Gordon’s long enough for Gordon to witness the pity there.
For him to see the firing squad marching smartly out onto the grass.

Pelham’s stare, his irises like a TV movie.

“Sergeant Means,” Pelham said. “You are to go to your command center immediately. You are to engage your CRAV and follow the route given you. Once -there, you are to block the road. This is an order. Do you understand? And do you understand the penalty for disobeying the order as I have explained it to you?”

“You’re killing me,” Gordon whispered.

Pelham’s mouth worked. He said nothing.

“I’ll stand there and let the Arabs destroy my CRAV sir,” Gordon said, “but it will kill me.”

And without bothering to salute, he shuffled out the door.

THE PYRENEES, ABOVE SEO DE URGEL

Zahra was standing ankle-deep in the Nile, tasseled papyrus reeds around her,
gelabia
pulled up to her knees. Her face was unveiled and she was smirking.

“Come out,” Wasef told her. “And lower your skirt.”

“The American women taught me secrets,” she said, her dark eyes flashing with hatred. “The biggest secret of all was that you killed me.”

Behind him, men were walking the dirt road, a line of ambulatory skeletons. The lustful eyes in their skulls were fastened on Zahra.

“Lower your skirt or I will beat you,” Wasef said.

She laughed. Her skirt twirled higher, to the level of her thighs. He reached out to grab her, but she danced away, splashing water that caught the sun and for a moment burned like incandescent magnesium.

“Come away,” he ordered, but she wasn’t listening.

He had no control over her, he never had. He glanced behind him. The line of men had stopped, and they were staring because they knew. They knew he could not make his wife obey.

“You shame me,” he said. But Zahra was gone, disappeared into the silent, motionless papyrus.

Panicked, he rushed after her into the shallows, scattering white ibis, a mud-colored crocodile, and strange, flesh-pink fish. Three steps into the Nile, the bottom dropped away. He sank, clutching at water, clutching at nothing.

With a gasp, Wasef sat bolt upright in the jeep. Out of the darkness beside him came Captain Rashid’s concerned whisper, “Are you all right, colonel?”

“A dream.” The transmissions of the tanks behind him were whining up the incline. Ahead of him he could see the dark shapes of the peaks, the gleam of snow on their shoulders.

“War?” Gamal asked.

“What?”

“You dream of war?”

“No,” he said. “Of murder.”

Zahra had wanted to stay in California; but Wasef forced her to return to Egypt He remembered the easy American girls with their foul mouths and their nakedness. He remembered how terrified he was that Zahra would be infected by freedom.

“I dream strange dreams now,” Gamal said to the inattentive colonel. “There are Americans in it”

Americans, Wasef thought. Americans and their sophisticated, decadent ways. Their lives of singles bars and lonely, barren nights.

He’d thought Zahra wanted to become sinful, but realized now that what she had liked were the bright clothes, the silks, the ruffles. Perhaps she remembered dressing up when it was allowed by Egyptian law. All she wanted was to feel pretty.

“I am at a lake,” the captain was saying softly. “There is a young American boy there, and sometimes an American pilot. Down at the end of the pier, just under a fall of light, sits an ill-defined thing. I think it is an alien,” he whispered.

Wasef was barely listening. He was thinking of Zahra, boyish in blue jeans and a tee shirt; Zahra, a hothouse flower in a gossamer dress of red and purple. Wasef had loathed the way the American men’s heads turned in her direction, the way their eyes fondled her.

He had been afraid to lose Zahra, so he brought her home to die.

“Are you all right, sir?” Gamal asked.

Wasef gazed up into the star-shot pool of sky lapping at the black peaks of the mountains. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You sound ...”

“I’m fine,” Wasef said sharply.

The empty road before them was illuminated by a thin strip of light from the jeep’s shrouded headlamps, the glow so weak that Wasef wondered how the driver could see where he was going.

They were lost; all of them lost. Wasef and the entire Arab nation was atop the black mountain of combat, with nothing, not even the gleam of reason, to light their way. No wonder he could not picture the war over. No one but Gamal Rashid worried about aftermaths.

“It is such a strange dream,” Gamal told him. “Sometimes I think I should stop and talk with the Americans, but I am afraid to. I am ashamed.”

Wasef glanced down the steep ravine to his right and noticed a river parallel to the road, its water silvery in the moon. Safety, sanity, was a long way down.

“To hide from the Americans, I walk into a shed,” Gamal said. “Odd. It reminds me of the shed my family had in the desert. And just before I wake, I think of my father.”

“Do you,” the colonel said absently, remembering his last dream-glimpse of Zahra before she disappeared into the reeds. Zahra as she had been before hunger covered her beauty like the shroud of the
gelabia.

“My father,” the boy said mournfully. “He is on his way into France and I am afraid he is too old for battle.”

“Too old?” Wasef sniffed. “He’s only fifteen years older than I am.”

When Gamal didn’t answer, Wasef turned. “And I also am too old? Is that it? Do you think that war is a young man’s game?”

“It isn’t a game,” the boy said.

The jeep struggled higher into the dark, barren rocks. On the other side of the mountains, eight hours from now, they would reach France. There would be trees there and places for concealment. Wasef needed a place to hide. At one time he thought he killed to avenge the famine. Now he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he killed to avenge Zahra.

“We are all either too old or too young for war,” Wasef said bitterly. “There is no good age for killing. Promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“Promise me that if you ever become President, you will get rid of the
gelabia
and the veil.”

Gamal’s voice was thin, whining. “You have no right to make fun of my aspirations. It is—”

“Promise me!” Wasef said so loudly that the driver glanced over his shoulder. “Promise,” he whispered.

Perhaps Gamal caught the pain in his voice, as subtle as the glimmer of moonlight on the snows of the colonel’s reserve. Gamal cleared his throat. “I promise,” he said softly.

THE PYRENEES, AT THE SWITCHBACK ABOVE LLIVIA

The CRAV hidden in the rocks by the side of the road, Gordon watched the Israelis set their explosives into the crannies of the cliff. Six were strung across the sheer limestone face like spiders; six were at the top of the cliff, feeding out line.

They worked silently, like coordinated insects, each man on top responsible for a man below. One misstep, and they would both fall.

And Gordon would not be able to catch them.

He hadn’t had the heart to talk to the Israelis much, hadn’t wanted to feel a tie to them as he had with Dix and her men. What would he write in the dust of the roadside, anyway? That it was a shame the price of Israel’s survival was the lives of her mercenaries?

Gordon turned to watch Rover. The blue light was at his side, where it had been all evening. As though Rover was afraid Gordon would leave again.

Gordon
was
going to leave. His orders were to park himself in the middle of the road and not move, not even if the tanks rolled over him, not even if they blasted him to pieces.

And why? Because if the Arabs didn’t stop for Rover and the CRAV, they’d maintain their cautious five-tank-lengths’ distance. The cliff, when it fell, would get only six or seven. There had to be twenty armored vehicle kills; otherwise the tanks would simply turn around, head down the mountain, and destroy the single battalion waiting for the survivors at the bottom.

Once Gordon had basked in his near invulnerability. The CRAV was not like the Gordon of the weak chin, the Gordon who always got chosen last for sandlot baseball.

Before the CRAV, he’d always come in last. An afterthought.

But it was illusion he’d loved. He learned that at Pons. The CRAV’ s soft, human heart was already broken; and a few hours from now, the hard armor would rupture, too.

Tears welled up in his eyes, ran down his cheeks, collected at the bottom of his goggles. His sight fogged and he blinked to clear it, going in and out of telescopic vision. Rover was a blue blur.

Gordon felt more than saw the light’s presence: steady, curious, and somehow sympathetic. The clatter in his mind was soft and questioning.

“I’m sorry,” he told it.

The CRAV was the bait, the staked goat, and when the Arabs advanced to kill the robot, Rover would be forced into a decision to defend or flee.

Rover had saved him before, and the general was gambling it would save him again—save him from an entire Arab division. The question was, how much did Rover love Gordon? And, for Christ’s sake, why?

CRAV COMMAND, TRÁS-OS-MONTES, PORTUGAL

Pelham pretended not to notice that Gordon was crying.

“Get some downtime,” he said. “We sent a surveillance drone up, and it looks like you have three hours.”

Without reply, Gordon slipped the gloves off his hands and wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“The light won’t go away, will it?” Pelham asked.

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Good,” he said, nodding vaguely. “Good.”

Gordon got up and started to leave the room, but the colonel took his arm. “I want to talk to you. I got you some dinner, and there’s a cot set up in the monitoring station.”

Following Pelham to his office, Gordon found a meal waiting. A whole New York strip, a mound of fries, and broccoli with cheese. It looked like the colonel had ordered from the officers’ mess.

“Sit down.” He waved a hand toward his desk. “Go ahead. Dig in. I’ve already eaten.”

Gingerly Gordon sat in the colonel’s leatherette swivel chair. It was a big seat for a big man and Gordon felt lost in it. He picked up the knife and fork and cut a slice of the steak. Pink blood ran from the center and gathered in a murder-scene pool around the potatoes.

“The main Arab army is moving fast, so fast they’re playing hell with their logistics,” Pelham told him. “They’re headed across the border to Perpignan.”

Gordon looked up from his squeamish scrutiny of the blood.

“The French are driving their forces east to meet them, hoping to Christ we’ve covered their backside. General Lauterbach is deploying our own troops in Figueras. The French will drive the Arabs right into our 3
rd
Armored.”

Gordon put a chunk of steak into his mouth. It was body-warm. Unable to swallow, he surreptitiously spit it out into a napkin.

“I wanted you to know this,” Pelham went on. “I wanted you to know how important your mission is. Unless we catch the Arabs in the Pyrenees totally by surprise, they’ll regroup. We’ll jam their communications so they can’t call ahead to warn the main army. But we can’t jam them forever, son. We’ve got to take them quick and mop up.”

Gordon put his fork down wearily on the plate.

“Look at me,” Pelham said.

Slowly Gordon lifted his gaze.

“It’s just a robot.”

“I know that, sir.”

“Would you like me ...” His voice trailed off for a moment in chagrin or compassion. “Would you like me to be there? To sit beside you or something? Just as a reminder that ...” The colonel’s voice failed him again.

That I’m not really dying.

“Yes, sir,” Gordon said. ‘‘That might be nice, sir.”

“I know you don’t like to be touched, but ...”

“I understand, sir,” Gordon said quickly, plucking the colonel from the brink of embarrassment. “If I feel a hand on my arm, I won’t take the goggles off. I won’t close my eyes.”

“Yes,” the colonel told him. “That’s very important.

You’ll want to, I know. But you can’t close your eyes.”

Not close them. Not even when he saw the approaching shell.

Pelham glanced at Gordon’s full plate. “No appetite?”

“Can’t eat, sir.”

“Well.” The colonel looked distractedly around his office as though it were unfamiliar. “Want to lie down for a while?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll try that, sir.”

Gordon walked to the monitoring room and lay down on the cot. When his head touched the pillow, he spasmed once, as if he were falling, and tumbled off the precipice of sleep.

IN THE LIGHT

Jerry was sitting in the grass with his Pa, watching the pilot toss stones into the lake. It was either sunset or dawn. The sky was a raspberry-sherbet pink at the horizon and a deep, starry cobalt above. Birds, black silhouettes, darted across the heavens.

Dew was falling, condensing on Jerry’s arms and his face, as though the solicitous breeze were pressing a cool washcloth against his fevered skin.

‘‘I’m not a coward,” the pilot said.

Neither Jerry nor his Pa answered. There was no need. Jerry knew that if the pilot hadn’t wanted to come, his Pa wouldn’t have brought him. Pa wasn’t a forceful man, with a booming, scary voice and stinging slaps. He wasn’t made up of have-to’s.

Jerry watched the stars wink on. Evening. It was evening.

“I mean, everyone’s scared sometimes, aren’t they?” the pilot asked. “I wasn’t any more scared than anyone else.”

Pa turned to Jerry. “Why don’t you look in the cooler, Jerry? I bet there’s some ice cream there.”

Jerry looked behind him and saw a Coca-Cola cooler in the grass. He lifted the lid. Inside, nestled into chunks of ice, was a white plastic spoon and a pint of Blue Bell Strawberries and Cream.

“Growing boys like sweets,” his Pa said.

Jerry licked the ice cream off the paper lid. The pilot threw a stone into the lake. The concentric circles caught the candy-pink glow of the dying sun.