Life During Wartime (8 page)

‘Sure,’ he said. But he was afraid. How could she have known about the red room? She must have had a vision of it, and … Then he realized that she might not have been talking about the room itself. He’d told her about the assault, hadn’t he? And if she had guerrilla contacts, she would know that the emergency lights were switched on during an assault. That had to be it! She was
trying to frighten him into deserting again, psyching him the way Christians played upon the fears of sinners with images of fiery rivers and torture. It infuriated him. Who the hell was she to tell him what was right or wise? Whatever he did, it was going to be
his
decision.

‘There were four doors in the room,’ she went on. ‘You wanted to leave the room, but you couldn’t tell which of the doors was safe to use. You tried the first door, and it turned out to be a facade. The knob of the second door turned easily, but the door itself was stuck. Rather than forcing it, you went to the third door. It was cold, and it frightened you. The knob of the fourth door was made of glass and cut your hand. After that you just walked back and forth, unsure what to do.’ She waited for a reaction, and when he gave none, she said, Do you understand?’

He kept silent, biting back anger.

‘I’ll interpret it for you,’ she said.

‘Don’t bother.’

‘The red room is war, and the false door is the way of your childish—’

‘Stop!’ He grabbed her wrist, squeezing it hard.

She glared at him until he released her. ‘Your childish magic,’ she went on. ‘The third door, the one that frightened you, that’s Psicorps.’

‘Maybe I’m not frightened of it anymore.’

‘Bad side effects, remember?’

‘What is it with you?’ he asked. ‘You have some kinda quota to fill? Five deserters a month, and you get a medal?’

She tucked her skirt down to cover her knees, fiddled with a loose thread. From the way she was acting, Mingolla wondered whether he had asked an intimate question and she was framing an answer that wouldn’t be indelicate. Finally she said, ‘Is that who you believe I am?’

‘Why else would you be handing me this bullshit?’

‘What’s the matter with you, David?’ She leaned forward, cupping his face in her hands. ‘Why …’

He pushed her hands away. ‘What’s the matter with me? This’ – his gesture included the sky, the river, the trees – ‘that’s what’s the matter. You remind me of my parents. They ask the same
sorta ignorant questions.’ Suddenly he wanted to injure her with answers, to find an answer like acid to throw in her face and watch it eat away her tranquility. Know what I do for my parents when they ask dumb-ass questions like “What’s the matter?” I tell ’em a story. A war story. You wanna hear a war story? Something happened a few days back that’ll do for an answer just fine.’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she said, discouraged.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Be my pleasure.’

The Ant Farm was a large sugarloaf hill overlooking dense jungle on the eastern border of Fire Zone Emerald; jutting out from its summit were rocket and gun emplacements that at a distance resembled a crown of thorns jammed down over a green scalp. For several hundred yards around, the land had been cleared of all vegetation. The big guns had been lowered to maximum declension and in a mad moment had obliterated huge swaths of jungle, snapping off regiments of massive tree trunks a couple of feet above the ground, leaving a moat of blackened stumps and scorched red dirt seamed with fissures. Tangles of razor wire had replaced the trees and bushes, forming surreal blue-steel hedges, and buried beneath the wire was a variety of mines and detection devices. These did little good, however, because the Cubans possessed technology that would neutralize most of them. On clear nights there was scant likelihood of trouble; but on misty nights trouble could be expected. Under cover of the mist, Cuban and guerrilla troops would come through the wire and attempt to infiltrate the tunnels that honeycombed the interior of the hill. Occasionally one of the mines would be triggered, and a ghostly fireball would bloom in the swirling whiteness, tiny black figures being flung outward from its center. Lately some of these casualties had been found to be wearing red berets and scorpion-shaped brass pins, and from this it was known that the Cubans had sent in the Alacran Division, which had been instrumental in routing the American forces in Miskitia.

There were nine levels of tunnels inside the hill, most lined with little round rooms that served as living quarters (the only exception being the bottom level, which was given over to the computer center and offices); all the rooms and tunnels were coated with a
bubbled white plastic that looked like hardened sea foam and was proof against antipersonnel explosives. In Mingolla’s room, where he and Baylor and Gilbey bunked, a scarlet paper lantern had been hung on the overhead light fixture, making it seem that they were inhabiting a blood cell: Baylor had insisted on the lantern, saying that the overhead was too bright and hurt his eyes. Three cots were arranged against the walls, as far apart as space allowed. The floor around Baylor’s cot was littered with cigarette butts and used Kleenex; under his pillow he kept a tin box containing a stash of pills and marijuana. Whenever he lit a joint he would always offer Mingolla a hit, and Mingolla always refused, feeling that the experience of the firebase would not be enhanced by drugs. Taped to the wall above Gilbey’s cot was a collage of beaver shots, and each day after duty, whether or not Mingolla and Baylor were in the room, he would lie beneath them and masturbate. His lack of shame caused Mingolla to be embarrassed by the pimply-youth quality of the objects taped above his own cot: a Yankee pennant; a photograph of his old girlfriend, and another of his senior-year high school basketball team; several sketches he had made of the surrounding jungle. Gilbey teased him constantly about this display, calling him the boy next door,’ which struck Mingolla as odd, because back home he had been considered something of an eccentric.

It was toward this room that Mingolla was heading when the assault began. Large cargo elevators capable of carrying sixty men ran up and down just inside the east and west slopes of the hill; but to provide quick access between adjoining levels, and also as a safeguard in case of power failures, an auxiliary tunnel corkscrewed down through the center of the hill like a huge coil of white intestine. It was slightly more than twice as wide as the electric carts that traveled it, carrying officers and VIPs on tours. Mingolla was in the habit of using the tunnel for his exercise. Each night he would put on sweat clothes and jog up and down the entire nine levels, doing this out of a conviction that exhaustion prevented bad dreams. That night, as he passed level Four on his final leg up, he heard a rumbling: an explosion, and not far off. Alarms sounded, the big guns atop the hill began to thunder. From directly above came shouts and the stutter of automatic fire.
The tunnel lights flickered, went dark, and the emergency lights winked on.

Mingolla flattened against the wall. The dim red lighting caused the bubbled surfaces of the tunnel to appear as smooth as a chamber in a gigantic nautilus, and this resemblance intensified his sense of helplessness, making him feel like a child trapped within an evil undersea palace. He couldn’t think clearly, picturing the chaos around him. Muzzle flashes, armies of ant-men seething through the tunnels, screams spraying blood, and the big guns bucking, every shell burst kindling miles of sky. He would have preferred to keep going up, to get out into the open where he might have a chance to hide in the jungle. But down was his only hope. Pushing away from the wall, he ran full-tilt, arms waving, skidding around corners, almost falling, past level Four, level Five. Then, halfway between levels Five and Six, he nearly tripped over a dead man: an American lying curled up around a belly wound, a slick of blood spreading beneath him and a machete by his hand. As Mingolla stooped for the machete, he thought nothing about the man, only about how weird it was for an American to be defending himself against Cubans with such a weapon. There was no use, he decided, in going any farther. Whoever had killed the man would be somewhere below, and the safest course would be to hide out in one of the rooms on level Five. Holding the machete before him, he moved cautiously back up the tunnel.

Levels Five, Six, and Seven were officer country, and though the tunnels were the same as the ones above – gently curving tubes eight feet high and ten feet wide – the rooms were larger and contained only two cots each. The rooms Mingolla peered into were empty, and this, despite the sounds of battle, gave him a secure feeling. But as he passed beyond the tunnel curve, he heard shouts in Spanish from the rear. He peeked back around the curve. A skinny black soldier wearing a red beret and gray fatigues was inching toward the first doorway; then, rifle at the ready, he ducked inside. Two other Cubans – slim, bearded men, their skin sallow-looking in the bloody light – were standing by the arched entranceway to the auxiliary tunnel; when they saw the black soldier emerge from the room, they walked off in the opposite direction, probably to check the rooms at the far end of the level.

Mingolla began to operate in a kind of luminous panic. He realized that he would have to kill the black soldier. Kill him without any fuss, take his rifle and hope that he could catch the other two off guard when they came back for him. He slipped into the nearest room and stationed himself against the wall to the right of the door. The Cuban, he had noticed, had turned left on entering the room; he would have been vulnerable to someone positioned as Mingolla was. Vulnerable for a split second. Less than a count of one. The pulse in Mingolla’s temple throbbed, and he gripped the machete in his left hand. He rehearsed mentally what he would have to do. Stab; clamp a hand over the Cuban’s mouth; bring his knee up to jar loose the rifle. And he would have to perform these actions simultaneously, execute them perfectly.

Perfect execution.

He almost laughed out loud, remembering his paunchy old basketball coach saying, Perfect execution, boys. That’s what beats a zone. Forget the fancy crap. Just set your screen, run your patterns, and get your shots down.’

Hoops ain’t nothin’ but life in short pants, huh, Coach?

Mingolla drew a deep breath and let it sigh out through his nostrils. He couldn’t believe he was going to die. He had spent the past nine months worrying about death, but now when circumstances had arisen that made death likely, he had trouble taking that likelihood seriously. It didn’t seem reasonable that a skinny black guy should be his nemesis. His death should involve massive detonations of light, special Mingolla-killing rays, astronomical portents. Not some scrawny little fuck with a rifle. He drew another breath and for the first time registered the contents of the room. Two cots; clothes strewn everywhere; taped-up Polaroids and pornography. Officer country or not, it was your basic Ant Farm decor; under the red light it looked squalid, long abandoned. He was amazed at how calm he felt. Oh, he was afraid all right! But fear was tucked into the dark folds of his personality like a murderer’s knife hidden inside an old coat on a closet shelf. Glowing in secret, waiting its chance to shine. Sooner or later it would skewer him but for now it was an ally, acting to sharpen his senses. He could see every bubbled pucker on the
white walls, could hear the scrape of the Cuban’s boots as he darted into the room next door, could feel how the Cuban swung the rifle left to right, paused, turned …

He could!

He could feel the Cuban, feel his heat, his heated shape, the exact position of his body. It was as if a thermal imager had been switched on inside his head, one that worked through walls.

The Cuban eased toward Mingolla’s door, his progress tangible, like a burning match moving behind a sheet of paper. Mingolla’s calm was shattered. The man’s heat, his fleshy temperature, was what disturbed him. He had imagined himself killing with a cinematic swiftness and lack of mess; now he thought of hogs being butchered and pile drivers smashing the skulls of cows. And could he trust this freakish form of perception? What if he couldn’t? What if he stabbed too late? Too soon? Then the hot, alive thing was almost at the door, and having no choice, Mingolla timed his attack to its movements, stabbing just as the Cuban entered.

He executed perfectly.

The blade slid home beneath the Cuban’s ribs, and Mingolla clamped a hand over his mouth, muffling his outcry. His knee nailed the rifle stock, sending it clattering to the floor. The Cuban thrashed wildly. He stank of rotten jungle air and cigarettes. His eyes rolled back, trying to see Mingolla. Crazy animal eyes, with liverish whites and expanded pupils. Sweat beads glittered red on his brow. Mingolla twisted the machete, and the Cuban’s eyelids fluttered down. But a second later they snapped open, and he lunged. They went staggering deeper into the room and teetered beside one of the cots. Mingolla wrangled the Cuban sideways and rammed him against the wall, pinning him there. Writhing, the Cuban nearly broke free. He seemed to be getting stronger, his squeals leaking out from Mingolla’s hand. He reached behind him, clawing at Mingolla’s face; he grabbed a clump of hair, yanked it. Desperate, Mingolla sawed with the machete. That tuned the Cuban’s squeals higher, louder. He squirmed and clawed at the wall. Mingolla’s clamped hand was slick with the Cuban’s saliva, his nostrils full of the man’s rank scent. He felt queasy, weak, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hang
on. The son of a bitch was never going to die, he was deriving strength from the steel in his guts, he was changing into some deathless force. But just then the Cuban stiffened. Then he relaxed, and Mingolla caught a whiff of feces.