Ralph Peters (82 page)

Krebs gently pressed the captain back down on his green bed.

"
It's all right,
"
the old warrant said.
"
The colonel's just fine, don't you worry.
"
The old soldier's voice managed a tenderness Meredith could hardly credit.
"
Don't you worry,
"
he repeated.
"
The colonel can take care of himself.
"
Meredith noticed that Krebs's eyes were glistening.
"
You just lay down and keep still now. The colonel said he wants you to keep still.
"

"
No time like the present,
"
Meredith said. He dropped his pistol belt in the snow and emptied the last grenades from his pocket. He left his rifle where Krebs had propped it against a tree trunk.

He began to trudge up through the trees.

Ryder followed, jogging through the snow with his knees high like an old-fashioned runner.

It was very beautiful to Meredith in the little strip of forest. The boughs were heavy and white, and as he moved away from the wreckage of the M-100 the world seemed a pure, clear place. It was not a bad place to finish up, if it came to that. Far better than many of the other places where he had spent time.

And he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had done good work. The strategic communications set had been on the blink, for some reason, but he had been able to relay the results of their mission by conventional means—including the brilliant surprise about the Japanese homeland
space shield. If he had to die, he was going to die in a world he had already changed for the better.
His
nation and his people would prosper.

He thought of his wife, suddenly and luxuriously.
He
owed her so many debts on promises unkept. Hard to be a soldiers wife. Maureen. But she would
get
over him. She was a handsome, handsome woman, still young and so full of life that life would not be able to resist her.
He
was sorry that he would not hold her again, sorry that
he
had not done better by her.

"
Sir,
"
Ryder called after him, panting heavily at the burden of climbing up through the snow.
"
Maybe we ought to call out or something. To let them know we're coming. In case they're jumpy or something.
"

Yes. The kid was right.

Meredith began to whistle. Then he smiled, and it bothered the whistling, so he forcibly tightened his lips. Taylor would appreciate it, he thought. Proudly. And he marched up toward his fate, whistling
"
Garry Owen
"
and remembering the guidon in his pocket.

The trees came to an abrupt end. Up across a smooth low slope of the sort richer cultures used to teach their children to ski. a skirmish line of armed men stood silhouetted against the winter sky. The valley was very small, a matter of just a few contour lines on a map. The sort of place easily overlooked during a planning session, or perhaps noticed, then rapidly forgotten. Its only distinguishing feature was transient
—
the hundred or so armed warriors standing slightly hunched against the wind, many of them bearded, all of them with the hard look of men who had been fighting for a long, long time.

Meredith stopped whistling. He continued to walk up the slope until he was within easy calling distance of the line of men. The guerrillas watched without a trace of emotion.

When Meredith sensed that the distance was right, he stopped. Ryder's footsteps came to a crunching halt in the snow beside him. Cold wind rinsed down the slope.

As good a time and place as any.

"
Hello,
"
he called out in Russian.
"
We're service members in
—
"

Dozens of the men raised their weapons in unison.

"
Don't shoot
,
"
Ryder shouted in English.
"
Don't hoot.
"

A man in a black kid hat barked an order, and the men lowered their weapons partway. Obviously a leader, he stepped forward, his bearing proud, and came a little way down the slope toward Meredith and Ryder. Another man followed, and Meredith pegged that one as a bodyguard.

The two guerrillas halted about ten yards up the slope from Meredith and Ryder. The bodyguard's trigger finger looked naked through a woolen glove, tickling the old Kalashnikov automatic rifle in his hands.

"
Who
are
you guys?
"
the leader asked in the English of a stumped cab driver.

Meredith was so surprised that Ryder had to answer for him.

"
We're Americans. From the United States Army,
"
the warrant officer said.
"
Who are you?
"

The guerrilla leader drew himself up to his full height.

"
We are members of the Armenian Christian Liberation Front,
"
he declared. Then he smiled broadly, revealing strong white teeth in the frame of his black beard. Hey, maybe you know my Uncle Abel in Chicago?
"

Epilogue

New Year's Day, 2021

Clifton Reynard Bouquette sat on the edge of
the bed in his boxer shorts. Behind him, the woman breathed regularly and deeply, with her plain face half
buried in the pillow. She had had too much to drink, and he could smell the decaying alcohol in her body. He did not find it offensive. Had she stopped drinking at a reasonable hour, she would not have allowed him back into her bed.

The draperies were closed, but enough light filtered through to give the air the color of gray flannel. He listened to the rain. He did not need to look outside to register the appearance of the world. Northern Virginia was drearily predictable on a wet winter morning. Anyway, he did not want to admit that the morning had come. Traditionally, New Year's Day was a time of family parties with old friends, with the morning reserved for taking stock of his achievements in the year past and his prospects for the year ahead. While the rest of the family slept, he would drink black coffee with a side of cognac in his study and treat himself to a triumphal mental procession featuring Clifton Reynard Bouquette of Newport and Georgetown. But this year there would be no victory parade, and he simply wanted the morning to be over. Much better to have slept through it. Only the old trouble in his kidneys had roused him from his hiding place in the woman's bed.

It had ended as a very bad year. Against
all odds, Mad
dox had won the election, riding the triumph of American arms abroad. And the cracker in the overly tailored suit had demoted him. Had he been fired,
the
situation would have been bearable. It might have been represented as the result of an important policy disagreement. In Washington important men were fired all the time. But he had not been deemed of sufficient importance to fire. Maddox had simply condemned him to a smaller office and fewer perks.

Then that little bitch from Smith had given him a Christmas present. She had come down from school with his daughter for a holiday visit, and Bouquette had merely made a few suggestions to her of the sort that had often brought a fair return in the past. The little tart had passed on the details to his daughter, who in turn shared them with her mother. Bouquette's wife had filed for divorce the day after Christmas.

Money wasn't a problem, of course. Thank God for that. But money was not really an important consideration to him, since he had always had plenty and knew he would always have enough. What mattered was the respect of men and the admiration—preferably active—of women. But he was under a cloud, both up on the Hill and between the sheets. Oh, the trend had been noticeable for some time. But he had refused to admit it. When his wife filed the papers, he had smiled, poured himself a drink, and picked up the phone. He had left messages on a vast archipelago of answering machines. But the plain, drunken girl in bed beside him was the only one who had bothered to return his call.

He had not seen her for over a month. She had quit her job at the Agency, against all logic. She was unemployed, and she drank. It couldn't go on, of course. One could not live within a reasonable commute of the District without a decent job. For a girl from her class background, the position would be financially untenable. He could help her out a bit there, of course, but he did not think he would. A part of him wished she would move to distant parts without leaving a forwarding address.

The woman moaned, as though all the alcohol was hurting her at last. She rolled to the side and the bedclothes tightened
under
Bouquette's shorts. In her drunken vigor she had torn at his back and called him
"
George.
"
The slip had rather spoiled things.

She was inconsolable. It wounded him deeply. Perhaps he was not all that he once had been—his hair was thinning just a bit, though the effect was not undistinguished. But I while his stamina had diminished ever so slightly, he believed he made up for it in art. He was rich and accomplished. He could offer a woman everything she might reasonably desire. He could not begin to fathom how the woman had talked herself into the notion of loving a man with whom no discriminating female would be seen in public.

No. He was being dishonest. He rested uncertain hands on his horseman's thighs. The woman had genuinely loved. She had loved with a depth of feeling that shamed Bouquette, for he recognized that he had never inspired such uncalculated love in another, not even in his wife, when they had both been young and utterly perfect. His loss would not have shaken the life of anyone the way her lover's death had broken this woman. He wondered what magic his competitor could have possessed. Bouquette had known something of a genius for bedding the right girls, and not a few deliciously wrong ones. Yet he had never filled another's life so fully that his loss would have left such distress in its wake. Certainly, he had left regiments of women in tears—but their expressions of grief, by and large, had been matters of style. He had made love to many, but he had reached no one as that shabby colonel had managed to reach this woman. He wondered how it was done.

Then again, it might be nothing but affectation on her part. He had been deceived before. After all, she had not bothered to attend the memorial service at Arlington, and I when he tried to pass her a few off-the-record details that had not appeared in the media, she cut him off sharply. Perhaps no one loved with such literary perfection, after all. Except for the emotionally unbalanced, of course.

Bouquette stood up, rising gently so that he would not wake the woman. She began to snore. He stepped over the litter of their clothing and went back into the bathroom, turning on the light to examine his face in the mirror, trying to understand how things had managed to turn out so badly.

Lieutenant Colonel Meredith sat beside the hospital bed, listening to the hideously cheerful music piped into the ward. This was one of several wards in the Veteran's Administration hospital serving the victims of the Scramblers and, during the day, radio programs, recorded books, and the General Accounting Office's notion of appropriate music sounded nonstop over cheap speakers. The men in the beds remained as helpless as infants. They could not keep their eyes on a television screen. But they could hear, and preliminary studies indicated that they could process audible information as well as any healthy man. They simply could not act on it.

Meredith recognized many of the faces in the ward, and he had made a brief stop at each bed, offering the men the encouragement he had struggled to assemble during his drive to the hospital. Then he settled into the gray chair beside Heifetz, scooting it around so that he could look at the expressionless mask of the man's features. Christmas decorations drooped above Heifetz's bed, and a string of garland framed the little plaque of medals that hung over the headboard. Meredith had been on the verge of pointing out to the duty nurse that Christmas decorations were not quite appropriate in Heifetz's case, but the woman looked exhausted, and she had not stopped moving since Meredith entered the ward. It was a bad day to be on duty, and a very bad ward.

Meredith would have liked the hospital to be cleaner. He would have liked the treatment of his comrades, and especially of Heifetz, to be a bit handsomer, and he would have liked the hungover clerk at the information desk to show a little more respect when giving directions. But, most of all, he would have liked an excuse not to come. He already knew he would avoid coming back for as long as his conscience would let him.

The odd thing was that Heifetz looked younger, less troubled. When they had served together, the operations officer's features had been permanently clenched, the eyes lined with tension and the chin set hard. Now Lucky Dave appeared beatifically calm. The tufts of flesh were smooth around the wandering eyes, and the mouth lay partway open in a mock smile.

Meredith reached for words. It had been hard enough with the succession of passingly familiar faces on the other pillows in the ward. But what could you say to Lucky Dave?

"
I'm a lieutenant colonel now,
"
Meredith began.
"
Just like you, goddamnit. Presidential promotion too.
"
He tried to call up a manly smile.
"
Hell, just about everybody got one. The chief of personnel went through the roof. He said there hadn't been so many presidential promotions since the Civil War. So I'm a lieutenant colonel now. And I'll be damned if I'm going to call you 'sir.' Unless you want to get up out of that bed and whip my ass.
"

Meredith stared at the uninterested planes of his comrade's face. Wondering how much Heifetz could really hear and understand. The doctors said it might be a hundred percent. But the face remained that of an infant who grasped nothing.

"
You know,
"
Meredith went on,
"
the old man's in for a posthumous Medal of Honor. He's going to get it too. Just takes Congress a while to go through the formalities. They're already getting together a display about him out at the Cavalry Museum at Riley. You're going to be in it, and Manny. All of us. But mostly the old man.
"

Meredith looked at the living death of Heifetz's eyes, then looked away.
"
You remember that old rag of a guidon he used to carry? The one he brought out of Africa? I passed it on to them for the museum. They're going to put it with his Medal of Honor, when that goes through.
"
Meredith let his eyes wander over the blanket, the bed-frame, the floor.
"
The old man didn't have any family. No wife or anything. So I'm making sure that all his effects go to the museum, where they belong. Where he'll be remembered properly.
"
He suddenly looked up, hoping Heifetz would offer some sign of agreement.
"
With nothing that could have embarrassed him.
"

Meredith realigned himself in the chair and smiled.
"
Those sonsofbitches,
"
he said.
"
You know how they get all hepped up on appearances. They're going to use a picture of the old man from back when he was a captain. Before his face got screwed up. But . . . what can you do?
"

To his surprise, Meredith took Heifetz's hand. It was soft and warm, yet utterly without human character. The fingers gave way as Meredith pressured them.

Meredith's smile widened into a terrible grin.
"
And that sonofabitch Reno. He's got the regiment now. Got his colonelcy out of the operation. Under the hand of the President, and all that. Of course, he's all sweetness and light for the press. He and the old man were best buddies, to hear him tell it. But the first duty day we had back at Riley, he assembles everybody in the post theater. And he comes out on the stage like a little Patton. And you know what the first words are out of his mouth, Dave? He puffs himself all up and says, 'We're going to make some big changes around here, men.' He told me to my face he intends to reshape the regiment in his own image.
"
Meredith laughed.
"
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs loves him.

"
Then the goddamned Russians. They sold us out, Dave. Plain as day. But nobody wants to hear that now. The war's over. And the Russians are our best buddies.
"

Meredith tightened his grip on his comrade's hand. He wanted a response. Anything.

"
I'm bailing out,
"
he said.
"
You know how the old man was. He would have told me to stay in the regiment and tough it out, to do what I could to control the damage Reno does. But I just can't, Dave. I know you understand. The old man just expected too much sometimes.
"
The hand seemed to cower under Meredith's grip. He suddenly relaxed the pressure, afraid he was hurting Heifetz. But there was no response. It was all in his own head.
"
Anyway, I'm leaving the Seventh. Tucker Williams is going down to Huachuca with a mandate to try to clean up the intel school, and I'm going to be his XO. Who knows?

Maybe we'll get it right this time. If they don't close the place down again. Christ, the peace treaty hasn't even been signed, and Congress is already looking for big cuts in the defense budget.
"

Meredith released the other man's hand altogether. Down the ward one of the patients made a violent gargling noise, then his body began to contort like a fish tossed onto a boat deck. The duty nurse darted from behind her medicine trolley and manhandled the patient over onto his belly, burping him as if he were a baby.

"
Dave? I've got to go. I've got a hell of a drive ahead of me, and I'm on a tight schedule. Tucker Williams wanted me out there yesterday. You know how it is. I want to make Knoxville tonight.
"

Meredith stood up. He had imagined that something dramatic might happen, that Heifetz might begin to weep or to otherwise acknowledge his presence. But the eyes just continued to flick haphazardly from right to left, up and down, and the mouth hung slackly, poised forever on the verge of speech. It was hard to believe that Heifetz understood a word.

The tinny loudspeaker broadcast a pop song about the joy of being in love.

"
I've left Maureen, you know,
"
Meredith said suddenly.
"
I can't explain it. I just couldn't go back.
"
He smiled down at Heifetz.
"
You know, the old man was plain fucking crazy sometimes. I remember, oh, it was years ago now, the old bastard gave me a copy of
Huckleberry Finn
and told me to read it. He said it was his favorite book. I never could quite see myself in the Nigger Jim role. But I don't think that's what the old man had in mind. Anyhow, I feel a little like Huck at the end of the book. Only in a really shitty grown-up sort of way.
"
He sat back down and hung his head. He began to cry.

"
I don't know what to do, Dave,
"
he said.
"
I just don't know what to do.
"