Stallion Gate (33 page)

He had been the last man to drive the jeep. Augustino had been the last man in it. The captain lay, arms and legs outspread, face tightly pressed against the ground, as if turning from the glow of lights. He pulled the dead man’s pockets out. No key.

The field radio. Joe went to the “privy,” the heavy crate that held the firing switch. The radio was gone. Of course. Jaworski was an old soldier; he knew to take the radio with him, just in case.

The crate’s door was padlocked. In the shadows of the tower legs he could find no loose bars or hammers. Coaxial cable ran out the top of the eight-foot crate and up the tower, and from the bottom as a buried conduit. In either case they were out of reach. Leaning on the crate and trying to push it over, he was surprised to learn how weak he was.

How big the valley is, he thought, as he staggered back from the tower. Mountains stooping to the plain. Far-off electric echoes over the music of toads.

He started to run.

The wide excavation road ran straight to South-10,000. Yucca lined the shoulders. There was a perfume to the air, the scent of cactus flowers, the stir of moths and bats.

The bullets must have been .22-shorts, he thought. Running had started the bleeding again; he was aware because of the cold. Loudspeakers barked. Mainly he heard his heart and lungs and the sound of his shoes on blacktop.

He was better than a mile from the tower now.

A Very rocket hung like a star. There was a short siren. Five minutes.

He tried to remember what Jaworski had said about hiding, about depressions and the flash. But he was too close and he could see nothing through the brush except baked flat earth. And toads, a soft, resolute migration of them everywhere he looked.

It was unfair. A whole year encased in hard dirt, waiting for it to be mud, to squirm freely to the surface, to see the moon and sing in passionate chorus at the
rim of a temporary desert pool, only to be fried by General Groves.

The Voice of America wandered in and out, like a spectator who couldn’t keep his mind on the event at hand. Now it was playing “Sentimental Journey.”

A hare darted in front of him, looked back in alarm and dashed off at an angle.

There was a long warning siren for everyone to go to the trenches behind the shelters and Base Camp. Only a few men, including Harvey and Oppy, would actually stay at South-10,000. Three minutes.

Never knew my heart could be so yearny, he confessed.

More and more the toads were underfoot, singly and in groups crossing the roads, stopping to sing. Sometimes the whole ground seemed to move. As one hopped before Joe, he saw Groves plopping on his belly, toes to the tower.

The final warning rocket sputtered overhead.

In fact the song of the toads was a powerful, sonorous trembling. Cello and flute at the same time.

“Do not look at the blast,” Harvey was warning. “When you do look, use your red goggles or a welder’s glass.”

A last warning gong frantically beat.

The Voice of America slipped into classical strings, rousing sleepy Latins everywhere. Mexicans, Peruvians, Tierra del Fuegans lifted their Polaroid all-purpose red goggles and looked north.

“Ten.”

Cirrus and stratocirrus fluttered in the dark. Rattlers stiffened at attention.

“Nine.”

He glanced back and the tower floated in a cloud, with impatient, circling beads of light.

“Eight.”

He felt Oppy sway, eyes on a door that would safely catch the image cast from a periscope. Breath held, a burnt, unraveling string through the heart. Fuchs watching from a hill twenty miles away, the only man there standing for the blast. Harry Gold strolling on the Alameda, looking south.

“Seven.”

Dolores had left pots in the fire. A gust worked between cedar coals and clay, shooting sparks around Rudy. There was a bootlegger’s truck in the corral, and rabbits packed like snow in the hutch.

“Six.”

Billy and Al put their hats on their hearts, not noticing that from dark kivas everywhere figures stole to the surface.

“Five.”

The car crashed the gate and the band rushed for the parade ground, striped clowns with trombones, saxophones, clarinets. In Harlem’s Palais de Sport, the French heavyweight swooped to the rafters, his satin shorts as bright as a macaw.

“Four.”

A piano toured the Rio Grande, its lid raised as a black sail.

“Three.”

Thinking Woman wore an embroidered Mexican dress with her turquoise necklace and silver pin, finally enough color even for her.

“Two.”

It was a slit trench for coaxial cable that had never been filled in. Maddened by the nearness of their destination, a thousand toads scaled the high shoulder of earth and abandoned stakes and at the crest sang with pulsing throats. Those on the other side slid deliriously into the miracle of water.

“One.”

Last step. Last heartbeat. Last breath.

“
NOW
!”

From the eye of the new sun, a shadow flying.

I would like to acnowledge the assistance of Dr. Norris Bradbury, Jon Else, Maj. Gen. Niles Fulwyler, Dr. John Manley and his wife, Kay, John Michnovich, Sir Rudolph and Lady Peirls, Alfonso Popolato, Bob Porton, Dr. Raemer Schreiber, Jack and Louise Smith.

Especial thanks are owed to Bob Krohn, R.C. and Harriett P. Smith, and to Françoise Ulam and her late husband, Stan.

A great debt is also owed to those friends who cannot be named.

While this book could not have been written without the generous aid of all the above, they should not be held responsible for what is, in fact, only fiction.

THE INDIANS WON

GYPSY IN AMBER

CANTO FOR A GYPSY

NIGHTWING

GORKY PARK
^*

STALLION GATE
^*

POLAR STAR
^*

RED SQUARE
^*

ROSE
^*

HAVANA BAY
^*

DECEMBER 6

WOLVES EAT DOGS

STALIN’S GHOST

While driving through New Mexico, M
ARTIN
C
RUZ
S
MITH
passed a road sign for Stallion Gate and inquired where it led. The result is this novel, his first since
Gorky Park
. Mr. Smith is part Indian. He lives in California with his wife and three children.