Cold Allies (6 page)

The colonel got off on the fifth floor. In the anteroom, an Algerian lieutenant was berating a Libyan sergeant at the top of his lungs. From what Wasef could glean from the tirade, the NCO had started a fire in his room, thinking to cook a piece of meat.

Neither looked up as Wasef made his way around them. The lieutenant was too furious, the sergeant too abashed.

Wasef knocked at the commander’s door and waited for an answer. When none came, he entered anyway, and surprised his fellow Egyptian in the middle of reading field reports. The corpulent, bearded general, seeing his colonel, rose. Sabry gestured at the closed door and the noisy harangue beyond.

“You see we are a rabble,” the general said with a pained, lopsided grin.

Wasef saluted, but Sabry waved the salute away.

“They steal things out of stores,” Sabry went on. “They murder shopkeepers. It is a terrible war when we shoot merchants.”

“Hang them,” Wasef suggested, taking a seat.

Sabry sighed. “Hang them for stupidity, and we would have to hang them all. They are young boys mostly, our soldiers. Sheepherders and mechanics.”

“Not enough mechanics,” Wasef said. “Not nearly enough for our tanks.” He glanced out the window and caught an unexpected, heart-stopping sight of the Mediterranean.

Sabry had apparently followed his gaze. “It reminds me of Alexandria, doesn’t it you?” he asked. “Alexandria before Egypt died and the Nile became a trickle.”

‘They should have shared,” Wasef said bitterly. He turned and saw the general regarding him, bemused. ‘‘The Nile?” Sabry asked.

‘‘The food.”

The shouts from the anteroom stopped. Either the lieutenant had finished dressing down the sergeant, Wasef thought, or he had strangled him.

In the silence, Wasef could hear the general’s soft sigh. Food was an old argument, a moot argument now. Still, Wasef persisted. ‘The Greenhouse heat was a genocidal plot of the industrialized countries. They hoped we would be as the Chinese and not fight back.”

“You don’t mean that,” the general said gently. “Surely you have not caught the paranoia of the masses, colonel. No one wanted the new deserts.”

“No,” Wasef replied, refusing to be chided. ‘The sin of the Westerners was simply that they did not care.”

Sabry gave a dismissive wave, indicating that he wished to change the subject. He asked, “And as to the roadway across the mountains?”

“Secure,” Wasef said. He pushed aside a memory of corpses lying in a buttercupped meadow like children napping on a bedspread. “When we disable the last military satellite, we can begin troop movements. Yours is a brilliant plan. The French are complacent. They will never expect a flank attack.”

“Good, good,” the general said with a vague nod, ignoring Wasef’s praise. “Better to get our inevitable victory over with quickly than to obtain it by attrition. Better for both sides.”

“The Americans have a new weapon,” the colonel told him.

Sabry grimaced, as though Wasef had committed a dreadful faux pas.

“A surveillance weapon, I believe,” the colonel went on.

“So far, it has not fired on us.”

Sabry drew his hands down his swarthy cheeks. “We know of the small remote vehicle,” he said. “You surely don’t mean that.”

“No, sir. A pilotless airborne.”

The general hefted his bulk from the chair, walked to the window, and looked out to sea. A white pigeon flew up from the street, flashing across the teal sky like a scrap of errant paper.

“A blue light,” Wasef added, speaking to the old man’s back.

Sabry muttered something into the open window, but the freshening wind blew the words away. Wasef lifted his head and drank in the breeze, as though his lungs were thirsty as the Nile Valley.

“What, sir?” Wasef asked.

The general turned to eye him. In Sabry’s round, bearded face Wasef read a weary lack of surprise. Whatever the blue light was, the general had already heard of it.

“Have you fired on the light?” Sabry asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Sabry closed his eyes a moment, then opened them. They were sad. “Have you hit it?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Don’t fire on it again, colonel,” he said. “It is my belief that the blue light is not American. In fact, I think the blue light belongs to no one we know.”

DULLES AIRPORT, VIRGINIA

Whoosh, they’d taken her from her apartment. Whoosh, they’d driven her to the airport. At Dulles, Mrs. Parisi tried to engage the agents in conversation, but the pair didn’t seem interested.

“I had a young boy looking after my dog,” she told the green-eyed agent. “I told him I’d be back Sunday. Lord only knows what Lacy will do for food.”

The man cast a mildly sympathetic look in her direction.

The agent with the green eyes was the nicer one, she decided. The easier to work on.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. We know about the dog. We’ve made arrangements,” he told her.

“He needs to go out, too. Oh, my. He can make such a mess.”

The man gave her an impartial smile and turned away, attention and charity depleted.

Doodles,
she thought in irritation. Mrs. Parisi was a master manipulator, had earned her stripes in cuteness as a child and junior officer rank by her sex appeal as a teenager. Now that she was getting on in years, fragility had given her a stunning new weapon. It frustrated her when foiled.

Her gaze was drawn to the window and the planes queued up in the darkness. She couldn’t con these men, and in twenty-three minutes—whoosh—she’d be swept off to Spain. Asleep in her apartment one minute, on her way to Europe the next. It took one’s breath away.

One’s breath.

A sly grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. The two agents were seated tensely, surveying the airport as though they thought the ANA or the Eridanians might be sneaking up on them.

With a subtle gasp—it was important that the scene not be overplayed—Mrs. Parisi put her hand to her chest.

The nicer agent looked at her, and his expression changed from blankness to alarm. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she told him in a squeezed voice. And began gulping air.

The agent motioned to the second man. “Kevin,” he said.

Through shuttered eyes, Mrs. Parisi saw the other man leap to his feet. Around the terminal, waiting passengers were starting to look her way.

She had to fight down a victorious smirk when the green-eyed agent turned to his partner and in a satisfyingly frantic voice snapped, “Call an ambulance.”

THE PYRENEES

Gordon didn’t find the laser. What he found was a T-72 tank on the side of the road, its engine cover up and no soldiers around.

Through the screen of trees he caught a flash of blue.

The blue light had been there when he came on line, and it had stayed with the CRAV since, following it like a shy stray dog.

Ignoring the light, Gordon pushed through the undergrowth that paralleled the road. At the crest of a hill near a burned-out farmhouse, the trail forked, one gravel-and-mud path leading west, another, even more rugged, leading east. He drove the CRAV forward and studied the ground.

No more treads to follow. But tire tracks. Big ones. The mark of the Brazilian-made Laser Deployment Vehicle. The tire tracks went east, straight up the mountain.

Gordon jerked his head left to bring up the display. The road to Spanish Vielia was a mile or so ahead. A good road, he saw, a decent French highway. The LDV wasn’t going up that. Oh no. It had to go the hard way around, up through the goat trail to the Pico de Forcanada.

What the hell? Are they lost?
Gordon wondered.

He looked up at the exposed grassy slope. What the LDV had climbed was a muddy pasture, complete with cow patties the shape of cinnamon rolls.

No telling what was on the other side of that hill. It might be a long haul, and his stomach and bladder were telling him it was break time. He eased the CRAV to the back of a destroyed barn and buried it in a manure pile while two rubbernecking Guernseys and blue Rover looked on.

CRAV COMMAND, TRÁS-OS-MONTES, PORTUGAL

Gordon closed his eyes and felt the odd sensory jump as the CRAV powered down. Taking off the gloves and goggles, he stood, stretched. It was past break time, apparently. His dinner lay, gelatinous and cold, on the side table.

Jerking open the warped door, he walked to the end of the corridor, to the restroom. After a pit stop, he paused at the refrigerator to grab a can of Coke. In the freezer, stacked next to the icemaker, he discovered a cache of Snickers.

42 Patricia Anthony

Chewing on the ice-hard chocolate, he ambled back toward his room, halting dead at the open doorway of Stendhal’s cramped command center.

She was obviously in the midst of a difficult move. Her head was thrown back, her face streaming sweat. Her gloved hands plucked the air.

Not all the operators minded being observed. Stendhal, Gordon figured, relished it. Her camouflage blouse, as usual, was open all the way down, exposing her Army-issue undershirt. Sweat had darkened the olive cloth between her small breasts, and her nipples were at erect attention.

It was only because she couldn’t see him that Gordon dared look at all. Stendhal wanted the other guys’ eyes on her, he knew, not his shy, cowlike regard.

He was so engrossed in Stendhal that he didn’t notice the man from Mitsubishi approach until the rep was right beside him. Gordon jerked his gaze away from Stendhal’s nipples and nearly choked on a piece of Snickers.

Ishimoto, following the line of Gordon’s leer, raised an eyebrow.

“She is good,” the Japanese said.

“Huh?”

“A good operator. I monitor her as well.”

Gordon pressed his lips together and fought not to let his gaze slide back to Stendhal.

“You put your unit into a dung heap,” Ishimoto said.

“Yeah.”

Ishimoto’s impassive expression broke, his lips cracking upward into a smile. “A very clever maneuver. So. After you eat, you will follow them up the hill?”

“Yeah,” Gordon replied, then remembered his Army manners and amended it to “Yes, sir. Of course I’ll use the hill as a defilade, but, hell, the Arabs could be just on the other side. And I’d sure like to know where those helicopters went.”

“Ah,” Ishimoto nodded. ‘The helicopters with the nerve gas.”

“Yes, sir.”

For a moment they stood there, staring at each other.

Black lashes made an awning over the most expressionless eyes Gordon had ever seen. Looking at Ishimoto, in some ways, was like looking into the face of his own CRAV.

Just inside the door Stendhal was grunting and huffing her way to some sort of CRAV-maneuver climax. Then suddenly she smiled, sighed in exhaustion. Her arms dropped.

“The blue light,” Ishimoto said.

Gordon whipped his head away from the slumped, happy girl. “Sir?”

“It follows you. Why?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“When
I
operate the CRAV the—what we call a Woofer goes away. When you operate the CRAV, it comes back.” There was an emotion now on the Japanese’s face, but Gordon wasn’t sure whether it was suspicion or envy.

“It just took a shine to me, I guess, sir.”

Ishimoto nodded and walked away, to the monitoring room, taking one final look at the breasts. After a moment of thought Gordon, too, went back to work.

THE PYRENEES

Manure fell off the turret like wet brown snow. In the muddy yard, Gordon swiveled his head. The Guernseys had gone off to seek other entertainment, but Rover was there, hovering a foot or so above the sodden grass.

As he watched the light, Gordon felt the tap-tap-tapping begin, a sound like someone knocking at the base of his brain.

“Stop that,” he said.

The rain sound quieted to a cold, pouty hiss.

Pressing the accelerator gently, Gordon rolled up the long, open incline. Near the top he paused to raise his missile tubes. As the opposite slope came into view, he noticed the pasture was empty. The heavy tire treads of the LOV disappeared in a curve to the right.

Gordon swiveled his head. Rover was hovering a few yards away. “Where’d they go, Boo-Boo?” he asked.

The only answer he got was that eerie whisper of falling sleet.

IN THE LIGHT

Ann and Justin were in the very back of the bus, on the long bench seat. He was using his blanket as a pillow, and Ann was on top of him, riding him to climax. He was coming, the bucking of his hips frenzied. He grabbed her at the bunched skirt and squeezed tight, feeling the cold sponginess of her waist underneath.

The next instant there was a throb, a spurt of release. He’d come, but there was no real pleasure in it. Ann crawled off him and lowered her skirt. “Will you read me your book?” she asked politely.

Dazed, he sat up and noticed his zipper was open. He should have been wearing his speed jeans and helmet, but they had disappeared somehow. He zipped up his flight suit while outside the window an F-14 crashed in the desert and two chutes came down over the twisted skeletons of burned Arab tanks.

“I crashed,” he whispered to her. “What?”

“I remember now. I crashed.”

“Read me your book,” she said.

“My name is Justin Searles. Lieutenant j.g. Justin Searles. And I crashed my F-14.”

“Read me your book now, Justin.”

He shoved at her. “Jesus God! You captured me.”

The Arab National Army must have captured him, must have started feeding him drugs. Justin pounded on the window, trying to get out, and the bus driver was back, wanting to know what was happening.

“Come on, boy,” the bus driver said.

Outside the window the desert flashed by. A burning oil field blossomed on the horizon like a night flower.

“Come on, boy. Don’t you want to fuck her again?” Ann leaned over and grabbed at his groin. Justin elbowed her hard in the chest. His arm plunged into her, went right through her pink sweater, right through chilled blood and putty-soft bone until it hit the bus seat.

He screamed.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” the bus driver was saying.

He’d gone and done it. God. He’d gone and done it.