Cold Allies (8 page)

“Get the fuck away!” Gordon hissed.

Reaching out, Gordon grabbed a nearby tree limb and pulled it over the front of his unit. A few yards from him Rover was bobbing up and down in place, a balloon at the end of a tether.

Whop-whop. WHOP-WHOP. The Hind was just above Gordon, coming in low over the trees. Suddenly the north side of the stream lit up in sickly shades of night-vision green.

Above Gordon’s head came a sound as if something heavy and soft had fallen from a height, the noise of an ATGM leaving its tube. Instinctively, Gordon shut his eyes. A second later the missile hit with a comic book KA-BLAM that set Gordon’s ears ringing. Mud and small stones pattered on the CRAV’s exposed hull.

When Gordon opened his eyes, he saw that both lights were gone. The clear stream was making a waterfall into a newly dug crater.

THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The rising sun turned the Reflecting Pool what Mrs. Parisi might have decided was a charming color had she not been waiting so impatiently.

The morning had turned from peach to gold by the time the publisher pulled up in an electric-powered Chevy van and stopped.

Tad was chain-smoking. His little effeminate face was pinched. “Oh my God, Linda,” he blurted. “Are you all
right?”

“Did you bring the money?” she asked.

He handed her a thick envelope. She opened it and peered inside: the tractable boy had brought all two thousand. The bills, she saw at a glance, were newish but not stridently so.

“What are you going to
do?”
Tad wailed.

Glancing up at his disheveled blond hair, she twisted her mouth in disgust. The least the man could have done was make himself presentable. She wondered if he had rented the van with his hair all stuck up like that. “Well, I’m leaving, dear.”

“For
where?”

“I think it’s best you don’t know. You might inadvertently tell them.”

Tad’s pale-blue eyes darted toward the traffic on Constitution Avenue. “Oh, God,” he said under his breath. “They’ll get me, too, won’t they. No telling what I’ll say under torture.”

‘That’s right.” She handed him the purse. “Now listen,” she told him. “I want you to take this back to Fairfax Hospital and give it to a Sally Glenndarning. Tell her I am so appreciative of the loan of her dress, and that I hope she won’t file charges.”

Tad’s blue eyes widened. For an instant he actually seemed intelligent and awake. “File charges? Oh, God. What about the van?”

“You should probably pay for it, dear. That’s what the Eridanians have told me.”

“Okay,” he said glumly. “I rented the nicest they had.

It’ll be expensive,” he added.

“Tad, if you’ll remember, the Eridanians have no concept of money. And you mustn’t complain. They can sense that, you know.”

Still morose, Tad nodded.

“But, just to show I love and trust you, I’m leaving you my dog.”

She jerked open the door pointedly. After some hesitation, he clambered out.

“Can you drop me off at National?” he asked so pitifully that she was almost inclined to take him. But it was best, she knew, to get on the road early, before the heavy traffic began.

Climbing into the seat, she slammed the door and looked out at him. Really, the boy needed a comb and a few hours more sleep. “Why don’t you take a cab,” she suggested, keying the ignition.

The van started with a soft hum. The dash readouts came on, the charge light reading FULL. She drove off, leaving Tad standing in the parking lot, staring forlornly after her.

As Mrs. Parisi sped over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, she rolled down the window to blow some of the cigarette stench out of the car.

Tad was so silly. If he had a brain in his head, which he didn’t, he would know she was headed west. There was a network of fans out west. Wealthy fans. Someone would certainly be kind enough to rent her a condo. There would be plenty of spending money. And maybe, if it ever bothered to snow decently again, she could even go skiing. She’d heard there were good slopes around Colorado Springs.

NEAR CALHAN, COLORADO

Jerry Casey sorted through the blankets and clothes in the back of the pickup. When he was finished, he went through everything carefully again, a knot of horror tightening in his belly.

His food and water were gone.

It was hot, and already his mouth felt cottony. To the east the sun was peeking over the flats, making a dull, glinting mirror of the sand.

Yards away in the camp, cook fires had already started, and the heady smell of coffee mingled with the stench of old urine and shit. Grabbing his cup, he walked to the nearest tent. Just outside the flap, he saw, a hollow-eyed woman was sewing a child into a shroud. The body’s small legs were covered, but the face was still exposed. The corpse’s skin was a sickly gray, the same color as the tattered sheet she would be burying him in.

The woman glanced up. Her eyes were like glinting seepage at the bottom of a shadowy well. “Something to drink?” she said.

Her question confused him. Then he realized she saw his cup. “Yes, ma’ am,” he told her. “Somebody done stole my water.”

Her face was all dry cliffs and arroyos, the flesh so thin he could see the bones underneath. A hard, desert floor of a face. “Got to watch what you drink around here. My kid didn’t,” she said furiously.

See what happens?
she might have shouted at her son if he could somehow still hear her.
See what happens when you don’t do what you’re fold?

The dry wind teased at the sheet, flapping it back and forth over the corpse’s neatly folded hands. The fluttering disturbed Jerry more than anything, because he knew the tickle of it was something only a dead person could stand. An almost overwhelming urge came over him to reach over and tuck the sheet in. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Get into everything, them kids,” she said, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

“You come a long ways?” She was staring out over the desert now, rocking a little.

“From Texas.”

“We come from Oklahoma, but to them damned Colorado troopers we’re all Texas trash.”

Jerry wanted to get away from the woman with the skull face. He couldn’t leave without saying something else, though. He didn’t remember his own Ma real clear, but he remembered the manners she had taught him. The only problem was, he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“You’re alone, I noticed. Young boy like you. Don’t seem right.”

“My Pa died back on the road.”

She looked down at her son and the winding sheet with mild surprise, as though she had forgotten he was dead. “Well, you’ll be wanting some water, most likely. Get you some of mine,” she offered, nodding her head toward the tent. “It’s boiled.”

“Yes, ma’am. I sure do thank you.” Jerry turned away from the boy’s corpse and pulled open the tent flap. Two other children were sleeping inside. One little girl’s face was bone-dry, her cheeks high-colored, as though she had a fever.

Quietly he made his way to a wash pan, dipped his cup in the water and took a drink. The water tasted flat, the way all boiled water did. Without disturbing the children’s sleep, he made his way outside.

The woman was still sewing.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Jerry said again.

The boy’s folded hands were disappearing into the sheet.

Another few moments the face would be covered; and Jerry thought that when it was, it would be a good thing.

She didn’t look up from her work. “You’re a good boy,” she said.

THE PYRENEES, ABOVE BAGNERES-DE-LUCHON

Colonel Wasef stared down into the streambed at the destruction his men had wrought. The action of the water, he noticed, had already smoothed the sharp edges of the crater, so that the mistake seemed to have been made years before, and the earth had nearly forgotten.

“Qasim,” his captain and childhood friend began in apology. “My brother—”

Wasef waved the apology away tiredly. “I’ll assure General Sabry that there was no way for you to know. Are you sure you hit it?”

“The helicopter pilot is positive. He saw nothing get away.”

Wasef looked at the small tread marks leading downstream. “Something did,” he grunted.

He turned and saw Yussif pressing his lips together in chagrin. Yussif was such a pudgy-cheeked man that the gesture made him look like a scolded child. “Don’t do that,” Wasef told him.

The captain’s expression altered to one of bewilderment, and Wasef laughingly explained, “Don’t make such a face. It is like when you were in school and the teacher called on you for the lesson.”

Captain Mustafa grinned. A positive sign. It was hard, Wasef knew, to keep up the men’s morale. In Egypt, women and children were dying. Wasef had lost his own wife, Zahra, on the dusty march from the plagues in Sinnüris. But Yussif’s family had been in Cairo, he remembered. Surely they were safe.

He thought to ask the captain about them, but didn’t have the heart.
Soon,
Wasef thought, soon they would make another move into France. The Eastern army would push through Poland and then through Germany. The two fronts would meet, hammer and anvil. And, even though it was too late for him, the other men could bring their families out of that sandy hell.

“I’ve sent a platoon downstream,” Yussif said, motioning with his hand. “The helicopter has searched, but there is so much leaf canopy, the pilot could not see anything. I ordered the T-72 to the Garonne River. The stream comes out there.”

Wasef nodded. “A good plan. Very good,” he said, seeing the pleasure in Yussif’s face, an unimportant backdrop to the disturbing memories of Zahra.

“We-will get the robot, colonel.”

“Yes. Of course you will.”

Before they left, Wasef glanced down at the streambed again and suppressed a shudder. There wasn’t much that Colonel Qasim Wasef feared. But this. This scared him to death. There was the crater, tangible and real as the stones, with no signs of a kill around it. Yet something other than the robot had gone into the ravine and not come out.

Allah must be punishing them for abandoning the desert, he decided. For leaving the women, the old men, the children to their prolonged deaths. Wasef had the cold thought that perhaps General Sabry was wrong. Perhaps the blue lights were not UFOs but some sort of avenging angels.

IN THE LIGHT

A calm voice said, “Go ahead. Call your mother.”

It was suddenly quiet. Lieutenant Justin Searles dropped his hand from his eyes and saw that he was standing in one of those bus rest stops. To his right was a pay phone. Before him, a long bar where silent passengers, motionless as stuffed animals, hunched over their coffee. The place smelled of onions and grease.

“Call your mother,” Ann said.

Justin turned to the pay phone and realized there was a quarter between his forefinger and thumb. He put the coin in the slot and dialed the old number.

“Hello, Justin,” a voice in the receiver said. The voice was female; it wasn’t his mother’s.

“Mom,” he said anyway. He wasn’t feeling much like a fighter jock anymore. He was so scared that his voice cracked like a little kid’s. “Mom. Where am I?”

“You’re close. Just picture home in your mind. Picture it very, very hard.”

He thought of Florida, the squat, blocky pink house, the mango tree in the front yard, the lemon tree in the back. The thick, sweet, green grass and the gray thunderheads in the humid sky.

But Florida wasn’t like that anymore, was it?

“They’ll let you come home,” his mother said kindly, “if you’ll read them your book.”

He slammed the receiver on the hook and stared in horror at the phone.

Oh, sweet Jesus.
The ANA had him and he would never go home. The Arabs had him by the short hairs and all he was allowed to tell them was his name, rank, and serial number, and he could remember only two thirds of that.

He glanced out the plate glass window of the diner. In the dark sky an F-14 was going down in flames, the blue lights of Woofers around it.

“Good thinking,” a familiar voice said.

He whirled. Lieutenant Commander Harding was standing there.

“Name, rank, and serial number.” The XO nodded. He was dressed in his whites, and there were huge rings of sweat under his arms. It was always hard to stay cool in the desert. “Tell you what, lieutenant,” he said. “You’ve come through this test admirably. Let’s go have a cup of coffee.”

Harding put his huge hand out. Justin took it. The man’s palm was firm and dry. Light winked on the XO’s balding dome and the embossed anchors of his brass buttons.

“A test, sir?” Justin asked, afraid not to believe it.

The XO clapped him on the back. “Sure, kid.” His voice was so gentle that it made Justin want to cry. “Don’t you remember the test? Well, I guess the drugs are still working on you. Let’s have that cup of coffee and wipe the cobwebs out.”

There weren’t any cobwebs in Justin’s mind. There was only scattershot ice so slick that his thoughts kept sliding.

Justin sat down on a stool next to a glass container of donuts. The waitress pushed a white cup and saucer in front of him.

Saucers.
He stared at the dish. Something nibbled and fretted at the edges of his memory.

“You run into many Woofers, son?” the lieutenant commander asked, taking a cautious sip from his steaming cup.

“Always run into Woofers lately,” Justin answered, pulling his gaze away from the saucer. The waitress was staring at him. Something in her cold eyes, her pulpy face, reminded him of Ann.

The XO said, “Tell me your story. Everybody’s got a Woofer story, don’t they?”

The XO’s spoon made a musical, frosty sound against the thick sides of the cup.

‘The first time my radio intercept officer saw one in his screen, it scared the shit out of him.” Justin laughed into the sudden, vacuous silence. ‘Then he got where he could identify their fuzzy returns and they didn’t worry him
anymore. I’ve seen ’em fly off my wingtip and follow me like a dog, like they were curious or something.”

“Oh?” the exec asked with a strange, flaccid smile. “Do you think they’re curious?”