Ralph Peters (59 page)

"
And why?
"

"
Because ... a dead soldier ... is just a dead soldier. But a wounded soldier puts stress on the enemy's infrastructure. He has to receive first aid. Then he has to be evacuated. He requires care. A dead soldier makes no immediate demands on the system, but a wounded man exerts a rearward pull. Enough wounded men can paralyze—
"

"
Exactly. And that's it, Merry.
"

"
But . . . how long until it wears off? When are they going to be all right?
"

Taylor strengthened his grip on Merry's arm. Merry, it
doesn't
wear off. Christ, if it did, we would have fielded it in a heartbeat. The effects are irreversible. It's a terror weapon too, you see.
"

Meredith felt sick again. With a deeper, emptier, spiritually dreary sickness.

"
But . . . you said they might be able to understand us?
"

Taylor nodded.
"
It makes no difference to recovery. In fact, that's the worst part, Merry. You see, if the Japanese are using approximately the same formula we came up with, Lucky . . . Colonel Heifetz and the others have not suffered any loss in intelligence, or in basic cognitive recognition. What the weapon does is simply to destroy the victim's control over his voluntary muscles. There's some collateral deterioration on the involuntary side, as well, but basically you can focus the damage. See, that's the beauty of the weapon—the victims remain fully intelligent human beings, even though they are physically utterly incapable of controlling their basic bodily functions. They cannot even tell their eyes where to look. But they still process what their eyes happen to see. That way, by presenting your enemy with a mature, living intelligence, you rob him of the excuse to lighten his load with conscience-free euthanasia—you're not killing a
thing.
You'd be killing a thinking, feeling human being who lost the use of his body in the service of his country.
"
Taylor snorted.
"
Beautiful, isn't it?
"

Meredith did not understand how Taylor could speak so calmly.

"
Merry. You need to pull yourself together now. We need to help them as best we can. And then we've got to get back into the fight.
"

Meredith stared at the scarred, scarred man as though he were crazy. What on earth was he talking about? Help them? How? And what would be the point of getting back into any fighting now? If this was all that was waiting at the end of it.

"
Count your blessings,
"
Taylor told him.
"
If that escort bird hadn't gone down . . . well, that's war, Merry. Some die, and others live. Luck of the draw.
"

"
I
can't,
"
Meredith said. Again, he had no clear idea as to what it was he could not do. But he felt panic seizing him.
"
I just can't function.
I give up.
"

Taylor's hand came up like lightning. He slapped Meredith so hard across the face that the younger man reeled and almost fell. Dazed, he could taste blood in his mouth. It was a far better taste than the vomit and snow had left behind.

Taylor caught him with both hands this time. The grip was noticeably weaker under the bandaged paw. He held Meredith upright, pinning the younger man's arms flat against his sides.

"
Merry.
Please.
"

Meredith tried to bond himself to reality. But this was a world out of horrific medieval paintings.

"
Merry, I
need
you now,
"
Taylor said.
"
You're a very brave man, and you've proved it time and again. I need you to be brave now. Because, if you can't handle this, think of the effect it's going to have on the others.
"

"
All right,
"
Meredith said slowly, emptily. The slap had jarred him, and he was still unsure of everything, but in a different way.

"
Merry,
"
Taylor begged,
"
we can't give up. You don't see it, but I do. They're all going to want to give up now, and we can't let them. It's up to us.
"

Meredith did not understand what Taylor was talking about.
Who
was going to give up? And to give up what?
"
We won't give up,
"
Meredith said flatly.

"
That's right. We're not going to give up. Now listen to me.
"
Taylor's voice took on the cold, clear tone it always had when he needed to give complex instructions under pressure.
"
I want you to go back to our ship. You go back there and get on the horn. Call Manny—
"
Taylor caught himself. For a moment, the two men looked at each other with eyes that met yet shared nothing. Then Taylor regrouped:
"
Call the assistant S-4. He'll be at the support site in Gold. Tell him to off-load every available wing-inground except the fuelers and get them down here to Silver. And I want the regimental surgeon on board, with every immediately available physician's assistant and medic. Call the assistant S-4 first. It's going to take him the longest. Then call Second Squadron over at Platinum. They're the closest. Tell the commander I want his scouts down here double-quick. Use the top-end secure. Explain that we have casualties. The scouts need to search each troop's local assembly area, just in case anybody else is lying out in the snow like that captain.
"

"
Captain Sturgis,
"
Meredith offered. He had known the officer slightly. An overgrown kid with a habit of bringing his sex life a little too close to the flagpole.

"
Yes,
"
Taylor said.
"
Sturgis. Anyway, get going. Get them moving. And prepare yourself, Merry. Please. I know you're with me. You just have to hang tough. Because we're going to have panic from here to Washington.
"

"
All right,
"
Meredith said. And, for the first time, there was a glimmer of capability in his voice. He realized that he was going to make it. He would do his duty. He just needed a little more time.
"
Anything else, sir?
"

Behind the scars and grime on Taylor's face, Meredith imagined that he saw a look of defenseless gratitude. A very brief revelation of the weakness Taylor felt himself.

"
No,
"
the colonel said.
"
You just get that much done. Then stay on the net to take care of any necessary damage control. I don't think the enemy have picked up on the other squadrons, or they would've hit them too. It's going to be all right, Merry.
"

"
Yes sir.
"

Taylor finally let go of Meredith's arm, and turned back toward Heifetz's M-100.

Captain Horace
"
Hank
"
Parker had been through an interesting day. While he had deployed to Mexico, the assignment had come too late in the intervention for him to see any real combat, and today marked the loss of his battlefield virginity. He had done his best, sensing that it was somehow inadequate—especially in the presence of Colonel Taylor, a man he held in awe. He could not help being jealous of the easy camaraderie between the S-2 and the commander, and he had felt very much like an outsider at first. He knew very well that Taylor would have preferred to have Heifetz himself on board, instead of his far less experienced assistant.

Still, he had done his best, always doubting himself a little, but somehow avoiding major errors. A few hours into the battle he had relaxed, experiencing the odd sense that modem combat was almost identical to playing games in an amusement arcade in a shopping mall. All screens and images and numbers. You racked up the most points on the board, and you won. It had been surprisingly difficult to picture a real flesh-and-blood enemy out there.

Then that intangible enemy had reached out and hit the old staging area at Omsk. People he knew personally had died, and the game had turned out to be real after all. Then things had begun to move with such speed that it all blurred. There was the ambush of the enemy planes, after
which Taylor surprised him by asking his first name, then calling him Hank—that had been better than receiving a medal, coming in the lonesome hour it did. Then Meredith had dismissively ordered him to stay with the comms sets while he and one of the NCOs followed Taylor out to try to rescue the crew of the downed M-100. He had obeyed faithfully, as the noise of gunfire reached into the controlled environment of the ops cell, frightened by his helplessness to influence events, waiting. Then the NCO had failed to return, and the casualties found a place in the cramped compartment, and death seemed to be sneaking closer and closer. The arcade game stakes were rising uncontrollably.

And now this. Waiting again. In an atmosphere of death. Afraid and uncertain, with Colonel Taylor and Meredith gone off into the silence. What was happening out there?
"
Parker waited in the ops cell with Meredith's shop NCO, who was also an ops backup in the austere modem Army. Both men hated the ominous quiet, and they agreed on it out loud. But they could not bring themselves to say much else.

They sat. Waiting. Imagining.

What was going on?

Without warning, the strategic communications receiver came to life.

Parker scrambled to put on the headset, then his fingers reached clumsily for the unfamiliar controls. Usually, Meredith or Taylor worked this set. Before he had begun to master the situation, the call came again.

"
Yes,
"
Parker answered hastily,
"
this is Sierra.
"

"
Hold for the President,
"
the voice said.

A moment later, a voice Parker knew only from television broadcasts came through the earpieces.

"
Colonel Taylor?
"
the smooth, instantly recognizable voice began,
"
Colonel Taylor, one of your subordinate commanders has just contacted us with an emergency message. Lieutenant Colonel Reno claims—
"

"
Uh, sir?
"
Parker interrupted, instantly regretting both that Taylor was not immediately at hand to rescue him and that, in the last election, he had voted for the other candidate. Somehow, he suspected that the President
would be able to tell about the miscast ballot.
"
Sir, this isn't Colonel Taylor. I'm
just...
like an assistant. Colonel Taylor's outside.
"

"
Oh,
"
the President said.
"
Excuse me.
"

Indeterminate noises followed from the distant station. Like miniature moving men hurriedly cleaning out a doll-house. A new voice came up on the net:

"
Soldier, this is General Oates. I want you to go find Colonel Taylor, wherever he is. The President of the United States wants to talk to him.
"

"
Yes, sir,
"
Parker said. He moved very, very quickly. Not bothering to search for his helmet, he launched himself out through the rear hatch and nearly collided with Meredith.

"
Whoa,
"
Meredith said.
"
Where're you going?
"

"
Major Meredith, sir? Where's Colonel Taylor? The President wants to talk to him.
"

Meredith seemed to take the news with reprehensible calm. He was well-dusted with snow, as though he had been standing outside for a long time. For a moment Parker did not even think Meredith had understood him correctly, and he opened his mouth to repeat his message.

Meredith beat him to it.
"
The colonel's over there. In the ops bird.
"
He pushed past Parker into the waiting M-100.

Parker plunged through the blowing snow. He high-stepped and slapped his way through the cold, imagining vaguely that one wrong move would bring far worse punishments down upon his head than anything battle might devise. He wished he were a faster runner, and he wished he were not such a fool.

He rounded the back end of Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz's M-100 and hauled himself up through the open hatch without a pause. He was about to howl his news at Taylor when the scene inside the ops cabin froze the words on his lips.

Heifetz's personal crew—men Parker worked with every day and knew as well as shared duty allowed—lay ranked along the narrow floor. It was immediately apparent that they were all alive, and it was equally apparent that something was revoltingly wrong, although the details of the
scene made no real sense to Parker. He had seen the image of the soldier sprawled in the snow, fooling his limbs at the sky, but he had assumed that the disjointed movements were the result of pain, of a wound. Now Parker was confronted with a cabin full of squirming bodies, each man making similarly inept movements without pattern or warning. There was a strong foul smell, and the nearest man made mewling noises that made Parker want to back right out of the hatch and get away.

"
But the sight at the end of the cabin held him. Colonel Taylor sat upon the floor, cradling Heifetz's head in his lap. Taylor was whispering softly to the S-3, the way Parker whispered to his twin daughters when they were sick. The colonel smoothed his unbandaged hand back over Heifetz's thinning hair, repeating the gesture again and again.

Parker did not know what to do. Then he remembered in panic: the President.

"
Colonel Taylor, sir,
"
he said too loudly.
"
Sir, the President is on the line. The President wants to talk to you.
"
Taylor looked up briefly. The fright-mask face was very calm, almost expressionless.

"
Tell him I'm busy.
"