Cold Allies (26 page)

“My son, Gamal, understood Westerners,” Sabry told him. “He received his doctorate at Cal Tech. I sent him to the Pyrenees. Perhaps he screamed there as you might: an inhibited, apologetic scream.”

“Don’t do this to yourself, sir. Our job demands we put people at risk. There’s no evil in that. No reason to feel guilty. If you’re a good commander, you try to minimize the risk. That’s all you can do.”

An inexplicable, overwhelming sorrow filled Lauterbach’s face.

“Gamal changed, you know. When he was a boy, I would take him out to the desert. We had a place there, little more than a shack. Those were simple times.”

Lauterbach made a noncommittal grunt. The man was no longer listening; he was thinking about something else, his expression as contrite as it was pensive.

“When my son was older, and came back from the States for his visits, I could see him growing less and less simple. Sadder as well. How did he die?”

The question roused Lauterbach from his thoughts. He shot a cautious look at Sabry. “Quickly,” he said.

Sabry knew the American was lying. A terrible death, then. He shifted his gaze to the window and saw the lights of the compound dance through his tears.

“You know, I am very much a Muslim—”

“Tell me what disposition you would wish for his remains. He’s been buried, but I’ll make sure that—”

“Listen to me!” Sabry shouted. His tone was so preemptive, so harsh, that a guard opened the door and looked in. Lauterbach waved him away.

When ‘the soldier closed the door, Sabry leveled angry eyes at the American. “Do not interrupt me with your damned, cool reason! You do not know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, sir,” the American said. “You’re quite right. I’m sorry.” And leaned back in his seat.

“The mullahs promise Heaven to those who die in battle, but the battle must be holy, and I’m not sure this war was. In any case, I can talk to Gamal no longer. What good is heaven, I ask you?”

Amazingly, Lauterbach smiled, irony in his eyes. “I’m sure I don’t know, general. I lost a wife through divorce and a daughter to cancer. I believe at the time I asked myself the same thing.”

“Did Colonel Wasef survive?”

The American seemed puzzled. “Excuse me?”

“Colonel Qasim Abdel Wasef. He was in the Pyrenees, too.”

“Oh, yes. The commanding officer. No, sir. He did not survive the engagement.”

“And how did he die?”

Lauterbach’s face shut down and for a long moment he was silent. Could it have been such a terrible death, Sabry wondered, that even the American was awed by it?

Finally Lauterbach took a long breath. “Friendly fire,” he said.

WARSAW, POLAND

Baranyk put his cup down with a wince, trying to ignore the fire the coffee had reignited in his gullet. By the bunker wall Zgursky stood chewing hungrily on a sweet roll, a look of intense enjoyment on his face.

“Well, colonel,” Baranyk said, turning to Jastrun. “No bombings today if the weather remains socked in. Those Arab pilots cannot find their cocks with two hands.”

At the fancy German phased-array radar screens, one of the specialists tittered. Jastrun’s lips curled into an arch though indulgent smile.

“Warsaw is a big target,” the colonel said. In the forced tolerance of the Pole’s gaze Baranyk saw questions. Jastrun was wondering what the Ukrainian was doing here.

“Perhaps Scuds.” Baranyk looked at the green radar screens.

“Yes. Perhaps Scuds.” The colonel shifted on his feet uneasily. Baranyk wasn’t sure what made the man nervous: the possibility of missiles or the Ukrainian’s presence.

“Would the general care to see something else?” Jastrun asked at last.

A polite way of indicating that the tour was at an end. Baranyk ignored him. “Tell me, colonel. If you could ask the spirit of Kazimierz the Great for one gift, what would it be?”

The colonel’s smile vanished: Baranyk had made a poor joke.

“Targets?” Baranyk suggested.

The Pole’s eyes narrowed. He was thinking furiously now; he was considering his situation.

“Forgive me for being ignorant of this miracle of German engineering,” Baranyk said with a slow, cunning smile. “But is it not true that if the Arabs shell, this radar can track the incoming shell and find the Arab emplacement even before they hit here?” .

The Pole held his back stiff, as if awaiting a blow. “Yes,” he said, drawing out the word into three cautious syllables.

“So the Arabs bomb instead.”

A pause. Jastrun’s eyes were asking questions so fast, so furiously, that Baranyk imagined he was looking through them into the working guts of a computer. “Yes.”

“I am thinking that if I mounted a small attack, a small one, you understand, we might provoke them into shelling.”

Jastrun leaned forward in interest. “Have you discussed this with General Czajowski?”

“It is just a thought as yet,” Baranyk told him, making a lazy, dismissive gesture with his hand. “I thought I would speak to you first, to see how you liked the idea.”

Jastrun pursed his lips judiciously. “Perhaps you should speak to him and then to me.”

“Ah, yes. Chain of command,” Baranyk said with a sly, ironic grin. “I remember how important that was in the Red Army. Good day,” he told the insulted Pole cheerily before the man would come up with a rejoinder.

Zgursky followed him out the bunker door. “Allies,” Baranyk laughed, slapping the aide’s belly with the back of his hand. “God preserve us from allies.” He pointed toward the hushed and opalescent east. “Not even the Arabs hate me so much.”

Still chuckling, Baranyk made his way past the sandbags at the side of the bunker and walked across the packed dirt yard to the sheltered tanks. Gutzman was at one of the Hammers, performing some arcane maintenance ritual. At their approach he glanced up, an oil rag in his hand.

“Has the general come back for another lesson on the Hammer?” the lieutenant asked.

Baranyk regarded Gutzman, who seemed pleased, and then Zgursky, who decidedly did not. “I think I should be the driver today. Let us have the sergeant be the gunner. And you, who have more experience, will be our tank commander. Choose our vehicle. I am under your orders, lieutenant. “

Gutzman climbed onto the tank’s deck. Baranyk climbed to the driver’s hatch and eased himself into the plush reclining seat, pulling the hatch closed behind him. Just before he put on his goggles, Baranyk turned and saw Zgursky staring at him in dawning horror. “We are armed and fully functional?” the general asked, slipping the headgear on.

In his ear he heard Gutzman’s calm voice: “Armed and ready, sir.”

Baranyk started the engine and put his hands around the steering T. His palms, he noticed distantly, had started to sweat.

At one side of his vision were the gaily-colored gauges: red for the reactor heat; blue for the KPM; yellow, a cautionary, cowardly color, for his directionals.

He turned the tank south, a cautionary, cowardly route. In his ear he heard a relieved sigh. Zgursky.

The Hammer moved like a huge, fat luxury car: a Russian Zil or an American Cadillac. At twelve kilometers per hour, he drove past the countersunk munitions bunkers.

“Where to, sir?” he heard Gutzman ask.

“I thought we might try something different today.”

A gasp in his ear. Zgursky knew. He’d known from the moment Baranyk had mentioned the plan to Jastrun.

Ten meters, twenty,
Baranyk counted, hoping he had found his mark: “Brace yourselves!” he called and floored the accelerator, slewing the big tank left. He muscled it over the barricades.

“Sir!” Gutzman’s voice was so loud, it hurt Baranyk’s ears. “Sir! What did we hit?”

“Keep your eyes on your instruments, Gutzman,” Baranyk said quietly. ‘‘We will be feinting toward the enemy to draw artillery fire.”

A groan from the headset Gutzman’s this time.

Out in the open, mine-dotted field, Baranyk reviewed his mental map of their path. He wound the speed to 80 KPH and angled toward the road. In his ear, a crackle of static, then the enraged voice of Jastrun, “Who the hell is in Hammer 8?”

“Tell him,” Baranyk said.

Gutzman’s voice was high-pitched with panic. “General Baranyk, Lieutenant Gutzman, Sergeant Zgursky.”

The tank mounted the road, and Baranyk accelerated, watching the kilometers flick by on the display. He set the stud on the steering T to telescopic vision and saw guideposts: the stand of pines, the shattered, burned farmhouse.

Three kilometers, three and a half,
he counted.

After a long silence, Jastrun asked, “Who is this on the radio?”

“Lieutenant Gutzman.”

“You are tank commander?” Jastrun barked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then turn that tank around immediately!”

“But sir,” Gutzman said miserably. “General Baranyk is driving.”

“Fuck General Baranyk!” Jastrun screamed, his fury apparently overcoming his religious awe of rank. “Doesn’t he know there are mines out there? And four hundred thousand Arabs? I will call General Czajowski! Tell him that! I will call General Czajowski! My hand is on the phone now, General Baranyk! Do you hear me? I am making the call right now!”

They went over a crater in the road, the suspension easing them through it as gently as a farm girl carrying eggs.

“Lieutenant?” Baranyk said. “Sergeant?”

“Sir?” they answered in nervous tandem.

“It is not too late. If you want to go back, tell me now.”

“Sir,” Zgursky said, his voice shaking. “I trust you, sir.” A pause. Then Gutzman’s hesitant, “No, sir.”

“Then, Gutzman! Tell that bugger of farm animals, that lazy Pole, to pay more attention to his radar screens than to his telephone. At ten kilometers in, we’ll open fire. I suspect the Arabs are no more than sixteen kilometers from the perimeter. He should begin preparing to orchestrate response.”

“Firing in ...” Gutzman began and stopped, evidently consulting his own readouts. “Oh, my God!” he screamed. “Firing in two minutes! Colonel Jastrun! Prepare to conduct response!”

They barreled up a hillock, the Hammer going airborne for a moment before coming down with a buttocks-bruising slam that even the suspension couldn’t cushion. Before them extended a grassy plain dotted here and there with islands of birch and pine.

Holy Father,
Baranyk thought in horror. He was lost.

He checked his display again nervously, imagining mines ahead, imagining all sorts of things. Perhaps the Arabs didn’t have the old artillery standbys: 2S5s and 2S3s. If they had the longer range BM-27s, the emplacements would be too far away to hurt. If 2S1 s, Baranyk would be right on top of them.

“Gunner. Prepare to fire,” the general said.

“But—where, sir?” Zgursky blurted.

Baranyk steered the tank off the asphalt and ran parallel to the yet unseen Arab artillery. Was this the way or not? “Fire now! Six kilometers due east!”

Baranyk heard the turret turn on its well-oiled gears. It took a moment for the tank’s computers to calculate wind direction and speed, then the 120mm cannon boomed, rocking the tank. The sound nearly brought Baranyk out of his seat. A
mine,
he thought, then realized what the noise had been.

“Fire!” Baranyk shouted. “Keep firing, Zgursky!”

The recoil momentarily tore the steering from the general’s hands. The eastern horizon began to twinkle.

“Response! Six-point-five kilometers!” Gutzman shouted.

A shell hit so close that Baranyk gasped. Instantly he was sober.
Mother of God,
he thought.
My drunken stupidity will kill us all.
He pulled the steering T into a desperate right turn and angled for the town, heedless of the mines. Directly in front of them a train station burst open, spilling guts of smoke.

He raced around a pre-Revolutionary building to hide, to let Zgursky fire again. There was no need. In the air above the artillery bombardment there was a flash. From the exploding Allied shell, submunitions arced out, making a weeping-willow pattern of fire. A heartbeat later, the
bomblets went off, their downward blasts as sudden and hard as pile drivers.

All along the sparkling perimeter, Allied shells exploded, a border of incandescent flowers. From the ground, flames blossomed, meeting the glow from the sky. Baranyk’s pulse began to slow. The tightness in his chest eased. He smiled.
Not bad for an old Communist who finds his courage in a bottle of vodka.

The barrage from the east dwindled to sporadic mortar fire. Still grinning, Baranyk turned the tank west and, carefully following his own tread marks, hurried back to Warsaw.

By the time he rolled over the barricades and brought the tank to a halt, both barrages had ended. Jastrun, hands on hips, was standing outside the bunker, his officers and men around him. Pulling the goggles off, Baranyk fought his way out of the driver’s compartment and up the deck. The eastern horizon was dark with smoke.

He whooped. “See there!” he cried, pointing. “And they call the American general crazy!”

Gutzman and Zgursky joined him. Zgursky’ s eyes were swollen as though he had been crying, and a wet spot covered the front of Gutzman’s pants.

Baranyk felt his smile falter.

“General Baranyk?” Jastrun said. Baranyk looked down at him.

“Commander Czajowski is on the phone. And he wants to talk with you now.”

IN THE LIGHT

Jerry was not happy to see the soldier come back. It was plain as day that his Pa loved that soldier; and Jerry could imagine a time when his Pa’s love would drift from him like a distracted gaze.

They sat on the grass watching the stars come out in the bruised sky. Next to Jerry’s hip, his Pa shifted weight and laid a moist, calming hand on his arm.

“Debts, Jerry,” his Pa said in an Andy Griffith voice.

“Yes, sir.”

The hand squeezed his, the soft fingers molding themselves around his flesh. “No one should ever forget debts.”

The soldier was sitting next to the kid named Mike, and he was staring off into the clattering reeds. He never said much, the soldier. Never said hello, never said goodbye.

Jerry didn’t like the pilot. Didn’t like the way he thought about war. But it struck Jerry that the pilot must be right. The soldier was a gomer. A second-rate target in a kill box.