Cold Allies (7 page)

There was something he should remember, he knew, but the terrible din of sleet battered all thought out of his brain.

“What do you want?” Ann asked. “What will make you happy?”

He grabbed the nubby material of the seat in front of him and held on for dear life. “Please let me go home,” he said.

THE PYRENEES

Below Gordon’s leafy hiding place, the huge pulse-laser tractor was mired in the mud. A platoon, thank God not a company, just a platoon, were standing around the vehicle scratching their asses and apparently wondering how to get out of this mess.

Nearby a Palestinian NCO was giving hell to a Libyan corporal. The corporal, Gordon saw with his telescopic vision, was staring down in confusion at a map.

“Arm missiles,” Gordon whispered. At his voice command the screen flickered to life. He touched his thumb to his middle finger and the words MISSILE I LOCKED lit up in red.

The instant before Gordon could press his fingers together, something blue flitted through his sights.

“Jesus, abort! Abort!” Gordon shouted as the Arab platoon leaped to its collective feet.

Arabs were running everywhere, grabbing their AK-47s, grabbing their mortars. The NCO stopped screaming at the corporal and started screaming at his men. One soldier was firing into the blue light so fast, he overheated his rifle and jammed it. The driver of the LDV flung himself into the seat and started the engine. The huge maw of the laser swung blindly in Gordon’s direction.

“Oh, shit! Bring in the stuntman!” Gordon cried. Rover was skimming back and forth across the ground, still drawing small-arms fire, still blocking Gordon’s aim.

And then the corporal pointed. He pointed right up the slope to the CRAV.

Ping-ping. Rounds bounced off Gordon’s diamond-hard hide. Bullets tore through the branches, causing a green rain of debris.

“Lower missiles!” Gordon ordered, hoping he could save his fragile tubes.

Below, the sergeant had more or less got his men into order. They had dropped belly-down into the mud and were firing up the hill, alternately loosing rounds into Rover, into Gordon.

Gordon pushed his feet into the controls and tore backward, slamming the rear of the CRAV into a sapling. The tree fell on the turret, leaves dangling over his sights like a lady’s Easter veil.

In the muddy pasture, the corporal with the mortar was calmly finding Gordon’s range. Trailing branches, Gordon floored the accelerator. But just as he was up and over the lip of the small ridge, his visuals exploded into red fire and brown dirt.

“Jesus fucking Christ! They killed me again!” he shouted.

But a heartbeat later, seeing rocks and trees flash by, he realized the CRAV was still functional. It had simply lost its footing and was tumbling into a ravine.

He hit the center of the shallow stream with a bruising thud and a loud splash, coming to rest right side up. Panicked, he goosed the accelerator. The CRAV lurched over the rocky bed, a scant hundred yards ahead of the pursuing Arabs.

CENTCOM-EAST, WARSAW, POLAND

Ever since childhood, Baranyk liked the hour just before sunset. This preference, he knew, made him an odd duck: most people preferred the garish sunlight at the middle of the day.

Subtle dusk spread over the fields like smoke. Shadows stretched lissome along the ground. At twilight in the country, the cows came clanking home. Birds flew to nest. Dusk felt as though the hectic day sat down to a good dinner and a warm fire; that it had the leisure to lean back and prop its legs on the hassock.

Lingering outside the pre-revolutionary palace which housed Centcom-East, Baranyk contemplated a stand of birches and felt his heart grow still.

When the opening door behind him threw a rectangle of golden light across the yard, he turned and saw the compact form of the Saceur-West ambling toward him.

Now, Baranyk thought, the mood would be destroyed.

The American would be jovial the way Americans always were. He would make a joke and laugh too loudly, and think Baranyk morose because he would not laugh with him.

That didn’t happen. Lauterbach simply came up to his side and stood gazing across the meadow at the Kampineska forest beyond.

The wind flirted with them, tugging at the American’s jacket, at Baranyk’s battle-dress blouse. The Ukrainian thought he caught the whiff of whiskey from Lauterbach, light and sweet, like blended perfume.

“Tell me about nuclear scientists,” the American said ill a voice nearly as quiet as the breeze. “Which ones are missing?”

Night was deepening fast. Now, in the dying light, the American was indistinct. He might have been a familial Polish ghost haunting the darkness of the yard; or a sorrowful Ukrainian one haunting Baranyk himself.

“We don’t know. When the breakup came, it was hard to keep track,” he replied.

The American grunted, a neither-here neither-there sort of grunt. In the gloom Baranyk saw him lift a hand to his mouth. He heard the rattle of ice, heard him swallow. Lauterbach had brought his glass of whiskey with him.

“Word from the CIA has it that twenty top experts went east about five years before the hostilities.”

Baranyk sniffed derisively, “The CIA.”

“Yes, granted. Most intelligence is crap. But if it is true, the Arabs would have had time to build bombs and the delivery system to go with them. Then there are those seven tacticals missing from the old Red Army list. The propellant has certainly degraded, but the missiles can be refitted.”

“What if—” Baranyk began and then looked away hurriedly. The question was so shameful and so terrifying, it was best, when it was asked, that one’s face be hidden. “What if the war seems lost? Would you actually consider using nuclear weapons on European soil?”

Baranyk heard ice tinkle against the sides of the glass.

“That’s a Presidential decision,” the American said.

Out of the quiet of the birches an owl hooted.
Early to be hunting,
Baranyk thought. Perhaps it was searching for a mate. The owl’s song was as lonely as the whistle of a night train.

“Goddamn it,” Lauterbach whispered. “Here.”

Baranyk turned. There was just enough light left to see that Lauterbach was holding something out to him. He took it. A book, he thought in surprise, running his hands over the slick cover.

“Read it,” Lauterbach said. ‘Then think about what I said at the meeting.”

The book was too large to fit in his pocket, so Baranyk clapped it to his stomach and folded his hands over it like a choirboy. “I will.”

“Promise me,” Lauterbach said. Then he laughed. It wasn’t an American laugh at all, but a low, sad, Ukrainian one, a laugh so sad that it seemed to be a necessary part of the evening. “I know you don’t believe in them, but they’re out there. And they’re wiser than we are. All that knowledge there for the asking. Think about the miracle.”

The American left, and Baranyk was alone with the night. He watched the owl fly off, pale wings spread like a death angel.

A jeep near the road started its engine. The shielded headlight beams were twin, slitted eyes. Baranyk turned and walked back into the grand entry hall of the Command Center. He stopped and glanced down at the cover of the book.
The Eridanian Way,
by Linda Parisi, it read.

FAIRFAX HOSPITAL, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

Mrs. Parisi had been suitably poked and prodded. Internists and cardiologists had mumbled over her chest. They’d put her on a monitor for a while and run an EEG. Not finding anything, of course, they’d finally stuck her in a room just to keep an eye on her overnight. She’d known they would.

Just before dawn she rose and padded to the small closet.

As she suspected, her clothes were gone; but her sedated roommate’s were not. When Mrs. Parisi took the purple tent dress and sandals, the sleeping woman didn’t miss a snore.

The dress hung on Mrs. Parisi, of course, because Mrs. Parisi, unlike her fat sow of a roommate, had been careful to keep her figure. Glancing in the dresser mirror, she saw that the grape Kool-Aid color didn’t flatter her, either.

In her roommate’s purse she found a driver’s license made out to a Sally Glenndarning. A Discover, a Visa, and a MasterCard. And Sally had left one hundred and thirty-five dollars in her wallet, a dreadful temptation for the hospital help.

Putting Sally’s thick wallet back in the purse, she slung the awful, clashing leatherette bag over her shoulder and tiptoed to the door.

Mrs. Parisi had always been a meticulous planner. She’d wanted to make her move all evening, but knew she should hold out until four.

By three in the morning the body processes started to creep. Eyelids became heavy, the heart slowed. Between three and four, most people who were going to die peacefully quit breathing. The live ones, though, were sleepy at three and comatose an hour later.

Peering out, she saw one agent asleep in his chair a few feet down the hall. The other was nowhere to be seen.

Scrunching up her feet to keep them from flopping out of the oversized sandals, Mrs. Parisi walked to the stairs. She limped down three flights and came out in the lobby. No one, not even the uniformed guard, watched her leave.

She walked three long blocks before she found a pay phone. Using Sally’s AT&T card, she dialed Tad Ellis in Maryland.

“Huh? What?” Tad said sleepily, catching the phone on the third ring.

“Wake up and listen.”

Mrs. Parisi heard a rustling on the other end of the line. Probably Tad’s bedcovers. “Linda?” he asked in a mumble.

“Yes. Now listen carefully. I want you to go out and rent me a car. Better yet, a van.”

Tad was awake enough now to cough. As with most heavy smokers, it was the thing he most wanted to do upon arising. In the middle of his hacking fit he managed to say, “But it’s four o’clock in the
morning.”

“Go to National Airport. They rent cars at all hours there. Bring money, Tad. At least a thousand. Go to as many ATMs as you have to.”

“It’s not the ATM,” Tad said with a yawn. “It’s the
card
that determines the credit limit. I could go to one A TM and get as much as I wanted.”

“Oh, Is that right, dear?” she asked with counterfeit admiration for the boy’s fiscal acumen. There was nothing Mrs. Parisi loathed more than being corrected; and so to teach Tad a memorable lesson in manners, she added, “Then perhaps you’d better make it two thousand. I’ll take a cab to—” She thought for a moment. “The Lincoln Memorial. You meet me there.”

Yes, Mrs. Parisi decided. The Lincoln Memorial. That should suit Tad’s clichéd sense of adventure perfectly.

“Are you listening, Tad?”

“Jesus, Linda. Can’t this wait till nine?”

“Tad,” she told him somberly. “Army Intelligence is after me. They want to take me to Spain. Do you hear what I’m saying, dear? To the war front. They’ll make me tell them all I know.”

“Oh, my God,” he breathed, and Mrs. Parisi knew that not only was Tad fully awake at last but she had hit all the right paranoia buttons. “Drugs. Torture. They’ll get everything out of you.”

‘That’s right,” she agreed, feeling more than a bit foolish standing in Sally Glenndarning’s absurd tent dress and grossly wide sandals. “You must help me, Tad.” Then she added darkly, “Or the Eridanians won’t understand.”

CENTRAL ARMY HOSPITAL, BADAJOZ, SPAIN

Dr. Rita Beaudreaux lifted her head from the microscope and rubbed her blurred eyes. Beside her lay the slides from the hole in the sternum. The hole had parted the cells so neatly, they were stacked like boxes in a warehouse. Nothing-no laser, no scalpel, nothing—could have made such a neat incision.

The sound of the door opening behind her brought her head around in a snap and set her heart racing as though she was afraid she’d see something supernatural there. It was only Lieutenant Colonel Martinez. The short, swarthy officer had his hands stuck into the pockets of his camouflage jacket, and it didn’t look as though he was expecting a salute. “Hi, Rita,” he said. “It’s late.”

She grunted in reply, her mind still on the slides. Martinez slumped down in one of the hard-backed, vinyl covered chairs. “You’ve found that the cellular structure of the hole in the chest is undamaged,” he said.

She stared at the slides in idiotic disbelief. The hour was so late and she was so tired that she wondered for a moment if she had already told him. They might have had an entire conversation she’d forgotten.

“There have been other injuries like that,” he explained.

“We had another pathologist studying them, too.”

“Other injuries?” she asked, bringing her head up so quickly that her vision swam. “What caused this?”

Martinez’s Aztec features creased into an embarrassed half-smile. Hispanic, but he was at least three shades darker than she was. “Aliens,” he said.

Had she not seen the seriousness in his eyes, she might have laughed.

“Look,” he told her, “I know you’re not much of a soldier. None of our Reserve or Guard doctors are. You people don’t take orders well.” He laughed.

“But aliens?” she asked, grinning. He was an affable sort, the lieutenant colonel. He’d had to adapt to a bunch of subordinates who habitually reminded him, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, that they were not only better educated than he but better paid. There were times Rita felt sorry for him.

“Aliens. I’m sending you to Lerida to study them.”

She blinked, thinking at first that she hadn’t understood him or that he was talking about some other Lerida, one in Portugal or northern France. “The Lerida near the Pyrenees?”

“That’s right. General Lauterbach wants a pathologist to view the bodies in situ. I’ve assigned you a platoon and given you a veteran lieutenant, Helen Dix, Look, Rita, I know you’ll take this the right way: Don’t pull rank on her. If Dix gives you a suggestion, don’t stop and ask why. Don’t argue with her as you do with me. There won’t be time for that.” His broad-cheeked face was pulled down in sympathetic lines.

“God almighty, colonel! They’re shooting people out there!” Fear made her tone harsher than she’d intended, and Martinez paled. She felt an immediate regret. Throughout her life the lash of her tongue had driven away those she cared for.

“You’ll be under fire at times, yes,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm and soothing, the way doctors did when giving a patient bad news. “But Dix is a superb field lieutenant. Keep your head down, and she’ll get you out of trouble.”

Rita took a calming breath to keep from offending the likable Martinez again. But she was angry, angrier at the Army bureaucracy than she had ever been at the enemy. “Surely you have somebody in the regulars to send.”

He patted the air with his hand—a suggestion, not an order—to keep her protests in check. “It wasn’t my decision. It was General Lauterbach’s. He likes you. He has confidence in you.”

She jerked her head away and glared at the microscope.

“If he likes me so much,” she said, “why is he sending me out to die?”

THE PYRENEES

Gordon had driven the CRAV far. The Arab Hind searching for him was a couple of miles back. He could hear its motor noise, a distant grumble on the night wind. His rear engine compartment blanketed by mud to escape infrared, Gordon took a short break.

He dozed with his eyes open, a trick that CRAV operators learned quickly. Close your eyes for more than thirty seconds, and the robot would shut itself off.

Gordon was in a half-sleep now. The liquid sound of the stream was lulling. His night vision had automatically cut in as the sun set, and the boulders on the other side of the stream were fuzzy greenish lumps.

A bird roused him from sleep by its sharp, startling shriek. A few minutes later, a deer came down to drink, and Gordon moved his head to watch it. After the deer left, a misty rain began to fall.

When he caught sight of the glow coming up the ravine, Gordon stiffened, believing at first that the Arab platoon had finally found him.

It was Rover.

The light floated happily toward him over the rocks like a dumb, friendly dog.

“Go away,” he whispered.

Rover stopped, hovered. The sound of the helicopter changed from an indistinct growl to a quiet flutter.