by David Poyer
“Yes sir. Resistance was a lot heavier than I expected.”
“Than anyone expected. Including our intel and our AI. That took a lot of moxie, to keep driving ahead when you were looking at casualty reports of twenty, thirty percent.” Niles tented his fingers. “Of course, if that’d been the wrong decision, we would have hung you by the balls.”
Dan figured that for a rhetorical statement, so simply nodded. And waited for the other boot to drop.
Niles searched through what was apparently Dan’s personnel file, though it seemed odd that it was printed out. He rumbled to himself, as if musing, then said a bit louder, “Your stars may be permanent.”
“Oh. Is that right, sir?” It didn’t seem that important, but he tried to look gratified.
“At least you’re on the postwar list for Senate confirmation. Nothing’s guaranteed these days.” He sighed, sat back, glanced out the window. “We’re having to fight for every flag billet. There’s a lot of pushback about anything to do with the Pacific. We need to pull two carriers back for core replacement and overhaul. That’s going to be a major fight in the next budget. There are already calls to scrap them, rather than refuel.”
“Then, thank you, sir. For the nomination, at least.”
Niles shrugged and rolled his eyes, and Dan added, “I saw something new on the way in here. Something called a Homeland Battalion.”
“Uh-huh. In black uniforms?”
“Yes sir.”
“Uh-huh.” Niles tilted a massive head. “Homeland Security’s amalgamating loyal Guard units and militias into Blackies. Also known as Special Action Forces. And they want general-officer billets for them. They’re not DoD formations, they’re DHS, but they count against our general and flag authorized strengths.”
“That doesn’t sound exactly … fair, Admiral.”
Niles’s eyelids flickered. “There’s worse coming over the horizon. Posse Comitatus may be suspended. To fight the unrest in the cities, and out west. And the closer we get to the elections … the slogan’s ‘Forward as one,’ but the reality may be that we’re headed for one-party rule.”
Niles looked away. “Some of us are determined not to let that happen. At least, not if we can prevent it.”
Dan weighed that last sentence. Then, despite himself, glanced around the office.
The admiral caught his reaction, and waved a large hand. “You can speak freely. This room’s a SCIF. Noise suppressors on the walls, and we sweep it every morning. One island we keep as sane as we can. The Joint Chiefs, I mean. Just don’t face the windows if you’re discussing anything you don’t want overheard.”
“Yes sir.” He wanted to know more, but decided he’d better digest what had just been intimated first. Because Niles’s words could be construed, in the wrong hands, into something close to treason.
Niles reached for the empty candy container, but halted his hand halfway. He rumbled, “I’m going to be stepping down pretty soon, Dan. We won, if you can call losing ten million lives a win. And I’m tired.”
“Ten million,” Dan repeated blankly, horrified. This was the first he’d heard of any round figure. Most of the deaths must have taken place within the areas he’d routed around in his trek east. Plus fallout effects, carried by the wind. Radiation, looting, revolt, disease … so the dying wasn’t over yet. He straightened his shoulders. “You’re punching out, sir? Retiring?”
Niles rubbed a palm over his bare scalp. His smile resembled a sardonic jack o’ lantern’s. “I have pancreatic cancer, Dan. They’re treating it, but as you can see, it’s a losing battle. I’d rather not die walled up in this fucking office. Scenic as the view is.”
“No sir. Of course not. I don’t—I’m very sorry to hear that.”
A tap at the door, and the aide stuck her head in. “Five minutes, Admiral.”
Niles sighed. He stood from behind the desk. Dan, rising too, saw anew how shrunken his old senior’s body was beneath the now nearly tentlike blues. Niles shrugged again. “That’s the cookie … Anyway, you’ll want to know what’s next for you. It’s still up in the air. Jun Min Jung called. He wants you as ambassador to reunited Korea. I told him that was a nonstarter. No way the administration would go for it, and you weren’t a fucking diplomat anyway.”
Dan nodded, not chagrined. Dealing with Jung could be stressful, and he wasn’t eager to leave home again. “Yes sir. So what were you thinking?”
The CNO waved the question away. “Let’s talk about that next time you come in. For now, go home. Take a shower. See Blair. Get some sleep. We all need a rest. Still got that boat of yours? Go sail it. Come back in when you feel up to it. Three, four days or so. Tell Marla to give you a District pass and a ration card.”
Niles looked at the papers again, a contemplative, lingering glance. Then shoved the chair back and came around the desk. He didn’t move like a lumbering bear anymore. His steps seemed tentative, cautious. His grip, though, was still strong as he pincered Dan’s shoulder. “We go back a long ways, Lenson. All the way to Crystal City and the JCMPO. I’ve been hard on you at times, I guess.”
Dan forced a smile. “No more than I deserved, sir.”
“But I fought for you too, when you needed it. The way I hear you do for your own people.”
“Your example, Admiral.”
“An officer who knows when to take a risk, even dares to disobey, for the good of the service—that’s a rare thing. We were headed for a zero-risk Navy for a long time, before this war. I tried to fight that, whenever I could.” Niles held out his hand. “I guess after all these years you’d better make it Nick. In private, at least.”
Dan’s eyes stung. At the Academy, spooning—a senior’s giving a junior permission to use a first name—was a time-honored tradition. One never given lightly. He cleared his throat and took the proffered hand. “Yes sir. I mean, Nick.”
“Sir?” said the aide, from the door. “Before you leave. Legal wants a word.”
“Legal? Hell. Well, make it short,” Niles said, turning away, letting go Dan’s hand, clearly annoyed.
A tall woman in blues introduced herself. She carried a red striped folder. “I heard Admiral Lenson was in the building.”
“Get to it,” Niles growled.
She turned to Dan. “The notification by the ICJ. Admiral, has anyone discussed this with you?”
The International Court of Justice. “Uh, my wife mentioned it.”
“Blair Titus,” Niles clarified. “Undersecretary of defense.”
The legal officer nodded. “Yes sir. I thought as long as he was here, we could go over the administration’s stand. That no US citizen will be judged.”
Dan said, “But doesn’t that mean the Chinese won’t attend either?”
Niles shook his head. “They’re trying to take that position. But they signed the treaty. Giving up war criminals was one of the stipulations.”
“That’s actually a political question, Admiral.” The attorney clasped her hands primly in front of her, elbows out. “It goes to war guilt, if we still want to align ourselves with that concept. But if we do, the ICJ may indict Americans as well. As they may with Mr. Lenson, here.”
Niles said irritably, “Forget it. He’s not responding.”
“What happens if I don’t?” Dan said, accepting that he probably wasn’t going to, but also curious as to what would happen if he didn’t.
“You wouldn’t be able to travel, probably,” the advisor said. “At least to Europe, the UK, the other standing members of the court. If you did, you’d be subject to arrest, extradition, and trial.”
Niles patted his arm. “Don’t lose any sleep over this, Dan. This’ll all get settled way above our pay grades.”
He nodded to the aide, who stepped aside to let them both pass.
* * *
DAN stopped by Blair’s office, but her people said she was overseas, in Singapore. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered. “The peace conference.” He stopped in at the cafeteria and put a lun
ch on his new ration card.
Next stop: home, in Arlington. And just about time; the bike was down to a top speed of forty, and its smoke trail was like a burning bomber’s.
He shut the engine down and rolled the last few feet down the driveway.
The house looked … deserted. Desiccated pine needles carpeted the roof, with patches of green moss. One of the gutters had come loose and hung down like a torn hem. The shingles needed attention. The lawn had grown two feet high, and Virginia creeper and the red hairy cables of poison ivy twisted through the undergrowth and up the trunks of the pines, clinging and strangling. He’d have to take a machete to them.
Around back, he found the spare key under a brick in the patio. Let himself in to first quiet, then alarmed mewing. He scooped Blair’s cat up and cradled it, ruffling its fur. “Hey, Jimbo.” Remembering suddenly how he’d cradled his daughter the same way, so many years ago.
The house smelled musty. No wonder; the windows were taped over, as if for a hurricane, and duct-taped shut, no doubt as a preparation against fallout, though it hadn’t reached this far east. He fed the cat, then let himself down the narrow steps to the basement. Here, in his study, it smelled even worse, as if the books were moldering. He went back up and checked the air-conditioning. But a crimson sticker sealed the breaker in the off position: Save Energy for Victory.
So he went around untaping and opening the windows and sliding down the screens. Not much of a breeze, but it might cool the house a bit. He checked the refrigerator: empty. The pantry was bare too, except for a few staples: olive oil, beans, rice, canned stuff, bottles of wine. Blair must have been getting her meals at work.
He stood at the window, watching squirrels squabble and play in the pines. Feeling suddenly … aimless. Apprehensive.
Fuck that! He should feel relieved, right? The war was over. And the US had “won.”
Yet he’d lost too much to feel relieved, or happy, or even curious about what came next. An indictment? He couldn’t muster concern for that, either. Like the legal beagle had suggested, maybe the whole concept of “war guilt” was a thing of the past. Quaint, like honor, or virtue, or truth, or the idea noncombatants weren’t legitimate targets.
He just felt … empty. Peculiar, out of place, as if this were some uncanny, alternate world he’d never expected to inhabit. And guilty, too, as if by surviving he’d betrayed those who had not.
The wine, in the pantry. He could uncork it. Forget all this. Blot it out, if only for a few hours.
No. He’d been sober for too many years. The craving faded. It wouldn’t help. When he woke up tomorrow, his daughter would still be dead.
He’d have to learn to live with that. Somehow. Like millions of others, all across the US. Across China. Pakistan. India. Indonesia. Iran. Vietnam. In all the countries this war had wrecked, trampled, and poisoned. Remember that, he told himself. You’re not the only one. He looked at the coffeemaker, but decided Niles was right. He needed a shower, a good long sleep more.
Upstairs, to a rumpled bed. The comforter was pulled up haphazardly, as if his wife had left in a hurry. Stooping to the pillow, he could smell her. Her lotions and emollients stood lined up in the bathroom. He peed, got a quick shower, then lay down. Blinked at the ceiling.
He didn’t bother to set the alarm.
17
Nagano, Japan
THE monkeys were much bigger than Cheryl had expected. About the size of large dogs. At the moment, five of them were lounging in the pool.
Leaning on the rail separating her from the steaming springs, she stared down. Their bright red faces were rimmed by long grayish fur. They reclined in the murky water, or paddled slowly across it to clamber awkwardly out onto the rocks, their wet fur slicked down, looking like drowned cats. There they desultorily groomed one another, picking things from each other’s heads. Or squabbled in squeaky, aggrieved tones, like seniors in the golf course locker room. It was easy to picture them as lazed-out retirees. All they needed was cocktail glasses and bingo cards.
“Think they’re naturally that way?” she asked Eddie, beside her. “Those red faces?”
Her husband stood hugging himself, his shockingly thin frame concealed within the heavy padded parka she’d bought him in Tokyo. The weather wasn’t really that cold. She herself felt fine in thermal leggings and hiking boots and a Navy windbreaker.
The pictures on Booking.com had all showed the onsens—natural hot-spring pools—in the wintertime, with snow down to the edges of the springs and lying deep on the rocky hills beyond. Now those hills were bare. The whole region was volcanic. Wisps of steam bled from the rocky ground here and there, rising to eddy and swirl in the wind along the short trail they’d walked down from the hotel. The stink of sulfur mingled with the rank stench of the monkeys. They had no compunction about letting go in the pool, to judge by the floating turds.
Finally he said, as if forcing some response, “Maybe they’re just flushed from the heat.”
“Or embarrassed about being naked. In front of an audience.”
That got a faint smile. “I doubt being naked would embarrass a monkey.”
She grinned. “Well, obviously shitting in the bathtub doesn’t.”
“But actually you don’t know. Do you?”
She looked away, feeling in the wrong, or as if she was overlooking something important. Something beyond missing her ship, which of course she did every minute she was away. It felt weird, not having that responsibility. But Savo was safe now. Inport Wakkanai again, with Matt Mills keeping an eye on things. And the war, thank God, was over.
She cleared her throat. “No, I guess I don’t.” Wanting to add something like, In fact, I can’t tell how anybody is feeling. Unless he tells me.
But she didn’t. Shit, the poor guy had just come back from a living death. A Chinese POW camp. Carried as missing, presumed dead, since his strike fighter had gone down in the Taiwan Strait during Operation Recoil.
Three years had been a long time for her, too. She’d mourned him. Then finally moved on, with a union rep from the shipyard.
She shivered, remembering Teju. His cocoa skin had felt smooth as a cat’s back. Except for his hands, a worker’s hands, stronger and rougher than Eddie’s had ever been … She should feel guilty about that. Shouldn’t she?
But whether she should or not, she didn’t. After all, she’d believed her husband was dead.
But now Eddie “Chip” Staurulakis was back. Gaunt, hesitant, pale. Pain had drawn his face tight by the end of the easy twenty-minute walk here from the hotel. He leaned on the paint-scarred railing beside her now as if exhausted. This husk was nothing like the brash, arrogant fighter jock she’d married, oh so long ago.
“Look at that little one,” he said, too cheerfully, as if trying to mimic being entertained. He lifted his hands, flexed the wrists, and winced. Then crammed them back into the parka pockets. “He’s kinda cute.”
“Yeah. Kinda.” She shivered. The little one was slightly more appealing than the others, if creepy, too. A cross between a puppy and a human baby. It was eating something it had found in the pool. She hoped it was food. A bin of what looked like peanuts or soybeans was set up a few yards down the slope. More turds littered the rocky ground around it. Yeah, these monkeys were famous. But she had absolutely no desire to get any closer to them. “Do you like the ryokan? I mean, is it all right?”
They were staying at a traditional hotel, a terrifyingly upscale place ostensibly favored by the imperial family. Their sunken tub looked out over the fog-shrouded northern mountains. The daily price was daunting, but they both had back pay on the books. She’d reserved a room with Western-style beds. But Chip hadn’t been able to sleep. He said the mattresses were too soft. Before they’d left for the springs this morning, she’d asked the desk to shift them to one with futons.
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then his shoulders lifted and fell. “I’m cool with it.”
“Did you get baths in the cam
p?” But the moment she asked this she thought, Fuck, Cheryl. What a stupid, stupid question. Why remind him? You’re supposed to be getting his mind off that. Helping him come back.
But he only shrugged again and squinted up at the dreary sky. A moment later she heard it too: the distant hissing roar of a jet. Invisible above the clouds, but he’d picked it up right away.
“Twin engine,” he said. “Probably commercial.”
A feral shriek jerked their heads around. At the far end of the spring, two monkeys had turned on a third, smaller one. They were screaming, their shockingly long yellow fangs bared in snarls. The small one scrambled up out of the spring and crouched shivering on the rocks, hugging herself. The larger ones glared. Then turned away, returning to their heat-soaked trance. They ignored her, beyond an occasional intimidating glance.
“They’re pretty fucking territorial,” her husband observed. He sighed, face tense, as if he’d just recalled some unpleasant event. “Like us.”
She wanted to ask what he was remembering. To know what he’d experienced. To share some of his pain, if it would help. But the counselor had said, “Give him time. It was hell in those camps. No food. Beatings. Worse, if you resisted. His story isn’t going to come out overnight. Some of it,” she’d added, “he’ll probably keep to himself for the rest of his life.”
She took his arm now and leaned her head on his shoulder. Yeah, her husband was back. She’d yearned for this. Dreamed. Then lost all hope, and just grieved. And finally, come to terms with the loss.
Now, years later, here he was again. But this was not the same man. Not at all. He’d slept badly. Twitching, jerking, and muttering all night long, so she’d only fallen asleep well toward dawn. In the morning, he’d gaped at their breakfast trays, as if fish, rice, pickled veggies, and pumpkin soup were an emperor’s feast.
And of course, he hadn’t touched her, other than a peck on the cheek that wouldn’t have offended a maiden aunt. Not at all like the horny jock she’d married, ready to launch hot on a moment’s notice. Once, she couldn’t even change her bra in front of him without a grab. Which she’d not always fended off …
