Cold Allies

by Patricia Anthony

  “Don’t worry, ma’am. We know about the dog. We’ve made arrangements,” he told her.

  “He needs to go out, too. Oh, my. He can make such a mess.”

  The man gave her an impartial smile and turned away, attention and charity depleted.

  Doodles, she thought in irritation. Mrs. Parisi was a master manipulator, had earned her stripes in cuteness as a child and junior officer rank by her sex appeal as a teenager. Now that she was getting on in years, fragility had given her a stunning new weapon. It frustrated her when foiled.

  Her gaze was drawn to the window and the planes queued up in the darkness. She couldn’t con these men, and in twenty-three minutes—whoosh—she’d be swept off to Spain. Asleep in her apartment one minute, on her way to Europe the next. It took one’s breath away.

  One’s breath.

  A sly grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. The two agents were seated tensely, surveying the airport as though they thought the ANA or the Eridanians might be sneaking up on them.

  With a subtle gasp—it was important that the scene not be overplayed—Mrs. Parisi put her hand to her chest.

  The nicer agent looked at her, and his expression changed from blankness to alarm. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she told him in a squeezed voice. And began gulping air.

  The agent motioned to the second man. “Kevin,” he said.

  Through shuttered eyes, Mrs. Parisi saw the other man leap to his feet. Around the terminal, waiting passengers were starting to look her way.

  She had to fight down a victorious smirk when the green-eyed agent turned to his partner and in a satisfyingly frantic voice snapped, “Call an ambulance.”

  THE PYRENEES

  Gordon didn’t find the laser. What he found was a T-72 tank on the side of the road, its engine cover up and no soldiers around.

  Through the screen of trees he caught a flash of blue.

  The blue light had been there when he came on line, and it had stayed with the CRAV since, following it like a shy stray dog.

  Ignoring the light, Gordon pushed through the undergrowth that paralleled the road. At the crest of a hill near a burned-out farmhouse, the trail forked, one gravel-and-mud path leading west, another, even more rugged, leading east. He drove the CRAV forward and studied the ground.

  No more treads to follow. But tire tracks. Big ones. The mark of the Brazilian-made Laser Deployment Vehicle. The tire tracks went east, straight up the mountain.

  Gordon jerked his head left to bring up the display. The road to Spanish Vielia was a mile or so ahead. A good road, he saw, a decent French highway. The LDV wasn’t going up that. Oh no. It had to go the hard way around, up through the goat trail to the Pico de Forcanada.

  What the hell? Are they lost? Gordon wondered.

  He looked up at the exposed grassy slope. What the LDV had climbed was a muddy pasture, complete with cow patties the shape of cinnamon rolls.

  No telling what was on the other side of that hill. It might be a long haul, and his stomach and bladder were telling him it was break time. He eased the CRAV to the back of a destroyed barn and buried it in a manure pile while two rubbernecking Guernseys and blue Rover looked on.

  CRAV COMMAND, TRÁS-OS-MONTES, PORTUGAL

  Gordon closed his eyes and felt the odd sensory jump as the CRAV powered down. Taking off the gloves and goggles, he stood, stretched. It was past break time, apparently. His dinner lay, gelatinous and cold, on the side table.

  Jerking open the warped door, he walked to the end of the corridor, to the restroom. After a pit stop, he paused at the refrigerator to grab a can of Coke. In the freezer, stacked next to the icemaker, he discovered a cache of Snickers.

  42 Patricia Anthony

  Chewing on the ice-hard chocolate, he ambled back toward his room, halting dead at the open doorway of Stendhal’s cramped command center.

  She was obviously in the midst of a difficult move. Her head was thrown back, her face streaming sweat. Her gloved hands plucked the air.

  Not all the operators minded being observed. Stendhal, Gordon figured, relished it. Her camouflage blouse, as usual, was open all the way down, exposing her Army-issue undershirt. Sweat had darkened the olive cloth between her small breasts, and her nipples were at erect attention.

  It was only because she couldn’t see him that Gordon dared look at all. Stendhal wanted the other guys’ eyes on her, he knew, not his shy, cowlike regard.

  He was so engrossed in Stendhal that he didn’t notice the man from Mitsubishi approach until the rep was right beside him. Gordon jerked his gaze away from Stendhal’s nipples and nearly choked on a piece of Snickers.

  Ishimoto, following the line of Gordon’s leer, raised an eyebrow.

  “She is good,” the Japanese said.

  “Huh?”

  “A good operator. I monitor her as well.”

  Gordon pressed his lips together and fought not to let his gaze slide back to Stendhal.

  “You put your unit into a dung heap,” Ishimoto said.

  “Yeah.”

  Ishimoto’s impassive expression broke, his lips cracking upward into a smile. “A very clever maneuver. So. After you eat, you will follow them up the hill?”

  “Yeah,” Gordon replied, then remembered his Army manners and amended it to “Yes, sir. Of course I’ll use the hill as a defilade, but, hell, the Arabs could be just on the other side. And I’d sure like to know where those helicopters went.”

  “Ah,” Ishimoto nodded. ‘The helicopters with the nerve gas.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  For a moment they stood there, staring at each other.

  Black lashes made an awning over the most expressionless eyes Gordon had ever seen. Looking at Ishimoto, in some ways, was like looking into the face of his own CRAV.

  Just inside the door Stendhal was grunting and huffing her way to some sort of CRAV-maneuver climax. Then suddenly she smiled, sighed in exhaustion. Her arms dropped.

  “The blue light,” Ishimoto said.

  Gordon whipped his head away from the slumped, happy girl. “Sir?”

  “It follows you. Why?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “When I operate the CRAV the—what we call a Woofer goes away. When you operate the CRAV, it comes back.” There was an emotion now on the Japanese’s face, but Gordon wasn’t sure whether it was suspicion or envy.

  “It just took a shine to me, I guess, sir.”

  Ishimoto nodded and walked away, to the monitoring room, taking one final look at the breasts. After a moment of thought Gordon, too, went back to work.

  THE PYRENEES

  Manure fell off the turret like wet brown snow. In the muddy yard, Gordon swiveled his head. The Guernseys had gone off to seek other entertainment, but Rover was there, hovering a foot or so above the sodden grass.

  As he watched the light, Gordon felt the tap-tap-tapping begin, a sound like someone knocking at the base of his brain.

  “Stop that,” he said.

  The rain sound quieted to a cold, pouty hiss.

  Pressing the accelerator gently, Gordon rolled up the long, open incline. Near the top he paused to raise his missile tubes. As the opposite slope came into view, he noticed the pasture was empty. The heavy tire treads of the LOV disappeared in a curve to the right.

  Gordon swiveled his head. Rover was hovering a few yards away. “Where’d they go, Boo-Boo?” he asked.

  The only answer he got was that eerie whisper of falling sleet.

  IN THE LIGHT

  Ann and Justin were in the very back of the bus, on the long bench seat. He was using his blanket as a pillow, and Ann was on top of him, riding him to climax. He was coming, the bucking of his hips frenzied. He grabbed her at
the bunched skirt and squeezed tight, feeling the cold sponginess of her waist underneath.

  The next instant there was a throb, a spurt of release. He’d come, but there was no real pleasure in it. Ann crawled off him and lowered her skirt. “Will you read me your book?” she asked politely.

  Dazed, he sat up and noticed his zipper was open. He should have been wearing his speed jeans and helmet, but they had disappeared somehow. He zipped up his flight suit while outside the window an F-14 crashed in the desert and two chutes came down over the twisted skeletons of burned Arab tanks.

  “I crashed,” he whispered to her. “What?”

  “I remember now. I crashed.”

  “Read me your book,” she said.

  “My name is Justin Searles. Lieutenant j.g. Justin Searles. And I crashed my F-14.”

  “Read me your book now, Justin.”

  He shoved at her. “Jesus God! You captured me.”

  The Arab National Army must have captured him, must have started feeding him drugs. Justin pounded on the window, trying to get out, and the bus driver was back, wanting to know what was happening.

  “Come on, boy,” the bus driver said.

  Outside the window the desert flashed by. A burning oil field blossomed on the horizon like a night flower.

  “Come on, boy. Don’t you want to fuck her again?” Ann leaned over and grabbed at his groin. Justin elbowed her hard in the chest. His arm plunged into her, went right through her pink sweater, right through chilled blood and putty-soft bone until it hit the bus seat.

  He screamed.

  “Now you’ve gone and done it,” the bus driver was saying.

  He’d gone and done it. God. He’d gone and done it.

  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.