Cold Allies

by Patricia Anthony

  They’d actually made it. For a while, the night before, he didn’t think they would.

  His soldiers had slept and eaten, grumbling because Wasef had refused them cook fires. The colonel himself hadn’t napped, and now he was paying the price of that poor decision. His arm muscles were jumpy, and there was an annoying tic under one eye.

  Sunrise had turned the lichened rocks around him to peach. Blue shadows pooled in the crevasses. He shivered in the brittle air and walked farther out into the sunlight, hoping to find warmth. Around him peaks rose like mosques into the lavender sky.

  A sound drew his attention. He looked down to see a jeep making its way up the Spanish slope.

  “Captain Mustafa?” he called.

  Instantly, as though the captain had congealed from the shadows, he was at the colonel’s side.

  “Get five men with rifles and hide them in those rocks.”

  Yussif glanced at the approaching jeep and nodded. Wasef drew back against the tunnel wall and watched the men scatter into position.

  As the jeep neared, the colonel saw the insignia on the side and motioned for the squad to lower their weapons.

  One man. A captain without a driver. The jeep rolled into the tunnel and stopped, engine idling loudly in the confines of the granite.

  As Wasef made his way over, the captain killed the motor and got out. “Colonel?” he asked with a smart salute.

  Wasef returned the salute and noticed that his hands were trembling, perhaps from cold, perhaps from exhaustion. Quickly he put his arm to his side.

  “I hope this is no imposition,” the man said. “But I have asked to be assigned to you.” The captain was curly-headed and swarthy, thin as a sapling and eager-eyed. Wasef’s gaze dropped to the stenciled nametag.

  RASHID, it said.

  He looked up and in the man’s face saw a suggestion of a familiar, indolent smile. “You’re General Rashid Sabry’s son, Gamal,” Wasef said in surprise. “You look just like him.”

  The young man’s grin widened. “Thinner.”

  “Yes,” Wasef laughed. “Thinner.” He held out his hand in welcome.

  Gamal clasped it.

  “I understand you studied astrophysics at Cal Tech,” Wasef said.

  A flicker of emotion in Gamal’s face. Wasef could feel the hand stiffen in his own. Guilt? he wondered. And does he feel guilty because he lived with the enemy, or because he is now murdering friends?

  “I myself studied in the U.S. for a while,” Wasef told him and instantly felt Gamal’s grip relax. “It was a pleasant country once,” he added softly.

  Gamal’s own voice was cautiously formal. “Yes, it was, colonel. A pleasant country.”

  Yussif wandered up, curiosity no doubt spurring him. Wasef made short shrift of the introduction and leveled a curious glance at Gamal.

  “You asked to be assigned?”

  “Yes,” he said, remembering his mission. “You have been having a problem pinpointing the satellite. I thought I might be of help.”

  Wasef saw Yussif’s lips tighten. The colonel knew the man was jealous of his duties. He hugged them to himself and refused to share, like a young boy with a handful of candy. Of late the captain’s jealousy had gained a mean streak. Yussif was indeed failing to hit the satellite, and even Wasef’s patience had become strained.

  ‘There is no real problem,” Yussif said.

  “Well, of course there is,” Gamal replied, either not reading or ignoring the warning in Yussif’s expression. “But it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s hard to distinguish between microwave sources unless you know what you’re looking for. And it’s doubly hard to shoot one down.”

  “Would you care for some breakfast?” Wasef asked before Yussif could rebut.

  “Please,” Gamal said, a childish delight in his eyes. “I skipped dinner last night.”

  “Captain Mustafa? Will you get something for our new laser fire officer?” Wasef ignored the effect of this rebuff and blandly turned to Gamal. “Your father agreed to this?”

  “Yes,” Gamal said. “And he thought I might get a close-up

  The chill on Wasef’s wind-whipped cheeks moved to his chest. “Sit down,” he murmured.

  The boy took a seat against the granite wall of the tunnel. Wasef hunkered next to him, wishing that the boy would change the subject, wishing that he had never come. Since the deaths of the tank crew, the men had begun looking over their shoulders. They’d painted warding signs on their rifles, their trucks. Even Yussif had come to believe the lights were supernatural, and Wasef himself ...

  “They are a heat sink, you see,” Gamal was saying. “I have instruments in my jeep. Infrared, a gravimeter ...”

  Yussif walked up and shoved a can of sardines at Gamal.

  The young man stared in surprise at the sardines before muttering a dubious “Thank you. So anyway,” he said, “I was hoping to get a closer look, to determine what the blue lights are. I have some theories of my own—”

  “They are the devil,” Yussif snapped.

  A small smile tugged at Gamal’s lips, a smile not of mockery but simple disbelief. “Surely you don’t—”

  “They are the devil! If you had seen men killed as we have. If you had seen the blood sucked from their bodies—”

  Gamal was shaking his head.

  “Superstition ...”

  “Islam is not superstition,” Yussif said.

  Gamal stopped. His face was bewildered, unsure. “I never said that.”

  Wasef caught Gamal’ s questioning glance. “Here. Let me open the can for you,” the colonel said, gently taking the sardines from his hand.

  “Allah has nothing to do with the blue lights, Captain Mustafa,” Gamal told him, “if they are alien.”

  In a voice that was too loud, a voice that drew the attention of the men, Yussif exclaimed, “Allah has everything to do with everything!”

  Lips pursed, Gamal sat for a moment, watching Wasef open the can. The smell of fish rose like an oily cloud in the thin air.

  “What I meant was,” Gamal went on quietly, “these lights put out a radar signal and microwave noise. They are a physical presence, captain. Not ghosts.”

  “It is not up to us to question the nature of demons.”

  Wasef handed Gamal the open can. The boy looked around, as though in search of a fork. Finally he gave up, pinched a sardine out with his fingers and stuffed it into his mouth.

  “You know?” he asked as he chewed. “Humans must question the nature of the universe. It was not my choice, Captain Mustafa, to think of aliens. I am a scientist above all. However, given Occam’s razor—”

  “You are stupid!” Yussif spat.

  “Stop it,” Wasef said, looking from one to the other. “Stop arguing like this. If you wish to debate this point, I’d suggest you not use words but tanks.”

  The pair were staring at him now in surprise. He got to his feet. “Famine aside, isn’t Western objectivity and Eastern passion what this war is all about? Gentlemen, I will get some sleep now. Wake me at dusk. And in the meantime confine your discussions to less inflammatory topics.”

  Shaking his head, he walked off to his sleeping bag.

  Seated around the laser, his soldiers watched him. They also snuck sidelong glances at Gamal Sabry. Glances full of righteous indignation, ignorance, and fury.

  NEAR LERIDA

  “Wake up, Capt’n,” Dix said.

  Rita opened her eyes. She was lying alone at the bottom of the foxhole. Someone had thrown a coat over her. The air was cold. The bluish light of dawn trickled into the trench.

  “Get up, Capt’n,” Dix said, looking down. “We’re moving out.”

  Rita sat up, her sweaty uniform sticking to her skin. She yearned for a toothbrush, Colgate
, and a hot shower with lilac-scented soap. Then she caught sight of the trench. It startled her. The tank had plowed into the left side of the hole, its treads scouring a track some three feet wide and two feet deep.

  “You want some breakfast?” the lieutenant asked. Below her helmet, Dix’s blue eyes were as cold and tranquil as the dawn.

  Rita shook her head, looked around for her own helmet.

  I could just hide here till the end of the war, she thought. That would be good.

  “You coming, ma’am?”

  “Yeah,” Rita sighed. “I’m coming.”

  Tossing her gear over the edge of the trench, Rita clambered up after it. In the orange grove, the fire had not gone out. Gray smoke drifted into the violet sky. The abandoned hut where Dix had parked the Humvees was flattened.

  The patrol lounged around in the grass and rocks, just finishing a cold breakfast. Rita slipped her coat on and noticed them watching her. Their gazes were level and, in their dispassion, frightening.

  “Forward OPs tell me there was a doo-wompus of a battle due south,” Dix said as she ambled up, her own breakfast in hand. “ANA and the Allies done caught each other with their pants down. Left their dead on the field. We all heading up there. Might be bad,” she added, her cornflower eyes settling on Rita’s face.

  “I’m a pathologist, Dix,” Rita said. “I’ve seen bodies up closer and nastier than most.”

  Dix nodded. “Listen here, Capt’n,” she said quietly. “I sure do hate to say it this way, but—”

  “Just say it.”

  Dix took a deep breath. “You all a senior officer and everything. And you been put in my care. But don’t you go endangering my troops. I give everybody one free freak-out, okay? Last night was yours. With all due respect, you done shot your wad.”

  “I’ll hold it together,” Rita assured her, wondering if somewhere in those Spanish hills she’d find her missing courage.

  THE PYRENEES, NEAR BAGNERES-DE-LUCHON

  Gordon had overslept, and by the time he got the CRAV out of its hiding place, the sun was up and the birds were singing. Now it was past noon, and he still had no idea where the laser was.

  The first thing he’d done that morning was find the cow pasture. He saw the marks of tank treads in the grass, and the knobbed mark of tractor tires. The Arabs had used a tank to tow the vehicle out of the mud.

  Then, somewhere on the road, he lost the trail. The tank had gone back to its base, but he wasn’t sure the LDV had gone with it.

  Center yourself, Toshio had told him the evening before, over supper. Center yourself, find the quiet, and knowledge will come.

  Yeah. Okay. Only nothing was springing to mind.

  He turned his head and looked up the road. Where the timberline ended, rocky peaks rose, snow snuggled around their shoulders like a soft, tasseled shawl.

  Suddenly he knew. The tank had gone down the mountain and the LDV had gone up. Up to try another potshot at the satellite.

  The Arabs were pushing their luck, two firings in three days. The laser probably needed all sorts of maintenance. But Gordon also knew they wanted that last satellite bad.

  He glanced behind him. Rover was playing over the rocks, Gordon’s blue, happy albatross. As soon as he looked Rover’s way, he could hear the clatter start up in his mind.

  “Noisy son of a bitch,” he muttered, and was jolted to feel the light touch of Toshio’s hand on his arm.

  Normally Gordon hated that. He hated when someone touched him while he was on-line. The sensation was eerie, disorienting, like bilocation.

  But Toshio’s touch seemed soothing, as if reminding him that he wasn’t really in the mountains and about to get his ass kicked.

  “No problem,” he told Toshio, breaking another cardinal CRAV rule of solitude.

  Gordon headed into the naked rocks, keeping to the side of the road. Behind him Rover appeared to be trying to stay out of sight.

  A jet passed over, and Gordon dived for whatever cover he could find. It was a Mirage, either a French sortie looking for the LDV or an Arab sortie protecting their own. Hoping he hadn’t been seen, he trundled out from behind a boulder and continued his trek.

  The incline steepened. Hollows in the granite cupped creamy mounds of snow. The trees had given way to a few patches of juniper and alpen roses.

  Gordon looked across a gorge at a gossamer waterfall. Close by, a falcon called out with its raucous, tuneless voice. He raised his head and saw it turning lazy circles in the sun.

  Something in the sky glinted. An instant later he heard the air-ripping scream of an approaching plane. The Mirage dropped from the glare of the sun and headed straight toward him.

  “Oh, my God!” Gordon shouted. There was no place to hide, nothing but sheer wall on one side and precipitous drop on the other. He gunned the accelerator. The CRAV shot forward.

  The Mirage was so close, he could see the clear bubble of the canopy, could count the missiles on each wing. Suddenly one fell free of its mount, spraying a mist of propellant.

  He ducked, a completely futile gesture. The CRAV didn’t understand duck. It only knew run. It knew hide.

  The missile hit wild, blasting a hole in the stone above Gordon’s head. Debris flew. The CRAV shivered on its springs. Then the Mirage was rocketing past, up and over the mountain.

  “Ha, ha, asshole! You missed me!” Gordon laughed. Hearing a curious rumble, he looked up in time to see the granite wall above his head slough off. A heartbeat later, part of the mountain thundered down on him.

  MICHÓW, POLAND

  Baranyk stabbed his pointer at the map. “Here, Major Shcheribitsky. The Arabs have been here at Lubertnów, and there are reports of skirmishes at Parczew. Gaze into your crystal ball and tell me what you think they are doing.”

  The small major, his wedge-shaped badger’s face grim, eyed the map reluctantly, as though it might bite. “They are sending scouts to our flank, general.” He drew a line with his finger, arcing up over Lubertnów, Parczew, and straight to Warsaw. “When they move ... if they move, they will go north.”

  The general grunted. “I want a reconnaissance flight south.” He stabbed the pointer into Lipsko, leaving a dent in the paper.

  “Yes, sir,” Shcheribitsky said calmly, as if he planned to get to the order sometime that afternoon. “But then Landsat shows no major incursion.”

  “Landsat is a blind bitch. She sees only during the day, and then with not enough resolution. They could be hiding in the villages and moving only at night. Perhaps our scouts are lazy, and keep to the main roads.”

  Baranyk stared at the map, and suddenly the Arab plan coalesced. He saw it clearly, as though the red arrows had already been drawn and the battle commenced.

  “Now, major,” he snapped. “Fly the recon now!”

  The major motioned an officer to his side and whispered into his ear. The man nodded and hurried out of the room.

  Baranyk went on. “And let us send a tank battalion out to meet them at Parczew where you think there is a company and I think there may be much more. Include those German miracles, those new Mercedes tanks. And give me air cover. Helicopters. Those BO-105s with HOT missiles Reiter has given us.”

  Baranyk saw Shcheribitsky’s pockmarked cheeks pale. “What?” Baranyk asked, impatient.

  “Fuel, sir,” Shcheribitsky said. “The diesel has arrived for our tanks, but the jet fuel—”

  “Call the Poles,” the general growled.

  Shcheribitsky was apologetic. “They say they have their hands full themselves, sir, with the battle at Kraków. And they have no fuel, either.”

  Baranyk brought his pointer down on the table so hard that it broke, a piece flying off and narrowly missing a lieutenant. “May the fuel be fucked!” The gathered officers flinched. Baranyk scarcely noticed.
He was looking into the mind of the Arab commander as though the man’s skull were made of glass.

  “We are using alcohol for some of the flights, general,” Shcheribitsky said quickly, “but the Polish alcohol is unreliable. Sometimes we find it mixed with water. We have enough fuel, perhaps, for the reconnaissance flight and two helicopters, but—”

  “Listen to me!” Baranyk said, thrusting his face so close to the major’s that the man stumbled back, his russet eyes wide. “I smell it. Only one time has my intuition left me, and that was at Kiev.”

  In the sudden silence, he gazed again at the map. “No, gentlemen,” he said to his officers. “I believe the Arabs mean to surround us, and, to save ourselves, we must attack before the net is closed.”

  THE PYRENEES

  When Gordon had stopped screaming, he felt Toshio’s hand on his arm. The Japanese wanted him out of the chair and, judging by the grip, he wanted him out quickly.

  Gordon ignored the order. He was still trembling. His unit’s visuals were up and running even though there was nothing to see but gray-shot black.

  When the panicked snag in his breathing unkinked and the ringing in his ears subsided, he tipped his head to bring up the diagnostics.

  The avalanche had disabled his missiles. Everything else looked good, though. The small reactor was intact, not bleeding radiation into the Valley. The turret was probably movable, even though he couldn’t, with the rockslide’s weight on it, coax it to turn.

  As an experiment, he eased his foot down on the accelerator. The CRAV’S engines whined, but the unit stayed put.

  Toshio’s hand was cutting off his circulation. With a furious jerk Gordon pulled his arm away. Servomotors screamed. Rocks shifted uneasily. Gravel rattled on the CRAV’S turret.

  Gordon pushed again at the rock. The stones on his left gave a quarter-inch. Outside his grave he could hear a grinding noise as part of the slide gave way.