by Tom Kratman
"Go back to what you said before," McPherson ordered, rolling his hand in a backwards circle over his desk.
"We haven't had a lick-"
"No, not that. Before that."
Pettigrew thought hard for a moment. "You mean about reticence and our people, SEALs, Rangers and Marines?"
"Yeah . . . those." McPherson's face lit with a wicked grin. "So he wants a court-martial, does he? I wonder if he wants all those others, people just like the ones he committed mass murder for, court-martialed, too."
Man, you really do have shitty moral judgment, thought Pettigrew. Makes me glad I boffed your wife.
"And that's the deal, Wes," Pettigrew told him later that afternoon. "You retire, without prejudice, or Welch and his team, and Thornton and his team, get tried as accessories. Moreover, the red-headed bastard is going to turn your man, Mosuma, over to the Afghan authorities. They'll hang him, no drop."
"What a piece of shit," Stauer said with a sneer. "Almost makes me wish I'd fucked his wife."
"You mean you didn't?"
Stauer looked at Pettigrew with great suspicion. "You don't mean you did?"
"Well, what was I supposed to do? I gave her a ride home from the O club, where she'd been drinking, oh, to excess. Next thing I knew, her head's over my lap, and my brain is being sucked southward. Right on Riley Road. I fucked her in the post stables."
Stauer was about to chew out his long-time friend, viciously. But then, what's the point?
He laughed. "How was she?"
Pettigrew sighed. "Words can't describe, Wes. Words just can't describe."
***
"He'll do it, sir," Pettigrew told McPherson. "But there's a little problem."
"I see no problems."
"Well . . . both Biggus Dickus Thornton, Terry Welch, and the entire teams of both of them are punching out, too. That's Wes' condition; we have to let them go if we want to get rid of him and if they want out."
"Fair enough," said McPherson, relieved that the problem was going to go away. "Do they?"
"To a man, sir. Every one of them said the war is lost and it just isn't worth it. They said other things, too, but you don't want to hear those.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
-Tennyson, "Ulysses"
D-127, San Antonio, Texas
Like watching fish in a tank, Wes Stauer thought, looking at the thin traffic making its way along East Evans Road and down Bulverde. No, that's not quite right. It's like watching paint dry. Not even enough cars on the road to provide the hope of a decent accident.
He watched one of two identical two-seat cars pass the other anemically and sneered, Battle Song of the Proletariat Specials. Painted "Green," of course.
He shook his head. He could afford a decent, which these days meant an imported, car. Most couldn't anymore, after the tax bite took. Indeed, most who could afford any kind of personal transport these days could only support one of the designed-by-committees-of-special-interests things, like those two seat jobs asthmatically chugging up the road in front of Stauer's house.
Stauer didn't really care that much about the tax rates, personally. His home was held by a corporation masquerading as a religious organization he'd set up in Lebanon once upon a time. He paid the corporation, which is to say, himself, a very modest rent. The rent just matched depreciation and expenses, so there was no tax burden there. Likewise most of his money was overseas where Uncle's sticky fingers couldn't get at it. Oh, yes, the Internal Revenue Service took a whopping bite out of his retired pay, but that, in relation to his overall finances, was "mere."
Unpatriotic? Stauer mused. It's never unpatriotic to keep your government from wasting your money on things that shouldn't be done anyway.
Not that he was necessarily all that illiberal in every particular. He wasn't really, at least as far as domestic issues went. Student aid, for example, to send someone to school to learn to be an engineer? Or a doctor. Or, just as good, a machinist or plumber or farmer? Those kinds of things he was fine with, though he was rather finer with them if there was some price involved; teaching poor kids or providing health care in Appalachia, for example. Or military service, of course.
To take a masters on the public ticket in resistingbadevilhonkywickednaughtydeadwhitemaleoppressionandrepressionlittleEichmannismbadbadbadidness? I'm not precisely enthusiastic about that.
And he had the strong sense that the money collected to help the poor and even out the playing field was, in fact, mostly being spent on upper middle class drones with sociology degrees, Who sow not; neither do they reap, and construction contracts for the very well connected.
Case in point, he mused, that program to pay school girls not to get pregnant. They pay a hundred thousand inner city girls a thousand or so dollars a year, each, and ten thousand social workers ninety thousand a year, each, to administer it, and half the girls end up getting knocked up anyway. Case in point, the senatrix from California whose husband somehow just managed to land a three-billion dollar contract to build wind farms in a place with no wind, because, unfortunately, the Senator from Massachusetts has a vacation home overlooking the place where there really is wind. Case in point . . . ah, what the hell's the use?
And it's not entirely fair to blame the President for this, either. It was building up for years, since the nineties, anyway. Maybe the eighties. And maybe President Wangai made it worse; but maybe he didn't, either. Nobody was going to make it a lot better. You drink enough; you get a hangover. You spend enough; you get broke. Maybe we could have spent our way back to prosperity. I doubt it, but maybe. But, if so, we'd have to have spent on the right things. We haven't.
At least it's a little better here in Texas. A little.
Stauer'd thought he knew why he'd retired to San Antonio. To use the PX and commissary, to have Brooke Army Medical Center nearby when the time came for that. That's what I thought I was doing.
It wasn't those things, though. Or, at least, it wasn't entirely those. What the hell did I want? The facilities-he mentally shrugged-yeah, okay, sure. But I wanted the facilities someplace where I wouldn't be reminded of what I was missing. No sharp young troopers, fit as a fiddle and ready to fight. No listening in the morning air for the distant cadence I can't join in any more.
I do miss the Army.
And I didn't want to be in a purely Air Force town. And at least my arthritis isn't too bad here. And home . . . well, it hasn't been "home" in a very long time.
"It sure sucks to get old," Stauer muttered, "and I'm not convinced that the alternative is worse." He sighed, looking down toward his feet. Briefly, his eyes rested on his stomach. "Two years ago, you miserable bastard, you were flat." Traveling further downward, he scowled and said, "And don't you even think about getting old. At least you still have a purpose."
From inside the residence he heard the purpose's plaintive call, "Honey, come to bed."
Philomena Potter-Phillie, for short-stirred in the big bed, reaching for the man who should have been there but who now stood on the balcony. Her questing hands coming up empty, she awakened and sat up. Immediately she called out, "Honey, come to bed."
Phillie, ER nurse, aged twenty-seven, five foot, ten inches, thirty-five, twenty-three, thirty-six, was a quarter English-eighth German-eighth Irish-half Mexican self-propelled monument to mixed marriages. She had short blond hair that had not come out of a bottle, large emerald green eyes, and skin that was essentially white but tanned really, really well. Long legs were a given. She was quite pretty without being painfully so, having a regular, straight nose, full lips that were almost pouting, high cheekbones and a rather endearingly delicate chin.
She was also one of those not entirely rare human females predisposed toward older men. Perhaps "hard-wired" would be more accurate. Indeed, Phillie was so hard-wired for older men that she'd hung on to her virginity-technically, anyway-until
well after turning seventeen, precisely so she'd be legal for the class of men that interested her. At the time, the minimum age for that had been thirty-five. She'd added a year and a half, on average, every year since. Her current lover-Wes Stauer, presumably sitting on the balcony watching life crawl by-was a little young by those standards. If young, he was also a soldier, had been, anyway, for about thirty years. That had the effect of making him look older. It was also the other area in which Phillie was hard-wired: Soldiers; yum.
Oh, she'd tried doctors, naturally enough, being an RN and all. Leaving aside the potential problems at work, she'd decided they were, on average, a bunch of arrogant pricks, and especially the specialists. She'd also tried Air Force types. The student pilots from Randolph AFB were interesting, but they were mostly arrogant pricks, too. And she tended to be taller than them, which was awkward and operated against the third area of her genetic predispositions. At six-two Wes is just about right. Why won't the bastard come back to bed?
The Special Forces medics, training at Fort Sam, downtown, had been her most enjoyable group. She'd even thought about marrying one of them. Then he'd been killed in Afghanistan and a colonel had come to tell her how very sorry he was and all, and how much the country appreciated . . . and that colonel had led to another colonel and that colonel . . .
***
"I'll be there in a few," Stauer called back. No I won't. Not tired, not horny, not even lonely. Just miserable. "Go back to sleep."
Nice girl, though, he thought. And, unlike most women that age, I can't say she has neither the charm of innocence nor the skill and grace of broad experience. And she's not even immature. She'd be a good match for an old fart like me. If I wanted a match. Family? I put all that off-"married to the Army"-and never missed it. And now I've no Army and no family. She says she wants kids. I just don't know if I'm up to it. Or if I'd be a decent father. And why the hell am I even thinking about this? I don't want to get married. Christ, I'll "be stone dead in a moment."
A car was pulling into the complex's parking lot as Stauer stood up. He ignored it. Walking inside and gently closing the sliding glass door behind him, Stauer padded quietly on stocking feet to the bedroom he'd set aside as an office. The hardwood floor underfoot didn't so much as creak.
Which is just as well. Phillie will put up with my staying on the balcony. She's good about leaving me space. But if I've come inside and not to her she's likely to get a little testy.
Instead of returning to bed, then, Stauer went into the office and closed that door even more gently and quietly than he'd closed the glass one. Only then did he flick on the light.
Even after two years of living here, most of his books were still packed up in boxes in the upstairs bedroom. Thus, the fifteen book cases were half empty. They'd have been even emptier if Phillie hadn't brought down, unpacked, and shelved about a thousand volumes. The walls were marked, too, with little holes, the only remaining traces of the various nick-knacks he'd picked up in service. He'd put them up when he'd first moved in. After a year or so he'd discovered they depressed him more than anything. Fortunately, there were the empty boxes from Phillie's unpacking of books. The plaques, awards, certificates, commendations . . . they'd all gone into the empty boxes and up to the upstairs bedroom, there to await the judgment day or the auction that would surely follow Stauer's eventual death.
He'd left some things out, still up on the walls, or in cases, or on stands. These were his weapons: forty-seven odd bayonets, knives and daggers, two dozen swords, including a matched fifteenth century daisho that had set him back forty thousand dollars, two crossbows, one modern, one medieval, sixteen rifles of various calibers and capabilities, nine pistols, one morning star . . .
Man without a family ought to have a hobby, at least.
He sat down, as lightly as he'd closed the doors and then cat-footed across the apartment.
Maybe I actually should have taken a job, Stauer thought. But what was there available? Office work? Being a body guard for some State Department maggot? Supervising guard details on a gate in Iraq or Afghanistan for seven hundred bucks a day? That shit got old when I was eighteen. And if I'd wanted to do direct action the options were not only limited, I'd have been reporting to some ex-SEAL who inherited a pile of money. Maybe I should have gone with that Ph.D from King's College London . . . but what would have been the point? It's not like I need the money. Military pay isn't extravagant, but when you don't have a family to support, and have no moral qualms about keeping Uncle's fingers off your money, you can invest yourself to a not inconsiderable wealth. Toss in the retired pay and it comes to quite a sum.
But I'm just so bored . . .
And it isn't just me.
Stauer flicked on the computer monitor, a twenty-inch flat screen, and pulled up his email. He tried to keep in touch with old comrades, such as wanted to keep in touch. And the refrain from them was so common as to be stereotypical. "I'd give up a year's pay for just one day back in the jungle . . . I am bored out of my gourd, boss . . . What the hell was I thinking when I punched out? . . . There's no work, sir, not for people like me. Not that isn't government make-work . . . "
Guys, if I knew how to help, I would, Stauer sighed. Maybe we should all get together sometime. But . . . nah . . . when it's over; it's over.
Alone in the bed, Phillie lay on her back, hands behind her head and fingers interlaced. I've never felt this way, she mused, and I don't just mean horny. He looks right, acts right, smells right. Everything's right. I'd be proud to be his wife and bear his children. And I think he cares for me. Loves me? I wish I knew. But if he doesn't, it isn't for anything I've failed to do. He loves history so I enrolled in a couple of history courses at UTSA so we could discuss it. That helped some, but would have helped more if he hadn't thought all the profs but one were idjits. Rollin, Wes said, knows what he's talking about. But then Professor Rollin left for greener pastures, so . . .
And, of course, I can't talk to him much about my job. "Phillie, honey, most of us are quite content to go through life without thinking of ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop." He won't even admit he stole that line from that antiwar science fiction writer.
Besides, since the government introduced medical rationing, I've come to hate my job. Why should I talk about something I hate?
Still, we have good times together. We have enough in common to make a go of things. He's met my mom, so he knows I'm going to age really well. We could-
Baaaringngngng.
Now what inconsiderate son of a bitch would be ringing a doorbell this time of night?
"I'll get it, Phillie," Stauer shouted from the office. He picked up a pistol from atop a bookcase standing against one wall and, after checking the magazine well, pulling the slide, and letting it slam forward to ensure the pistol was loaded, walked to the front door muttering foul imprecations the whole way. The federal government, quite despite some recent rulings from the Supreme Court, was being difficult about personal arms, but Texas and a number of other southern and Midwestern states were being equally difficult right back. It was a bad sign, really; everyone said so.
"Dirty, miserable, ill-mannered bastard! Who the fuck calls on someone at three in the fucking morning?" Wes made sure that his muttering wasn't so low that whichever rotten SOB was at the door wouldn't be sure hear it.
He continued cursing while fumbling with the door chain. If there was someone at the door with criminal intent, he didn't want a narrowly opened door restricting his field of fire. No, he wanted a clear path to shoot the son of a bitch, quite despite that the Feds were likely to prosecute these days on civil rights grounds no matter what the local Castle Doctrine laws said.
Chain unhooked, hand grasped around his pistol, Wes flung open the door and stuck the muzzle right against the nose of-
The muzzle didn't waver. Rather, Stauer's head rocked from side to side, as if to bring a jumbled memory to the surface. The scars on his face seemed familiar. The me
dium tall, slightly pudgy black man slowly and carefully raising his hands over his head looked like . . . but no . . . it's been freakin' years.
"Wahab?" Stauer asked.
The pudgy black face rocked, the nose moving the muzzle up and down with it. "Yes, Wes," the man said in a clipped, almost British accent, "it's Wahab. And I need help."
CHAPTER TWO
God preserve us from our friends.
-Lenin
D-165, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Rain came down in a steady drizzle, filling the low points in the streets and soaking everyone in a cold, wet misery. From the left, headlights dimmed by the thin, half-frozen deluge, an automobile came. Ignoring pedestrians, the car passed through a muddy puddle, casting up the filth therein onto sidewalk and foot traveler alike. Overhead, icicles were beginning to form on the trees that lined the broad green strip that divided the street.
"God, this weather is shitty," said one of the party, a black man, tall and thin but with refined, almost Arab, features.
"Shitty it is, Gheddi" agreed an older man, likewise black, "but at least it isn't California."
"What's the matter with California, Labaan?"
"Californians," the older man, Labaan, replied. Though he often, even usually, wore a smile, Labaan lost it everytime the subject of California or Californians came up. And he would never say why.
The car reached them, splashing filthy water from the street onto their coats and trousers.
"Sharmutaada ayaa ku dhashay was!" Gheddi shouted. He shook his fist as he swore at the splashing car. Fuck the whore that bore you. When the car ignored him, continuing on its way without a backward glance, he began to reach under his coat.
