He stood in the dim orange light and fumbled for his pants. “Close the drapes,” the general gasped. “Turn on the lights.” Under his bare feet the floor still shuddered.
“Sir?” Zgursky called.
Holding his trousers in one hand, Baranyk hurried to the window. From the east rose a column of fire. Another quake struck, rattling the curtain pulls, making the springs in the iron bed sing.
As Baranyk hurriedly began to dress, he heard a dry click.
“Electricity’s out, sir,” Zgursky informed him.
Baranyk buttoned his uniform blouse as well as he could with shivering, blind fingers. The door to the hall swung open with a squeal.
“General?” Major Shcheribitsky whispered.
“You will come with me, major. I wish to inspect the eastern emplacements. And order the Humvee to be brought up, please, sergeant.”
Baranyk put on his calf-length woolen coat, searched in the dark for the nightstand, found the bottle and took a deep, calming drink.
Outside of the officers’ barracks, Zgursky was waiting. Baranyk, ducking his way through the rain, climbed into the shelter of the Humvee. The warning sirens had fallen silent, but from a nearby street came the tenor wails of fire trucks.
Two blocks from the fire, Zgursky stopped. In the steady downpour, Jastrun stood with some Polish officers watching the inferno. Across the street three fire trucks were parked in a line, the firemen gathered around, confounded and useless. “Have you called up the tanks?” Baranyk shouted at Jastrun.
The Pole, too, Baranyk noticed, had been dragged out of bed. His wet uniform was awry. “What?” the colonel snapped, in his foul mood overlooking formalities.
“Call tanks to this location, man! Get spotters on the roofs! If the Arabs take the advantage, they will attack at this location!”
A series of angry bass booms thundered as the flames reached more stockpiled shells. Jastrun and his men flinched. The firemen ran for cover. An instant later hot debris rained down, hissing through the mist, pinging on helmets and the Humvee.
“Colonel Jastrun!” Baranyk shouted.
Ducking, the Pole made his way to the side of the Humvee. Even in the lurid glow from the fire, the man’s face was pale. “Yes?”
“Which munitions, colonel?”
Jastrun blinked. “The smart shells, I believe. I—”
“Does Czajowski know?”
“Of course. I informed him immediately. I believe he has telephoned the Americans and plans—”
“Shit!” Baranyk screamed. “Mother of God! He would tell the Americans?”
The Pole was utterly confused. “Why not?”
“Your brains drip out your asshole, Jastrun! Because, tovarich,” Baranyk said, falling back into old habits, older suspicions, “now Lauterbach will begin drafting Poland’s surrender.”
He rapped on the door frame of the Humvee. “Get us to the commander’s office now, sergeant. Get us there quickly, before Czajowski makes his mistake.”
It took almost fifteen minutes to reach the command center. Before the Humvee came to a stop, Baranyk had jumped out and was sprinting up the steps. The power was back on; the hall he raced down was brightly lit. He reached Czajowski’s office at a dead run and flung open the door.
The Pole was just putting down the secure phone’s receiver. There was a bemused, frightened expression on his face.
“Did you tell him?” Baranyk shouted. “Did you tell Lauterbach of our situation?”
Czajowski stared at the phone. “Do you know what he said?” he asked softly.
Baranyk was still breathing hard from his run. It seemed that his tight throat meant to strangle him.
“He said he would get back to me,” Czajowski said with an anxious twitch of a smile. “I told him we had lost half our munitions, and he said he would get back to me. Blessed Mother,” the Pole breathed. His grotesque smile vanished. “Doesn’t he realize there will be no one to pick up the phone?”
CENTCOM WEST, BADAJOZ, SPAIN
Banging and shouts at the anteroom door. Jolted from sleep, Mrs. Parisi sat up and looked bleary-eyed at the clock. Good Lord. Twelve midnight, and they were waking her up. The Army simply had no sense of decorum.
It was cold in her room, and that made her even more out of sorts. She turned on the bedside lamp, but before she could put on her robe, she heard footsteps, and there was Lauterbach in the doorway. He looked a fright. His hair was mussed, his face wide-eyed and pale.
“The main munitions dump in Warsaw has just been destroyed,” he said. “Out of bed. We need to contact the aliens.”
Suddenly Mrs. Parisi was aware that all she had on was her filmy nightgown, the one with the tiny pink and blue flowers all over it.
“Let me get dressed,” she said, pulling the blanket over her shoulders.
Much to her astonishment, the general lunged across to the bed and grabbed her upper arm so tightly, she knew it would leave bruises. He shook her, and she was shamefully conscious of the water-balloon sway of her braless breasts.
“Listen to me, lady!”
Furious spittle flew, misted her cheeks.
“I’m sick of all this New Age crap you’ve been feeding me!” He shoved his face into hers. “It’s all over with, all right? This is do-or-die time. You said in your books you can contact the aliens. Well, goddamn! Get to it!”
“Not everyone comes at your silly beck and call,” she said, overriding her fear of him and returning his glare. “The Eridanians are not your ridiculous toy soldiers.”
For a moment it looked as if he might actually strike her. He was breathing so hard that his chest heaved.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?” he said with a sound between a moan and a gasp. “God. You’ve been lying to me.”
Her heart was hammering terribly now, so loud, she was certain he could hear it. His grip on her arm made her fingers tingle.
“You simply haven’t been able to sleep deeply enough to reach them,” she told him. “Don’t blame me for that.”
His eyes took on a faraway look she didn’t like.
“I know you!” Her voice rose now, strident with desperation. “You catch a couple of hours here and there. I can see the effects of sleep deprivation in your face. Really. You look just awful. How do you expect ...”
He dropped her arm; stepped away. “I take sleeping pills. That’s not it.” He looked around, at the dresser, the bed, like a child who has strayed from his mother in the busy confusion of a shopping mall. “You’ve been lying.”
She stood up, ignoring the sheerness of her nightgown. “You stupid, egotistical little man!” she said. “You can’t talk to the Eridanians if you’ve been taking sleeping pills.”
His eyes sparked in renewed anger. Faith took a long time to die, she knew. It sickened and decayed into a prolonged half-life. She realized, at that moment, Lauterbach still yearned to believe.
“Did you take pills tonight?” she asked.
“No, I just—”
“Go straight to bed,” she said curtly. “You’re living on drugs, that’s what you’re doing.” She had never played the Game so boldly and so well. Her skill gave her a giddy sense of pride. “No wonder the Eridanians can’t understand.” His shoulders sagged.
“For Christ’s sake, lady. I can’t sleep.”
“Well, you’d just better, hadn’t you? You’d just better try.”
He straightened. His gaze became Machiavellian. She hadn’t seen that shrewdness in his face in a long time. “You’re lying,” he told her.
“How will you ever know?” she smirked.
For a moment he stood, regarding her skeptically. Then he whirled and stalked out.
“Sir?” a waiting aide asked. “Will you call General Brown now, sir? To arrange t
he ordnance for the B-2s?’
The door slammed on Lauterbach’s reply.
IN THE LIGHT
Rita turned the corner of the stacks and saw Lauterbach. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face a sickly gray.
“I have a message,” he told her, his expression intent.
“Fuck you,” she answered. “What do you expect me to do, salute? You want ‘Yes, sir, what is the message, sir?’ Well, up your four-star ass, sir. I didn’t ask to be sent here.”
‘There isn’t much time,” he said. “You need to ask them to help.”
“Who, the aliens?” she laughed. “Help with what?”
He scrubbed his hand over his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Help. Yes. Help.”
“Ask them yourself.” She turned to go.
“Goddamn it!” His rage stopped her in her tracks. His body, she saw, was stress-fracture brittle.
“You have to tell them, Rita. They like you. I can’t find my way around the library. The stairs go nowhere, and the elevators bring me back to where I began. No matter which direction I take, I always end up at this table. They won’t come to me. They won’t listen to me. You’ve got to do it.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked around wildly, began yanking books off shelves. They landed on the marble floor with wet smacks.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting their attention!” He took The Collected Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson and hurled it at the window. It hit the glass with a wind-chime sound.
“Stop!” she screamed.
He didn’t. The books, covers open like wings, swatted the windows, one after the other, birds flying to their death.
Lauterbach would tear the library down around her shoulders. What would happen then? What horrors would stand revealed when all the illusion was gone?
A weighty volume of Shakespeare smacked against the pane with an ice-pellet rattle. “I have to get their attention!” the general shouted. “Quick!” He lunged at her. “Give me a pen!”
She backed away. He turned and waded though the fallen books, to the table.
“A pen!” he called into the pewter air. “For Christ’s sake. I told you I was sorry. What else can I do? Give me a goddamned pen!”
“There’s a pen in your pocket,” she told him.
Surprised, he glanced down, patting his uniform. He grasped the pen, then began looking around frantically.
“What the hell are you doing? And what are you looking for now?”
“Paper! I need paper!”
She gestured with exasperation at the floor. They were both ankle-deep in books. “Jesus. Can’t you see? There’s paper allover the place.”
He looked up at her with pathetic gratitude. Bending, he picked up the Shakespeare and scribbled something on the flyleaf. “Here,” he said, handing her the book.
She took it.
“Please. Please. Give it to them. Tell them— Tell them how much they mean to me. Tell them how I’ve pinned my hopes—” His voice faltered. His expression was imploring.
After some hesitation she waded though the fallen books and out of the labyrinth of stacks. Dr. Gladdings was waiting for her at the librarian’s desk. “I have a message,” she said.
He looked up, his tarry eyes melting down his cheeks. Opening to the flyleaf, Rita handed him the book and glanced at the meaningless scribbles Lauterbach had written there.
Dr. Gladdings smiled up at her. “Oh, the message.” He shut the book with a slap and looked out the windows at the barren trees. “We have the message. We’ve known it for quite a while.”
WARSAW, POLAND
The cold nudged Baranyk awake. He opened his eyes to ashen light. Wrapping the blanket around him, he went to the window. Ornate ferns of frost etched the glass. Below him, Warsaw lay covered in hoary ice.
Teeth chattering, back hunched, he got into his uniform. Hiking his coat over his shoulders, he walked into Zgursky’ s room. The aide was still asleep, shivering under his blanket. Gathering his own blanket from his bed, Baranyk threw it over the sleeping boy.
In the common room, Shcheribitsky was seated at the table, hunched in his coat, his gloved hands encircling a glass of tea.
“What weather, general,” the major said in wonder. His face was pallid but for two spots of winter rouge, one on either cheek. He sniffed and wiped a glove across the end of his nose. “Some breakfast?”
Baranyk gestured at him to keep his seat and began rummaging through the barren cabinets. “Any news?”
“Jastrun moved tanks to the perimeter. It appears we have lost four of our nine munitions dumps.”
Baranyk picked up a jar of pickled herring, hesitated, put it back. There was fig jam, he saw, but no bread. “Polish idiocy, to put the dumps so close together.”
“Yes, sir.”
Baranyk grabbed the fig jam and a spoon. He poured himself a glass of tea from the pot the major had made. His breakfast balanced in his hands, he sat down.
“It is quiet, sir,” Shcheribitsky observed in an uneasy voice.
Baranyk spooned a little jam into his mouth. “Too quiet,” he agreed. “I find it incredible that the Arabs have not yet—”
A noise. Baranyk turned. Zgursky was in the doorway, his eyes wide.
“Look outside, sir!” he shouted. “General! Look out the window!”
Shcheribitsky leaped to his feet. His chair toppled, hitting the wooden floor with a 20mm bang.
Baranyk was on his feet, too, but was afraid to look, afraid that, without his knowledge, Warsaw had fallen, that he would see Arab soldiers among the buildings, BTR-80s full of troops, and columns of T -72s.
“It’s snowing!” Zgursky cried.
Incredulously, Baranyk walked to Shcheribitsky’s side and stared out the fogged pane. November. A Greenhouse November, yet snow was coming down in the streets like gentle falls of angels.
CENTRAL ARMY HOSPITAL, BADAJOZ, SPAIN
Sabry opened his eyes to discover that he had survived the operation. It appeared, too, that he was out of recovery and back in his own room. But then again he might be dreaming, because Lauterbach was there. The American general was standing with the surgeon.
Sabry caught the tag end of the general’s sentence. “ ... just for a few minutes.”
And the doctor’s reply. “Don’t stay too long. We had a bit of a surgical complication, and I imagine he’ll be tired.”
Surgical complication. Sabry’s dulled mind played with the phrase. He rolled the words this way and that, until the words became too heavy and his mind grew too exhausted to hold them.
Something shoved him awake. He saw Lauterbach bending over him. The American looked sick. Sabry wondered if he had had a surgical complication, too.
“What is the readiness of your nuclear response, sir?” The question amused Sabry. He wanted to grin at the American, but his lips wouldn’t work. The room, Lauterbach’s face, faded to gray.
The American shook him. His tone was impatient. “General Sabry! What is the readiness of the Arab nuclear response?”
It must be a dream, Sabry decided. Left to themselves, his eyelids shut. A slap on his cheek woke him. He was still dreaming about Lauterbach.
“I will pull you off this fucking bed, sir, unless you answer my question. There isn’t any time.”
A nonsensical dream. Sabry turned his head to look out the window. Through the slats in the blind he saw that it was raining.
Lauterbach slapped him again, harder. The blow should have hurt, but it didn’t. Nothing hurt, not the stump of his knee, not his hip.
“Answer me!”
“I will answer you with bullets,” Sabry replied, his anesthetized tongue lolling in his mouth. He laughed, too, but the laugh sou
nded strange.
Three quick blows like impatient applause: clap-clap-clap. Sabry’s head jerked hard with each impact. Not a dream, he thought, a nightmare. But a nightmare that left him more irked than afraid.
“ICBMs!” Lauterbach cried.
Sabry tried to will the wild-eyed, furious American away. “No ICBMs,” he muttered.
“What about the twenty-five Russian nuclear scientists? They didn’t help you build a delivery system?”
Sabry laughed again. “Russians.” The Russians were dead, he remembered, shot by a mob during the famine. Shot because they were foreigners. Gamal was right, he decided. My son was right. We are xenophobic idiots. Sabry closed his eyes. Strong arms clutched the front of his hospital smock.
“Listen to me!” Lauterbach hissed.
The American’s hot breath smelled of mint and coffee. “Goddamn you! Don’t go to sleep again! Don’t you go to sleep again on me! Open your eyes!”
An angry little wasp, that’s what the American was. An annoying little nightmare.
“I don’t have anything left to lose, General Sabry. And I want a goddamned answer. What about your nuclear delivery system?”
“Nothing works,” Sabry mumbled. His army had broken down like the Russian tanks. Had the scientists survived the mob, what they made would have been shit, too.
Lauterbach shook him again. “So if we used nuclears, the ANA could not respond in kind.”
Wait a moment, Sabry thought with a flicker of alarm. Something was wrong with this dream. But he could not quite put his finger on the problem.
“You could not respond, sir? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Respond?” Sabry asked, blinking. It was very important that he wake up now, he knew. He reached over to pinch his own arm, dragging the IV with him. The pinch didn’t hurt, either.
“Answer the question,” Lauterbach barked. “Why didn’t you nuke us?”
Cold Allies Page 27