Crockett?'
Ike didn't play dumb, but he wasn't about to bend over, either. 'The lieutenant writes a fast report,' he commented. 'We only pulled in twenty minutes ago.'
'You threatened an officer?' Jump's bark was tinny over the computer speaker.
'Contradicted.'
'In the field, in front of his men?'
Branch sat shaking his head in brotherly disgust.
'The man doesn't belong out there,' Ike said. 'He got one boy mangled on a wrong call. I saw no reason to keep feeding the lieutenant's version of reality. I finally got him to see reason.'
Jump fumed as frames dropped on the computer. He finally said, 'I thought it was a cleared region. This was supposed to be a shakedown cruise for Meadows. You're telling me you ran into hadals?'
'Booby traps,' Ike said. 'Old. Centuries old. I doubt there's been traffic through there
since the Ice Age.' He didn't bother addressing the issue of being sent to baby-sit a shake-and- bake ROTC student.
The computer image turned to a wall map. 'Where have they all gone?' Jump wondered. 'We haven't made physical contact with the enemy in months.'
'Don't worry,' Ike said. 'They're down there somewhere.'
'I'm not so sure. Some days I mink they really are on the run. Or they've died off from disease or something.'
Branch grabbed at the interlude. 'It looks like a stalemate to me,' he said to Jump.
'My clown cancels out yours. I think we're agreed.' The two majors knew Meadows was a disaster. And it was certain they'd never send him out with Ike again. That was good enough for Ike.
'Fuck it, then,' Jump said. 'I'm going to bury the report. This time.'
Branch went on glaring at Ike. 'I don't know, Jump,' he said. 'Maybe we ought to quit coddling him.'
'Elias, I know he's a special project of yours,' Jump said. 'But I've told you before, don't get attached. There's a reason we treat the Dixie cups with such caution. I'm telling ya, they're heartbreakers.'
'Thanks for the burial. I owe you.' Branch punched the computer's off button and turned to Ike. 'Nice work,' he said. 'Tell me, are you trying to hang yourself?'
If it was contrition he wanted, Ike offered none. Ike helped himself to some boxes and made a seat. 'Dixie cups,' he said. 'That's a new one. More Army slang?'
'Spook, if you must know. It means 'use once, throw away.' The CIA used it to refer to their indigenous guerrilla ops. Now it includes the cowboys like you that we haul in from the deep and use for scout work.'
Ike said, 'It kind of grows on ya.'
Branch's mood stayed foul. 'Your sense of timing is unbelievable. Congress is closing the base on us. Selling it. To another pack of corporate hyenas. Every time you turn around, the government's caving in to another cartel. We do the dirty work, then the multinationals move in with their commercial militias and land developers and mining equipment. We bleed, they profit. I've been given three weeks to transfer the entire unit to temporary quarters two thousand feet below Camp Alison. I don't have a lot of time, Ike. I'm busting nuts to keep you alive down here. And you go and threaten an officer in the field?'
Ike raised two fingers and spread them. 'Peace, dad.'
Branch exhaled. He glanced around his tiny office space in disgust. Country-western loped in mega- decibels nearby. 'Look at us,' Branch said. 'Pitiful. We bleed. The corporations profit. Where's the honor in it?'
'Honor?'
'Don't hand me that. Yeah, the honor. Not the money. Not the power. Not the possession. Just the bottom line for being true to the code. This.' He pointed at his heart.
'Maybe you believe too much,' Ike suggested.
'And you don't?'
'I'm not a lifer. You are.'
'You're not anything,' Branch said, and his shoulders sagged. 'They've gone ahead with your court- martial up top. In absentia. While you were still in the field. One AWOL turns into a desertion-under-fire charge.'
Ike was not particularly devastated. 'So now I appeal.'
'This was the appeal.'
Ike didn't show the slightest distress.
'There's a ray of hope, Ike. You've been ordered to go up for the sentencing. I talked with JAG, and they think you can throw yourself on the mercy of the court. I've pulled all the strings I can up there. I told them what you did behind the lines. Some
important people have promised to put a good word in for you. No promises, but it sounds to me like the court will show leniency. They by God ought to.'
'That's my ray of hope?'
Branch didn't rise to it. 'You can do worse, you know.'
They'd argued this one into knots. Ike didn't retort. The Army had been less a family than a holding pen. It wasn't the Army that had broken his slavery and dragged him back to his own humanity and seen to it that his wounds were cleaned and shackles cut. It was Branch. Ike would never forget that.
'You could try anyway,' Branch said.
'I don't need it,' Ike softly replied. 'I don't need ever to go up again.'
'It's a dangerous place down here.'
'It's worse up there.'
'You can't be alone and survive.'
'I can always join some outfit.'
'What are you talking about? You're facing a dishonorable discharge, with possible brig time. You'll be an untouchable.'
'There's other action.'
'A soldier of fortune?' Branch looked sick. 'You?' Ike dropped it.
Both men fell silent. Finally Branch got it out, barely a whisper. 'For me,' he swallowed.
If it wasn't so obviously hard for him to have said it, Ike would have refused. He would have set his rifle in one corner and shoved his ruck into the room and stripped his encrusted ninjas off and walked naked from the Rangers and their Army forever. But Branch had just done what Branch never did. And because this man who had saved his life and nurtured him back to sanity and been like a father to him had laid his pride in the dirt before Ike's feet, Ike did what he had sworn never to do again. He submitted.
'So where do I go?' he asked.
Both of them tried to ignore Branch's happiness.
'You won't regret it,' Branch promised.
'Sounds like a hanging,' Ike cracked without a smile.
Washington DC
Midway up the escalator as steep as an Aztec staircase, Ike could take no more. It was not just the unbearable light. His journey from the earth's bowels had become a gruesome siege. His senses were in havoc. The world seemed inside out.
Now as the stainless-steel escalator rose to ground zero and the howl of traffic poured down, Ike clung to the rubber handrail. At the top, he was belched onto a city sidewalk. The crowd jostled and drove him farther away from the Metro entrance. Ike was carried by noises and accidental nudges into the middle of Independence Avenue.
Ike had known vertigo in his day, but never anything like this. The sky plummeted overhead. The
