The War in 2020

the farm. But what the fuck do you write when Johnny's coming home as a physical vegetable with unimpaired emotions and a perfect grasp of the world around him. With memories of what women are like, with—

'George. You're tired.'

'No. Really. What in-the-name-of-Christ do you do? Send the folks back home a catalog for oversize cribs and disposable diapers? Oh, by the way, Mrs. Jones, your husband may prove a disappointment to you on several counts, owing to his recent unfortunate term of military service. Jesus, Tucker… it's a hell of a thing to find yourself wishing that your own men had died.'

'Maybe we'll find a cure.'

'Yeah.'

'Heifetz was a damned good man.

'And a hell of a lot life gave him for it. And Manny. Martinez. Tucker, I can't tell you what a good man he was. I'm lost without him.'

Williams smiled. 'George, you've never been lost in your life. Why, hell. You even found your way out of Africa without so much as a credit card or a supply of condoms.'

Taylor could not smile. He retreated into silence.

'You remember,' Williams went on, 'lying in that damned tent in the Azores? Playing poker with the grim reaper. And I lectured you for all the saints and sinners to hear about how I was going to clean up Military Intelligence. You know what I was always thinking, George? I was shooting off my mouth and thinking, Jesus Christ. I wish I had whatever the hell it is this guy Taylor's got. You used to lie on your bunk and look right through me. You didn't need me to explain the world to you. You already knew the things I was struggling to figure out.' Williams smiled into his reminiscences. 'Anyway, we came a hell of a lot further than either of us had much right to expect.'

'Not far enough,' Taylor said.

'Not yet. But maybe we're underestimating the President after all. He just may give us the green light.'

'I don't know. Everybody's telling him to head for the bushes.'

'Well, hope for the best.'

Taylor sighed. 'I gave it my best shot. Tucker. I really did. But I'm just so goddamned tired. I couldn't get the words to come out right. All I could think was how I wanted to reach out and grab him and shake the shit out of him. To bring home to him what it means if we quit now. Damn it, though,' Taylor said. 'All my life I've had a healthy respect for language. I read the good books. I paid attention. I always tried to write op orders in clean, clear language. I valued words, crazy as that sounds. But, when I really needed the right words, they wouldn't come.'

'You can't do it all by yourself, George. What the hell, if the chickenshit bastards tell us to come home, it'll be on their heads. You and me can retire and go fishing.'

'No,' Taylor said emphatically. 'It'll be on our heads. The Army will have failed. That's what the black words on the white pages are going to say.'

'Fuck 'em, then.'

Taylor glanced down at the dirty bandage on his hand and shook the burned paw lightly, without really thinking about it.

'You should've seen Lucky Dave,' he said. 'Tucker, I honestly did not think I could bear it. Maybe I don't have what it takes to be a soldier after all.'

'When's the President supposed to get back to you?' Taylor glanced at his watch. 'Seven minutes.'

Down the length of the central environmental shelter, the internal entrance flap pushed to the side and a man in a Soviet uniform entered the headquarters complex. As the man straightened up in the dusky light, Taylor recognized Kozlov. He was glad to see him, anxious for any help he could get. Would the Soviets come through?

As Taylor watched, Merry Meredith came out of the S-2's compartment and headed over to greet the Russian.

Merry was the only one of them left now. Of the men Taylor trusted. And loved.

Taylor looked at Tucker Williams. It was odd how relationships developed in the Army. Taylor was never completely sure whether Williams should be classed as an acquaintance or a friend. There were varying degrees of intimacy in the military. Taylor always worked well with

Williams, respected him, and willingly drank a few beers with him whenever their paths crossed at some overly laminated officer's club. Yet, a nebulous spiritual gulf remained between them. Williams was right. In the Azores Taylor had, indeed, looked right through him, his thoughts in a different world.

There had been only Meredith, Martinez, and Heifetz, a brotherhood assembled by the odd chance of a bad year, by the simple accident of change-of-station orders and discovered affinities. And now only Meredith was left.

'I'd better get back to the comms bubble,' Taylor said. 'Keep your fingers crossed, Tucker.'

'Will do.'

Taylor began to turn away, just as a lightning bolt of recognition struck right through him. He had to call up his last reserves of determination in order to keep going, telling himself that it was all just the oversensitivity that came with weariness, a matter of emotional as well as physical exhaustion. The coincidence was absolute nonsense.

He had realized of whom Williams's young warrant officer reminded him. It was uncanny, as if the Hindus were dead right about the constant cycles, the endless and inevitable returnings.

Ryder reminded him of the young warrant officer who had been his copilot and weapons officer in Zaire, the broken boy who had pleaded for water until Taylor shot him in the head.

* * *

Daisy listened. She thought she would go mad. Wanting to speak, to cry out to them all that it was time to put an end to the folly, she could not find the opportunity or the courage. Her opinion was not asked as the men in the room labored through all of the arguments against further military action one more time. Unanimously, the President's advisers shared her view that it would be insane and pointless to accede to Taylor's wishes.

The Soviets, on the other hand, were no help at all. Speaking to Waters, the Soviet president had seemed preoccupied, inexplicably removed from the matters at hand. Readily agreeing to anything Waters suggested, the

Soviet seemed, above all else, to want to bring the conversation to a speedy end. Moscow seemed fractured. State security had been cooperating wholeheartedly with U.S. Army Intelligence on the scheme to strike the Japanese command computer system, while the Soviet Ministry of Defense seemed ready to run up the white flag. Something disturbing was going on in the Kremlin, and it gnawed at Daisy that she could not figure it out.

In any case, the raid was a hopeless idea. It was an act of desperation, conceived by a man who could not face reality. They all agreed. Yet, not one of them stated it with sufficient clarity and emphasis for her. She wanted to be absolutely certain that the President understood the absurdity of Taylor's vision. She had begun to trust Waters's judgment. But, given all of the evidence that had been presented, she could not believe the man had allowed the deliberations to drag on this long. It was indisputably clear that Waters needed to disengage American forces as rapidly as possible and bring the troops home.

To bring Taylor home. Alive.

On the sole occasion when she legitimately might have spoken up, she had held her tongue. The President had grilled Bouquette for the third time about the massed crowds in Baku, and Bouquette had repeated his conviction that Taylor was simply an old soldier who did not understand international realities. Of course the demonstrations were pro-Japanese and anti-American. Nothing else made sense.

Daisy had known better. Bouquette was a bureaucrat, while she had worked her way up this far with no adornment other than her talent as an analyst. And upon seeing the first scan images of the crowds in downtown Baku, then the pictures of the mob ringing the Japanese headquarters compound, she had recognized instantly that the Japanese were in trouble. Taylor, in a few simple words, had summarized her views. Those crowds bore with them the unmistakable odor of hostility.

But she did not care about the truth anymore. She did not care about the fate of nations. She realized that all of it was nothing but nonsense, games for grown-up boys without the courage to accept what really mattered in life.