The War in 2020

see what happens.'

The old intelligence colonel laid a hand on his friend's forearm.

'George,' he said, 'you take care. I'd miss you, you know.' He chuckled. 'I haven't seen all that much of you over the years. But I always knew you were out there. I always said to myself, 'Tucker, they may call you crazy. But you ain't half as crazy as that sonofabitch Georgie Taylor.' It was always reassuring.' He fretted his hand on the cloth of Taylor's uniform. 'I'm just not ready to assume the mantle of the U.S. Army's number one damned-fool lunatic.'

'Don't underestimate yourself,' Taylor said with a dead man's smile.

Williams shook his head and casually withdrew his hand.

'Well, do me one favor,' he told Taylor. 'Just don't fuck it all up, okay?'

Taylor looked at the worn face beside him. Veteran of so many mutual disappointments, of so much trying.

'Not if I can help it,' Taylor said.

* * *

For the first time in days, Noburu's dreams did not wake him. This time it was a bomb.

At first, everything was unclear. He woke from haunted sleep as if his bed had convulsed and coughed him up. Unsure of his state, he sat upright in a waking trance, gripping the darkness as if falling. Was he dreaming this too?

The last echo of the blast receded, leaving an emptiness quickly filled by the noise of automatic weapons and the muffled but unmistakable sound of human cries from the far edge of reason.

Noburu reached toward the light just as the intercom beeped. The message began without the usual ceremonious greeting.

'They're coming over the wall,' the voice warned. Volume turned down, the intercom had shrunken the voice and it sounded oddly comic: a midget in terror.

Noburu hurried into his trousers.

'— a bomb—' the voice went on.

Noburu grasped his tunic, shooting an arm down its sleeve.

'— the gate—'

Conditioned by an eternity of mornings, Noburu took up his pistol belt, strapping it on over his open uniform blouse.

Machine guns sputtered beyond the headquarters walls. Storm tides of voices swept forward. The floor pulsed underfoot as dozens of men hurried along nearby corridors.

'— local guards deserted—'

Another blast. But this one was distinctly less powerful.

Akiro burst into the room. The aide's brown eyes burned.

'Sir,' Akiro barked. But the younger man could think of nothing further to say. He had been sleeping. Noburu noted that his normally precise aide had neglected to do up the fly of his trousers. It struck Noburu as odd that he still had the capacity to notice such details with death already brushing its cold fur up against him.

Noburu crossed to the wall where heavy draperies covered a window of bulletproof glass. He touched a button offset from the meaty fabric and the curtain parted.

Nothing to be seen. The fighting was around the other side of the compound, and despite the bluster of automatic weaponry, from Noburu's bedroom a man could see only the nighttime peace of the city cuddled around the bay. Beyond the moraine of buildings, the sea lay naked under voluptuous moonlight. It was a powerful and romantic view, and the background noise of combat seemed grotesquely inappropriate, as though the wrong sound track had been supplied for a film.

It occurred to Noburu that Tokyo would much prefer this view of things, but before he could smile a firebomb traced across the dark sky, tail on fire. It struck a balustrade a bit below Noburu's lookout point and flames spilled backward over a terraced roof.

'Come on,' Noburu told his aide. 'And pull up your zipper.'

Noburu jogged out through his office and into the corridor, with Akiro close behind, trying to reason with the older man.

'Sir,' Akiro pleaded, 'you must stay here. You must remain where we can guarantee your safety.'

Only when the closed elevator doors temporarily blocked his path did Noburu turn any serious attention to the younger man.

'Nothing is guaranteed,' he said calmly. 'Least of all, my safety.'

The sliding doors opened with a delicate warning chime. Inside stood Colonel Piet Kloete, the senior South African representative on the staff. Two of his NCOs stood beside him. All three of the men were heavily armed. Kloete himself looked ferocious with a light machine gun cradled in his arms, while the other two soldiers had loaded themselves down with autorifles, grenade belts, a light radio, and ammunition tins for Kloete's machine gun. Noburu could not help admiring the appearance of the South Africans. He knew that he had reached an age where he would frighten no one, where a pose behind a machine gun would most likely amuse an enemy. But the South African colonel was at a perfect point in his life, his body still hard. The gray along Kloete's temples resembled reinforcing wires of steel.

'The roof,' the South African said to Noburu.

'Yes,' Noburu said. 'The helipad. The best vantage point.'

He entered the elevator. When Akiro tried to follow, Noburu barred the aide's way with a forearm.

'Go down to the operations center,' Noburu commanded. 'Gather information.' He looked at the younger man. The perfect staff officer was out of his depth now. Akiro did not look frightened. He merely looked mortally confused. An orderly man from an orderly world, waking barefoot in a hissing jungle. 'And get yourself a rifle,' Noburu added.

The doors kissed shut. During the brief ascent, the muted sounds of battle surrounded them, yet the combat remained unreal, almost irrelevant. Voices bubbling down into an aquarium.

'Truck bomb,' Kloete said casually. He boosted the machine gun until he had a sounder grip on it. 'Fuckers took out the main gate.'

The doors parted. Noburu went first, stepping gingerly through the short dark tunnel that led out onto the helipad.

'Bloody fuck-all,' one of the South African NCOs spat, stumbling against something audibly metallic.

As the little group emerged from the concrete shelter of the passageway, the night wind off the sea splashed in through Noburu's unbuttoned tunic like ice water and rinsed back through his hair. Brassy flares dripped from the heavens, lighting the compound and the nearby quarter of the city. Lower down, tracer rounds wove in and out of the darkness, while the block of buildings just beyond the barracks complex burned skyward. Apparently, the first assault had been beaten off. There was little human movement in evidence at the moment. Noburu strode briskly across the helipad to gain a better look. The South Africans trotted on ahead, booted feet heavy under the burden of their weaponry.

'Machine gun,' Kloete cried, 'action.' His voice carried the legacy of old British enemies, insinuated into Boer blood and transported now to the shore of the Caspian Sea. Kloete spoke in unmistakably British phrases, muddied by an Afrikaans accent.

The South African's long-barreled weapon began to peck at targets Noburu's aging eyes could not even begin to distinguish.

The body softened, the eyes failed. While the mind remembered youth too well.

As Noburu hunkered down behind the low wall along the edge of the roof, blossoms of flame spread out from under one of the guard towers, a construction that housed sentinels in a bulb atop a long, narrow stalk. Now the tulip came to life. Its base uprooted by the blast, the tower shivered, then seemed to hop, struggling to keep its balance. Finally, the construction's last equilibrium failed and the tower fell over hard, slamming its high concrete compartment down onto the parade ground.

The shouting came before the sound of the guns. Screaming unintelligibly, the Azeris rushed back in through the wreckage of the main gate. The big steel doors had been blown completely off their hinges, and the masonry of