sonofabitch back in Washington doesn't lose his nerve at the last minute. Goddamnit, Merry. I haven't got time to feel sorry for them. I've got the only fully equipped heavy cavalry regiment in the United States Army — and possibly the only one we'll be able to afford to equip. And what's behind us, if we screw it up? A couple of tired-out armor outfits with gear that's thirty years old? God knows, the light infantry boys have their hands full down in Sao Paulo. And we'll have to garrison Mexico for another ten years.' Taylor shook his head. 'We're it, pal. And our butts are on the line because our little Soviet brothers spent a century turning what might have been the richest country on earth into a junkyard. And don't give me your speech about how they tried to reform. Too little, too late. They only stuck it halfway in. And they damn near bankrupted the Europeans in the process. You know the figures better than I do. All those big
Taylor stared out across the ruined industrial park. It seemed to go on forever. Black. Abandoned. He knew why he was here. He understood politics, economics, strategy. He even
'Go get yourself a cup of coffee, Merry,' Taylor said.
'Sure you don't want a cup, sir?'
Taylor shook his head. 'Just makes me piss.'
The major turned to go, historically and ethnically all wrong in the gray Soviet greatcoat each officer wore as part of the deception plan. Then he hesitated, not yet reconciled.
'It's just,' Meredith said, 'that when I look at all this… I can't help seeing it in terms of all the dreams gone bad. Some of them really believed. In the possibility of a heaven on earth, in a planned utopia. In a better world. Back at the beginning, I think, there were real believers… and it all went so damned wrong.'
Taylor shrugged.
'Could have been us,' he repeated.
It was important, Taylor told himself, to remain objective. To avoid letting your emotions interfere in the least with your judgment. But it was very hard. He always hastened through the intelligence reports Meredith put in front of him, anxious to find any reference to the Japanese. He knew that the odds were very good that not one of the men under his command would come into contact with a single Japanese soldier during the entire campaign. The Japanese were too good at insulating themselves. Once, they had hidden behind the South Africans. This time they had concealed themselves behind the alliance that had slowly congealed against the continued Russian domination of the Soviet empire: ethnic-Asian Soviet rebels, Iranians, and Arab Islamic fundamentalists. No Japanese officer ever gave a direct command. Yet, the equipment was Japanese, the 'contract advisers' who enabled the alliance to make military sense of itself, the trainers and repair personnel were all Japanese, and the ultimate goal was Japanese, as well. Dominance. Dominion. Domination. You could split hairs, play with words like a diplomat's clerk. But it all came down to the issue of the disposition of the world's richest supply of minerals, in a very hungry age.
He and his men had been sent to shore up a Soviet Union grown as frail as a diseased old man. To deny the Japanese yet another magnificent prize. But Taylor knew in his heart that he himself was sick. Cancered with the desire to strike back at the Japanese. To cause them a level of suffering and humiliation that paid back old debts with interest. He feared the day, the moment, when Merry Meredith would come to him with a report that a Japanese control site had been located in the regiment's area of operations. He was not sure he would be able to make a rational judgment, to prioritize his targets intelligently. He was afraid that he would turn out to be a mad animal, who merely walked like a man.
Taylor sought to be a good man. But even in this dead Siberian landscape of rusted metals he was still a young troop commander, flying up through the brief coolness of the African morning, cocksure and unwitting, on his way to see his command destroyed and his country humiliated. Even with his beginning gray hairs, his old scars, and his tiring body, he was still a boyish captain sailing the clear blue sky above those grasslands, waiting for the shock of the Japanese gunships. And he feared that Africa had ruined his soul as surely as it had ruined his skin. He wanted to be a good man. But he worried that he had become a killer in his heart, and a racist. A warrior to whom his opponents were no longer fully human. A smart, quick, cultured animal.
The first time his unit killed a Japanese military adviser in Mexico, Taylor had felt a level of exhilaration and self-righteousness that he knew could not be squared with any legitimate concept of human decency. And his satisfaction had not diminished with the further kills his unit chalked up. As a leader, his behavior, in word and deed, had always been impeccable. Yet, he wondered if he had not managed somehow to telegraph to his men that certain types of prisoners were not welcome. It was impossible to know, as difficult to master the past as it was to foretell the future.
His face worked into a tight-lipped smile he could not have explained to any man. Perhaps, he thought, I really am a devil.
Suddenly the roof of a nearby work hall exploded, shattering into the sky. But it was only a flock of birds lifting off. They briefly broke apart, then gathered into a black cloud and turned south. Toward the war.
Taylor kept his eyes on the bright green ribbon of light that marked the last twilight in the west. It was going to be very cold. He hoped the temperature would not affect the operation of his war machines. Every imaginable precaution had been taken. But the magnificent new killing machines had never before gone into battle, and there were many doubts. The M-l00s were so complex that there was a seemingly infinite number of potential problems.
Behind us, nothing, Taylor reminded himself.
He heard the tinny door of the work hall open just beyond his field of vision, and he made an innocent game out of guessing which of his officers it might be. Possibly Meredith with a threat update. But he bet on Lucky Dave. He knew that Heifetz was going crazy with all the waiting. A dispossessed little man from the new diaspora, haunted with the soul of a Prussian staff officer. Above all, Heifetz could not bear the disorder he found in the Soviet Union. Capable of something very close to perfection in his own work, Lucky Dave found it very difficult to tolerate anything less in others.
'Colonel Taylor, sir?'
It was Heifetz.
'We finally reached the Russians. They say they're on their way.'
Taylor nodded. Accepting the news.
'We cannot afford such a loss of time,' Heifetz went on. 'It is hardly responsible. It's only a matter of time before the enemy finds us. We have been too lucky.
Lucky David Heifetz. Lucky, lucky Dave. His family dead, his homeland destroyed. Lucky David Heifetz, wearing a foreign uniform because he had nowhere else to go, because soldiering was all that was left to him.
David Heifetz, who would never have betrayed this bit of worry, of uncertainty, to anyone else in the regiment. Heifetz, who allowed himself no friends.
Taylor turned, making a slight opening in his world, as if lifting the flap of a tent. Heifetz carried out the functions of both executive officer and S-3 operations officer of the regiment, since the Romeo tables of organization and equipment had combined the two positions in a desperate attempt to save a few more spaces. It was too much to ask of any man, but Heifetz did as well as any human being might under such a burden. It told on him, though, and he looked years older than his actual age.
Of course, there were other causes for the man s worn look. Taylor pictured the young tank commander in a dusty pause on the road to Damascus, goggles lifted up onto the fore of his helmet, a handsome young Israeli, compensating with vitality for the physical stature he lacked. Taylor imagined him frozen in the moment before the word came down the radio net that Tel Aviv had been the target of multiple nuclear strikes. Tel Aviv, where a young officer's wife and child should have been safe.
It was all a long time ago now. Before the worldwide nuclear ban. The last Mideast war, launched by a fanatic coalition who saw their chance, with the United States beaten in Africa and seemingly helpless. It was a madman's war, begun by an alliance ultimately willing to trade Damascus for Tel Aviv in a war of extermination.
