the American West. Turning yet another desert into a garden. He did not know exactly what he would do, or for what he might be qualified after so many years in arms. But he knew with iron certainty that he would manage. He was not afraid of a little dirt under his fingernails, if it came to that. And he did not need much.
For an instant he regretted the years of salaries he had donated to the American-Israeli relief fund. Then he dismissed the consideration, ashamed of himself. It was better this way. To start clean. Without the false security that too much money insinuated into a man's soul.
Perhaps there would even be a woman. He recognized now that Mira had never asked for his celibacy. No, he had wronged her that way too. She had been so much better than that. She would have wanted him to love again, to the meager extent of his abilities.
All of his adult life had been spent doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons. He only hoped there was still time to put it right. He was going to allow himself to live again. And, this time, it truly would be for Mira. He would turn his face back toward the light.
Heifetz picked up the helmet that he always wore in the field to set the right example for his subordinates.
'I'm going outside to take a piss,' he told his ops crew.
The cold was beautifully clean, and he thought of Taylor. It would be good to see him at the end of such a day. Taylor was his closest semblance of a friend. He did not yet have the words to explain to Taylor about resigning, but that could wait. Taylor had to concentrate on other things now, and Heifetz was determined to help him as best he could. There were plenty of problems waiting to be resolved, especially with the loss of the last functioning weapons calibrator back at Omsk. But, somehow, he and Taylor would find solutions. Heifetz pictured himself beside Taylor, leaning over a map, shaping destiny with a marker pen. The two men did not even need words to understand each other.
Heifetz tramped through the snow toward an undernourished-looking stand of trees. The white trunks and branches looked feminine and tubercular. It struck him that this country was poor in so many ways.
His musings were interrupted by the sight of a startled young captain who had been squatting in a little snow-smoothed hollow. The captain had twisted over to clean himself above a display of steaming shit.
The younger man straightened at the sight of Heifetz, discarding the smudged paper from his hand and grabbing for his distended coveralls.
Heifetz could not help smiling. Life went on, after all.
'At ease,' Heifetz commanded. 'Continue with your mission, captain.'
The young officer stammered something unintelligible, and Heifetz turned to urinate against the slender tilt of a tree trunk.
A more distant voice called Heifetz by his rank and last name. There was no escape, not even for a moment. Heifetz glanced back toward his M-100 and saw one of the staff NCOs trotting bareheaded toward the little grove. Have to tell them to keep their damned helmets on when they come outside, Heifetz thought. Like children. After combat, the natural tendency was to over-relax. To drop your guard and decline into slovenliness.
Heifetz shook himself vigorously, then tucked the cold-tightened bit of flesh back into his uniform. Too long unused for its higher purpose, he teased himself.
The NCO hurried toward him, hopping through the snow.
'Lieutenant Colonel Heifetz, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Reno's on the net. He says he's got to talk to you personally.'
Heifetz nodded in weary acquiescence. Then he turned to the ambushed captain, who was hurriedly doing up his uniform.
'You know what the biggest problem is with the U.S. Army?' Heifetz asked. The captain had the sort of wholesome, handsome features Heifetz had come to associate with a peculiarly American invulnerability to intellect. After a moment's rumination, the captain resettled the web belt around his athlete's waist and said nervously, 'No, sir.'
'We talk too much,' Heifetz said. But he could see from the captain's features that the triteness of the observation had disappointed the younger man, who apparently had expected a revelation of far deeper profundity.
'We talk too much,' Heifetz repeated. He smiled gently and turned back toward his place of duty.
Captain Jack Sturgis couldn't believe it. He had actually seen Lucky Dave Heifetz smile. He wondered if he would ever be able to convince his friends of what he had seen.
He began to reconstruct the tale in his head. He immediately discarded the bit about his physical situation during the incident. Then he reconsidered, and modified his role into the more manly one of fellow-pisser-on- nearby-tree. How exactly had Heifetz put it? About the Army's biggest problem? Pretty dumb, really. Nothing much to it. Sturgis poked at Heifetz's words for some hidden meaning: 'We talk too much.' Did he mean, like, too much talk and not enough action? Or just too much talk, period?
Goddamn, though. There he was, with Lucky Dave Heifetz. The man who had never been known to crack a smile, the cradle-to-grave soldier. And the old bugger comes through with this big toothy grin.
He wished he had a witness. Then he recalled the more personal details of the encounter and decided that he was glad there had been no witness, after all.
Maybe Heifetz had just been laughing at him?
Naw. Old Lucky Dave had seen plenty of guys taking a dump before. No, it probably meant that things had gone really well. That they had really torn the enemy a new asshole.
Yeah. Now that could be tied into the tale very nicely. 'Even old Lucky Dave was happy. Should've seen it, guys. Smiling. Bigtime.'
Lucky Dave Heifetz, the terror of the regiment. The guy who was reported never to have felt a single human emotion in his life.
Sturgis had been disconcerted by the unexpected appearance of a second party during his evacuation procedures — and Lucky Dave, of all people. All things considered, however, he figured it was worth it. For the tale he would have to tell. And for the reassurance Heifetz's good mood had given him.
They had met the enemy — and knocked their dicks in the mud.
He had been worried, of course. He had never been in combat before, and he had read lots of war novels and seen plenty of movies and heard how tough it all was from the veterans. They said you never knew who was going to break down and turn out to be a pussy.
Well, now he knew. He was no pussy. He had what it took proven in battle. As he trudged back toward the camouflaged position of his M-100, Jack Sturgis luxuriated in visions of a great military career. Someday he might even be as famous as the old man, Colonel Taylor. Or even more famous. He had no intentions of becoming disfigured, however. He didn't want to look like Taylor. Sturgis cast himself in a far more romantic light, and no vision of success was complete without a complementary vision of well-disposed women.
Sturgis took a deep breath. It was a wonderful thing to be a soldier. To be a real combat leader.
A snowflake caught at the corner of the young man's eye. He paused to wipe it away, touching a gloved hand to his shying eyelash.
And Captain Jack Sturgis jerked perfectly upright, gripped by a pain the intensity of which no human animal had ever before experienced.
19
'Sierra five-five, this is Saber six. Sierra five-five, this is Saber six…'
Taylor knew immediately that something was seriously wrong when he heard Reno's voice on the command net. The general's son was always careful to maintain a studied coolness over any open communications means, except when he was verbally destroying one of his subordinates, or in combat, when his voice screamed for medals, awards, citations. Now Reno's voice strained with emotion and he had done something which he never had done before. He had used the call sign 'Saber six' on Taylor's net.
