Soon, through this curtain, he could see a high rooster feather of dust, the motorcycle and sidecar unit now just a dot four hundred yards away and moving along the flat, skirting the RAM-C or whatever it was and climbing up toward the dune and coming in the general direction of the SAS/D group. If he didn’t have to he wouldn’t shoot at them and would let them pass, but if they kept coming up over the dune toward the FAV he’d have no choice. They sure as hell were taking their time — bloody putt-putting along, as his father would have said.
Four thousand miles to the northeast in the Aleutian Islands, a bitterly cold wind howled across Dutch Harbor as Lana Brentwood, her parka hood dusted in fine white snow, made her way quickly from the motor pool’s shuttle bus into the warmth of the Davy Jones Restaurant. As she entered, CNN was interrupting a pretaped senior citizens’ pro golf tournament in New Orleans with news of the massive tank battle now taking place in China some three hundred miles north of Beijing and only 280 miles from the Great Wall, bad weather apparently preventing the effective use of the tank-killing American A-10 Thunderbolts.
Jay La Roche had been the only one who, complaining, “Where are we here — Hicksville?” had objected to the TV being turned on in the first place, conspicuously not watching it while most of the other patrons in the dimly lit booths had paused to hear the news flash. He sat desultorily stirring the Manhattan in front of him, having complained to the waitress that he’d ordered “on the rocks,” not “a fucking iceberg!” The young, ruddy-faced reporter from the
“Fuck off.” La Roche told the boy, who, acutely embarrassed, started to apologize profusely, but La Roche wasn’t interested. He saw Lana taking off her parka by the door and hanging it up. Immediately his expression of surly discontent vanished and he rose, smiling, moving out of the booth. She knew he was going to try to kiss her. Quickly she slid into the opposite side of the booth. “Sorry I’m late. Quite a flap on at the base. We’re part of the logistical tail for Freeman’s tooth. He takes quite a bite.”
“No sweat,” he said. “I could wait for you all day.”
“Weather over there’s been lousy,” she said. “Some huge dust storm or other coming out of the Gobi Desert. And the Chinese are apparently using some U.S. radar equipment against us and are trying to—”
“Hey — no shop talk. Okay?” He sat back, spreading his arms imploringly.
She shrugged. “All right. Where are the papers?”
“I thought we were going to have dinner first?”
“I never said that,” she answered.
“You had dinner?”
“No.”
“Well, then—”
“I’m not hungry, Jay.”
“Sure you are. You could do with a few more pounds. They’re workin’ you too—”
“No thanks.” She took her Wave hat off and put it, businesslike, beside her. “You told me you’d have the divorce papers ready for signing.”
“Hey, Lana. I thought we’d agreed on a civil good-bye? I came all this way. Is that too much to ask?”
She paused. With a private Lear jet and all his connections, Lana knew it hadn’t exactly been a chore for Jay to come “all this way,” as he put it. “After what you put me through, Jay — not to mention your threatening to smear my parents in your gutter press — yes, I would say it’s too much to ask. Dinner with you is too much. I agreed to meet. That’s all.”
“Hey,” he said easily, “that’s fine.”
She moved her head away from him, her hair catching the golden sheen of the candlelight. She turned back angrily and looked across the table at him. “Jay, I have no interest in you. I don’t want to see you anymore. Ever. There’s no point in all the smooth talk or the smutty innuendos that your whores probably think are so cute. Have you brought divorce papers or not? We’ll need a witness.”
“Yes. I’ve got one of my staff Xeroxing the damn set for you now.” He looked uncomfortable, jabbing at the crushed ice with his swizzle stick. “Hey, I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t want to screw this up but — I guess with you and me it’s oil and water now.”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I guess it is.”
“Okay—” He raised his glass, beckoning her to pick up hers. She hesitated. “Don’t tell me I got that wrong, too?” he said smiling. “Give me a break. You haven’t gone off martinis? Used to be your favorite poison.”
She loathed him now and couldn’t hide it. Her stare seemed an eternity to him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Now you’re not gonna drink with me? Was I that bad to you?” Quickly he held up his hands. “Okay, I was. If you don’t want to drink with me, fine, but it’s, well — it’s kind of petty isn’t it? Christ — I’m going to give you a fair settlement, babe. A lot of bucks, believe me.”
She was still staring at him. “I remember,” she said, “in Shanghai one time you slipped me a drink. All friendly, lovey-dovey—”
“Jesus, Lana! Is that what you’re on about? Paranoid. Want to switch drinks? Unless,” he jibed sarcastically, “you think I got some venereal disease? Besides, I haven’t touched it. Been waiting for you. For my old flame.” She said nothing.
“Cheers,” he said, ignoring her, raising his glass. Reluctantly she lifted her glass and let his clink against hers and took a sip. The truth was, she was thirsty and would have killed for a Manhattan after a long shift at the base and another day of worrying about Frank — where he was, wondering when next they’d see one another — if ever. She couldn’t bear the possibility of him being killed.
The sound of the patrol motorcycle and sidecar was muted, its rattle absorbed by the enormous walls of sand that rose on either side of the gully between the dunes, a whirligig twisting along a crest, throwing the fine sand up like brown sugar. Then the rider turned up toward the crest, not fast and not at a steep angle but making a gradual, unhurried approach at no more than ten miles an hour.
It gave Aussie no choice. He flicked up the sand guard on the Haskins’s scope, fixed the machine gunner in the sidecar in the cross hairs, inhaled, let out half his breath, held it, and squeezed. The suppressor kept the noise to a quick “bump” sound, the machine gunner’s head and arms flying back like a rag doll’s against the white smear of the infrared-sighted exhaust. The driver made a quick U-turn but Aussie had the cross hairs on him and squeezed again. The bike coughed once or twice like some animal and fell over on its right side, the wheel of its sidecar still spinning. Aussie made his way quickly back to the FAV, the sound of the tank battle roaring unabated in the distance. Whether Freeman was winning or losing he had no idea — every crew was fighting its own war. Handing Salvini the Haskins, Aussie buckled himself in, saying quietly, “That Haskins is the best fucking rifle in the army.”
“The M-fourteen,” Salvini opined.
“Balls,” Aussie replied, starting the FAV up. “Ten to one you’re wrong.”
“Yeah — who’s to judge?”
Aussie slipped me FAV into low gear and moved toward the crest. “We pick two guys each — four in all — and they fire the Haskins and the M-fourteen — winner’ll be the Haskins.”
“Balls,” Salvini said.
“Come on — you in or out?”
“In.”
“Right,” Aussie whispered as they made the crest. Going down the other side they were all silent, Aussie confident that the thunderous reverberations from the tank battle would cover the approach of the FAV.
“No windows,” Choir observed, looking through his night-vision binoculars at me RAM-C.
“There will be when we hit it,” Aussie said.
“Remember,” David cautioned, the trailer hut now only three hundred yards off, “you stay in the car, Aussie.”
“Yes, mother!”
They were at the bottom of the crest where sand gave way to hard, cracked earth, when a hand clamped Aussie’s shoulder in a viselike grip.
“What the—?”
“Mine!” It was the first time in the last hour or so that the La Roche reporter had said anything. No one
