put it back in the mailer and send it on back. They dupe the ones for the camps from a master they make at headquarters.'
He looked at me with a telltale intentness. It was the game of which hand holds the marble. I got in- stantaneous help from my actress friend of long ago. Tom McGraw would ask.
'where is headquarters anyway?'
'Classified,' he said, smiling, whacking me on the arm.
'When do we get the next one?'
'There's no schedule. When she has something to say to us, she makes a tape, and they dupe it and send it out. They cost a lot, those tapes, so they get sent back blank to be reduped.'
I wandered on out. I illed an item in the back of my mind. Somewhere in America, Betamax tapes were being sent in to a central place. If they were saving money on tape, they wouldn't be wasting it using couriers. If it were my problem, I'd use the mails. And I would have a permanent filler on the first fifteen minutes of each tape. They would be plainly labeled as church property, and they would have some old duck in a backward collar reading a dissertation on the philosophical impact of Martin Luther on political thought in middle Burope. And then the Sister. I would have them sent to a mail drop for courier pickup and delivery to home
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John MacDonald base. So if I happened to find the mailing address, it would probably give me no help at ale
I sat through it again that evening, and the impact of her was intensified, if anything. She did not fade. She just seemed to get stronger. And it was difficult to shake the illusion that she was looking directly at me. I could not estimate how big a woman she was. There was nothing to compare her to. She was in perfect proportion and could have been three feet tall or seven and a half. Dark-blue velvety dress with lace at the throat. No jewelry.
After it was over, Persival got me aside and said, 'I want you working out with the group tomorrow. Any objection?'
'spiel No. No objection. Only, what is being done to locate where my little girl is?'
'They're trying to find her, and when they do, they'll let me know immediately. Report to Brother Chuck at eight sharp. Field exercises.' swearing what?'
'Ask him now.'
Chuck told me we weren't leaving the land the Church owned, one full section of land, mostly up and down and sideways, so we'd wear fatigues, a light pack, and an ammo belt, and carry a weapon. He and Ahman took me over to supply, after Chuck got the key. The biggest fatigues were a little high in the allele and short at the wrist I explained my shoe problem, and they found a pair of size twelve sneakers and some thick nylon-and-wool
The Green Ripper socks. Ahman threw me the weapon, harder than he had to. The light was bad, just the single bulb going inside the warehouse door, and I didn't grab it close enough to the balance point, so the muzzle end tapped me over the ear, drawing a drop of blood.
'Watch it,' I told him.
'snatch out for yourself, Brother,' he said.
What is this thing anyway?'
'It's an Uzi,' Chuck said. 'made in Israel.'
'Very small and light. Good weapon?'
Ahman shrugged and said, 'You won't be firing it. AU you do is carry it. You'll be glad it's light bee fore the day is over. Some friends picked up a couple of trucldoads of these in Lebanon. So we've got some. Makes for nice confusion. Remember what Aren't said after Camp David? He said there hadn't been any terrorism in the United States, and now they had proved themselves ready for some. For a lot, baby. A big lot. So when they bring down some of the brothers and sisters with Israeli weapons, they'll wonder what the hell, won't they?'
I carried my issue gear back to T-6. The sneakers felt right with two pairs of the socks. I found the right hole for the belt, filled the canteen, and positioned it at a better place on the belt. Chuck had told me I would be carrying twenty pounds of rock in the backpack, so I made careful adjustment of the straps, bringing die padding to the exact place where the straps hit the tops of my shoulders. Then
I inspected the Uziunder the light. It hadn't been built for pretty. It was an ugly, simple, straighfforward little weapon. The empty clip snapped into place easily. It had a good balance, and a simple three-way control for safety, single fire, and full automatic. It looked designed for quantity production. I couldn't give it full approval until I had a chance, if ever, to ilre it. Then I would learn the cycle of fire and whether it would ride up at fun automatic, or whether the gases were diverted just right to make it easy to hold on target. It hung well over the shoulder on its fat little sling and came off the shoulder fast, with your hands faring into the right position. I had heard that since I had been around this kind of hardware they had upped the cycle of iIre, upped the muzzle velocity to practically double, and reduced the weight of the projectile. A man could carry a lot more rounds into a firelight, do just as much damage with each hit, and hit oftener.
I was up early and observed the usual routine of the others that wherever I strolled, somebody was keeping an eye on me. Brother Thomas was an unknown quantity.
When I had been wakeful in the night, I had realized that my assumption that they would mail the tapes had to be wrong. This outfit preferred to take no chances at ale It had to be a hand-delivery sys
The Green Ripper tem, and so it would do no good at all to try to find a return address.
When I went back to sleep I dreamed of Sister Elena Marie, smiling at me, talking to me. It was very important that I understand what she was saying, but I could only catch a word or phrase here and there, and they were in a foreign language I could not even identify. She was telling me how to get around behind the screen, back to where she was, and she was becoming angry because I couldn't understand what she was telling me. If I could get on the same side of the screen as Sister Elena Marie, then Gretel would be spared. When I yelled at her in rage, it woke me up agam.
I ate little because I had a good idea of what they were going to try to do to me. I guessed they could probably run me into the ground. But out of pride I wanted to make them have to stretch to do it.
They had six hundred and forty very rugged acres. It was a bright chilly day, at first. Chuck ran the group with whistle signals. I had to be briefed on those. Most of it was standard operating procedure for patrols. Infiltration, cover and concealment, giving covering fire, without ammo. It involved a lot of running. I had a fifteen- year disad- vantage with most of them, and I was carrying eighty more pounds uphill than were the two girls. But they wasted energy in random movements. I husbanded every ounce, made no unnecessary step.
I was sweating heavily by late morning, and they all looked dry. They were conditioned.
There were special little moments of humiliation. Once when we had crossed a swollen creek and were going up an abrupt rocky slope on the other side, I got so winded near the top that I was grabbing sman trees to yank myself along. As I was doing that, Stella went by me, running uphill on tiptoe, deft as a goat, and turned to give me a smile and a quick wink before leaving me behind, looking uphill at the bounding flex of those hips under the tough denim.
At another time, when I was breathing with my mouth open, gulping air hungrily, I sucked in a large California beetlebug, coughed him out violently, and couldn't stop coughing. But I was damned if I was going to say uncle. I was ready to drop first and be carried in. And I was also ready to cheat. I had weeded my twenty pounds of rock down to about three pounds. It helped.
When I was down to counting the minutes before I would probably pitch forward onto my face, I was saved by misadventure. Sister Nena took a good fast run to clear a creek, jumped well, and landed on a stone that turned as her foot struck *. She fell heavily on gravel, equipment clanking, and moaned as she reached for her right ankle. Her olive complemon was a yellow-white, her eyes squeezed by pain. I was first to reach her, and carefully unlaced
The Green Ripper the sodden sneaker and eased it off, then peeled the sock down and off her foot.
Chuck knelt beside me, and The others stood around looking down at her. 'Busted?' he asked.
I told her to hold on tight, and I slowly manipulated the ankle joint. She sucked air. I made her work it herself. I knew from wide experience it wasn't bad.
'Just a little sprain, I ark, but you shouldn't walk on it right away.'
Chuck looked around at the slope of The land, the direction of distant peaks. 'About a half mile back,' he said.
Barry was wearing a macho silk scarf, off-white. Chuck wrapped The ankle tightly and tied it in place. I said I could carry her back. She said she could hobble and hop. She said it was her own damn clumsiness. Barry said he'd carry her. I said he could take over when I got tired. I didn't tell him I was already so tired I wondered if I could make a half mile by myself. Suddenly Me sun was covered and the rain began to fall again. Chuck took my pack, hefted it, looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and dumped out the remaining rocks. Two of them. Apple-size. Barry took the weapon. Nena stood up on one foot, with Stella helping her balance. I bent and put my shoulder in her middle and had her lean forward as I stood up with her, my right arm wrapped around her legs lust above her knees. She was smallish but solid. The rain rem freshed me. It cooled me off. I made pretty good time. A few times I lost my footing on the uneven ground, and when I caught myself it
