my face, and I tried to wipe it away.
'Why don't you tell me about her?' she said quietly.
'I'd love to hear about her.'
I felt the pins and needles return to my legs, felt the lid forcing itself open, and I had nothing left to control it.
'It's OK it's OK, Nick. Let it out.' Her voice was cool, soothing.
And then I knew I couldn't stop it. The lid burst open and words crashed out of my mouth, hardly giving me time to breathe. I told her about being Kelly's guardian, being totally inconsistent, going to Maryland to see Josh, the only sort of friend I had left, people I liked always fucking me over, signing Kelly over permanently to Josh's care, Kelly's therapy, the loneliness... everything.
By the end, I felt exhausted and just sat there with my hands covering my face.
I felt a hand gently touch my shoulder.
'You've never told anybody that before, have you?'
I shook my head, letting my hands fall, and tried to smile.
'I've never sat still long enough,' I said.
'I had to give the therapist a few details about the way Kev and Marsha died, but I did my best to keep the rest of it pretty well hidden.'
She could have been looking right through me. It certainly felt that way.
'She might have helped, you know.'
'Hughes? She just made me feel like a like a like an emotional dwarf.' I felt my jaw clench. 'You know, my world may look like a pile of shit, but at least I sometimes get to sit on top of it.'
She gave me a sad smile.
'But what's the view like from your pile of shit?'
'Not a patch on yours but, then, I like jungles.'
'Mmm.' Her smile widened.
'Great for hiding in.'
I nodded, and managed a real smile this time.
'Are you going to keep hiding for the rest of your life, Nick Stone?'
Good question. What the fuck was the answer?
I stared at the tubs for a long while as the pins and needles disappeared, and eventually she gave a theatrical sigh.
'What are we going to do with you?'
We looked at each other before she got to her feet. I joined her, feeling awkward as I tried to think of something, anything, to say that would prolong the moment.
She smiled again, then clipped me playfully across the ear.
'Well, then, recess over, back to work. I have some math to check.'
'Yes, right. I need one of your tubs1 think I saw some empties near the sinks.'
'Sure, we're maxed out. They won't be needed soon, anyway.' The smile was still there, but it had become rueful.
I held up the box.
'I'm going to play with that explosive down in the shack for a while, and I promise, no more bangs.'
She nodded. That's a relief,' she said.
'I think we've both had quite enough excitement for one day.' She turned towards the storeroom but then paused.
'Don't worry, Nick Stone, no one will know about this. No one.'
I nodded a thank-you, not just for keeping quiet, as she headed for the storeroom.
'Carrie?'
She stopped and half turned once more.
'OK if I have a mooch around in the stores and take some stuff with me? You know, food and equipment for tonight.'
'For sure, but just tell me what you've got so we can replace it, OK? And, of course, nothing that can identify us like that.' She pointed at the soup box, which had a white sticky label saying 'Yanklewitz 08/14/00', probably the heli delivery date.
'No worries.'
She gave that rueful smile again.
'As if, Nick Stone.'
I watched her disappear into the store before heading round the corner towards the sinks, then got to work. I peeled off the label in three stubborn bits, which went into one of the glasses. Then, after getting a drink from the D hose and refilling my bottle, I wandered across the open ground to the shack' swinging the tub I'd just collected in one hand, the box and water-bottle in the other, trying to think about nothing except the job. It was hard. She was right, I did have worries, but at least I hadn't gob bed off about who the real target was.
The clouds were gathering big-time. I'd been right not to be fooled by the sun this morning. Just as I reached the gentle incline and started to see the roof of the hut, I heard a succession of short bursts from a vehicle's horn and looked back. The Mazda was bumping along the track, and Luz was running out to greet her dad. I stood watching for a while as he jumped out of the wagon to be hugged and talked to as they walked on to the veranda.
Sitting in the still humid shade of the hut, I tore off the top and bottom flaps of the Campbell's box, scrunched them up in the bottom of the tub, and was left with the main carcass, a four-sided cube, which I ripped apart at a seam and opened out so that I had one long, flat section of cardboard. I started fitting it into the tub, running it round the edges then twisting it until I'd made a cone with its apex about a third of the way up from the bottom, with all the scrunched-up flaps beneath. If I let it go now the cone shape would spring apart, so I started to pack HE, still in its wrappers, around the base to keep it in place. Then, with the cone held fast, I peeled open the other boxes, unwrapped more HE and played with the putty-like substance, packing it into the tub and around the cone.
I was trying to make a copy of the French off-route mine. These are the same shape as the tub, but a little smaller, and designed so that, unlike a conventional mine, they don't have to be directly beneath the target when detonated to destroy it. It can be concealed off to one side of a road or track, hidden in the bushes or, as I was planning, up a tree. It's a handy device if you're trying to mine a metal road, say, without having your goodies laid out for everyone to see.
One version of the mine is initiated by a cable as thin as a strand of silk that's laid over the tarmac and crushed. I was going to detonate it with a round from the Mosin Nagant.
Once triggered, the manufactured ones instantly turn a cone of copper into a hot, molten slug, the shaped charge, propelling it at such speed and power that it penetrates the target's armour and rips its insides apart. I didn't have any copper; in its place,
and shaped very much the same way, was the cardboard cone, but there should be enough force in the HE alone to do the job required of it.
I continued squashing down the HE, trying to make it one solid mass over the cone. My hands stung as the glycerine got into my cuts, and my headache was back, really giving me the good news.
Thinking about the old German guy who'd given me the bayonet gave me the idea of using the explosive this way. He'd told me a story about the Second World War.
German Paras had taken a bridge, stopping the Brits from demolishing it as they withdrew. The charges were still in position, but the Germans disconnected the detonators so that a Panzer column could cross and kick the shit out of the Brits. A young British squaddie took one shot with his bog standard Lee Enfield 3O3 rifle at the placed charges. Because it was old-style explosive, just like this stuff, it detonated, and set off all the other charges that were connected by the det (detonation) cord. The whole bridge dropped, stopping the Panzers ever getting through.
As I packed the last of the HE, I was hoping that the squaddie had at least got a couple of weeks' leave as a reward, but I very much doubted it. Probably just a tap on the tin hat with a riding crop and a 'Jolly well done, that man', before getting killed a few weeks later.
