Philips. Philips would not do anything crazy with Thomer around.
“Charge is up!” Skittles called.
“Hold!” I shouted. Herrington, Boll, and I braced our weight against the nozzle, and Skittles pulled the trigger. The sound the mine-placer made was a hollow
“Good,” he said, and we moved on to the next X.
We stood a few feet away from the skeletal frame of one of the destroyed rocket launchers. The structure stood thirty feet tall, a charred skeleton of twisted rods and melted wires.
Around the grounds, soldiers and Marines placed traps of many descriptions. A team of soldiers strung hot- wire fences. Once they finished the fence, they would hook it up to an electrical circuit, and four thousand volts would surge through the wires. A fence like that could wipe out a whole platoon, but I doubted the Avatari would even notice it.
“What do you think?” Herrington asked, standing straight and stretching out his back. “This should give us an edge.”
“The mines might slow them down,” I said.
“It’s going to come down to a firefight again, isn’t it?” Boll asked.
If Skittles or some other lightweight asked that question, I might well have lied, but I would not lie to Boll or Herrington. They deserved better. “There’s a lot going on that I can’t tell you about,” I said.
“It’s bad?” Herrington asked.
“Yeah, it’s bad,” I agreed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
General Glade sent an aide to retrieve me from the DMZ. We were on our fourth load of mines. My arms were numb, and the muscles in my back felt like they were tied in a knot. I wanted to head back to base and take a nap, but no one was handing out furloughs.
“Lieutenant Harris, General Glade sent for you,” the man said. He was wearing his Charlie-service khakis—a captain with a chestful of ribbons for typing and filing. If they gave out purple hearts for paper cuts, this guy would have one.
I sized the captain up in an instant and did not like what I saw. Let the world collapse around him, this guy’s peach-fuzz blond hair would never grow beyond regulation length. I quickly dismissed all his ribbons as having been earned by typing above and beyond the call of duty.
“Captain …” I paused because I did not know the man’s name.
The captain took a moment to figure out that I was waiting for his name. “Everley,” he said.
“Captain Everley,” I said.
“Charge is up!” Skittles yelled.
I called, “Hold!” and Skittles pulled the trigger. The recoil of the hose reverberated through my body. “Captain Everley, do you realize that you are standing in the middle of a minefield?”
The officer’s smug smile evaporated from his face. He was an administrator who had stumbled into an area for fighting men.
“Excuse me, sir,” Sergeant Herrington said, gently escorting Everley out of his way so he could inspect the mine. He climbed on all fours and ran a hand over our work. “It’s good,” he said.
“You see those Xs?” I asked, holding on to the hose with one hand and moving closer to Captain Everley.
“Are those mines?” he asked.
“No, Captain, those are the only places you can be sure do not have mines. We’re laying mines under the Xs.” Everley looked back. The path he had come on was still marked with Xs.
“I’m guessing between the Marines and the Army, we’ve laid at least ten thousand mines out here today. Each mine is calibrated to blow the legs off a Mudder,” I said.
Everley swallowed and looked around the street.
“Charge is up!”
“Hold!” We shot another mine into the pavement.
“You tell General Glade that I’ll head straight for Base Command when we finish up here. It should be another hour or two.”
“But the—”
“And, Captain, watch your step on the way back. I figure that any mine that could blow the legs off a Mudder would send your balls at least a mile away.”
“I always thought it would vaporize them,” said Herrington.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, also, sir,” Skittles piped in.
Everley nodded and left, hopping from X to X as if they were stepping-stones leading across a pond.
“A bit on the harsh side, wasn’t that?” Boll asked me.
“You think so?” I asked. It was harsh, but I had a pretty good feeling why General Glade wanted to speak with me, and I didn’t feel like playing along. We were coming down to the wire now. When things came down to the wire, the men at the top often turned to the men they sent out to die for absolution. They wanted us to know they were not making these decisions lightly, and they wanted to know that we understood. It was all bullshit.
Having bright daylight twenty-four hours per day wreaked havoc on my internal clock, but it had some advantages. We worked well past 2100 hours on a winter night, and the sky was always as bright as midday.
By the time we finished, my right shoulder hurt just about the same way it did after the doctor reset it. The small of my back ached from all of my leaning over the mine-placer. I stood on the truck as we rode out to our new barracks working my back and neck. No one spoke on that ride. They may not have known the particulars, but most military clones can sense the calm before the storm.
I found my billet and stripped out of my armor. I took a muscle relaxant and headed for the shower. I wanted to eat a large meal and crawl into bed, but that was not on the agenda. Instead, I called Base Command, and General Glade’s staff sent Captain Everley to retrieve me.
“Do we have time for me to stop by the mess for a sandwich?” I asked.
“I’d get to General Glade’s office as quickly as I could if I were you,” Everley said. “He’s still in a rage about this afternoon.”
“What happened this afternoon?” I asked.
“You didn’t specking report that’s what happened,” he said. “When a general invites you in for a chat, you drop everything and report.”
“I see. You know what, I really need that sandwich,” I said, remembering just how much I despised admirals and generals.
We were nearing the dormitory cafeteria. The food wouldn’t be as good as the restaurants in the Valhalla Hotel, but this was our mess hall. I turned in and headed for the food line.
“Lieutenant, I must—” Captain Everley whined. I had sized him up as an officious weakling the first time I saw him. He was a captain, and I was a lieutenant, but I was the one controlling the situation.
“Just a moment,” I said.
“But General Glade—”
“Unless he has chow laid out, he’s going to have to wait. I’ll eat on the way, Captain. I have just come from ten hours of laying mines and I’m hungry.” I selected two slices of bread and slathered them with mayo and mustard. I used tongs to take slices of ham, roast beef, and turkey. After laying lettuce, onions, and tomatoes across the pile, I closed the sandwich, stuffed half of it into my mouth, and said, “There. That didn’t take so long,” around the sandwich as I bit.
“Can we go now?” Everley asked. He was mad, and he showed it by pouting.
I grabbed two cartons of milk. “Sure, I’m ready.”
Everley did not speak to me again as we drove around the outside of the campus. Except for the abundance of
