pursuit.
One
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and brave ever in a majority?
The recent thunderstorms had turned the yard — if you could call their little patch of dirt, grass, and rocks a yard — into a brown crumbly paste, like soggy half-baked green-colored brownies. The unpaved streets were in a little better shape, having been compacted by automobile and construction traffic, but it was still a wet, sloppy mess that sunshine hadn’t yet been able to ameliorate.
This could have been war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan, or some remote Chinese village… instead, it was a relatively new subdivision in the community of Battle Mountain, in north-central Nevada.
Battle Mountain began life as a small railroad depot and mining camp in post — Civil War north-central Nevada, nothing more than a small collection of warehouses, shops, saloons, and brothels. Although it became the seat of Lander County, the community never got around to becoming an incorporated town, city, or even a village. Even when the interstate highway was built nearby and the U.S. Army set up a B-17 bomber crew training base outside of town, the community never really grew far from its mining-camp, bump-in-the-road past.
And that’s pretty much what Bradley James McLanahan thought of Battle Mountain: yet another bump in
Just one month away from his eighteenth birthday, tallish like his deceased mother but husky and blue-eyed like his father, Brad — no one used his full first name except his dad unless they were looking for trouble — had had his share of moves and terrible postings, like all Air Force brats. Although he didn’t think so, he actually had it pretty good compared to the kids of some other officers, because he had moved just a few times in the eighteen years his father, retired Air Force Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan, had been in the service. But to his thinking, Battle Mountain was his penalty for having fewer moves and bad postings.
Brad had been cooped up most of the morning playing computer games and waiting for the hellish thunderstorms to blow through, and now that the rains had stopped and the sun was coming out, he wanted to get the heck
“Depends,” his father replied without turning. Patrick was seemingly staring out the window of his bedroom, one hand hovering in midair, his fingers moving as if he were typing on a keyboard. Brad knew — but wasn’t allowed to tell anyone — that his father didn’t need a screen because computer images were broadcast to tiny monitors built into special lenses of his eyes so the computer images appeared as big as if on a twenty-seven-inch high-def screen; he typed on a “virtual” keyboard that he could call up as well. His dad had been the guinea pig for many such high-tech gadgets in his years in the Air Force. “Kitchen?”
“Clean, dishwasher unloaded.”
“Bathroom?”
“Sunday is my usual day to do the bathroom. Okay if I do it tomorrow?”
“Okay. Bedroom?”
“Picked up, bed made.”
“Living room?”
“Presentable.”
His father looked at him, trying to discern exactly what that meant. “Maybe we should check.”
“Okay.” He watched his dad’s blue eyes dart back and forth as he made mouse-pointer movements by simply looking at log-off commands on his virtual screen. He followed his dad down the narrow hallway. Patrick peeked into Brad’s bedroom across the hall, checked, nodded approval, then proceeded past the hall closet with the stacked washer and dryer, the kitchen/dining area, and finally into the living room. The McLanahans lived in a double-wide trailer, about half the size of their last residence in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas, but large and almost ostentatious compared to many of their neighbors’.
Patrick scowled at a stack of magazines and junk mail in a pile on the coffee table. “That stuff needs to be sorted, recycled, or put away,” he said.
“It’s Gia’s stuff, Dad,” Brad said. His dad nodded solemnly. Gia Cazzotto was his dad’s girlfriend — or former girlfriend, or wacko, or alkie, he didn’t know which. She had been medically retired from the Air Force after ejecting from an EB-1C Vampire bomber that had been attacked by Russian fighters over the Arabian Sea last year.
After recovering from her injuries, Gia was sent to Washington to face charges for her actions just prior to the shoot-down. She was charged with causing injuries and damage to a peaceful vessel and its crew in international waters, inciting an international incident, disobeying orders, and dereliction of duty. Patrick went with her to lend support and to testify on her behalf, but was barred from doing so because he faced his own charges. She was found guilty in a court-martial and sentenced to three years in prison, reduction in rank to second lieutenant — she had been a full colonel, in command of a high-tech bomber unit in Southern California — and a less-than-honorable discharge. Her sentence was commuted by President Kenneth Phoenix hours after he assumed office, but the less-than-honorable discharge remained.
Gia was never the same person after that, Brad remembered. She was angry, quick-tempered, restless, and quiet. The charges against his father were dismissed by the president, which only seemed to make her angrier. The president could have completely pardoned her, but he didn’t, saying that in good conscience he couldn’t overturn a jury verdict, even if he believed what she did was in the best interests of the United States of America. That made her even angrier.
When his father accepted this job in Battle Mountain, she accompanied them for a while, helping to set up the trailer and watch over Brad while his father worked, but she was definitely no fun to be around like she was in Henderson. She started drinking: good stuff at first, top-quality Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons — Brad always got a little taste — then when the money ran low and she lost her job, it was whatever was cheapest. Soon after, she started disappearing, first for a couple days, then a couple weeks at a time. Who knew if she’d ever be back?
“Sorry. Don’t worry about it,” Patrick said, straightening his shoulders. He nodded toward the desk with the drawer with all the keys in it. “If it needs gas, you know what to do. Watch the speed limits. And no driving on the interstate. Got some cash?”
“Yes.”
Patrick nodded. Damn, he thought, his son was grown up, almost his own guy. What in hell would living in this trailer feel like without him? “Call if anything happens.”
“I know, I know, I will,” Brad said. “Thanks.” Like all of his friends, Brad got his learner’s permit at exactly age fifteen and a half on the dot because a car meant real freedom in an isolated place like Battle Mountain — the nearest town of any size was Elko, more than seventy miles away and accessible only by the interstate, unless you really liked serious off-roading. The cops knew that, and they liked to ticket kids who drove at night or used the interstate highway, which was not allowed for drivers with only learner’s permits.
The phone was ringing as Brad dashed out the door — no one he wanted to talk to right now used the home phone, so the quicker he could get away, the better. He had made it to the car and was just opening the driver’s door when he heard the front door to the trailer open and his dad shouted, “Brad!”
“Gotta go, Dad,” he shouted, not stopping. Sheesh, he thought, who calls the home number for him on a Saturday afternoon? All his friends used his cell number. “I’m meeting Ron and he needs—”
“Squadron recall,” Patrick said. “Actual. Everyone. Seventy-two hours.”
