Culver helped him stand up, and Kip had to wonder how the man was coping with his own reaction to having donated blood. It didn't seem to bother him nearly as much.
"There'll be a formal intelligence brief coming through on this within an hour or so," Culver said. "I'll get it to you as soon as possible. Get NIA working on it with the Euroweenies. And Echelon Group with the Brits. See if they've picked up anything in the chatter."
"Okay."
They emerged from the room to find their escort group standing off a short distance down the corridor, presumably to give them some privacy. As they returned to the party for the short walk to the recovery ward, the first buses full of blood donors from the settler camp pulled into the car park. Kipper watched through a big picture window as the new Americans spilled out onto the tarmac, chattering and grinning and looking all around. Probably looking for me, he thought.
"If you'll follow me, Mister President," Leong said.
The recovery ward was hushed as they entered. Here and there a soldier was propped up on pillows, keenly awaiting his arrival. But many of them were unconscious. Feeling like a child in church who has done something wrong but does not know exactly what, Kipper walked down the long line of beds, stopping to talk to those who were awake and responsive. Colonel Ralls was back, standing by with a box of Purple Hearts. The president personally pinned the medal to the pillow of each wounded soldier, whether they were conscious or not, an act he had already performed far too many times over the last three years. He tried to clear his fuzzy head of the conversation with Kinninmore. He wanted to be able to concentrate on meeting these soldiers.
"Hello, son. I'm James Kipper. What's your name?" he asked of a redheaded boy whose right arm ended at a bandaged stump just above the elbow.
"Specialist Neil Tomlinson, sir," the young man barked back as he attempted to salute, forgetting about his injury. Confusion and embarrassment flooded the boy's face, and Kipper felt his heart cracking open inside his chest.
"Don't you worry about any of that stuff, Tomlinson. You're officially excused from saluting and marching and all of that crap."
"And KP, Mister President?" said the specialist, trying for a light tone and almost, but not quite, making it. "No more peeling taters for me."
Kip forced a smile.
"No. Suffered that indignity a few times, have you?"
Tomlinson rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion. "More times than I care to remember, Mister President."
"Do you mind?" Kip asked, motioning toward the edge of Tomlinson's cot.
"No, sir," he answered, his butt shuffling over a few inches before Kip could stop him.
The president of the United States sat down on the rumpled blanket and looked to Colonel Ralls, who leaned forward with his box of tricks and retrieved two medals: a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
"Well, son, the colonel here tells me that you've been busy on our account. Not just getting yourself wounded and all but doing extra hero duty with it. According to this citation-"
Ralls passed him a sheet of paper.
"-you were part of a platoon that was ambushed by sniper and rocket and machine gun fire at the intersection of Broadway and 26th Street. Says here one of your squad mates was shot and went down in the middle of that intersection and that you ran into the fire to drag him out. Says that's how you lost your arm, Neil."
Kipper read directly from the citation, struggling to keep his voice from breaking.
"Says here that 'by his courage, dedication, and willingness to sacrifice for his wounded comrade, Specialist Tomlinson reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Army.'"
The president lowered the piece of paper and looked directly at Tomlinson, whose eyes were clouded with a mix of emotions he would probably never understand. Kipper found himself feeling even more poorly as he confronted the human consequences of decisions he had made in comfort many thousands of miles away from places like the intersection of Broadway and 26th, where young men like Neil Tomlinson got their limbs blown off.
"I'm very proud of you, son," he said with some difficulty. "We all are." He tilted his head to indicate the cluster of high-ranking men and women gathered around him. "And you need to know that we are in your debt forever now. I don't know that we can truly pay you back, but you need to know that as long as an American draws breath somewhere, that debt will be acknowledged and honored."
"Thank you, Mister President," Tomlinson said in a quiet voice. "I was really just helping my buddy."
"And that's what makes it admirable," Kipper said as he leaned forward to pin the medals to Tomlinson's pillow.
He bade farewell to the boy and moved on to decorate a number of unconscious patients. Once or twice he had to stop and take a few breaths to get his balance back.
With one of the injured soldiers, however, he couldn't identify the race or gender. Blood-spotted bandages covered the trooper's entire head. An air tube forced oxygen through a fleshy hole that didn't resemble a mouth in any way that Kip recognized. There were no eyeholes cut through the bandages.
He asked why.
"Shrapnel struck this soldier in the face, Mister President," Leong explained without needing to check the chart. "She has lost her lower jaw. She also received additional shrapnel in her sinuses and eyes. This soldier will never see again, but we believe once we stabilize her, we can send her on to Sydney for reconstructive surgery."
Kipper stayed focused on the soldier. Her chest rose and fell regularly. He placed his hand on her shoulder and whispered into her ear. After stroking her bandaged forehead, he pinned a Purple Heart to her pillow, stood up, and walked on.
Culver asked what he had said to the woman. The military officers and medical staff couldn't help hanging on his answer, either.
The president rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Jed," he replied, "I asked her to forgive me. For my weakness."
38
Texas Administrative Division Road agents had been through Palestine. Miguel and the other riders stayed on their mounts as the animals slowly clip-clopped down the wide-open thoroughfare, snorting and neighing in distress, their ears twitching ner-vously. Miguel leaned forward and patted Flossie on the neck to calm her down, taking the opportunity to check on his daughter. Sofia was tight-lipped and pale-faced with her Remington laid out across her lap. She seemed to be holding up well enough, though, all things considered.
"There now, girl, be still," he said to the horse. It was not easy to keep his voice calm and soothing with such a black oily rage threatening to boil up from deep inside his guts.
He had first thought to climb down and lead the mare in on foot after the long ride from their last camp, but now he wanted to be able to spur away if necessary. Unfortunately, that put him on eye level with the corpses. They swung on ropes that creaked and groaned under their burden. Twenty-three of them he had counted so far, all strung up from the cross stays of the telephone and power poles that ran along the street.
"They were from the south," Miguel said quietly.
"How can you tell?" Aronson asked in a tight voice. "They're… pretty far gone."
He was right. The bodies had turned black and bloated with gases before rupturing and spilling over the refuse-strewn footpath below. Crows and other carrion birds had been at them for some time. Drag marks evidenced the efforts of wild dogs and other ground scavengers to carry off a tasty prize.
"The way they are dressed. And their hair," said Miguel. "All of them had black hair. Like mine."
"And Mama's," Sofia said in a strangled voice.
He considered sending her back to the edge of town with Adam, but there was an evil air about this place, and he wanted his only blood kin right where he could see her.