Pleased that in Collins at least he had an attentive audience, of sorts, the big man ignored the remark. He turned the weapon over to give it a final buff.
‘If I ain’t using it, it’s in here,’ he patted the sheath, ‘and when I am using it, I like the Commies to see it coming. Some of them freeze when they see it, makes it easier to stick ’em. So why hide it, and anyway it slides in nice and smooth when it’s like this; as well as making that lovely slurping sound as it comes out.’
‘I thought this was going to be a push-button war.’ A loud bellow of laughter from Dooley brought an immediate rebuke from the others, and even he was taken aback at the volume he’d produced.
‘Laugh quieter, you fat-arsed crud.’ Cohen looked at his watch. ‘Will I be glad when the major gets back, so maybe he can shut you up.’
‘I kinda get the impression you’ve amused our lump of lard.’ Jango had to pound Dooley on the back since he appeared in danger of choking.
‘It is a fucking push-button war, or hadn’t you noticed.’ He made a quick recovery.
‘Then why are we out here?’ Collins was puzzled. ‘What are we doing with these?’ He held up his assault rifle and bag of demolition charges.
‘What a fucking innocent.’ Dooley had his audience back. I’ll tell you how it works. The Heap Big General in Washington, the Pentagon no less, he presses a button on his desk and his aide comes in. The General gives him a three-line order to send out. The aide goes out, presses a lot more buttons and the order goes off. It travels through maybe thirty or forty different command centres and headquarters and the like, and at every stage more buttons are pressed and a load more words get added. Finally it reaches our battalion, only now it ain’t three lines, now it looks like the New York telephone directory. Our CO reads the bit that’s for him, about sixty pages, and presses a button for our platoon commander. He reads his ten pages and presses a button to send for me. I go charging over, all keen and excited, he looks me in the eye, pokes me in the belly button and says ‘attack’.’
Dooley sat back, pleased with the effect of his complex recitation, and looked smugly about him in a manner that suggested he was expecting at the very least a standing ovation. All he got was a thundering fart from Burke.
‘I’ll be glad when this waiting is over, when we know what’s going to happen.’
‘Listen to me, kid.’ Leaning forward and lightly resting his hand on Collins’ knee, Cohen put on his fatherly act. ‘Enjoy the waiting; to be bored is to be sure you’re still alive. It doesn’t feature in heaven or hell. As for what’s going to happen, the best we can hope for is .that we know what is supposed to happen. If we knew what was going to happen, we could cut straight to the end of the war and save a lot of misery.
‘I still wish I knew where Hyde and the others were right now.’
‘You could always ask your friend Clarence.’ Jango tapped the feet which perpetually shuffled round and round on the gunner’s chair.
Since a fighter-bomber had screamed across the tops of the trees at about midday, their stand-in turret gunner had abandoned the Rarden with its limited forty-degree elevation, and manned their anti-aircraft machine gun instead.
‘Man, he’s gone round so many times he’s just got to be in a trance by now. Ask him if he can see into the future.’
Collins didn’t take up the black’s suggestion. Nor did Clarence respond in any way, though Jango had deliberately uttered the words loudly, for his benefit.
‘You don’t need crystal balls or trances or any of that junk.’ Between puffs at his cigarette, while watching the large clouds of blue smoke slowly spreading to fill the upper regions of the interior, Dooley had come to the conclusion that here was yet another subject in which he could join. ‘I know where they are and what’s going to happen. I bet you any amount they’re in a whore house, they’re screwing everything in sight, and we’ll get there just in time to be told it’s time to be moving on.’
‘What an imagination.’ Cohen poured scorn on the big man’s prediction. ‘Those three might well have their hands full, but it won’t be of tit and bum. But since you’re so sure I’ll let you win some of your money back. I’ll take you on. Fifty says not one of them has so much as seen, let alone had, a handful of whore. How’s that, is that fair?’
There was a loud smack as Dooley crashed his palms together in satisfaction. ‘You’re on, fifty bucks.’
‘It’s a bet’ Cohen made a record of the wager in a notebook taken from one of his many pockets. ‘It’s almost a shame to take your money. Does anyone else want to back Dooley’s wishful thinking?’
‘No way, brother, no way.’ Rinehart gave up his attempts to administer a drink of water to Nelson. ‘I know why you wear that armour. I’ve seen you poke more cash and loot in those pockets than I thought there were in the whole of the Zone. I ain’t about to add another bulge to it. Mind you, I’m tempted to take you on. Maybe it’s stupid, but I got this hunch that there’s just a chance friend Dooley might be right for once. Who knows, maybe he’ll even take a few bucks off you yet.’
A momentary look of doubt flickered across Cohen’s tanned features. It didn’t last long. What was he worrying about? Since when had he ever bet on anything other than a sure thing? Dooley already owed him four hundred and fifty, this would make it a nice round number. So maybe he’d never make general, but with a little more luck, god willing, he’d come out of the war with enough cash and goodies to make a three-star’s retirement plan look like peanuts. He patted the multitude of flap secured compartments in the flak jacket’s front in turn, and checked that each was buttoned down, lingering a little longer over the one with the diamonds in it.
That fifty bucks was as good as his already. There was no way Dooley was going to win, no way.
‘Sit down. SIT DOWN.’ Libby shouted at the old scrubber. With ill grace she plonked back down, turning off the act immediately she was rebuffed, as the three before her had been.
Libby knew what they were up to. They wanted out, the same as the East Germans, and if anything their reasons were stronger. After the attack it wouldn’t take the Russians long to figure out who had visited The Farm and, with suspicion and brutality an inbred facet of their nature, they would be sure to turn on the girls. The whores knew that, hence the clumsy, continuous attempts at seduction.
All he had to do was mime his needs and there’d be a rush to fulfil them. The thought revolted him. In such a struggle, bound to be heard by the others, he’d have little to say in which of the tarts got to him first, and the older ones with their layers of ill-matched cosmetics’ and flaccid bodies nauseated him. Old women always made him feel ill. Elderly female relatives had thought him ‘cold’. He had thought them hideous, and had been obliged to force himself to give even the briefest of pecks on cheeks when it had been customarily expected of him on special occasions. Even now, the recollection of that oft repeated and much loathed duty made him cringe.
‘I told you to bloody sit down.’
This time the woman didn’t choose to be cowed so easily. Though she could not have understood the words, their tone and the action that accompanied them had been abundantly clear. The insinuating smile she turned on was complemented by a deliberate loosening of a bow at the neck of her already gaping nightdress. Her body oozed from the threadbare material, and a large brown nipple with hairs sprouting around it was shoved into plain view by the weight of a balloon-like breast.
‘I said sit down, get back.’
She kept coming, while the others looked on, leaning forward to see what would happen.