What if they don’t call me back? he thought. What if they just keep me here, fighting, till I’m killed? His stomach knotted into a pit and turned. The gassy pain and taste of bile in his mouth made him want to sit up and take a swig from his canteen. But he was too tired, and he didn’t want to go through the effort of covering his fucking bag with leaves again.
The war for Hart was now against the cold and the longing for a shower and a warm bed. At least, he thought, the air was clean and fresh. Not like, he imagined, life in a bunker. Even the word, he thought. “Bunker.” It sounded like “tomb,” or “mausoleum.” Or what was that word? he thought. “Sepulcher,” said the other voice in his head. The voice that kept him company.
Hart had conversations with himself more and more frequently. It hadn’t been like that when he’d stayed with the Lipscombs. A melancholy overcame Hart when he thought back to that time. He’d had daily contact with people. He would talk to Jimmy and Amanda after school, and their mother and father after dinner.
Now I’m just lying here talking to myself, he said to himself. I need to get back into the fight. Blow a fuckin’ bridge. Snipe at a convoy. Plant a mine, for Christ’s sake!
But his controller had ordered him not to do anything that might risk discovery. “Go to ground,” he’d said. Why, Hart had asked? The Special Forces colonel, somewhere in an underground command center in Maryland, had said something about “national strategic assets.” His first words had been cut off by a drifting microwave carrier wave. He’d said something like America was conserving all its national strategic assets.
That was Hart, he had finally realized. Hart had become too valuable to be put at risk.
Back in Maryland, Hart had been told what had happened to their unit. He wasn’t supposed to know in case he got captured, but a sympathetic staffer had told him anyway. Before the start of the war, the 5th Special Forces Group had scattered 4,600 Green Berets throughout Alabama and Mississippi. Of that number, 4,100 were missing and presumed killed or captured. Another 300 were known to be killed in action, usually by public execution. The final 200 had appeared on lists as prisoners of war.
“Those numbers,” Hart had noted, “add up to 4,600.” The staff officer had nodded. “What about me? I survived,” Hart said with agitated vigor.
“You’re part of the rounding error,” the staffer had said.
The words had lingered with Hart. In a war in which millions die, what does one more death matter?
Maybe I’ll make it back, he thought as he looked up through bare limbs at bright stars on a frigid, clear night. Maybe I won’t, said the other voice in his head. It doesn’t really matter, both agreed.
Han sat at his desk on the third floor of an ordinary American office building. The plan had been for his headquarters to be located in the state governor’s mansion, but it had been destroyed by retreating national guardsmen. The dingy insurance company office that now housed his headquarters was the best they could do for the time being. They would finish refurbishing the fortieth floor any day. Maybe then, he thought, in the more comfortable surroundings he would feel more like himself.
An explosion shook the windows and doors, and rattled Han’s nerves. There had been no air raid siren. The blast had come from just outside. Rips of machine gun fire followed.
Han’s heart froze in his chest. This is it, he realized. He tapped his flush video display, which rose from the desktop and offered a view of his waiting area. Soldiers in dress uniform — his security detail, or imposters — rushed into his waiting area.
The door burst open. Han jumped. Soldiers with rifles poured through. He braced himself. But instead of delivering executioners’ bullets, they rounded his desk from both sides.
“Down, Administrator Han!” one shouted.
Han was seized by both arms and levered to the floor. His rib cage crashed painfully onto a leg of his chair. Han was roughly pressed up under his desk, which was armored.
The soldiers were there not to kill him, but to protect him. Han’s lungs thawed. He took the first breath of his new life. And the second. And the third.
The rattling gunfire on the floor beneath them was not enough to disturb Han’s euphoria over the reprieve. Han elbowed a soldier and twisted into a more comfortable position amid his fortress desk and half a dozen bodyguards. One soldier’s radio tracked the progress of the partisan attack on Han’s civilian headquarters.
“They’re in the staircase! They’re in the staircase!” leaked from the nearest soldier’s earbuds. Automatic weapons blazed in concrete hollows outside his door. “Get down that hall! They’re setting a charge! Use grenades! Use grenades!”
A dozen grenades exploded like miniature artillery on an indoor range, shaking the building.
There followed rips of automatic weapons fire.
Nothing.
Silence.
“Building secure.”
The protective screen made way for a chipper Han, who rose and dusted himself off. “I want a full report on how those partisans got into this building,” Han said, dismissing soldiers who were quite happy being dismissed.
On a sofa in the waiting room sat a grimy soldier. His rifle rested across his thighs. He appeared unconcerned by the recent, nearby fighting. He wore dusty full battle dress. Held his helmet in both hands. His hair shorn to a tanned scalp and neck which bore a long red scratch.
He looked straight into Han’s eyes.
“Who is that?” Han asked as his aide closed the door from outside Han’s office.
His aide — who was acting quite shaken by the attack and obviously wanting to get away — stuck his head through the door. “He, he arrived unannounced, sir. Not on the…” He coughed. “The agenda, which is full. But he refused to leave, sir. I’ve already called security, but obviously they have been occupied.”
“What does he want?” Han asked, sniffing the air. “And find out if there is a fire in this building. I smell something.”
“There is smoke. Yes, sir. I smell it myself. And to speak to you, sir. He wants to speak to you.”
Han was incensed. “You should tell me these things!” He pressed his flush video display, and it popped from the desk. With two presses of a button, the camera found the soldier.
His aide stepped inside. “We didn’t know if we could trust him.”
“How did he get up here with a weapon?” Han asked. “And of course you can trust him! He’s sitting in a waiting room waiting! Ask him to come in!”
The man nodded as if that had been his plan all along. “Yes, sir!”
The combat officer — a major — was ushered into Han’s office. Han watched carefully as he leaned the rifle against a chair by the door. As he did, Han heard the click as he engaged the rifle’s safety.
The soldier, despite being a major, couldn’t have been a year older than thirty. That was the way it was during wartime. Five or six years after commissioning, the surviving twenty-somethings commanded companies. Surviving thirty-year-olds commanded battalions of six hundred eighteen-year-olds.
The officer stood at attention before Han’s desk and saluted.
“What can I do for you, Major?” Han asked graciously.
The soldier eased and then said, “The army is going to massacre my men, sir. They’re getting ready to execute all of my men. Four hundred of them.”