Both shook their heads.
Hart carved open a blade-width hole in a piece of the hard bread. “You cut into the neck, reach inside with your finger, and pull the tongue out through the hole.” He ate the slice of bread in three bites. “Looks like a necktie. Get it?” He took a swig from his canteen. “It’s, uhm, a slow way to go, shall we say.”
Hart brushed his hands clean of the crumbs and grabbed a hunting rifle. He slid the bolt out, then did the same with the other three long guns.
“What’re you doin’?” Brad asked.
Hart slipped the four bolts into his cargo pocket and climbed onto the ladder outside. “Saving your lives,” he replied. “Now go home.”
“This is our home,” Brad said.
“Well, go take care of your families.”
“Ain’t got none,” Brad replied. “My wife died near ’bout fourteen years ago. We didn’t have no childern. Willy here, well, his wife wised up and left him awhile back, and his only boy… Well, he was in the Marines.”
Willy’s head hung. Hart looked back and forth between the two in increasing exasperation. “Look! If you guys wanta fight the fucking Chinese, at least join the militia.”
“They won’t have us,” Willy answered. “Top age is sixty. We miss out by a coupla years.”
Hart looked out at the surrounding terrain. They had a clear shot at Interstate 65 heading inland from the port of Mobile. It was, Hart knew from extensive prewar briefings, projected to be the main line of supply for the Chinese. At five hundred meters, it was within range of their hunting rifles.
The trees whose branches scraped on the metal siding of the blind with each gust might provide concealment from advance patrols, which probably wouldn’t stray that far off the highway at first. Those same trees, however, would also provide concealment to Chinese troops who were maneuvering against the two old men. But the would-be snipers probably wouldn’t last that long. A main tank gun on the road could fire a shell that would cover the distance in a fraction of a second.
“This is a bad idea, guys,” Hart advised one last time. “You won’t make it outa here.”
“We know that,” Brad replied. Willy nodded in confirmation. “We thought about strappin’ bombs to ourselves like terrorists, but the first few we made just sorta burned real hot. Finally, we figured we’d just do what we knew we could. We’re both damn good shots.” Willy nodded.
Hart frowned, took one last look around, and dropped the four rifle bolts on the metal floor of the hunting blind with a clacking sound. The two men stared at them, then at Hart. “What I said before,” Hart warned, “about being taken prisoner, I wasn’t bullshitting you. Don’t let yourselves get captured. You two understand? If they close on you, you’ve gotta do the job yourselves. You’ve gotta take your own lives — quickly — before they do it… slowly. You two both understand that?”
Hart waited, and both men nodded again. Willy seemed to have trouble swallowing.
“We made our minds up,” Brad said. “The two of us, we ain’t never done nothin’, you know, special. This’ll be it, we figure. Even if nobody ever knows we done it, this’ll be it.”
Willy nodded.
The trees hissed as the breeze rose from the Gulf. A dull clanking sound again drew Brad and Willy’s gaze to the deck of the blind. In the dim moonlight, their eyes took a moment to find the knobby, pineapple-shaped fragmentation grenade that Hart had dropped next to the rifle bolts. “Happy hunting,” Hart said as he descended the ladder.
“Same to ya,” came Brad’s reply. Willy, Hart presumed, was nodding.
Bill sought shelter from his emotional storm in the Map Room. For decades, it had been used for informal meetings — coffees, teas, receptions, televised chats — but Bill had ordered the room returned to its original use. As a consequence, Secret Service agents stood guard by the door. The tabletop electronic maps contained highly classified military information.
Bill stood at a flat-screen, high-definition display of the South, searching for Stephie’s unit. He found the glowing blue unit marker on a map of northern Alabama. The 41st Infantry Division lay directly in harm’s way, and for that he was responsible. He had put Stephie there when he had ordered all women drafted and put through batteries of tests. They were young, healthy, bright, and patriotic: the products of affluence, good nutrition, and athletic suburban lifestyles. Twenty percent would test into the infantry. After their country had afforded the young women every conceivable advantage and privilege — after it had cultivated and cherished its daughters — now it needed their lives in return.
Bill jammed his eyes shut at the horrible truth. It was a tragedy on an unimaginable scale. Yet that scale had a more measurable personal dimension.
Months earlier General Adam Cotler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had met with Bill behind closed doors in the Oval Office. He was the senior general in the army, and he had delivered the army’s official report. “Your daughter, sir, is five-foot seven and weighs one twenty-eight. Her health is excellent. She begins eight weeks of basic training tomorrow.”
Eight weeks later, Cotler had squeezed in a moment during Baker’s last trip to the Hawaiian Islands. The president had just given a rousing speech to the 3rd Marine Division, which was dug into the sand and volcanic ash. “She has completed the first half — basic infantry training,” Cotler had reported. “She was in the 82nd percentile overall.” Bill had nodded and stifled a smile. As Stephie was entering womanhood, the world was only now finding out what Bill already knew: Stephanie Roberts was an exceptional girl. “That’s the 82ndpercentile, Mr. President,” Cotler had explained, “of all recruits: women and men.”
Cotler’s report had continued. Bill couldn’t stop it. “She’s lost seven pounds in the Georgia summer heat and is down to one twenty-one. But that’s a strong one twenty-one.” The words had been spoken as softly as Cotler could manage. “She can carry a full load: rifle, ammo, pack, extra machine gun belts, grenades, all-threat missiles, and cluster mortars.”
“Wait!” Bill had interrupted. “Are you… you’re not saying, General, that… that Stephie is going to be in the infantry?”
Cotler had nodded with sincere compassion. “The young women these days, sir, they’re very athletic. You get an average eighteen-year-old soccer player, like your daughter, and put her up against a male Internet junkie, and you’d be amazed how favorably she compares.” He had looked at Baker. “Fair tests sometimes give you the wrong answer, sir. The top twenty percent, Mr. President, of the most mentally and physically tough women go infantry. Your daughter, sir, is in the ninety-eighth percentile of female recruits. She lost two points on upper-body strength. But on mental toughness and leadership — which comes from evaluations by DIs after sixteen weeks of watching her — she totally maxed the test. Number one in her basic training battalion of three hundred men and three hundred women.”
Bill had been helpless to avoid the slow-motion car wreck. Cotler had said in a low, guilty-sounding voice that they had offered Stephie her choice of assignments: communications, intelligence, military government, public affairs. She had requested — demanded, in fact — the infantry. Bill jammed his eyes shut again and rubbed his face.