Stephie snorted in amusement and turned to John, only to find him standing there with his eyes closed praying. She was stunned. She’d never seen him pray. Or wear a cross, or a Star of David, or whatever. Stephie lowered her own head, but her eyes studied him. She was dying to know what he was praying for.
He looked up at her, and her lips mouthed, “Amen,” reflexively.
She turned to him. They stood close and swayed even closer to each other. But neither took that last step to close the gap. John glanced down the hill toward Animal, who like a tour guide was explaining to a gaggle of cherries the significance of what they were about to see.
“And voilà,” Animal presented, waving his arm through air over the open grave. “What you see there, kiddies, is victory. They’re starting to shoot themselves.”
One of the female cherries staggered, took a couple of steps, doubled over, and vomited. Stephie attributed the episode to a nervous stomach following hours of tense combat. But then two of the other replacements stumbled off and spilled the contents of their stomachs. It forced Stephie to realize just how much she had changed. How readily she had accepted the sights and smells of death.
“What the fuck?” Animal cursed disapprovingly. “It’s just a bunch of dead chinks!”
One of the female Chinese-American cherries stared back at him, then down at the piles of decaying teenagers. She turned and stomped back toward the supply depot.
“Hey, I’m not a racist!” Animal knew enough to shout after her. He then snickered sarcastically and muttered, “Bitch must be on the rag.” The other replacements did their best to force themselves to look at the atrocity as if it were one more obstacle along the course to becoming a veteran. “All right!” Animal shouted, having grown tired of the gawkers. “Show’s over! Get back to your posts!”
A fusillade of tank cannon rattled through the hills on the far side of the cleared junction of two state highways where the supply depot had been placed. Out of the overcast sky above swooped inbound American missiles, which paused to circle underneath the layer of clouds. When their cameras pinpointed the attacking Chinese tanks, they streaked to a spot directly overhead and scattered smaller submunitions in the air. The hundreds of tiny antitank missiles shot almost straight down just beyond a ridge a mile away. Their shower of pops must’ve killed dozens of tanks. The hundreds of missiles were designed to cooperate with each other in assigning targets to avoid duplication. The network of tiny computers only survived a few seconds. It was destroyed when the shaped charges burned through the vehicles’ thin top armor.
A Humvee skidded to a stop in the dirt at the edge of the depot. The backdrop of heavy fighting in the next valley over sent the brigade intell officers up the hill at a trot. One put on his gas mask and descended into the slight depression to search the bodies. Two others carried cameras and microwave gear, respectively, which they set up at the lip of the draw. The intell people all worked hurriedly — glancing repeatedly at the far ridge and not even greeting John and Stephie — as if they were petrified of being caught at the front.
When one man found the microwave carrier signal, the other began filming. He panned his small, handheld camera across the piles of bodies, zooming in for close-ups. John was called away to a company meeting by Ackerman. Stephie told Animal to round up his squad for a withdrawal back to their lines. When the camera lens swept over Stephie, she waved.
Amanda knocked on the shelter’s door and awakened Jim Hart, summoning him to the house. “What’s up?” he asked as he followed her through the cold darkness.
“There’s a lot of trouble at school,” she said with her head hanging.
“Like what kind of trouble?” Hart asked.
“They’re looking for who did it,” she explained. “And they’re actin’ real mean, too. Pissed off. Not like before.”
Those words could easily have described Amanda’s parents as well. “They’re lookin’ ever’where fer you!” the drunken father shouted as he paced the kitchen. The rest of the family and Hart sat at the breakfast table. “And I don’t blame ’em! Shit! Ya kilt three hun’erd of ’em like they was bugs!”
“That’s what he’s s’posed to do!” Jimmy objected.
“You hush up!” his father snapped. He turned back to Hart. “They got soldiers out beatin’ the bushes for you, boy. People been disappearin’ from their houses. They hung a man in front of the courthouse for shopliftin’ some food for his fam’ly. All on account of you!”
Hart nodded. He had gone on missions on each of the last two nights and had noted the increasing number of patrols. On the second night, he had also taken an inventory of his cache and noted that his supplies had dwindled significantly. At most he could go on half a dozen more missions. “All right,” Hart said, “I guess it’s time to go.”
His announcement created a stir. Jimmy exclaimed, “No!” Amanda looked beseechingly at her mother. The father took a triumphant draw from his flask.
The mother said, “Where to?”
“Back to friendly lines,” he replied. “Back to America.”
That announcement evoked an even more profound, if silent, response.
“We’re goin’ with you,” the gaunt woman said.
“What?” her husband shouted. “What in the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“This ain’t no place to raise these kids,” she said steadfastly.
“So you’re gonna take ’em halfway across the country — across the front lines — with a man the Chinese are on the lookout for?”
She nodded at Hart. “If he’ll have us.”
Her husband didn’t await his reply. “Well I ain’t goin’! I got me a better job now than before the war!”
“That’s ’cause you don’t gotta do nothin’ but show up,” his wife shot back. “Nowadays, you even come home from work drunk.”
“I put food on the table!”
“With Chinese money,” Amanda muttered.
Her father backhanded her face with a loud slap.
Hart had his hand around the man’s throat and slammed him back into the wall before he even thought about what he was doing. The man’s breath stank of alcohol. His eyes bulged wide from Hart’s grip. His wife held onto Hart’s arm and told him gently but insistently to let go. Amanda cried from her place at the table.
Hart leaned over to whisper in the man’s ear. “Touch her again, and I’ll kill you.” He let go. The man coughed, sagged, and rubbed the red outlines of four fingers imprinted on his unshaven neck. His gaze never returned to Hart as he staggered toward the living room unscrewing the top on his flask.
Amanda’s head lay on her crossed arms. Hart bent over and rested his hand lightly on her back. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She surprised him by bolting to her feet. He caught a glimpse of a tear-covered face before she threw both arms around him and sobbed. He patted her back softly and looked at Jimmy, who stared with clenched teeth toward the living room.
“I wish you’d beaten the crap outa him,” Jimmy said.
“Jimmy!” his mother corrected instinctively.
“Why not!” Jimmy replied. “He beats the crap outa me and Amanda! And you, too, Mom!”
When she just hung her head, Hart began to pry Amanda’s arms from his neck and to head for the living room. Amanda wouldn’t let him go. “No!” she begged. Her mother grabbed his arm and they both held him. He allowed himself to be restrained not by their grasps but by their pleas.