“I have nothing I want to say. Thank you. I didn’t expect a medal, but I’m very honored. Flattered. Humbled, really.”
“You don’t want to apologize for anything?”
“For getting off on the wrong foot?”
“For not showing respect.”
Dog stiffened. He didn’t have anything to apologize for.
Samson was just playing bs games, throwing his weight around.
“If the general feels an apology is warranted for anything,”
he said coldly, “then I apologize.”
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Samson scowled, pressing his lips together and furling his eyebrows out.
“I was wondering when you’d want me to run down the main projects and personnel with you,” said Dog, trying to move the conversation past its sticking point. “I can make myself available at any—”
“That won’t be necessary,” snapped Samson, stalking back up the ramp toward the exit.
GENERAL SAMSON WAS SO ANGRY, HIS LOWER LIP STARTED
to tremble by the time he reached his waiting SUV. He’d offered the idiot the chance to apologize, to start fresh, and the jerk had all but spat in his face.
A cowboy, out of control, with no respect for anyone. From first to last.
Last, as far as Samson was concerned. Medal of Honor or not, the sooner Bastian was gone from Dreamland, the better.
Northwestern Moldova,
near the Romania border
23 January 1998
0155
MARK STONER HAD HEARD SEVERAL EXPLOSIONS IN HIS
life, but none quite like this.
The grenade the gunman had thrown blew up with the sound a pumpkin makes when it hits the pavement. Part of the explosive packed beneath the hard metal shell failed to explode, whether because of manufacturing defects or poor storage during the fifty-some years since. But more than enough explosive did ignite to shred the metal canister and send splinters hurtling through the air in every direction, red hot metal spat from a dragon’s mouth.
Stoner caught a small piece in his right side. There was no pain at first, just a light flick as if someone had tapped him 84
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there with a pen or a ruler. And then it began to burn. This was a fire on the inside of his skin, a flame that stayed in place rather than spreading, and was all the more intense because of it. His body twisted away from the pain. He couldn’t breathe for a second. He lost his grip on his rifle.
The man who’d thrown the grenade came down the hill toward him, his flashlight waving over the ground.
Stoner reached for his gun but couldn’t find it. He grabbed to the left, reached farther, found the barrel and began pulling it over. The flashlight’s beam moved closer to him. He slid his hand along the rifle, trying to reach the trigger, but it was too late—the guerrilla’s light hit him.
An assault rifle barked—a long, sustained burst, a thick run of death.
But the bullets didn’t hit Stoner. They hadn’t been aimed at him. They struck the man with the flashlight, cutting a dotted line across his back. The holes the bullets made were so close together, he was nearly severed in two.
A minute later the woman he’d come to meet stood over him, AK-47 in hand.
“You are the man who answered the message,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Where did they hit you?”
He rolled over and showed her.
She knelt down. “It’s shrapnel only. It has to be taken out.
The wound can be cauterized.”
“Yeah.” He unsheathed his knife. “Do it.”
“It will hurt very much.”
“No shit.”
She frowned. “There is blood all over this knife.”
“I killed one of them near the road.”
“Well then, let us get someplace where I can clean it and start a fire.”
“No one’s going to be looking for them?” Stoner asked as she helped him up.
“They may. It will be best to do this quickly.”
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* * *
HER NAME WAS SORINA VIORICA. SHE WAS ROMANIAN. SHE
called herself a freedom fighter. Stoner tried not to scoff.
A good idea, considering she had his knife in her hands and was poking out the grenade shard as she spoke.
“This government has done very little for the people, the poor people,” she insisted, slipping the tip of the knife into his side as they sat on the floor of the house. She’d started a small fire nearby, and smoke curled in his nose. “The people are left to fend like animals as the fat get fatter. Hold still.
You must hold still.”
The tip of knife blade struck something underneath the metal, and a sharp pain ran through his abdomen, all the way to his fingers and toes. He felt faint.
“Out,” she said, turning to the fire. “Now for the part that will hurt.”
Stoner pulled his T-shirt up into his mouth and bit down, waiting as Sorina Viorica heated the knife in the fire. It was an old method of dealing with a wound—cauterizing it, basically burning the flesh so it would no longer bleed or spread an infection.
Effective, but extremely painful.
Stoner dug his fingers into his face as the pain wracked his body. His heart pumped fiercely; his head felt as if it would explode. His whole body writhed in agony. He swam in it, awash in pain.
“Are you still with me?” she asked.
“Oh yeah.” The words were a relief. He pushed up.
“I have to wrap it.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She stood up and took off the heavy coat she was wearing, removed a thick shirt and then stripped off a T-shirt. She had another beneath it, but he could see the outline of her breasts, loose against her body.
“This is just to keep dirt away from it,” she said as she wrapped it around his torso. “There shouldn’t be further problems. But you’ll have to have it seen to.”
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“Yeah.”
Stoner took a long, deep breath, trying to pull his thoughts back to the present, trying to push his mind past the pain.
“We should go,” he told her. “This isn’t safe.”
Sorina looked up suddenly, as if she’d heard something outside. “Yes,” she told him.
“I brought two men with me, as guides over the border.
They’re with the man who showed me here.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Stoner got up slowly and followed her out of the cottage.
He was in a kind of shock, his mind pushed back behind a wall of thick foam. It had separated itself from the rest of his body, from some, though not all, of the pain. He felt like he had a hole in his side; though the grenade fragment was gone, it felt as if it was still there, and on fire. He told himself he was lucky—absurdly lucky—to be hit by only a splinter and not the full force of the grenade, to be nabbed lightly in a part of his body where he could still walk, still use his arms, his head, his eyes. He told himself he was lucky and that he had to use that luck—that if he didn’t move, he was a dead man.
Stoner went out into the night like an animal, his only instinct survival. He followed Sorina Viorica down the opposite side of the hill, holding his gun in his left hand, breathing hard. His midsection seemed to be twisting away from the rest of his body, a tourniquet that squeezed itself.
The pain lessened ever so slightly and began to feel … not good, but familiar in a way that told him he could survive it.
When they reached a small stream, they turned left, back toward the road. After a hundred yards or so, Sorina stopped.
“I’m sorry I’m moving so fast. Catch your breath.”
“I’m OK,” said Stoner, though he was thankful for the rest.
“They were after me, not you,” she said as he leaned back against the tree. “They have been trying to kill me for several days.”
“Who are they?”
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“Russians. Are you ready?”
“Sure.”
Stoner pushed off from the tree. Russians. He wanted to know more, suspected that they were to blame for the deaths, thought for sure they were pulling the strings. But he couldn’t ask the questions he needed to ask. He had to walk first, had to get back over the border, away.