I looked down the long stretch of bland grey tunnel, and listened as the silence echoed in my ears. The cave twisted into the bowel of the mountain like a wormhole burrowed into the core of a rotten apple. Feeling some sympathy with a cockroach about to be squashed, I shouldered my gear, stuck an emergency cyalume stick in my shirt pocket, and started down the jagged slope.
Chapter Four
Ever notice how assholes just have to show off, even when they know better? I haven't yet met an exception to that rule—and I figure I know myself as well as I'm going to by now.
Most of the time, nothing serious happens when some idiot shows his true colors. People nearby mutter, "What an asshole" and that's an end to it. (Of course, kids kill themselves all the time pulling stupid stunts like falling off hotel balconies while they're drunk, and driving off bridges at a hundred miles per hour, and doing enough crack cocaine to give the entire Rams front line a buzz. Dumb schmucks.)
But for those of us who survive puberty, being an asshole is generally limited to minor idiocies like proving that your dick won't fit through a toilet-paper tube, or ordering the meal in French just to prove to her that you can pronounce it (whether you can or not). If we all stayed as stupid as we are when we're young, the species wouldn't continue breeding very long. Despite the reputation most infantrymen get, I know perfectly well that women are one hell of a lot smarter than men. (I can prove it—act like you did when you were seventeen, and see how many second dates you get.)
Unfortunately, showing off—adult asshole style—generally means that the damned fool involved is getting careless.
And when men get careless, the gods take advantage.
After nearly three years on Pershing duty, I knew better than to show off in front of an L-T. But some things are like trying not to scratch an itch. And besides, it was something I was really good at; and inordinately proud of; and who would have figured that something so innocent would prove to be the catalyst that led to my hiking solo through the middle of a Norwegian mountain, looking for a god, just so I could strangle him with my bare hands?
What hurt worst was the fact that damned near everything which had happened had been avoidable; but I'd never been one to avoid anything I could go out of my way to step into. (Witness my presence in this cave... .)
It had begun, innocently enough, when Sergeant Pritchard stomped into the barracks mess room. He stamped his feet, shook snow off his clothes, and began to unpeel.
"Gentlemen," he nodded, carefully avoiding looking at us.
It occurred to me that he looked uncomfortable, and not because of the weather. I'd been in the Army long enough to know that a sergeant with a problem is like the common cold—he doesn't get over it; he gives it to somebody else. And there was nobody here but us... .
Pritchard snagged a coffee mug and poured himself a cup. He sighed and drank again, letting the brew warm him up slowly.
"What's up?" Wally asked suspiciously. Bright boy, Wallenstein...
Pritchard cleared his throat self-consciously. "You gentlemen are scheduled for qualifying next week."
"Boom, rat-tat-tat!"
"Hot damn, we get to shoot next week!"
"Brrrup, brrupp-upp!"
Maybe I was just more paranoid than the rest of the guys, but instead of contributing to the general nonsense, I found myself waiting for the other shoe. Pritchard waited for the silly-season furor to die down before continuing.
"I don't have to tell you the political situation we've got here. Brass doesn't want any incidents with unqualified troopies, so we'll have one hundred percent qualification from this outfit—and I mean no exceptions. I don't care how long it takes some of you to do it."
Without exception, we glanced at Butler's half-closed eyes. He was struggling to stay awake, at least while the sergeant was in the room.
"We pull out at oh-nine-hundred Monday, after your shift, so be ready. Well, snowbunnies, carry on. I'll be expecting a good qualification round from all of you."
He pulled on his snow gear again and disappeared back into the blizzard. Probably had a warm truck waiting for him down at the gate.
He was no sooner gone than the discussion broke out.
"What'll we do about Butler?" Crater wanted to know.
"Get him off the damn Quaaludes for starters," Chuck replied.
"We'll have to nursemaid him, all right," Gary said. "I hate to admit it, but brass does have a point. We've got to be sure all of us qualify. With the number of incidents up, we've got to have guard personnel on the towers who can use their weapons."
"Damn straight," I nodded. "And anyone who can't qualify should have his ass kicked right out of security clearance and back into rock-painting duty, or wherever it is they find some of these losers."
I noticed that Gary was carefully avoiding my eye, and I knew what was coming.
"You know we're too short-shifted to do that," he said quietly.
"Dammit, Vernon! It's our lives on the line out there. If a guy can't cut it after a fair chance to qualify, he doesn't need to be out there bumbling around in the dark. And you know blessed well those qualifications are so simple a chimpanzee could do them."
"That's not fair, and you know it." Gary's tone was calm, assured. Sometimes that knack of his, never losing his temper in an argument, really drove me crazy. "If a guy comes from the city, never has a chance to practice, maybe never even sees a rifle, how is he going to compete with those of us who grew up with them? We need all the qualified personnel we can get, and if a man can't qualify right away, he ought to have another chance—because we might need him to give us a chance out there."
He pointed into the blizzard outside. I glared at him. It was an old argument, one of the rare points we didn't agree on. He was all for fixing the screw-ups, while I felt screw-ups shouldn't be allowed to happen in the first place. For me, it was perfection or nothing, because anything less could make you very dead when the brown stuff hit the fan blades. We weren't going to solve this today—and from the unease on everyone else's faces, our argument wasn't helping already bad morale.
"Good of the unit, huh?" I said finally. "You know what I think, and I know what you think, so we'll just let it go at that, okay, Vernon?"
He relaxed and nodded, and I felt relief sweep through the rest of the room. It made me very uneasy to realize that Gary Vernon and I were holding the morale of A-Shift together practically by ourselves. The situation could get worse real fast if our next patrol together wasn't quite as lucky as the other night's had been.
Monday's qualifications were held on one of the German Army's "million-mark" rifle ranges, which they rented out to the Americans on an as-needed basis. Snow covered the ground under a weak winter sun. At least the high protective dirt berms kept the worst of the wind off us. We had to shoot a combination course of bull's-eye targets at one hundred meters, and pop-up targets at two and three hundred meters. What made the morning's shoot interesting was that we had ridden two hours in deuce-and-a-halves to get here, directly after coming off of twenty-four hours of guard. Most of us hadn't had more than about four hours of sleep. I'd have been surprised if guys like Butler could even have seen the targets, never mind hit them.
"Man, this snow is a real pain," Crater complained, lying prone in the freezing stuff.
"Just shoot, Private." Lieutenant Donaldson frowned.
I got a good sight picture on my first target and was just beginning to squeeze the trigger when I heard the L-T's voice above me: "Your head's too far back, Barnes. Get it down there where it belongs; see all you can through that rear sight aperture."