Of all the gutless wonders, greenhorn newbies, dopers, and fools who joined the Army and somehow got themselves assigned to Pershing, only a pitiful few were competent to handle the job of guarding nuclear missiles. Among those few were guys like "Wally" Wallenstein, and Charles "Chuck" Norris, and Crater, who, as far as I knew, had never been called anything else (although I'd heard it rumored that his real name was Haversham).
They'd been among my closest friends.
But head-and-shoulders above the whole crowd—in everyone's opinion—was Gary Vernon. The best of the best. An all-around nice guy, who'd lend you beer money when you were short, and watch your back on patrol. Which was good, since he was generally acknowledged to be the luckiest man alive. And since his luck seemed to rub off on whoever pulled patrols with him, everybody wanted to be teamed with him.
Gary always laughed it off, attributed it to a pact he'd made with Odin. Whatever the cause, it seemed to work. And the closer I got to discharge, the happier I was that Sergeant Brown and Lieutenant Donaldson teamed us up a lot. We worked well together, and nothing got past us.
Being teamed with Gary got a whole lot more attractive once the brass sent down their no-ammo-on-patrol policy. The official explanation sounded like an updated version of Mom's "You'll shoot your eye out" excuse for never buying BB guns for Christmas—and made just about as much sense. We were sitting on several megatons of nuclear warheads, and incidents with terrorist groups running "training missions" in our area had been up at least three hundred percent over the previous three months. Yet brass decides out of the blue we ought to go sneaking around in the dark with empty rifles? Go figure.
It wasn't our fault some goddamn fool of a civilian had gotten himself shot on one of the other sites. The way we had it figured, he'd probably been point scout, anyway, and got caught. But brass up at HQ had had a royal cow, so we got stuck with the cow patties. The tower guards got live ammo; just not us poor, dumb fools assigned to patrol the perimeter.
Being GIs, we found ways around it, with nobody the wiser, and none of us ending up casualties. We had the situation well in hand—until that inevitable, bitter night under a full moon when I turned to Gary and whispered, "You got any spares?"
He shot me an incredulous look. "You don't?"
"No—Wilson borrowed 'em last night. He's running scared. You know, his second kid's due in a couple of weeks, and I felt sorry for him. Besides, I knew you always carry."
Gary snorted, visibly disgusted. His breath steamed.
"Great. I dumped mine back into my gear while you were in the can. Brunowski almost caught me when he poked his head in the door. I knew you always carry."
I wasn't sure which of us was more dismayed. Neither of us had any illegal personal ammo; which meant we now carried what amounted to clumsy plastic-handled clubs.
"Well," Gary muttered philosophically, "I guess it's you and me and the gods tonight, good buddy."
As we started down the access road that led up toward the main missile site, I growled morosely, "Odin help us if we run into trouble."
"Odin, huh?" Gary's ugly face broke into a lopsided grin. "The fledgling pagan speaks."
"You're a good one to talk about pagans, Vernon."
He laughed. "Yeah. Well . . ."
The little gold Thor's hammer I wore beneath my shirt moved on its chain as I shrugged. "I wish more of those old stories had survived. It's really great stuff. Whoring, drinking, fighting off the bad guys against all odds—our kind of guys."
"Kind of thought you might like that," he laughed.
I grinned; then we headed into the woodline and fell silent. It hadn't snowed yet. The iron-hard ground was littered with leaf debris, all of it tinder-dry. It was tough to move without making enough noise to wake the dead. Thanks to the full moon, ghostly white light fell in odd bright patches. The forest floor was a nightmare of shadows and light. Where moonlight cut across low-hanging branches, hard black lines ended abruptly in a tangle of silver limbs, confusing the eyes and distorting depth perception. Patches of shapeless grey where low-hanging pine boughs brushed the ground made it hard to see what was pine tree and what might be a foreign object under it.
With this lighting, we could run across anything from a wild boar to a Soviet Spetznaz platoon, and not even see it. Of course, realistically speaking, we'd probably either run into ragheads or nothing at all. I figured it was just a matter of time before one of the groups hit a nuke site. They didn't even need to carry off any warheads—just blowing up a Pershing or three would generate the desired effect, and be much easier.
I could see the headlines now—U.S. N<MS>UCLEAR M<MS>ISSILE E<MS>XPLODES. Ought to do wonders for our political and military presence in Europe. Not that any of the little incidents we'd had with terrorists over the past few months had made it into the press. They hadn't. Not one. And we soldier-types were expected to keep the world safe for democracy—without bullets? I shuddered. Stupid peacetime army . . .
One of these nights I was going to get backed into a tight enough jam to make a pact with Odin myself, and see where it got me. All I'd ever gotten from Jehovah was a great big, fat silence, leaving me to figure out ways to save my own rear end. That was the trouble with gods—
Gary froze.
Instinctively, I did, too.
He stood slightly ahead of me in a deep patch of shadow. I was near its edge, and had just been about to move out of it. I held my breath and scanned the moonlit woods, although I knew what I'd see even before I spotted them a heartbeat later.
And there they were.
I swallowed: half a dozen ragheads in black, hugging the shadows under the trees, their AKs held at ready.
And I'd almost stepped out into that bright little patch of moonlight, straight into their line of sight. . . .
We went to ground, flat on our bellies under rustling pine branches, and watched them slip through the deep gloom between the trees. They were headed away from the site, from the direction of Tower Three. A scouting party that meant trouble later? Or part of a team sent to eliminate the patrol?
—Us.
I clutched my empty M-16 in sweaty hands and listened to Gary's breathing and the ragheads' careful footsteps. I was surprised they hadn't heard us. Of course, I hadn't heard them either, and I knew better than to spend patrol time woolgathering, dammit.
The ragheads stopped within spitting distance and began to whisper among themselves. It sounded to me like an argument. The evident leader said something really foul-sounding. The man who'd raised an objection backed down. Then, just as they were turning to go, a brittle, snapping sound loud as gunfire cracked through the darkness from almost next to my ear.
Sweat popped out all over my belly and thighs. The ragheads whirled and stared straight at us. Rifle barrels swung around into a deadly line aimed less than a foot above our backs.
I willed the bright moonlight to blind them. . . .
Another loud snap came from near my right ear. What the hell was it? I didn't dare look—didn't even dare breathe.
At a whispered command, the last terrorist in line started toward us, his features lost in the smear of camouflage lampblack rubbed into his skin. His rifle—it looked like a Rumanian copy of the Soviet AK-47—glinted in the cold moonlight. I watched the terrorist's boots walk straight toward my face. Saw him begin to stoop down to peer under our tree . . .
I swore solemnly that if I got out of this patrol alive, I'd blood a good steel knife and leave it under an oak tree for Odin.
It seemed to work for Gary.
Abruptly a small hedgehog, about the size of a well-grown box turtle, waddled out from beside me into the patch of moonlight. The terrorist stopped and grinned, teeth gleaming whitely for an instant. Then he raised his rifle and aimed for center of mass on the spiny little body. An angry hiss came from the trees. The would-be shooter snarled something in reply. The hedgehog reacted to the voices and snapped into a tightly curled ball, spines bristling.
Another whispered argument broke out. The leader strode over and grabbed his man by the arm. He gestured angrily toward the missile site, then off toward the little village about two klicks away through the forest. The subordinate shrugged and kicked viciously at the hedgehog. It squealed and curled up tighter than ever, skidding to a pathetic stop a few inches from our noses.
My knuckles went white gripping the useless rifle. If it'd been loaded, I wouldn't even have stopped to think about it. Hurting a hedgehog brought unthinkably bad luck. Not that I was overly superstitious—
The two terrorists rejoined their group, and the three of us—hedgehog, Gary, and I—lay frozen in place, waiting. If they searched the immediate vicinity for good measure . . . Fighting it out under halfway decent odds was one thing. Given three-to-one their favor, Gary probably would've charged in and let Odin sort it out. But getting shot to pieces because all you had was an empty tube with a flimsy plastic stock on one end was not my idea of a good time. Even a Berserker would've prayed they just turned around and walked away.
For once, something came out the way I wanted. The black-clad Palestinians—or whoever they were—disappeared into the darkness. Gary and I waited until the sound of their footsteps had died completely away; then I rested my forehead on my arm and started breathing again. I tried not to shiver too loudly in case the sound carried.
Then, noticing for the first time the wonderful, Christmasy smell of the pine tree, I squeezed Gary's arm in silent thanks. I nodded when he made a motion with his thumb. We crawled cautiously out from under the pine tree. The hedgehog still hadn't moved. Poor little guy . . .
Then, like a swimmer coming up from a long dive, I took a deep breath and let it out again silently.
Looked like I owed Odin a knife.
And Gary my life.