Horgen looked through the opening to the jungle. She sang softly, “Let me be your sidetrack till your mainline lover comes . . .”
Abbado unfastened one bandolier and started checking the pockets. A fungus had begun to grow on the fabric, but the stinger magazines seemed all right. He wondered what he ought to do with the rocket whose warhead he’d expended to blow the cockpit open. It probably wasn’t worth the weight of carrying it, but he hated to throw away anything of possible use when the margin was so thin.
Sergeant Gabrilovitch was crying silently.
“Hey Gabe,” Abbado said while he continued to examine his ammo with the appearance of total concentration. “How’s that shoulder of yours doing?”
“I can’t do it,” Gabrilovitch said. “I’m just going to die. I know it, I’m going to die.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Caldwell said. Her powerknife whirred as she sliced off a thick vine stem. “I had a dream as real as could be before Placid Rose. You remember Placid Rose? The place smelled like a bad egg when we landed, but I guess my nose got used to it.”
“The Spooks had packed up and gone home before we got there, right?” Abbado said. Gabe wasn’t the first striker to have a bad moment. This was no damn time for it, of course; but tomorrow was likely to be worse. “The place stank like hell, though.”
“Yeah, but I was sure, I mean sure, I was buying the farm,” Caldwell said. “Say, anybody want to try this with me? I set it for beans and franks.”
Gabrilovitch began crying openly. “I’m poisoned,” he wailed. “The major knows I’ll die if I don’t get back to the column. I need a doctor.”
Abbado’s lips pursed as if he was sucking a lemon. Gabe wasn’t talking, it was the fear.
“Abbado?” Caius Blohm asked over a personal channel instead of using intercom or calling through the opening from outside. “Want somebody to spell me on guard? I’ll talk to him. Over.”
“Hell, Gabe,” Abbado said, speaking loudly enough that he was sure Blohm could hear him. “I never thought you could come with us. We’re going to have enough trouble with the wogs not to worry about our walking wounded. I figured you’d wait here till we handled things and could come back for you.”
Gabe was no damn good to them now, that Abbado could see. The problem wasn’t the shoulder wound: a stinger only requires one hand to fire. The jungle had beat Sergeant Gabrilovitch down to his stumps. He might come out of it once things settled down—maybe even if he just got back to the column and was drugged into a night’s sleep, something Abbado didn’t dare do out here in the boonies.
Everybody’s got a redline. It was creepy to be around somebody who’d gone past his, though. Especially if you weren’t sure that you hadn’t done the same thing yourself and just didn’t recognize it.
“I think I better head back at daylight, Abbado,” Gabrilovitch said. He hugged himself with his good arm and hunched over as if he had a belly wound.
“You’ll be on your own, you know,” Abbado warned. “I can’t spare somebody to back you up.”
And I especially can’t spare Blohm, no matter how good buddies the two of you are.
“I’ll be okay,” Gabrilovitch said with his eyes closed. “I’ll get back to the column and the docs ‘ll fix me up.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figure too,” Abbado lied. “Say Caldwell? Give me a bite of your beanie-weenies, will you? Maybe I’ll try a batch myself.”
The tank melted around Meyer in the howling darkness. She was dying alone. She would be alone forever. She tried to shout, but her throat was filled with molten steel.
Striker Meyer. Esther.
She came awake flailing her arms. He tried to hold her wrists, but he wasn’t nearly strong enough to control her for the first moments. Meyer had his throat in both hands before she returned to full awareness. A rush of white fire prickled across her skin.
She released Matthew Lock and slumped back onto the plastic. The night lived with the sounds of tight-packed sleepers. A few children cried openly. Adult sobs were more likely to be muffled. Snoring, sighing; the creak of plastic as someone rolled over or got up to walk to one of the pit latrines near the perimeter.