A Private Little War (60 page)

Carter ran. In the smoke and haze of gray and white, he made for the tent line by dead reckoning—working off an internal compass that he hoped was still functioning.

He’d seen Cat this morning. He’d talked to Cat. He’d watched Cat tear into its bed of rags by the door and, he hoped, that was where he would still find it. Loud noises never spooked the thing. Gunshots, airplane engines—it was accustomed to furious action and loud sounds. Carter told himself that Cat would still be there. That it
had
to still be there. He’d made a promise, and he wasn’t leaving this place without the one thing on it that he’d never had any urge to kill. The one thing worth saving.

One thousand yards. He ran blindly through the smoke and, with artillery shells bursting behind him, saw the dark outline of tents rising up before him.

“Counting off!” Ted bellowed over the clamor of voices and rasping of belts and crying of the wounded.

Fenn hung by the door, one foot still on the ramp.

“George!” someone yelled.

“He’s here. Carried him,” someone else answered.

“Raoul?”

“Didn’t make it.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Eddie.”

“Jack? Has anyone seen Hawker?”

“Carter,” Fenn said, not loudly enough for anyone to hear.

“Captain?”

Fenn turned and saw Ted standing close to him.

“Carter’s still out there,” he said.

“Then he’d better hurry,” said Ted.

“What about Eddie? I didn’t see him come aboard.”

“He died valiantly defending the FTL relay from the enemy,” Ted said with a shrug. “Brave man.”

“I’m sure he was,” said Fenn.

Vic pushed her way to the open door and shouted, “Pilot is getting nervous. There’s infantry headed this way. Where’s Kevin?”

“Coming,” said Fenn. “He had to do something.”

“Do what?” Vic still wore an engine blanket around her shoulders. She looked haunted by something worse than dying.

“I’m not sure if he knew.”

When she tried to bolt, Fenn caught her. When she screamed, he just pretended he couldn’t hear.

Carter came through the door of the tent like a spy—quietly and carefully, not wanting to spook Cat with sudden movement. He had a plan, if he could find the little monster. He snapped a blanket from his bed and kicked through Cat’s nest. He found a sock balled up on the floor, threw it into a corner, and shouted, “Get it, Cat! Kill it!”

Cat had been hiding under the cold potbelly stove. Carter saw only the streak of movement headed for the corner, but he leaped after it, holding the blanket out like a net. When he hit the dirt, he heard Cat howl and felt the thing scrambling in sudden blindness.

Carter scooped Cat into his arms, wadding up blankets around it, trying to protect it and himself at the same time. He tried to speak comfortingly but found that everything came out as a scream. Explosions made the earth move beneath him and made the tent’s poles bow above him. He existed now in a bubble of violence—the sweet candy center of a world going entirely to shit. He struggled to his feet, gathering up folds of blanket like trying to scoop water with his hands. Cat’s head popped out the top of the bundle and snapped at Carter’s throat.

“You’re coming home with me,” he said. “We’re going now.”

And then he ran—out of the tent, off in the direction of the infield where the transport had been. Over the ringing in his ears and the thudding of walking artillery shells, he heard big, vectored thrust engines roaring up a scale that seemed to have no crescendo. The pilot, he knew, was warming for lift, cycling up those massive alcohol-fueled engines, anticipating takeoff. He wondered if everyone else was aboard yet. It did not occur to him that they would not wait.

With Cat clutched tight to him like a baby, arms folded protectively around it as it squirmed, Carter retraced his steps. The smoke and dust swirled around him, seemed to acquire some organizing principle, then were suddenly sucked to tatters as Carter heard the gearshift thunk of engines being locked into place.

He ran faster, in a panic now. The engine noise plateaued in a scream like the world ending, and as the fog was torn from the ground, he saw the wreck that things had become.

The airstrips had been obliterated. The longhouse was twisted, burst in the middle, and it spilled broken, burning planes like toys left scattered by an inattentive giant’s child. One of the shipping containers that had been left in the infield was upended, stuck into the dirt like a dart and curled like a broken finger. The field house, final resting place of Eden Lucas, was burning. The mess—the Flyboy O Club—had been blown over, and the tables and gear now sat naked and tumbled in the grass. And above it all hung the sleek body of the dropship—like a black eagle sitting on the columns of its jet wash, a huge, dark god come to settle the messy affairs of its mischievous offspring.

“There!” Vic shouted. “He’s right there! Tell him to bring it down!”

Billy, still half in a daze of painkillers, jerked for the radio switch and slurred at the pilot to bring it around and down. Their last man had been spotted. In the open door, Fenn held on to Vic with one arm wrapped around her, his other hand holding the safety bar. Ted stood like an officiant behind them. Inside the compartment, the lights went red. The pilot had just enough time to say, “Hold on!” over the PA.

Carter didn’t hear the explosion that flattened him. It was that close. One instant he was looking up, raising one hand to Vic and Fenn and Ted standing by the still-open loading door and hanging ramp. The next, his vision had acquired an entirely new angle and a red haze of blood.

The transport was yawing. The shell hadn’t hit it, but it had impacted on the ground beside Carter and close enough that there was now something wrong with the starboard engine. It was blowing black smoke, having sucked too much shrapnel and dirt and fire into the intake. From his back, he watched it twisting in the sky—wounded but still airborne. He watched it bow to him, dipping a stubby wing, and rotate so that he could see Vic standing in the doorway, an engine blanket around her shoulders, whipped in the wash from the engines until it looked like wings spreading above and behind her. She reached out a hand for him as the pilot frantically tried to recover his craft and put on altitude.

And Carter, still clutching Cat to him inside the blanket, opened his mouth to say something—to say,
Stay
, to say,
Go,
to say,
Come back, please. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry.

All that came out was blood.

AFTER ACTION REPORT:

TAG 14-447

Report Key:
FINAL
744B4RC3-AA001-C7EP3365

Tracking Number: 33-447aaa

Attack Code: None

Originator Group: FBLE-NODISPERSE

Updated by Group: FALSE

SigAct:
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
,
EYES ONLY, MGMT
.

DO NOT COPY. DO NOT DISPERSE
.