Dale Brown - Dale Brown's Dreamland 04 - Piranha(and Jim DeFelice)(2003) (30 page)

 
          
The
young woman didn’t answer.

 
          
“Restraints,”
said Danny. Liu nodded and went back inside the tent.

 
          
“CPP,”
said a Marine officer who’d joined the semicircle. “Commie.”

 
          
“No.
she’s a Muslim,” said Stoner. “Ask her.”

 
          
“What
difference does that make?” said the Marine.

 
          
Stoner
said nothing, but came over and lowered himself into a squat next to Breanna.
Danny, standing behind the Filipino and still holding her shirt, stooped
slightly. A light drizzle had started to fall; the rain was warm, like the
sprinkle from a shower.

 
          
“What
are you doing on this island?” asked Stoner. “You don’t come from here.”

 
          
The
young woman spit at him, but the spook didn’t react.

 
          
“We’re
not your friends, but we’re not interested in hurting you either,” he said.
“Tell us why you’re here. Otherwise we’ll turn you over to the Army.”

 
          
She
said nothing. They stared at each other a few seconds more; then Stoner rose.

 
          
“She’s
a guerrilla,” said Captain Peterson. “You’ll have to give her over to Western
Command, the Filipino Army. Her people were probably planning a raid.”

 
          
“She’s
not CPP, and she wasn’t planning a raid,” said Stoner.

 
          
“Who
the fuck are you?” Peterson said.

 
          
Stoner
gave the Marine a half smile but didn’t answer his question. He turned to Zen
instead—he was the ranking officer, but even so, Zen thought it odd—and told
him. “The people in that settlement are probably all related; came here from
one of the other islands. Luzon or someplace. They’ll have a horror story.” Stoner
then turned abruptly and walked away.

 
          
“Whether
she’s a Commie or not,” said Peterson, “you’re going to have to turn her over
to her government.”

 
          
“She’s
my prisoner,” said Danny. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her yet.”

 
          
Peterson
took a long breath obviously designed to underline what he was going to say
next. “Captain, you have to follow proper procedures. And if there’s a village
that’s threatening our post, then—”

 
          
“We’ll
survey the village to see if it’s a threat,” said Danny. “In the meantime, this
woman may have to stand charges.”

 
          
“For
grabbing some scissors?” said Bree.

 
          
Danny
glared at her.

 
          
“I
want to talk to Colonel Bastian,” said Danny. He turned to Liu. “Put her in the
tent. Keep her hands cuffed. Behind her.”

 
          
Stoner
walked along the perimeter of the airstrip, letting the light rain soak his
face and clothes. He knew he wanted it to purge his anger. He also knew it
wouldn’t work, not completely.

 
          
Desire
was the cause of all suffering. He stared into the droplets of rain, gazing out
at the ocean. The furling waves had no desire; they were just drop of water
pushed by physics.

 
          
Like
him.

 
          
Not
like him. He hated Woods—he hated all of the Navy people. And the Marines.
Especially the Marines.

 
          
Irrationally,
ridiculously. He had been a SEAL, and yet he hated the Navy. His assignments
with the Company made use of his Navy expertise. Yet he hated the Navy. With no
reason, beyond a hundred thousand insults and injuries, all to his ego, all
meaningless in the great flow of life.

 
          
He
would never be a true Buddhist, since he could not denounce is ego. Maybe he
didn’t want to be a true Buddhist—which, ironically, would make him closer to
being one. The
koan
of it was a beautiful, humorous
circle.

 
          
Stoner
held his fingers together, his arms down at his sides, absorbing the rain. He
actually liked Freah for not wanting to turn the idiot girl over to the
Filipino Army. He liked all the Dreamland people—Zen Stockard especially. The
major had just sat there, listening, not forming a judgment. The guy knew shit
every second he was awake, but he didn’t bitch about it.

 
          
And
his wife, his beautiful wife …

 
          
Stoner
let the idea float out toward the water. Desire was the cause of all suffering,
the Buddha taught, and this was still the most difficult lesson to reconcile.

 
          
Danny
knew from Bison he wouldn’t find Colonel Bastian in the trailer, but he went
there first anyway. Then he walked very deliberately—to the tent that had been
designated as Colonel Bastian’s quarters. He knew he wouldn’t find the colonel
there either. So by the time he went to look for him where he had known all
along he would be—Iowa, getting ready to takeoff—it was too late. The
Megafortress’s four engines rumbled and flared as Danny watched from twenty or
thirty yards away; slowly being towed toward the runway, preparing to take off.

 
          
“Hey,
Cap,” said Powder as Danny watched the Megafortress put her nose into the wind.
“Getting wet, huh?”

 
          
“Yeah,”
said Danny. If he wanted, he could use his smart helmet to talk to the colonel
right now, ask him what to do. But he didn’t.

 
          
“So
what’s with the girl?” asked Powder. “Tried to shoot your head off?”

 
          
“Something
like that.”

 
          
“Like
that girl is Bosnia, huh?”

 
          
“Yeah,”
said Danny, who hadn’t even thought about that incident.

 
          
Oh,
he realized.

 
          
Oh!

 
          
“Spooky
replay, huh?”

 
          
Danny
put his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the rain. Powder had been with
him in Bosnia.

 
          
“You
know, I hadn’t even thought about it,” he told the sergeant. “I didn’t even
remember that.”

 
          
“Shit.”

 
          
“Yeah,”
Danny laughed.

 
          
“Really,
Cap? You blocked the whole sucker out?”

 
          
More
or less. It had probably poked at him when he realized the person he’d grabbed
was a woman, but he hadn’t really remembered, or thought about it, maybe
because he was too focused on doing his job. Or maybe the memory was just too
much.

 
          
The
other woman was a Muslim too.

 
          
“Shit,”
said Danny.

 
          
“Captain?”

 
          
“Let’s
go get some coffee,” he told Powder. “Assuming these Navy guys know how to make
it.”

 
          
He’d
been in Italy as part of a Special Tactics Squadron, and through a series of
related and unrelated developments, wound up being assigned with two of his men
to accompany a UN negotiating team. The UN people were to meet with government
officials at a police station in an obscure hillside town. The day before
Danny, Powder, and another STS sergeant named Dave
Chafetz
went into the town with two plainclothes Yugoslavian policemen to familiarize
themselves with the area. The policemen were scared shitless about something,
even though they were in ostensibly friendly territory.

 
          
Scouting
the ingress and egress routes went quickly. The police station was located near
the town’s biggest intersection, which, despite the
Yug’s
assurance, was highly problematic. Danny and his team members took mental notes
of several evacuation points, including the police station roof. They planned
to have a pair of Blackhawks and some scout helicopters no more than two
minutes away, and a ground unit with armored vehicles within striking distance.
With Danny taking pains not to tip off his assessments to his Yugoslav escorts,
it took about four hours to scout the whole place. Danny’s efforts were more
professional than practical; it wouldn’t take a genius to know roughly where an
emergency rendezvous or pickup would be planned.

 
          
The
policemen kept asking nervously if he’d seen enough, hinting almost to the
point of insistence that it was time for them to return to their UN base.
Finally, Powder suggested they look at the building next to the police station;
it was a grocery-type store, though from the window and door facing the street,
the shelves looked pretty bare.

 
          
The
policemen argued it was time to leave. Danny exchanged glances with his two
men, then told the
Yugs
they were going in.

 
          
“Fine,”
said one of the policemen. “We’ll wait out here.”

 
          
More
than likely, they were just being paranoid, but you could never tell. The
building had to be inspected and it had to be inspected now.

 
          
Danny
and his men were dressed in fatigues with armored vests, but weren’t carrying
rifles. They could and would call on air support if things
got
crazy, probably cancel the meeting tomorrow, and set the process back
considerably.

 
          
He
left his Beretta in its holster, trying to play it as innocently as possible.
The door squeaked on its jamb as he pushed inside, and a bell at the corner of
the frame rang, but there was no one in sight. He walked in, boots creaking
against the old floorboards—there was a basement; they’d have to investigate.

 
          
Danny
had memorized a set of cumbersome phrases in Serbo-Croatian, meant more to show
he was friendly than to really communicate. He rehearsed one—“
Vrlo
mi je
drago
što
vas
vidim
,” or roughly,
“pleased to meet you”—as he walked toward a glass display counter about three
quarters of the way back in the room. The display was empty, as were the
shelves nearby. The place had a slightly sweet smell to it, the sort of scent
that might come from cooking cabbage. The faint odor mixed with something more
like dirt or mud.

 
          
Something
moved on his right. He spun, his hands down near his belt and gun.

 
          
A
figure came from behind a tattered curtain, a thin shadow. He thought it was a
boy at first, then realized it was a girl, a young woman really. Maybe
five-one, barely ninety pounds. Her hair was very short, unusual for the area.

 
          
“
Vrlo
mi” he started, faltering almost immediately with the
pronunciation. He had memorized a phrase for “are you the owner?”—“
da
li
ste
sopstvenik
?” which was intended to apply to the taxi
drivers. He tried to remember it, but before he could, the girl held her hands
in front of her, then backed away.

 
          
“I’m
not going to hurt you,” he said, putting up his own hand.

 
          
The
girl stopped. The store was unlit, making it difficult to see her face well,
but Danny thought she had understood what he said.

 
          
“We’re
just Americans. Yanks,” he told her. “United States. U.S. We just, uh, looking
around. Do you have anything to sell?”

 
          
It
was lame, but it was all he could think of. Powder, who was a few feet behind
him, said they were looking for coffee.