Amerika (22 page)

“That’s a hell of a thing to throw at me. What if I don’t want the job on those terms?”

“Don’t overreact. She’s smart. Obviously she’s well connected. Use her.”

“Use her? She’s got her own agenda, her own ambitions. I don’t trust her.”

Andrei looked Peter full in the face. “And we don’t trust you,” he said. “To be precise, senior officials in the foreign ministry in Moscow do not trust you. You are not a party man. Thus you are uncontrollable, untrustworthy. Marion, on the other hand, is committed to ideology and to her own hunger for power. Those are qualities they understand in the Kremlin. They see you as not having enough at stake.”

“I have my country at stake,” Peter said stiffly. Andrei shrugged. “I have persuaded General Samanov, and he, somewhat against his better judgment, has persuaded the Kremlin that you are the right man. But he needs a guarantee, security.”

“What if I won’t do it?”

“Someone else will. Someone less capable. Less humane.”

“It would set your timetable back.”

“True. And that could be dangerous for your hope for America, as well as mine.”

Peter, still angry, still embittered by the games the Russians were playing, asked, “And what is your hope for America?”

Andrei’s reply was entirely sincere. “To salvage as much as possible,” he said.

Word of the SSU maneuvers had spread fast through the county. At dawn the courthouse square was deserted. Even Herb ’n Betty’s Cafe was closed, for the first time in memory.

At precisely 7:00
a.m.,
the main gate of the SSU barracks swung open and locked in place. Inside the compound, four black attack helicopters rose into the

air, then hovered above the road. Then, with a low rumble, the entire battalion came racing out toward the gates—attack vehicles, light tanks, snowmobiles, armored personnel carriers, all directed by Helmut Gurtman in his command vehicle. Just after clearing the gate the column split, the snowmobiles and all-terrain attack vehicles speeding across the fields, heading directly toward the town of Milford.

They raced through the courthouse square at forty miles an hour. Ward Milford, watching from the sheriffs office, felt himself tremble—their speed and sound were menacing, even to him.

The convoy roared past the Bradford house on the edge of town. Scott watched openmouthed. Amanda and Jackie stood in the doorway close together, their faces fearful

Moments later the speeding vehicles passed the Milford farm. Will ran out into the yard. “Sons of bitches,” he yelled, shaking his fist. Alethea, watching from an upstairs window, began to sob.

It was a gray, cloudy morning. The day’s first stirrings had begun at the exile camp: two men started the outdoor cook fires; a child entered one of the outdoor privies;
&
 woman hung wash on a line. Suddenly the roar filled the camp. People emerged from their tents and shacks to search the sky. With the stoicism of those who have been through catastrophes before, they reacted not with panic but only with quiet resignation.

Helmut took his place at the crest of the hill, east of the camp. He studied the scene with a kind of pleasure, a smile playing across his gaunt face. He held out his hand and a sergeant gave him a flare. He sent the flare soaring above the exile camp; it cast an eerie red glow, as in medieval paintings of hell.

Responding to the flare, a long fine of attack vehicles, each filled with armed troops, shot down the hill from the east and formed a phalanx facing the camp. The troops raced across the creek to the camp, weapons at the ready, awaiting their orders. The people began to back away from them, just as Helmut sent up a second Hare.

The flare still hung in the dark sky when the four helicopters came swooping in low from the west. They hovered over the camp, banked, and returned to circle, dip, and perform intricate maneuvers above the terrified Exiles. They dropped ever lower, until people Hopped on their bellies for safety. The raging wind from their blades had blown down many of the tents, and wet snow swirled crazily on the agitated ground. Children screamed but their cries could not be heard above the roar of the engines; their openmouthed faces were mute masks of terror.

Finally the helicopters took up positions at the four comers of the camp, hovering there like sentries. There was a moment’s respite. Mothers clutched their children as men searched for weapons and routes of escape.

Dieter Heinlander stood outside his trailer with his wife, gazing across the creek at the row of troops. “What are they going to do?” Gerta asked.

“Perhaps that is all,” Dieter said. “An exhibition, to scare us, to show their strength.”

Gerta asked in despair, “Have we not suffered enough?”

It is the nature of the beast, Dieter thought, and held her closer.

Then Helmut shot off the third flare and a wave of tanks roared over the hill from the west: a dozen great black monsters in a perfectly straight line, picking up speed as they moved down the slope toward camp.

The Exiles began to scream, running everywhere, but there was no escape. The tanks to the west, the line of armed men to the east, the hovering helicopters standing guard—all were ready to crush anyone who fled the camp.

A tank reached a tent high on the hill and demolished it with ease.

A young man ran from one tank into the path of another and was crushed.

A woman, running with a baby in her arms, tripped and fell. A tank ran over her leg and her child was thrown screaming to the ground.

Trailers were tumbled over and shacks crushed. An old man tried to beat on the side of a tank with a hammer and was thrown senseless to the ground. The troops across the creek began to fire into the air. One of the demolished shanties was ablaze and smoke filled the air. The noise was deafening: the wheeling and smashing. But another sound, more fearsome, resounded: the mounting cries of the Exiles.

When the tanks had completed their sweep, a moment’s peace settled over the devastated camp. Families found one another, and comfort was given to the wounded. Then the tanks wheeled about and made a second rim through the camp. This time some of the Exiles just sank to the ground and did not resist.

To Helmut, watching from the hillside, the attack had a marvelous symmetry. The Exiles saw chaos, but from his vantage point he saw only perfection: two clean, regimented lines that did not waver or break. His forces had not gone there to kill, only to execute this elegant maneuver, and if people died, it was because they had panicked or resisted.

He fired yet another flare, and within minutes his force had withdrawn, as abruptly as it came, leaving behind the dead and dying of the broken camp. Helmut climbed into his vehicle and, without a glance at the devastation below, drove away across the fields toward the barracks.

Peter was having breakfast on a bright, glassed-in porch that overlooked the rolling hills of northern Virginia. Three horses gracefully grazed in the distance on the emerald carpet of green. As he finished his coffee, an attractive woman in a Soviet army uniform, a member of General Samanov’s staff, entered and smiled at him.

“On your call to Milford, sir. There seems to be a problem. We cannot get through.”

“What’s the matter?”

She shrugged. She spoke with a fight accent and was a bit plump but very pretty. “Lines down?” she asked. “It is common.”

Peter poured more coffee. He decided he’d try to reach home later. It couldn’t be that hard.

As the convoy roared back to the barracks, past the Milford and Bradford homes, through the deserted courthouse square, hundreds of townspeople wondered what it had left in its wake.

Alethea was in her kitchen piling together all the clean sheets she could find; she had heard the cries from over the hill, the gunshots, the raging helicopters, and she had no illusions about the fate of the exile camp.

Will Milford appeared in the doorway. He had his parka on. “I’m going out,” he said. “Nobody locks me in my own house all day.”

Alethea crossed the room, still clutching the pile of sheets, and
kis
sed him, “They’re squatters, Dad,” she said.

He scowled at her. “Just ’cause I don’t want ’em on my land don’t mean I’d let ’em die like dogs. Let’s go!”

He grabbed the first-aid box from the table and marched out the door.

Tears welled in Alethea’s eyes. She quickly followed.

“The red phone was busy and the other one was just dead,” Amanda said.

“Didn’t he say he’d call?” Jackie asked.

Amanda went to the kitchen window and looked over the fields in the direction of the exile camp. “He said he’d call when he got the chance.”

Scott asked, “What do you think they did?”

“God, I don’t know,” Amanda cried. “I wish your father was home.”

Suddenly she knew she must do something. She walked to the closet and grabbed her parka and boots.

“Mom!” Jackie cried.

Amanda sat down and started tugging at one of the boots. “You two stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Mom, you can’t go out there,” Jackie said. “Scott?”

“Come on, Mom. They’ll be checking the roads.”

“At least wait till you talk to Dad,” Jackie urged.

Amanda stood up, zipping her parka. “I trust you to stay here until I get home,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

She kissed Jackie and turned to kiss Scott. “I hate to ask a sixteen-year-old kid to kiss his mother ...”

He walked over to her and gave her a quick kiss.

Then she hurried out the door, before she changed her

mind.

At the exile camp, Alan Drummond had set up a field hospital in what remained of the bam that had been used as a community center. Its floor was littered with the dead and dying, and outside the carnage seemed to extend forever.

Several fires still smoldered, sending ghostly wisps of smoke across the ruined landscape. Bodies lay unmoved. Mothers searched the debris for their children as children cried helplessly for lost parents. One man, Ms head bloody, crawled slowly in an ever-widening circle. An unofficial system of triage had emerged, as the dying were left to die and those with a chance of life were canied to Alan Drummond’s hopelessly overworked medical center.

Will Milford was helping some of the survivors search through the wrecked dwellings for bodies or whatever valuables could be salvaged. Alethea was helping Alan, cutting her sheets into bandages and applying them to bleeding men and women. All she knew was what she had learned in a first-aid course, years before, but her efforts were better than notMng. She thought she must be in shock. She could not believe that human beings, even Helmut Gurtman, had caused this senseless slaughter; it was easier to think of it as a natural disaster, like a flood or tornado.

And yet she knew that Helmut had done it, out of hate, out of a need for revenge, out of some reservoir of malice that would never be totally understood.

The others did not see Amanda arrive at the camp. She walked in alone and soon her face mirrored the devastation she saw. She had been here before, and done what good she could, but she was not prepared for this horror, so far beyond her ability to correct. She saw the crushed body of a woman she recognized, recoiled in shock, then began digging through the wreckage of a leveled shack. Tearing at the debris, she uncovered the mangled body of a child. Her face blooded, her features distorted by the final moments of terror, the lifeless girl was not immediately recognizable. But after a moment Amanda realized that it was Dierdre, the girl who had come to her yard that morning.

Amanda held the child close, as if her warmth could give life, and then she began to stagger toward the hospital.

Alethea saw her coming and ran to meet her. She reached for the child, then slowly drew back her hand.

“I’ve got her,” Amanda whispered.

Alethea looked from the child’s still face to Amanda’s haunted eyes. “I’ll . . . I’ll get someone,” she said.

She returned in a moment with Alan Drummond. His face was weary, his white coat soaked with blood. When he spoke, it was with an odd formality. “Thank you for coming, Amanda.”

“Hie baby . . . she needs ...”

He shook his head; he too was in shock. It did not keep him from working, but it kept him from thinking of anything but the patient before him. “She needs nothing, Amanda. She’s gone.” He reached out and touched Amanda’s cheek.

Amanda turned and started up the hill, the dead baby clutched in her arms.

“You’d better stop her,” Alan said. “She’s in shock.”

Alethea looked at him. She thought she loved this man, for his goodness, and yet she rejected his advice. “Why?” she said, more to herself than to Alan. “Why
the hell not take the corpse to town? Let the townspeople have a dose of reality.” She ran into their battered little hospital. “Come on,” she cried. “Anybody who can walk. Get up. Help the others. We’ll go to town.” She ran through the camp, summoning others. “If you’re not hurt, help those who are,” she told them. “We’ve got to go where people can help us. We can’t stay here and die.”

She came to Dieter, sitting on the ground beside his crushed trailer, the body of his dead wife nearby, covered by a blanket. “Come on,” she said. “Please.” He shook his head slowly. “No. I’ll stay.”