Arc Light (63 page)

Standing up under the spreaders of the camo netting he could see men crawling all over the metal monsters up and down the line. And this was only one of his four companies, fourteen of his fifty-eight tanks. It seemed an insurmountable force, unstoppable to the Russians, uncontrollable to Chandler. How was he going to keep it together in the heat of battle, keep one company from running wild or getting left behind or shooting up friendly troops? He looked down at the massive flat deck to his tank's turret and wished he could content himself with fighting just this one vehicle. He knew he could handle that, given time to master it.

He climbed up onto the turret behind the huge .50-caliber M-2 heavy machine gun, the “Ma Deuce.” The thumb-size bullets it spit out would pound through the cylinder block of a heavy truck engine at two miles. Everyone thought the sole purpose of a tank was the main gun, but it was the five-foot-long black machine gun in front of the commander's hatch that the infantry feared.

“Sixty-six is ready to roll, sir!” shouted the slender enlisted man from the ground at the next tank over. He sweated at a large clawlike crowbar with which he was attempting to lever together the treads of the neighboring tank to insert the pin that held the last link together. He handed the job off to another soldier and walked up to the side of the tank, wiping his hands and then stopping to salute. “Spec 4 Jefferson, sir. I'm your loader.”

Chandler returned his salute. “She looks like she's in fine shape.”

“Yes, sir. She's good to go.”

“Hey”—they heard a grunting shout—“could you . . . ?”

Jefferson looked back at the man who strained unsuccessfully at the bar and then up at Chandler. “We gonna kick some mother-fuckin' ass with this baby, sir,” he said, lovingly patting the armored fender, “if you don't mind me sayin'.” He waved a sloppy salute before returning to his tread. From down the line, Chandler saw sparks from a welding torch flying out onto the churned-up brown dirt and green grass, huge ruts torn into the soft soil with every move of the tanks' treads. The activity level was high. Everybody was working, but there was still so much to be done.

In human chains men hoisted the heavy rounds of the main gun up to others. Thick black hoses snaked up onto the rear decks for fueling, tiny orange flags sunk into the ground around the curling hoses to ward off potentially disastrous accidents by inattentive drivers.

Chandler's eyes wandered across the rolling hills outside the
netting. About a quarter of a mile away he could see his next stop: the brigade supply point. The army logistics people had solved the problem of the wider-gauged rails in Eastern Europe, a relic of strategic planning intentionally engineered by the Soviets, by simply leasing up practically all of the aging rolling stock in the former Warsaw Pact countries. The result was what had become known as the “Rotterdam Corridor,” a supply chain from the U.S. through Rotterdam—the old NATO-designated point of entry that had been reluctantly left open by the former allies—that fed a rail grid across Germany to the east. At every rail siding for miles around there grew mounds of wooden or cardboard crates with black stenciling in cryptic English letters and numbers.

Chandler shook his head. When they had first designated the supply point at which he looked a few days before, they had chosen a spot next to a copse of trees so that the camo netting would form a natural extension of the dark greenery to the inattentive enemy eye. Looking at it now he chuckled. The mound of crates had grown to a mountain, only haphazardly covered by netting. And the logistics people had lost control. It was easier, he had been told by one brigade supply officer, to special-order something from the States than to look through the stacks of crates that forklifts and cranes built with every train's arrival. It would be weeks, the exhausted man had said, before they even got the crates already on hand open to see what was inside, and more crates arrived every day.

He looked back down at his tank. The open commander's and loader's hatches beckoned. Chandler swung his feet up onto the turret and down into the black hole. Probing for a foothold, he held himself up over the opening with hands on either side of the hatch. Finally he found the commander's seat and stood there for a moment. Lying just below him the thick tube of the main gun pointed the way—low, straight, powerful. Jefferson and the others had hand-painted “Suck on this” on the base of the barrel. Chandler's machine gun sat swiveled to the right side of his hatch, the loader's smaller M-60 7.62-mm machine gun swiveled symmetrically to his side of the turret on Chandler's left. Chandler dropped down into the vehicle.

He didn't get far. Halfway in his equipment jammed painfully into his kidneys as his canteen and M-16 ammo pouches and miscellaneous gear got stuck on the hatch.
Shit!
he thought, quickly checking the men around his tank. A team of men labored as they ran the thick brush back out of the barrel across from him, stripped to the waist and too hot and too tired to notice. Chandler took his belt off and sank on in, sitting in darkness with the heavy pistol belt in his hand. It was hot, dark, and quiet. The cabin was roomier than
it looked from outside. He had no idea how to turn the crew compartment's lights on, so he removed his flashlight from his belt.

The huge breech of the main gun dominated the center of the cabin to his left and below him as he sat high in the commander's perch. There was very little else lining the antiseptic white walls of the compartment. He found the gunner's position below and in front of his own, the padded sights and gun controls a duplicate of the set just in front of him. He put the flashlight back onto his belt and in the dim light filtering through the netting and hatch above he lightly grasped the joystick that would turn the turret and raise, lower, and fire the main gun. He pressed his face against the sight's pads as he sat on his seat just under the hatch. The screen was dark, but the pad fit snugly around his eyes just over his nose.

A screech, the sound filling his armored cocoon, tore past with a whine, and he sat there in the dark, his heart skipping a beat. The jet engines were gone in an instant as the camo netting above his hatch gently rose and fell in the wash of air they trailed. In the quiet, Chandler heard shouts and then
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop
in a rapid-fire chain. A second later he heard the harsh horn of the chemical weapons detector.

“Gas-gas-gas!” someone shouted and Chandler took one deep breath and began to fumble with the bag containing his mask and suit. He raced against a silent count as he held his breath, banging his elbows and knees and head onto the compartment's walls as he struggled into his gear. This time he won, shivering in cold dread as he climbed awkwardly back out of the hatch, his breath hissing inside his mask and its “no-fog” lenses fogging immediately. A small clump of hooded men gathered in what, through the fogging lenses, looked like a writhing green mound just below the abandoned rammer still jutting from the tank barrel opposite Chandler's. Climbing out onto the turret, Chandler saw their charcoal-suit-covered arms and backs jerking with frantic effort, atropine injectors being thrust down into the object of their attention from all sides. Chandler caught a glimpse of the soldier over whom they struggled: wearing only his mask, the man's bare torso was pasty white and he convulsed with jerks and spasms that seemed machinelike, inhuman.

POSTWAR
VCRs! the sign read, and Melissa wheeled Matthew, crumpled down in the umbrella stroller sound asleep, over to the
window of the electronics store at the Galleria,
SHIPMENT WAS INBOUND FROM JAPAN, NO
EMP
DAMAGE
, ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED!

“
TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS
,” she read out loud, incredulous, “
BUY ANY
TV
—GET A GAS MASK FOR
FREE! another sign read. A shiver ran down her spine. The news reports were sketchy—the government wasn't talking—but the news media's speculation was running wild.
What's the world coming to?
she thought as she looked down at her sleeping newborn. Melissa had hoped the trip out would help her, but she felt no better.

She walked on. The mall was nearly deserted, and very few stores were open. She passed an accessories store, the smell of fine leather wafting out into the air-conditioned walkway of the second level. “You looking for work?” the proprietor said, walking out around the counter with a rag with which she had been dusting.

Melissa smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“Oh,” the woman said, huffing and looking down at Matthew, smiling sadly. She shook her head and looked around the empty mall. “I just don't know how much longer I can stay open.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, with all these new regulations—federal taxes, state taxes, city taxes . . . I normally do the books and the banking, and now changing over to the new taxes is a full-time job but I can't ever get out of the store.”

Melissa noticed the
HELP WANTED
sign posted in her window. “Why?”

“Because everybody skipped out on me. One girl came to work two days after the war—the nuclear attack—because it was a Friday, pay day, but none of the others even called in.” She hung her head and shrugged. “It's not exactly like business has been booming though.”

Melissa looked down the row of stores ahead, metal gates closed across their glass fronts. One, an Oriental rug store, had a
ONE DAY ONLY GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE
! banner pasted diagonally across the plate glass window. The now closed store appeared to be full of rugs still. “Where is everybody?” Melissa asked. “I thought it would be packed on a Sunday.”

“They've headed for the hills. Weekends are the worst. It seems like everybody who has a car just packs up and heads out of town.”

“Why?”

The woman chuckled. “Because of the Russians,” she said as if the question made no sense. “You know, in case it happens on a weekend, they won't be in the city.”

“In case what. . . ?” Melissa began to ask, but stopped when she realized the answer.

“You haven't gotten out much, have you, dear?”

“No. I've watched TV almost nonstop. Mainly just the national news, though. My husband is in the army somewhere.”

“Oh, dear,” the shop owner said, putting her hand on Melissa's arm and looking down at their child. “I guess there are more important things to worry about. I'm sorry for being so self-centered.”

Melissa shook her head and smiled, looking into the store at a handbag.

“You see something you like?”

“Yes,” she said, wheeling Matthew in and walking up to the display. Louis Vuitton. She felt guilty even contemplating it, but this was her first treat since the war, the first time she had gotten up, dressed, put makeup on, and gone out just for entertainment.

“That's a lovely purse,” the shopkeeper said. “They're very popular. Or were, anyway.” She handed Melissa the bag. Melissa looked up at the woman, and behind her at the empty Galleria. She had hoped to see and be with people. The woman was the only person she had met.

“I'll take it.”

“Oh, wonderful,” she said, rounding the counter to the cash register as Melissa fumbled with her wallet. Melissa put a credit card on the glass counter, and the woman looked up but did not reach for it. She filled her lungs with air to speak, but faltered, finally saying, “Oh, I'm sorry.” She shook her head. “No credit cards,” she said and smiled meekly, pointing at another sign in the window. “I really should put that where you can see it better, but I thought everybody knew.” Melissa pulled the gold card back awkwardly. “You see, it's not me, dear. So many of the banks that were issuing those things have been closed, plus the computers that do the authorizations work so slowly now they're almost impossible to use. Plus my bank told me no credit cards.”

Melissa smiled and nodded, putting away the card. “Well, I'm sorry. I don't have that much cash.”

“Of course not.” The woman smiled a kindly, pitying smile at Melissa and her baby.

“I've got a job,” Melissa said. “I mean, I'm on maternity leave, but I'm a lawyer with a downtown firm. And so is my husband, although he's on vacation pay for another couple of weeks and then goes, you know, unpaid.”

The woman smiled and walked around to take a closer look at Matthew. “Well, you've got a beautiful baby. Is it a boy?”

“Yes. Matthew.”

“If you're on maternity leave, and you don't have to be in L.A., if you don't mind my asking, what are you doing here?”

“I . . . I live here.”

“Well, sure, but . . . ” She glanced down at Matthew and then back up at Melissa. She smiled. “Of course.”

Melissa turned to go, her mind a fog of confused thoughts. Everybody else has fled. What should she do? Go back on the road like before? It had been so difficult.

“Excuse me,” the woman said from behind, and when Melissa turned she saw the shopkeeper removing the security tag on the handbag. “Why don't you take this?”

“Oh, no,” Melissa said, shaking her head as the woman held the bag out to her. “I couldn't.”

“Oh, go ahead.”

“But I couldn't!”

“Why not? I don't know who I'm kidding. The only way this war is going to end soon is if we blow each other up, and if it doesn't end by next week I'll miss my lease payment. They shut you down at twelve oh one these days—come in and change the locks in the middle of the night. Anyway, either way, I figure this handbag is a goner.” She laughed nervously, and hung the bag on the stroller handle.

“Thank you,” Melissa said, and she rolled Matthew on out.

“Take care of that little one,” the woman called. “He's our future.” Melissa smiled as she watched the woman return lovingly to her dusting of the bags and belts that hung in the empty little store.