Arc Light (95 page)

He thought he had time to ask her what the scent was when a stunning BOOM echoed through the canyons of the still city. Margaret jerked, and he felt her sag in his arms. “I love you,” he said in a voice loud enough to carry over blast after blast after blast that shook the air with great shock waves. He held her against him to keep her from falling, as glass shattered up and down the street and picture frames fell from their mantel. A large vase atop a pedestal in their foyer shattered against the marble floor as the explosions across the city outside sounded as if an enormous drum were being beaten all about them.

The last of the echoes died down, and all was quiet. Margaret twisted slightly in his arms and he realized that he was hurting her. He loosened his grip. “There he is!” someone yelled below, and the
two of them looked down at the soldiers resuming their chase through the park, one Guardsman first running the other way to retrieve his helmet before racing to catch his buddies. From around the city rose dozens of columns of black smoke. The first sound of a siren—a new siren, this one from a fire engine—rose up to their balcony as the air raid siren slowly wound down and fell silent.

Margaret looked up at him. Her face was paper-white, but her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered in the first of what were both sobs and giggling. Walter smiled and felt tears flood his own eyes. She laughed, and he let loose a long, side-splitting cackle. “They . . . they didn't work!” she exclaimed, the look on her face part incredulity, part joy at the miracle that had saved them. They laughed and laughed, the tears still flowing.

“We'd better go inside,” he said finally as he eyed the black smoke, which would contain radioactivity, he realized, even though the warheads had failed to explode. When he looked down, he saw Margaret, the smile again on her face, as her lips moved in prayer. He bowed his head and said his own thanks as the reporter on television exclaimed, “This just in to CNN Headquarters in Atlanta . . . !”

Lambert, Filipov, and Razov stood on the Kremlin wall staring out at the thousand fires that lit a line across Moscow, roughly marking the forward edge of the coalition advance. While arranging for transport to friendly lines, Lambert had asked the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division to allow Russian firefighters access to the blazing buildings, but either the fires or the sporadic fighting that still flared around the city were dangers deemed too great by the city's workers, and the fires raged undiminished. The wind licked also at the smaller flames around Red Square below, which was pockmarked with shell holes and dotted with blazing vehicles. The ferocious popping sound of a firefight erupted here and there as the two sides still rubbed against each other. Men on each side were still dying, Lambert knew, despite the cease-fire.

Lambert shivered as the cool wind cut right through the filthy, tattered summer suit he wore, and he looked over at the two Russians, comfortably warm in the wool overcoats they had donned.

Filipov returned Lambert's gaze. Lambert searched for words that might bridge the gap that had formed between them. Suddenly he had an idea. “I guess ‘that's the ball game'?” he said, watching
Filipov for any sign of reaction to the query.

“ ‘Ball game'?” Filipov snapped as he straightened to face Lambert square on. “You call that a game?” His arm swept out over the fires, sneering as he shook his head.

“It was just an expression, Pavel.” Lambert was confused. He had been convinced that Filipov was the source, Damocles. “Look, if you want,” Lambert said as he faced Filipov, “we can talk about this and see if there is anything left of our friendship, or we can just go our two ways. It's your call.”

Filipov stared at Lambert with hatred in his eyes. “It's this way with Americans every time, isn't it?” he asked, his eyes dropping to look Lambert up and down as his lips curled in animosity. “You come rolling in killing and destroying and then say, ‘Now it's time to be friends.' ” He shook his head again, barely containing his anger. “You used nerve gas on the Moscow Line,” he said nodding toward the southwest.
“Nerve gas
—on undefended Provisional Troops whose sole crime was defending their homes!”

“You used it first,” Lambert replied, growing angry at the insinuation that there was something criminal in the act.

“On troops who at least had a
chance”
Filipov shouted, “who had the equipment to defend themselves! Troops who were
invading
our country! We were acting out of desperation, but still we held back, didn't we?
Didn't we?
We disarmed our missiles before they were fired!”

“Do I have to remind you, Pavel, how this whole thing got . . . ?” Lambert began, but Filipov was shaking his head and turning angrily away, not interested in listening.

In Red Square below, the lights of a convoy—Russian Army BTRs leading and trailing three American M-1 tanks—rolled up the hill and into view.

“There's your ride,” Filipov said, his jaw clenched. “I'll go make arrangements for your departure.” Filipov turned to face Lambert.
“Proshchai,
Greg.”

Lambert stared back at him. No hand raised for a shake, no hint of any friendship remaining. “Proshchai,” Lambert thought,
not
“do svidaniya.”
He had used the word for “farewell” instead of the more common “until we meet again.”

“Proshchai,
Pavel.” Filipov strode off, revealing Razov who leaned in a relaxed manner over the wall and stared at the American tanks below. Lambert felt another chill as the wind whipped up, and he saw the wry smile on Razov's face.

Together they surveyed the amazing scene beneath the Kremlin walls.

“Once again Moscow burns,” Razov finally said. It wasn't a
bitter charge. It was simply a tired statement of fact, a historical reference.

“The last time was 1812?” Lambert asked, realizing the moment the words left his mouth that the subject was probably too sensitive, and his handling of it too cavalier.

“Napoleon,” Razov said, apparently taking no offense. “Yes, 1812.” He looked at Lambert. For an instant, Lambert thought he was going to continue the history lesson, make another historical analogy. After his victory, Napoleon had retreated from Moscow during winter and, in the bitter cold and under constant harassment from Russian troops, had lost his Grande Armée in the thick snows of Western Russia. “What a terrible century this has been,” Razov said instead.

Three world wars,
Lambert thought,
at the beginning, middle, and end of the century.
He nodded. “I'll be glad when it's over,” Lambert said. “A fresh start in a new century, without all the blood that stains this one.”

“A new millennium. A thousand years. How many armies have risen, how many soldiers have fallen, over the last thousand years?”

“Too many.”

Razov heaved a sigh, or possibly just breathed deeply the chilly air, Lambert could not tell which. “Unfortunately,” he said looking down at the American tanks whose commanders waited warily in their hatches, “this millennium is not quite over yet.” He looked back at Lambert, and again Lambert waited for what he thought might be something significant, some point that Razov seemed on the verge of making. “What did you want to be, Greg, when you grew up?”

“Pardon me?”

“When you were a boy, what did you want to be? Let me guess. President of the United States?”

Lambert stared back at him before shaking his head. “Most Valuable Player in the NBA.” Razov squinted and cocked his head, not understanding. “The National Basketball Association,” Lambert translated, and Razov looked up at Lambert's head, judging his height, and nodded, looking out again into the wind.

“I,” Razov said, looking down now at his gloved hands, “I wanted to be a soldier. A general.” Lambert waited again, but that was all he said, his eyes roaming now across the brightly burning skyline. Lambert's eyes dropped down to the tanks, whose commanders were speaking to a delegation of Russians headed by Filipov.

“Do you know the legend of Damocles?” Razov asked suddenly, and Lambert turned to stare at him for a moment in growing surprise. Razov returned his stare just long enough to confirm that his
question was no coincidence, and then continued. “Damocles was a Greek nobleman who frequently expressed his awe and envy at the power and apparent happiness of the king.” A wistful smile washed over his face. “One day, the king grew tired of his flattery and held a banquet. At the banquet, the king seated Damocles under a sword that was suspended from the ceiling by a single hair.” His eyes squinted as the wind blew cold rain into his and Lambert's faces. “The king wanted to demonstrate, you see, that the crown brought with it fears and worries as well as pleasures.”

Razov looked back down into the square, and Lambert followed his eyes. Streaking through the flickering light of flames from a Russian armored vehicle, Lambert could see the air thick with the precipitation that stung his face. He shivered and wrapped his arms tightly about himself. When he looked back at Razov, he saw that his face was turned up into the sky and that he inhaled the cold air and moisture deeply. Not returning Lambert's gaze, Razov said, “America lies at a southern latitude,” as if he were instructing a pupil in the fundamentals of geography. “The latitude of New York is about the same as that of Rome, if I am not mistaken. You know of our winters here, of course,” he said, turning to look at Lambert briefly before his eyes were drawn down to the crackling flame below.

“Ah!” Razov said, holding out his gloved hand. Lambert looked down at the flame and saw in the air the downward drift of what could only be snow. On the outstretched palm of Razov's gloved hand there gathered large, wet flakes.

“The first snow of September.” Lambert felt Razov's eyes. “The snows have come early this year,” he said slowly in his mellifluous voice as a gust of wind blew the snow from his hand and sent a new shiver down Lambert's spine.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

—A
RTHUR
W
ELLESLEY
,
D
UKE OF
W
ELLINGTON
Dispatch from the field
of Waterloo (June 1815)

David squeezed Melissa tightly to his chest as he smelled Matthew's head, inhaling the soft, fragrant baby hair with every breath. “I love you so much,” Melissa kept repeating as her arms encircled him and her face was buried against his camouflage blouse.

Standing just inside the front door, David marveled at how everything seemed the same. The nuclear war. The fight all the way to Moscow. The steady decline of the Russian civil situation and rise of the anarchists as the violence rose with every new snowfall. Six months. All of that in six months. Here, at home, everything seemed the way it was before for most. But it was not the same for some. Everything had changed for those who had lost someone in the war, and for those who feared for loved ones in the now burgeoning armed forces.

Melissa looked up, tears streaming down her face. Matthew cooed, and both looked at him and then back at each other in pride over what only parents could perceive as an accomplishment. David kissed his son's cheek.

There was a brief tap of a car horn from the driveway, and David kissed Matthew again and handed him to Melissa.

Melissa looked stricken. David hoisted the arctic white bag filled with heavy cold weather gear onto his shoulder and opened the door. The cabdriver got out to open the trunk.

“Can you call when you get there?” she asked, her voice shaking.

He started to tell her about the difficulties still involved in getting an international line from Moscow but said instead, “Sure. I'll call.”

“And you wrote down everything I need to know to get in touch with you?” she asked. “I can just write ‘Army Post Office—Russia?' ” David nodded as he turned to hug her, but she lowered her eyes and kept talking. “And . . . and it's only for a few more months,” she said, intentionally avoiding his gaze. David looked back at the cabdriver, who had obviously seen his uniform and bag with its helmet covered in snow-colored white cloth and was leaning against the hood patiently.

“They still say we'll withdraw completely from Western Russia,” she said as her eyes flitted across David's in question, but as he opened his mouth to speak she rushed on. “They won't transfer you to the occupation forces in Siberia,” she asked, and her voice broke in open fear, “or . . . or to the Chinese DMZ?”

“No, no,” David said, shaking his head. “We tore up the Trans-Siberian Railroad so bad it's easier to ship troops from here than to cross Russia from Europe.”

“And once the anarchist thing is under control in the cities . . . ?” she asked for the hundredth time.

“Then we'll withdraw in the west. A few more months,” David repeated the official policy with much greater certainty than he felt. “Honey, I've gotta go. My flight leaves in an hour.” He shifted the heavy bag to relieve the cramping in his arm and she looked distractedly at it. She had seen him pack. White Gore-Tex snowsuits, white boots, white body armor, everything white and heavily insulated. Even the new rifle stocks were white plastic. Everything was white, including the five chemical warfare suits in the bag that would deteriorate within hours in the subfreezing temperatures of the Eurasian plain. Melissa's eyes stared at the bag. She had seen him pack.

David again wrapped his arms around his wife and son, holding them close. “Two weeks, David,” she said, shaking her head. “Only two weeks at home. It's not fair.”