Hero (13 page)

It was clear that he'd forgotten all the steps last night. The courses hadn't covered what he was supposed to do about the interesting way he ached in unusual places, or the light scratches across his chest, just under the left nipple.

He tried to work some feeling back into his shoulder; the pins-and-needles sensation worsened.

His one-piece was hanging up in the shower, vaguely damp; his commo unit, helmet and pistol hung neatly on the towel rack. His weapons training was still good: he had ejected and checked the magazine, which was full, and pulled back the slide to examine the chamber, which was empty, before he was fully aware of what he was doing.

Rubbing at his arm and shoulder, he looked at himself in the mirror. He didn't look any different, except that his low-gee acne had finally cleared up.

He washed his hands and face with floral soap. How had this all happened? What you were supposed to do when you were with a prostitute was wrap your valuables in your pants and stash the pants someplace safe—ideally, under the center of the mattress. But it was clear that he hadn't done any of that.

He reached into the back pocket of his one-piece and pulled out his wallet, slapping it once against his thigh before he broke the moisture seal.

Strange, it still contained some of the squarish local currency. Less than he'd started the evening out with, but. . . .

He pulled out the commo unit and slipped the phone over his head, switching it from Standby to On, bringing it up to his lips and puffing for the Admin Freak.

"Kelev One One Two Five," he whispered. "Checking in."

"Mouth Eleven. You're due at Ramorino . . . just less than oh-three hours, Five," a businesslike voice answered immediately, too crisply. "Morning formation—briefing at nine hundred hours. Is there a problem?"

"I . . . don't think so." He thought of asking them to call Tetsuo and Benyamin, but what was he going to say? Hey, brothers, I've locked myself in the bathroom and there's a strange woman out in the other room. Not the kind of situation you wanted to discuss over the air.

The replying voice was too casual as it said, "Say again."

Shit. He just asked me if there's a problem.

Forgetting alert responses wasn't a good way to begin the day.

"Kelev One One Two Five reporting situation nominal," Ari said carefully, and then, with equal care, shut up. The words were important, and so was the delivery.

Translation: I am not being held with a gun to my head, and you don't have to bring the regiment to full alert while you're calling the commanding general, who then gets to decide whether or not to come get me, and with what.

"Mouth Eleven to Kelev One One Two Five. Confirm, please."

The response to that was silence. One word, one grunt, anything—and the voice on the other end would casually accept his word, dismiss him, and then push the panic button.

"Fair enough," the voice of Admin finally said. "You're due in one seven two minutes."

"Understood. Kelev One One Two Five out." He snapped his commo shut.

"Hello?" sounded from the other room.

Great. What was he supposed to do now?

It's amazing what they don't teach you in school, he thought.

He set the equipment down, wrapped a towel around his waist and opened the door.

Her name was Elena D'Ancona, and she was black-haired and lovely, and a few thousand hours short of the twenty standard years he claimed to be, and no, she didn't do this often at all—as she had told him last night, before they broke open the bottle of grappa—she was a sottotenente in the II Distacamento de la Fedeltà, assigned to Maggiore Zuchelli's detachment, and while last night was fine and all, and she wasn't complaining, they had both had a bit too much grappa and it was all over kind of quick and was the Metzadan Tenente in any particular rush?

Tenente? Oh.

"I'm not exactly a lieutenant," he said. "I'm not even approximately a lieutenant. My brothers had me put the bars on so we could get into the officer's bar."

Her face clouded over for a moment, but then she laughed. "You look just like . . . a puppy who has made a mess on the floor. You know," she said, "in the Casalingpaesesercito we like to hang sergeants for impersonating an officer."

"In Metzada, we like to promote privates. If they do it right." He couldn't help adding, "And there's been some talk of me getting a promotion."
About the time that the Messiah comes, that is.
"And Zuchelli? Why are you working for that asshole?"

"Oh, the little major isn't so bad." She smiled. "When you do what you're told, we call it obeying orders in the Distacamento Fedeltà, and the Casalingpaesesercito." A sharp fingernail traced down his side. "What do you call it?"

He laughed. "We call it the same thing."

"Why are we wasting time?" she stretched, and smiled.

"I—I've got to be back in three hours," he said, indecently pleased that this time his voice didn't break. "Plenty of time."

She walked him to the shuttle, close, their hips almost touching, but that was all. Metzadan soldiers—be they captains or privates—didn't hold hands in public. Neither did officers in II Distacamento de la Fedeltà. Bad for the image.

Which helped to explain things, he decided. Fraternization between officers and enlisted was forbidden here—it was part of the local caste system—and while the Distacamento de la Fedeltà was an officer corps, it was not
the
officer corps: regular Casalingpaesesercito officers wouldn't want to associate with the overgrown Inspector General corps that the DF had long been.

At the shuttle, he looked long and hard into her eyes, and then patted his chest pocket, where he'd written down her phone code. "I'll call when I can. If I can, I'll see you tonight."

She nodded briefly, and then smiled. "Luck," she said. She touched two fingers lightly to her own, full lips.

And then she turned and was gone in the crowd.

He stumbled aboard and found a seat, and then fell into it, trying to reconstruct last night. He could vaguely dredge up a memory of a first round of some fiery clear liquor, and he had a distant image of Benyamin bellowing a Casa captain to attention, but for the life of him he couldn't remember meeting Elena, or what he'd said to her, or how he had ended up in her bed.

There was a tap on his shoulder; he turned to see Benyamin's ugly face split in an almost indecent leer. "Have a good time last night?"

Ari nodded. "Yeah."
I can't remember it, but I guess I did.

"Line
up and
shut
up." Peled bellowed, not using commo when ordinary shouting could serve. "HQ there, First Bat over there, then Second and Third.
Move
it,
move
it,
move
it."

Ari shuffled into his place on the tarmac between Benyamin and David Laskov, only two rows back from the front.

Diagonally opposite, a Casa brigade was forming up at right angles to the regiment. They were all clean and shiny, their brass gleaming, their boots mirror-bright, the creases on their utilities knife-sharp. Boots pounding on the concrete, they fell into their places like little toy soldiers.

"If I hear a snicker," Galil muttered from two rows up, at the far corner of the platoon's formation, "I'm going to be real pissed. Keep it to yourselves, people."

"Still, though, don't they look pretty?" somebody murmured.

"That they do." Galil snickered.

Metzadans didn't much practice formal assembly formation. It took a few minutes and more than a few oaths to get the two thousand or so men assembled into lines and files.

The Casas had set up a reviewing stand at a forty-five degree angle to both sets of troops, although what that was all about escaped Ari. Passing in review wasn't one of the things that had been emphasized in school.

Dov Ginsberg stood in front of his seat on the reviewing stand, to one side of Shimon, eyeing the rest of the universe skeptically. Ari could make out Colonel Chiabrera's stout form. The grizzled man next to him appeared to be a general. Probably not Colletta, though—Ari wasn't sure, but he thought he could see only three stars on the general's shoulders.

"Attention to orders," Peled said. He was grim-faced, and his voice was too level, too controlled.

"Stand easy, everyone. This is going to take a few minutes." Shimon Bar-El took Peled's place in front of the microphone. "As you all know, there's been a change of plans," he said, not waiting for Chiabrera's translation for the Casas. "We're moving out in five days to a forward staging area. There's an operation, code-named Triumphant, starting; we're attached to Headquarters, Casalingpaesercito Second Division. Most of you have seen, if not formally met, Tenente Colonello Sergio Chiabrera, formerly the Generale's aide. He's going to be our liaison officer. Standing next to him is Generale Carlo Castiglione, adjutant of Second Division. His boss—our boss—will be Generale d'Armata Giovanni Prezzolini.

"Now, as to what Second Divisione Headquarters is going to have us doing," Bar-El said, smiling, "you don't need to know much. I can tell you that starting tomorrow most of us are going to be doing a solid review of urban assault and street clearing. Sappers are going to be working on occupied demolition. I want the heavy weapons people not only up on local equipment, but local maps and communications protocols, within two days."

"Hey, Benyamin," David Laskov whispered, "you kick in any roofs lately?"

"Shut up." Benyamin sounded more distracted than irritated.

"Now, there's been a lot of shuffling of personnel," Bar-El went on. "I'd like to report that that's all done, but it's not. Effective immediately, Mordecai Peled's relieved of First Battalion and as deputy regimental commander; he stays on as chief of staff. It's my understanding that he's going to put in for retirement when we return home."

Peled's face could have been carved from granite.

Shimon continued: "In case the lesson is lost on anybody, here's the short version. It doesn't matter who you are, or how long you've been my friend, or how well you've served Metzada in the past: when you get a green light on a target, you burn it."

"Bet you Ebi gets the deputy spot," Laskov whispered, probably to Benyamin.

"Five on Sidney," Benyamin whispered back.

"Done."

Shimon Bar-El glanced down at the flimsy in his hands. "Next: Natan Horowitz gets regimental S3. Moshe Kaplan takes over as First Bat commander; he's brevetted to full colonel. Ezer Laskov becomes his deputy, but he's going to have to hold down regimental S2 as well. Sidney Rabinowitz is the new deputy regimental commander, but he's going to have plenty to do with running Third Bat, so let's be sure to keep me alive."

"Pay me," Laskov whispered.

"Shit."

"Aharon Harari is the deputy commander of Second Bat; Benny Elon gets the Third Bat deputy slot." Shimon Bar-El folded the flimsy neatly in thirds, then stuffed it into a hip pocket.

"With all of the reshuffling, all the commo units are going to have to be reprogrammed. Turn them into your platoon leaders at the end of assembly—Sher and his people will have them reprogrammed by evening. Full test tomorrow."

He pursed his lips, then shrugged. "There's one more thing, and it's not a pleasant one. I'd rather not have to do this in public, but if I'm going to embarrass my chief of staff, then I'd best do this publicly, too.

"Brothers and cousins, there's one among us who doesn't measure up. I—no,
we
don't have any use for him. Bring him out."

Ohmigod.
Ari's mouth went dry. Shimon was going to march him out in front of the regiment and exile him.

Ari gripped the muzzle of his rifle in his right hand. Better he should pull the charging bolt, stick the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

"Stop squirming, asshole. Just stand straight," Benyamin hissed.

Two privates marched Yitzhak Slepak out from First Bat. Slepak moved slowly, jerkily, as though drugged. He wasn't carrying a rifle.

That should be me. Maybe they'll do me next.

No. He hadn't been disarmed, not the way Slepak was. They were going to let Ari get away with it. Ari's stomach twisted itself into a knot. He wanted to vomit, to run, to shout, to do something.

But he just stood there.

Shimon's right hand clenched for a moment before he reached out and tugged at Slepak's uniform, jerking the chain-circled Shield of David patch from Slepak's chest. The threads hadn't been weakened; it took four hard jerks.

Shimon Bar-El shook his head slowly. "I wish there was something I could say to you. Something that would make you understand," he said gently, his voice picked up and magnified into an accusing shout, "but there isn't any point, not anymore. You let us down. We can't afford you." He pursed his lips, then shook his head again. "It's like triage, boy. A medician has to decide who can wait for treatment, who needs to be treated right now, and who is dead, no matter what he does. You're dead weight, and our people can't afford to carry dead weight."

Tears dripped down Slepak's smooth young face, and snot ran from his nose, but he didn't say anything.

"Goodbye, whoever you are," Shimon Bar-El said. "You're no brother or cousin of mine."

Two Casa privates hustled Slepak into a waiting jeep; it raised itself up on its rubber skirt and headed away in a roar of dust and wind.

"What's going to happen to him?" Ari whispered.

Benyamin shrugged microscopically. "I figure the Casas'll put him in the brig tonight, and then offer him some sort of job tomorrow, let him work his way up to some sort of local citizenship. Truth to tell, our training methods are a lot better than what's local; he's worth something to them—as a clerk, if nothing else."

Ari nodded.

I deserve it just as much as he did. I froze like he did.

"Why him and not me?" he whispered.

"Because you're lucky. You've got me and Tetsuo watching out for you." Benyamin sighed. "That poor chickenshit bastard doesn't have anybody."

CHAPTER 9

Training

"Okay, Kelev One One Two Five," Yitzhak Galil, silhouetted in the noonday sun, shouted down from the roof. "Let's see you get up the wall."