The Devil's Footprint (16 page)
Read The Devil's Footprint Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
Fitzduane
lay
down beside her and put his arm around her.
They had had this conversation before and he
had run out of answers.
Fundamentally,
there weren't any.
Kathleen was
right.
But in the real world, being
right was not enough.
Kathleen
snuggled into him.
Then she reached out
with her hand and caressed him.
Soon,
none of it mattered.
*
*
*
*
*
Don Shanley,
manager of Magnavox's Electro-Optical Division, watched with mixed feelings as
the six
special forces
troopers left.
They had been
drinking beer and telling war stories for the past three hours, and it had been
good fun.
But it had been a long day,
and now all he really wanted to do was have a shower and put his feet up.
Exhibitions were hard on the feet.
You were standing working all day, and
standing around socializing in the evening, and it just was not the way, in his
opinion, feet were designed to be used.
They were useful appendages and really should receive more care and
consideration.
Shanley
stripped and stood under the shower, the pressure turned full up.
The water needled into him and he could feel
the layers of fatigue being stripped away.
It was just as well.
It was after
eleven, but his day was still not finished.
An exhibition meant a sixteen-hour day, sometimes more.
Tomorrow, he
had additional work to do.
He was
starting the day with a demonstration of the MAG-600 for a cadre of the 82
nd
Airborne.
The good news about that was
that he would not lose any time at the stand, because the paratroopers started
so goddamn early.
The bad news was that
he was not going to get much sleep.
All
equipment, no matter how inherently reliable, had an amazing knack of letting
you down at sales demonstrations.
Doubtless, it was the gods playing games.
But
interestingly, he reflected, they seemed to play them much less often if
equipment was checked out thoroughly and methodically in advance.
It was doubly important if the devices had
been fiddled about with all day on the exhibition stand.
It was impressive how much several hundred pairs
of untrained hands could fuck up the most soldier-proof of devices.
Laymen thought
you designed equipment for performance.
That was the easy part.
The hard
part was making it stand up to the average soldier's activities in the field.
That was not so easy.
The military had strange habits.
They liked mud and rain and sand and grit and
extremes of temperature and humidity.
They jumped out of airplanes and helicopters and rattled around armored
fighting vehicles.
People shot at them
with sharp pieces of metal and dropped explosives on them.
All of this
was not conducive to good electro-optical performance.
No, ‘Mil-Spec’ was not just an arbitrary list
of standards.
The military were really
rough on things.
But it was
fair enough, Shanley thought, because they were hardest of all on
themselves.
And that was hard to take.
Shanley looked
like everyone's image of the ultimate professional soldier.
His bearing was military.
His black hair was cropped short.
He was fit and lean, with high cheekbones and
a firm jaw.
His eyes were blue and
piercing and laughter lines showed he could take stress.
He was deeply tanned.
His demeanor was both confident and
encouraging.
He had a natural air of
command.
His voice was a pleasure to
listen to, both crisp and authoritative and persuasive.
Clothes fitted him as if tailored.
He
was
a
man's man and a woman's man.
Both sexes automatically warmed to him.
Unprompted,
enlisted men automatically called him ‘Sir.’
Officers called him ‘Sir’
also,
or ‘Mister’
with respect.
He had eyeballed Death and
he had not blinked.
He was ex-Special
Forces or some such elite unit.
He was
ranger and airborne qualified.
He was a
warrior.
But he had
never served.
He had come close, but
then
But he had always wondered.
The irony of
Don Shanley was that none of his military traits or mannerisms was
affected.
All were natural and were innate
to the man.
Shanley was just ordained by
nature to look the part.
It went deeper
than mere looks.
Shanley also was a
crack shot and had a deep understanding of the military art.
He knew weapons and tactics and military
history, and how the whole terrible business worked, in very considerable
detail.
By nature he
was conscientious and thorough, and in his value system you should thoroughly
understand the needs of your customer.
It went with doing the job right.
Shanley was a
decent man.
Doing the job as well as it
could be done was important to him.
Work
was how he supported his family, and they were everything to him.
They
were why he did what he did and why he was proud to do it.
He also thought it was necessary.
The
the best weapons that money and technology could provide, and he, Donald
Shanley, would see that they had them.
On that issue he slept easy.
But when he
trained men who were about to put their lives on the line, he felt guilty.
He felt the need to pay his dues.
To serve in a combat unit
in defense of his country.
He was an
old-fashioned man with simple values.
He
had a conscience and he cared.
He picked up
the phone and called
This was something he had done virtually
every night he had been away since they had gotten married eight years
ago.
She was asleep, but she responded
to his voice with drowsy warmth.
The twins were
fine.
Sam adored the new pancake
recipe.
Samantha wanted to play the
guitar instead of the piano.
The air
conditioner had been fixed.
All was well
with the world.
She missed him and loved
him.
Shanley
replaced the receiver.
He had a good job
with a fine company, and he had a wife and children he adored.
He should be entirely content.
And yet something was missing.
He wanted to —
needed to —
serve
.
He swung his
legs off the bed and began checking the equipment.
Toward the end, he stripped and cleaned the
M16A2 and the Barrett.
The Magnavox
MAG-600, which he was going to demonstrate to the 82
nd
tomorrow, was
an interesting piece of equipment.
It was a thermal-imager
sight, which meant it responded to heat emanations.
With it, you could shoot in complete darkness
or through smoke or fog at quite considerable ranges.
Variations of it could accomplish the same
task when fitted to a Stinger antiaircraft missile.
One of the
most interesting applications of all was the application of the Magnavox
thermal imaging technology to driving.
Using a thermal viewer fed through to a miniature TV monitor mounted on
or in the dashboard, you could drive without lights in the absolute dead of
night.
Image intensifiers required some
light.
Thermal imagers required none at
all.
Shanley
finished the weapons cleaning and consulted his appointment schedule.
A Colonel Hugo
Fitzduane of the Irish Rangers and party were due at 3:00
P.M.
for a personal demonstration.
They had some particular problems they wanted
to resolve that sounded as if they were right up Magnavox's street.
They wanted to equip a FAV — a fast-attack
vehicle — with full thermal capability and wondered if the equipment could take
the pounding.
Don Shanley
smiled to himself.
The Shanleys had come
to
famine-stricken
Who would have thought then that
and thrive and prosper?
He was looking
forward to meeting this Colonel Fitzduane.
He looked at
his watch.
It was after one in the
morning.
He had given the company an
eighteen-hour day.
A little personal
time did not seem unreasonable.
He put on swim
trunks and then slid on a terry-cloth robe and headed for the pool.
The corridors
were empty, and when he got outside he could see that most of the rooms were in
darkness.
For all practical purposes he
had the hotel to himself.
It was not
true, of course, because there was still a night staff on duty, but the
illusion was there and he savored it.
An
exhibition was the unrelenting pressure of people day after day.
Well, mostly he liked people, but sometimes
he craved some personal space.
Silent in his
bare feet, he walked slowly down the path that led through landscaped
vegetation to the pool.
The vegetation
was normally floodlit, but at this late hour the lights had been turned off and
only the pool in the center was still illuminated.
The water
glowed like the entrance to a magical world.
When he dived in, he thought, he would keep on swimming down and the
waters would part and mysteries beyond compare would be revealed.
He was just
about to leave the darkness to enter the pool area when he saw ripples on the
surface of the water.
He paused, and
seconds later a nearly naked woman emerged from the pool.
She did not use the ladder but instead
levered herself up effortlessly onto the poolside.
Her body was long and lithe and glowed in the
soft light.
She was not
just fit.
She was in perfect
condition.
Muscles rippled under golden
skin, and her figure was showed off to perfection by the minimal black fabric
of her costume.
She ran her
hands back over her head, squeezing water from her close-cropped blond
hair.
Her carriage was erect, and
something about her posture suggested formal training.
If she had been a man, he would have thought
military.
Ballet?
Modeling?
No, she had the discipline, but there was too much hard muscle there in
the upper body.
In this case, functionality
ran ahead of appearance.
This woman did
not just want to be fit.
She
needed
the strength and stamina.
As he watched,
she leaned down casually and picked up a towel.
She dried her face, and as she did so she turned quite naturally to face
in his direction.
"Come on
in," she said.
"It really
would be a cool idea.
Don't be shy.
It makes me nervous."
Her hands were
outstretched.
They were not empty.
Shanley looked
down at the front of his robe.
The red
dot of the laser sight rested neatly on his torso.
It was not quite central but sat slightly to
the left.
The red dot was steady.
Rib cage,
heart, lungs, and all kinds of other useful bits he was quite attached to in
one burst.
It looked like a
mini-Uzi.
Neat trick, that, with the
towel.
He stepped
into the light.
It seemed like a
remarkably good idea.
"Ah, Mr.
Magnavox," she said slowly.
"I
saw you on the stand.
You were playing
with a Stinger missile.
Thermal sights,
if I recall."