Paul McEuen - Spiral

“How long were you there?”

“Almost six months. It was so damned hot, and as the invasion got close, every couple of days the bioweapons sirens would go off and we’d have to suit up. Everybody was sure Saddam had anthrax weapons, God knows what else. So we’d put on these full-body suits, gas masks, and sweat it out. You wanted to rip the damned thing off and at the same time you worried that some little microbe was going to sneak through a faulty seal and kill you.

“Then, boom, the orders come down. We’re on the move, going in, crossing the border into Kuwait. Our orders are to blast forward, destroying everything in our path. But the Iraqis have all these trenches dug, these bunkers of sand pushed up. It was a total pain in the ass. You could blow them up, but there weren’t enough bombs to do the whole thing. So the plan was send in the armored bulldozers, create a breach, then we’d send in mechanized units to get in behind them, then attack from the rear.

“But then someone had an idea. Use bulldozers.”

Jake looked up. “It was one of those ideas that had a kind of rough elegance. Why the hell not? Who needs to kill them with bullets when you can bury them in sand? All you need is a big shovel. The idea floated up through the chain of command, then came back down again. Get your bulldozers ready. ”

Jake shook his head. “You know, we engineers, we’re one step away. We just built the roads. It’s different, building the roads.”

“It sounds terrible.”

“It was. The Iraqis didn’t have a chance in hell. Some saw us coming and ran. Others stayed, just disappeared as the sand swept over them, like a crab on the shore when the tide pushed in. The worst were the ones halfway between. They’d finally get what was about to happen, and they’d pop up, maybe thirty yards in front of the blade. But it was too late. Our orders were clear. Keep plowing.

“One guy I’ll always remember. He charged me. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. He had this stupid sidearm, he was running at the bulldozer, firing into the blade. He wasn’t even trying to hit me. He just kept firing into the blade. He was screaming. You couldn’t hear it, not for the engines, all the other crazy shit happening, but he was screaming, yelling, charging. Then he went under, like all the rest. He was gone.” Jake shook his head. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sorry. Of course.”

But they didn’t talk about anything. They just watched the night, listened to the bits of conversation drifting in from the kitchen.

Out in the darkness, the slap of a closing door. Dylan emerged from the greenhouse, Turtle at his side. Jake watched closely as the boy crossed the distance to the house. “How are the tomatoes doing?” Maggie asked as he stepped up on the porch.

“Almost ready. I think I can pick them pretty soon.”

She pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead. “Good. Now go get ready for bed.”

Dylan turned to face Jake. He held out a hand. “Good night.”

The two shook formally. Dylan ducked his head and disappeared inside. Maggie watched her son go, took a breath, and looked gratefully at Jake before glancing away, suddenly embarrassed.

Jake smiled. “A question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“The spreading-of-the-breaths thing. How long does it take for the gas molecules all around the world to mix? How long until a breath makes it to, say, China?”

“Ten years. It takes about a decade for the air on the planet to get stirred completely.” She looked down at the deck, put her arms around herself. “So right now, Liam’s last breath is still mostly right here. Right around us.”

Jake nodded. “But less so with each day.”

They were silent after that, watching the darkness. Jake glanced over, catching her in profile, the slight subtle motion of her hair in the breeze. When someone died, all the relationships surrounding that person were shaken, had to be rebuilt in new ways to help fill the void. That’s what grief helped you do.

He wanted contact, to feel the warmth of her. He leaned toward her, and their shoulders touched. She kept looking at the woods, but he felt her body relax. On the railing, he placed his hand over hers, let it rest there. “You know,” he said, “it’s not just Dylan.”

“I know. But listen—”

Jake’s cell went off in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said.

She pulled her hand in. “It’s fine. Go ahead. Take it.”

He fished it out, and his pulse jumped a notch. “It’s Becraft,” he said to Maggie. He accepted the call. “Yes?”

“Professor Sterling? We need you to come down. Right away. It’s about the missing MicroCrawlers.”

“Did you find them?”

“Some of them, yes. The Onondaga medical examiner’s office just called.” Becraft paused. “Look. I’d prefer it if you came down.”

Jake looked to Maggie. “Tell me where you found them.”

“We just got Liam Connor’s autopsy report. They found four in his stomach.”

LAWRENCE DUNNE MADE HIS PLAY. CHOOSING ONE OF THE small black stones from the wooden bowl, he placed it with a sharp click onto the Go board. He tried to project authority, but it was a desperation move.

His opponent bit her lower lip, studying the pattern of stones arrayed in a gridlike pattern on the board. They were alone in a Motel 6, the yellow walls adorned with paintings of ducks and dogs. She was naked, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He sat across from her, as naked as she.

She clicked her piece down, smooth and white.

“Shit,” Dunne said.

Her wide smile lit up the generic room. “You’re mine.” She dove for him, knocking him backward onto the bed, scattering the stones.

Dunne wrestled her onto her back, enjoying the view. He allowed himself two indulgences, games he enjoyed whether he won or lost. The first was Go, the second this woman. Her name was Audrey Candor, née Pister. They’d met at Yale ten years ago, when she was an undergraduate student sitting in on his course on game theory and geopolitics. She was from Long Island, her father a Wall Street financier and her mother a minor movie star in the eighties. Audrey was married to the son of a rich diplomat from France, but Dunne and she had kept up their trysts over the years. She was smart, devilish, and unbelievably gorgeous. Dunne wasn’t an unattractive guy—he had a rakish charm—but she was in another category altogether.

He bent over her, staring down at smooth white skin and coal-black eyes. She wore a pale red lipstick, the kind he liked. Picking one of his black stones off the mattress, he balanced it on her nipple. She giggled.

“Run away with me,” he said. “We’ll crash a plane into a small Pacific island, live off fruit and berries. I’ll rig snares to trap wild boar.”

She laughed. “You’d better crash into an island with a Whole Foods.”

“You underestimate me. I can be a beast.”

“Show, don’t tell,” she ordered, pulling him down.

An unwelcome knock on the door.

“What?”

“Mr. Dunne? You don’t seem to be answering your cell. There’s a call from your assistant.”

“Get lost,” he said. His ringer had been very purposefully turned off. “I’ll be free in twenty.”

“Sir? He said Lancer absolutely needs to talk to you.”

“Holy Christ,” Dunne said, thoughts of the deserted Pacific isle long forgotten.

OUT FRONT A BLACK LIMO IDLED, TWO SECRET SERVICE AGENTS at the ready. Three minutes later, Dunne was on the vehicle’s secure line with the President of the United States.