Ian Slater: World in Flames

David could imagine him strutting across campus, writing A-plus papers on the “nuclear threat”—and how taking out a whole city wouldn’t worry him one little bit. Trouble was, after seeing the way the Russians had shot Americans out of hand, David knew he wouldn’t have much trouble pushing the button either if it came to that.

“Brentwood!” It was like being woken up from a sleep, the British sergeant’s bullish voice rolling down the embankment of the canal. “Brentwood?”

“Yo,” answered David.

“You’re to report to Brussels, lad.”

“There are no hospital ships in Brussels,” he told the sergeant, who was one of the military policy detachments assigned to Liege.

“Nothing about hospital ships, lad — HQ wants you. Something about prisoners. They suspect there might be a few of those bloody fancy-dress artistes.” Sometimes David didn’t know what the British were talking about. Churchill was right: the English and Americans were two races divided by a common language.

“You know!” said the sergeant, taking off his beret, bowing and slapping it hard against his thigh before putting it on again. “Artistes. Actors! Those bastards who took our blokes’ uniforms and—”

“Oh, SPETS,” said David. “What about them?”

“Brussels thinks they might have captured some of the swine. But they need positive ID, see. We’re rounding up all you blokes from the DB pocket who might have seen ‘em— least, all of you who are still around. London’s dead set on making an example of ‘em. Shoot a few of the pricks. Send a big message to Moscow, right?”

David was surprised to find himself out of breath after walking up from the canal. His old DI would’ve been disgusted, and he made a mental note right then and there that he’d better get back into shape. “I doubt it’ll make any difference,” he told the sergeant, pausing for breath. “SPETS are very professional. Won’t stop them sending more.”

“Like you marines, eh?” said the sergeant. He was a much taller man than David, an angry glint in his eye. “Well, I’m inclined to agree, mate,” continued the Brit. “Won’t stop ‘em, I reckon. But London wants to let ‘em know that it’s the high jump if they’re caught. Bump off a couple anyway. Hell — you shouldn’t worry. Free trip to Brussels, lad. See the sights. Wine, women, and song, eh? Train leaves in two hours.”

“Don’t think I could identify any of the SPETS,” said David, glancing worriedly up at the sergeant. Ahead were long, white, loamy cart tracks beside the canal. Some parts of Europe hadn’t changed in three hundred years. “Except for the guy who shot your lieutenant,” said David.

“Couple of birds among them, I hear,” said the sergeant, bending down, cracking a fallen branch from one of the poplars, stripping the bark in no time and slapping it under his left arm as if he were the regimental sergeant major on parade.

David looked up at him, puzzled. “Birds?”

“Women, lad! You know. Tits and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said David. He’d been thinking about Melissa, and, whenever he did, crude descriptions of the female anatomy bothered him.

“Not interested?” charged the sergeant as they walked along the path, David finding it hard to keep up. The cart track stopped and became a bicycle path by the canal. “Maybe,” said the sergeant lecherously, “you’re dipping your wick into that Admitting filly, eh? Young Lili.” He laughed so loudly, anyone could easily have heard him on the far side of the bank.

“No such luck,” answered David. The truth was, he hadn’t really tried — he guessed she mustn’t be more than seventeen.

“Well,” boomed the sergeant, “she’s got the hots for you, boy. Medal of Honor winner and all that—”

“Yeah, sure,” said David.

“I’m serious, lad. I’ve seen her giving you the once-over when you pick up your hero mail. Cat, if ever I saw it, mark my words.”

“Cat?”

The sergeant thought for a moment, slowed, then stopped. “Ah—“ he said, swiping the top off a long stem of reed grass, “pussy, I mean. Isn’t that what you call it?”

“Cat!” said David, starting to laugh.

The sergeant was exploding in laughter again. When he finally got control, he told David that several of the female POWs were supposedly “smashing!”

“You’ve seen them?” David asked, surprised.

“No — but word has it.”

“They’ll be ugly as sin,” said David. “Beards most likely.”

“Now, don’t be particular, laddie. It’s wartime.”

“No kiddin’,” David replied.

“I’m not kidding,” said the sergeant. “It’s in all the newspapers.”

“You’re nuts,” said David. He was starting to like the Limey.

“Here,” said the sergeant, thrusting his right hand out, a packet in his hand.

“What’s this?” It was a strip panel of condoms.

“If you don’t know what to do with ‘em,” ordered the sergeant, “read the instructions after you get through your fan mail.” He tapped them with his poplar stick. “See?” The condom instructions were in Dutch. “Course,” the sergeant said, “it’s all Greek to me!” and began another belly roll of laughter. But he kept laughing and wouldn’t stop, wildly swiping at more reed grass, tears rolling down his face, until the fixed glint in the Britisher’s eye told David the man was quite mad.

Despite the stinking kerosene fumes from the Avgas sucked in by the air-conditioning, there was a half-hearted cheer in Personnel two levels below the Salt Lake City’s flight deck when the computers came back on line. But they told the personnel director that Lt. Comdr. Frank Shirer was presently assigned to the Tomcat squadron at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska in the easternmost sector of the Aleutian arc. Shot down over the western Aleutians eight weeks before, following an air strike from the carrier, and picked up by a helo from one of the nine escorts in the battle group, Shirer had been taken to Unalaska. Because of the “big show” in Europe, pilots were in short supply on the Aleutian front, and Shirer had quickly found himself seconded to the air force’s Sixty-Fifth Wing stationed at Dutch Harbor.

What the computer didn’t reveal was that between sorties over the Russian-captured outposts of Adak and Shemya at the westernmost reaches of the Aleutian arc, Shirer had renewed a fleeting romance in Dutch Harbor with a Wave nurse, Lana Brentwood, whom he’d met years before in Washington. But the screen did show that Shirer was “AFR-CD — available for recall” to the carrier at the captain’s discretion.

“Very well,” the captain informed the personnel director, “check with Dutch Harbor. My hunch is they’ll be about as unhappy as I am to have one of our top guns reassigned to Washington. But if the Pentagon wants him, I’m not going to stand in their way. Any advisory on why they want him back east?”

The personnel officer’s reply was drowned by the roar of a Grumman EA-Prowler, or “Wild Weasel,” one of the ship’s electronic countermeasures aircraft, landing on the “roof.”

“Say again?” asked the captain, his eyes on a yellow jacket far below whose thumb was held high in the air as he sprinted away from the nose of the Prowler, the wash of jet engines flapping the man’s vest, the plane’s proboscislike midair refueling spout giving it the look of some giant insect anxious to be on its way.

“COMPAC gives no reason for requesting Shirer, sir.” The Prowler was off, swallowed by the darkness.

“Very well,” said the captain, slapping the personnel director on the shoulder. “Ours not to reason why, Phil. Draw up the papers. I’ll sign them end of the watch. Where’s Shirer now?”