Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

The Saudi, in spite of himself, chuckled. So did Chris: after the look on Beck’s white face when he’d come out of the crew’s compartment to tell them about the loss of the 727 and everyone aboard, she needed something to chuckle about.

She’d never seen Beck look that shaken; she’d seriously wondered if he was going to come apart. She’d wanted to go to him, comfort him, but Slick had been right there, reminding her of her job, of her pose as the nasty, wisecracking reporter, radiating moral support and intensity from every pore of his being.

And with Slick’s help, she’d gotten through it, somehow; the ten hours airborne since the loss of the 727 had seemed endless, even though Slick had recruited her to help him feed the diplomats and used the opportunity for a little playful neck ing in the galley, which she wasn’t entirely sure was an operational necessity. But with Beck sequestered in the off-limits crew area, she’d been grateful for Slick’s strong arms and his casual courage: Slick, unlike Beck, was at ease and unworried, telling her so with his fighter’s body.

Slick, she was beginning to realize, was about a dozen people, and he expected her to be able to play many roles as well.

He nuzzled her hair and whispered to her until the Saudi put on the spidery headset that provided a narrow selection of recorded music, the only amenity aboard the P-3B that in any way resembled commercial air travel.

Then Slick said: “In about five minutes, go to the head and leave your full cassettes there; there are new ones in the right-hand drawer. Find out anything urgent?”

“Prince Faisal’s offered to marry me, which would make me… let’s see… his fourth, I believe.”

“I’ll marry you,” Slick grinned. “Soon as we land, which will be in about an hour, hour and a half.”

She looked at her watch, still on Jerusalem time—Zaki had neglected to show her how to reset it and she didn’t want to break it. “Thank God.” She groaned and stretched, knowing he was watching her breasts appreciatively, and not minding.

“Thank Ashmead,” Slick corrected.

“Not Beck?” She got out her cigarettes and lit two with her new lighter, whose indicator was blithely green, then handed one to Slick.

“No comment. Look, when we land, you’re to stick close to me, no matter where the dips are taken. We’re going to risk letting you be a little late for the Presidential briefing because of a lovers’ tryst. Okay?” His lips were next to her ear, his breath tickled her neck.

“How’s Beck doing?” she asked. “He didn’t look too—” Then she realized the significance of what Slick had said. “You mean we’re over the US?” She knifed forward in her seat and put her nose to the glass so that the Saudi glanced at her quizzically. “But there’re no lights! There should be lights. Some lights. Some —”

“Easy, easy.” Slick’s strong hand was on her shoulder; he pulled her back and put his palms to her cheeks, forcing her to look at him: “No hysterics, okay? I’ll tell you when to worry. You can trust me to do that. There’s a lot of low cloud cover, that’s all.”

“You mean…” She sat back, trembling, feeling the sudden wetness of nervous perspiration under her arms. “…it’s not all dark—not the whole East Coast?”

His gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t imagine it’s anything like it used to look at night, but it’s not all dark, no.”

“Can you tell me how much worse it is than the garbage I’ve been feeding these dips?”

“Shh,” he warned, yet his gaze was fond and his expression teasing. “Let’s not take a chance that anybody’s awake, okay? Let’s get some coffee.”

She went aft with him to the galley in the P-3B’s tail, where he smelled the coffee which had been on its hot plate for hours, spilled it out, and started making a fresh pot.

“I’ll do that,” she said. “It’s something I can handle.”

“Ah, not liberated, to boot. You know, you just might be my dream girl, if I can get you away from Beck.”

She tore a plastic pack of coffee with her teeth: “Not a chance.”

“Just a friendly warning—don’t get too attached to him. He’s made an awful lot of bad judgment calls. In this sort of context, he may not survive all of them.”

“What are you saying?” She turned and stared at Slick, who was watching her with his arms crossed.

“I’m telling you that he’s accruing a lot of guilt he’s not built to handle. He’ll either toughen up real fast or we’ll lose him—I’ve seen men commit suicide lots of times, lots of ways that don’t look like it, for less reason than he’s got. So you be careful. Don’t go off with him alone. Make sure I know where you are when you’re with him, all the time, not just some of the time, no matter how innocent it seems. Copy?”

She poured coffee grounds from the plastic pack into the coffee maker: “Affirmative, Sir,” she said teasingly, to cover her fear: it was Beck she’d been holding onto all this time, Beck’s calm, Beck’s competency. To hear Slick coldly suggest that Beck was crumbling meant to her that what was left of her world was crumbling. When Beck had announced that the 727 had gone down she’d been dry-eyed and proud of it; now she blinked back tears.

“Hey, lady,” Slick said, and turned her to him, “I’m just trying to keep you informed. If you don’t want to—”

“No, that’s fine.” She pulled back and shook him off. “You do that—keep me informed. About everything. As a matter of fact, I’d like to be informed as to why you people arranged to have us overfly the East Coast at night, and how bad it really—”

Slick sighed, “Newsies. Chris, we honestly don’t know how bad it is ourselves. There’s probably some guy from Langley sitting in the Houston White House with lots of hypothetical damage estimates prepared before the war, reading whatever he likes onto a tape, which then goes to the White House briefing office. Do you understand? Nobody knows squat yet about how bad it is. But you can be sure right now everybody down there who’s expecting us is trying like hell to find as many undamaged or slightly damaged areas as possible to show these five guys we’ve got left, even though they only want to see the worst we’ve got to show ’em.”

“But I don’t understand. If we want their money and their help—”

“We want them to tell their countries that we’re in pretty good shape, still the big, bad US of A. We’ll show you some medium-rough stuff, but there won’t be any red zones in the official tour—too dangerous, politically if not physically. If you want that, come with us while we go after Morse’s family. But if you want in, you can’t print it. It’s that simple. Me, I’d as soon see you pass. Radiation may not be forever, but it sure can take years off your life. You never applied for this kind of job; don’t let Beck make you think you owe it to your country. Okay?”

“I—No, it’s not okay. I need to see as much as I can. As for what I report, I’ve agreed to security restrictions in exchange for an exclusive when… when…”

She turned away and began pouring water into the coffee maker.

Slick finished for her: “When it’s appropriate? That’s a long wait.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Fun of you? I’d like somebody I know to live through this, that’s all. You say you don’t care if it’s you, I’ve got to respect that. It’s just that I’ve lost a lot of friends in the last week.”

“So has everybody else, Slick,” came a voice from behind them.

“Beck!” Though she wasn’t supposed to, she launched herself past Slick and into his arms. And he hugged her tightly.