George Martin - Busted flush

The tips of her fingers are cool as she quickly touches my wrist. "But you feel guilty." And I realize it's true.

A flick of the fingers sends the butt soaring away over the water trailing red sparks.

"When did you find out? That you couldn't…" Her voice trails away.

"When I was twelve. My teenage years should have been fantastic-stick with me, baby. All the fun and none of the risk. But it didn't work out that way."

"Why?"

"Christ, woman, are you dense? You saw me. I'm grotesque."

She reaches back, feeling along the length of her tail. "Do you know how I ended up at BICC?"

I shake my head.

"I was twenty-two when I learned this isn't just a tail," she said. "As if things hadn't been bad enough already." She looks up at me, challenging me to engage. I decide to go along.

"And what, exactly, does that mean?"

"My parents never had any interest in raising a joker. I was, um, embarrassing to them. They distanced themselves from me as much as they could. They called me their niece, said they'd taken me in after my own parents died."

"Charming. They must live in a world where image is more important than anything else."

She seems startled at my words. She nods slowly. "I had no idea I was an ace until it just sorta happened." Her eyes have gone dark, and her expression is bleak. "I thought he liked me, but he just wanted sex. And it happened almost instantly."

"What?"

"The eggs. It hurt so badly, I thought I was dying. I thought God was punishing me. That this was what happened to wretched little whores."

"I hear a quote in that." I find I'm suddenly fascinated, and furious at whoever would have said such a thing to a frightened teenager.

"My father." The words are spoken so quietly that I have to lean in to hear her.

She draws in a deep, shaky breath and forges ahead: "But the eggs hatched, and suddenly, I had kids. They were so wonderful. They bounced and laughed and flew around the house. They infuriated my parents and terrorized the help, but I didn't care, because they were my children and I loved them so intensely. And they loved me, too." Her voice is fierce, passionate. "I was simply delirious with joy. Until they died." The three words seem to hang in the air. "When my children died, my heart was crushed. My joy extinguished. I took it badly. I hurt myself."

Her tone is so dispassionate that I know she is holding back a storm of emotion. I don't know why I'm hearing this story, but I know I want to hear it all. I speak very softly as if I'm dealing with a frightened foal. "What did you do?"

"I tried to cut my tail off. I've never felt pain like that. It surged up my spine and erupted in my skull like magma. I passed out." She gets a crooked little smile. "It's funny. I've been in therapy for years and I just remembered this. As the floor was coming up to meet my face, I noticed the way my blood ran in little rivulets between the tiles, toward the bathtub. My last thought was how upset my parents would be when they learned their remodeled bathroom had an uneven floor."

I look down at the bumpy ridge where none of the bristly hair grew. "I presume they shipped you off shortly after that."

She nods. "And then they had the bathroom redone."

We stand in silence listening to the ocean's soft murmurs.

"Can Drake control himself?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

"Where?"

"I'm going to take you to meet a truly decent man."

"I think you're pretty decent."

"You'd be mistaken."

The Chinook was loud, crowded, and uncomfortable. Underneath them, lit only by starlight, sandy, low hills crawled toward the horizon and more hills emerged to replace them, until finally the sun rose to color the world red and then yellow. Rusty was in the chopper with him, along with four dozen UN troops and their officers, Lieutenant Bedeau among them. They wore flak jackets and helmets and carried live ammunition in their weapons, but there had still been no real resistance-not at Kuwait International, not at any of the places that Michael had been to in the endless parade of days and nights.

Michael had lost count of time. All the places in the Ar-Rumaylah field in southern Iraq were starting to look the same, blurring in his memory. The employees of each facility had packed up and left, leaving papers and half-eaten snacks on their desks. In each place, the wind wailed mournfully as it blew dun-colored sand between the buildings. The army of the Caliphate was an eternal no-show.

The other teams-Kate with Lohengrin in the Al-Burqan field in Kuwait; Tinker on the Az-Zuluf platforms out in the Gulf-reported the same: no resistance. The wellheads, the pumping stations, the pipelines, the refineries: they'd all been abandoned. Michael, Rusty, and their blue helmets would stay a day or two or three until UN contractors and support troops were sent in from HQ at Kuwait International, and then they'd be on to the next place.

The ease of the operation was a relief to everyone, Michael no less than the others. He'd not been looking forward to another battle in some godforsaken locale, especially when the enemy carried a special hatred for him.

He glanced out the window nearest him. The radio headset squawked with terse updates. DB kept tapping on the flak jacket that covered his chest, but the dull sound it returned gave him no comfort. Easy or not, the whole operation still felt wrong. Everything was too easy. Michael was sweating, and it wasn't the heat. He slipped one of his hands under his flak jacket and rubbed at the bruise on his chest, the fading remnant of the sniper attack at Kuwait International.

They hate you for what you did in Egypt… The people of the Caliphate, they don't like you very much…

"Wellheads, one minute." The warning came from his headset. Around him, soldiers checked gear and readied themselves: their group was French, as were the bulk of the UN ground forces, armed with stubby FAMAS G2 assault rifles. The Chinook tilted, then dipped with nauseating suddenness as the rotors wailed. Michael caught a glimpse of the towers of derricks, several buildings, and a trio of huge storage tanks for the crude oil, but then dust and sand rose in a dense, choking cloud, blocking sight of the landscape, and he felt the shudder as the wheels touched ground.

The rear door yawned; a squad of blue helmets jumped out, ducking their heads against the rotor wash and running across the sand with weapons ready. Alongside him, Rusty coughed in the gritty air. "Cripes," he muttered. More troops tumbled out. Michael checked the two M-16s he carried-still leaving his upper set of hands free-and lurched to his feet. "Let's go," he said to Rusty.

"Why don'cha stay behind me, fella?" Rusty suggested. "Just in case." Michael thought that an excellent idea.

They lumbered down the ramp and onto the sand at a jog.

Their Chinook had landed alongside the administration building for the facility-Lieutenant Bedeau was leading the first set of blue helmets, and had already kicked open the doors of the building and gone in. As with all the wellheads they'd taken, there didn't seem to be anyone around: no cars in the parking lots, no one near the storage tanks or near the oil derricks set in a mile-long arc just to the east, no one moving in the village five hundred or so yards away to the west near the main road. The pipeline-linked refinery a half mile to the south looked equally deserted. The Tigre choppers hovered overhead menacingly, loud in the sunlight, but their guns were silent.

Maybe, he thought, maybe Jayewardene and Fortune were going to get what they'd hoped. He rubbed the bruise under his Kevlar again and crouched behind Rusty, scanning the rooftops and half expecting to feel the kick of a slug against his jacket.