Randolph Calverhall - Serpent's Walk

Sunday, December 22, 2041

There were two men in the dank, cluttered back-office of the lithographer’s shop. He who stood in front of the table wore faded workpants and a black, leather biker’s jacket. The jacket was old and frayed, its decals flaking, its once-angry motto now illegible.

The other man sat in shadow. Posture hinted at a younger person, a sophisticated man, one who might be acceptable in the upper strata of society. The black-jacketed man could see little more than a thin tie upon a white shirt, a black ribbon painted down the middle of a dazzling highway that glowed blue-white behind the table’s one fluorescent work lamp. Two arms sheathed in lead-grey tweed extended out of the darkness that was the man’s torso, and pale fingers plucked at the dog-eared files heaped upon the table top, pallid spiders scuttling about amidst a moonscape of buff and white papers and scarred, chestnut-hued wood.

“Best we could do on short notice,” the biker said. He was a diffident, ordinary sort. His face was raddled with pockmarks, and his complexion reminded the other of red-brick walls slathered over with graffiti.

“Whatever.” The prissy, delicate fingers burrowed deeper into white paper. “Lesser, you said? Lessing?”

“Lessing. Alan Lessing.” The older man gleaned a smidgin of secret amusement from the smear of black lithographer’s ink visible upon the other’s left sleeve. He’d have the devil’s own time getting that stain out of the expensive sport coat!

“Lessing. Fought in Angola in 2030. Then in Syria during the Baalbek War. Then he came back here for a while.” His voice trailed off as he read. He looked down at the man behind the desk and finished, “A good enough man. A real mercenary.”

“Reliable?”

“How would I know? Never met him.” Leather creaked as the older man scraped thick fingers through his grizzled, grey-red hair. “It’s all in the file. American… high school, a year of college, a family that he don’t remember… and they don’t remember him.”

“A mere, though.” Coming from the younger man, the term sounded self-conscious. “Did he… uh… see combat? Real combat?”

“It’s all there. Read it for yourself.” The other’s voice took on a querulous tone as he dropped the file onto the desk. He moved to peer out the one grime-smeared window as the man behind the desk picked up the file. “God, it’s started to snow hard out there. I’ve got to get home.”

“Politics? I don’t see anything about that in here.”

“If it’s not written down, he don’t have any.”

“Any religious or racial problems? Will he cooperate with other team members? Blacks? Jews? Arabs?”

The older man snorted and wiped a stubby finger across his upper lip. “Lessing’s fought for… and against… every ethnic group there is.”

“I have to know.”

The older man turned back to the window, now an abstract study in black dirt and white snow. “He’s okay. Whatever you tell him. Come on “

“One more minute. We can settle it all here and now.”

“What more do you need? Take Lessing; he’s good. Then either you pick the team or let Lessing do it. You provide the stuff… uh, cars, weapons, whatever. I don’t want to know.”

“You won’t. Just make the contacts and get him here. Where is he?”

The finger strayed up to a surprisingly ugly, lumpy nose. “India, I think… beegeeing… uh, bodyguarding… for some American exec. Somebody who don’t want to get dead over there. India’s like most of the rest of the fuckin’ Third World now… open season on foreigners. Specially Westerners… and Saturday matinee special on Americans.”

White teeth glimmered a pale crescent in the darkness. The chair squealed as the younger man pushed it back and stood up. “Good. Get Lessing. Who’ve you got in India? DaSilva? Gomez? One of them can give him the details, and he can send out for whatever help he wants. Then fly him to Mexico City. We’ll pick him up there. Have him there by the middle of next month… January fifteenth. Let my secretary know when he arrives. You’ll get your commission through the regular channels.”

“No problem.” The older man reached for the leather gauntlets lying on the table, fumbled, dropped one into the litter of paper on the floor, and bent over to pick it up. He sighed. “And a merry Christmas to you.”

The other made no reply.

Take nothing for granted in war. The commander who would live to return home is he who anticipates not only the unusual but the totally unexpected.

Thursday, January 30, 2042

“Christ,” Doe grunted. He swung the binoculars left, then right “Come on, what is it?” Lessing wrested the glasses from the smaller man. Their four companions were somewhere behind them, hunkered down in the glazed, ankle-deep snow. Who would’ve thought there’d be so much snow in the American Southwest, even in January? People said the climate had changed since the Vietnamese-Chinese War back in 2010.

Teen wriggled up beside them. The muzzle of his Riga-71 automatic rifle had been blackened with grease, but it still gleamed. Lessing pushed it down so no sentry could see it flash in the watery winter sunlight.

The compound below was empty. A dilapidated truck stood beside the peeling, white, wooden wall of the main house. The garage in back was unpainted and ramshackle, and the boxy, little water-storage tower — the logical place for a sentry — was as dis-reputable an edifice as Lessing had ever seen. Even the Angolans built better than that!

Doe gestured urgently. Panch and Cheh would be watching the rugged slope behind them while Char continued to scout, invisible somewhere in the grey-black rocks ahead. Lessing waggled two fingers at Teen, indicating that he should watch the rest of the white-shrouded terrain around the compound. Only when he was satisfied did he look through the glasses.

A booted foot protruded from behind the dirt-caked back wheel of the ancient truck. The vehicle was a four-wheel-drive Hideyoshi, vintage about 2025.

“He working on her?” Lessing whispered. He rested one thick forearm on his knee and adjusted the glasses.

“Too quiet. Not moving.” Doe reached for the binoculars again, but Lessing held onto them. “Gate’s open, but nobody there.” Doe’s English was tinged with the remnants of a German — or maybe Belgian — accent. Lessing had worked with him before, fighting with the covert American-Israeli strike force in Syria during the Baalbek War in 2038.

Lessing had only a hazy idea of Doe’s real name, or at least the name he used now. On temporary missions it was better this way: today’s comrade could become tomorrow’s foe. Such makeshift “units” often gave their members numbers, letters, or artificial names picked for easy comprehension in battle. When Gomez, Lessing’s Goanese contact in Bombay, had supplied him with this squad of five, Lessing had whimsically named them with Hindi numerals. He himself was Ek, “one”; the others were Doe, Teen, Char, Panch, and Cheh. Doe and Teen carried automatic rifles, as did Lessing; Char and Panch had light Israeli stitch-guns and grenades; the girl, Cheh, who came from Australia or New Zealand or some place “down under,” bore the heavy laser rifle.