Slowly Paul pulled her hands up to his lips and kissed them. He let them fall away as he continued to stare into her eyes. "Now I am supposed to say, 'Here's looking at you, kid,' and let you walk away to your plane."
"Yes, Paul, I must go." They looked at each other for another second. Then, like a broken spell in a fairy tale, the moment was over. Paul stepped to one side and Jan hustled off in search of the nearest phone.
Dixon sat before the charred remains of the Libyan tank for the longest time. In the bright moon he could clearly make out every detail of a body half hanging out of the driver's hatch on the tank. The man, caught between the half-open hatch and the gun tube positioned over it, had been unable to escape. He had died in the fire that had consumed the tank. The dead driver's teeth and exposed jawbone glistened white in the light of the bright winter moon. The cold desert wind that cut through Dixon's jacket like a knife didn't bother the corpse. Nothing would ever bother it again.
Dixon's tired mind wandered ponderously from one thought to the next. Though he had tried to avoid it, he was at war again. As with the last war, he had not asked for it. And, again like in the last war, circumstances had thrust him into the forefront. Again he had commanded a task force in battle and won. Though losses had been light this time — less than two dozen total, according to Grissins's count— they were still losses. When, with relief and pride written all over his face, Grissins had reported the figures to Dixon, Dixon's only response was curt, cryptic, and cold. Facing Grissins, Dixon told him to add one more. Then, without an explanation or another word, Dixon turned and walked out into the desert.
With Grissins and the task force sergeant major firmly in charge of the recovery operations, and orders to maintain current positions, there was nothing for Dixon to do. Still too keyed up from the day's fight, he wandered about, trying hard to push everything from his mind, but failing. When he came upon the Libyan tank with the dead driver hanging from it, he paused. At first he wondered if he had done that, if it had been his tank that had killed the Libyan driver. His answer bothered him. Yes, he had killed that man. Perhaps not his tank, but his orders, his soldiers, one of them, had.
Sitting down, Dixon studied the corpse. If that was true, he thought, if his decisions could kill, then was he responsible for Fay's death? Was his decision to stay in the Army the root cause of Fay's death? Where would he be right now if he had done as Fay had wanted and left the service? At home, sitting in front of the TV with his children and Fay? That was, Dixon knew, what Fay had wanted: a family, a home, and a husband who came home every night and made love to her once or twice a week. Nothing grand, nothing beyond the grasp of every normal American.
He, however, had chosen a different path. He had marched down it, blind to Fay's needs and desires for years. Submerging himself in a military career, he had dedicated himself to God and country, not always in that order. The cost had been high. In the cold desert night Dixon could feel the cost. Instead of being home, growing old in an obscure suburban home with his wife and children, he was in a desert, six thousand miles from where he had been bom. His wife was dead, his children God knows where. Only the corpse of a man he did not know, one of many that lay in the wake of his life, kept him company.
In his despair Dixon began to wonder where that corpse would have been had he not been there. Would the dead Libyan still be at home, with his family? Or would he be in Alexandria, or maybe even Cairo? And if he had made it to Cairo with the rest of his crew, so what? Dixon didn't live in Cairo. The only people Dixon knew in Cairo were other Americans sent away from their homes, just like himself, to defend American interests.
It was not hard to make the mental leap to the next logical step.
Even as tired as he was, the standard argument "They have to be stopped somewhere, so why not here?" ran through his mind. In his head Dixon knew that to be true. He knew that if he hadn't stayed in the Army, if he hadn't commanded the task force that morning, then perhaps, just perhaps, the battle would have been different. Maybe, just maybe, Dixon thought, he had made the decisive difference. It was possible. Anything was possible.
Yet there was more than defending freedom and the American way that motivated him. He had seen it that morning on the A Company commander's face. After Ken Armstrong and his crew had destroyed their first BMP, there had been joy, a real feeling of satisfaction, a perverse pleasure in having fought and won. In the heat of battle even Dixon himself had felt it. When they had acquired their first two victims, Dixon could have turned away, hiding behind his cloak of command in order to keep from killing. But he had not. Instinctively he had turned to fight. Should he have? Probably not. He was the task force commander. He had responsibilities that transcended a simple tank-to-tank duel. Dixon could easily have left the killing to others. But he hadn't. And when it was over, he, like Armstrong, had savored the kills, his kills.
Still, those thoughts brought little relief or comfort to him. They were not reasons, only explanations. In the end, they changed nothing. Dixon was still sitting alone in the desert, alone with a corpse. And Fay, his only true love, a woman who had given her best years to him and followed him, was dead. No logic, no explanation, no success, regardless of how great it was, could ever change that.
Tired of thinking and staring at ghosts, both new and old, Dixon got up and headed back to his hummvee. He needed to get some sleep while he could. The next morning would bring new missions, new battles — battles that he would have to see through.
Standing at the west end of Solium, General Boldin, along with his chief of staff and aide, stood on the side of the road watching the flood of men and equipment streaming west. The vehicles of Boldin's forward command post were parked a hundred meters to their rear in a wadi. For two hours Boldin and his two subordinates had watched a beaten army retreat past them, blocking the road and preventing him from moving down to the coast. Though they could have gone around, Boldin decided not to. There was no need, he told his aide, to hurry forward to find the front. The front, he said, would no doubt find them in due course.
As he watched, Boldin could feel his sense of foreboding and depression deepening. Defeat and collapse of the Libyan forces eradicated all hope for a quick and favorable solution. It also meant that his Soviet and Cuban units would have to carry the brunt of the next battle. That there would be another battle was a given. Boldin could see no way out of one. It was only a matter of where, when, and how. The where and how should have been matters left to Boldin and his staff. That, however, was not the case. To Boldin's disgust, men in Moscow would make those decisions. How they, over three thousand kilometers away, would be able to do that was beyond Boldin. That they could imagine that they could added to his feeling of depression and to a growing sense of hopelessness. Instead of being a front commander, Boldin pictured himself reduced to a simple messenger boy, passing information, what little he had, back to Moscow and waiting for his orders.
For hours information concerning the exact whereabouts and activities of Libyan and Egyptian forces had been scant and confusing. What information came into General Boldin's headquarters came from satellite photos hours old, from confused and wild stories from Libyan soldiers fleeing to the west, and from their Soviet advisors. While the satellite photos provided great details and identified a large Egyptian armored force moving down the coastal road, they did not tell Boldin what was happening on the ground. Other than the fact that the Libyan forces in Egypt had collapsed, Boldin knew little. Needing information, he ordered reconnaissance units from the 24th Tank Corps further into Egypt, establishing an outpost line from Sidi Barrani on the coast to Bir al Khamsa eighty-two kilometers inland. They would at least give Boldin warning of an Egyptian or American advance.