None of the androids had bloody fingers. Then again, Lauderdale hadn't expected them to.
He took one last look around the store-room, turned off the lights, and stepped outside into the corridor.
Lieutenant Rexroth was running by, a print-out streaming from his hand.
They bumped together. Rexroth saluted.
"Sorry, Captain."
Lauderdale was irritated. "What's the hurry, Rex?"
"Major Faulcon has to see this."
They walked, almost jogging, along together.
"What's important?"
"Younger's orders. They were sealed in his own terminal files. Captain Finney gave me the codes and told me to access them. They're germane."
"Shouldn't you be taking them to Colonel Rintoon then?"
Rexroth stopped short. Lauderdale could tell the cmer officer was conflicted about something. He wanted to talk, but thought he shouldn't.
"What is it, Rex?"
Rexroth looked at the print-out, and over his shoulder. There was no one else in the corridor.
"What did Younger say?"
"I…I can't follow it…it's about chain of command."
Lauderdale took the print-out. Rexroth didn't fight him for it. Lauderdale started reading from the top.
"Directive Five, sir."
Lauderdale looked down for it. It was triple-starred.
"It was scrambled three times. And marked MOST URGENT."
Lauderdale read. "IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH OR INCAPACITY," Younger had written, "COMMAND OF FORT APACHE IS TO DEVOLVE TO MAJOR HENDRY FAULCON. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS COLONEL VLADEK RINTOON TO ASSUME TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT CONTROL OF THE OUTPOST."
"I don't understand," Lauderdale said. "This is against all procedures."
"Look down again. It's in the notations at the bottom."
Here it was. "COLONEL RINTOON'S LATEST PSYCHIATRIC PROFILE SUGGESTS HE IS SUFFERING FROM EXTREME STRESS. HE IS NOT TO BE ADVANCED IN RANK. HE IS TO BE REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY AS SOON AS AN OFFICER OF EQUIVALENT RANK CAN BE BROUGHT IN FROM FORT COMANCHE. A PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS SUGGESTS INCIPIENT PARANOIA, COMPULSIVE HOSTILITY, FRACTURED PSYCHE. COPIES OF THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED TO GENERAL ERNEST HAYCOX, STATE GOVERNOR TOLLIVER." It was dated two days ago. So much for timing.
Rexroth was fidgeting with his lip. "We have to do something, sir."
"Colonel Rintoon has assumed command. There was nothing to suggest that he shouldn't. Younger should have suspended him from active duty immediately if he believed this."
"But he didn't. We have to talk to Major Faulcon. You, me and Finney. Rintoon has to be relieved of his command before something goes seriously wrong."
The corridor was still empty. .
"Something already is seriously wrong, Rexroth."
"Yes sir, I'm sorry sir."
Lauderdale drew his sidearm, pressed the barrel to the fleshy part under Rexroth's jaw, and fired, twice.
"The Rath of Joseph is thorny," he whispered.
Then, he raised the alarm.
IV
They were having real coffee on the balcony of their hotel, overlooking the pleasant central square of Managua. It was the flower festival, and the square was multi-coloured with the heaps of blossom placed at the foot of the equestrian statue of Augusto Cesar Sandino almost up to his saddle. The smiling faces of Daniel Ortega and Archbishop Romero shone down from a three-storey poster. It was the middle of the morning, but they had only just had their breakfast sent up. A band was playing the songs of the Revolution, and a young girl was singing about wheat, love and her thirty-thirty ammunition.
"Trente-trente?" said Leona, the slight breeze shifting her shining hair as she dissected her grapefruit with a serrated spoon. "I got guns, you got guns…"
A flight of birds shot up from the square. Stack sipped his coffee, sacriligiously despoiled with Sweet 'n' Lo.
"…all God's chillun got guns."
Leona wasn't really bitter, he knew, but back in the States there were duties waiting for both of them. Both felt guilty about snatching this downtime for themselves.
He set his cup down and walked round to her side of the table. He smoothed her hair down, and kissed the top of her head. She relaxed and stroked his wrists, and he massaged her neck.
The girl was singing only of love now, of the children she was expecting from her soldier boyfriend, of the bright future tfieir struggle had won for the country. She sang of their defiance of the Yankee tyrants and the multinat octopus. Everybody down here had been friendly, but the papers, the teevee shows and the songs painted all Americans as villains. After years of recaff, Stack, with the rich taste of coffee in his mouth, could see why some thought the CAC a paradise on earth.
Stack slipped his hand into Leona's dress, and rubbed his thumb over a nipple. He bent down and kissed her grapefruit-flavoured lips.
She sucked hungrily at his tongue.
A cheer went up from the crowds outside as Oscar Romero appeared on his own, much grander, balcony, arm-in-arm with the new Pope of Rome, Georgi. Stack and Leona ignored the speeches.
Leona stood up, and pressed her body to his. They danced together, to the National Anthem of the Central American Confederacy, their bodies responding warmly.
He smelled the traces of perfume in her hair, and the soft female musk of her body.
Stack wasn't sure whether he had manoeuvered Leona back into their room and pushed her down on their bed, or whether she had done it to him. They were on the bed now, gently pressing against each other.
Their dressing gowns were getting in the way. They broke apart, unknotted their belts, and threw the gowns away. Naked, they embraced again. He kissed her neck and chin. She stroked his back, and sides.
She slid under him, and he looked into her eyes as he lowered his face to hers.
They kissed…
Stack's heart leaped as he started awake. His neck ached where the seatbelt had cut into it, and his entire face throbbed. His head was still bruised from Exxon's fists. Hardly an inch of his body wasn't in one kind of pain or another.
Chantal was shaking him. It was her subtly different scent he had smelled, not Leona's.
"Time to wake up, Trooper Stack."
His wounds came back to him. His body felt like a baggy diving suit. He would have liked to go to Doc Zarathustra and traded it in for a new, more durable model. Hearts, he remembered the Wizard of Oz saying, will never be a practical proposition until they can be made unbreakable.
He rubbed the grit from his eyes, and looked at the woman. "I was dreaming."
Chantal stood up, and backed away from the car. "I thought so. I'm sorry for disturbing you. You were REMming."
He tried to stretch, to lift the imaginary weight from his shoulders.
"You were smiling."
Stack sighed. "It was a nice dream."
"So I noticed."
Chantal was almost smirking. Embarassed, Stack realized he had a generous erection straining the crotch of his Cav britches. He adjusted his position to de-emphasize his bulge, and waited for his arousal to die down.
Chantal slipped into the driving seat, and flicked switches. Federico reacted with lights and instrument evaluations.
In the light of day, Chantal wasn't the woman she had seemed last night. Appearing in the Silver Byte with her cannon and steely determination in her eyes, she had looked to Stack like Redd Harvest on steroids with a touch of Clint Eastwood and Annie Oakley thrown in. This morning, in the same outfit, she seemed more demure. Passive, restful, even. There was something kittenish about her unconscious pout, and a certain unassailable balance in her disposition. She was younger than he had thought, too. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. She gave the impression that she could hardly lift the heavy side-iron she was packing, let alone squeeze off a ScumStopper and hole the target dead centre. Stack knew better.