“Shit, why all the glum faces?” LeBlanc said, trying to smile. “Let’s get this finished and get on the road. We have Posleen to kill!”
“You should head back to the division aid station, Major,” Indy said shakily.
“Why? If I’m just going to die anyway?” The commander shrugged, flicking some of the foam off. “Might as well go out in a blaze of glory, right?”
Indy sniffed and started scrubbing her back again.
Pruitt had finished scrubbing down the Abrams gunner, who had needed it quite frankly, radiation or no radiation, and walked over to the tableau around the naked, shivering major. He touched her, lightly and carefully, on the shoulder and shook his head.
“I’m sorry too, ma’am,” he said, carefully looking her in the eye and nowhere else.
“Thanks, but that doesn’t get my people scrubbed down,” she said, pointedly, with a gesture of her chin at the waiting loader and driver.
Pruitt nodded his head but walked over to Kilzer and looked at the readouts on the counter. He looked at them again then took the counter and waved it at the major’s shoulders and back.
“I want to talk to Mr. Kilzer for a minute,” he said, then put his arm companionably around the civilian’s shoulders and walked him into the darkness.
“Okay, how far are you going to push this?” he asked, trying to keep from laughing. Maybe they’ll think I’m crying. God, I hope they think I’m crying.
“What do you mean?” Kilzer frowned.
“You didn’t realize you had the sensitivity on this thing cranked all the way to the bottom?” Pruitt asked. “I thought you just had a terrific dead-pan! I was waiting for you to make some silly comment about ‘well, since you’ve only got another hour on earth…’ or ‘You don’t want to die a virgin, do you?’ ”
“Oh, fuck,” Kilzer said, snatching the device out of his hands and tapping controls. One adjustment and the radiation bar dropped by two-thirds. When he actually pulled up the recorded rem count, instead of looking at the bar readout, it was about as bad as sitting in an airplane during a solar storm. Major LeBlanc had not, by any stretch of the imagination, been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. “Shit!”
“You are so fucked, man,” Pruitt said, turning his back to the group under the lights and hoping like hell that his shaking shoulders would be taken for sobs rather than the belly laughs that were threatening to sneak out. “There’s no way the river was that hot. Sure, it’s going to set off alarms, the fuckers are so sensitive you can set them off with a watch face. But the damned blast was only a few hours ago. There’s not enough runoff to kick up the rad count. And there’s a dam between us and the fallout.”
“Why didn’t you say something!” Kilzer hissed, staring at the readout and wishing it would go away.
“I just figured it was a way to get Major LeBlanc naked, a goal not to be ignored. Worked like a charm, by the way. The decon foam was a nice touch. Really morale building. I can feel my morale soaring!”
“I’m so screwed! We didn’t even have to decon them!”
“Yeah,” Pruitt said with a shrug, “but we got to see Major LeBlanc covered in ice-cold, slippery foam with a serious case of nipples erecti. And we got to watch Indy washing her down. Sort of a two-fer. I kept trying to think of a way to get the warrant into a white tee-shirt but nothing came to mind. So keep that in mind as your last thoughts because she’s gonna fuckin’ tie you to the ground, strip you naked, paint you blue and run you over with one of her tanks. Probably from the groin up. Speaking of which, is the tank actually hot?”
“I dunno, it was pegging but with the counter set that low…” Kilzer said. “I’m so screwed!”
“Just shoot yourself now, dude,” Pruitt said, finally breaking down into smothered laughter. “I’m so out of here,” he snorted, putting the back of his hand over his mouth and heading for the SheVa’s door. Maybe in there he’d be safe.
Indy watched as Kilzer walked back up the hill. He had the Geiger counter in one hand and the other one held protectively in the area of his groin.
“Where is Pruitt going?” she asked, standing in the cold air with the brush still upraised.
“He… had to go get something out of the SheVa,” Kilzer said in a rush and then handed the counter to Indy. He pointed at the gain control and then turned around. “And I have to go help him!”
Indy looked at the device then at the gain control as Kilzer pounded down the hill. Then she swept it across Glennis’ back and arms.
“Oh.” She just stopped for a moment then looked into the darkness at the retreating civilian. “COWARDS!”
Glennis cocked her head to the side and shivered. “I am b-beginning to think I’m n-not going to die?”
“How’s Major LeBlanc?” Mitchell asked as Indy slumped into her station chair.
“She’s fine,” the warrant replied wearily. She fumbled out a Provigil and took it without a chaser. “Angry, but fine. Amazing how fast a person can warm up in the jet-turbine exhaust from an Abrams.” The engineer looked over at Pruitt and shook her head. “You realize that you’re on her shit list, too.”
“Moi, ma’am?” the gunner replied with a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression. “What did I do?”
“Failure to point out something like gain fault is the same as intending to see a female battalion commander naked,” the warrant said firmly. “Some officers would put you up for an Article Fifteen. I think I’ll just let LeBlanc track you down.”
“Oh, shit,” the gunner muttered under his breath.
“I need an honest answer, Pruitt,” Mitchell said, quietly. “When did you realize something was wrong?”
“Honestly, sir, it wasn’t until I was scrubbing down the gunner,” Pruitt replied. “I started thinking about how many rems they might have taken and I was wondering about the river. Then I had to think about the course it took, and where it would have gotten contaminated. All that didn’t take long, no more than a few seconds once I started to think about it, but I all of a sudden realized that it, the river that is, shouldn’t have been that hot. And I made a gain-control mistake in training one time; I caught it almost immediately, but I knew what could have happened. And with everybody running around like chickens with their heads cut off… So when I was finished scrubbing down the gunner I went and checked and, sure enough, Kilzer had the gain cranked all the way to the bottom. That’s the default setting, because you want to catch low-level radiation and then work up to high level. He’d been using it in the SheVa, and the reactor room is high level, so he had the gain cranked way up and he was used to looking at the readouts and figuring it at that gain. I think he just forgot that the system resets when you turn it off. Honest mistake on his part and at least I did think of it.” He looked over at the warrant officer pointedly.
“Instead of, for example, the local radiation expert?” Mitchell grinned.
“It’s not funny!” Indy said. “Major LeBlanc was embarrassed, thought her life was about to end and, and…”
“Got covered in slippery foam?” Pruitt asked. “Look, her loader, her gunner and her driver were all out there, stripped naked and shivering along with her. If you want to play with the boys, you play the same game.” The gunner shrugged and then snorted. “At least I didn’t try to get you into a white tee-shirt. Now that would have been something to sell tickets for!”