‘Okay, we take the turn-off.’
During his deliberations Andrea had been beside him, occasionally leaning against him as she looked at the map. Her presence, her proximity made him feel good. A great effort of will, of self control would be involved, but he’d have to take things slow with her, not rush it.
It was probably by accident that Thome’s hand brushed against her breasts as he reached between them for a water bottle being passed around. Certainly Andrea made nothing of it, and she’d always been fast enough slapping aside any deliberate attempts to feel her body, but Revell reacted all the same.
‘Keep your hands to yourself.’ Immediately he regretted his interference, wishing the engine had started a moment earlier and drowned his words. Still he was not sufficiently on guard over his jealousy, he would have to strive harder to keep it in check.
It had been a long time coming, longer than he’d expected, but it was no surprise to Clarence that Andrea had at last battened onto the major. Systematically she had worked through most of them, like an apprentice butcher eager to learn every aspect of the craft, how to cut and hack and mince flesh in a thousand different ways.
The Uzi submachine gun felt unfamiliar in his hands, and he glanced at the weapons rack to check that his Enfield sniper rifle was still safely secured. It swayed a little as the Marder lurched on turning off the autoroute onto the back road. The major’s assault shotgun was next to it, its huge twenty round drum magazine dwarfing the grenade discharger barrel on Andrea’s M16 next in line. Even their rifles were together.
Not that there was anything the officer could have done to speed the selection process, bring his turn faster. Andrea set her own pace, made her own rules.
The ride became rougher, and the Marder began to climb. The instruments indicating the level of contamination outside of their steel cocooned world, that had fallen dramatically since they left the grey woods, began to rise again.
As the angle of ascent became steeper Clarence had to exert considerable pressure on the bench and floor to prevent himself from sliding into Dooley. There was nothing he could do to stop Andrea from sliding into him.
The contact of the warm length of her thigh did nothing for him, no woman had, not since that Soviet Bomber had crashed on the married quarters in Cologne, and his wife… and children.
As so often they did, those thoughts drove all else from his mind and only gradually did he become aware that Revell was glaring at him. For a moment he didn’t understand, then comprehension dawned as Andrea shifted slightly to a more comfortable position and he felt her move against him.
Ordinarily he would have wasted no time in distancing himself from that physical contact, but the major’s attitude prompted him to uncharacteristic behaviour, and he stayed where he was. The glare has deepened to a scowl, and to get away from it Clarence closed his eyes and leaned back against the hull feigning sleep.
In his mind he conjured pictures of the sort of country they were traveling through. His thoughts projected images of steep and rugged hillsides, often covered by dense forests of firs and pines, and in places gashed by deep river gorges and outcrops of frost shattered rock, and here and there, where the slope of the land was not so severe, a few cleared patches where farms clung to the valley sides. He had only to move his head a little, open his eyes and the image intensifying lens in his periscope would have enabled him to check the accuracy or otherwise of his imaginings.
The night was no impediment, the special glass would concentrate what little light there was and enable him to see as clearly as in day, but he didn’t bother. He had seen enough of the Zone already.
Beyond the armoured wall of the hull the landscape they passed did resemble the sniper’s picture of it, the mountains and craps and cliffs and valleys were all there, but they lacked the furnishings of trees and grass and clear water he’d set on them. The basic contours of the land were there as they had been before the war, but there any similarity with the tourist brochures ended. Defoliants had stripped the trees of leaves and needles. No blade of grass remained, and with it had gone the patterns of the meadows that had marked out the farms. A few hardy, or miraculously fortunate plants survived, but now they looked alien in a panorama of lifeless decay where death was the norm.
With even their root systems shrivelled and destroyed by the constant showers of yellow rain and other Russian chemical weapons, the trees no longer bound the soil to the slopes and erosion on a gigantic scale was adding its contribution to the man-made havoc, silting and damming the rivers. Mud slides also blocked the road in places, and from the glutinous mounds projected lance-like lengths of snapped off timber.
Rarely shaving more than a fraction from their speed as he tackled each, Burke made scant allowance for the dangers of the slippery slopes. On one the tracks began to spin as loose material carried them toward a vertical drop to a debris-laden river several hundred feet below. They found traction again just in time, driving clear as part of the slide avalanched over the edge, taking a section of the road with it into the depths.
‘Hell, I had my eyes closed then.’ Ripper left his periscope and reached to dig their driver in the back. ‘I ain’t had a drive like this since I rode with my Uncle Billy hauling moonshine across the state line. He sure was in a hurry that day, Aunt Sarah had been denying him his conjugals for better than a month, on account of her being, like they say in the good book, kinda heavy with child.’
‘What did that have to do with his driving?’ Scenting an interesting story in the offing, Dooley encouraged his fellow American.
‘Well the fella we took the ‘shine to, he always paid cash money on the barrel head, no fuss, no hassle. Uncle Billy planned to spend a goodly portion of it at Ma Kelly’s. She ran a real smart brothel, over a Chinese laundry in Burford City, where we delivered. Aunt Sarah being to due to drop just about any time, Unc’ was in a hurry to get back but wanted time for a couple of decent sessions before we had to turn about.’
‘Did you get his oats?’ Thorne was taking a wry interest as well.
‘Not that day. Snooping revenuers found a thimble-full of white lightning still in the tank under the back seat. In his hurry he got kinda careless. Didn’t get his oats that or any day for quite a spell. I looked in on Ma Kelly’s, though. That were the day I lost my virginity. I were just thirteen, but big for my years, if you catch my meaning.’
Ripper had to pause there, as in attempting to nudge Dooley he moved the dressing on his arm. He rocked back and forth hugging the limb to him and keeping up an undertone of heartfelt obscenity.
‘Well don’t leave it there, tell us what happened.’ Dooley offered no vestige of sympathy, only encouragement to continue the story.
‘Shit, that hurt. Think maybe this’ll get me back stateside? Where was I?’
‘Losing your virginity.’
‘Oh yeah. Soon as I stepped inside I was grabbed by this big red-head. Maybe she thought the bulge in my pants was a roll of money, or maybe not, anyway she hustled me into this room the size of a broom cupboard. I ain’t kidding when I tell you if I’d been an inch taller we’d have had to do it standing up. So like a real pro she gets straight to the serious business first, and reels off a list of services and prices. She rattled through them too fast for me, shit, I’d have needed a medical dictionary to even figure what half of them were. When she asked me if I wanted to plate her I thought she were hinting she wanted me to help with the dishes.’
‘Get to it, what happened?’ Leaning close in order not to miss anything, Dooley inadvertently crushed up against Ripper’s sore arm and brought about another torrent of bad language, only at greater volume this time, and another delay.