He wished he were home in Kyoto. At least for one night. Murawa felt lucky to have been born in that most precious, most Japanese of cities, so unlike Tokyo with its compromises with Western degeneracy. There was nothing more beautiful than the gardens of Kyoto in the autumn. Unless it was the Kyoto girls, with their peculiar, disarming combination of delicacy and young strength. Certainly, they were unlike the gruesome women of Central Asia in their dirty, eerie costumes, with their gibbering voices. Those with plague scars — obviously untreated in this primitive environment — were only grimmer than the rest by a matter of degree. There was no romance in Central Asia for Murawa. Only ugly deserts interrupted with excavation scars and cities erected madly in the middle of nowhere, choking with half-dead industries whose principal product seemed to be bad air. It was like taking an unpleasant journey back through a number of bygone centuries, collecting the worst features of each as you went along. Central Asia made Murawa feel sick in spirit, and he was grateful for each new day that his body did not sicken, as well.
Apparently, it was not only the Iranians who were a problem. At the maintenance councils back at headquarters, Murawa had spoken with fellow officers who served with the Arab Islamic Union forces. Their tales made it plain that there was little to choose between their charges and Murawa's.
Despite unprecedented successes, the front was beginning to bog down. There was no military reason not to press on now. The Russians were clearly beaten. But each new local breakthrough proved harder to support and sustain logistically. The Iranians and the Arabs had gone through so many combat systems that they had too little left for the final blow. Their leaders barked that Japan was obliged to replace their losses. But even Murawa, a mere captain, knew that the additional systems did not exist. Japanese industry had gone all out to provide the vast forces already deployed. And, even if additional systems had been available, it would have been impossible to transport them all from Japan to the depths of Central Asia overnight. The prewar buildup had taken years.
The Iranians refused to understand. Murawa worked his crews until the men literally could no longer function without sleep. He sought desperately to do his duty, to return enough combat systems to the fighting forces to flesh out the skeletal units pointed northward. And all he heard were complaints that had increasingly begun to sound like threats.
Now all he wanted to do was sleep. It had been a hard day, a bad day. Sleep was his only respite and reward.
The explosions woke him.
Murawa had been dreaming of red leaves and old temple bells. Until suddenly the bells began to ring with a ferocity that hurled him out of his repose. He spent a long moment sitting with his hands clapped over his ears in a state of thorough disorientation.
The noise was of bells loud as thunder. Louder than thunder. The walls and floor wobbled, as though the earth had gotten drunk. Earthquake, he thought. Then a nearby explosion shattered all of the glass remaining in the window of his room and an orange-rose light illuminated the spartan quarters.
My God, he realized, we're under attack.
He grabbed wildly for his trousers. He was accustomed to seeing the mechanical results of combat. But he had never felt its immediate effects before. Once, he had seen an old Russian jet knocked out of the sky at some distance.
But nothing like this.
The huge noise of the bells would not stop. It hurt his ears badly, making his head throb. The noise was so great that it had physical force. The big sound of explosions made sense to him. But not the bells.
The sound of human shouting was puny, barely audible, amid the crazy concert of the bells.
He pulled on his boots over bare feet and ran out of his room, stumbling down the dark corridor toward the entrance of the barracks building. The Iranian military policeman on guard duty huddled in the corner of the foyer, chanting out loud.
"What's going on?" Murawa demanded in Japanese. But he was not really addressing the cowering Iranian. He hurried out past the blown-in door, tramping over glass and grit.
Outside, heavy snowflakes sailed down from the dark heavens. The white carpet on the ground lay in total incongruity with the array of bonfires spread across the near horizon.
The motor park. His repair yards.
He watched, stunned, as a heavy tank flashed silver-white-gold as if it had been electrified, then jerked backward like a kicked dog. Nearby, another vehicle seemed to crouch into the earth, a beaten animal — until it jumped up and began to blaze.
With each new flash, the enormous bell sound rolled across the landscape.
The bells. His tanks. His precious vehicles. His treasures.
What in-the-name-of-God was going on? What kind of weapons were the Russians using? Where had they come from?
Another huge tolling noise throbbed through his skull, and he briefly considered that the Iranians might have turned on them. But that was impossible. It was premature. And the Iranians could never have managed anything like this.
He pointed himself toward the communications center, feet unsure in the snow. He brushed against an Iranian soldier whose eyes were mad with fear, and it occurred to Murawa belatedly that he had come out unarmed. The realization made him feel even more helpless, although a sidearm was unlikely to be very effective against whatever was out there playing God in the darkness.
He ran along the accustomed route — the shortest way— without thinking about the need for cover. The air around him hissed. At the periphery of his field of vision, dark figures moved through the shadows or silhouetted briefly against a local inferno. He was still far too excited to seriously analyze the situation. His immediate ambition was limited to reaching the communications center. Someone there might have answers. And there were communications means. Other Japanese officers and NCOs. The comms center called him both as a place of duty and of refuge.
He almost made it. He was running the last gauntlet, slipping across the open space between the devastated motor parks and the administration area, when a force like a hot ocean wave lifted him from the earth and hurled him back down. The action happened with irresistible speed, yet, within it, there was time to sense his complete loss of orientation as the shock wave rolled him over in the air exactly as a child tumbles when caught unexpectedly by the sea. For an instant gravity disappeared, and time stretched out long enough for him to feel astonishment then elemental fear before the sky slammed him back against the earth. In the last bad sliver of time, he thrust out a hand to protect himself. It hit the ground ahead of his body, at a bad angle, and his arm snapped like a dry biscuit.
He lay on the earth, sucking for air. He felt wetness under his shoulder blades. He raised his head like a crippled horse attempting to rise. He felt impossibly heavy.
He tried to right himself, but it simply did not work. He almost rolled up onto one knee, but he found that his right arm would not cooperate. When he realized that the dangling object at the end of his limb was his own hand, a wave of nausea passed over him. There was blood all over his uniform, all over his flesh. He could not decide where it had originated. The world seemed extraordinarily intense, yet unclear at the same time.