Sleipnir

Then he turned to me. I could see in his eyes that he was about to drop a shoe—first or second didn't matter; I knew I wasn't going to like it. Diffidently he said, "Say, Barnes, didn't you spend some of your time off this past week teaching Johnson how to shoot?"

Uh-oh. "Yeah, Johnson and all those other no-gos on that relief. Why?" (Never ever show off in front of second lieutenants: they'll either bust your ass—or put you to work. Donaldson was the latter type. I'd spent hours out in that freezing snow drilling those idiots, showing them how to hold their weapons properly, how to read their sight pictures accurately, how not to jerk on the trigger or take a deep breath for luck just as you're squeezing the shot off... .)

Brown grimaced. "Well, all the others did okay; but Johnson didn't even qualify."

"That's no surprise," Wally groused. "He doesn't qualify to be a human being."

"Well, damn." So that's what had been dripping off the fan blades. "I knew he wasn't paying attention; but I've never had anybody not qualify." To the astonishment of nearly everyone, I'd even managed to nurse Butler through his qualification.

"Well, you have now," Brown said. "Fortunately, one of the other platoons in training has the range today and the L-T wants you to take Johnson over right now and get him qualified."

Now? As in right now?

Great...

I truly loved this guy—I hadn't had any real time off in a week, and now I got to play wet nurse. I sighed. "So who's coming off our shift to take Johnson's place on the other relief?"

Johnson's relief worked opposite us on the missile site; when we were on site, they were either off duty or pulling patrols, and vice versa. We rarely saw the guys on the other relief (except when we changed reliefs), unless someone changed shifts and they shuffled people around.

Brown wouldn't meet my eyes. I knew then that my suspicion had been right on the money. Another shoe was falling and it had my name on it.

"Well-l-l," Brown drawled, gaze glued to the ceiling, "we don't really have anybody on slack. Peters fell and sprained his knee on the ice yesterday, and the L-T let Wilson go in this morning 'cause his wife's having a baby, and Whitney has pneumonia. One of you guys is going to have to pull forty-eight hours straight and be on the other relief for a while."

"I wouldn't take his place if his life depended on it!" Wally exploded.

Fuck. I hate it when the handwriting on the wall conflicts with my plans. I avoided looking at Gary. I was already seeing red, and he hadn't even said it yet. Good of the unit...

"I'll do it," he said. Just as I knew he was going to.

Wally and Crater made outraged sounds: "Hey, man, you can't—" "Sheeiit, Vernon, what're you doin'; you crazy all of a sudden?"

I lunged to my feet. "Damn you to hell, Vernon! You know goddamn well if you switch with that little prickhead, the HK tour is screwed—"

Gary met my eyes squarely. "Randy, hang on to your temper a minute—"

"Fuck you very much, Vernon."

I turned without another word and left with my gear slung across my back, not even stomping or hurrying. When I got to the door, I slammed it open and stalked out into the cold.

Dammit! It was about time Vernon let somebody else take the shit for a change. Screw morale... along with everything else about the goddamned Army... .

As I stormed toward the waiting jeep—where Johnson already huddled, looking less miserable than he was going to by the time I got through with his ass—I wondered if I'd get any sleep on the drive over.

Johnson gri

I wanted to shoot him.

Instead, I drove out to the goddamned range with him, and got the misbegotten little shirker qualified. By the time we finished, Johnson wasn't smiling anymore. Hell, by the time I finished with him, I wasn't sure Archibald Johnson would ever smile again, and didn't give a bald rat's ass one way or the other. It didn't help my temper any to realize that while Gary Vernon's pact with Odin had brought him nothing but good luck, mine seemed to have brought nothing but bad.

Chapter Five

My footsteps rattled around the cavern like angry wasps inside a falling nest. Whoever said to beware asking the gods for gifts knew what they were talking about. (Which made me wonder how many other mortals had been royally screwed down the ages.)

I hadn't asked for much; just something to believe in on those endless nights in the missile site's guard towers, where hours and hours of deadly boredom alternated with occasional moments of lethal peril. Just something to believe in, for those excruciating seconds when all hell would break loose, and a man didn't know which direction death might come from next.

Well, I'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for. Odin had let me have it, both barrels.

And in all the chaos, I hadn't apologized to Gary.

He'd only done exactly the kind of thing I'd always admired most about him. Given his silver tongue, I should have realized he could talk his way back onto our shift again before the scheduled HK factory tour. I certainly should have realized that morale really was that important. Soldiers who don't give a damn anymore make mistakes that get people killed. Both of us had ended up mad enough at each other—and at the system in general—to be just that little bit less cautious than normal. When the gods are watching, that's all it takes.

I should have apologized.

Archibald Johnson took Gary's place on Tower Five. I hadn't said much. The guys understood, and let me stew in silence. As though echoing my mood, ice formed on the tower's windows—from the inside—and blocked my view. Double chain-link fences and a treeless perimeter were all I had to look at for the next few wretched hours, but they beat looking at Archie Johnson.

I rubbed the windows with a scrap of dirty toweling, and muttered obscenities at the heater. I couldn't really fault it. Whoever had ordered it, back Stateside, they hadn't taken into account the plywood-and-glass box on stilts where it was going to be used. The idiot obviously hadn't figured on German winters, either. The heater was doing its best, faced with impossible demands.

I winced. I'd made some pretty impossible demands of my own, then ended by telling my best friend to go to hell.

I was not proud of myself.

So I scrubbed the windows and scowled out at the perimeter, with a black sky and black thoughts and glittering ice for company, and wondered how to apologize. My breath froze into little slivers of ice on contact with the glass. Tomorrow morning—first thing—I would put on my best hangdog expression and go find him.

Earlier, Wally had said that Gary was going into town tonight with some of the guys: Hill and Rosetti and a couple of others I didn't know very well. Wally had also said he'd looked mad as a two-dollar whore stiffed by a fifty-cent john. Which hadn't sounded at all like Gary Vernon, and made me feel even lower and slimier than I already did. A night off ought to leave him in a better mood, anyway; maybe good enough to accept an apology from a first-class asshole.

I sighed, and used my sleeve to wipe away ice crystals. Deep shadows lurked beneath the trees out beyond the perimeter. They hid secrets from the stars. Too quiet out there. Some nights silence was a relief; but others... Nights like those a man was glad when the sun came up to find him still breathing.

I decided to listen in on the phone, just to hear human voices. Chuck had just delivered the punchline of a joke. I winced, and wondered what had led up to "—so she sucked his apples!" Laughter erupted over the line.