“Then why do you need me?” the sergeant asked.
“Because I need someone I can trust to help me run the operation. In one week, we’re going to be off-loading roughly three tons of equipment on an island that I’m told is nearly inaccessible. There’s no place for a plane to land, no safe harbor for a ship of any size. We’re going to have to bring in the supplies by chopper, a lot like we did in Afghanistan, and we’ve got to hit the ground running.”
Groves blew out a breath and looked up as two new fighters feinted and jabbed.
“Why now? Why this time of year?”
“Why not?” Slater said, “It’s the holiday season—where would you rather be than the Arctic?”
“It’s dark there. Almost all the time. Anybody think of that?”
“Yes, of course we have,” Slater replied. Indeed, artificial illumination was one of the first things he had entered into the budget proposal—klieg lamps, ramp lights, and backup generators to make sure they never went down. When dealing with viral material, inert or not, a lighting malfunction could be as dangerous as a refrigeration failure. “But the job can’t wait.”
One of the fighters in the ring landed a low blow, and the other one complained loudly.
“Walk it off!” Groves shouted.
The match resumed, and Slater waited. In spite of all the sergeant’s objections, Slater knew his man. The call to duty in Afghanistan would be strong, but the plea from his old major would be stronger. Groves’s sense of loyalty wouldn’t allow him to let Slater go off on his own, much less after such a personal appeal.
“I’ve already got my orders,” Groves finally said without taking his eyes from the ring. The two fighters were in a clinch, heads butting like rams. “Who’s gonna get my deployment changed?”
“Don’t sweat it. Everything will be taken care of.” Slater put out his hand and said, “Don’t forget to pack warm.”
“Yeah,” the sergeant replied, taking his hand resignedly, “I’ll do that.”
All in all, Slater thought, it had been a successful day. What he needed now was a good, solid night’s rest. Looking down the suburban street, he saw a door open, a dog come out and lift its leg on a tree, then scamper back inside. Still feeling drowsy from the drugs, he heated up the car, then closed his eyes, for what he planned would be a ten-minute nap before driving the rest of the way home. But when he awoke, stiff and sore in his seat, he heard a light tapping on his window. When he opened his eyes, Martha was standing there in a jogging suit, a key in her hand.
Slater, suitably mortified, touched the button and the window rolled down.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve been here all night,” she said.
Slater glanced at his watch. It was five thirty in the morning. A gray dawn was breaking. Christ, he wondered, was he becoming narcoleptic from all the drug interactions?
“Don’t tell me you jog at this hour,” he said, hoping to strike a tone that would mask his embarrassment.
Martha shook her head ruefully. “You want to come in and warm up?”
“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
“No,” she said, “it wouldn’t.”
There was an awkward moment before Martha said, “I’m glad the court-martial went as well as it did.”
“All things considered,” he said, “I got lucky.”
“So, are you posted here in the States again?”
“Not for long.”
“Where are you going next?”
“It’s classified,” he said, and they both smiled. They had had almost this identical conversation so many times in the past that to be having it again now—on a chilly suburban street, with Martha in her jogging suit and Slater slumped in his car—struck them both as absurd.
For a moment, they held each other’s gaze, with a thousand things to say but all of them said before. For Slater, it was like looking at a vision of what might have been, the life he could have led—and right now, with his back feeling like a plank and his legs half-asleep and his brain in a muddle—it didn’t look so bad. He had to keep himself from lifting one cold hand through the window simply to caress her cheek for a moment. As part of the annual exam for field epidemiologists deployed on high-stress missions, an Army psychiatrist had recently told him there was a notable lack of intimacy in his life. “You can’t run from it forever,” he’d said. “Given what you face on the job, you’re going to need some human anchor, some safe harbor, in your life.” After a pause, the shrink had added, “Or else you can find yourself drifting off the emotional map and into uncharted waters.”