The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [115]
"This is some war. Our guys are knocked off right and left," Jake lamented huskily, "and I can't even talk my way past a paper-ass general to get overseas and drop bombs on the worst human beings in history." He sneaked a glance at Ben, rigid behind the wheel again. "You don't happen to be doing it to me, are you?"
"What, keeping you on the Eskimo run? You give me too much credit, Ice." You're not alone in that kind of wondering, though. You flying nowhere but to Alaska, apparently ever. Prokosch turned down for sea duty before he got blown up anyway, poor luckless kid. Danzer's soft assignment to MacArthur's palace guard was handed to him from somewhere, such as from way on high? While Animal gets flung onto beachhead after beachhead until a Jap bullet finally finds him, and Moxie is over there month after month trying to shoot down planes that are trying to bomb him. It looks just random, the war cuts some guys unhealthier orders than others. But a setup would want to be made to look like that, too, wouldn't it. If Tepee Weepy is picking and choosing who is supposed to stay safe and who goes into combat—
"I wish Grandpa Grady would get off my case," Jake was saying. "Hell, it was only one floatplane, it wasn't as if we—"
"We? I was only the sandbag, remember?"
"—wrecked the whole goddamn Eighth Air Force. Hey, watch it!"
Ben saw it at the same time. Just ahead, in the middle of the highway, a magpie was eating a skunk. The long-tailed bird took a last impertinent peck, then lifted into the air, stunningly black and white as if having intensified its colors with those of its prey. Steering with one hand, with the other Ben frantically tried to crank the windshield closed.
Not in time. As the wheels straddled the squashed skunk, the smell swept into the jeep like a stink bomb through a transom. "Yow." Jake was blinking the sting out of his eyes, as was Ben. "That was some ripe polecat."
"The Montana state flower, Dex always called one like that," Ben managed after gasping.
"Dexter the Dexterous. That sounds like him, let the peasants scoop those striped pussies out of his way." Still fanning at the linger of the skunk, Jake thought of something. "Hey, our secret -mission guy must be about due to get his turn at fame from you again, ain't he? Then the milk-run pilot Eisman, specializing in pallbearing? My ma's got her scrapbook open, waiting."
"Tepee Weepy has loosened up a little about that, so if you treat me right, I might squeeze you in ahead of him this time," Ben hedged, aware it was drawing him a deeply inquiring look. Hastily he skipped on past the situation of Dex: "That doesn't mean I'm going to fly into the cold blue yonder with you like last time. Besides, you've got enough company in Alaska without me." He was secretly relieved Jake was shelved there in the ATC icebox. That's what comes of climbing into a Red bed, my friend. "Fill me in, Yakov—how's the bewitching Katya?"
"Gone, is what she is."
"Say again?"
"She's vanished." Jake looked even more bleak. "I ask the other Russians about her and they just look at me and give the galoot salute." Illustratively he shrugged his more than sizable shoulders up around his ears. "Nothing I can do about it, Ben. Like everything else."
Governments and their coin tricks, with people instead of pocket change. Ben fell silent, into hard thinking about Tepee Weepy, as the jeep went up a rise from the Teton River bridge and there a couple of dozen miles ahead on the horizon stood the Black Eagle smelter stack, its plume dark against the sky. Off the western edge of the smoke cloud a set of specks separated from the smudge and kept on going, a flight of bombers setting out for Alaska.
"Home