Dreamcatcher(75)

At some point, Owen realized, they had started over counting primes from one. On the way up to Gosselin's in the bus, the various voices had reached primes in the high four figures.

'We are dying,' said the voice of Barbra Strelsand. 'On se meurt, on crève.' A pause, then the voice of David Lettertman: 'One hundred and twenty-seven. One hundred - '

'Belay that!' Kurtz cried. For the only time in the years Owen had known him, Kurtz sounded really upset. Almost shocked. 'Owen, why do you want to run that filth into the ears of my boys? You come back and tell me, and right now.'

'Just wanted to hear if any of it had changed, boss,' Owen said. That was a lie, and of course Kurtz knew it and at some point would undoubtedly make him pay for it. it was failing to shoot the kids all over again, maybe even worse. Owen didn't care. Fuck the phooka horse. If they were going to do this, he wanted Kurtz's boys (Skyhook in Bosnia, Blue Group this time, some other name next time, but it always came back to the same hard young faces) to hear the grayboys one last time. Travelers from another star system, perhaps even another universe or time-stream, knowers of things their hosts would never know (not that Kurtz would care). Let them hear the grayboys one last time instead of Pearl Jam or Jar of Flies or Rage Against the Machine; the grayboys appealing to what they had foolishly hoped was some better nature.

'And has it changed?' Kurtz's voice crackled back. The green Kiowa was still down there, just below the hanging line of gunships, its rotors beating at the split top of a tall old pine Just under it, making it ruffle and sway. 'Has it, Owen?'

'No,' he said. 'Not at all, boss.'

'Then belay that chatter. Daylight's wasting, praise Jesus.' Owen paused, then said, with careful deliberation: 'Yes, sir.'

6

Kurtz sat bolt-upright in the Kiowa's right seat  -  'ramrod-straight' was how they always put it in the books and movies. He had donned his sunglasses in spite of the day's niild gray light, but Freddy, his pilot, still only dared to look at him from the corners of his eyes. The sunglasses were wraparounds, hipster-hodaddy shades, and now that they were on, you couldn't tell where the boss was looking. You certainly couldn't trust the way his head was pointing.

The Derry News lay on Kurtz's lap (MYSTERIOUS SKYLIGHTS, MISSING HUNTERS SPARK PANIC IN JEFFERSON TRACT, read the headline). Now he picked up the paper and folded it carefully. He was good at this, and soon the Derry News would be folded into what Owen Underhill's career had just become: a cocked hat. Underhill no doubt thought he would face some sort of disciplinary action  -  Kurtz's own, since this was a black-ops deal, at least so far  -  followed by a second chance. What he didn't seem to realize (and that was probably good; unwarned usually meant unarmed) was that this had been his second chance. Which was one more than Kurtz had ever given anyone else, and one he now regretted. Bitterly regretted. For Owen to go and pull a trick like that after their conversation in the office of the store after he had been specifically warned . . .  

'Who gives the order?' Underhill's voice crackled in Kurtz's private comlink.

Kurtz was surprised and a little dismayed by the depth of his rage. Most of it was caused by no more than surprise, the simplest emotion, the one babies registered before any other. Owen had zinged him a good one, putting the grayboys on the squad channel like that; just wanted to hear if any of it had changed indeed, that was one you could roll tight and stick up your ass. Owen was probably the best second Kurtz had ever had in a long and complicated career that stretched all the way back to Cambodia in the early seventies, but Kurtz was going to break him, just the same. For the trick with the radio; because Owen hadn't learned. It wasn't about kids in Bosanski Novi, or a bunch of babbling voices now. It wasn't about following orders, or even the principle of the matter. It was about the line. His line. The Kurtz Line.

Also, there was that sir.

That damned snotty sir.

'Boss?' Owen sounding Just a tad nervous now, and he was right to sound nervous, Jesus love him. 'Who gives - '

'Common channel, Freddy,' Kurtz said. 'Key me in.'

The Kiowa, much lighter than the gunships, caught a gust of wind and took a giddy bounce. Kurtz and Freddy ignored it. Freddy keyed him wide.

'Listen up, boys,' Kurtz said, looking at the four gunships hanging in a line, glass dragonflies above the trees and beneath the clouds. Just ahead of them was the swamp and the vast pearlescent tilted dish with its surviving crew  -  or whatever they were  -  standing beneath its aft lip.

'Listen now, boys, Daddy's gonna sermonize. Are you listening? Answer up.'

Yes, yes, affirmative, affirm, roger that (with an occasional sir thrown in, but that was all right; there was a difference between forgetfulness and insolence).

'I'm not a talker, boys, talking's not what I do, but I want you to know that this is not repeat not a case of what you see is what you get. What you see is about six dozen gray, apparently unsexed humanoids standing around naked as a loving God made them and you say, some would say anyway, "Why, those poor folks, all naked and unarmed, not a c**k or a cunt to share among em, pleading for mercy there by their crashed intergalactic Trailways, and what kind of a dog, what kind of a monster could hear those pleading voices and go in just the same?" And I have to tell you, boys, that I am that dog, I am that monster, I am that post-industrial post-modern crypto-fascist politically incorrect male cocka-rocka warpig, praise Jesus, and for anyone listening in I am Abraham Peter Kurtz, USAF Retired, serial number 241771699, and I am leading this charge, I'm the Lieutenant Calley in charge of this particular Alice's Restaurant Massacree.'