1945

"Thanks for the lift, Sergeant, and the warm night of hospitality," he added, and dropped the heavy bag by his left side. He waited and stared until the sergeant reluctantly saluted him. Morrell returned it and turned away.

Tent number 721 was but one of thousands like it in the massive tent city that had been thrown up on the outskirts of Oakland, California, as a means of processing the transient troops en route to the war in the Pacific. The whole camp had an air of temporariness, as if it belonged to a migratory horde that had suddenly appeared and could disappear at will. The roads were dirt and rutted, and the tents were small and shapeless. However, the camp was laid out in a sensible grid that made it possible for the MPs to drop Paul off only a little way from his destination, tent 721. They could have dropped him off right in front, but they wanted to show a little more of their superiority by letting him take a walk.

Paul tapped on a piece of plywood attached to the front of the tent as a crude knocker. "Come in," a voice called, and Paul had that feeling that he'd been here before. It was uncannily like that last time in Germany.

He ducked his head and entered. Then he started to stand upright and come to attention. "Sit down, Lieutenant," said the voice, interrupting that effort. Paul found a camp chair and did as directed.

As his eyes became adjusted to the dimmer light, he saw that the man facing him across a card table that served as a desk was a captain in his late twenties or early thirties. He had dark, brush-cut hair and looked to be fairly tall and rangy.

"Lieutenant Morrell, I presume?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wonderful. Lieutenant, I am Captain Tom Ruger. Now just where the hell have you been? You were supposed to be here three days ago. Almost all the rest of the regimental officers have gone on ahead with the enlisted men, with me left behind to round up strays like you."

Tradition dictated that he was to say "no excuse," or something like that. Right now, Paul was too tired and dirty to care. "Sir, if I hadn't been thrown in jail for no good reason yesterday, I would only have been two days late. As to the rest of it, my orders weren't realistic. I may have had travel priority, but that couldn't get me on planes that weren't flying or trains that weren't moving."

To Paul's surprise, Ruger laughed. "The orders may not have been realistic, but most army orders aren't. If we had told you to arrive as soon as you could, how long would you have taken? A year? Two? As to the other part, you were arrested for the crime of wearing a uniform in San Francisco, which, after the peace riots of a few weeks ago, is now off-limits to all military personnel and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

"When the cops stopped you, your orders caused the police to worry about your intentions because they showed you were already two days AWOL. If you'd been on time, they'd just have put you on a bus or truck and shipped your sorry ass out here. Since your paperwork condemned you as a probable felon, they decided not to take chances, and that's why they held you in jail. To tell you the truth I don't blame them. There are a lot of people showing up late in hopes the war will be over by the time they arrive."

"I admit the thought crossed my mind."

"As to transportation problems, Lieutenant, the military in the Northwest states are going crazy, which is completely screwing up everything that moves on wheels. The Japs have started sending over firebombs attached to balloons that drift along over the prevailing air currents by the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and into the U.S. They've only caused a little damage: a couple of small forest fires, and a handful of people were killed while trying to examine them. But rumor has it that one of the bombs apparently started a fire at some supersecret installation near Hanford, Washington, and cut the place's electricity. It may have been chance, but it's the sort of thing that drives the brass crazy and disrupts train schedules."

Ruger's voice dropped its tone of banter and turned stern. "Be that as it may, you were still supposed to be here on time. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

"You planning to make the army a career, Lieutenant Morrell?"

"Hell, no. I mean, no, sir."

Ruger took a piece of paper off his makeshift desk and wadded it up. "Then there's no point in disciplining you, is there? I could maybe have you court-martialed and stripped of rank, but that would be a waste of the time and money the government's got invested in you, and a written reprimand that would ruin your career wouldn't mean squat if you don't have a career to ruin in the first place." He threw the paper away. It landed on the ground, a few feet from an overflowing wastebasket. "You got a family in Detroit? A girl?"

"Yes to both, Captain."

Ruger leaned forward and glared. "I'll bet you deviated from a true straight-line course and spent some time with them, didn't you?"