Flashback

The then-Nick thinks he understands. There’s a lot about the Keigo Nakamura investigation that he hasn’t been free to talk to Dara about since she works for District Attorney Mannie Ortega. The then-Nick thinks that she resents his silence.

“I’m sorry, Dara. There are just things that I haven’t been able to talk about and…”

Amazingly, she balls her hand into a fist and hits him on his chest. It isn’t a joke-punch; she strikes hard enough to make a red mark.

“You idiot,” she says and he’s even more startled to see tears in her eyes. “Does it ever occur to you that there are things about my job that I can’t talk to you about but would like to? Need to?”

He’s smart enough—for a change—not to admit this, but in truth this possibility hasn’t really occurred to Nick. Since Dara is head researcher for one of the assistant district attorneys, old Harvey Cohen, with whom Nick has never been that impressed, he can’t imagine much in her work life that she couldn’t talk to Nick about if she wanted to. As far as he knows, the DA’s office, much less Harvey, doesn’t have any cases pending that Nick has been involved in or would have to go to court to testify about.

“It’s not right,” says Dara, putting her flushed face into the pillow. “But I guess it doesn’t matter… it’s almost over… just a few more days, maybe a week, Mannie says…”

“Mannie Ortega?” says Nick. He’s never liked the ambitious, shrewd, but not very bright DA. “What the hell has he got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” says Dara and rolls over on her side, facing away from him now and still hugging the pillow to her chest.

But her lovely back and lovely backside are bare, and Nick presses himself against them, putting his left arm around her, his forearm encountering only pillow. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy…”

She reaches back over her head and touches the top of his head with her fingers. “It’s stupid. Forget everything I said, Nick. I’ll explain… when I can. Soon.”

He kisses her neck.

And, he realizes floating above the conversation at the end of this fifteen-minute flash, he almost had forgotten the entire conversation. He still didn’t understand what she’d been talking and crying about. Something at work—her work—obviously had been bothering her for some time.

“Shall we take that nap we came in for an hour ago?” whispers Dara, turning back toward him. Her breath is sweet from tears.

“Sure, let’s take a short snooze,” says Nick. “I’ll lock the door in case Val gets home from the birthday party before we wake up.”

The Summit of Raton Pass was only 7,834 feet, but Major Malcolm’s headquarters was in a military trailer set a few hundred feet higher on a low peak just to the west of Interstate 25.

The major obviously knew that Sato was coming and that he represented the Advisor, so Malcolm treated Nakamura’s security chief with that minimum of obviously irritated you’re-wasting-my-time-but-I-have-to-do-this respect that military officers are so good at projecting. Sato had introduced Nick only by name—no explanation of his presence—and Major Malcolm’s nod had been totally dismissive.

There’d been a time when Nick would have been insulted by that attitude, but now he found it convenient. He wanted to think his own thoughts and not be involved.

Also, he was tired. He’d done flashback most of the night, getting less than an hour’s sleep. Not a smart strategy for a day when he knew he might need all his survival skills—whatever he had left—but he didn’t have time enough not to have spent the hours under the flash.

They were in the trailer and the major was gesturing toward one screen on a wall of screens, pointing at what seemed to be tiny dust puffs swirling against a textured and three-dimensional tan-and-brown wall.

“These dust fountains,” said Major Malcolm, stabbing his blunt finger into the 3D images, “are what’s left of the Republic of Texas’s Third Armored Division, retreating toward their initial staging area in Dalhart and Dumas. These…”

His hand disappeared into the raised images as he touched the screen where darker, broader smudges rose. “This black wall here is actually more than a thousand smoke plumes between Wagon Mound and Las Vegas, a lot of them near the old Fort Union National Monument… and beneath those plumes are hundreds of burning tanks, APCs, and other armored elements, mostly Texan. The battle lasted ten days and some of our historians are already saying that it was the largest tank fight since the Battle of Kursk in late summer of nineteen forty-three.”

“Who won?” asked Nick.

Major Malcolm looked at him as if he’d farted. “Strategically speaking, the Russians, because they stopped the German Blitzkrieg,” said the major. “Although the Soviets lost more than six thousand tanks and assault guns against the Germans’ seven hundred or so in the whole battle, the Wehrmacht had to retreat. They’d lost the initiative on the Eastern Front and it was the last strategic offensive Hitler managed to mount in the east.”