Free Hunter Killer by James Rouch Page A

spite of her German accent Libby had recognised the irony in her words. ‘You love the killing. I’ve seen you doing it.’ ‘I do it well.’
‘So does a nuclear bomb, but I wouldn’t cuddle up to that either.’ ‘About the bomb I do not know, but there is no danger you would get the chance to do the other is there?’ Taking her grenade-discharger fitted M16 with her, Andrea moved away and went to the window.
    ‘And no bloody chance I’d want to.’ Sod her, sod all bloody women, except for Helga. Sod ‘em, sod ‘em, sod ‘em. When he deliberately moved to sit in the exact spot she’d occupied, he fancied he could feel something of her warmth. Sod her. Being near her, close to any woman, made his balls ache. He’d have to find a corner and work his frustration off in the same degrading way he always resorted to. Oh God, he did need a woman. He smiled to himself, a tight wry thing in the privacy of the grimy hands he rubbed over his face. He’d held out so long, but the next chance he got, he’d have to, he’d just have to. But he’d said that to himself the last time, and the time before that, and so it had been for all of two years. Perhaps when, if, it actually came to it, he wouldn’t be able to. Maybe lack of practice, or more likely his conscience, wouldn’t let him. But it did no good to indulge in such speculations. The problem was now.
    He casually stood up and went out to the tiny bathroom. Quietly and carefully, he pulled the door shut behind him.
    ‘Fucking neutrals? I’d bomb the bloody lot of them, and all the shitty bleeding hearts and pacifists and fellow-travellers back home.’ The few daylight hours had gone, taking with them the low cloud that had offered some degree of concealment to their activities. In places, the first hard white points of light that were stars were already appearing.
    Dooley turned from the kitchen window. With tight-clenched hands he was draining the last drop of warmth from the can of self-heating soup. ‘I don’t know how York does it. He reckons he’s a decent cook, but somehow he can even screw up this muck.’ His body ached, he could still feel where the harness straps had bitten into his shoulders and stripped the skin, even through his several thick layers of clothing. ‘Why the hell should some po-faced pacifist shit be sitting at home, with a full table and a warm butt, while I’m stuck out here?’
    ‘You’re not the only one who wants to go home.’ Burke had finished his soup and now crushed the double-skinned can and shied it into the sink.
    ‘Who said anything about going home? I want the cruds out here with me, so I can show ‘em just what it’s like.’ Dooley sent his can after Burke’s. Aimed less accurately it bounced from the drainer and on to the floor, to be flattened under the big man’s boot. ‘It’s the fucking neutrals I really hate, especially the fucking Frogs, I’d smear every last one of them.’ He demonstrated his. meaning by grinding the can hard into the boards.
    Over in a corner, Clarence had built a nest of rags and paper and burrowed into it with his sleeping bag, but the noise Dooley was making was preventing him from sleeping. ‘Alright, so you don’t like them, does your continuing tirade mean I’m not to get any rest? Now be a good idiot and be quiet for a while will you, six hours will do nicely, but I’ll settle for two.’ He pulled a smelly, dog hair- smothered, threadbare rug over his head. It didn’t help, Dooley was like a record that had become stuck in a groove, going on and on. After a further five minutes Clarence could stand no more.
    ‘That does it. I have to tolerate this ghastly war, you loathsome oafs, this stinking ruin, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to put up with your simplistic all- embracing bigotry. Since when have you Americans been so fast off the mark in joining a war? Seems to me I remember a slight delay - of, what was it, three years? - before you came into the first