Free Project - 16 by Martyn J. Pass Page B

to tell. When has the media ever told you the
truth?”
    “ Fair point,” I replied.
    We drove on in silence for a bit. I wasn't going fast - hell,
Land Rovers never did, but with my fuel supply gone I'd have to
take it easy all the way home.
    “ How far is it?” she asked. “To your house, I
mean.”
    “ About three hours, maybe more if we have to take a detour,” I
replied. “It depends on the roads.”
    “ Is it a nice place?”
    “ I think so,” I said.
    “ Colonel said you used to train Rangers up there.”
    “ Yeah. For quite a while. It was my Dad's job, then he passed
it on to me.”
    “ I never went in for that survival bullshit before,” she said,
lifting her foot onto the dash. “I figure that if you're going to
get stuck without your gear or a radio then you might as well die
because you ain't cut out for being a Ranger.”
    “ That's one point of view,” I said, restraining a
sigh.
    “ I can shoot straight - that's the only thing I need to know.
I never listened in these lessons. I got bored of them moaning on
all day. If I could get away with not being there I usually wasn't.
One time, me and this guy ducked a whole day just by hanging around
the range, cleaning guns and loading mags. Man, we had a hoot back
then. Tommy, that was his name, Tommy Ledbetter.”
    “ Good guy?” I asked.
    “ Yeah, the best. Then he got killed in Iran. Taken prisoner,
killed under torture. When they found him he was missing a lot of
stuff. Arms and shit.”
    If you weren't looking for it, you'd never have seen it. It
was all in that turn of the head, the quick, almost invisible pulse
of the neck muscles that moved the mind of Claudia to somewhere
else in an instant, somewhere, anywhere other than Iran and the
body of Tommy Ledbetter.
    “ You ever had crumpets?” I asked. She laughed and Riley was
back in an instant.
    “ Crumpets? What the fuck are they?”
    “ Like toast but thicker with bubbles in.”
    “ Bubbles?”
    “ Yeah. You butter them when they're hot. Like
toast.”
    “ Sounds weird,” she said. “Where do you get them
from?”
    “ I make them,” I replied.
    “ What, like baking and stuff?”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ My Mom used to bake. Baked her own bread every Sunday to have
with our lunch when we got back from church. She never baked
fucked-up toast though. Never saw her bake a crumpet.”
    I laughed and so did she. “You went to church?”
    “ Yeah, we all did. Big family thing, been doing it for
generations. Same church, same time and up until a few years ago it
was the same Pastor. Then he went and joined Jesus and now they got
some new guy in who ain't as good.”
    “ Do you believe it all?”
    “ Hell no. You think I could do my job and cry 'God Bless
Claudia Riley' after it? Nah, I done some bad shit that I ain't
proud of and if God is up there then I don't think he'll be too
happy with me.”
    “ I see your point.”
    “ Do you? Man, I never got the whole 'God Bless America'
bullshit. If there is a God then he stopped blessing us when we
delivered early Christmas presents to Nagasaki and
Hiroshima.”
    “ You aren't proud to be American?” I asked.
    “ Proud? What the fuck have we got to be proud of? Man, the
moment the Ruskies started moving south we backed down like they
were the high-school bully or something. There was a time we'd just
go over there and fuck them up. Now? Now we ain't got the backbone
to do that any more. Now you guys, man, they were good times. Who
was that guy at Trafalgar?”
    “ Nelson?”
    “ Yeah, he was a bad-ass. He wouldn't be taking this
shit.”
    “ That's true,” I said. “You know your history
then?”
    “ Yeah, I used to love all that stuff in school. Now that
bullshit I did listen to.”
    We drove on across the better roads that hadn't blistered and
split with time. It may have been the reason the US decided to
build their Fort here but I couldn't be sure. The land on either
side was overgrown and almost jungle-like as roots, creepers