Sunday, 3:10 P.M. Fat City International Airport
A group of touristy-looking people filed out of the main doors and onto a purple bus with the word 'Bus' painted prominently on the side. Nearby, cars which may or may not have been taxis disgorged people onto the sidewalk and absorbed others.
General Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina walked through the terminal with the confidence of an officer and the practicality of an infantryman. Her web gear was festooned with D-rings and carabiners that jingled when she moved. Her regimental badge and her qualification badges were low-contrast so the only touches of colour on her uniform were the maroon of her beret and the blue of her Peacekeeping ribbon, which matched her eyes. Her boots looked like they had never been polished. In fact, they never had.
At thirty-six she was a young general but with eighteen years in the light infantry there were few who knew the backwoods of Fatatatutti better than she did.
Sunday afternoon. The tourists who had remembered to go home had mostly left already. The ones who were arriving were only late because their flights refused to land until the food was gone - at least that was the way AeroFat, the national airline, advertised it.
A Chinese lady was selling African fabrics. A clown was selling balloons. Some of the vendors seemed to be selling to each other.
When the general walked up to the information desk the commissionaire looked down at her and immediately smiled. "Good afternoon, General. Did you have a good weekend?"
"Pretty good, thank you," she smiled back. She didn't mention the sometimes frustrating beating-her-head-against-the-wall with the Council of Generals.
"Are you heading back tonight?"
"Yes. My sergeant is trying to rustle up some transport. I was hoping to get a direct flight to Alpha Charlie but it doesn't look promising."
"There are a lot of tourists in town," the commissionaire observed.
She thought he might have missed her point. "Actually, I'm expecting some people from Bereia. When they come in, could you have them wait here and page me?"
"Sure, I can do that." He reached for a pencil. "Bereia?"
"Yes. I'm not sure where it is. Intelligence sent me a big folder but I haven't gotten around to reading it."
"I think I was there once," the commissionaire said absently as he scribbled something on a pad. "Up north somewhere. Nice place. Lots of cows."
"Could be. Just give me a call when they come in, will you? I'll be around somewhere."
"Right. Met a girl there, I think. Pretty little thing."
The general smiled to herself as she walked away.
A little girl in a Cub Scout uniform waved at her and she waved back. A hawker held out a small packet of white powder and she thought he said, 'Heroin?' so she shook her head.
Without thinking about it she wandered over to one of the big windows that overlooked the tarmac. To the left she could see the military airfield which was much shorter than the commercial runways. She smiled to herself again as she thought of the gasps of tourists watching the big transports hurtling straight toward the mountain, then making a 90-degree turn to the left at the last moment to drop onto the runway. If they could have seen the landings at the Anvil, which was much shorter yet, they would have had heart attacks.
"General?" The voice behind her was the voice of a sergeant, gruff even when he was talking to a general.
"Any luck, Elmo?" she asked, barely turning around. He was more than twice her size and somewhat older but uniformed the same.
"There's nothing going straight home," he said. She was amused and in a way gratified that he thought of the base as home. "Colonel Cho has scooped up everything that will fly for her raid on Long Beach."
"Hoist by our own petard, eh?" The general had scrounged for transport for one operation or another so many times that she couldn't help but appreciate the irony of her own officers co-opting her transport.
"If you say so, General." The sergeant was no Shakespeare afficionado.
"So, are we getting home tonight or not?" She deliberately used his word 'home'.
"Well, there's a flight going up to the Anvil...."
More irony, she said to herself at the prospect of taking visitors up to the most dangerous airfield on the island.
"If we go up there, we can maybe catch another flight that's coming back here and maybe talk them into diverting to Alpha Charlie."
"Maybe?"
"Maybe."
"Who's the pilot? To the Anvil."
"Lieutenant Kiniski."
She nodded thoughtfully. If anybody could get them and the VIPs up to the Anvil alive and avoid an international incident it was Lewis Kiniski. "Okay. Give the Lieutenant my compliments and ask him when he wants to wheels up."
"Done, General. Twenty-one hundred. Sharp."
She knew he meant the 'sharp'. In Fatatatutti even a general didn't stop the clock. "Well, on the bright side, they won't be able to see it in the dark," she muttered.
"With the general's permission," he said as if he hadn't heard her, though she was sure he had, "I have a matter of a personal nature...."
She nodded. "Carry on, Sergeant. I'll be fine."
"Thank you, General."
"Have a good evening."
"Thank you, General. I will."
She was tempted to add, 'Don't be late,' but she didn't. She didn't know much about his personal life and she sensed that he wanted it that way.
She looked out the window again at the sun that was approaching the mountaintops.
Fatatatutians had an international reputation for rudeness, though they themselves would have called it directness. One reason might have been the habit of sending soldiers on diplomatic missions. This was a diplomatic mission but it was also a meeting of soldiers with soldiers. Taking the visitors up to the Anvil might not have been the most auspicious beginning but hopefully the soldiers would understand, maybe even take it as a compliment.
As the sun settled toward the horizon and the clatter of the airport settled into Sunday evening, part of her wished that she had read that folder.