Final Winter

‘Hah,’ Sean said. ‘How secure are our borders, Carrie? Tell me that. All it takes is one guy slipping across, carrying a suit-case nuke designed for the KGB back in the 1970s and bought on the black market, and overnight we lose DC or a good chunk of Manhattan or LA. And that’s why the war is going to last for decades. Every other previous war, including the first Hundred Years’ War, was a war between states. You could conquer that state by killing its armed forces and holding the ground. But that’s not the war we’re fighting. We’re fighting an idea, a radical version of a religious belief, and the only way to win that war is to change societies, change people’s minds. And that’s going to take decades. We’ll fight them by killing terrorist cells and overthrowing nations that support them, but the only victory will be when young men growing up in Karachi or Riyadh or Jakarta or even in the slums of London and Marseilles, when those young men decide, they want to live and have families and have good jobs, when all of that is more attractive than strapping on suicide belts and going on jihad. It’s not going to happen in our lifetimes, Carrie. It might happen in Susan’s, if we’re very lucky.’

Carrie felt cold, though it was a beautiful day and a warm breeze was caressing her skin. ‘Why Alaska?’

Sean said, ‘Because except for the pipeline and a military base or two, it’s safe. There’re no real target areas up there. Terrorists like big targets, like big shopping malls, big office buildings, big cities. We could find a place up there and raise a family, and be much safer than living here, in the lower forty-eight.’

‘Sounds like running away.’

‘No, we’ve done our duty, you and me, in the Air Force and Navy. We’ve given our time and talents to the military, put our lives on the line, eaten bad food and slept in strange places, and now it’s time for us to look out for each other. You know I’m making sense, Carrie. You know I am. So marry me and let’s get our lives in order.’

‘North to Alaska?’ she asked, smiling.

‘More like northwest to Alaska,’ he said.

Carrie bent down, kissed Sean’s lips, kissed him again. ‘I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no, Sean. Give me some time to think. All right?’

Sean said, ‘Sure. But you know I’m right.’

‘No, I just know you have good taste,’ she said.

‘How’s that?’

Another kiss. ‘Because you spend time with me, that’s why.’

~ * ~

At the US Customs checkpoint at the Route 99 crossing in Washington State, Tanya Mead of the Customs Service walked up to the Freightliner that was hauling a bright yellow Seamarsk container. She carried a clipboard in her hand, and she eyed the truck as she approached it. The license plate was clean, not having been flagged on any of the search-&-seize lists, and the neutron-emission detectors buried along the decorative shrubbery flanking the off ramp to the commercial vehicle crossing area hadn’t flickered as the truck went by. There was a driver and a passenger, both looking down at her as she approached.

She went up to the driver’s side, looked up at the open window. Young guy, dark skin, Mediterranean type. Greek, maybe, or Turkish. Who knew?

‘Good morning,’ she called up to him. ‘What’s your destination?’

‘Julius Distribution, Port Bellingham,’ he said. His voice had a trace of an accent. Sounded Middle Eastern but please, let’s not get into racial profiling, all right?

‘Cargo?’

‘Toys. Bats, balls, dolls.’

‘Your paperwork, please.’

‘Sure,’ he said. He ducked in, leaned back out, handed the papers down to her, and then — son of a bitch — he let them go, obviously on purpose. The papers fell to the ground and as Tanya bent down to pick them up she was sure she heard the driver say two words, the first being ‘dumb’ and the second being the n-word, that nasty n-word that she wasn’t going to allow any male fucking driver to use in her presence, and she stood up, glaring at him. Tanya Mead had been with the US Customs service for three years and she loved her job and took it seriously, and the fuck she was going to let anybody push her around.

She smiled sweetly up at the driver. ‘All right, pal. You and your friend get out of the truck. Hope you don’t have dinner plans tonight, ‘cause for the next few hours your ass and his ass and this fucking truck and all its cargo belong to me.’

~ * ~

Also in Memphis, Randy Tuthill was in his small backyard, his head buzzing a bit from the beer and the strange and wonderful thing that had just occurred. A while ago he’d been at the union hall, going through the hundred thousand or so details that had to be taken care of just before a job action, when his wife had called. ‘You need to come home, right now,’ Sarah had said.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask why, just do it,’ she had said.

‘Are you okay? Is it about the boys?’ And his heart had almost seized at the thought of something happening to Tom and Eric, their young bodies burnt or shattered or blown up or—

‘The boys are fine. I’m fine. Come home now.’

‘Look, babe, I’ve got so many—’