Upsetting the Balance

“So I haven’t.” Groves glanced down at some papers behind hisIN basket that Yeager couldn’t see. “We’ve established a center for interrogation and research on Lizard POWs down in Arkansas. I’m going to send Ristin and Ullhass there, and I’m ordering you to accompany them. I think you can best serve your country by using your rapport with the Lizards, and that’s the place for you to do it.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. He’d been traded, all right, but to a place he didn’t mind going… assuming he could get there. “Uh, sir, what sort of transportation will we have? There’s a lot of Lizards between here and Arkansas that aren’t prisoners, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Nevertheless, you’ll fly,” Groves answered.

“Sir?” Yeager did his best to keep the surprise-to say nothing of the dismay-he felt from showing. His best, he feared, was none too good. He figured he’d better explain: “They shoot down an awful lot of our planes, sir.” That would do for an understatement until a better one came along. The Lizards’ aircraft had the same sort of advantage against the planes the Americans flew as a Lightning or a Warhawk would have against a World War I-vintage Sopwith Camel.

But Groves nodded his big head and said, “You’ll fly anyhow-and what’s more, the Lizards will know you’re coming.” Yeager must have looked as if he’d just been smacked in the kisser with a large carp, for the general chuckled a little before continuing, “We always inform them before we move prisoners by air, and we paint the planes we fly them in bright yellow. It’s worked pretty well; they don’t like shooting at their own people any more than we would.”

“Oh,” Yeager said. “I guess that’s okay, then.” And if there were no such arrangement between Lizards and men and Groves had told him to fly anyway, he’d have damn well flown: that’s what the Army was about. As it was, though, he asked, “Do you think it’s safe enough for my wife to come along, sir? Really, I’m not just asking for the sake of having her with me; she knows just about as much about the Lizards as I do. She’d be useful at this Arkansas place, at least until she has her baby.”

“Under normal circumstances, Sergeant, I’d say no,” Groves answered. He grimaced. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as normal circumstances any more. As you say, your Barbara may be useful in Arkansas, but that’s not why I’m going to tell you yes. Frankly, Sergeant, getting you and her out of here will simplify matters when Professor Larssen gets back from Washington State.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said woodenly. Groves had to think like that, though; Jens Larssen was a talented nuclear physicist, and the general was running a project to build an atomic bomb. If he could help the Lizard prisoner research project at the same time…two birds with one stone ran through Yeager’s mind. “When do we leave, sir?” he asked.

“Not for a few days,” Groves answered. “We need to make the arrangements and be sure they’re understood. Written orders will go out to you as soon as one of the secretaries gets around to typing them. Dismissed.”

Yeager stood, saluted, and left. He wasn’t sure Groves even saw the salute; he’d already gotten back to work on the report he’d been scribbling on when Sam came in.

Barbara, Ullhass, and Ristin all took a couple of steps toward him when he came out into the hallway. “You look green, Sam,” she said. “What happened in there?”

“Pack your bags, hon,” he answered. “We’re moving to Arkansas.” She stared and stared. He had to remind himself that she’d never been traded before.

Heinrich Jager stuck his head and torso up through the open cupola of his Panzer V for a look around, then ducked back down into the turret of the panzer. “Lord, it feels good to have some centimeters of steel all the way around me again,” he said.

His gunner, a veteran sergeant named Klaus Meinecke, grunted at that. “Colonel, you don’t seem to have done too bad while you were out on your own, either.” He pointed to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross that Jager wore at his collar.

Jager’s hand went to the medal. He’d earned it for helping Otto Skorzeny take the town of Split on the Adriatic back from the Lizards. He said, “Sergeant, I was in the infantry during the last war. I thought one round of that had cured me forever. Just goes to show, you may get older, but you don’t get smarter.”

Meinecke laughed as if he’d told a joke. But Jager meant every word of it. Fighting from building to building inside the great stone walls of Diocletian’s palace had been every bit as appalling as trench warfare in France a quarter of a century before.

The Alsatian town of Rouffach, through which the Panther had rumbled a few minutes before, had been part of the GermanReich during World War I, taken from France after the Franco-Prussian War. France had taken it back after the First World War; now it was German again… for as long as theReich could maintain itself against the Lizards.