5
The water boiled. I tipped Nescafé into two mugs and poured. You couldn’t move for catering wagons round here, but I didn’t fancy joining the breakfast queue now the night shift was over. Apart from anything else, it meant venturing out into the cold, and I liked to put that off until the sun came up.
I hung on to Tony’s brew as he faffed about, trying to unzip. He rubbed his eyes and groped around for his glasses in the glow from the stove. He was all right, I supposed. He was thirty-something, with the kind of nose that made it look like his forefathers came from Easter Island. His hair was brown, and style-wise he’d gone for mad professor. Either he didn’t have any idea what he looked like or, more likely, he just didn’t care; because he was one, his head so full of chemical formulae he didn’t seem to know what day it was.
There were nine thousand or so eggheads employed by DERA [Defence Evaluation and Research Agency], and Tony was one of them. You didn’t ask these guys at exactly which of the eighty or so establishments up and down the UK they worked, but I was pretty sure, given why he was here, that he wouldn’t be a complete stranger to the germ warfare laboratories at Porton Down in Wiltshire.
I’d looked after boffins like him before, holding their hand in hostile environments, or escorting them into premises neither of us should really have been in, and I tended to just let them get on with whatever they had to do. The less I knew, the less shit I could be in if things went pear-shaped. These sorts of jobs always tended to come back and kick you in the bollocks. But one thing always puzzled me: Tony and his mates had brains the size of hot-air balloons, and spent their whole lives grappling with the secrets of the universe – so how come they couldn’t even get a decent brew on?
The RAF had flown a big container in with us to Fort Hood, then had it trucked on-site, and Tony carried the keys. He seemed pretty much a pacifist, so maybe it just contained enough fairy dust to make everybody dance out of the building, but I doubted it. The FBI had been pretty keen to have access to Charlie’s siege surveillance devices, but the inside of Tony’s head was what they really wanted. His business was advanced gases; he seemed to be on first-name terms with every molecule on the planet. What’s more, he knew how to mix them so precisely that they killed, immobilized, or merely incapacitated you to the point where you were still able to crawl.
A flurry of shouted instructions belted out of Alpha Pod’s command tent. Special Agent Jim D. ‘Call Me Buster’ Bastendorf was tuning up for his morning gobbing-off session to the new shift commanders, and as usual making everything sound like a bollocking.
Bastendorf really did like everyone to call him Buster, but it took us no time at all to christen him Deaf Bastard, then, because it was less of a mouthful, Bastard for short.
Bastard was a Texan and that meant everything – his shoulders, arms, hands and, most of all, his stomach – was bigger than it needed to be. It would have done him no harm at all to stay away from the two-pound T-bones after Christmas. He had a severe crew cut and a heavily waxed Kaiser Wilhelm moustache. He kept on curling the ends, as if letting them droop would be a sign of weakness. Yessirree, Jim D. Bastendorf knew exactly what his mission was: to kick ass, bust heads, solve the problem.
Everything was a battle for this man; every minute of every day was a fight he had to win. His jaws worked non-stop on chewing tobacco. Every quarter of an hour he’d gob a mouthful of thick, black, saliva-covered crap into a polystyrene cup, trawl out another wad from a tin in his back pocket, and start the whole process again.
His problem with us began with Tony’s accent. Whenever Tony asked a question or tried to offer some input, he just looked blank, and took to referring to him as ‘that Limey fag in the trailer’ who ‘don’t know shit from Shinola’. I was this other Brit waste of space who kept asking damn-fool questions: ‘What about this? What about that? Do you really think that keeping these guys awake 24/7 is going to get them to come out?’
When it came down to it, he didn’t have a clue what we were doing here. Our brief was short and to the point. So long as we kept out of his way, had the correct little blue passes hanging from our necks at all times, and shared his view that we’d all been floundering helplessly till he rode over the hill like the Fifth Cavalry, we could stay here for ever, for all he cared – which was just fine by me, because I didn’t care much either. If Bastard didn’t want to listen, it wasn’t my problem. The Davidians’ water supply had been f*cked up, and sooner or later they’d get hungry or thirsty or bored. They’d come out eventually, so I’d just keep getting the kettle on for Tony and me until the white flags started appearing.
Bastard roared with laughter. People were shouting instructions to get over to the command post. Something was happening.
‘Shut the f*ck up!’ Bastard boomed. ‘Check this out – showtime!’
I unzipped my bag and got to my feet. There was another sound above the scream of rabbits and screech of tank tracks. Bastard had thrown a switch so that his mates could listen in on the conversation between the negotiators and the Bible-bashers.
Achild of no more than five was on the phone inside the compound. I could hear muffled crying in the background. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ her small voice asked.