Black Cross Read Online Free Page B

swung.”
    “I see your point.” Mark leaned back and took a deep breath. “Down here we lose sight of how personal war can be. We don’t see the hatred.”
    “Damn right you don’t, buddy. You oughta fly a raid with us sometime. Just once. Freezing your balls off, trying to remember to breathe from your mask, knowing ten seconds of exposed flesh could mean frostbite surgery. The whole ride you’re cursing yourself for every time you ever skipped Sunday school.”
    Mark was thinking of an offer he had recently made to a Scottish brigadier general. In a fit of anger he’dthreatened to leave his laboratory and volunteer to carry a rifle at the front. “Maybe I should get closer to the real war,” he said quietly. “What are my convictions worth if I don’t know what war really is? I could request a transfer to a forward surgical unit in Italy—”
    David slammed his whiskey glass down, reached across the table and pinned his brother’s arm to the scarred wood. Several patrons looked in their direction, but one glare from David was enough to blunt their curiosity. “You try that, and I’ll break your friggin’ legs,” he said. “And if you try to do it without me knowing, I’ll find out.”
    Mark was stunned by his brother’s vehemence.
    “I’m dead serious, Mac. You don’t want to go anywhere near a real battlefield. Even from five miles up, I can tell you those places are hell on earth. You read me?”
    “Loud and clear, ace,” Mark said. But he was troubled by a feeling that for the first time he was seeing his brother as he really was. The David he remembered as a brash, irrepressible young athlete had been transformed by the war into a haggard boy-man with the eyes of a neurosurgeon.
    “David,” Mark whispered with sudden urgency, feeling his face grow hot with the prospect of confession. “I’ve got to talk to you.” He couldn’t stop himself. The words that became illegal the moment he uttered them came tumbling out in a flood. “The British are after me to work on a special project for them. They want me to spearhead it. It’s a type of weapon that hasn’t been used before—well, that’s not strictly true, it has been used before but not in this way and not with this much potential for wholesale slaughter—”
    David caught hold of his arm. “Whoa! Slow down. What are you babbling about?”
    Mark looked furtively around the pub. The background hum of voices seemed sufficient to cover quiet conversation. He leaned across the table. “A secret weapon, David. I’m not kidding. It’s just like the movies. It’s a goddamn nightmare.”
    “A secret weapon.”
    “That’s what I said. It’s something that would have little to guide it. It would kill indiscriminately. Men,women, children, animals—no distinction. They’d die by the thousands.”
    “And the British want you to spearhead this project?”
    “Right.”
    David’s mouth split into an amazed smile. “Boy, did they ever pick the wrong guy.”
    Mark nodded. “Well, they think I’m the right guy.”
    “What kind of weapon is this? I don’t see how it could be much more destructive or less discriminating than a thousand-bomber air raid.”
    Mark looked slowly around the pub. “It is, though. It’s not a bomb. It’s not even one of the super-bombs you’ve probably heard rumors about. It’s something . . . something like what wounded Dad.”
    David recoiled, the cynicism instantly gone from his face. “You mean gas ? Poison gas?”
    Mark nodded.
    “Shit, neither side has used gas yet in this war. Even the Nazis still remember the trenches from the last one. There are treaties prohibiting it, right?”
    “The Geneva Protocol. But nobody cares about that. The U.S. didn’t even sign it.”
    “Jesus. What kind of gas is it? Mustard?”
    Mark’s laugh had an almost hysterical undertone. “David, nobody knows the horrific effects of mustard gas better than you or I. But this gas I’m talking about is a thousand