“Drop that rifle, or you’ll never find out.”

“Oh yeah?”

Her voice is velvet over steel. “Oh yeah.”

Summoning his drunken courage, the man does the opposite of what he has been commanded, ponderously lifting his rifle and aiming it at the she-demon on the guard tower.

“I wouldn’t,” Koda murmurs, her voice just strong enough to prick his hearing.

“Says who, bitch?”

The sound of a dozen M-16s being cocked gives the man an eloquent answer.

Paling noticeably, he lowers his rifle. His friends drop theirs and dive for the ubiquitous safety of the pickup.

“Sergeant!” Koda shouts down to the guard leader.

“Ma’am!”

“Round those three up and take them to the brig.”

“For what?!?” the drunken man demands. “You ain’t got no hold on us! We’re on public land!”

“Exactly,” Koda hisses, her grin most unpleasant. “Cruelty to animals will do for starters. If that doesn’t stick, assault with a deadly weapon.”

“You can’t…!”

“Open the gate!” the Sergeant yells.

Hearing this, the man drops his weapon and runs, jumping into his truck and fumbling for the gearshift.

An M-16 rattles, and the truck suddenly finds itself with two flats and a fractured engine block. The punctured radiator sends up a bellow of steam from beneath the hood and the truck shudders, and dies.

“Come out of there with your hands over your heads! We won’t ask you twice!”

Koda doesn’t need to see the rest of it. She hands the gun back to the MP with a quiet murmur of thanks, and crosses the tower, pelting down the steps with speed. Running through the gate, she immediately turns toward the ridge, long strides eating up the ground beneath her. The wolf has disappeared behind the ridge, but she doesn’t need sight to track her. The scent of blood is heavy in the air, and she can feel the pain radiating from the injured animal, tugging hard at a part of her that is far more kin to the wolf than to any of the humans behind her.

Halfway up the shallow ridge, she deliberately slows her steps, listening as the wolf’s panting breaths are interrupted by a weak warning growl.

“It’s okay, shugmanitu tanka, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” She steps carefully upwind so that her scent is carried to the injured animal.

Cresting the ridge, she stops and looks down at the silver-tipped fur and the crimson stain slowly spreading in the snow. Her eyes narrow. This is a wolf she knows; the alpha female of a large pack whose home range covers several hundred miles, from the base to her family’s home and beyond. That she’s alone and obviously starving is of great concern.

She meets the wolf’s eyes, then shifts her gaze abruptly to the side before looking back. After a moment, the wolf does the same, and Koda relaxes, letting go a slow breath that clouds the air between them. She resumes her steps, narrowing the gap between them, then drops gracefully to her haunches, holding out an ungloved hand for the animal to sniff.

A soft whine lets her know she’s been accepted, and she spends a long moment unmoving, examining the she-wolf with just her experienced gaze. Beneath dry, brittle and thinning fur, her ribs stand out like dinosaur bones, aspirating weakly with every panting breath. Her tongue is dry, cracked, and bleeding in places, indicating severe dehydration. Blood is pouring from two bullet wounds—no more than grazes really, but in her weakened condition they are life-threatening.

Acting on intuition, Koda reaches slowly over and ruffles through the hair on the wolf’s belly. The nipples are swollen, reddened and cracked.

An early litter. Shit. Removing her hand, she peers into dark, pain-wracked eyes. “Where are your pups, ina?”

With a soft whine, the she-wolf looks over her shoulder, then attempts to rise. She collapses a second later, all of her energy completely drained.

“It’s alright, ina, it’s okay. I’ll find them for you. But first, I need to help you so you can help them, alright?”

Feeling along her ruff, Koda slips an arm under the wolf’s proud neck, then gathers her flank and stands, cradling the injured animal easily in her arms.

Too weak to struggle, the wolf gives a soft whine, then collapses back against the strong body holding her.

Koda looks up. The hawk is still circling, wingtips fluttering in the air’s heavy currents. “Wiyo! Awayaye!”

With a loud kre-ee-ee, Wiyo circles once more, then comes down to land atop a winter-bare tree, carefully folding her wings behind her and staring straight ahead. “Pilamayaye,” Koda shouts to the hawk, nodding once, sharply.

And with that, she turns and heads back to the base using her quickest and smoothest gait.

*

The room is very much as Maggie has become accustomed to it, grey as the rest of the Headquarters Building except for the framed photographs on the walls. Several show Ellsworth’s various aircraft in flight against impossibly blue skies: the Tomcat with its delta wings swept back, the sleek B-1, ponderous and old-fashioned B-52’s that look like nothing so much as locusts built to cyclopean scale. Others depict Hart in the company of various dignitaries: the most recent with President Clinton, the earliest with her husband during his tenure as Commander in Chief. The fluorescent light illuminates them coldly, chilling the imaged skies and the deep blue of uniforms and the hills that ring the Base. Pulled tightly over the windows, curtain panels barricade the office against the bright spring day of strengthening sun and melting snow that lies just on the other side of the glass. There is a settled stillness here that creeps over Maggie’s skin like the passing of a ghost.

The room is so quiet that it seems at first that she is alone. Then paper rustles, drawing her eye to the massive desk at one end of the room as the General slowly pages through a stack of reports, pausing to glance at each one while she stands waiting. With a flourish, he initials three of them, consigning them to one neatly squared-off stack, the apparent rejects to another. The neat surface seems somehow empty, and it comes to Maggie that there are several framed photographs missing. Finally, his point made, the General rises, unfolding out of his leather chair with the suddenly stiff joints of an octagenarian. Maggie has never been quite certain whether the old-fashioned gesture is residual gallantry so ingrained that it is intractable, or whether it is a reminder that while she may be an officer, a gentlewoman and a decorated battle ace, she is still a woman and therefore not quite equal to any one of the boys. “Margaret,” he says. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Sir,” she echoes. A burning begins, deep in her solar plexus, spreading itself along her nerves until her skin feels as though she has taken fire, incandescent in the chill of the long room. Hart has never played power politics adroitly, and this attempt at dominance is almost as crude as his revelation of the one blot he had been able to find on her record. For an instant Maggie wants nothing so much as to turn on her heel and walk out. Leave him for the jackals, damn him. But she cannot do that. Hart has talents that are in short supply.

He is a human being, she reminds herself sternly. Human beings themselves are in short supply, male human beings even shorter. None salvageable can be wasted with impunity.

“Salvageable” being the operative word. One of the matters they must discuss is the trial and subsequent punishment of the rapists from Mandan and Grand Rapids.

Hart gestures toward the comfortable armchair across the desk, then settles back into his own with an attempt at ease that only emphasizes the angularity of his movements. His skin seems faded by more than the sunless months of snow, his features not so much relaxed as given in to the pull of gravity.

Dead man walking.

He says, startling her almost as much as if he truly were dead, “What can I do for you this morning, Colonel?’

Maggie snaps open her briefcase, removes a pair of manila envelopes and lays them on the General’s desk, facing him. “Casualty report, sir.”

The General lifts one of the files, fans the pages with a thumb and then sets it down again. He does not bother to examine it or read the figures in detail. “How bad?”

“A hundred and fifty dead,” she replies, her voice tight. “Of those, approximately two thirds were military personnel, the remainder civilian volunteers. The heaviest losses occurred on the far side of the river, among the troops assigned to close on the enemy from the rear.”

“Sergeant Rivers’ contingent?” There is a hint of something in his voice that Maggie cannot quite identify; not anger, precisely, not exactly jealousy. Resentment, perhaps.

“Yes. As you’re aware from initial reports, Sir, they came under heavier fire than any of the other units.”

Hart simply nods. Whatever he feels or thinks, he is not going to share it with a subordinate who has, in his clear if unspoken view, usurped his position. “Injuries?”

Maggie points toward the other folder. “Eighty percent ambulatory. The remainder include everything from punctured lungs to third degree burns. The medics tell me we may still lose as many as a quarter of them.”

“Burial details?”

“Proceeding.”

“Very good. What else?”

With considerable distaste, Maggie hands him a third, thicker folder. “Incident report. Reports, actually.”

“I see. Under control?”

“For the time being.”

“What else? How are the prosecutions of the collaborators going?”

“Sir—”

Hart regards her without speaking, not giving her an opening. From the far side of the window come the first hesitant notes of a sparrow’s song to set up a counterpoint to the muffled clack of keys from the secretary’s desk. Perhaps she imagines it, but the grey rectangle of the window seems somehow lighter, as if the sun has emerged fully from the cloud cover that dampened the early morning. She suppresses an urge, almost overpowering, to rise and fling back the curtains, to let the day come spilling into the dingy room.