Games of State

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

The footsteps were gaining on them. But as Herbert wheeled himself through the woods, he wasn't thinking about them. He wasn't thinking about anything except what he had overlooked in the pressure of escaping from the camp. The key to survival, to victory.

What the hell was that name?

Jody grunted as they moved slowly through the dark.

Herbert almost asked her to get behind him and kick him.

I can't remember.

He would. He had to. He couldn't let Mike Rodgers win this one. Rodgers and Herbert were both fans of military history, and they had debated the point many times over. If you had a choice, they had asked each other, would you rather go into battle with a small band of dedicated soldiers or an overwhelming force of conscripts.

Rodgers invariably favored greater numbers, and there were strong arguments for both points of view. Herbert pointed out that Samson beat back the Philistines using only the jawbone of an ass. In the thirteenth century, Alexander Nevsky and his poorly armed Russian peasants repulsed the heavily armored Teutonic knights. In the fifteenth century, the small band of Englishmen who fought beside Henry V at Agincourt defeated vastly superior numbers of Frenchmen.

But Rodgers had his examples as well. The brave band of Spartans were defeated by the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.; the Alamo fell to Santa Anna; and then there was the British 27th Lancers cavalry, the "Light Brigade" which was cut down in its self-defeating charge during the Crimean War.

Add to the list of the doomed Robert West Herbert, he thought as he listened to the footfalls and cracking twigs.

The guy who didn't have the goddamn brains enough to write down the name that could have saved them. At least he would die in good company. King Leonidas. Jim Bowie.

Errol Flynn.

Thinking about Flynn helped him stay loose as he psyched himself up to make a stand against all these enemies. He only hoped that Jody would run. The thought of fighting to save her gave him extra adrenaline.

And then, because he wasn't thinking about it, the name he'd been trying to remember came back to him.

"Jody, push me," he said.

She had been walking beside him. She stopped and got behind him.

"C'mon, push," he said. "We're going to get out of this.

But we'll need time." Jody put her tired back and wounded shoulder into the effort. Herbert reached for his weapon.

Unlike Flynn's doomed Major Vickers, Herbert was going to hold the enemy off. Though unlike Samson, he wasn't going to use the jawbone of an ass to do it.

He was going to use a cellular phone.