Joe took the wands from her and threw them out of the jeep. They spun, glittered and then plunged into the dark of the canyon.

“Not anymore,” he said.

FRIDAY,
JULY 13

25

Orders were, no stopping en route, but as Joe went through Antonio he slowed by the Owl Bar and Cafe enough to see Army engineers and MPs stationed in the motel courtyard. He gained speed again, leading a convoy of two jeeps, two CID sedans, a carryall truck of spare parts and a covered truck bearing Jaworski and the sphere of steel and high explosive that was the implosive shell of the bomb.

“The MPs are there to evacuate the town in case of, you know …” Ray Stingo rode in the lead jeep with Joe.

“What’s it like down here?” Joe asked. Ray had been in and out of Trinity for a week.

“Typical Army fuck-ups. We got some scientists, some of the million-dollar whiz kids, laying some wires out in the bushes and a B-29 comes over shooting antelope. Fifty-caliber machine guns. Scientists are running, diving, trying to fly. You see, the rest of the Army doesn’t know about this.”

They were already out of Antonio. Ray took a long, swiveled view of a far-off, flat horizon of buffalo grass, gray sage, yucca spears. “Fucking place for a test. You gotta shake your shoes every morning to get out the scorpions. You gotta bang a wrench on the jeep to chase the rattlers. There’s gypsum in the water to fuck up your plumbing. Every five minutes you gotta run in the bushes, and then it’s you and the shit and rattlers all over again.” There was alkali in the water, too. Ray’s black spit curl was plaster-hard. “It may be a new weapon, but it’s the same Army.”

“The odds on the fight?” Joe asked.

“Funny. The odds started out two to one for you and now it’s two to one against. The odds are so good they scare me. I was thinking, I could be real set up on the Hill. Back in Jersey I’d just piss away the money. I think I’ll stay.”

“There won’t be any Hill after the war.”

“Chief, I got one smart idea in my whole life, okay? We didn’t build this bomb for the Japs, we built it for the Reds. And we didn’t even fight them yet.”

Besides the convoy, Joe had seen no Army traffic on the road. Stallion Gate was little changed. New barbed wire, new fence posts, a checkpoint that consisted of a tarp-covered lean- to providing a miserly wedge of shade. The MPs had been issued pith helmets. Before leaving the Hill, each man in the convoy had been issued a pink pass with a “T” for Trinity, which they exchanged at the gate for round white badges.