Joe started the engine. “I almost got the chance once to tell Harvey that if he wanted to walk away from you, he shouldn’t talk, he should just go.”

“This is it, this is what we all worked for.”

“You worked for. This is your bomb, not mine.”

He swung away from Oppy and aimed for the North blacktop. He’d only gone twenty feet when he hit the brakes and stopped. “Oppy!”

Oppy was heading back to Groves, and turned at the sound of his name. Suddenly he seemed pathetically out of place against the tower, the desert, the men in uniform.

“Good luck!” Joe shouted, and stepped on the accelerator again. He’d pick up Shapiro and Gruber at the guard station. Ray should already be in Antonio. He could see the first lightning over the Oscuras, but he was finally in the clear.

28

Joe couldn’t get away from the right-hand jab. He circled to his right, the way he’d shown Shapiro, and walked into a hook. Heard a hoarse grunt and recognized his own lungs, lungs ten years older than the kid’s, ten years of cigarette fumes encased in ten years of beer fat, the sort of fat that showed only when a 195-pound kid hooked to the ribs. He liked the way the kid kept his eyes and shoulders level, jab high and cocked. The eyes intense and watery, pale in the headlights and black water in the dark. Joe feinted the jab.

The next thing he knew, he was sitting on his ass. He didn’t know whether he’d been hit with a right or a left. All he remembered was seeing a fist coming and being too slow to get out of the way. Being down brought a new perspective, closer to his leaden feet and the pounding sac of his heart. The wet macadam had a diamond glitter. Ray had appropriated the mess tent from the Base Camp, and the cars were parked under it in a ring of light. Canvas drummed in the rain. Joe rolled away from a rabbit punch and up to his feet. Who’s here? Everybody’s here. Texans, New Mexicans, soldiers. No scientists, but it wasn’t their fight.

“Time!” Hilario shouted.

Ray sat Joe on the bumper of a jeep and pressed a towel against his ear. The ear stung, so it was cut. Their fists were taped, but they wore no gloves. There were going to be a lot of cuts.

“Ought to be a real ring, ought to be a referee. This is like a fucking dogfight,” Ray muttered.

“Dogfights are very popular here.”