Bertinelli began to curse under his breath. He moved the glove to his patient's left shoulder.
Delresumed his observation of the transponder balloon. "What does that mean, Churchie?" he asked.
His friend snorted again. All the humor was gone from his voice as hereplied, "Wish to hell I knew, darling. Wish to hell. What I'm afraid it means is that Fasolini's Company is deep in shit."
****
The only light in theOperationsCenter was the green glow of the phosphor screen. It emphasized the wrinkled anger of Colonel Fasolini's face as he said, "Gibberish! Goddamgibberish!"
Sookie Foyle snapped her fingers in frustration. "Look, Colonel," she said, "I'm a Communicator, not a magician. You get me a copy of the code pad the indigs are using, and I'll let you know what they've got to say. Otherwise it's garbage-" she waved at the groups of meaningless letters which continued to crawl across the screen-"and it's going to stay garbage."
The three sergeants-Mboko, Hummel, and Jensen-stirred restively in the darkness. They were the tacticians of the Company, but the present situation was too amorphous for their skills to be of any use. Lieutenant ben Mehdi bent forward and said, "We don't have to read the transmissions to know what they're saying, do we, Guido? The only thing we don't know is the exact terms the Major's holding out for-and that doesn't matter to us, because we ought to be making terms with the Republicans for ourselves, right now, before it all hits the fan. Otherwise, we wind up taking whatever we're offered."