The Death Trust Read Online Free PDF

left, into a large parking lot. “We have to change vehicles,” she said.
    That made sense. Being so wide, the Humvee was not road-friendly, especially if the road narrowed and meandered through a town.
    Masters pulled up beside a purple midsized Mercedes-Benz. “That’s mine,” she said, with a vague hint of pride, gesturing at the vehicle. “You can pick a Mercedes up here for a song.”
    We got out of the Humvee and into the Merc. It was a nice car inside—smelled of leather and wood. “It looks new,” I said.
    “Actually, it’s fifteen years old,” she replied. “It was a promotional car for a local printer. The color made it hard to sell. I got it cheap.”
    I can do small talk with the best of them, but, for molar reasons, my heart wasn’t in it. “Before we go much further, do I have time to see a dentist?”
    “No,” said Masters without missing a beat, pulling out of the parking lot and joining the queue exiting the base via the security gate. “Why?”
    “Toothache.”
    “Aside from the fact that we’ve got to get you cleaned up before you meet with the general, it’s oh-seven-thirty. Dentistry’s a nine-to-five gig. I’ve got some Tylenols in the glove compartment if you need them.”
    “No, thanks,” I said. Given the number I’d eaten over the past twenty-four hours, I was vaguely concerned about my liver. I folded my arms and buried my tongue in the hole. The cold was finding its way through my cheek and into the root. The pain was making me short-tempered, and I’m usually such a lovely, placid soul.
    “I’ve got you a room in K-town. It’s small, but it’s clean.”
    “K-town?”
    “Kaiserslautern. Everyone calls it K-town. Back in ’55, it was the biggest community of U.S. citizens outside of America. At the moment, there are around forty-five thousand of us living there. We’ve got American football, American hot dogs, American cinemas, American shopping malls—”
    “America,” I said. “Don’t leave home without it.”
    Masters responded with cool silence.
    My new, temporary partner was young and possessed a perfect set of teeth. Her bio, thoughtfully included in my briefing notes, said she was twenty-six and held the rank of major. Twenty-six was too young to be a major. Masters was either very good at her job, or very good on the job. She came across as efficient, officious, and no doubt had several volumes of air force articles surgically inserted up her ass for round-the-clock reference.
    I turned my attention to the world zipping by. The countryside was flat and rural, a bit like the area around Brandywine, only the German landscape was neater, more orderly, almost manicured. The small, immaculate farms were separated by stands of towering pines. Intermittent showers sprinkled from fluffy, toylike clouds pasted against a pale blue watercolor sky, and I counted one, two, three, four rainbows this time. The street signs we passed bore long, unpronounceable names for towns and cities up ahead, and any moment I expected to see a gingerbread house and maybe a witch chasing two kids around it on her broom. But then I saw a sign with the familiar golden butt that told me I was only four kilometers away from the world’s favorite hamburger, and I felt less like I’d been hijacked by a Grimm’s fairy tale.
     
     
     
    K-town—Kaiserslautern—seemed to appear out of nowhere. The outskirts of the town were devoid of the usual three-mile strip of auto-body repairers and retailers and fast-food restaurants selling more or less the same stack of pancakes. This was America done the way the U.S. military likes it, probably not that far from how Germany likes it: anal.
    We drove through the town, past American-style malls. There were joggers everywhere wearing Nike, Russell Athletic, and Everlast. All the street signs were in English. The only clue that I wasn’t in some U.S. town, maybe somewhere north on the east coast, were all the Mercedes running around—even