somewhere
along the way. For a moment she considered taking Wilfred and Pickles but decided
against it. She needed to be totally anonymous and people might remember seeing the
dogs in the car. Then she checked the bottom of the drive from a bedroom window and was
relieved to see that the reporters had left. At 9 p.m. she drove down to the road and was on
her way south towards Ipford.
Chapter 15
Being up at the cabin overlooking Lake Sassaquassee with the quads wasn’t making
Uncle Wally feel even slightly safer. Not that it was a cabin. As Sheriff Stallard had
said Wally Immelmann had built himself an ante-bellum mansion there and had felled
nearly every tree for half a mile around the place because Auntie Joan was frightened of
bears and wasn’t going to go walking in the woods where she couldn’t see if there were bears
about. And beyond the open space she’d insisted on his erecting an extremely strong wire
fence to make sure as hell bears didn’t get in and start marauding around the house and
coming through the picture windows that looked out over the terrace and the swimming-pool
(she wasn’t swimming in the lake because she’d heard there were snakes that swam too, water
moccasins and cottonmouths) and the barbecue area and all. It was the ‘all’ that excited
the Wilt girls. And had always excited Wally which is why he had taken such pains and paid
so much to collect it.
‘That there is a Sherman tank. Went right through the Second World War,’ he told them
proudly. ‘Up Omaha Beach on D-Day with General Patton–they say he rode into battle on
it–and on all the way to Berlin. Well, not right to Berlin because that General Montgomery
chickened out taking the city but it got pretty damn close. Best battle tank there was. Now
over here is a Huey ‘copter with a Puff the Magic Dragon in the door. Knocked the sh…knocked
the charlies out in ‘Nam like they didn’t know what hit them. That gun could fire thousands
of rounds in no time at all. And this here is a howitzer that was with General MacArthur in
Korea and when that baby fired, those yellow-bellies knew that Uncle Sam meant business.
Same with this baby.’ He indicated a flame-thrower. ‘Went in on Okinawa barbecuing
Nips like–’
‘Barbecuing whats?’ Emmeline asked.
‘Japs,’ said Uncle Wally proudly. ‘Shoots flame out the nozzle here and zaps a guy and
you got a turkey roast up and running on the hoof. Those bastards were torched in their
hundreds. And this here is a napalm bomb. You know what napalm is. It’s great stuff. Like
cooking oil and jello. You want a village fry-up all you need do is drop one of those
and–boom!–you’ve got a charlie roasted better than anything you’ve ever seen. Now this is
a missile I got from Germany when we won the Cold War. Put a nuclear warhead on that
sweetheart and a town five times the size of Wilma you wouldn’t even find on a map it would go
so fast. The Russkies knew that, which is how we saved the world from Communism. They weren’t
going risk nuclear annihilation, no way.’
All over the grounds there were the mementoes of terrible wars but the pride of Uncle
Wally’s military collection was a B-52. It stood on the other side of the house where it
could be seen through the picture window even at night with lights set in the ground shining
up on it, a black monstrous bomber with fifty-eight missions over Vietnam and Iraq painted
in symbols on the side; it was, as Wally said, capable of flying twelve thousand miles
and dropping an H-bomb that would take out the biggest city in the world.
‘What does ‘take out’ mean, Uncle Wally?’ Josephine asked with seeming innocence. But
Wally Immelmann was too immersed in his dream of a world made safe by mass destruction to
notice.
‘It means first you get the blast wave and second the fireball and third you get
radiation and fifteen, sixteen million
along the way. For a moment she considered taking Wilfred and Pickles but decided
against it. She needed to be totally anonymous and people might remember seeing the
dogs in the car. Then she checked the bottom of the drive from a bedroom window and was
relieved to see that the reporters had left. At 9 p.m. she drove down to the road and was on
her way south towards Ipford.
Chapter 15
Being up at the cabin overlooking Lake Sassaquassee with the quads wasn’t making
Uncle Wally feel even slightly safer. Not that it was a cabin. As Sheriff Stallard had
said Wally Immelmann had built himself an ante-bellum mansion there and had felled
nearly every tree for half a mile around the place because Auntie Joan was frightened of
bears and wasn’t going to go walking in the woods where she couldn’t see if there were bears
about. And beyond the open space she’d insisted on his erecting an extremely strong wire
fence to make sure as hell bears didn’t get in and start marauding around the house and
coming through the picture windows that looked out over the terrace and the swimming-pool
(she wasn’t swimming in the lake because she’d heard there were snakes that swam too, water
moccasins and cottonmouths) and the barbecue area and all. It was the ‘all’ that excited
the Wilt girls. And had always excited Wally which is why he had taken such pains and paid
so much to collect it.
‘That there is a Sherman tank. Went right through the Second World War,’ he told them
proudly. ‘Up Omaha Beach on D-Day with General Patton–they say he rode into battle on
it–and on all the way to Berlin. Well, not right to Berlin because that General Montgomery
chickened out taking the city but it got pretty damn close. Best battle tank there was. Now
over here is a Huey ‘copter with a Puff the Magic Dragon in the door. Knocked the sh…knocked
the charlies out in ‘Nam like they didn’t know what hit them. That gun could fire thousands
of rounds in no time at all. And this here is a howitzer that was with General MacArthur in
Korea and when that baby fired, those yellow-bellies knew that Uncle Sam meant business.
Same with this baby.’ He indicated a flame-thrower. ‘Went in on Okinawa barbecuing
Nips like–’
‘Barbecuing whats?’ Emmeline asked.
‘Japs,’ said Uncle Wally proudly. ‘Shoots flame out the nozzle here and zaps a guy and
you got a turkey roast up and running on the hoof. Those bastards were torched in their
hundreds. And this here is a napalm bomb. You know what napalm is. It’s great stuff. Like
cooking oil and jello. You want a village fry-up all you need do is drop one of those
and–boom!–you’ve got a charlie roasted better than anything you’ve ever seen. Now this is
a missile I got from Germany when we won the Cold War. Put a nuclear warhead on that
sweetheart and a town five times the size of Wilma you wouldn’t even find on a map it would go
so fast. The Russkies knew that, which is how we saved the world from Communism. They weren’t
going risk nuclear annihilation, no way.’
All over the grounds there were the mementoes of terrible wars but the pride of Uncle
Wally’s military collection was a B-52. It stood on the other side of the house where it
could be seen through the picture window even at night with lights set in the ground shining
up on it, a black monstrous bomber with fifty-eight missions over Vietnam and Iraq painted
in symbols on the side; it was, as Wally said, capable of flying twelve thousand miles
and dropping an H-bomb that would take out the biggest city in the world.
‘What does ‘take out’ mean, Uncle Wally?’ Josephine asked with seeming innocence. But
Wally Immelmann was too immersed in his dream of a world made safe by mass destruction to
notice.
‘It means first you get the blast wave and second the fireball and third you get
radiation and fifteen, sixteen million
Similar Books
