"Why do you have a massage table in the back of your car?" she asked accusingly.

Henry grabbed the final ammo can, put it in the back, and pulled the table out of the vehicle.

"I thought your muscles might be tired after this morning. I also thought it would be a good way to find out just what your body likes best," Henry said casually as he unfolded the padded table and set it up at the back of the car. Danielle watched as he opened the gym bag and took out a large towel which he spread on the vinyl surface.

Henry poked around in the gym bag and pulled out a large towel, a t-shirt, a can of hand cleaner, and a plastic bottle filled with what looked like shampoo. "Here," he said, holding out the large towel. "Take off your clothes and lie on your stomach," he said, indicating the table and relieved that his voice didn't crack. "Cover yourself with the towel. I'm going to go change shirts, and clean some of this powder residue off my hands." He kept his face impassive as he turned away, but his heart was pounding.

Danielle stared dumbfounded at Henry Bowman, but found herself stepping out of her shoes. Her fingers slowly unbuttoned the denim work shirt and she let it fall to the ground. She unzipped the tight, faded jeans and pushed them down her hips.

When Henry came back around the car, Danielle was standing next to the massage table. She wore matching bra and panties that were made of a fine beige material that was almost transparent. Her erect nipples were evident, as was the small brown patch of fine pubic hair five inches below her navel. She looked absolutely stunning. He stared at her, his head canted, a questioning look on his face. He started to speak, but she cut him off forcefully.

"This morning, before I got dressed in old blue jeans and a man's work shirt because we were going shooting, I planned a little surprise for you for when we came back. I put on the sexiest and most outrageously expensive set of underwear I've ever owned, and I'll be damned if I'm going to take them off, toss them in a pile, and cover myself up with a towel before you tell me how absolutely, totally hot I look in them."

She turned around to give him the rear view, and slowly, deliberately clenched the muscles in her firm ass. When she turned back to face him they were both grinning. Henry nodded his head in obvious appreciation. "Do you want me to take them off now?" Danielle asked innocently. Henry nodded again. Danielle unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties. She settled comfortably onto the padded surface, stretched out on her stomach, and let her toes hang over the sides of the table.

"Start with my bottom," she instructed. Henry drew his breath in sharply. What have you gotten yourself into here, fella? he thought.

"This is, uh, a non-sexual massage," Henry said lamely, then immediately felt like an idiot. Danielle sighed, closed her eyes, and smiled happily.

"We'll see about that."

May 8,1973 "So, we've talked about everything else-what's your view on the war?" Danielle Pelletier asked as she rearranged one of the pillows and propped herself up on an elbow. "You think it will end before you get drafted?" Henry Bowman stretched, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

"I won't get drafted, no matter how long it goes on. I tried to enlist, but they wouldn't take me. There's still a big stainless steel rod in this leg. Military won't take you with foreign metal in your body." "What?"

"Yep, that's their rule, though I'm not sure why they have that policy. For some reconstructive work the steel is temporary, and they take it out after the bone's healed, but in my case they said-" "No, no, I mean, you enlisted? You wanted to go? Are you out of your mind?" Danielle was sitting up now, and Henry found himself admiring her chest.

"That wasn't it," Henry said with a sigh. "Lots of things bother me about the war. Enlisting was the best way to avoid the worst part of...of the whole mess."

"What do you mean? I mean...this just blows my mind. Your whole bag, the thing you always talk about in the protection class, is that each one of us is responsible for ourselves. Ourselves, Henry. You always talk about personal freedom. About individual rights. About how being a policeman just entitles you to arrest people for misdemeanors." She became more animated as she spoke.

"About...about how the police are just the historians, there to write it down after it's already happened, and more interested in handing out traffic tickets than anything else. Henry, you hate it when the government says you have to go get a permit to buy a gun, or to carry it with you, and how some places they won't let you carry it for protection at all.

"Now you tell me you want to join those same people, and go over and meddle in somebody else's business in another country, when nobody has a clue as to what they're doing!" She drew away from him as she spoke.

"Everything you said is true," Henry replied, "except the part about wanting to meddle in other people's business. Let me finish," he commanded, holding up a hand.

"You are absolutely right when you say I believe that each one of us should determine our own destiny. You are also right about how our goals over there aren't particularly well-defined." He furrowed his brow, and went on.

"But the first priority is me. Volunteering to jump into a war I didn't much understand, let alone believe in, wasn't nearly as terrifying as getting drafted into that war."

"What's the difference?"

"What's the difference?" Henry repeated. "Jesus Christ, Danielle! Get drafted and you have no control over your future whatsoever. You can easily get thrown in with a bunch of shitbums whose only goal is to get high, and who have no reservations about lobbing a grenade into their CD's tent if they think he might give them an order to go into battle. Enlist, and you can make sure that the people you end up with are ones you can count on to back you up, not shoot you in the back." He looked into her eyes. "There's no conscripts in the Special Forces."

Danielle took a moment to think that over.

"I guess that makes sense," she said finally. "Except it still surprises me. The idea of you taking orders, I mean."

'"Girls say yes to guys who say no', you mean?" he teased as he reached between her legs.

"Stop that!" she laughed. Danielle Pelletier had participated halfheartedly in several war protests, and was well aware that most of the young men involved in them were there to get laid. Henry smiled, then became serious again.

"Sometimes taking orders, at least for a while, is your best option," he said. "But you should always keep as many options open as possible. Especially involving the government."

"Why do I have the feeling you're about to tell me something new? Something that's interesting, and maybe a little scary, like in your class?" Danielle asked.

"Woman's intuition?" Henry offered.

"I'm serious," she countered. Henry nodded.

"One of the biggest ways to keep your options open is to be able to start with a clean slate, if need be." "Go on."

"To be able to step into another identity, and kiss off the one with the problems.."

"What, you mean like so you can get rid of a bad credit rating, or something? Skip out on the rent payment?"

"No, I mean more like not getting thrown into a concentration camp in California in 1942 because your name is Edward Anderson, with an address in Ohio, instead of Ito Hamata from Los Angeles." Henry saw her quizzical look, and went on.

"People think of fake IDs as what you use to scam people. You know, get into strip joints, get booze when you're nineteen, get a credit card and then tear up the bills, that kind of thing. You can use them for that, but then they're shot if you really get in a jam. What I'm talking about is a lot more important than ripping off some credit card company for a few extra bucks. More like ripping off the Grim Reaper for a few extra decades." He smiled at her and continued.

"Time to do something is when you can, and you got lots of time and no pressure, right? Not when the deadline's tomorrow. Krauts come knock on your door, say 'Guten tag, Frau Epstein, mach schnell to der soap factory,' and you tell them your name's Adams, and you pull out a driver's license issued last week and a checkbook printed yesterday, and your matching luggage happens to be monogrammed with a big 'E', well, nice try.

"But if you've got a two-year-old driver's license, and a stack of paid credit card bills from the last fifteen years, and cancelled checks over the last decade, twelve year-old membership to a gym, and a copy of a birth certificate that was issued and notarized eight years ago, and all these things are in the name of Adams, well, maybe you won't end up as lather in some guy's armpit, at least not this week.

"If the krauts never come, and they probably won't, you wasted a little time over the years setting up the other 'jacket', just like the time you wasted working to pay for fire insurance all those years that your house didn't burn down."

Danielle's eyes were bright. "So what's your other identity, Henry? What name, I mean." "I've got three."

"Three?" she squealed.

"Three males about my age, that I have birth certificates for, and driver's licenses, and credit cards, and other stuff. Each with a different address. I also have three women's birth certificates, but I couldn't very well pretend to be female and rent a post office box, apply for a driver's license, all that, so all I've got there is the three birth certificates."

"Why three women?" Danielle asked, certain she knew the answer. Henry Bowman took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling.

"Several reasons," he said. Because I was drunk and it was fun he answered silently. "First of all, the whole point is to plan for the unexpected in the distant future, and in twenty years I could easily be married. So I had to get several. You know, for different eye color, and like that.

"Second, even if I was single and unattached, a ready-made ID with a long history that'd stand up wo uld be worth a fair bit of money to someone with more immediate problems, don't you think? Particularly if I could supply one that matched the person's description."

"I want to buy one of your birth certificates now," Danielle said immediately.

"Sorry, but none of the three I have lists 'world-class butt' in the official description." Henry held up his arms as Danielle started to punch him.

"Seriously," he said, after she had stopped hitting him, "I'll give you one, and help you get others if you want, if you'll help me get some of the other stuff done, like driver's licenses and P.O. boxes. It's actually kind of fun, and I've looked at the legal statutes to see how serious a crime it is. Near as I can tell, if you don't do anything with your new identity to cheat anyone, or apply for a passport, I think they'd have a tough time prosecuting you at all."

"And if they did, you'd just turn into someone else."

"Exactly."

"So when do we start?"

"How 'bout in, say, another hour?" Henry suggested, pulling back the sheet.

"Goodness! Has that been there all this time?" Danielle asked as she slid a pillow under her stomach and lifted her bottom slightly.

"Pretty much, yes," Henry admitted.

"Well, bring him on over here."

December 22,1973 "This has been sitting on the mail table for two weeks," Catherine Bowman told her son as she handed him the envelope. "I was going to send it on to you but I forgot, and then it was almost your vacation." Henry looked at the flimsy paper, Rhodesian stamps and postmark, and Air Mail notices, then slit the envelope with his knife. The letter was from Raymond Johnson.

November 12 Dear Henry, Thank you for your swift reply to my request for .458 ammunition such as your uncle used on his safari in Angola in 1969. I realized at the time that you would need to know more specifics on the gun for which it was intended, but when I wrote the letter, I had not yet secured a specific weapon.

I now have a Winchester Model 70 in this caliber. It is the old model with controlled feed, with a stock handmade out of a laminate and bedded with epoxy so it won't end up a handful of kindling. I well agree with your assessment of factory stocks in this caliber, at least concerning the first decade of production. I believe the factory has made some improvements lately, as clients have used the new model without breakage, though the extractor system leaves me cold.

Funny that you should be an Enfield man; I had a friend in New York ten years ago who felt exactly the same way. Custom gun-smithing (metalwork, at least) being relatively hard to come by on this side of the ocean, one must make do with factory offerings and modest modification.

The answer to your question about my chamber and throat is as follows: Overall length of dummy round with 500 grain Winchester bullet seated backwards (and still able to close the bolt) is 2.93 inches for my rifle. I am glad to hear that you are concerned about feeding reliability in my unmodified action and have a blunt projectile available that is not quite so square-ended as the ones Max used.

I'd prefer to keep using my .600 Holland, but I am finally out of Kynoch ammunition and there is none to be had anywhere. You could load for it I am sure but you'd need the rifle in hand to get the charge regulated properly.

You asked about Rhodesia in your letter. It is a beautiful country and I wish I had moved here earlier. The political climate would probably baffle anyone used to the U.S. system. Only South Africa recognizes the independence declared 7 years ago-the U.N. cut off Rhodesia. Because of the sanctions, Rhodesia is industrialized and self-sufficient. Not quite what the U.N. had in mind, I'd bet. Kind of like Colorado declaring independence and prospering after being cut off by the rest of the U.S., if you can imagine that. Maybe there's a lesson there.

Another novel political notion here is that you have to have a minimum quantity of assets before you can vote. One effect of this policy is that the game hasn't been slaughtered to make way for collective farming. Thank God.

Thank you once again for your help, and get over here on a trip as soon as you can. I waited until I was 25 to hunt Africa, and that was too damn long.

Let me know what I owe you on the ammo. You'll have to check out shipping on your end.

Ray

Henry folded the letter and put it in his pocket. As Ray had pointed out, no one was loading the big English calibers any longer. Thus, the few remaining manufacturers of double rifles (mostly Germans and Austrians) were chambering their arms for available cartridges. In dangerous game calibers, this meant the .458 Winchester Magnum, which was a smaller cartridge made for bolt guns. Loads designed for use in bolt action rifles produced about 55,000 PSI of peak chamber pressure. Such pressures would overstrain the hinged action of a double .rifle.

The factories soon realized that their .458 ammo was too hot for double guns, and they reduced the powder charge to bring peak pressure down to the 40,000 PSI level that double rifles could live with. Unfortunately, this also reduced the penetration of the .458 to where it was marginal on elephant and buffalo.