Read Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) for Free Online

Hamburg. We love our fish. You can’t pick up a fork without tripping over something of the piscine persuasion.”
    “I’ll take the flavorless mystery meat, thanks.” Adele tossed her third cigarette into the sand. It blinked out. She nudged the discarded butts with her boot. “I see why you smoke these things. They have a certain draw, don’t they? Once you get past the initial taste.”
    Luka’s cigarette was down to finger-burning length as well. He followed suit, very briefly considering a fourth before deciding he needed to slow down.
They
needed to slow down. At the rate they were smoking, his stash would be depleted before Shanghai, and his road jitters were always at their worst on the last leg.
    “I’m surprised you like them so much,” Luka said.
    “You’re surprised I tried them at all,” the fräulein countered. “You shouldn’t be. Fish affinities aside, you and I aren’t so different.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.”
    Luka waited for Adele to elaborate, but she didn’t. Their conversation was winding down, and just as well, since the night was drawing long.
    “We need to get up early tomorrow to make the push to Cairo,” he told her. “Katsuo will probably be off at first light.”
    “You still want to let Katsuo stay in first?” she asked as Luka stood, stretching the affronted muscles of his wrists and rear.
    “The plan hasn’t changed, Adele.”
    “Felix,” she corrected him. “I’m Felix at the checkpoint.”
    “We’re not there yet, Adeleadeleadele.” The name was a good one, as far as rhythms went. It flowed naturally into itself, tumbling off Luka’s tongue like a frantic lemming herd. “Goodnight, Adeleadeleadele.”
    She laughed again.
    A smile crept its way onto Luka’s face as he ducked inside his tent.

    March 17, 1955. Cairo came.
    1st: Tsuda Katsuo, 4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes, 13 seconds.
    2nd: Luka Löwe, 4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes, 20 seconds.
    3rd: Kobi Yokuto, 4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes, 24 seconds.
    4th: Felix Wolfe, 4 days, 1 hour, 56 minutes, 30 seconds.
    Cairo went. March 18, 1955.
    The desert continued, all flat. Luka found himself racing not just to keep up with Katsuo and stay cumulatively ahead of Yokuto, but also to get to the evening, when he could exhale words and smoke and feel his insides lift in a way that wasn’t tangled with adrenaline or nicotine.
    He didn’t smoke as much the next night. This was the Valley of Thirst—the stretch of race that cut through desert so deserted it had no wells to refresh their canteens. Rationing sips of water was necessary in this two-day stretch, and too much smoke scratching Luka’s throat always made him thirsty. Two cigarettes was plenty, but Luka stayed up talking long after the embers went out. He thought (feared?) they might run out of things to talk about, but the silences between them didn’t stand a chance. Adele shot them down with rapid-fire questions. Some importantly strategic: “Will you help me guard the washroom in Baghdad while I get this road gunk off?” “Does the racing path always have so many potholes?” Others not so much: “Do you know what that star is called?” “Got any more cigarettes?” “What’s your middle name?”
    Hers: Valerie. Pretty. Fitting, seamless, into the rest of her. Adele Valerie Wolfe.
    His: Wotan. Odd. Antiquated. The name of a grandfather who had probably inherited it from his grandfather before that. When Adele heard it, she laughed so hard that a piece of dried chicken/beef/cardboard got stuck in her throat and Luka had to smack her on the back until the offending meat slipped out.
    Adele kept laughing until she cried. “Wotan?”
    “You laugh now,” Luka told her. All too aware that he was sitting next to her, close, close. Shoulders touching. This slight contact shot through him with all the heat of the desert day. “Just wait. It will make a surging comeback in baby names once I become double victor.”
    “A world full of little Wotans. God help