Siege Line

by Myke Cole

  It took some getting used to, the burning of his muscles, the fatigue. He’d gone so long feeling neither that the intensity was magnified, and it wasn’t long before Schweitzer stopped reveling in the feeling of life and began to simply hate the discomfort.

  Plante, on the other hand, was tireless. The old man forged silently ahead, showing endurance that Schweitzer imagined he’d have had difficulty matching even in his twenties.

  Neither spoke, and the world receded into an unending landscape of white snow, tightly packed trees, and the gray-blue sky bearing down on them. At last, Plante looked over his shoulder. “How’s Joe doin’?”

  Schweitzer swallowed, caught off guard by the question. He glanced inward, saw Yakecan’s soul still sitting in silence with the same idiot grin, staring off into the void. “He’s all right.”

  Plante chuckled, not breaking stride. “You’re a bad liar, Jim.”

  Schweitzer winced. He was far too tired to stonewall the old man. “How can you tell?”

  Plante looked back at him and winked. “Magic.”

  Schweitzer smiled. “He’s in here, but he’s . . . spiritually brain-dead too, I guess. He’s not responsive. Just staring out into the void.”

  “That . . . unusual?”

  “Hell if I know,” Schweitzer said. “This is only the second soul I’ve been paired with.”

  “How was it with the first?”

  “Less said about him, the better. Let’s just say I wish he’d been spiritually brain-dead.”

  Plante chuckled, and they forged on in silence again. The landscape finally changed enough for Schweitzer to get a sense of progress, the ground sloping sharply downward and skirting the edge of a thickly frozen pond. Schweitzer was quiet as he focused on crab-stepping down the slope, marveling as how unsure his footing was now. At last, he reached the bottom, and they trudged on through the level ground and back into the woods.

  “Sir,” Schweitzer began.

  “You want to know if I can help you find your wife,” Plante said without looking around.

  “Does your magic include mind reading?”

  “No, but you don’t live as long as I have without learning how to read people. If I was in your shoes, it’d be the thing most on my mind.”

  “I just figured if you could put me in a living body, then maybe you could put her—”

  “You got a volunteer? Someone also brain-dead?” Plante stopped, turned to face him. “Or were you planning on just capturing someone and doing it against their will?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud, sir.” Schweitzer could feel Yakecan’s plump cheeks burning with shame at the accusation.

  Plante’s face softened. “I know it. But I also know that men in love do and think crazy things. That’s why they’re called ‘crimes of passion.’ I know what she meant to you, Jim. Hell, it was the first thing I thought when you opened your eyes next to that bonfire and I realized that I could do this.” He shook his head. “Naw. Bad idea.”

  “Why is it a bad idea?”

  Plante’s eyes narrowed. “For one thing, I need to truly know someone. I was amazed that we were able to make it work based on that little tête-à-tête we had. But I also had you to look at, to talk to, to take the measure of. Been so long for Mary, I realize now that I don’t really know who she was anymore. She’s faded for me, so much that I can’t be confident I could find her again. I’d rather have her as tháydÿne nearby than risk sending her back into the beyond, only to lose her forever.”

  Schweitzer looked down. “Then Sarah would be impossible.”

  “’Fraid so, son. Ask yourself: How well could you describe her to me? Could you make her truly live for me? Make me understand who she really was?”

  Schweitzer swallowed tears. “No.”

  “You got anythin’ of hers I could use to get a sense of her? Pictures? Clothing? A lock of her hair? Her perfume?”

  “No.” Schweitzer felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “I lost everything.” All he had left were his memories; the distant fragrance of her rosewater perfume was for his nose alone, he knew. He had nothing.

  Plante placed a gentle hand on Schweitzer’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “Before I had the inkoze, I thought that death was it. You never believe the legends, you know? Everyone tells you there’s life after death, another world you go to, but you don’t believe ’em. But we believe ’em now, don’t we? So, it’s just waitin’, is all. You miss your wife, but all you have to do is wait, and you’ll be with her again.”

  Schweitzer shook his head, thinking of the whirling chaos of the soul storm. “That’s not how it works, sir.”

  “I know how it works,” Plante said. “Just ’cause somethin’s tough don’t mean you can’t make it happen anyway. You want something, you find a way.”

  Schweitzer nodded. “You should have been a SEAL, sir.”

  Plante smiled, clapped Schweitzer on his shoulder, started walking again. “Balance a ball on my nose? Clap my flippers together? No, thanks. Anyway, you’ll have all eternity to be dead. You got a boy still alive, from what I hear; that’s where you oughta be lookin’, you ask me.”

  “Kind of missed the boat there. First I was always deployed, and then I was always dead. Never had a chance to raise him.”

  “So?” Plante asked. “That mean it’s impossible? You can’t start over? You can’t make it right?”

  Schweitzer gestured to his body. “He won’t even recognize me now.”

  “He dealt with you bein’ dead. He can deal with you wearin’ Joe Yakecan’s skin. Kids always loved Joe. Guy was a natural. Hell, you might be better off.”

  Schweitzer felt his smile broaden. “Way you put it, doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “All a matter of perspective,” Plante said. “Joe’s . . . Heck, I don’t remember how old Joe is. Mid-thirties, tops. You got a lot of life left in that body. Let’s focus on gettin’ help, and then we can worry about what comes next.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Schweitzer said.

  The shot’s report sounded a moment after Plante fell.

  CHAPTER XXI

  PUMP FAKE

  Without Yakecan . . . or Schweitzer—Mankiller still had a hard time keeping the identity straight—pulling the sledge was twice as hard. Ghaznavi grunted alongside her, not complaining at least but clearly having a tough time with the added weight of the supplies. The sled wiggled and fishtailed as Mankiller tried to increase or decrease her pull to keep steady with Ghaznavi. At last, she could take no more.

  She stopped, put her hands on her hips. “Look, I know you’re tired an’ all, but you gotta pull even with me.”

  Ghaznavi looked at her boots. “I’m trying.”

  Mankiller swallowed her frustration. “I know it, but . . . just try to match my step, is all. Ain’t no time to rest yet, but we’re almost to—”

  “I know,” Ghaznavi growled. “Look, I’ll try harder to match your pace. Just maybe go a little lighter. Now let’s move; we’re wasting time here.”

  Ghaznavi grumbled under her breath as they started pulling again, but she was more careful now, and they made better progress. Mankiller couldn’t blame her for being edgy. She kept straining her hearing, terrified that any minute, gunshots would ring out behind them as the Director’s flanking force followed their trail and caught up. She was glad they’d done what they had, but she’d have been lying if she said she wasn’t also terrified. If their plan worked, it meant that she’d be bringing the full wrath of the Cell down on her head. She’d do it, and do it without a second thought, but that didn’t mean that the idea appealed to her.

  She looked over at Ghaznavi, realized with a start that this might be the last living person she got to see before she met her end. She looked at the set of Ghaznavi’s jaw and grimaced. “Hey, thanks,” she offered.

  “For what?” Gha
znavi asked without looking up.

  “For comin’ to help. For pullin’ the sledge. I dunno, for everythin’, I guess.”

  Now the SAD Director did look up, eyes wide with surprise. She stammered, “Well . . . uh . . . you’re welcome.”

  They moved on again in awkward silence until Mankiller suddenly stopped short.

  Ghaznavi jerked in her harness, stared daggers at Mankiller. “First you tell me to pull even with you; now what the he—”

  Mankiller silenced her with a wave. “Heard somethin’.”

  Ghaznavi froze, squinting into the distance. The trees were thick around them, and the packed snow that passed for a track disappeared over a rise less than twenty feet away. Mankiller struggled out of the ropes and turned back to the tarps.

  “What are you doing?” Ghaznavi whispered.

  Mankiller didn’t answer, feeling around underneath the tarp until her hand closed around the butt of one of her grandfather’s hunting rifles, an ancient Winchester Model 70. She fished it out, grabbed the box of .30-06 ammunition beside it, and fumbled out a round. The action was clumsy and rushed, sending much of the box’s contents cascading into the snow.

  She chambered a round and brought the weapon up to the low ready. The 70 had no magazine, and she didn’t have time to go fishing after loose bullets in the snow. She had one shot; she had better make it count.

  Ghaznavi whispered something, but Mankiller silenced her with a wave and then motioned for her to get down. She didn’t wait to see if the SAD Director complied; she was already tuning out the world, bringing her front sight post into focus, drawing a bead on the top of the rise where’d she’d heard the noise.

  She heard it again, rasping breath, crunching footsteps. Whoever was coming wasn’t bothering to be quiet about it.

  Mankiller took a knee. A hiker running from a bear would sound like that. So would a refugee from Fort Resolution, and so would one of the Cell’s operators who’d been ordered to run up the trail to intercept them before they turned off it. She couldn’t take any chances. She dialed in her aim and waited.

  A figure crested the rise. A man in a parka and boots, a carbine slung across his chest. Not a hiker running from a bear, not with armament like that. Mankiller sighted in and eased the slack out of the trigger.

  She should have just shot. Would have been the sensible thing. But the old cop’s protocol held her tightly in its grip. Even now, when she was more soldier than cop, when this was more a military evolution than a police one. It might get her killed, but to fail it was a kind of living death, and to be honest, she was dead anyway. Might as well go down being true to herself.

  And so, Wilma Mankiller didn’t fire. Instead, she shouted, “Police! Drop your weapon!”

  The figure didn’t drop his weapon. Instead, he fell on his face in the snow, hacking and gasping as if his heart would burst. Mankiller came off her sights, unfocused her vision.

  And recognized him instantly.

  “Ollie!” She raced to his side. “What the hell are you doin’ out here?”

  Calmut must have been running flat out for a long time, because it took him a solid minute of coughing to get enough breath to speak.

  “Sherr . . . if. God. I been runnin’ . . . Thought I wouldn’a found you.”

  “Ollie, calm down and just breathe. Are you hurt?”

  “Got a round . . . in my leg,” he managed, tapping his snow pants.

  “You ran all this way with a round in your leg? Have you lost your mind? What if it cuts your femoral, you dumb shit!”

  Ghaznavi had taken off her harness and joined them, bringing one of the first aid kits from under the tarp. “If he’s here, that means Fort Resolution has been overrun.”

  Mankiller felt her stomach turn over. She put her hands on Calmut’s shoulders. “That true, Ollie? They take the town?”

  Calmut shook his head. “No, ma’am. They came again once more, but we hung on. Lost a coupla more. They got Freddie. That Chinese fella who was stayin’ with . . .”

  “Ollie. We’ll deal with the casualties later. If the Fort’s holdin’ on, what the hell are you doin’ out here? Why’d you run all the way with a bullet in your leg? You left all those people holdin’ on by themselves? They got an army to hold off and you were the man to help ’em do it!”

  “No army,” Calmut spat.

  “Whaddya mean, there’s no army?” Mankiller’s voice went cool.

  “That’s what I came ta warn ya. They up and left.”

  “They up and left?” Ghaznavi asked. “Maybe they got tired of being repulsed.”

  “That ain’t it,” Calmut said. “I saw ’em goin’ up out past the lakeshore, same way you went. They musta figured out where your Grampy was at. Came to warn you. Thought for sure they’d have caught you by now.”

  “When did they set out, Ollie?” Mankiller stood, panic threatening to rise at the back of her throat.

  “Dunno, maybe yesterday? Hard ta think now.”

  Mankiller returned to the sledge, started collecting the bullets she’d let tumble in the snow.

  “Sherriff, what are you doing?” Ghaznavi asked. “They’re behind us.”

  “That’s right,” Mankiller said, “and I’m going to meet them.”

  “Why?” Ghaznavi asked. “We’re past them. They’re heading to your grandfather’s place.”

  “They are if they know exactly where it is,” Mankiller said, “and I pray that they do. ’Cause if they don’t, they’ll be spreadin’ out right where we left Grampy and Jim.”

  The sledge tracks might fool a human who was out in the frozen hinterlands of the Northwest Territory for the first time. But she had seen what the Cell’s Director could do. If he was out there, then Grampy was as good as caught.

  CHAPTER XXII

  ANCESTORS

  Schweitzer was so used to his augmented hearing dissecting the sound, telling him the precise direction, distance, and caliber of the weapon, that he lost precious seconds frozen, waiting for his human senses to relay the information.

  Plante writhed on the ground, hands clamped to his thigh. Schweitzer finally broke his paralysis and rushed to the old man’s side, pried his shaking hands apart. Dark blood leaked slowly from the hole in the man’s trousers. Not arterial. They had time.

  “Pack that with whatever you can reach and stay down,” Schweitzer whispered. There was no time. He had to get off the X before the shooter took him, too.

  Another shot sprayed bark from a tree trunk not far from him, and Schweitzer was up and running. He’d figured direction at least and a rough estimate of distance. Whoever it was wasn’t a great shot. Schweitzer might lack his magical abilities, but he still had the training of a SEAL, and that training was clear. His instructors at SQT had drilled it into him, referencing a book that would have made old man Plante proud, Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander. To stand still is to cede the advantage to the enemy, Master Chief Green had said. Alexander always attacked. When outnumbered. When he doubted the morale or the loyalty of his troops. He always attacked. And so will you.

  Schweitzer brought the Alaskan up, letting his eye drift to the scope, then brought the gun down to the low ready. Weapons had been little more than window dressing since he died, but his training came rushing back to him, his vision broadening to take in the peripheral field, never focusing on anything for long. Not a threat. Move. Not a threat. Move.

  Yakecan’s huge body lumbered, and Schweitzer winced at the noise he was making. The first thing he’d be doing if he made it through this was going on a diet. He didn’t doubt that he’d be sucking wind and sore by the time the fight was done, but he was willing to pay that price if it kept him alive. He wove from tree to tree, doing his best to keep them between himself and what he guessed was the shooter’s position.

  He hoped whoever it was, they were dumb enough to take another
. . .

  Bang. Bark exploded from the trunk in front of him, spraying his face with splinters.

  Schweitzer exploded from cover and raced toward the shooter, coming up on his sights and easing the slack out of the trigger. He could see her now, a thick-limbed woman rising to her feet, stumbling backward, trying to get back on her weapon sights. “I got him, sir!” she was shouting. “I’ve got him!”

  Schweitzer was tempted to look around, find who she was calling to, but he ignored it. He couldn’t focus on the unknown threat when the known one was before him. “Taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird,” Master Chief Green had quoted from some ancient Japanese text. “Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird other than the one it first marked.”

  He slowed his pace, raised the Alaskan, steadying his firing platform as he slid the trigger to the rear. The big hunting rifle was unwieldy, heavy at the muzzle, different from the light carbines he was accustomed to. He relied on the locking muscles in his arms to steady the gun, but without his magically enhanced strength, his limbs trembled. Yakecan hadn’t been as strong as Schweitzer in life, and he was unused to the limits of this new body as well as the weight of the unfamiliar trigger pull. There were too many variables, and Schweitzer knew he would miss before the gun went off.

  The muzzle jumped and the round snapped against pine-covered boughs in the distance. Schweitzer was already working the action, closing the distance between them. He expected the woman to run, but she stood instead, charged forward. A professional, then.

  She punched the quick release on her sling and swung the rifle over her head. Schweitzer punched his own, realized too late that the hunting harness didn’t have one, barely succeed in getting the weapon up to parry the blow. The woman’s stock rang off the Alaskan’s muzzle, sending plastic fragments flying. Schweitzer kicked out with one of Yakecan’s enormous legs. He felt a sharp pain in his hamstring. Yakecan hadn’t been any more flexible than he was fit, another limitation Schweitzer would have to get used to. Despite the pain, he managed to commit to the kick, sending his heel into the woman’s gut and driving her onto her backside. Schweitzer eased the sling over his head and gripped his gun by the muzzle, lifting it high. The woman threw up her rifle to parry, but Schweitzer had height, leverage, and Yakecan’s strength. He’d smash right through her weapon and stave in her skull.