“So what now?” Morgan asked.
“You return to the cavern and await your departure. You ensure some meaning to the destruction by fulfilling your part in all this.”
“By sitting underground and listening to you all die? By leaving the major out there?” Lightholler’s sorrel, in tune with his rider, snorted hot gusts of defiance.
“At what point in your instructions did the major ask you to hold out hope for him?”
“When he stood outside my hotel suite in New York and asked me for a few moments of my time,” Lightholler replied. “I plan on giving them to him now.”
“Your loyalty is only exceeded by your stupidity,” Tecumseh muttered. “We’ll take the southern path, skirt Echo, and try to come up behind the old Groom ore seam. There are mines and other snares out there, so follow my trail well.”
Tecumseh picked a path through the rocks that guarded the southern entry to the base. Low hills rose into sharp banks of bare stone that cut the sky. Red Rock dropped behind them. From their vantage point, the installation—once so well concealed—was a blackened stain on the desert floor.
Fifteen minutes of riding gained them little ground across the harsh terrain. Morgan glanced at his watch often. His heart had soared at the thought of finding the major, but the possibility that they would run out of time was becoming all too real. What would Doc and Agent Malcolm hope to achieve alone in Wells’ world?
Tecumseh had his binoculars out. He surveyed the western skyline. There was nothing to see in the distant haze but a shimmer of broken horizon.
“Ceta’n,” he muttered.
“I beg your pardon?” Lightholler said.
“Hawk,” Tecumseh replied. He handed the binoculars to Lightholler.
Morgan looked up. A solitary bird, its crown a dappled black, its tail white-banded and broad, soared among the thermals. Wings beat rapidly, then fixed to a languid glide.
Tecumseh’s ravaged face was a portrait of bereavement. Did he suddenly mourn the passing of this damaged world? “Ceta’n ote,” he added, qualifying his assessment. He directed Lightholler to a point beyond Morgan’s vision. “Many hawks.”
Lightholler shifted his point of view and handed the binoculars distractedly to Morgan. Morgan adjusted the focus. The bird was long gone. There was a stipple of black smudges in the far distance. He played with the focus and they resolved. He handed the binoculars on to Shine.
“They have Mitsubishi FS-Zs among those bombers,” Lightholler said. “Where the hell are they coming from?”
“They might have repaired some of the captured airfields on the border,” Tecumseh suggested.
“Even so, those interceptors will be running on fumes.”
“It hardly matters. We have no anti-air defences.”
Morgan could see them without the binoculars now. Wing upon wing of heavy bombers, low and to the west.
Many hawks.
XXVIII
April 29, 2012
Groom Mine, Nevada
It was a place Kennedy had frequented only in his dreams these last ten years. This was where Cambyses’ Persian army, fifty-thousand strong, had vanished without a trace. Where Carthage was lost and the Crusaders fought and died. Here was where Napoleon had sought to destroy an empire, and Prussia carved a new one. This might have been the Sahara or the Gobi, the Simpson or the Mojave, but one simple act could turn them all into the same dark place.
This was the churning whirlpool of war in the sand.
A crew of Union gunners manned the nearest one-twenty. The vehicle, partially dug into the sand, had its gun almost resting on the dunes. Kennedy worked his way towards them. He hunkered down with them, his hands over his ears to blunt the crashing bellow of its blast.
“Who’s in charge here?”
The commander seemed unfazed by Kennedy’s squad. He eyed them cursorily before saying, “Thought you were, General.” His salute was an airy gesture as he turned back to his spotter. “Hit ’em again.”
The loaders secured the ungainly bulk of the round and the one-twenty roared flame.
“Where’s your commanding officer?”
The commander gestured to a point behind him with a toss of his head. “Captain Hobbes.”
Tracer fire illuminated the smoke and danced across the notched plating of the gun’s armour.
“Hit ’em again.”
Kennedy detailed two of his men to cover the gun and negotiated the cleft landscape of the Union enclave. He found the captain standing by the slashed remains of a tent. His staff, two lieutenants and a warrant officer, stood with him by a radio set.
Hobbes was a heavily built man. The broad features of his face were lost in the ambiguity of caked dirt. He snapped a salute and said to Kennedy, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“I’m working on it, Captain.” Kennedy returned the salute. He felt something catch in his shoulder, only now recalling the recent wound. Their exchange was yelled over the pandemonium of the artillery barrage.
“Clearly. When did you get promoted?”
“About five minutes ago.”
The captain’s face contorted into an ugly scowl. “And the provisional government?”
“You’re looking at it.”
“Lousy son of a...” The captain punched his meaty palm. He turned away from Kennedy, but as he took in the faces of his staff his look of disgust swiftly melted into something else. “You had the japs going for a while,” he said. “The colonel was considering a parley.”
“A colonel is in command of this army?” Kennedy asked.
“Your snipers took out a Japanese general and lieutenant general last night. They lost a lot of momentum dealing with your supply raids, and your decoy took out an entire battalion. There isn’t supposed to be any confed resistance out here, and I haven’t seen anything like your uniforms before.”
A battalion? Kennedy’s bared teeth were thankfully concealed behind his mask. “We’re Special Forces.”
“I’ll say,” the warrant officer volunteered.
“What changed the colonel’s mind?” Kennedy asked.
“Full-strength reserves are only ten miles back, and they called in an air strike three hours ago.”
Kennedy’s men had taken up position within the Union defences. Ghost dancers helped man the understaffed guns or took defensive positions to cover the Union crews. The redoubt was a vortex of dust and burning wreckage.
“So why did you throw in with me?”
“You’re Joseph fucking Kennedy. I thought you might have had something up your sleeve.”
“I did,” Kennedy replied. “You.”
“Christ, what were you expecting us to do?”
“I was expecting you to butt out of this while my men took out the enemy supplies. You were a bit more enthusiastic than I expected.”
“Hell of a nice flag you had waving on that hilltop, sir. We just got carried away. Well, now that we’re stuck in this situation, what do you want us to do? Visibility is down to shit. We just been aiming low and hitting anything that moves.”
“I have spotters up on the escarpment. I want your guns to prevent that brigade of tanks from deploying, and take out the column of reinforcements that are making for my base.”
“Piece o’ cake. Anything else?”
“You can tell me more about that air strike, Captain.”
XXIX
April 29, 2012
Red Rock, Nevada
“All I’m saying is that we can’t stay on open ground.” Morgan’s comment was directed more to himself than his companions.
Shine, intent on Tecumseh’s radio transmissions, nodded his accord. Even the horses seemed edgy. They scraped at the plateau’s pebbled surface. Reined in on the narrow shelf of bare rock, the three horsemen drew their mounts closer to Tecumseh, as if that might afford protection from the incoming fighters.
“This fast becomes a fool’s errand,” Tecumseh murmured.
The battlefields were spread
out below them. Dispersing vapours roofed the gorge that had housed Echo. A thicker black cloud extended over Red Rock’s west reach and a pall of filthy, flame-edged smoke burgeoned in the far distance where Major Kennedy had struck. Elsewhere, seared patches of earth documented slaughter and devastation. The extent of the Japanese camp, beyond Kennedy’s attack, stretched towards the western horizon.
“Okay,” Tecumseh said, finally, “those fighters will only be able to make a few runs before they have to turn back. The bombers are another problem entirely. Iron Horse has gone to ground, and the cliffs around the west tower will afford his men some cover. The major’s men, however, are dangerously exposed.” He turned to Lightholler. “Your cavern will withstand a limited raid from the air, but after the bombers leave, the ground assault will resume.
“Will you see reason now?” He peered intently at the three men.
“Did you speak to the major?” Shine asked.
Tecumseh shook his head.
“Could you get us to him if I asked you to?” Lightholler asked.
“Maybe, but once there, I can’t see us returning in any reasonable length of time.”
“I can’t see him ditching his men,” Morgan offered glumly.
“We’re his men,” Lightholler said.
“No,” Tecumseh said. “You’re his weapon, fashioned to undo changes that were wrongly made.”
Lightholler looked at him for a long time. The expressionless cast of his mask did little to conceal the regret of his reply.
He said, “Take us back.”
XXX
April 29, 2012
Groom Mine, Nevada
Atop the escarpment, Tom Shine had made short work of directing the Union guns. His last transmission had assured Kennedy that the column of Japanese reinforcements was mired in the detritus of their own shattered armour. Of the four companies Kennedy had dispatched in their pursuit, however, barely two hundred men remained. Red Thunder, warned of the impending air strike, had been instructed to disperse them. They would have to find their shelter somewhere on the open plains between the Japanese camp and the environs of Red Rock.
Little appeared to remain of the Japanese depot. Kennedy’s men, scattered and bereft of any specific orders, had taken to following their own dark itinerary. Death, random and swift, struck from the shifting sand.
If not for the fact of the inbound bombers, he might have called this victory. Modest, Pyrrhic, but victory all the same. The Japanese camp was a turmoil of disordered ranks. There was no evidence of leadership among the confusion. If triumph was determined by the moral collapse of the enemy, it was prefigured in the fleeing shapes that loomed and vanished in the sandstorm.
But still the bombers were inbound.
Only one company of men and seven of his Jacksons remained to augment the thin blue line of Yankee regulars. If Hayes’ last estimate was correct, he only needed ninety minutes.
The Japanese guns fell quiet. The Union forces, deprived of targets, stared out into the retreating haze. The attacks ceased and the silence of their adversary screamed his intentions. Even the infantrymen had halted their appalling suicidal rushes against the ghost dancer lines.
A band of samurai broke through the perimeter. Hurdling the piles of their dead, they emptied their machine-guns; ornate, pearl-handled weapons that gleamed in their hands. They leapt from cannon to cannon. A flash of sharp silver skewered a gunner here, a dancer there, before the concerted efforts of Kennedy’s band finally stretched them in the dust. The glittering edge of a shuriken still protruded from the side of an eighty-eight where it had missed its mark.
“They’re coming.”
There was nothing to do but seek cover beneath the armoured hem of the artillery.
Shadows, long and dark, swept over them. Machine-gun fire ploughed narrow channels, raking the ground. Dust, freshly settled, flurried in clotted droves, plastering his goggles.
The bombers began to drop their payloads. Time and again he was heaved bodily against the underside of the tank as the landscape reformed around him in tectonic mockery of some act of creation. The clamour was a vice, compressing his skull.
Ninety minutes...
If the cavern was being targeted, they would barely last nine.
Kennedy pictured the vaulted ceiling crumbling beneath the barrage. The carapace, sundered and sinking beneath its own weight. Cracks splitting through the framework of Tecumseh’s mysterious art as the walls themselves gave way. And Patricia, grey and silent and broken within the mausoleum he had constructed.
There was Hobbes’ radio set, tilted crazily near the frayed pennant of his command tent. A globe, pale red, flickered still on its console.
He dived across the sand and rolled between the criss-cross path of strafing fire. He latched onto the set and dialled up a prearranged frequency with bloodied fingers.
The signal was there, loud and clear.
He brought the mouthpiece close to his lips and shouted his question above the din of falling doom.
“Where the fuck are you?”
One last gesture of defiance.
One last grab for the ring.
A blast tossed him onto his back. His shoulder exploded in a callous burst of agony.
Looking up, he saw a fighter swoop down through a break in the cloud. He saw the wingtips flare brightly and felt the rapid thud of bullets as they danced towards him along the desert floor. The fighter bobbed wildly, as if already preparing for a victory roll, then rolled over completely in a nebula of red flame, disintegrating.
Behind it, soaring past the wreckage, two Confederate biplanes veered back up into the clouds.
A voice, muffled by static, crackled over the radio set. “On my way, Joseph. We should arrive at your soirée any time now.”
Kennedy crawled back to the transmitter. “You sure took your damn time.” He coughed into the mouthpiece.
Despite the interference, Webster’s reply still managed to seethe some secret satisfaction.
“You have no idea how difficult it is to hijack a stratolite. I suggest you and your men find yourself a deep, deep hole. I’m in foul spirits.”
XXXI
April 29, 2012
Red Rock, Nevada
They galloped four abreast. Calamity dogged their heels, a rolling wave of destruction that lashed the tortured earth with jubilant abandon.
The Rock loomed wildly with every juddering stride as the foam-flecked horses bore them across the burning plain. The shack, cloven to reveal the domed cement entrance to the cavern, was less than a hundred yards away.
Lightholler fixed his eyes on the quaking hoof-tossed earth. He cringed at each fleeting shadow that heralded another plane’s strafing run. They entered a vast darkness too thick for cloud and when he emerged he found that he was galloping alone.
He reined in hard, twisting his stallion in a tight turn that brought him to rest a short distance from the dome’s entrance. Tecumseh and the others, just feet away, had also stopped, and they had their heads tilted skywards. He lifted his eyes to join theirs and a vertiginous shudder racked his body.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Morgan, bent back in his saddle, was in danger of losing his seat.
Shine was trying to settle his mount.
Tecumseh just stared in awed wonder. Perhaps he was thinking about his thunderbird, perched above the deluge, snapping lightning and bringing thunder. For above their heads, impossibly large and impossibly near, hung the Patton.
XXXII
April 29, 2012
CSS Patton
Webster, standing at the stratolite’s Eye, gazed down upon the wastes of Kennedy’s realm.
Pre-dawn, the Patton had been a lifeless husk pitched on uncaring seas. Suspended out over the Nevada–Arizona border, derelict and insensate, millions of dollars worth of steel and high-grade plastic listed within a swarm of bi-winged gnats.
Pinked to the gills, Webster lay face up on his bunk while renegade dreams buffeted him along nar
row corridors, down, down, always down, towards that infinitely sharp barb that awaited the soft pulpy orb of his right eye. The pounding of his heart resolved into the steady thud of a fist against his door.
With heavy, cloddish movements he lurched towards the cabin entrance.
“Director.” The agent’s voice broke through the syrupy miasma of pharmaceutical enfoldings. “Radio. Inbound. Urgent.” Words forced their way through ramparts of delirium. “Black Knight.”
That did it.
Webster’s eye throbbed syncopal as he clawed his way out of stupefaction.
By the time he’d traversed the five decks to communications, his head had almost cleared. His desk was as he’d left it. A light flashed, agitatedly, on the receiver.
He heard Agent Reid’s voice, tremulous, saying, “Who could have imagined?”
Who indeed?
And then, inconceivably, Kennedy was on the line with his proposal.
The offer: information, the only currency worth dealing in, and the negotiation was to be held face to face in Kennedy’s own lair.
“What’s in it for you, Joseph?”
“I’ll let you decide that.”
“Surely we’d be more comfortable up here.”
“I want to show you what’s behind the curtain, Director. But you only have sixty seconds left to triangulate my whereabouts and I’ll be done in thirty. Bring enough security to make yourself comfortable. Your pilot only gets the coordinates in the air. If your plane is escorted, we blow you all out of the sky. I’ll call back in three for your answer.”
Then Agent Reid’s voice. “Director, you really need to see this.”
Then static.
He’d assembled his best men, blustered his way past Illingworth’s feeble protest, and was airborne in fifteen minutes. No escort. Reid’s tone, chilling and awed, had left no doubt.
The Company of the Dead Page 57
