Alternative Truths

by Bob Brown

  Sun Tzu had covered this sort of thing. So had Patton. Dale had read both several times growing up. Dad had a whole library.

  Stan nodded. Somehow, he conveyed approval and respect with a simple bob of the head.

  “Is there any advantage to poisoning the reservoir?” Stan asked.

  Yeah, Dale was being graded today.

  “Panic,” Dale replied. “But actually doing it would risk an escalation from one of the other nations surrounding the Blues. Still, you could get people moving south to Denver in the middle of a raid and winter. But why come this way? It’s easier to come into the reservoir from the east if you want to hit it. So that’s out. I’d want to hide someplace farther west, where there are more trees.”

  Stan nodded again.

  “So would I,” he agreed.

  Dale thought he would say something else, but Stan just whipped Audrey’s reins and got the big, bay mare moving. Centurion had spent enough time in the Park Service to follow without any heels. The blue roan was big, and occasionally a goof, but he was a soldier, too.

  Dale let Stan set the pace, pushing through the snow toward some target to the southwest.

  Between them, they had two rifles and two pistols. Plus two cavalry sabers.

  That force over there had a couple of tanks, half a dozen armored transports, and probably a hundred men in battle gear. In back, several flatbeds were hauling covered loads Dale couldn’t identify.

  Trouble.

  And near as Dale knew, there were no friendly troops this side of Fort Collins that could help.

  Dale wasn’t sure how they could stop them, but he knew Stan was dead set on trying.

  ~o0o~

  They ended up in a stand of trees on the east side of Turkey Roost Mountain, still deep in the heart of what used to be the Roosevelt Forest. He and Stan were down below the peak, just lee enough that the howling wind was quiet here, but Dale could still see the angry edges of the storm running on all sides of them.

  The west face was where the North Fork River would run hard and dangerous in the spring melt, but for now, it was ice. Over here, just the least amount of gully and enough trees that they could hang a camouflage net and settle the horses in a bit.

  Dale glanced back over his left shoulder as the sun began to set.

  Or would have set, if it was visible. More snow was coming.

  He wasn’t sure if another storm would slow down those Jayhawkers. It would certainly provide them enough cover to do mischief, up here in the mountains.

  Stan had called for backup, but it just confirmed that there was nobody within range.

  Made sense. If this was cover for an attack on Fort Collins, they would need everybody down in the flats.

  Still, it would have been nice to have some help out here.

  They started a climb, letting Audrey and Centurion hump along at a nice amble. The two horses had fought hard to get them here early enough, but they still had a bit to go before everyone was done.

  “There’s only one way we might slow them down,” Stan said in that quiet drawl. “Stop them, maybe.”

  Dale nodded. There wasn’t a lot two men with rifles could do against an armored company in rough country.

  Die, maybe, but Stan wasn’t a Death or Glory kind of guy. Not today, anyway.

  Stan took his silence with a nod.

  “Assuming they want to stay off Eighty as much as possible, they should pass below us,” Stan said. “We can ambush them here, and then run like hell for the back country and hope they don’t catch us.”

  “They’ve got tanks, Stan,” Dale felt compelled to point out the obvious.

  The old man actually grinned at that.

  “Those are nice in an open field, kid,” he replied. “Ain’t worth shit in tight quarters. And those guns only elevate so far. No, I’d be much more worried if they had horses with them, or snow-mobiles. This gives us a chance.”

  They were still fifty-ton behemoths, invulnerable to anything at hand. Dale wasn’t about to point that out. Again.

  “And the troop transports?” Dale asked instead.

  “Man on foot in this snow is about as worthless as tits on a boar, Dale,” Stan said. “Only thing I worry about is aircraft, but the snow’ll be too much.”

  Dale nodded.

  He’d never fired his rifle in anger, unless you counted being pissed off at an elk that zigged when it should have zagged, two winters ago, and would’ve gotten away, if his dad hadn’t drilled it. His dad was like that.

  But there were Blues coming. Lots of them. As Stan had said, this was enough force to do something stupid with, if the commander over there had a mind to.

  Dale wondered if the man had ever read Sun Tzu, or Patton. Rommel. Wellington. Light Horse Harry Lee. Any of them.

  It would be a man. Blues didn’t allow women to serve. Feared that it would somehow sully their delicate womanliness. Taint their femininity.

  Dale’s mom had been a drill instructor, once upon a time. There wasn’t anything delicate about that woman but her drop biscuits.

  The top of Turkey Roost was a bald knob of gray granite, slicked over with what little snow and ice could hang on in the teeth of that bitter northwest wind coming down.

  Stan directed Dale to tie the horses loosely to a tree, part of a stand down on a little shoulder, something that would provide them some cover and a wind break. Assuming nobody decided to fly overhead anytime soon and maybe catch them moving about on an infrared scanner.

  And even that would get muddled up by the wind and snowfall coming at them. They might look like deer.

  Stan had found a tree and settled into the lee of it. Every little bit to block the wind, especially up here where there was no cover at all. Dale fell into his lee, kneeling down and letting his chaps and boots protect his knees from the cold stone.

  The Ranger had his optics out, but Dale’s eyes were good enough to see the Jayhawks coming. They had chosen to come up Mill Creek instead of the North Fork. Flip of a coin which was smarter.

  Dale was still surprised at the raid. All he could think of was that this was a supply column being escorted into the wilderness, to hide a stash depot in advance of the spring offensive. Nothing else made any sense, especially as valuable as those vehicles had to be.

  Even over the wind, those ancient turbines screamed like angry raptors. Long column of beasts, coming closer.

  Dale would have said wolves, but the Jayhawks were exactly backward from that. Wolves put the weak and old up front to set the pace, so nobody got left behind, with the Alpha at the very rear.

  Buffalo, maybe.

  These yahoos had both tanks up front, followed by about half of the troop transports, creeping along slowly and crushing small trees and squishing the snow down so the big, articulated trucks in back had a clear trail. As long as they stayed mostly on the bank, everything would be fine.

  Dale had studied enough history of the old days to know those tanks down there were really low-flying spaceships, bundled up tight with their own air, heat, and radios. Nobody had made any new tanks in maybe twenty-five years, since folks had started sabotaging the factories that made the war machines, but both sides had inherited thousands of the old beasts from the United States Army, back when it was a thing, and not the degenerate street gang they were witnessing today.

  Patton would have cried. Or slapped someone.

  “Final exam, Dale,” Stan announced in a voice that brooked no sass. “They will pass below us in column. I have explosives enough to bring down a significant portion of that overhanging shelf of rock. What timing do we seek?”

  Dale nodded, mostly as a placeholder.

  They were on the top of Turkey Roost Mountain, looking down from a sheer cliff face, a wall running at an angle to the valley below where the stone went straight down nearly twenty meters before it flattened out again. They could drop an avalanche, not just of snow, but of tons and tons of mountain as well.

  That much was obvious. But that
wasn’t the question Stan was asking.

  This man was a legend. The Last Ranger of the National Park Service, from the time before Blue and Green.

  From the old world, before Park Rangers were the police force of the west, protecting the wilderness and the people from the Robber Barons and the Drumphers.

  When they were just teachers, and not paladins.

  What timing do we seek?

  It was a question with a blade hidden in the folds of the fabric, as Musashi would have summarized it. Sun Tzu would have nodded with the swordmaster.

  Larimer County was all rippled up, waves of rock frozen forever, leaving troughs where ticks and Jayhawks could hide.

  At the same time, it wasn’t like the leading face down by Denver, where artillery on the hills could range damned-near forever, and you had to climb hard up the few passable places, channeled into killzones designed by sadists with history degrees.

  You couldn’t just stop the Jayhawkers by dropping the rocks now. That was the obvious trap. The raiders would just go around you. Maybe backtrack down the North Fork a mile or so and circle around Turkey Roost to come up the back, like he and Stan had done.

  Tanks in relatively open country would chase them down like a pack of wolves on a lone buffalo calf.

  No, you had to drop the rock and snow on them. Avalanche the stone down atop the snake and trap it. Immobilize them here, so that later reinforcements could come roll them up, after whatever was going to happen that these yahoos were here for in the first place.

  Patton smiled at him with a cruel eye. Wellington spoke to him of Salamanca.

  Stan had asked a different question.

  How many men did Dale want to kill today?

  None. He had joined the Park Service and not the army because he wanted to help people. He wasn’t a killer.

  But this was war. They were Jayhawks.

  “They likely to stop for the night, anytime soon?” Dale asked.

  Laagers would be better defended, but easier to mousetrap. Rommel reminded him of the Battle of Caporetto, before he was famous, but still a genius.

  Stan glanced back at the western sky.

  “Horse troop would have, already,” Stan said, but Dale knew that. “Armor doesn’t need to, as long as they have fuel and maps. Two of those big rigs are hauling jet fuel for the machines.”

  Ah. That’s what those were.

  There were a pair of them, tucked in at the front of the others. Dale had wondered if they were mobile missile launchers of some sort. Articulated, armored canteens on treads made more sense.

  “How come we don’t have tanks up here?” Dale asked.

  It didn’t really matter. Inspiration had lit up his mind, followed by the sound of both the Iron Duke and Light Horse Harry laughing maniacally.

  They did that.

  Killing was generally wrong, but there were times when it was the best of a set of bad choices. Dale had never had to confront that until today.

  People were likely to die as a result of his choices.

  He swallowed past a dry tongue and listened.

  “Too easy to bomb fuel depots,” Stan replied. “Even way out on the west coast. Blues still have an Air Force, even if we got the Springs in the divorce. Plus, too damned rough up here. Figure they’ll have to fix at least one major breakdown before they get wherever they want to end up.”

  Dale nodded carefully, that plan’s shape crystalizing.

  “In the southwest and in the spring, they always say you cut off the head of the snake,” he observed.

  He’d never been to Arizona, now mostly empty land and Indian reservation, once all the Snowbirds had gone East during the first war. It hadn’t been India and Pakistan Partitioning, but there had still been long convoys in and out of Texas, once things got serious.

  Mom had served there, before she had met dad. Still had a magnificent thunderbird tattoo across her back as a reminder.

  Stan watched him, utterly motionless.

  “Hopefully, we won’t have to kill too many of them,” Dale continued in a low voice. “But they should have stayed in Kansas, so they need to be batted on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Maybe next time, they’ll think twice and stay home.”

  Stan grinned.

  He stood and tucked the optics back into their case. Dale stood as well.

  “When I was a kid,” Stan laughed, “this would be the point where someone says: Here, hold my beer.”

  Dale wasn’t sure what that phrase meant, but the cold, steel gleam in Stan’s eyes gave him some clue about how dangerous it was about to become.

  ~o0o~

  Dale had never played with high explosives. Sure, there had been familiarization classes with plastic explosives and recoilless rifles, still the best way to knock down avalanches under controlled circumstances.

  But he had never really gotten to play with the squishy stuff.

  Still hadn’t, technically. Stan had done all the work, cramming cold globs down into four ice-filled crevices, always careful not to slip and fly. The snow might be thick and soft below, but you were still going to be falling far enough to break bones at the very best.

  In this weather, probably a slow, painful death, especially when that vale turned into a battlefield in a little while.

  The column of angry buffalo was still creeping along, but not much faster than a man could walk. Which made sense, with fifty tons of tank; deep snow; small, frozen rivers; and no scouts out front on horses.

  It was slow work.

  No radios. Detonators on long wires that Dale was holding, back up and in the trees, as Stan worked below him. The twist-plunger was sitting next to Dale.

  Stan had explained how to wire it and set everything off, in case he died out there, but Dale was content to wait. Hopefully, all he would do today is watch, but he had a feeling that Stan was going to make him do the killing.

  If you wanted to join the Park Service and become a Ranger, those were the costs. Others would be happy to stay as 189’s or 303’s, Recreation Aides and Clerks, but Dale was already an apprentice Guide, an 090, and had his heart set on becoming an 025, a true Park Ranger, with the gold badge and buffalo embroidered on his shoulder.

  Warrior.

  Stan pushed another glob of gray evil into a hole at his feet and stuffed a wire down, like a long-tail sperm cell just penetrating an egg to give birth to fire.

  The sky lit up with the sound of thunder. Which made no sense. Wasn’t the right kind of storm for thundersnow.

  Wasn’t thunder.

  Someone had opened up with a machine gun.

  Blues had suddenly realized they weren’t alone up here in the great, peaceful wilderness.

  Stan flipped up in the air suddenly, turned a complete somersault, and face-planted in the snow.

  Dale was about a hundred feet away, but he could see blood starting to stain the snow.

  And Stan wasn’t moving.

  Dale lurched to his feet and stopped.

  Their job was to stop the Blues. Paralyze them. Nail them to the ground like a catfish on a board, waiting to be cleaned for dinner.

  There was nothing he could do for the man if Stan was dead. And the blues were ripping the sky with tracer rounds, turning the twilight purple and pink.

  Someone had seen Stan move, on the ridge above them. And nailed him pretty good.

  But they thought there were more people around.

  A dragon roared, like Gabriel sounding his horn.

  Dale watched a one-twenty-five round from the leading tank slam into the far hillside, across the vale and down a half-mile. He didn’t know if it was paranoia pulling the trigger, or an unlucky rabbit coming out to feed.

  Didn’t matter.

  Something had drawn their attention. More dragons bellowed, drowning out the baying of angry wolves throwing bullets in every direction.

  It was like watching God himself fire a shotgun out of the sky, seeing the snow erupt in little puffs as bullets and explosions went eve
ry which way.

  Dale was frozen with fear. He forced himself to breathe.

  Even Centurion was better trained for this sort of thing than he was.

  “Blow it, kid,” Stan’s voice was suddenly there above the din.

  Dale looked over.

  Stan was lying in a pool of blood, staining the snow bright crimson.

  Even from here, Dale could see the old man gritting his teeth in pain, that precipice not too far beyond him.

  “Get out of there, Stan,” Dale yelled back.

  Stan shook his head.

  “Can’t move,” he hollered over the ongoing gunfire.

  “I’ll rescue you,” Dale almost pleaded.

  Those angry, blue eyes speared Dale’s soul from clear over there.

  “Do your duty, Ranger,” Stan commanded.

  Dale understood.

  He fought back the tears and kneeled, as if in prayer.

  Or, also in prayer.

  There was a whole package of plastic explosives in that cliff face, just waiting for Joshua.

  Dale pulled off his gloves like Stan had showed him. Frostbite was always a risk doing this, but a small one. Better to handle the wires under fingertips than mittens and gloves.

  Dale pulled a knife to cut and strip the ends of the wires. He opened the wingnuts and wrapped the four wires tight on the poles.

  Something whoomped like an ominous kettle drum. Dale damned near peed himself, until the mortar round landed up-valley in a blast of submunitions and explosives. Vicious, little baseballs of doom and ugliness shredding the snow and trees.

  There were a lot of scared kids right below him, just from the sound of gunfire.

  And one scared kid up here.

  Dale fixed his eyes on Stan and unlocked the plunger. It opened under his hands with a half twist.

  Stan nodded, calm as a man at Sunday morning service.

  All the tears were Dale’s.

  Another deep breath.

  He nodded back at the old man, the Last Ranger, and twisted the handle down.