The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time

by Raymond Dean White

  Chapter 36: The Provo Spy

  Michael rolled over and thumped his pillow. He had been tossing and turning all night long, thinking about Ellen and the kids and what would happen to the Freeholds if the King’s forces weren’t stopped. Nightmarish visions haunted his attempts at sleep. Ellen, lying dead on the field of battle. His son, Steven, slaving on one of the King’s road building crews. Little Mary and Jimmy and the rest of his family, dispersed and destroyed. Every time he closed his eyes the images jumped out at him. It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself the victim of his own hyperactive imagination.

  Michael knew he needed rest. He and the other pilots had flown sorties around the clock for several days. Besides, a soldier always needs rest on the eave of a battle; and the battle was imminent. The sun had been out for several days and the ground was drying nicely. The enemy had stepped up the frequency of his probing attacks. Even the artillery barrage had intensified. Soon, today or tomorrow, it would be time for the real thing. With his mind chasing its tail he drifted into a fitful slumber. If he’d known that as he slept Jim’s relief force was being chopped into mincemeat...

  *

  Michael wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. Martin Dinelli mashed a home-rolled cigarette into an ashtray and lit another one. He’d been chain-smoking so fast his tongue was scorched. His “private stock”, as he jokingly referred to his tobacco, consisted of dried kinnikinnick, corn husks and dogwood bark. He’d offered some to Bob Young earlier, forgetting that good Mormons didn’t smoke, drink or swear.

  “It may be harsh,” he’d said, “but it tastes like shit.” Martin’s sense of humor was a bit on the dry side. At least smoking gave him something to do with his hands while he waited for his mission to begin. His cigarette burned down to his fingers, so he stubbed it out and reached for another, slapping his shirt pocket in frustration when he realized he was out. To hell with it, he thought. Let’s get it done.

  *

  Bob Young eyed the situation map, wondering if there was anything he and Adam had overlooked. There was just no way to know, but one thing he was sure of--staring at maps and reports wasn’t the answer. He pushed himself back from his desk in disgust and strode out of his office into the night. Seeing things first-hand might help.

  *

  Able Emery looked up from the crop duster he was working on. He thought he’d heard something, but he couldn’t see anything. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing to anyone, though if it came down to it, he was reasonably certain he could bluff his way through. He moved the trouble light to shine on the plugged filter he was replacing, slipped the dirty part out of its housing and set the clean filter in place. He’d heard from Michael that morning that Jason Banda wouldn’t be able to fly for at least another week. This was the first opportunity he’d had to replace the filter he’d sabotaged the evening before.

  It was only a five-minute job, but without a clean fuel filter, the Pitts wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. Everyone knew the King would strike soon and Able had taken this way to insure he’d be flying a crop duster instead of an ultralight. No one but him would ever know what he’d done. His thoughts flitted to his family and shied from the way their bodies looked when he found them. He couldn’t stand remembering them that way.

  He cursed silently as the wrench he was using slipped off the nut and clanged against the housing. He finished up, turned off the light and headed for his cot. He’d get his revenge soon.

  *

  What was that? Michael sat up abruptly, instantly alert. He’d heard a sound that didn’t belong and it jerked him awake. He slid, fully clothed, from under his blanket and slipped into his boots. He strapped on his .357, picked up his Uzi and opened the door.

  As he entered the hangar where the Pitts Specials were stored, he heard a thud and froze. Though it was dark inside, there was enough light coming in from the crescent moon to allow his cat-like eyes to see. Someone, Michael was too far away to see who, was huddled over a fallen form. Even as he looked, the man stood and stepped away from the body, heading for the planes.

  Michael drew his .357, lay his Uzi down soundlessly--no fully-automatic gunfire was needed near those planes--and began stalking. As he ghosted across the hangar toward the man, Michael could see him fiddling with the fuel refill cap on the farthest plane. Passing close to the fallen body, Michael recognized Able Emery. He appeared to be breathing.

  Michael concentrated on the unidentified man, who was now moving purposefully toward the second crop duster. As the man passed close to a window, the faint light lit his face: Martin Dinelli. What the hell was he up to? Michael decided he’d learn more by waiting and observing than by attacking immediately. He sensed it was more important to find out what sort of mischief Martin was bent on than to take him out now and get medical attention for Able.

  Martin opened the fuel refill cap of the second Pitts, dumped something inside, closed the cap and walked swiftly out of the hangar. Michael followed closely enough to keep him in sight, but far enough back to remain undetected. Martin was obviously nervous. He kept looking over his shoulder as if he knew he was being watched. Michael dropped back even farther and made it a point not to look directly at the man. Sometimes people really could feel another’s eyes on them.

  Martin reached the last of several defensive breastworks and started carefully pacing along them. Michael had seen so-called civilians in the last war doing the same thing: measuring the coordinates of defensive positions while seeming to take an innocent walk. Michael recalled how Adam had told him that in Vietnam, such casual strollers had often managed to mark mine fields so the V.C. could avoid them when attacking at night. Michael’s gut churned when he considered all the vital information Martin could access and he wondered how much had already been passed on.

  Michael had seen enough to convict Martin of sabotage, at least in his own mind. He crept closer, deciding on taking him alive so the allies could find out what Martin had given the King. That was when he saw the other man standing in the deep shadows of a nearby building. If he hadn’t moved... Michael changed course enough toward the second man. It was Bob Young.

  “Hey, Bob,” Michael whispered softly.

  “Michael?” Bob started.

  “Yeah,” Michael said quietly. He put a hand on Bob’s nearest shoulder and continued. “Listen, Bob, Martin Dinelli is our spy. He cold-cocked Able Emery, dumped something in the fuel tanks of the crop dusters and now he’s measuring the position of our latest line of defense.”

  Adam and Bob had constructed a many-layered defensive posture consisting of eight separate lines of trenches and bunkers, one behind the other. Dotting each trench line were a dozen or more bunkers, most of them only manned by two or three soldiers and a machine gun. But a few key bunkers shielded 90 mm recoilless rifles, whose job it was to take out the enemy’s tanks. Interspersed between each breastwork were minefields. As the enemy breached each one, the allies would fall back to the next. Taking Provo was going to be costly if Adam and Bob had anything to say about it, but what if Martin had already fed the precise coordinates of the anti-tank bunkers to the enemy artillery commander. He had presumably disabled the allied air force. What else had he done?

  “I wish I didn’t believe you, Michael, but I was wondering what he was doing,” Bob said, nodding in the direction of Martin. “He’s pacing too steadily just to be out for a walk.”

  Bob felt a fury rising within him. The memory of how Adam had taken a bullet in the chest while rescuing Martin from a band of marauders made the man’s betrayal even more unforgivable. Bob’s hands clenched and unclenched, as if aching to surround a certain neck.

  Michael noticed the gesture.

  “Look, Bob.” he said, “It’s only a few minutes after eleven. I know you want to kill the son-of-a-bitch, but it’s more important for us to discover everything Martin has sabotaged or betrayed. We have to know what to fix before the King attacks and my guess is he’ll hit us tomorrow
morning.”

  Bob swallowed convulsively, then nodded. In a velvet smooth whisper that raised the hackles on Michael’s neck he said, “Okay, we’ll follow him...for now.”

  Martin finished taking measurements and headed back for his office at the AT&T building.

  “He’s a clever little shit,” Michael said, thinking of how Martin had helped to establish satellite communication between Provo and the Freeholds. “Either the King already has satellite communication capabilities, or Ol’ Marty’s using our shortwave set to transmit his intelligence.”

  “What about the atmospheric interference?”

  “Shit, Bob, from the top of that building it’s probably line-of-sight to Payson,” Michael replied, adding, “He could be using a VFR set or even a CB. As for punching a message up to a satellite, only a lightning storm could interfere with that.”

  As Martin entered the building, nodding to the guard at the door, Michael and Bob moved from cover and crossed the street to the entrance. Bob told the guard to go get Adam immediately, while Michael followed Martin.

  As Martin closed his office door, he sighed with relief. He was almost done with this assignment and the riskiest parts were behind him. Sliding his chair over against the wall, he took a screwdriver out of his desk drawer and proceeded to take off the heater vent. Reaching inside, he pulled out a compact Ham set, placed it on his desk and turned it on. It had taken him two weeks to construct the radio from stolen parts and another three days to build and hide the antenna up on the roof amidst the welter of antennae already there. He’d run the antenna cable down the building’s ductwork.

  On the other side of the door, Michael listened carefully, imagining accurately from the sounds inside what had just happened. His first thought was to kick down the door before Martin could transmit, but on second thought, he realized it would be better to allow Martin to send the message. That way the King would have no notice his spy had been caught. Michael listened to the clicking of the transmitter key as Martin tapped his message in Morse Code.

  A few minutes later, Bob and an irate Adam Young joined Michael outside the door. From the sounds inside, Michael could tell Marty had put the radio back in its hidey-hole.

  Michael placed a finger against his lips in a shushing motion and calmly knocked on the office door.

  “Hey, Marty, this is Michael Whitebear. You got a minute?”

  “Sure thi...,” Martin’s speech faded out as he opened the office door and found the barrel of Michael’s .357 being shoved up his nose.

  “Got a few quick questions for ya, Marty old boy,” Michael said.

  Martin’s eyes took in the grim forms of Bob and Adam Young, standing just behind Michael. He looked into Michael’s eyes and saw the devil lurking there. Martin wilted inside, knowing it was over. Martin Dinelli served the King out of greed and not, like Jamal Rashid, out of fanaticism. He knew when to cut his losses. The interrogation took surprisingly little time.

  By midnight, people all over Provo were being awakened and given emergency orders. Five hours later, preparations for the attack were complete and all appeared back to normal. The recoilless rifles had been moved to other, unmapped, bunkers. The M102 howitzers had been shifted half a mile. Provo was dug in and ready.

  In the hangar, Able Emery, who was all right except for a knot on his head, was busy supervising his crew in putting the finishing touches on both the planes and the ultralights. All fuel tanks had been drained, flushed and refilled. The same was done to the fuel lines.

  Simple sugar had been the additive, though perhaps simple is the wrong word. For in a time and place where there were no sugar cane fields nearby and where no sugar beet refineries operated, sugar was so rare its value exceeded that of gold. There was more than one pilot there who would cheerfully have hung Martin Dinelli just for wasting sugar.

  At six o’clock, the radio room exploded, destroying most of the Allies’ communications capability and killing the two men on duty. Martin had planted the charges and set the timer before he left to take care of the planes. It was the one thing he hadn’t told the Allies about.

  At one minute after six, the enemy began an artillery barrage that pulverized the now-empty bunkers Martin had so carefully mapped out. Believing the Allies’ planes were grounded, their communications disrupted and their flanking army destroyed, Prince John struck hard and fast.

  At two minutes after six, Bob Young swept into the interrogation room and strangled Martin Dinelli.

  Chapter 37: Dogfight

  Dawn found Michael at the airfield with Able and the other pilots, preflighting the converted crop dusters and ultralights. At the last minute, Michael decided to carry his Uzi. Strange how he’d become attached to that gun, but then people get sentimental over all kinds of things. Ellen was positively sloppy over a bunch of seashells the two of them collected on a Caribbean beach during a pre-Dying Time vacation. That beach probably wasn’t even there anymore. Come to think of it, maybe that was why she loved them so much. With Michael, it was just that his Uzi had helped him out of a lot of jams, sort of like a good luck charm; not that he’d admit to being superstitious.

  The pilots warmed up their engines and were taxiing for takeoff when their radios blared a warning.

  “Planes! Planes!” The voice was that of Charity Kirkwell. “They’re hitting the command center! They’re hitting...”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Michael saw the Kirkwell’s balloon collapse and fall toward the ground. The basket suspended under it hung in tatters.

  Before the Allied pilots could get airborne, the enemy planes were on them. An Me-109 Messerschmitt, two P-51 Mustangs and a P-38 Lightning. World War Two vintage fighters, Michael noted.

  He keyed his mike, saying, “Faith! Take the ultralights! Go after the tanks and artillery.”

  “Roger that, Boss,” Faith said as the ultralights lifted from the runway and veered away. The ultralights required considerably less runway to get airborne than the Pitts Specials.

  All Michael and Able could do was pour on the coal and hope to get up in the air before they were shot to pieces. Michael’s plane shuddered as four slugs tore through its lower left wing, ruining the LAWS rocket mounted there and then he was climbing and twisting away. The enemy had all the advantages--speed, altitude and numbers. Michael had all he could do just to keep the enemy off of him while trying to claw his way into the sky.

  Able had the same problem, with one on his tail and another above him. Fortunately, the crop dusters were among the most aerobatic aircraft ever designed, not as nimble as a Sukhoi, but far more maneuverable than the enemy fighters. That gave Michael an idea.

  “Able! Let’s team up, buddy and crowd their airspace a little,” Michael yelled into his radio.

  As the two Allies banked toward each other, Able caught on and radioed back, “We’ll be each other’s wingmen.”

  Able flashed by and Michael glimpsed shock on the face of the guy on his tail as the enemy pilot flew into Michael’s line of fire. The twin Vickers chattered and the enemy pilot’s cockpit and the face behind it dissolved in a rain of lead and shattered Plexiglas. The Mustang exploded.

  One down.

  Michael glanced around and mentally corrected himself.

  Two down.

  Able had sent the Me-109 on Michael’s tail spiraling earthward in a barely controlled dive toward a hard landing.

  Michael executed a snap roll right and pulled into a hard climb. The enemy planes above had been scrambling to avoid ramming each other. By the time they untangled, Michael was on the Lightning’s tail and Able was locking on to the remaining Mustang. Able’s plane was smoking badly, but he had at least a momentary advantage.

  That P-38 Michael attacked was fast and its pilot knew the score. With two engines he could out climb Michael’s crop duster, so he nosed up sharply and grabbed sky. Michael practically stood the Pitts on end and succeeded in getting the Lightning in his sights for a second. He swore viciously as the Vickers stutte
red twice and jammed. By the time Michael cleared the jam, the other plane was out of range.

  As the enemy pilot pulled away, Michael rolled over and dove back down to see how Able was doing. The first thing he saw was the wreckage of the other P-51 spinning ground ward. Then he saw Able, dangling beneath his chute. Able’s plane was gone, but he had done his job. As Michael zoomed past, Able gave him a thumbs- up, then began waving wildly. Michael cursed again as he veered left, but this time he was cursing his stupidity in forgetting that the P-38 could also dive faster than his Pitts. Bullets hammered into the crop duster, destroying the Vickers and cutting the launch wire to the other LAWS.

  The next few minutes were a blur of spins, rolls, loops, half-loops and assorted other aerobatics Michael was certain he invented on the spot. The enemy couldn’t keep Michael in his sights because of the Pitts superior maneuverability, but every time Michael out-positioned the Lightning, it would simply out climb him and regain the advantage. It was the kind of stalemate that could last until one plane or the other ran out of fuel. And Michael knew the P-38 could stay up longer.

  “All right,” he muttered. “If I can’t out-fly him, I’ll have to out-think him.”

  The Lightning dove on him again. Michael flipped the little Pitts out of the way and looped onto the P-38’s tail, pounding his fist against the wrecked Vickers as the Lightning zipped through his sights.

  The enemy pilot understood Michael’s performance and started getting cocky. Twice more, Michael got on the Lightning’s tail without firing. Now the P-38’s pilot was sure. He didn’t bother to out-climb Michael. He could sense victory.

  They sparred for a few more minutes. Michael had to let him get close. By this time, they were several miles from the battle. Michael broke off and headed back, as though fleeing for his life--convincing enough, since he was. He hugged the deck, banking and rolling wildly to stay out of the Lightning’s sights and to convince its pilot that he was frantic. The P-38 was faster and it soon caught up.