by neetha Napew
Carrie dragged him into the hall to explain and to go upstairs for the recon.
Casually Jim rattled the key in the lock and called out loudly, "Sly, the lock is stuck. Can you hang on a short while or come around to the front of the house?"
Jim knew that there was a powerful, battery-operated security light at the front of the house.
Sly didn't answer. Jim pressed his ear to the door but couldn't hear a sound.
"Sly!"
"No, don't hurt me…" The thin little voice trembled with terror.
That was all it took.
Jim drew the Ruger, killed the light behind him and threw open the door.
The drifting moonlight revealed a frozen tableau in the muddied yard of the farmhouse.
Sly Romero, less than six feet away from the door, half-turned away, hands clasped in front of him. His mouth was half-open, and there were tears on his cheeks. Even in that flashing moment, Jim had time to notice the dark bruise and streak of black blood at the corner of the teenager's mouth.
Circling around him, paralyzed by the sudden opening of the door and the appearance of the big man with the gun in his hand, were five strangers.
A faded blonde held a small automatic. It brought Carrie's warning about the purse gun to a sudden, hideous reality for Jim Hilton.
He recognized her immediately, but the four men were strangers. All were in dark-colored shell suits, with woolen caps and ankle-high hiking boots. All of them were hefting hunting rifles, all pointed toward Jim.
"Hi, Alison," he said in a friendly, conversational tone of voice, throwing her off-balance and buying himself the fraction of an edge that he needed.
"Jim...." she began, the old cocktail waitress's false, official smile beginning to slide into place.
There wasn't a moment's hesitation.
He brought up the six-inch barrel of the big .44, the checkered hammer already thumbed back, his index finger on the wide trigger.
Sighed and squeezed.
The full-metal-jacket round only had to travel a dozen yards. It hit Alison Romero just below and between her full, sagging breasts. It angled slightly to the left, then struck the center of her spine, distorting and flattening. Driving to the right and upward, it blew a hole the size of a coffeepot beneath the woman's left shoulder blade.
Her mouth opened, and she staggered back six or seven paces, the automatic dropping from her fingers. A huge spray of blood and splinters of shattered bone burst out behind her, splattering in the mud.
The jolt of the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter ran through Jim Hilton's wrist, clean up to the shoulder, while the dull boom began to echo out toward the surrounding hills.
Before Alison's knees crumpled and sent her sprawling and dying onto the ground, Jim had fired two more times at the group of men with her.
Sly had yelped once at the sound of the first shot, hands going over his ears while he dropped to elbows and knees, keeping well out of Jim's line of sight.
The tallest of the attackers, who'd been close to the woman on her left, took the .44 slug through the middle of the chest, a few inches above the belt buckle. It doubled him over and sent him down to his knees, a thin cry of shock and agony leaking from his open mouth.
By now, though only a second and a quarter had passed since Jim lifted the revolver, the gang was on the move. The third bullet hit the outside man below the ribs, going straight in and through and out, carrying on to hit the wall of the barn with a dry, splintering crack. He tottered a few unsteady paces to his left, but remained upright.
The Ruger held six rounds.
One of the men was diving forward, opening fire as he went down. A window shattered behind Jim, yards along to his right. In return he put his fourth bullet into the gunman's right cheek, a finger's width from his nose. Since he was lying in the dirt, the .44 round drove through the top of the man's mouth, ripping away five upper teeth and penetrating into the center of the skull, where it ricocheted off the thick bone and bounced around and around, puddling the brain into bloody gravy.
A shutter rattled on the top floor of the house, and Jim was relieved to hear the silk-ripping noise of Nanci's Port Royale machine pistol.
The last of the unwounded men went spinning and dancing, the 9 mm bullets creating puffs of pale dust and clumps of blood wherever they hit.
There was only one of the quartet still on his feet, both hands clasped to the wound in his side that was leaking a steady trickle of blood, black in the moonlight.
"No, mister," he pleaded. "I don't know fucking nothing about all of this. Ally said the dummy was her kid and you stole him from her. I'll move on. Don't want any part of it. Truth, mister. Gimme a chance."
There were voices from the house shouting to Jim Hilton. Most seemed to be telling him to kill the wounded man, but he ignored them all.
He listened to the shaky voice of Sly Romero, now on hands and knees. "He was one hit me."
The fifth bullet from the Ruger hit the last survivor of the raid through the throat, blowing away most of the cervical vertebrae and almost severing the skull from the spine. The head flopped backward, the tongue protruding, becoming invisible in the gusher of arterial blood that pumped from the gaping wound in the neck.
"One still living," called Nanci Simms. "On hands and knees there."
Carrie Princip's little .22 cracked three times, and the crouched figure in the yard rolled slowly over on his side and lay still, eyes white in the moonlight.
"Purse guns are still useful," she called.
But Jim wasn't listening. He had gone straight to Sly, holstering the warm revolver, and put his arms around the quivering boy.
"You did brilliantly, Sly," he said, his own voice sounding cracked and harsh with the released tension. "Brilliant the way you warned us."
Sly was crying, great gobbets of tears rolling down his plump cheeks. "Mom was always horrid to me, Jim. Slapped me and man hit me in belly and they said me was to get you to open the door. Me knew they want to hurt you with their guns." He wiped his eyes and sniffed. "Me tricked them, yeah?"
"By God, but you sure did, son."
"Steve be…?"
Jim hugged him tight, choking off the question. "You can bet your last dollar on it, Sly. Steve's about the proudest man in the whole wide universe right now."
To his surprise and passing embarrassment, Jim Hilton found that he was also crying.
Chapter Thirty
It was a little after five o'clock on the morning of December 26.
John Kennedy Zelig was awake in his narrow canvas bed, running through all the options in his mind. All the strands of future possibility. Where might James Hilton be now? Where might the dead Flagg's whoremongering mistress be? What had happened to the Chinooks? The reports that they'd received from their informants had all indicated poor weather with ground-zero cloud cover. The longer that continued, the more chance Operation Tempest might have of success.
"The day after the day of Christmas," he said to himself. "And that's the day of the martyrdom of the first Christian martyr, the Blessed Stephen. Can't be a coincidence, can it? But is it a good omen?"
The way society had crumbled after Earthblood spread its crimson tentacles across the plant life of the world had been so rapid that there had been no time to formulate plans. Operation Tempest had originally been a thick folder, bound in dark green morocco, collecting layers of dust on a back shelf in a deserted office. It had been drawn up in the 1980s, when the great ecological fear had been some sort of nuclear disaster, either accidental or military.
But times had moved on.
Zelig knew that if he'd been able to obtain more hardware, he could have gone openly against the Hunters of the Sun and wiped them off the face of the planet. On the other hand, if Flagg had been able to get his claws into a few missiles, the days for Aurora would have been numbered.
One of the M113s in Zelig's column had their one and only usable missile, which he was holding in reserve against the threat of
a helicopter attack.
It was an antitank Silverhead M855, capable of being fired from a tripod-mounted 155 mm launcher. It had an effective range of fifteen miles and had not been designed for use against airborne opponents. But it had a simple laser-guidance control system that could easily be adapted for use against the Chinooks.
Suddenly he heard the high-pitched tone of a radio message coming in and the sleepy yawn of the operator responding to it. "Tempest receiving. Identification? I repeat, please give Identification."
Zelig swung off his bunk and eased himself through the confined space to lean over the young man's shoulder. "Who is it?" he whispered, not wanting to rouse the whole crew.
"Don't know yet. Bit off the dial, sir."
"Call them again."
"Tempest calling…"
"Double Baker, calling Tempest. Double Baker calling. Reading you strength six. Repeat, strength six. Please indicate our reception strength."
"Reading you eight, Double Baker."
"Who's that?" asked Zelig. "Is he the last of the calls we were expecting?"
"Yes, sir."
"None of the others seen or heard anything of Jim Hilton?"
The operator held up a hand to silence the commanding officer. "No. Coming through now, sir."
There was the hissing and crackling of static, but none of the usual cross-channel interference that they'd have heard a couple of years ago. Now there was only a handful of shortwave radio sets operating throughout the entire continent.
And an even smaller number of people actually listening for them.
"Double Baker for Tempest with news of the flight of eagles. Repeat, news—" Then the hissing swamped the man's voice, drowning the rest of the message.
"Flames and martyrs!" Zelig's shout woke everyone in the armored vehicle.
"Probably get them back in a few minutes, General. Atmospherics rarely last long."
"Who did you say this Double Baker is? And where is he? Can't be that far. Think he's identified any of the Aquila's crew? How far off are we?"
"Lot of questions," replied the radioman, leaning forward, fingers as delicate as a surgeon, slowly turning the dial, seeking the voice again.
"Some answers, then?"
"He used the code word 'eagles,' so he must have a hard report. Double Baker's got a spread near a little town in Oregon called Rilkeville. With his wife. She sometimes spells him on the radio. Got a real nice voice. At a good speed, we might be there in a day and a half, General."
"Does he have a real name behind the code?"
"Sure. He… Ah, nearly had him there. Yeah. Code's simple. Depends on using their real initials. Double Baker. So his name's actually… Here he is again...."
DAVE BRADLEY TURNED to his wife. "Think we're picking them up again. Got a high-scale reading on the top dial. Must be the warm weather brought a front across the state, bollixing all of the transmissions."
"Want a coffee?"
He grinned fondly at her. "Wouldn't say no to that. Don't disturb our guests, though."
Norma-Jean wiped her nose with a handkerchief. "Caught a cold." She paused with her hand on the stout lock on the room that concealed their shortwave radio equipment. "Think we might travel north with them to Aurora, honey?"
"Maybe. Get us the coffee, and I'll transmit the news to the general."
As the middle-aged woman unlocked the door, Jeff Thomas pushed hard against it, making her stumble. He quickly followed her in and stabbed her once with a knife he'd taken from her own kitchen.
The sharp point slid in under the ribs, and he thrust it a second time, twisting his wrist the way Nanci Simms had once taught him, converting a serious wound into a mortal one. Hot blood poured from the deep gash, over his hand and wrist, dripping to the wood-block floor. Norma-Jean gave a great sigh that was almost sexual in its intensity and reached up a hand, groping for his eyes. But her strength was gone, and her fingertips caressed his stubbled cheek, touching the deep scar that seamed its way from his right eye to the corner of his mouth.
Jeff took her weight and lowered her with a casual efficiency, wiping the honed steel on her sleeveless sweater.
Dave Bradley had the cans on, his back to the door, and didn't hear the almost-silent murder of his wife.
"Double Baker to Tempest. Receiving you now, Tempest. Message begins."
"Message ends," said Jeff Thomas, giggling at his own macabre sense of humor.
He moved three quiet steps to stand immediately behind Bradley, who was leaning forward over his equipment.
Jeff adjusted his hold on the black hilt of the knife, pausing to wipe his hands on his own pant legs, making sure they wouldn't slip.
Bradley must have somehow sensed movement, because he turned at that moment, pulling off the earphones. He immediately saw his wife's body, the eyes still opening and shutting, blood soaking away from her.
Saw Jeff Thomas.
Saw his own death.
"You're one of them, the Hunters," he said quietly, "How did you guess?"
"Big antenna for a little house."
Sitting down, Bradley was helpless, but he still made a try for it. He half rose from the chair, but he got no farther.
It was so easy. The razored steel edge drawn across the exposed throat, while Jeff grabbed at the man's flailing hands. More blood fountained, brighter than Norma-Jean's, the two shades of red mingling in the gold light of the big brass oil lamp on the baize-covered table.
"Bast—" But Dave Bradley could say no more. He was choking, drowning in his own spurting blood.
Jeff swiftly stabbed him three times, then lowered the body to the floor.
Meanwhile, the tinny little voice kept chattering from the earphones. "Tempest to Double Baker…do you read? Do you read, Double Baker? Is there something wrong?"
Jeff padded across the room, unable to avoid the soles of his boots sucking in the lake of crimson. He reached for the door handle and silently closed it. Then he went to the radio set and sat down at the cane-back chair, pushing the body of Dave Bradley out of his way. He put on the warm cans and started to turn the illuminated dial, looking for a wide frequency.
When he found one, he turned the power to full, knowing that at that level and broad focus it would be audible to anyone within a two-hundred-mile radius. Zelig would hear it, just the same way he'd been listening in to Dave Bradley's broadcast. But that didn't matter. That wasn't Jeff's idea.
"Calling the Hunters of the Sun. This is Jeff Thomas, calling the Hunters of the Sun. I got news for the Hunters and their Chief. Big news—about the biggest there is—and I want a big reward for it."
Jeff had his .38 laid on the desk, alongside the blood-slick knife. All around him the house was silent. Not a creature stirring.
"I'll only say this one time, so listen good. Rilkeville in Oregon. Look it up on your Rand McNally if you don't know where it is. There was Bradley and his wife. They're done. I'm Jeff Thomas and I'll be gone in a few minutes. But there's also Captain James high-and-fucking-mighty Hilton, late of the United States Space Vessel Aquila. Biggest fish in the small pool. There's his prissy daughter Heather and a thick stupid kid called Sly. Carrie Princip. She was second navigator. Frigid bitch. Henderson McGill. Astrophysics was his specialty. Antique fart."
"I'm not staying around here for long. Gotta move on. Just one more job I need to take care of, then I'm outta here."
Somewhere in the old frame house, a board creaked. Jeff froze, hand grabbing for the gun, waiting. Beads of sweat were gathering on his forehead, streaking his cheeks. He listened for fifty beats of the heart, but the sound wasn't repeated.
"Sorry for the break, friends and neighbors. Nearly done, Chief. So get your ass in gear and your Hunters up here. You should know that the little prick Zelig is on the move, somewhere not too far away. He knows this information like you do. Apart from McGill, there's a scrawny bitch who was his first wife. Son of around twenty with the brain of a gate hinge. Two little girls. All of them here an
d waiting, like ripe peaches for you to come and pluck 'em." He grinned at his own verbal cleverness.
ZELIG HAD already given orders for Rilkeville to be traced on their maps. And for the whole convoy to be rousted out and gotten on the road in fifteen minutes.
"I'll personally put a bullet through that murderous bastard's skull," he said. "I'd always feared he'd turn traitor on us. I know his public file, and some things about him that are in another classified file."
"Weather south's supposed to be clearing. Hunters could put their Chinooks into the air if they want to take the chance. Think they will, sir?"
The General turned to his meteorology officer. "That woman'll fly through hell if it serves her purpose. Wonder what the chore is that Thomas has to do? If she's still with him…"
MARGARET TABOR couldn't stop smiling. Outside the tent she could hear the organized chaos as her squad was torn from sleep. One of the choppers already had its engine turning over.
"Won't be long," she said with a grin. "By the sacred nails on the cross, but it won't be long."
The engine of the second chinook coughed into life. Outside the tent, there was the first faint hint of the coming dawn. Margaret Tabor clapped her hands together and then ran across the frost-dusted ground to her own quarters to get dressed and ready for the mission. "That son of a bitch," she whispered to herself as she threw on her clothes. "Get a reward, Jeff Thomas? You bet your fucking pension I'll give you a fine reward for this."
JEFF SWITCHED OFF the transmitter and pulled the main lead from the bank of batteries.
He opened up the back with the blade of the kitchen knife and levered away some of the silicon-chip panels, breaking them between his hands and tendering the radio totally useless.
Then he stood up, slipped the blade into his belt and picked his way around the two corpses and the lake of congealing blood. The .38 was in his hand.
"Now, Nanci," he whispered to himself.
Starting to open the door of the radio room, he glanced back at the charnel-house shambles that he left behind him. He smiled proudly to himself, eager for the long-waited revenge that he was about to enjoy.
