Cowboy Angels

by Paul McAuley

  ‘You don’t work for Special Ops anymore,’ Knightly said, ‘and neither do I, so how on God’s good green Earth could I give you an order? What I am giving you is a chance to save the life of the man who saved your life. You won’t be able to go through until after Wendell Baines has led his troops into battle, but as long as Tom sticks with that advance unit I know exactly where you can find him. You can take Albert with you - he’s a useful man in a tight spot - and I’ll make sure that at least one of the gates is kept open until you return. How about it? Are you game?’

  General Baines’s speech to his troops was short and punchy. He quoted Shakespeare, the old chestnut about Saint Crispin’s day from Henry V. He made much of the fact that Gettysburg was just a few miles down the road, and told his troops that they were lighting a flame of freedom that would drive Communism’s evil works from their native land.

  Stone watched the general’s performance on a monitor in an Airstream trailer that housed one of Bruce Ellis’s surveillance teams. Bruce was talking on a telephone in a cubbyhole at the far end, jammed between the chemical toilet and a kitchen nook where a pot of coffee simmered on a hot plate. Half a dozen technicians in roller chairs hunched over keyboards and CCTV monitors. One of them had shown Stone footage of the advance platoon passing through one of the Turing gates. Captain Gene Lewis had been driving the lead Jeep. The man in the shotgun seat next to him had been wearing a fleece-trimmed leather jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over his face.

  Baines got a big cheer at the end of his speech. A bugler in a cavalry hat played the cavalry charge; several hundred engines revved up, spitting plumes of black smoke into the floodlit air. For a long moment, nothing else happened. Then the floodlights around the apron dimmed, the air filled with a low rumble that the turning axis of the world might make, and the mirrors of the two Turing gates flicked on, giving back the dazzle of the headlights of the vehicles facing them.

  Bruce Ellis handed Stone a mug of coffee. ‘I guess you still take it black.’

  ‘Have you found out how long the gates will stay open?’

  ‘I still have a few people to call. Hang in there,’ Bruce said, and went back to his cubbyhole.

  Stone sipped coffee and watched a rack of monitors that showed different views of two orderly lines of vehicles moving through the pair of gates. The coffee was pretty good, but it burned like acid in his jittery stomach and he couldn’t finish it. Two by two, vehicles moved toward the silvery mirrors of the gates and were swallowed by their reflections. Only a couple of dozen trucks were left when Bruce came back down the narrow corridor between the techs and racks of monitors and electronics.

  ‘I just got word that Knightly has been pulling strings back at Third Div headquarters. We’re supposed to shut down the gates as soon as the last of Baines’s men go through, but Knightly managed to get that changed. The gates will stay open for another three hours. Will that be long enough?’

  ‘I think so. If Tom isn’t where he’s supposed to be, I’m coming straight back.’

  ‘If you’re going into combat, you need to get kitted out,’ Bruce said. ‘Let’s start by losing that nice suit.’

  Stone stripped to his underwear and pulled on a set of khaki coveralls and a flak vest with ceramic plates front and back. He borrowed a pair of combat boots from one of the technicians; Bruce gave him an olive-green parka with wolf-fur lining, a Kevlar-lined resin composite helmet, a Browning Hi-Power pistol, and a .22 pocket auto in an ankle holster.

  ‘As you once told me, always carry some kind of backup in Indian Territory,’ Bruce said. ‘It’s small, but it fires high-velocity hollowpoints with plenty of stopping power.’

  ‘Thanks, Bruce. I owe you big time.’

  ‘That parka’s a vintage item. If you get blood on it, don’t bother coming back.’

  Stone carried a spare flak vest and helmet outside. Albert Flynn was leaning against the hood of the Jeep he’d requisitioned, smoking a cigarette. When Stone handed him the combat gear, he said, ‘You take the wheel, I’ll tell you exactly where to go.’

  Stone said, ‘Do you have combat experience?’

  ‘Five years in the Marines. I can handle myself.’

  ‘What rank?’

  ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘Let me make it clear, Sergeant Flynn. I’m in charge. If you don’t like that you can stay here.’

  ‘I don’t like any of it,’ Flynn said. ‘But I have my orders, just like you.’

  ‘I’m not doing this because I was told to do it. I’m doing it because I want to help out an old friend.’

  ‘Did this guy really save your life?’

  ‘Once upon a time, in a place far away from here.’

  Stone drove as fast as he could down the road into the valley and across the empty, floodlit apron of the staging area. He braked and shifted down as the Jeep climbed the broad ramp, couldn’t help holding his breath as the arch of the gate swept overhead like a scythe. There was the usual moment of blackness, as if every neuron in his brain had short-circuited, and then the Jeep thumped down on a steel-mesh trackway laid over mud.

  They were on the other side of the mirror, in an America ruled by a monolithic Communist state, a sheaf where the course of history had diverged from that of the Real more than fifty years ago.

  Stone had passed through the mirror more times than he cared to remember. He was used to the idea of moving from one landscape to another in a single step. But he had never before driven straight into the middle of a war.

  The gates had been opened in the middle of a collective farm. Their two silvery circles hung side by side with no visible means of support. The ground level here was a little higher than in the Real, and cut chords out of their bottom edges. A vast muddy field stretched away into darkness, rutted by vehicle tracks. The night seemed colder than in the Real, but perhaps that was just Stone’s imagination. A cluster of buildings was burning on the ridge above the valley. The black sky strobed with huge red flashes. The crackle of small-arms fire sounded from several points in the middle distance.

  As Stone drove past the empty low-loaders that had transported Dick Knightly’s helicopters through the gates, Flynn reached under his seat and pulled out a radio with a whip aerial. He gave the call sign of Captain Lewis’s platoon and asked for an update, repeating the question three times without getting a response, then clicking through channels until someone answered. After a brief conversation, he told Stone, ‘The guy I talked to is with the main column. They’re under heavy fire just a few miles away, a little place called Catocin Furnace. No one has heard from Lewis’s platoon.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s still where it’s supposed to be. Point me in the right direction, Sergeant Flynn.’

  ‘See that clump of trees?’

  It was at the edge of the huge fields, silhouetted by a small fire.

  ‘There should be a country road leads straight to a railroad,’ Flynn said. ‘Lewis’s platoon was supposed to secure it.’

  A Jeep was burning beyond the clump of trees. It sat in the middle of the road, a chalice of yellow flame with dead men lying all around, some in camo gear, some in heavy woollen coats. As Stone drove past, a plane roared overhead and something screeched down and exploded on the ridge and lit up the whole valley. Stone crouched low as the Jeep was rocked by a solid thump of air and clods of hot earth rattled all around.

  ‘I thought the guerrillas were supposed to have sabotaged the local airfields,’ he said. His ears were ringing and he felt as if he was speaking under half a mile of water.

  ‘Looks like this thing is coming apart,’ Flynn said. ‘Maybe you could get this heap of junk moving. I feel kind of vulnerable sitting here.’

  Stone drove as fast as he dared down the dark road, headlights off. It climbed a small rise, dropped down, and there were lights up ahead, shimmering through a scrim of leafless trees, moving to and fro along the length of a train of cattle-cars halted on a single-track railroad. Soldiers were hauling back the doors
of the cars and yelling at men crowded inside, telling them to jump down, telling them they were liberated. A massive brute of a locomotive stood at the head of the train, clouds of steam leaking from the joints of its pistons and a big red star splashed across the riveted flank of its tender. A small group clustered below its cab. Soldiers, three men in bib overalls - Stone guessed that they must be the train crew - and a burly man in a fleece-trimmed leather jacket.

  Stone told Flynn to stay frosty, and they both sat still and kept their hands in plain sight as Captain Lewis and three soldiers trotted toward the Jeep. Tom Waverly followed right behind them. He had lost his baseball cap and there was a bandage wrapped around his head, spotted with blood over his right ear, but he was cheerful and animated, saying, ‘You’re just in time, Adam. We’re going to use this train to outflank the unfriendlies and punch right through their lines.’

  Captain Lewis pulled the Browning from Stone’s holster, told him to put his hands on his head and step down. ‘What you think you doing here?’

  ‘What were you thinking, Captain, letting Mr Waverly ride along with you?’

  On the other side of the Jeep, Flynn was telling the two soldiers patting him down to take it easy, he was on their side.

  Captain Lewis said, ‘We are friends. He ask me for a favour, I should refuse him?’

  ‘If you really are his friend, yes, you should.’

  Tom put his hand on Captain Lewis’s shoulder and said, ‘Let me handle him, Gene.’

  ‘You will be responsible for him?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Then you are also responsible for Mr Stone’s friend. If Mr Stone tries anything, his friend dies.’

  Albert Flynn said, ‘Wait a fucking minute . . .’

  Captain Lewis told Stone, ‘I move out in ten minutes no matter what. Do we understand each other?’

  ‘I’m here to talk with my friend, Captain, not cause you any trouble. ’

  Captain Lewis held Stone’s gaze for a moment, then turned and walked back to the locomotive, following the soldiers who were escorting Flynn at gunpoint.

  Tom said, ‘We’re gonna take this train all the way to Washington. It’ll be a lot of fun.’

  ‘You won’t get five miles.’ Stone’s ears were still ringing. Nothing seemed quite real, and he had a claustrophobic sense of time passing too quickly, of the narrowing window before the gates were shut down and he was trapped here for good.

  Tom said, ‘We’re going all the way, old buddy.’

  ‘You’re going straight to hell if you don’t come back with me.’

  ‘You came through the mirror because you wanted to, Adam, why don’t you admit it? Admit that you miss the action.’

  ‘I came through to ask you to come back with me, Tom. This isn’t our war, and you know it.’

  ‘Let me show you something,’ Tom said, and led Stone along the side of the train.

  Soldiers were hauling men out of the cattle-cars. The men were manacled in pairs by wrist cuffs welded to short iron bars, or shackled in groups of four or five. Soldiers in the cars pushed them to the open door. Soldiers on the track reached up and grabbed their legs and pulled them down. Men fell and tried to get up and other men fell on top of them. The soldiers worked in a fever, hauling men from the recesses of the cars, screaming at them, pushing them out. A soldier kicked a man square in the crotch and he fell to the ground and the four men chained to him fell down too. Men fell out of the cars and lay in heaps. Only a few managed to get to their feet. Soldiers swore at them and tried to shove them out of the way, but they took only a few steps and stood still again, blinking stupidly.

  Stone caught the arm of a soldier who was about to strike a skinny man with his rifle butt, pushed him away. ‘What are these men? Slaves?’

  ‘Political prisoners. Remember the American Bund? This is worse,’ Tom said, and grabbed the shoulders of the man Stone had rescued, turned him around.

  He wore a ragged shirt and filthy trousers that ended in tatters around his calves. He was barefoot and there were welted scars around his wrists and ankles. He stank horribly. His gaze flicked here and there, not resting on anything or anyone for more than a second. He looked as if he might bolt at any moment, if only he could figure out how to do it.

  Tom plucked a penlight from the pocket of his leather jacket and shone it in the man’s face. His teeth were black with decay and he had no tongue, just a stump that jumped like a frog at the back of his mouth.

  ‘The Commies cut out the tongues of political prisoners and lobotomise them or treat them with a chemical cosh to make them docile,’ Tom said. ‘Send them to work in factories, steel mills, mines, farms. They only last a year or two, but there are always more prisoners. This is what this is all about, Adam. This is what we’re going to destroy.’

  He patted the man on the back and told him he could go, he was free, but the man just stood there, smiling a stupid ingratiating smile.

  Stone said, ‘How about the slaves the Free Americans use on their farms and plantations in Cuba? Are you going to free them, too?’

  Tom pulled a hip flask from the pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Know what we should have done here? Brought a nuke through, set it off in the middle of Washington. The Commies don’t have nukes. If we nuked Washington and told ’em New York or San Francisco was next, they’d cave in the very same day.’

  Stone shook his head when Tom offered him the flask. ‘Commit an atrocity to end an atrocity - is that any way to win a war?’

  ‘Look around you! Look at these poor fuckers! The whole fucking country is an atrocity!’

  The two men were standing toe-to-toe in the near-dark while soldiers hauled men out of the cattle-cars. Shouts, the sound of rifle butts on flesh, on bone. Stone took a breath, put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. ‘You want to do something useful? Come back with me. Tell me why the Old Man needs you.’

  Tom knocked Stone’s hand away. ‘You don’t have clue one, do you? Why I’m here, the Old Man made me the kind of offer you can’t refuse.’

  ‘If you’re in trouble, Tom, I swear I’ll do my best to straighten it out.’

  ‘I’m better off here. Better to burn out, bro, than fade away.’

  They stared at each other for a few moments, Tom Waverly mulishly stubborn, Adam Stone angry and frustrated. Then gunfire started up somewhere beyond the head of the train, the snap of rifles, the heavy rattle of a machine gun. Rounds sparked off the boiler, sparked off spoked driving wheels. Tom ran toward the locomotive and Stone ran after him, into the roar of an incoming plane. Soldiers were returning fire. Stone saw Captain Lewis walk up to the three men in overalls who knelt on the ground, saw him shoot two in the head, one after the other, saw him haul the third to his feet and shove him toward the cab of the locomotive. Albert Flynn stood to one side of this, hands raised to his shoulders, two soldiers aiming their rifles at him.

  The plane tore low overhead. Leafless trees threshed in its wake. It climbed and turned back and came in again. Captain Lewis’s soldiers started up a ragged fusillade and the plane’s guns flashed along the edge of its wings, tore long furrows out of the embankment. Then it was gone again, making another turn out in the darkness as random rounds cracked out of black air.

  Tom Waverly ran to a Jeep and lifted a fat cylinder from the back seat - the launch tube of an M-288 smart missile, totally forbidden to locals in any sheaf. No doubt it was another of Knightly’s gifts. Tom flipped open the tube front and back and shouldered it, and Stone yanked the .22 from his ankle holster and shouted Tom’s name.

  Tom grinned at him. ‘That won’t do much against a plane, but I appreciate the gesture.’

  ‘It’s time to go home, Tom.’

  The plane was making a rising noise out in the dark as it swung back toward the train.

  Stone cocked the .22. ‘Put that thing down, Tom. Come with me.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Tom said and threw the launch tube at Stone and reached inside his jacket for his revolver.

>   Stone shot him in the right shoulder, ran forward as Tom dropped to his knees, and clipped him on the point of his chin and laid him out.

  The plane made another roaring pass. Something slanted down with a piercing whistle and flame burst on the other side of the locomotive and a blast of hot air knocked Stone down. He took a little while to get to his feet. The locomotive was venting jets of steam from its broken boiler. Most of the cattle-cars were on fire. A few soldiers and prisoners were stirring; many more lay still. Stone saw Albert Flynn stoop over a body and pick up a rifle, saw a soldier fire a burst that kicked dirt around the big man, saw him spin around and fall flat on his face.

  Stone got his hands under Tom’s shoulders and hauled him into the back seat of the Jeep. Soldiers were staggering out of the steam and smoke. One of them was Captain Gene Lewis.

  The young officer was covered in dirt and soot and he was bleeding from his nose and ears, but he was aiming his pistol straight at Stone. He screamed something lost in the howl of venting steam and the ringing in Stone’s ears, and fired. The shot crazed the Jeep’s windshield and Stone snatched Tom’s knife from his shoulder rig and threw it in a flat arc. Captain Lewis took a step, his hand reaching for the handle of the knife that protruded from his breastbone, and collapsed.

  Stone swung behind the wheel and gunned the Jeep and pulled a U-turn, scattering soldiers. Something big was on fire a mile away and heavy artillery was lighting the horizon beyond it, making thunder under the black sky. Stone swerved past the burning Jeep, rattled over a smashed fence. One of the Turing gates was still open, a circle of beautiful silver light shining at the end of the trackway like a tethered moon. Stone accelerated, saw a smoking crater that bisected the trackway, swerved to avoid it, and got bogged down in mud. He gathered Tom’s dead weight into his arms and slogged around the crater and walked into the glow of the gate.