Better than long hours of activity, he told himself while he checked the display screen before him. As for the past four hours, it showed the same thing-—one single blip, Jace’s ship, which flew a parallel course fifty yards to the right. Why or how they and the convoy had escaped detection for five hours of traveling over open roads he didn’t know. He just thanked whatever powers guided their fates.
His attention turned to the line of pickup trucks on the deserted highway below. Like a segmented serpent, they followed the skyfighters’ searchlight in a tight line. Except for having to weave a path around abandoned cars in the streets of Stephenville and Midlothian, the drive had gone without a hitch. He smiled. In fact, the trucks had managed to maintain the once-legal speed limit of fifty-five miles an hour.
The searchlights revealed rolling farmland and occasional clumps of trees to each side of the road. Even in the harsh bluish light, Rick detected lush greens covering the land. The browns and reds of West Texas sand and stone were behind them now, Charlie had explained, saying they had entered north central Texas, where rainfall was abundant.
Shifting his weight again, Rick allowed himself a moment of self-satisfaction. Using the searchlights had been his idea. The two skyfighters flew on opposite sides of the highway ahead of the caravan, their searchlights bathing the ground beneath them. To an alien observer, the ships would appear to be scouring the road, a perfect ruse when all the Visitor forces seemed to be out looking for them. However, the searchlights provided illumination for the convoy, which accounted for the trucks’ brisk speed.
“Resistance attack reported on Arlington headquarters,” a static-crackling voice came from the speaker grille at the front of the alien ship. “Units Forty and Forty-One, you are to reroute from the Hurst fire. Proceed immediately to Arlington headquarters and there provide aerial support. Units Nineteen and Thirty-Six, secure your location and proceed to Arlington headquarters.”
“Hot damn! Will you listen to that?” Charlie’s laughter roared through the small craft. “That Brad and his crew have had the snakes jumpin’ all night!”
Rick grinned. Charlie did not exaggerate, although he omitted the Fort Worth resistance’s participation in the constant harassment of the Visitors they had monitored on the ship’s radio. At least twelve times since the convoy began its journey to Dallas, the lizards had reported attacks within the two cities.
To be certain, none of the assaults were major or long-lived. A group in Fort Worth began the series of attacks with a quick attack on a roadblock in the western part of the city. Their gunshots had lasted just long enough for two hundred shock troopers to be sent to the area. Fifteen minutes later snipers opened fire on a ground patrol in south Dallas. Firebombs tossed into a shock trooper garrison in the suburb of Irving, burning tires rolled into a landing squad vehicle in north Fort Worth—again and again the resistance forces struck. Each incident sent Visitor troops scurrying to another portion of the cities.
“Brad’s softening them up, confusing them before he hits the processing center,” Rick called forward to Charlie. “By the time the real attack comes, they’ll think it’s just another brushfire.”
Charlie’s laughter continued. “He’s going to make it a mite easier on us when we hit the roadblock. The snakes’ll be so scattered out they won’t know whether to scratch their heads or their scaly tails!”
With luck, that was just the way it would be. Or so Rick hoped. Even with the support of two skyfighters, those on the ground were going to need all the help they could get.
Rick lifted his right arm and squinted at the face of his watch—one-thirty. The caravan had thirty minutes until the rendezvous with the fleet of cars Brad had promised.
“Waxahachie city limits dead ahead,” Charlie said. “We’re runnin’ right on schedule. Twenty-one more miles and we’ve pulled it off.”
Rick watched the caravan turn onto Interstate 35E. Still driving without headlights, they moved northward on the last leg of their journey.
“Nineteen miles,” Charlie counted down the distance remaining between the trucks and the Visitor roadblock ahead.
When he reached ten, the skyfighter’s engines whined in a high-pitched scream. Charlie, with Jace keeping pace, pushed the small craft forward through the night. Both ships directed their searchlights dead ahead, then switched them off.
“I can see their lights. Target’s right in front of our nose!” Charlie called back to his tailgunner. “Here we go!”
Rick felt the skyfighter nose downward. When it leveled, the highway’s surface was a mere ten feet below the ship’s rear window. His thumbs arched over the tops of the seat’s gun grips to lightly rest on the red buttons there.
“Searchlights—on!” Charlie thumbed the glaring beams back on, their harsh light meant to momentarily blind the Visitor guards who manned the roadblock. “Now to give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Even over the skyfighter’s engines, Rick heard the sizzling hiss of energy bolts as Charlie unleashed the ship’s nose cannons on the unsuspecting alien roadblock.
“Give ’em everything you’ve got, son!” Charlie called out.
At the same time the ship nosed upward to avoid colliding with the Visitors’ barricade. Rick’s thumbs depressed the firing buttons. A trail of blue-white energy globes burst from the twin tailguns, strafing the scattering shock troopers as the craft shot over the roadblock. A similar line of bolts came from Jace’s ship when Mark opened up with his own barrage,
A shower of flames leaped into the air as the deadly light beams struck home. The wooden barricade exploded, clearing a path for the trucks that barreled up the highway.
“That did it!” Rick shouted. “We opened the way!”
“No harm in givin’ the snakes another run, is there?” Charlie answered.
The skyfighter banked to the left in a 180-degree turn and nosed back toward the ground. Again the sizzle of Charlie’s nose cannons came from the front of the ship.
Rick heard the radio come alive again, this time with a panicked report of their aerial assault. The cry for help went unanswered. Another alarm drowned that of the shock troopers below—an officer reported an allout attack on Dallas’ remaining processing center.
The instant Rick felt the older man pull the ship skyward, he pressed the firing buttons and held them down. This time, however, he directed the two guns in wide, sweeping arcs, spraying energy blasts into the fleeing shock troopers on each side of the road. Two, maybe three of the alien warriors fell beneath the searing barrage. Rick couldn’t be certain because Charlie banked the ship in another tight turn.
“This is it, son. All or nothin’.”
When the Korean War veteran leveled the craft, they once more flew over the convoy of pickup trucks. Maneuvering the skyfighter ahead of the lead truck, Charlie eased the ship to within ten feet of the pavement again. His nose cannons blasted fiery death for a third time.
Rick jerked his hands away from the firing grips when the ship lurched up into the night sky. He didn’t dare risk firing with the pickups right behind them. They hadn’t come across Texas to be taken out by friendly fire.
Below, four trucks raced through the wide hole in the Visitor barricade before the still-living shock troopers realized what was happening. The last two trucks sped through the gap while the Visitors lifted weapons and fired wild shots after the disappearing vehicles.
“Slick as hell,” Charlie chuckled while he surveyed the scene below. “Jace can keep ’em pinned down for a while now. We’ve other matters to attend to.”
The blue glow faded from Rick’s window as Charlie switched off the skyfighter’s searchlight. To the left the Californian saw Jace wing his ship in a tight arc and circle back on the shock troopers beside the highway. His forward cannons, then Mark’s rear guns erupted when the craft swooped over the still-flaming remains of the roadblock.
The pickup convoy appeared beneath the window. One by one the craft passed over the six trucks u
ntil it once more flew at the head of the line.
“There’s the shoppin’ center ahead, and the turnoff,” Charlie announced. “And the cars Brad promised!”
His gaze moving between the display screen and window, Rick watched as the skyfighter rose five hundred feet over the shopping center to hover above the waiting cars. The searchlight came back on, flooding the parking lot with artificial sunlight. Like ants scurrying between toy cars, the resistance fighters hurried from their vehicles to meet the incoming trucks and the boxes packed on their beds.
Ten minutes passed before the last car was loaded and drove into the night with Sheryl Lee sitting in its passenger seat. Below, the farmers and ranchers who had survived the treacherous journey, many of whom were still nameless to Rick, looked up and waved their arms before climbing back into their vehicles.
“Time to get the folks started on their way home,” Charlie said from the pilot’s seat.
The skyfighter swung about to begin the flight south. The voice on the Visitors’ radio returned.
With fingers pressed to pounding temples, Garth listened to the reports flooding Fort Worth Processing Center Two from the North Dallas installation. From the first alarm of the resistance’s attack, the communiques had grown more bleak. Now there was nothing. The last message had ended in an explosive burst of static. Garth needed no official report to tell him the obvious—the last Dallas processing center had fallen and lay in smoldering ruins.
“Commander,” Major Lawrence said from Garth’s left. “Five squad vehicles with two hundred shock troopers will arrive at the North Dallas facility in five minutes.”
Five minutes! A dry, humorless chuckle pushed from Garth’s throat. Five minutes might as well have been an eternity. By the time the reinforcements landed, the enemy would be gone, vanished back into the night that had spawned it.
“Where does their ingenuity come from, Major?” Garth asked without turning to the officer.
“Ingenuity, Commander? Certainly you don’t mean the murderous rabble out there!” Indignation showed in Lawrence’s words. “They are nothing more than animals—stupid animals!”
“Animals, yes, but very resourceful animals, Major.” Garth shook his head. Was the major blind to what had occurred tonight? “Can’t you see the pattern?”
Major Lawrence did not reply.
“The attacks, Major, the scattered hit-and-run attacks throughout both cities tonight!” Garth continued. “They were but a ruse designed to disorient us, to leave us off balance. When we reeled, our troops spread too thin, they struck their primary target. It’s so clear now with the blessing of hindsight.”
“You read too much into tonight’s action, Commander,” Lawrence answered. “What we have here is what we have always faced in this sector—random acts of violence by mindless creatures! There is no pattern, only cattle who struggle against their master’s yoke.” Garth sat silently. The major was a fool. When Garth returned to Houston he would have the man recalled to the Mother Ship. There was always need of individuals gifted with Lawrence’s extraordinary insight to clean the ship’s septic tanks.
“Major,” the sergeant at the communications console called over a shoulder. “It’s the roadblock on Interstate 35E again.”
Lawrence waved the man away, but Garth sat straight in his chair. He had forgotten about the Dallas roadblock during the assault on the processing center.
“Put it on the loudspeaker, Sergeant,” Garth ordered. The man flicked a switch, and a quavering voice echoed within the room. In short, quick gasps the voice described two skyfighters attacking the blockade and several tracks that ran the roadblock.
With each word another horrible piece fell into place. Garth grimaced; the pattern of the attacks expanded. The destruction of the processing center had not been the human resistance fighters’ primary objective. It had been yet another diversion. One that had allowed them to bring the medical supplies into Dallas—and with those supplies the woman he searched for!
His pulse raced. Even as he sat here, the resistance was transporting the supplies through Dallas, and perhaps Fort Worth!
“Major, I want every available squad vehicle and skyfighter at your command in the air!” Garth swiveled around in his chair to explain the scene he visualized. “I want them captured, Major. Captured, not killed.”
Chapter 20
Jace took the lead as the two skyfighters swung about in a tight 180-degree turn and headed north toward Dallas. Shadows moving in the night, Rick glimpsed the six tracks as they wheeled from the interstate and rolled westward.
“Why don’t you come up front here and keep me company?” Charlie glanced over his shoulder. “I think things have quieted down a bit.”
A tap of the black button on the left side of the gunner’s seat and the minidisplay retracted into the chair’s arm. Rick pushed to his feet and stretched, his palms brushing the craft’s ceiling. The joints in his arms and legs popped.
Charlie chuckled while the Californian walked forward and sank into the co-pilot’s seat. “You sound as old as I look.”
“Which is about a hundred years younger than I feel,” Rick answered. His gaze turned to the approaching city outside.
“When we get our feet back on the ground, we’ll find us two rockin’ chairs and sit around and listen to our bones creak.” Charlie looked at his young friend and grinned.
Ahead Jace’s ship banked a few degrees to the west. Charlie imitated the maneuver.
“You have to admit that it went easier than any of us expected,” Charlie said while he leveled the skyfighter.
“Yes, I do have to admit that. Although I wouldn’t want to make a daily routine of tonight’s activities. ” Rick nodded.
Lights blinked alive at the periphery of his vision. His head jerked to the right. Three more lights appeared in the sky to the east.
“Charlie, what the hell is that?” As he spoke, additional lights flashed on ahead.
“Damned if it doesn’t look like Visitor ships switching on their searchlights.” The older man’s brow furrowed with deep creases. “They’re flyin’ mighty low.”
The beams of light were from alien vessels. Rick watched the searchlights sweep across the ground.
“They’re after something—Brad and the others who hit the processing center or . . Charlie grunted.
Rick didn’t want to consider the unspoken “or” Charlie had repressed. Nor could he edge the thought away. Sheryl Lee was down there. The snakes might be searching for the cars and the medical supplies.
“Best make it appear that we’re doing the same thing.”
Charlie’s right hand lifted to the control console, tapping a button to glowing white life. The searchlight beamed down from the belly of the skyfighter, illuminating block on block of homes in a look-alike housing development.
“Now to bring her down a mite.” He nosed the craft closer to the tops of the trees.
Ahead of them Jace’s searchlight beamed on and his ship slid down until it matched Charlie’s altitude.
“They’re not interested in us,” Rick said, watching the other aerial lights that moved over Dallas. “Wonder what’s going on? We haven’t heard anything over the radio for the past fifteen minutes.”
Charlie shook his head and eased the ship closer to the ground as Jace led them over a narrow, winding ribbon of black. Rick recognized the Trinity River from their evening flight above Dallas yesterday.
“Looks like he’s taking us back to the warehouse district.” Rick saw Jace’s ship drop even lower after the two craft shot above the rubble that marked what had once been Dallas’ downtown.
“So it seems.” Charlie edged the ship down after Jace until the skyfighters skimmed over a wide road lined with warehouses on each side. “He’s slowing.”
Jace did, then stopped. The ship’s searchlight blinking once before flashing off. Charlie killed his own searchlight. A wink of a flashlight came from a warehouse on the west side of the street. As Rick
turned to find its source, he saw one of the warehouse’s great doors slide upward.
Immediately, Jace’s ship swung around to face the opening, then floated toward the gaping darkness with Charlie right on his tail. The rattle of the door closing behind them vibrated through the ship as Charlie gently let the craft settle to the ground. Lights flared overhead.
“What the hell!” Rick blinked, trying to focus.
“I’ll be damned.” Charlie whistled. “I’ve got to get a better look at this.”
He opened the skyfighter’s door, pushed from the seat, and strode from the ship. The Californian, still half blinded by the lights, stumbled after the Korean War veteran.
“Welcome to Little Love,” Jace greeted the two as they stared at the warehouse’s interior. “We named it after Dallas’ Love Field.”
Rick stared in disbelief. The warehouse had been converted into an airplane hangar that contained a singleengine plane and a helicopter. Two-man work crews busied themselves about the aircraft.
“That Piper Cub looks brand spankin’ new.” Charlie whistled in admiration. “Somebody’s put a lot of work into her.”
Jace nodded. “She’s mine. My father taught me to fly in her. Used to have another copter, but the snakes shot it down about a month back.”
“How do you get them out of here?” This from Rick. “How do you take off?”
“No problem with the copter. Just push it outside and lift off, ” Jace replied while Mark and he escorted them to a side door. “As for the Cub, we just came in on Little Love’s one and only runway—the street outside.”
Jace waved an arm, and the warehouse lights went off. The door opened and the pilot stepped outside. “ We’re three blocks from headquarters. Brad’ll be waiting to hear from us.”
Without another word the four slipped through the shadows toward Dallas resistance headquarters.
“Somethin’s up.” Charlie nudged Rick’s shoulder and tilted his head toward the opposite side of the warehouse the Dallas resistance called headquarters.
V 11 - The Texas Run Page 14
