Ride of the Valkyries

by Stuart Slade

  "That's new. The white man giving us a cure for smallpox."

  "Oh, you don't believe that old myth do you?"

  "Seer, those epidemics decimated our people."

  "I know and I know a lot about General Amherst. Not a pleasant man at all, if I didn't know better I'd think he was the reason brother-sister marriages got a bad name. Anyway, we'll fight over that some other time. The other thing is, I have to go to Cuba soon, on business. Want to come? We can disguise it as a research trip into running Casinos, with the first of yours opening soon, you'll need some personal observation of what's involved."

  Raven's eyes lit up. "That would be wonderful. I'd love it."

  "Good, I'll have Lillith arrange for you to have your own rooms in the hotel. Not sure which one yet. Probably the Havana Tropicana."

  There was a brief pause while Raven looked down and made up her mind. Like it or not, she and her friends were being absorbed by the Seer's circle. It was inevitable she supposed. They were a tiny group of people that had spent their time within the Indian society of the reservations, isolated from the world at large. Now, they weren't alone any more, they were part of something much, much larger. But being absorbed like that they would be losing their identity?

  After all, they were different from these people. They were accepted by the population they came from, they didn't live in the shadows the way The Seer and his people did. Would they have to give up its daylight and live in the shadows also? Then Raven realized something. The Seer and his close friends, his extended family, were an identifiable entity within the larger American group. The impact of Inanna's words sank home. She and her friends had as much to offer the Seer's circle as they were as liable to receive. The Seer and all his people had no real home or society, they just went along with whatever they had to. Suddenly Raven realized that Inanna had been telling the truth when she'd said she envied her. The stability of a known and established culture where they were accepted was a gift they'd value.

  "Raven, I'm running late, I've got to change. Can I be discourteous and leave you for a few minutes? Perhaps you could check the news channel weather broadcast for me? The streets are clear so we could take my car, but if it's going to snow again, I'd rather grab a cab."

  "Of course." The Seer vanished into another room while Raven turned the television on. She was lucky, she just caught the end of the weather forecast. Clear, cold but no snow. "No snow, we'll be fine."

  "That's great. We won't put the top down though." Raven snorted at the idea of driving in a convertible with the roof down in mid-winter. She could probably stand it but she guessed the Seer's pampered ears would fall off. Behind her, there was a thump as a door closed and she turned around. The Seer had changed out of his suit and was in casual clothes. He walked over to drawer, took out a stainless steel Colt M1911 and chambered a round.

  "You carry, Raven?"

  She shook her head. "Off the reservation, we're not allowed to carry weapons Whites are probably afraid we'll go on the warpath or something."

  The Seer said something under his breath. "Another bloody stupid thing to fix. Meanwhile we can get you sorted out." He picked up the telephone and dialed a number. A couple of seconds later, the person on the other end had probably picked up. "Lillith, not disturbing you am I honey......Good. Look, can you fix up a concealed carry permit for Raven? Federal ones, we don't want her to worry about state lines. Better sort them out for Menewa, Five Elks and the others as well. Yeah, that'll do fine. Thanks honey." He turned to Raven. "You'll have a Federal concealed carry permit in a week. Let you carry anywhere, any time. Ask Henry and he'll give you some lessons in practical pistol craft."

  "Thanks Seer." Raven wasn't actually sure she was grateful and she guessed that Menewa wouldn't carry a gun even if he was allowed to. "Hey what's this on the news?" The on-the-hour broadcast was starting.

  ‘‘Tonight, the situation around the world continues to deteriorate as the new smallpox epidemic continues to spread. The disease is reportedly known as blackpox to distinguish it from the less deadly variants. The first cases were reported in Algeria and that continues to be the main center of infection. More border Algerian villages have reportedly started to suffer from the disease and there are some suggestions that one or more of the larger towns have been infected. More worrying though, is the news that cases of blackpox have been reported from Colombia and Mexico. We now speak to our Washington correspondent. Stan? "

  "Well Barbara, word here tonight is that we now have definite proof that blackpox is a Caliphate-inspired biological weapons attack. There are rumors that the United States was attacked as well as French Algeria but the attack was thwarted and that the infections in South America are just by-products of that failed attack. "

  "The United States was attacked. Does that mean we're at war?"

  "One might think so but there's no sign of it here. The Pentagon, the NSC Building, the White House, they ‘re all quiet with just the usual night shift at work. Whatever the United States plans to do, there's no sign that they ‘re doing it now. "

  The Seer laughed "One thing about Washington you can guarantee, honey, is that Stan Mather will always get it wrong. It never occurred to him that when there's a crisis and nothing seems to be happening, the reason why is that the decisions have all been made, all the plans are ready and everybody might as well get a good night's sleep."

  "We are going to war?"

  "We surely are. Tomorrow, the President gives the word and we go. How hungry are you?"

  Raven blinked, disorientated by the sudden change of direction. "Very."

  "Good, me too. Let's go."

  "Uhh. Seer, I've got a small cabin on our reservation. It's nothing much, not much more than a single room but may I share it with the rest of you, add it to the pot of properties? I doubt if you'd want to live on a reservation but...."

  "Don't bet on it. Henry will jump at the chance. He hates living in motels when he's out west. Quick question, its real cold out there, you got a heavy coat?"

  Raven gestured downwards and the Seer glanced. It was heavily padded but polyester, cheap. It wouldn't keep out the biting winds of a Washington street. He walked over to a cupboard and looked inside. Raven held her breath. He wasn't going to give her a fur was he? Nothing could be less appropriate for the reservation and having it would cause words to be spoken behind her back. About what she'd done to get it. She might be ghost-touched but a reservation was a small place with vicious tongues ready to wag. Then she breathed out. He'd got a heavy, fleece-lined leather jacket from a cupboard, something that would pass unnoticed back home.

  "Genuine, military cold-weather gear. Russian-designed SAC-issue no less. Available in military surplus stores at way less than the cost Uncle Sam paid. This doesn't come from there of course but nobody else need know that."

  Inanna had been right, he was always two jumps ahead. Raven smiled to herself as she made a decision. The Seer wouldn't find out yet but there would be no need for Lillith to book her rooms for herself. "Are you sure we should be going out with a crisis going down?"

  "Nothing else to do, honey. Eat, drink and be merry: for tomorrow we're going to start a nuclear war."

  CHAPTER TEN: CHARGE!

  State Department Communique

  The United States of America will be conducting military operations against the Caliphate effective as of 08:00 February 25th, 1973. Any attempt to interfere with or otherwise impede those operations will be considered an act of war against the United States of America and treated accordingly.

  National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Notice to Mariners.

  The United States of America draws your attention to the fact that the Strait of Hormuz will be permanently closed to all shipping effective as of 08:00 February 25th, 1973. Mariners attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz after that time will do so at their own risk.

  P6M-4 Seamaster Tigerfish Approaching the Strait of Hormuz

  She was finally doing
what she was designed to do. Lieutenant Commander George Dixon settled back in his seat as Tigerfish dropped down to her penetration altitude and started her run towards the Strait up ahead. Unlike SAC's ferocious arsenal, the Navy's P6M flying boats were intended for low-altitude penetration missions, laying mines and hitting coastal installations. They'd rarely done that; most of their time had been spent inserting SEALs or picking them up after they'd done their deeds ashore. Sometimes they'd run electronic intelligence missions, sometimes air-sea rescue or few other unglamorous runs. Never before had they done the job they were supposed to.

  As a result, the flying boats were seen as something of a backwater in the Navy, a posting that held very few prospects for promotion. Flying off the carriers or serving on the missile cruisers, that was another matter. Those career paths lead to the top. But the flying boats didn't and even the need to maintain the force was being questioned. After all, what did they offer that SAC did not? This mission was intended, in part, to answer that question. Neither the B-52s over 50,000 feet up, nor the B-70s 30,000 feet higher could lay mines.

  The briefing a few hours earlier had been explicit, the American strike aimed at the Caliphate was intended to do two things. One was to shatter the Caliphate's ability to produce biological weapons by destroying the industrial complexes suspected of making them. The other was to limit the Caliphate's access to the foreign currency it needed to buy replacement industrial equipment. The Caliphate's industrial ability was limited at best; they were barely capable of building crude automobiles and low-performance aircraft. Precision machinery was way beyond them and machine tools were in such short supply that nobody was prepared to supply them without massive compensation. So the Caliphate had to import what it needed and the money it needed to buy them was gained through sales of oil. Those oil exports ran, mostly, through the Straits up ahead. So those Straits were about to be closed.

  Of course, the primary customer for the Caliphate's oil was Chipan and removing that oil from the market would hurt Chipan's economy. Hurt it badly; from an American point of view that was no regrettable thing. To get around the problem, Chipan would either have to buy Russian oil, helping to strengthen America's ally in the process or Indonesian oil, helping to strengthen the Triple Alliance and put an end to the idiotic but lethal fighting going on in the South China Sea. If Chipan built pipelines in the Caliphate to bypass the blocked Strait, that would use financial and industrial resources that would otherwise have gone to strengthen Chipan's military forces. No matter which way one cut it, the Seamasters were executing a vital mission. One that SAC, for all its power, could not.

  "Target up ahead." Lieutenant James Wicks, Tigerfish ‘s copilot, confirmed the course plot. The whole point of this mission, the whole reason for assigning it to the Seamasters, was to lay the mines in the flying boat's belly accurately. This was a precision mission after all.

  "Tigershark confirms. Any hostile air activity?"

  "A lot of radars lit up Sir." That was Lieutenant (jg) Joseph Ridgeway in the back, the Seamaster's defensive systems operator. "A lot of air surveillance radars, we're even picking up the big ones on Bahrein. But no fighters."

  "Ducting, this area's notorious for it. We must be picking up every radar in the region. Bahrein won't be on the air for long. The Vigilantes will see to that."

  "Mines ready to drop, Sir." Lieutenant (jg) Arnold Becker, the fourth crew member, cut in. There were fifteen rising mines in Tigerfish's belly. Each was a marvel of engineering; a circular sonar array built around the outer casing and a series of thrusters. The array would pick up the sound of a ship and determine its range, then rotate so that an underwater rocket would be fired at the contact. At 200 knots, the target would have no chance of escaping and an 1,200 pound rocket hitting at that speed didn't really need a warhead to destroy its victim. The rocket still had a warhead of course, just to make sure.

  Tigerfish wasn't carrying nuclear mines. The rising mines were intended for the outer ring of the minefield. Other Seamasters were carrying the nuclear mines for the center of the field. Still, the Russian-made rising mines were deadly enough. The Russians had always been good at mine warfare.

  "‘Tell Tigershark, Tiger Ray and Tigersnake to get ready to drop in one minute from synchronization signal - now."

  The four P6M-4s changed course slightly, now heading parallel down the Strait. Still no opposition, Dixon thought gratefully, this was where enemy fighters could really cause nausea. Still, with all the F9U-5 Crusaders and F4H-4 Phantoms in the area, any Caliphate fighter that showed its face would have a very short life. Not that their lives were scheduled to be much longer if they stayed on the ground. The Vigilantes with their nuclear weapons were going to see to that.

  Dixon glanced quickly sideways. Frank Collinses Tigershark and James Simkin's Tiger Ray were in position. Charles Carlson's Tigersnake was on the outside of the turn and had dropped back slightly. As he'd watched, Dixon had seen him pull back into place. Two of Carlson's four crewman, Miller and White were newbies, they'd only joined Tiger Flight a few days before. No problem, they were learning their trade well.

  A loud ding almost drowned by the rattle as the watertight rotating bomb door in Tigerfish's belly opened up and the fifteen mines started their falls towards the sea. The American assault on the Caliphate had started.

  Chipanese ULCC Aikoku Maru, Approaching the Strait of Hormuz.

  "Ahoy. Imperial Japanese Merchant Ship, this is United States Warship 174 calling on the international hailing band. We have an urgent amendment to your charts. Request permission to come on board and deliver new charts to you, courtesy of the United States Navy."

  The nuclear-powered cruiser was sleek and gray in the sea a few hundred meters off the Aikoku Maru's port beam. "174, what ship is that." Captain Tan's voice was interested rather than urgent. First Officer Chao needed the practice more than anything else. While the Captain focused his binoculars on the cruiser, he heard Chao thumbing through the pages of his naval reference book. Tan shook his head slowly, no matter how much Britain had declined since they'd collapsed in 1940, they still produced the naval reference book every warship in the world used.

  "USS John C Stens Sir. Improved Long Beach class. Will we let them board?'"

  "Of course. Make in reply ‘Thank you for your concern. Welcome on board.' Have some whisky and fresh sushi sent up to the bridge."

  Tan returned to watching the cruiser. The two twin Terrier missile launchers forward and the twin Talos launcher aft were all loaded. No way of telling from here, but Tan was prepared to bet that all six missiles were nuclear tipped. They were trained fore and aft though, as were the four eight-round boxes for Sea Falcon missiles on the corners of the superstructure's main deck. Tan was under no illusions about his importance, if the Americans wanted to sink him they'd use one of those. The 0.25 kiloton warhead on a Sea Falcon would do for his tanker quite nicely. Then he looked aft. There was activity on the flight deck. That was the difference between the original Long Beach class and the improved version. 8,000 tonnes of displacement and a hangar that could hold four to six Kaman Seaking Rotodynes. One of those hulking brutes was on the flight deck at the moment, dwarfing the little SH-2 Seasprite helicopter that was being readied. Why do the Americans prefix all their naval equipment with the word Sea? Tan asked himself. To remind the crew they weren‘t on land perhaps.

  The Seasprite took off and made the short hop over to the Aikoku Mam. The pilot didn't bother to climb much; the flight was too short. The helicopter had hardly begun to fly when it turned and landed on the cleared pad set on the tanker's stern. Two figures climbed out and hurried up to the bridge. Fortunately for First Officer Chao, the refreshments the Captain had ordered arrived on the bridge before they did.

  "Permission to enter the bridge Captain?" One of the Americans spoke carefully in Japanese. Obviously a rote-learned phrase.

  "Permission granted Commander. . . ." Tan spoke in English, the international language of the sea
.

  "Alexander, William Alexander. Sir, the Strait of Hormuz is closed for the indefinite future."

  Commander Alexander's voice was interrupted by a sonic boom followed by the sound of jet engines. Overhead, four dark blue A3J-5 Vigilante bombers were heading north. "Military operations in progress require us to seal off the Gulf. I have new charts for you sir, they show the danger areas."

  He handed the charts over. The new minefields were marked with the deadly black-and-yellow trefoil. Nuclear mines. Tan shook slightly.

  "Commander, may I offer you some refreshments while I study these? A drink, perhaps? I know your ships are dry, we do not suffer from that problem. And the sushi is freshly made."

  "Thank you sir." Alexander and his assistant picked up pieces of sushi. Raw fish, well it wasn't in the American diet but this was a ticklish matter and courtesy was everything.

  "Commander Alexander, you know that 80 percent of Japan's oil is carried through that Strait?"

  "Indeed I do sir. But I am advised that the Caliphate blackpox attacks make our action essential."

  "Blackpox." Tan thought of the film he'd seen of the victims dying of the disease. Horrible. "Very well Commander, I will order my ship to hove-to and radio Tokyo for instructions. You are contacting the other tankers heading this way?"

  "Indeed I am Sir. It will be a busy day for my ship." The bridge was lit suddenly by a flash. In the far distance, four mushroom clouds were forming. "That was the main Caliphate air base this side of the Straits. It is going to be a busy day for many, many people." The thunder of the laydowns was muted by distance. Somewhere a lot of people had just died. "Thank you for your courtesy and consideration in these difficult times, Captain."