Analog SFF, July-August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "And that makes it okay?” said Leslie. “The fact that it could be worse?"

  Solada leaned toward her on the bench; Leslie had calmed down enough not to pull Nicholas away. “If I blow the whistle on my own project, it looks like I'm trying to grab the spotlight; nobody pays any attention. But you! What are you doing? I counted on someone like you to kick up a fuss in the press. Faculty advisory committees? Official university censure? What is wrong with you? Start a blog to rant about it! Call reporters! Tell your students to tell their parents! The student paper is not enough. Rumors are not enough."

  "You're saying you wanted me to—"

  "You or someone like you. For God's sake, yes. Get the word out. Make sure everybody knows that this is something we can do. Make sure they ask themselves questions about how we're doing it.” Solada shook her head. “I'm amazed it didn't happen before. I thought surely the Empty Moon thing would be the last straw for you. Or someone like you. And I never dreamed that one of my students would use it politically, the way I thought the big parties would.

  "So be fast about it, Dr. Baxter. Be as loud as you can. I'm willing to be the wicked queen here. Better a wicked queen than an eminence grise."

  And with that she was gone, leaving Leslie stunned and clinging to her son. Most of the media contacts she had were in the obscure economic press. Would it be best to call a national news magazine? The local newspaper or its big city neighbor? She'd never tried to break a story before. It had never been this important before.

  "Mommy, did you take me here another time?” asked Nicholas.

  Leslie's heart went into her throat.

  "And Daddy was here, too, and you bought me hot chocolate?” he continued hopefully.

  She relaxed. It was a real memory; they had come to the student union before Christmas. “I'll buy you hot chocolate again,” she assured him, “and then we'll go over to my office and you can draw pictures. Mommy has some phone calls to make.” n Copyright © 2009 Marissa K. Lingen

  * * * *

  "The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where."—Dorothy Thompson

  "Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."—Aldous Huxley

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Series: TURNING THE GRAIN: PART I OF II by Barry B. Longyear

  * * * *

  Illustrated by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  The best-laid plans can go very ugly....

  * * * *

  I

  The sun's rim edged above the desert horizon, brushing the tops of the plateau's night-chilled cliffs with pale gold. Gilf Kebir's day creatures began awakening, noted the light, and moved toward the promise of warmth. Night things backed deeper into shadows, away from the moisture-sucking heat of Egypt's Western Desert, away from the ever-present eyes of predators. In one such shadow Gordon Redcliff raised the front detector cover on his rifle's electronic sight and swept the wadi below. The ones down there had finished their work: seven shooters just this side of the narrows on the rocky trail climbing to the plateau where the expedition camped. Two more shooters in the shadows up on the wide slope above the narrows. From his perch, the shadowed ledge hidden from below by the reflected glare of the sun on the cliff face adjoining it, Gordon studied the faces and positions through his scope.

  The shooter closest to Gordon's position had a rocket-propelled grenade in addition to his Kalashnikov. Both weapons leaned on a rock to the fellow's right. RPG was lighting a cigarette, his bearded face craggy, the eyes searching the shadows above a hawklike nose. His face indicated a lot of mileage: the Iran thing, probably. He was about the right age. RPG wore a gold chain around his neck with a crucifix on it. Probably not a Christian, though—at least, not in good standing. RPG was the back door. Gordon shifted the sight picture to the slope above the narrows. Of the two there, the younger one with the pale skin and delicate features, the tails of his gutrah folded over his head in anticipation of rising temperatures later in the day, he was the boss. He wore his ogal cool, cocked forward so that the front of the black band sat on his eyebrows. He was facing east and downhill, kneeling and touching his forehead to a cloth.

  Cool's companion was older, more secular, less fashionable. He wore only the tagiyah on his head, the white cap pushed back, his falls of tangled black hair in his face. Incongruously, he was wearing a black and white Red Sox jacket over his thoub against the desert's night chill. He squatted, his elbows resting upon his knees, waiting and listening. From a less connected family perhaps than Cool's, and certainly a slob, but Red Sox was wired: the group technology geek. He was the sapper, the one with the remote. Red Sox controlled the front door.

  Below them among the rocks, growing impatient in the chilly shadows, RPG and the six other gunmen, all costumed as Bedouins, were talking among themselves, smoking, wandering behind outcroppings to relieve themselves, but always avoiding that narrowest point in the trail: the bend. That's where, under Red Sox's direction, they had installed the front door in the hours before sunrise. There had only been the one truck—running electric and silent in the dark—that had brought them and their explosive device. Nothing else had been in the vehicle. No provisions for hostages. Perhaps one Christian, one Muslim, and a few secularists. At least the murderers had figured out how to get along, mused Gordon.

  There was a crackle in his headset; Dr. Hussein speaking in Arabic: "Gordon, we have all the samples, equipment, supplies, and shelters packed. We should be ready to leave for Site Safar as soon as morning prayers and breakfast are concluded. Dr. Taleghani is anxious for us to return. Is the route clear?"

  "In a moment, Doctor,” replied Gordon quietly into his mouthpiece, also in Arabic. He felt a scorpion crawl across his hand but didn't look away from his scope. “I'll need Captain Mansouri at the head of the wadi in a couple of minutes. There will be something to report."

  There was a slight hesitation. "Another ambush?"

  "Yes."

  A note of frustration. "How do the devils find us?"

  "The sky is crowded with eyes, Doctor, and most of them are for rent. I'll have the wadi clean in a minute."

  "Wait." Another pause. Gordon blinked his eyes and smiled slightly as he continued watching the gunmen below, knowing his academician boss needed to allow his eccentric compassion fantasy to run a bit before reality reined it in. "Gordon, might they be open to some—I don't know—perhaps they might consider some sort of negotiation? We could pay them something for their trouble if they'd leave us alone. If Captain Mansouri's men—"

  "There are nine shooters, Doctor,” interrupted Gordon. “Seven are armed with high-powered assault rifles, one in addition has an RPG. Another is controlling an explosive device planted at the bend in the first narrows. Their plan is to disable the first vehicle in the convoy, blocking the trail, then disable the last vehicle, trapping the convoy in between. Then the shooters attack the vehicles from both sides, killing everyone."

  "Certainly we are worth more alive than dead."

  "I don't think they're into comparative investments. These fellows are not hostage takers."

  "You know this?"

  "They've made no provision for hostages: no food, no bindings. Only one truck.” The scorpion skittered off Gordon's hand in pursuit of game of its own. “Five minutes, Doctor, and please have someone start up one of the heavy vehicles."

  A final grudging pause. "Very well."

  Twenty seconds later the sound of a four-ton all-terrain diesel started up far behind Gordon, the whine of the eight-wheeler's starter motor and the clatter of the initial diesel exhaust reverberated loudly from the stubby hills at the edge of the crater across the plateau and into the wadi. On the slope above the narrows Cool wrapped up his prayers and spoke quickly into his handset. He gathered up the cloth he had been using, then he and Red Sox rushed behind a rocky outcropping and squatted. Suddenly everyone was in place, hidden o
n either side of the trail above the bend, safeties off, weapons aimed and ready, extra magazines within easy reach, and all as still as death. RPG was settled in a draw fifty meters up from the bend near where the rear vehicle should be when the convoy stopped. A very practiced crew: motionless, disciplined, professional, and therefore predictable.

  The four shooters on the near side of the trail would have the longest journey to get away from Gordon's fire, the ones on the far side the shortest. Far side goes down first. Cool and Red Sox didn't appear to have anything heavier than pistols with them. They had no place to go, in addition, but toward Gordon or up the slope toward a sheer cliff once the shooting started. Red Sox and Cool go down last.

  Noticing Gordon and trying to get away from his fire was only a remote possibility in any event. None of them should be able to hear any of Gordon's shots. He was over a kilometer away. For the few seconds it would take to kill them all they would be momentarily deaf after Gordon triggered off their front door charge. Nine shots, possibly ten. Should only take five or eight seconds. Eight if he had to change clips to go for that tenth shot.

  Gordon's Stryker M-3 semiautomatic sniper rifle had an eight-round magazine of 9mm magnum shattertips. He already had one round up the spout. An extra magazine was on the right of the sandbag he had filled that was cradling his left forearm as his hand held the forward grip of his M-3. Next to the mag, connected by a thin cable to the rifle, was a remote disrupter, looking very much like an early cell phone, its stub of an antenna pointed toward the wadi. He reached to the rifle's electronic sight and turned on the recoil compensator. It would maintain his sight picture and aim between shots while the weapon's gas mechanism automatically ejected a spent cartridge and chambered the next.

  Of the three shooters on the far side of the trail, the most difficult to hit would be the one in the center. Of all of them, Middle Man knew best how to hide. Ex-military or ex-terror vet. None of that Christian or Jihadi action for him; his god was terrain. It chose where he went, how he stood, and what he did. All that was visible of him was an edge of the right rear quadrant of his head. He was the one who might make that tenth shot necessary: the first round to get him exposed, the tenth—after Gordon had dispatched the others and changed magazines—to put Middle Man out of his misery. Gordon centered the sight's kill dot on that spot, took a breath, let part of it out, and pressed the disruptor trigger on the rifle's front hand grip. The charge down in the narrows exploded with a roar and Middle Man surprised Gordon momentarily by standing straight up in astonishment at the early detonation, exposing the upper third of his body. Nine shots and five seconds later the last echoes of the explosion still had not completely faded from the wadi. When they had, all was still down at the narrows.

  Gordon ejected the empty magazine and loaded the full one into his weapon, pulling the bolt to chamber the first round. He placed the safety on, emptied his sandbag, disconnected and pocketed the disrupter, collected and pocketed the ejected brass and the empty mag. Getting up into a squat he noted the black scorpion had crushed the beetle it had been after with its claws and was preparing to pick it apart.

  "Bon apétit," he said to the insect as he duckwalked backwards from beneath the ledge, swishing the cloth of his emptied sandbag to remove the evidence of his passing. Once he was clear of the overhang, he stood, folded and pocketed the ochre-colored bag, slung his rifle, and climbed up to the head of the trail. Once there he paused and looked around.

  The mesas reminded him a little of pueblo country, but without all the lights, casinos, strip developments, and golden arches. The sand sea dusting the edges of the plateau was almost lifeless. None of the wild sage, pinon pines, or junipers of New Mexico. Hunks of hazy gray-green glass littered the sands, though: part of the reason for Dr. Hussein's expedition. As the gravelly surface of the plateau crunched beneath his desert boots, Gordon keyed his headset. “It's all over, Doctor."

  A lengthy pause. "Things went well?" Dr. Hussein asked at last.

  "No trouble,” answered Gordon.

  "Nine dead?"

  "They aren't our dead, Doctor. That makes it a good morning's work."

  Gordon knew that the geologist wanted to say what he had expressed before: that he wished Gordon would feel at least a little badly about having to kill—and having to kill so many. Gordon hadn't the need, though, and couldn't explain why to the satisfaction of those who thought he should.

  "I called in my conclusions about the crater to Dr. Taleghani last night," said Dr. Hussein at last. "I've just heard back from Site Safar. There has been an unfortunate development: one of the expedition members has been injured and needs to be replaced. Dr. Taleghani needs a special kind of bodyguard—good with languages. Tonight in fact. I suggested you."

  "What about you and your staff, sir?"

  "Our work for the project is concluded. As soon as we arrive at the dig, Bethany and I will be returning to Cairo on the chopper. The rest of the staff will follow on the regular truck run. Pending your agreement, I said you would be excellent for what Dr. Taleghani has in mind. You are very quick with languages."

  "Thank you for the reference. If you're firing me, I'll need the work."

  "Have you ever met Dr. Taleghani?"

  "Just in passing at the dig.” Gordon heard a Land Rover making its way from the camp to the head of the wadi trail. The vehicle came around a low hill and continued toward him. The sand-and-black-colored security car pulled to a stop on the trail in a cloud of dust at the edge of the plateau. “Here's Captain Mansouri. Signing off, Doctor."

  The dust cloud moved slowly forward of the Land Rover, dissipating as it enveloped the vehicle and moved out over the wadi. The captain's angry voice came from the vehicle, bellowing at the hapless driver once again that if the fellow would brake more gradually they wouldn't have to eat so much of their own dust. The driver grinned and nodded. “Idiot!” Mansouri roared in Arabic as he climbed down from the vehicle and slammed the door.

  He walked around the Land Rover and looked at Gordon. Mansouri always tried to make his comments to Gordon sound mocking, but it always came off as petulant. “Ugh, Chief Killum-Every-Damned-Body-In-Sight,” greeted the captain, insultingly using his take on American Indian pidgin English. Despite being a graduate of UCLA, the Egyptian security commander took every opportunity to insult Gordon in an obviously passive-aggressive display of inadequacy, as Gordon's old college girlfriend the psych major would have put it. Mansouri was the commander of the joint Egyptian-Libyan security force that provided protection for the geological expedition to the Kebira Crater bisected by the Egyptian-Libyan border. He was a squat, powerfully built man wearing khakis, desert boots, and one of the wide-brimmed white straw hats favored by those in the expedition. His upper lip carried a thick black mustache, his brow a permanent frown. The stub of an unlit cigar was jammed in his mouth. He wouldn't ask why Gordon didn't call him before the fight. The subject had come up before. The captain had only himself and four men, none of whom were particularly proficient in marksmanship or combat. They needed to stay with the trucks and out of harm's way. Still, it bruised the captain's pride a mite.

  "I take it, Crazy Horse, General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry lost again,” quipped Mansouri.

  Gordon frowned and slowly shook his head, his arms folded high across his chest as he stared with hooded eyes into the endless wastes of the north cliffs. “Umm, Kemosabe.” He pointed toward the distant horizon with a flat hand, palm down, all fingers extended. “Scout see four white-eyes escape, Captain. All with AK-47s. Need you and long knives help Chief rootum out of rocks."

  Mansouri stood there, bug eyed, until he saw Gordon's smirk. “You are as funny as cancer in an earthquake, Redcliff,” said Mansouri. “Hell, you could do standup in a damned graveyard. Chief Shecky Horse. You should have been at Little Big Horn, man. You would've killed ‘em."

  "You seemed to be complaining about me doing all the work myself, Captain. I thought the prospect of a little action might c
heer you up."

  Mansouri's face reddened. “My complaint was not having not enough to do, Redcliff. What bothers me is ... oh, it's the monotony of your precision."

  "I'm too consistent?"

  The captain raised an arm and pointed down the trail into the wadi. “I'll go down there in a minute and what am I going to find, Chief? Any wounded? No. Anyone I can question? No."

  "Do you want prisoners to question, Captain? Guards, paperwork, medical facilities and personnel, provisioning, confinement? International incidents?"

  Mansouri held up a hand. “You made your point. How many this time?"

  "Nine."

  "Nine men drilled right through their coconuts. Am I correct?"

  "Only eight, Captain. One was shot in the heart."

  Mansouri's eyebrows went up. “What is this? Have you added a mad splash of abandon to your terminal artistry?"

  "It was just the way things worked out. Fellow stood up. Fortunate for him."

  "Fortunate? I must hear this one, Chief. Tell me about this dead man's lucky streak."

  "The original position he took didn't give me much of a shot—just the right rear quadrant of his head.” Gordon gestured with his hand tapping the right rear of his own head. “The hit would have been disabling, for sure, but knocking off a corner of his head along with a bit of brain tissue with a shattertip would have been quite painful for the fellow before I could finish off his companions, reload, and get back to him. Eight or nine seconds can be a hellishly long time when you're dribbling brains—"

  "Please,” protested the captain as he winced and held out his hands, palms facing Gordon. “Please."

  "Sorry, Captain. Thought you wanted to talk shop."

  Mansouri waved a disgusted hand at him. “Let's get on with the report,” he continued in Arabic as he pressed the record key on his belt recorder and punched the auto time and date marker. “Gordon Redcliff, Dr. Hussein's personal bodyguard. When did you first see those who were preparing to attack the expedition?"