Knave's Gambit

by Deforest Day

  He leaned out the door, saw the Cessna two hundred yards behind, and fifty above. He aimed at the nose, emptied the thirty round mag in three round bursts, ejected, flipped end for end, and slammed the fresh one home as the high wing airplane swept past at a hundred knots. “Hey Fred!” he yelled, “Get ready to hand me a fresh mag.”

  He didn’t need it. Rounds fifty through fifty-seven went into the Cessna’s engine compartment.

  The Lycoming engine puts out two hundred and thirty horsepower at full throttle. Unless it has been hit by Full Metal Jackets, ones shredding an oil line. The loss of oil quickly actuated the manifold and oil pressure annunciation alerts.

  The swarthy man killed the goddamned alert horn, and scanned the instrument panel. He glanced at the terrain, and didn’t need the altimeter to tell him they were way too low. The CHT/EGT Sensors showed the cylinder temp off the scale; he had low vacuum, low oil pressure, and the rest of his avionics were just plain useless.

  Poppy stood on the left pedal, the tail rotor responded, and they flew sideways long enough to see the Cessna, trailing a stream of black smoke, disappear behind the hill. “Well, wasn’t that fun,” He said, reaching in front of Kat, flipping the FADEC switches back on.

  Howie closed the door and the decibel level dropped. “HOO-YAH!” he yelled, and slapped Fred a high five.

  Flush with adrenaline, Kat grinned, said, “Can we do it again?”

  —o—

  Hot damn! It wasn’t just Miss Mounds of Joy locked up in the Day Room. When Heston slipped inside he was met by a passel of split tail beaver, and every one of ‘em happy to see him. They must be the whores scuttlebutt said was tonight's dessert.

  He felt like a kid in a candy shop as he checked out the assortment. Large and small, young and old, black, white, and shades in between. Only, up close and in daylight they didn’t look so good. Or so clean. The skank with the skinny arms had tracks from elbow to wrist.

  Then he saw the kid, tricked out in a pleated skirt and innocent face. Her big eyes made him think of those Jap porn sites. A squealer. He bet she was one of them five hundred dollar fantasies the guys lied about after lights out.

  “Hey there, Babe,” he said, laying his weapon on the pool table, and his hand on the top of her head. “Give Poppa some skull.”

  Babe hadn’t thought about this part of the plan. She assumed the soldier would be drawn to one of the women dressed for this kind of work. Maybe it wasn’t just the ladies who weren’t so good at planning ahead.

  She figured giving skull was related to knob polishing, and she sank to her knees, and hoped to heaven LaDonna would come to her rescue. Right now wouldn’t be too soon.

  Nick saw his daughter, standing next to a pool table, and caught in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight streaming through the open window. His heart fluttered, and he grinned in spite of himself as he studied her face, centered in the cross hairs of his scope. “I found her,” he whispered. “Safe and sound.”

  Tran had his own 10x40 view of the scene. Miss Lizzie about to do something her daddy not like. “Not so sure.”

  Nick watched his daughter’s head sink below the pool table. Saw the soldier unzip his fly. He thought back to yesterday, at the Cannon Works, and his dumb-ass self-defense Drill. If he hadn’t grabbed her she’d still have the little pepper spray canister. But she didn’t. Instead he had her mother’s little rifle, loaded with sixty-two grain Tactical Bonded ammunition.

  “Maybe not my place, but I think you make big mistake.”

  Nick was busily calculating a firing solution. “What mistake?” He glanced up at Tran.

  “Shoot man, then what? Miss Lizzie still down there, we still up here. Kick hornet nest, better have Step Two.”

  “You’re right. It’s not your place. It’s also not your daughter.” He dialed in the distance on his scope as he estimated the windage from the shimmering heat waves rising from the parade ground. Two, three MPH crosswind. No glass to defect the little twenty-two caliber bullet, traveling at three thousand feet per second. In less than a heartbeat the bastard’s head would explode into a red cloud of brains and bone and blood.

  Nick stepped into The Zone, blocked out everything but the vignette five hundred feet away. His pulse pounded in his ears, a sound like surf crashing on the shore. He took up the slack in the trigger.

  “Fuck you think you’re doin’?” Nick froze. “Put your weapon on safe, and lay it down. Slow and easy.”

  Something about the voice made Nick do as he was told, and with a crisp click he thumbed the safety forward. He turned his head enough to see the man standing over him. Fortyish, five-eight, buck and a half of muscle and bone clad in Bearclaw black. He had some serious woodland skills—they hadn’t heard a sound as the trooper came within five feet of them.

  “Get up, sport. Hands in view.” Not exactly what he expected, when Gunny sent him up here for a recon. He had assumed it was some gomer in bib overalls and a thutty-thutty, looking to jack a deer. Instead he found two guys; one wearing the old chocolate chip cammys, and toting a scoped rifle too small for his frame.

  The second asshole was a slope dressed in a coat and a tie and two thousand dollar Leica binocs. The Charlie looked old, but you couldn’t tell with their kind.

  This smelled like a black ops situation. Some alphabet agency, with their own agenda. There were stories about domestic killer teams he’d discounted as scuttlebutt. Until now.

  What the fuck. Give 'em one in the back of the head, and tell Gunny it was just some hunter, end of story. Or interrogate them, strip their ID, and let Gunny deal with it. Either way, these two weren't coming down from the mountain top.

  Nick rose to his knees, turned away from the Bearclaw trooper. Put his left hand on a large rock to steady himself, and slipped his right hand into his waistband, found his pistol. He thumbed the safety off as he stood.

  A three-round burst of 9mm blew bits of rock into Nick’s legs. It stung like hell. “What part of hands in view don’t you understand, asshole?” Then Sanderson saw the .45 Colt, and knew for certain these weren't a couple of local yokels out shootin’ their supper. “I could put the pair of you down, right here, right now, and nobody will say jack shit. Comprehendo?”

  “Comprehendo.” Nick raised his hands to chest level, palms facing the man with the MP-5. “Look, sergeant, I got no problem with what you people are doing. But my daughter’s down there, and I want her back.”

  Tran moved to the side, forming a loose triangle. He also held up his hands. “Mister Sir. OK I smoke cigarette?” Without waiting for an answer he fumbled in his shirt pocket with his left hand, flipped open the Marlboro box.

  “Buddy, I don’t give a damn about your daughter. Now, ease your forty-five out, left hand, and pass it across. Butt first.”

  Nick obeyed. Tran stuck a cigarette between his lips, patted his pockets in search of matches.

  Sanderson reached out for the pistol with his left, kept the MP-5 trained on Nick with his right.

  Tran eased his hand into his hip pocket, snaked out the Chief’s Special, and shot Sanderson in the head.

  —o—

  The Cessna's landing gear clipped the tree tops. The nose dropped, the tail rose, and the prop tore itself to pieces by shredding leaves and branches sixty feet above the forest.

  Airspeed fell from a hundred knots to thirty as the airplane crashed through the trees. The dark haired woman crashed through the windscreen.

  Fifty milliseconds later the swarthy man’s AmSafe harness inflated as the Cessna plunged to earth.

  The integral wet-wing fuel tanks ruptured, drenching the forest floor with aviation fuel. He struggled free from the harness, and tried to open his door. Jammed. The other door was hard against a tree trunk, and a large branch was wedged across the splintered windshield.

  He gagged at the smell of gasoline fumes as he frantically searched for a way out of the wreckage. How ironic, to die the way so many others had over the last few days.

  H
e climbed over the seat back. His left knee hurt like the devil. The dumb bitch had not closed the aluminum case, and its contents were strewn about the interior. He grabbed the Ka-Bar survival knife, rammed the blade through the thin aluminum skin, and furiously sawed his way to freedom. He snatched up the silenced Ruger, struggled through the ragged opening, and staggered away from the wreckage.

  The Cessna exploded with a loud WHOOMP. The heat of the fireball scorched his back, and the blast threw him to the ground by. The smell of burnt hair filled his nostrils as he stared at the red and yellow blossom rising through the trees.

  The fire cooked off the ammunition and explosives inside the aircraft. He crawled behind a tree, seeking shelter from the inferno. Dizzy and disoriented, he watched the black smoke swirl skyward.

  It wouldn’t be long before someone came to investigate; people from the army camp they'd flown over, or busybody volunteer firemen. Cops. He had to get away from the wreckage, and started to rise when a hand snaked around his ankle.

  She’d fallen from sixty feet, but the dense forest had slowed her descent. He stared down at his current partner and torrid lover. The jagged edges of the windscreen had peeled away her scalp. Skin and hair and blood veiled her face, and a fractured leg showed white bone poking through her black slacks.

  He pried her hand from his ankle, and put two fingers against her carotid. Her pulse was strong. Even with a shattered bone she would survive, if a medivac could get her to the local hospital. Wherever the hell that was.

  The swarthy man didn’t have time for such nonsense, and he replaced his fingers with the Ka-Bar, swiftly drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. He considered himself a merciful man. “Vaya con Dios,” he whispered, and left her to bleed out, alone.

  He struggled to his feet, and limped away. At the edge of the woods he saw a jet aircraft parked at the end of a macadam landing strip.

  —o—

  Norelle didn't see no reason to wait until Schoolgirl had a mouthful of dick before somebody did something, so she peeled off her tube top and wrapped it around the eight ball. Swinging it twice around her head, the stretchy lycra made a whoop whoop sound, followed by a ripe melon-on-cement thunk as it connected with the soldier's head. Motherfucker dropped so fast he didn’t even stick his arms out to break his fall.

  “Shit, Norelle, I think you done kilt him. Now we in it.”

  Norelle struggled back into her tube top, readjusted her display, and huffed, “I didn’t see none of y'all grabbin’ a pool cue, coming to the child’s rescue.”

  Liz kept her eyes away from the big man with the dent in his head, and picked up the H&K, checked the safety was on. With a house full of firearms, she’d been a toddler when she learned her first lesson. All guns are loaded, and you never point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot.

  The weapon wasn’t like any of the hunting rifles Daddy made. It was short, and stubby, and ugly. “Thank you, Norelle,” she said, and removed the long curved magazine from the gun. Nine millimeter ammo, same as Daddy’s bedroom pistol. She guessed the mag held about thirty rounds. Liz removed the second magazine from the soldier’s pouch. He wasn't moving. Her thoughts drifted back to Aunt Patty. Someone was shaking her arm.

  “Don’t you be flakin’ out on us now, Schoolgirl. We got us a gun. Now what we gonna do with it?”

  Schoolgirl said, “We steal the school bus we came in. Drive it back to Washington.”

  Norelle said, “We don’t have no keys.”

  LaDonna said, “She-it. Don’t need no keys. Hot wire the mother.”

  Schoolgirl said, “You know how to do that?”

  Big Rita said, “What’s to know? You rip out the wires, start touchin' ‘em together, until the sucker starts up. Ain’t you never seen them do it in the movies?”

  Schoolgirl said, “First we have to figure out how to get to the bus, without being seen.”

  “Girl, you gettin’ to be a pain in the ass, with all these obs-tickles you keep thinking up.”

  —o—

  Nick snatched up Goldilocks, aimed through the window, searching for his daughter. He saw a group of women, Liz included, looking down at the floor. The soldier was nowhere in sight. Liz was holding an MP-5. What the hell was going on?

  He tore his eye away from the scope. The trooper’s blood was spattered across the fallen leaves, adding to the yellow and orange and crimson hues of fall. “I’d hoped to talk our way out of this.”

  Tran shook his head. “Not have choice, Paloma. He gonna shoot both us. Pretty damn quick.”

  “You think so?”

  Tran reached down for the cigarette he’d dropped a moment before. Still lit. “I fourteen when I flee my father’s burning rubber plantation, ten minute ahead of Vietminh. Nineteen fifty-four. You know about Dien Ben Phu?”

  He opened the cylinder of the little revolver, ejected the empty cartridge. “Twenty one years later, April, 'seventy-five, I flee my burning nightclub, join last journalists out of Saigon.” He flipped the cylinder closed, stared at Nick. “Damn right, I think so.”

  “I won’t argue with a man who's been there, done that. I guess our next move is to get down to the camp, figure a way to get Liz out of the building.” He inspected the dead trooper. “If I put on his Bearclaw uniform, take you prisoner, we can walk right through the gate.”

  Tran's eyes shifted from the dead man to Nick. “Good plan. Except his clothes too small.” Tran picked up Goldilocks, shortened the sling. “I take you prisoner.”

  They were halfway down the long, rocky hillside when SKY SIX shot past, a hundred feet overhead. Tran had wiped brains and blood off the Wiley-X ballistic sunglasses, slung Goldilocks over his left shoulder, and carried the MP-5 on his right. Nick paused, waved at the helicopter. Tran poked him in the back with the H&K. “Stay in character, asshole.”

  Edge touched a key and the screen went dark. He closed his laptop, picked up the slim black folder, and scanned the assemblage for the Speaker of the House of Representatives or the President pro tempore of the Senate. The jumpsuits made the dining hall look like a bowl of orange gumdrops. Gumdrops who seemed to have polished off the rest of the Robert Mondavi with alarming alacrity during his brief presentation.

  He found the Speaker in deep conversation with several Gulf State members, discussing the electoral ramifications of oil-eating bacteria in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves.

  A minute later Edge and the Speaker delivered the folder to the President pro tempore of the Senate. The white haired octogenarian silently read the document, then quoted the pertinent Constitutional paragraph from memory. “—transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” He handed the folder to the Speaker with a palsied hand.

  The Speaker perused the short document, counted the signatures of the Cabinet. “It appears we have a new Chief Executive.”

  The Senator glowered. “Not yet we don’t.” He snatched the folder from the Speaker, and waved it in Edge’s face. “Hear me now! Section Four of the Twenty Fifth Amendment dictates Congress shall decide the issue. I say again. 'Congress shall decide the issue. Assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose, if not in session’.” He slapped the slim black folder against the Secretary’s chest. “Take this back to your Acting President, and tell him to reread his Constitution.”

  —o—

  When SKY SIX flew past Kat spied the two men heading down the steep slope toward the gate into the compound. “I think Nick’s been captured; a soldier has his rifle. I don’t see Tran.”

  Fred leaned past Howie for a look. “Let’s shoot the bastard, pick up Paloma.”

  Howie gave Fred a look. “What movie is that from?”

  Poppy said, “Howie’s right. It ain’t as easy as it looks. Plus, we can’t risk gunfire and the attention it’ll draw. Don’t forget, Tran’s a survivor. I just hope Nick d
oesn’t try any heroics of his own.” He slowed, dropped, settled onto the parade ground between the flagpole and the Sea King.

  Fred said, “What the hell is the president doing here?”

  Kat asked, “Huh?”

  Poppy pointed to the helicopter and the Marine NCO standing at parade rest beside the folding stairway. “Lots of outfits, both government and commercial, use the Sea King, but only one is showroom shiny and has UNITED STATES OF AMERICA painted on the side. That’s Marine One. The president’s personal ride.”

  Kat said, “Yeah? Where the hell is he? And everybody else?”

  Two men in black with silver insignia, silver name tapes, jogged toward their helicopter, submachine guns at port arms.

  Kat opened her door, showed Sergeant Blaine and Corporal Flores the most thigh they’d seen since the day they’d been recruited by Gunny at the strip club. She climbed out of the helicopter, reaching for a helping hand as she did so. There were two volunteers.

  She unzipped the side pocket of her carryall, felt past the Glock, and pulled out the Sennheiser. Kat fumbled with the ON-OFF switch, dropped it at their feet. She bent over to pick up the wireless microphone. Slowly. “Hi,” She said, drawing their eyes back up to her face. “We’re here to interview the president.” She pointed to Marine One. “Of the United States?”

  “Hell, lady, it ain’t the president. Just some old guy, says he’s from Homeland Security, here to deliver some papers. You from the TV?”

  “Yes we are.” Kat called to the men still sitting in SKY SIX. “Howie! Get your camera rolling. If we can’t interview the president, let’s get some human interest footage.” She turned back to the two troopers, and lowered her voice. “Are all you soldier boys so good looking?”