“I don't know. He may have lost his way. I hope he didn't lose his nerve when he saw the police.”
“The truck didn't seem to be in very good shape. It could have broken down,” Biks van Nagel volunteered.
“That would match the rest of our luck,” Van der Merwe commented. “Either way, Oscar has the extra ammunition and the food. There's a Chinese carryout across the street, but I doubt the police will let us order. Are there vending machines in the basement?”
De Ia Rey slumped against the wall. “What will I tell the president?”
“I'd better call his office before the police turn off the telephone lines.” Van der Merwe put the best face on things. “Maybe if we can find some of the documents he was talking about, things will turn out all right.”
De Ia Rey gestured. “The rest of you, go look for Union party papers.” He amended, “Not all of you. Jordaan and Cloete, you two watch the door. Keep watching the police. Keep me informed if anything occurs.”
TELWYN ZALM TOOK VAN DER MERWE'S CALL. ZALM IMMEDIATELY pulled Steen out of a meeting. Steen's reaction was one of stunned incredulity. “How could those idiots-” His voice trailed away.
“They are holed up in the National Assembly building by themselves. Apparently some other dolt in the organization phoned in a bomb threat a few moments before they arrived,” Zalm explained. “I made Van der Merwe read me De la Rey's proclamation over the telephone.”
“What a monumental blunder!” Steen thought furiously. “Where is Schreiner?”
“You sent him off to keep Bloemfontein East from backsliding. It will be hours before he returns.”
“When this is over, remind me to cut out De la Rey's manhood with a dull knife,” Steen commented.
“Not even his wife would notice,” Zalm rejoined, ever practical. “What do we do? De la Rey is telling the world that you ordered this to forestall a coup by Vereshchagin. Our best option is to simply throw him over and tell everyone that he is lying.”
“The election is on Monday,” Steen hissed. He thought for the space of five minutes. Finally, he said, “We are committed. There is no turning back now. How long will it take to assemble the press here?”
“An hour or two.”
“Bring them here in an hour. Vereshchagin planned a coup. De la Rey acted to forestall him. That is all there is to it. Now, get out of here. I must think what I will say.”
“THESE ARE AWFUL.” VAN DER MERWE SPEARED ANOTHER COCKTAIL SAUSAGE with the point of his knife and ate it “If our legislators have to eat them, they are worth every cent of their pay.”
De la Rey fumed. “Nothing! Not one shred of evidence toward a plot. What do we do now?”
“We have been here nearly two hours. If we don't leave, we have to start thinking about setting up a defense,” Van der Merwe urged.
“We would stay in any case. It is a matter of honor,” De la Rey said stubbornly. “The president is counting upon us.”
A light machine gun sprayed fire over the heads of the two men guarding the door. They dropped to the floor as bits of plaster pelted them.
The older of the two, Deon Cloete, lifted his head cautiously. “Sir, there is a man waving a handkerchief who wants to talk to us.”
Van der Merwe punched the intercom savagely. “Listen, everybody hold your fire.”
Crouching, Van der Merwe and De la Rey went to the door. Seeing Roelf Jordaan aiming his rifle, Van der Merwe kicked it aside. “Stop that.” He shouted out the door, “You! That is close enough. What do you want?”
A tall officer with broad shoulders tucked his handkerchief in a side pocket . “I am Major Tlkhon Degtyarov, A Company, 1/35th Rifle Battalion. I presume that I have the honor of addressing Klaes De Ia Rey.” Degtyarov chuckled. “Someone handed me a copy of your proclamation.” By some trick, his words were broadcast over the building's intercom.
“Klaes, we are in deep trouble,” Van der Merwe said very quietly. “That is The Iceman's company out there. Degtyarov is The Iceman's handpicked successor.”
De Ia Rey looked stunned.
Degtyarov continued in a conversational tone, '“The local police gave me a call about two hours ago and said something about a bomb. You have not blown up, so I presume there is nothing to it”
“This business of calling in bomb threats is sounding less and less like a good idea,” Van der Merwe muttered.
Degtyarov adjusted the microphone around his neck. “Until a few moments ago, you had one of my engineers crawling around in the ventilation system. You needn't look--he's gone- but you really should have put someone on the roof to keep us from landing there.”
“What do you want?” De Ia Rey asked.
“The usual. Tbe Johannesburg police have informed me that you have broken any number of municipal ordinances relating to breaking and entering, unlawful possession of firearms, high treason, and willful destruction of vending machines. Colonel Coldewe and I flipped a coin to see which one of us would attend to the bomb and be lost, but to repeat one of his favorite aphorisms, 'We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up.' “
“Never!” De Ia Rey shouted back, looking around for support. “Come in and get us!”
“Sir,” the older of the two door guards murmured, “you really oughtn't to make him mad.”
“Heer De Ia Rey,” Degtyarov said patiently, “when we had to blast Admiral Horii's troops out of the spaceport, we lost good men, and we are not going to go through that again. Moushegian, now, if you please. The gas only.”
Above De la Rey's head, the sprinkler system began discharging a cloud of acrid white gas.
Degtyarov continued, “As you may have noticed, we have control of your building's systems. What you are smelling right now is tear gas with a convulsant agent.”
”We have gas masks!” De la Rey shouted. Choking, he put his mask to his face, as his stomach began turning flip-flops.
“In a few moments, anyone in there who caught a lungful of gas will begin vomiting, which will make it exceedingly difficult for you to keep your masks on. It may have occurred to you that we could have introduced something lethal, and you are probably wondering why we did not” Degtyarov gave them a minute to consider this.
“Q-fever8 is a biological agent from the crack-up. You will begin to show symptoms about half an hour after exposure. Without immediate treatment, the prognosis is not good. Our battalion surgeon, Dr. Natasha Solchava-Snyman, has informed me that the mortality rate approximates 93 percent. I would add that she does not like biologicals and she will be exceedingly annoyed with me for using them, so I would appreciate it very much if you would surrender quietly. You have five minutes in
which to decide.” Degtyarov began walking away.
Van der Merwe tapped Cloete with his foot “Please don't say things like that about the president where people can hear you.”
De la Rey drew a deep breath and immediately thought better of it.“We can hold true to our principles. We will be the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae or the three hundred Texans at the Alamo. We are still the vanguard of a nation!” The gas twisted at his intestines.
Cloete threw up, and Roelf Jordaan followed almost immediately.
Van der Merwe shook his head. “No, Klaes.” He gestured. “It is over. The only thing left in our power to decide is whether our men walk out or leave feet foremost”
Jordaan carefully laid his weapon aside. A second or two later, Cloete copied him.
Van der Merwe shook his head and dropped his weapon on the floor. He walked over and touched the inteicom. “Everybody, it’s over! We are surrendering.” He waited with De Ia Rey as his Silvershirts filed out the building's exits into the bands of the Johannesburg police.
De la Rey, whose stomach was weak, was too busy retching for a final speech.
As the police secured the building and bundled the Silvershirts into vehicles, Seibert Wild shoved a microphone under Ttkhon Degtyarov's nose as
he was about to leave in a Sparrow reconnaissance aircraft. “Seibert Wild, Dagbreek. Major, isn't there a danger of infecting the population with
Q-fever?”
Degtyarov stared at him. “Heer Wild, I do not wish to be rude, but do you truly believe that Sergeant Moushegian and I carry biological agents around in our pockets? As it was, we had
to borrow the tear gas from the police.”
“But I heard you say---”
“Heer De Ia Rey and his people are rather credulous,” Degtyarov explained in a bored voice. “As Colonel Coldewe is fond of pointing out, although the Devil is the father of lies, he neglected to patent the idea. Dr. Solchava would have been exceedingly annoyed if we had actually employed Q-fever.” He climbed into the plane. “Now, I fear Moushegian and I must leave you. Although Operasie Spuungslang seems to have sprung a leak, there may be trouble with Silvershirts elsewhere.” It dawned on Wild that Degtyarov and Moushegian were the only soldiers he had seen, and his jaw dropped.
“I don't know why you are looking at me like that,” Degtyarov said irritably. “There were any number of police to help.”
“THAT CONCLUDES MY PREPARED REMARKS,” STEEN STATED. “I endorse Heer De Ia Rey's actions to prevent the overthrow of our constitution, our laws, and our national existence.”
The buzzing from reporters present was interrupted by a clear voice from the back of the room. “If President Steen is through, I have a few remarks to make.”
Stepping through the crowd, Hans Coldewe walked up to the stage. Steen made a quick motion to kill the microphone, but Coldewe smiled and touched the collar of his battledress. “Thanks, but I'm wired for sound.”
Reaching the stage, Coldewe leaned over the podium. “The Silvershirts occupying the Assembly building surrendered about ten minutes ago to the Johannesburg police. A couple of our people helped with negotiations, although Tlkhon Degtyarov's idea of negotiation may leave something to be desired. The Lord Mayor of Johannesburg has formally declared a state of siege and his police are rounding up all of the Silvershirts they can find.”
Coldewe pulled a rifle magazine out of his left pocket and tossed it to a reporter in the front row. “That includes the six choirboys who were standing outside when I arrived.”
He reached into his right pocket and pulled out a handful of computer disks. “These are copies of what the police pulled off the computer in the Johannesburg chapter house. The public prosecutor told me it was okay to hand them out. President Steen neglected to mention that his party funds the Silvershirts, and the ones the police pulled out of the Assembly building claim that Steen personally ordered the attack two days ago. Now maybe I'm just a simple soldier, but to me, seizing the leg islature to stop a coup sounds kind of silly.”
Coldewe jammed his hands in his pockets to soften the image he was presenting on television. “I'll say this. Your president just lied through his teeth. We took an oath to defend this planet and its constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, which means that if President Steen orders his Silvershirts to overturn the constitution, we'd have to send a policeman to arrest them. But you people need to decide whether you want to bother having laws and a constitution in the future.”
He looked at President Steen. “ 'Flee from all prophets, from all those who are ready to die for the truth; for they will also provide the death of many others before their own.' “
He walked away whistling '“The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Sunday (1173)
PROUD OF THEIR ACKNOWLEDGED ASSOCIATION WITH STEEN AND the Nationalists, most of De la Rey's men confessed to everything they had done and a few things they hadn't. The Johannesburg police cheerfully produced snippets of their confessions throughout the day.
A few tried to exculpate themselves; one member claimed to have been drunk at the time and asserted that he thought that they were driving to a beer hall. That remark and Coldewe's comment about sending a policeman both made headlines, and the one thing that no politician survives is ridicule.
Six Nationalist candidates for election met overnight and took the unusual step of purchasing a full-page ad in all eleven local newspapers denouncing Steen and distancing themselves from the Silvershirts. The Silvershirt district leaders also convened and hastily issued a statement to the effect that Klaes De la Rey was suffering from a disorder of the brain and was not responsible for his actions. which did their organization remarkably little good.
With a delicate taste for the jugular, in both major speeches for the day, Rikki Sanmartin chose to refer to Saturday afternoon's events as the “Beer Hall Putsch.”
Monday (1173)
“THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME YOUR PREPARATIONS NOW THAT it has become politically expedient to do so,” Mutaro said as be walked the length of C Company's casern with Coldewe. He added with intended irony, “I understand that two of the men captured in the Assembly building were wanted by the police for murder. What a coincidence that President Steen adopted such an ill-considered policy on the eve of reelection, and how very strange that be only chose to communicate with Heer De Ia Rey by telephone.”
Coldewe refused to be drawn. “Rikki's poll watchers are already scenting victory. Making Steen look like a villain was important, but making him look like a villain and a fool is so much more satisfying.” He pointed to the landing strip. “That’s Mika Hiltunen's platoon packing ammo into one-ton containers.” He shaded his eyes. “And it looks like they're still ragging Uborevich about his girlfriend.”
Mutaro clutched at Coldewe's sleeve, pointing to the two armored cars being worked on at the near end of the runway. “Please excuse me for saying this, but the soldier there looks like a woman.”
“Oh. She is. That’s Valeska Remmar. She is the gunner on armored car 14/3, and her father, Mikhail, with the limp, is the vehicle commander. Valeska's mother is a commo specialist now, so she's going, too.”
Remmar was a tall girl with an uneven suntan and dark, kinky hair, some of which was peeping out from under her cap.
“Isn't this unusual?” Mutaro asked.
“I don't know. Mikhail's wife used to be his driver, and a female cousin was Mikhail's gunner for a few years before she got around to starting a family, so that crew has always been a family affair. Although, come to think of it, Valeska's brother went into forestry, so I guess it is a little unusual.” Coldewe stared off into space. “We had four crews who wanted to come. They were all pretty much equally good, so we let them draw straws.”
Sensing Mutaro's obvious concern, Coldewe took him by the arm. “'The light attack detachment we're bringing along consists of two scout vehicles--the troops call them 'slicks'--and two Type 97FA 'Cadillac' armored cars. We've made a few modifications since your government was kind enough to provide them--the slicks we're bringing have 12mm heavy machine guns in place of their original armament, and the Cadillacs have had their operating range extended. Mikhail can explain better than I can.”
Out of the comer of his eye, Coldewe saw Mikhail snap his fingers, and his daughter popped the gum out of her mouth.
As they reached the two armored cars, Coldewe made introductions. “Commissioner, this is Section Sergeant Mikhail Remmar and his crew, Superior Privates Valeska Remmar and Rian Lange. Mikhail, this is Commissioner Mutaro. Where's Savichev hiding?”
Mikhail pointed toward the barracks. “Some things never change. He's arguing with Major Bukhanov about spares.”
Mutaro looked up at the Cadillac's turret “May I look inside, Section Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” Mikhail replied, looking at Coldewe. “Please step around to the side with the little white gallows insignia. It’s bad luck to climb up on this side.”
Mutaro walked around, and Mikhail and his driver, Lange, helped him up.
From the hatch,the Cadillac's turret appeared incredibly cramped. Mutaro stepped onto the driver's seat, and Lange showed him how to use the handholds to lower himself. Valeska Remmar occupied the
gunner's seat.
“This is a Type 97FA armored car with a 90mm electromagnetic gun,” Mikhail explained. “We, ah. picked up a few of them during the second rebellion.”
Mutaro placed his hands on the wheel. “It appears very well preserved.”
Mikhail nudged Lange, who was primarily responsible for the vehicle's maintenance and was slightly younger than the vehicle he drove. “She's had two refits since she entered service, so she is in very good shape, sir. Composites don't fatigue the way metals do.”
Coldewe grinned. “Given the cost of shipping replacement items to colonial worlds, your government built its equipment to last.”
“I have always wondered why we never employed tanks on colonial worlds,” Mutaro commented, to see how Mikhail would respond.
“Well, sir, you know what it costs to push weight into orbit. This vehicle weighs twelve tons loaded, and a tank weighs sixty.” Remmar shrugged. “A tank drinks fuel like it was vodka, chews roads for breakfast, and needs at least sixteen man-hours of maintenance a day. Tanks belong on Earth.”
Mutaro tugged on the wheel experimentally. “Colonel Coldewe was kind enough to tell me that this vehicle has been modified. Perhaps you could explain.”
“Yes, sir.” Mikhail looked at Coldewe. “The biggest problems with the Type 97E4 were the lack of range and the increased maintenance. We haven't been able to do much to make them easier to maintain--keeping the electromagnetic gun working right is pretty much a full-time job--but we raised the deck four centimeters and added fuel cells there and under the seats to increase the range.”
“Doesn't this pose an additional hazard of fire?” Mutaro asked.
Remmar nodded, silently complimenting Mutaro for choosing an intelligent question. “We have shielding and fire retardant, and the underseat cells are the first to empty, but it does pose an additional danger. What we found when we looked over the 97FAs we shot up during the rebellion was that if the crew compartment takes a solid hit, anybody who isn't dead already is probably going to get electrocuted when the electromagnetic sink discharges, so it doesn't much matter. A lot of our boys don't much like the 97FAs for that reason.”
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