Standing Before Hell's Gate

by William Alan Webb

  He’d assumed that Bondo and Roe would return to pick them up, but the figure on the platform had a cloth wrapped around its face and, from its size, could have been either one or even someone else. There was no way to tell, nor did it really matter; they had to go through with the plan no matter what happened.

  As it turned out, the pilot was Bondo. Landing far enough away that backwash didn’t coat Randall with dust, he walked over and wiped his hands on his pants. “How’d you boys like day two out here? Talking to the snakes yet? Hey, where’s Carlos? We need to get going before that storm hits.”

  “In the wind.”

  “What?” Bondo glanced over each shoulder. “It’s not even blowing that hard yet.”

  “He’s gone,” Randall said. “Bunny’s gone. He’s out there somewhere.” He waved his hand toward the desert.

  Bondo squinted and examined his face as Randall stared back at him. Randall assumed he was looking for signs of deceit, but he doubted that fooling a man who’d never played poker with pilots would be hard. It was hard staying focused on Bondo when Carlos rose from the shallow trench they’d dug that afternoon. Dirt and sand poured from his body in yellow clouds. They’d agreed that if Bondo heard him, Randall would stop him from reacting by using his own rifle, but the big man showed no sign of being on alert.

  “You mean gone, like into the desert gone?” Bondo said.

  Randall ignored Carlos raising his rifle toward the back of Bondo’s head. “That’s it. He couldn’t take it any more and took off that way.” He pointed east.

  “He’ll be back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “There’s a crack in the desert out that way, really wide and deep. Runs a long way north and south and there’s no going around it.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got these flitters,” Randall said. With that his eyes flicked to Carlos.

  He pushed the muzzle of his rifle against Bondo’s head. “Don’t make any sudden moves, big boy.”

  Bondo stiffened. “I knew you fuckers couldn’t be trusted…”

  A sudden wind gust filled the air with dust and pebbles, the last gasp of the storm.

  “You’re a regular Einstein,” Randall said. He stuck out his hand and waggled his fingers. “The relays?”

  Bondo handed them over and Randall clicked them into place without trouble. Unlike most military gear, the hovercraft had a modular assembly that simplified both production and maintenance. Both powered up immediately. He then went to Bondo’s flitter and removed the identical relay.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Randall told him. “We’re gonna take your rifle and this relay and leave them a few hundred yards out from here on a big boulder. That way you don’t get stuck out here.” Another gust blew his hat off. He retrieved it before continuing and put the strap around his neck. “Don’t get in our way and you won’t get hurt.”

  Bondo looked over his shoulder, met Carlos’ eyes, but then looked beyond him. When Randall followed the direction of his gaze, he had to cup hands around his eyes to keep out debris stirred up by the coming storm. Through the haze of dust, he spotted multiple somethings moving their way. “Shit!”

  Bondo smiled.

  “What?” Carlos said, still focused on Bondo.

  “Second wife time! Move!”

  They were on their flitters and moving within seconds. Randall checked his power levels, which registered fifty-three percent. How was that possible? He knew he was missing something but didn’t have time to figure out what.

  Despite the turbulence, they both accelerated toward maximum speed until the wind nearly flipped Carlos. The platform vibrated like an out-of-track rotor blade on a helicopter. He struggled to keep from impacting the ground at seventy miles per hour. With no other choice, both men slowed to less than forty. As the desert raced away under them, it seemed like they blazed along, until a glance behind showed their four experienced pursuers closing fast.

  A black line ahead had to be the crack that Bondo spoke of. Flying over it wasn’t a problem, but that wouldn’t shake the posse on their tail, and there didn’t seem much doubt about what would happen if they were recaptured. Without goggles, they couldn’t keep going much longer, as more and more dust swirled upward. Another look back showed their pursuers had closed to about four hundred yards.

  Although the craft was different, the situation was an environment Randall and Carlos knew well. Randall’s brain did the calculations automatically between the maximum speed they could make without crashing, about forty in the current wind conditions, and that of their more experienced pursuers, at least sixty. That meant their closing rate neared thirty feet per second, which only gave them forty seconds until they were caught. He and Carlos either had to increase speed and risk disaster, or evade them somehow. But how could they evade when the people chasing them had more experience in flitters?

  They raced toward the ravine and Randall saw his chance. He couldn’t risk taking a hand off the controls to get Carlos’ attention, so he risked disaster and sped up. When he nosed ahead of Carlos, he veered hard right into the darkness of the crack and hoped Carlos would follow.

  It was a tight squeeze, but to the two gunship pilots the violent maneuvering seemed like they were at home in Tank Girl. It was the kind of flying that came naturally to Randall, and inside the sheltering walls the wind had dropped to near zero.

  The width of the crevice didn’t exceed twenty feet. Each side varied from ninety degrees sheer down to the bottom, which appeared to be at least two hundred feet down, and less than sixty degrees in a few places. As they flew along, the width in places narrowed to less than ten feet. The safe play was to slow down, but instead Randall zipped through without reducing speed.

  The ravine bent to the right. Randall’s last glance behind showed they were opening the distance. As experienced as they might be in flying over the desert, their pursuers weren’t trained pilots. Randall’s plan was working.

  Until he looked at the power gauge: twenty-one percent.

  Damn!

  Whatever they did, they’d have to do it fast. Scenarios flashed through his mind. The ravine bottom offered no solace and would only get them shot from above. He considered going back up into the desert with hopes that the winds might bring some chance to escape, but he nixed that, too, as the chasers had already proven they were better in the turbulent air left over by the storm. Nor did going straight help; he couldn’t be sure how accurate the power gauges were, and if they ran out of juice so far up, the fall would be fatal.

  Desperation brought an idea. As the ravine bent right at an acute angle, a number of collapsed areas showed up on his right. These were effectively caves created by whatever stresses had triggered the fault in the first place. Most were small, but if one were big enough for them…

  And just like that, he spotted one ahead. The air around it was hazy and he got a brief glimpse of something burning on the ravine floor below, but had no time for a look. Risking losing control, he used his left hand to signal Carlos. Zooming toward the black mouth, he decelerated and hovered by the mouth. Five feet wide at the bottom, tapering to less than three feet at the apex, the cave roof stood about six feet high. In other words, it was a tight fit.

  There was no way to know if the cave connected to the surface twenty feet above. There could be rattlesnakes inside, or scorpions, or even a coyote den, but with no other choice, both men gently steered their flitters into the narrow opening, dismounted, turned the machines sideways, and went back thirty feet. Then they crouched and waited.

  #

  Chapter 82

  I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

  Warren Zevon

  Sierra Army Depot

  1834 hours, April 30

  “Sir, I hate to do this again, but I need you to wake up.”

  Green Ghost had an arm over his face so that his mumbled response also came out muffled. “What time is it?”

  “It’s nineteen fifteen hours.”r />
  “Did Vapor put you up to this?”

  “I wouldn’t do that, sir. Junker Jane says it’s urgent.”

  Green Ghost moved his arm, hoping to see the face of the man leaning over his makeshift bed. Instead all he saw was a black outline against the slightly less black night. “Tell her I’m coming.”

  When he dragged himself awake, he followed the man to Fleming’s office, where the only illumination was a battle lamp. The shadows made an obviously exhausted Norm Fleming look worse than Green Ghost felt. Fleming’s entire body seemed to sag. But then he got a good look at Jane, who in the wan light looked closer to sixty than forty.

  He hadn’t even sat down when she blurted out her news. “There’s a big force of Americans to the south of Carson City.”

  “Maybe they’ve got coffee.”

  “Nick, listen up,” Fleming said. “This is bad.”

  Ignoring the use of his first name, Green Ghost rubbed his eyes. “How’s that, Socrates? Don’t they have fuel trucks?”

  Fleming turned to Jane and lifted his eyebrows in question.

  “Yes, four of them. And lots of those AFV things, but—”

  “Wheels or tracks?” Green Ghost interrupted.

  “Ummm… tracks like tanks, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “Tracks.”

  “Bradleys,” he and Fleming said simultaneously.

  Green Ghost added, “This is all stuff we expected.”

  “There’s one thing we didn’t expect, and it’s the bad part.” Fleming pointed at Jane and Green Ghost followed his finger to look at her.

  “There’s Chinese with them.”

  #

  Doyle, California

  1850 hours, April 30

  For his part, Major Dieter Strootman wasn’t surprised by the roadblock at the tiny cluster of ruined structures beside Highway 395 marked by a sign that read DOYLE, CA. The old road map which acted as their only guide showed a secondary road marked only 322 leading from the hamlet to the desert south of Sierra Army Depot, so a checkpoint of some kind was not only to be expected, it would have been negligent had there not been one. What he hadn’t expected were men forbidding them to advance further under threat of being fired upon.

  The column’s lead Bradley idled in front of what passed for a barrier across the highway, being an old wooden plank laid across two rusted-out fifty-gallon drums. Standing behind this flimsy demarcation line stood an unshaven sergeant holding a Carl Gustav, an unmistakable threat. In response, the gunner directing the Bradley’s M242 Bushmaster chain gun aimed it right at his fellow American, while its commander leaned out of the turret to bring Strootman up to speed.

  “Says we can’t go any further, Major, unless General Angriff himself comes up here and orders them to allow us to pass. I thought you might want to explain the situation.”

  “Thank you, Staff Sergeant Immeritt.”

  Strootman walked to the barrier while observing the sergeant standing guard and the five men in firing positions around him, some of them also holding Carl Gustavs. He only had a few seconds to decide how to play it, but the man’s tired and dirty face didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by having a cannon pointed at his chest.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Sergeant? We’ve been on the road a long time, and we’re tired.”

  “I’m sorry, Major, but my orders are that only General Angriff in person can order this barrier taken down.”

  “Who gave you these orders, Sergeant?”

  “My C.O., Major Ball. He indicated the orders came from General Fleming, and the only one person who could override that order would be General Angriff. I am authorized to allow one officer through as a liaison.”

  Strootman took a moment to study the men at the roadblock before wheeling and moving back down the column. He stopped and turned back when the sergeant called him.

  “Major! I wouldn’t try entering the base by going cross country. Anticipating another Chinese attack, we’ve spent every spare moment burying mines we found in the bunkers here. Must be thousands of ’em out there.”

  #

  “Do you believe him?” asked Captain Chen Yi of the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese liaison officer stood to his left rear, but Major Strootman didn’t turn even a little bit. Instead he focused all of his attention on Colonel Young.

  “It’s a pertinent question, Dieter. Do you think he’s running a con or could he be serious?”

  “I have no way of knowing, Colonel. All I’ve got is what my gut tells me.”

  “You Americans and your gut.” That time it was the other Chinese captain, Xiao Ki, the intelligence officer. Strootman couldn’t help staring at him sometimes because while his round face certainly appeared to be Chinese, his hair was pale blonde. “The man is obviously lying.”

  Colonel Young rubbed his mouth and stepped away, thinking. What he really wanted to do was order the two Chinese officers shot and his regiment to rebase to Sierra, but logistically that was impossible. Within a fortnight, they’d all be starving, nor would four tankers of gas last forever. “I’m sending the officer,” he finally said. “But not you, Dieter. I need you here. Find me Lieutenant Ruiz. I want her for this mission.”

  “Why Ruiz, Colonel?”

  Young smiled as though at a memory. “She once told me she’d never gas me.”

  “What does that mean?” said Yi.

  “It means she won’t bullshit me.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Yeah,” Young said. “I do. My gut tells me she’s not lying.”

  #

  “This is not how things are done in my army!” Yi said. His orderly, Lieutenant Li Da, stood nearby. The screech of a passing prairie falcon momentarily diverted his gaze skyward.

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Colonel Young said.

  “It is an inefficient way to run an army, trusting your instincts instead of enforcing discipline. My report to General Steeple will reflect my disagreement with your decisions.”

  “That’s your prerogative, Captain.”

  “I will also express confusion at how you were assigned this mission.”

  “I can answer that for you,” said Major Strootman. “It’s because this regiment kicked your ass at Prescott last year. And those people up at Sierra kicked it again this year.”

  Young held up one hand in a stop motion. “Enough—”

  Yi nodded and scowled at Strootman. “Thank you, Colonel, for—”

  “And you, Captain Yi, are a guest in my headquarters.” Young gave the Chinese captain his best commanding officer’s glare. “So instead of chewing you out for interrupting me, I will politely ask you not to do it again, lest you force me to take measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Sulking, Yi stalked off just as Lieutenant Ruiz approached Colonel Young’s command vehicle. Small, with quick brown eyes, Ruiz had been instrumental in the previous year’s battle as part of the regimental headquarters. She had impressed Young with her calm demeanor even during the height of the battle.

  He wasted no time before taking her aside and explaining her mission. “I need you to make General Fleming understand our situation, Maria. You are authorized to tell him that General Angriff is no longer in charge of Overtime, and that General Steeple is. You must impress upon him that we are under strict orders to occupy Sierra one way or another, and that includes suppressing any opposition, by whatever means necessary. You are not authorized to conduct any negotiations or to reveal more than I have told you. Are these orders clear?”

  The critical nature of what Young asked of her showed in deep lines cut into her youthful face. “Ummm… yes, sir. Colonel… am I allowed to mention our new… arrangement with the Chinese?”

  Young thought about it. “Dieter, didn’t you serve under General Fleming once?”

  “Briefly.”

  “What do you think?”

  “General Fleming is one of the most meticulous officers I’ve ever met, si
r. He and I played chess some, and he killed me every time. He can see five moves ahead of the rest of us. I think you have to tell him, Colonel, you have to let him know how bad the odds are against him.”

  “Very well. All right, Maria, you can tell him that a second Chinese force is approaching from the west and that we are now allies. He’s not going to like it one little bit, but you’ve got to convince him that resistance will just mean futile casualties. He can’t win this one.”

  “I’ll do my best, Colonel.”

  “All right, but look, it’s already late today. Let’s just wait until the morning. Negotiations are always better when all parties are rested and thinking clearly.”

  Ruiz’s relief was palpable in her loud exhale and smile. As they watched her half walk, half run toward the front of the column to inform Sergeant Immeritt of the delay, Strootman leaned closer.

  “For the record, I don’t like it, either.”

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “This alliance with the PLA.”

  “Oh. Me three. I’d just as soon wipe out the lot of ’em, starting with that arrogant prick Yi.”

  “Do you think General Angriff will make it? To someplace safe, I mean.”

  “He won’t go somewhere safe. From what I know of General Angriff, he’s on his way back to Prime, and when he gets there, somebody’s gonna get an ass whoopin’.”

  “Hope you’re right, sir.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  #

  Chapter 83

  Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Overtime Prime

  1834 hours, April 30

  Tom Steeple stared at Károly Rosos’ back as his unwanted visitor stood admiring the view of the desert beyond the blast windows. The presence of the least pleasant of the Rosos trio had not been his idea, although he did understand Károly’s influence with the Chinese had been invaluable. At some point, he might be able to risk purging the Rosos clan from his plans, but that time was still far in the future.