Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Loren gave a scream of frustration and clawed for a spare magazine. The Blazer disappeared behind the shattered work shack, vanishing into the plume of range-fire smoke. Loren dropped the first magazine and slammed in the second, but his moment was gone.

  Patience had vanished into the Figueracion Ranch, hidden behind smoke and darkness, the cloud of uncertainty. The Blazer was capable of traveling across country for as long as necessary. He could hope Patience would drive into an arroyo he didn’t know was there, but he couldn’t count on it. Most likely Patience would encounter a ranch road and follow it to a gate that led onto one of the county roads.

  Loren rose to his feet, breathing hard, and tried to remember what it was he had planned to do at this point. He looked down and saw rifle casings gleam in the firelight. He fell to his knees and started snatching them up in his gloved hands.

  The sound of a shot made his nerves leap. He looked wildly around. The shot was followed by another.

  Ammunition, he realized, cooking off in the fire. Nothing to concern him.

  He’d used sabot rounds in the Dragunov because the sabot blew away as soon as the bullet exited the barrel, and thus made it impossible to trace a bullet to a particular weapon. But ejector mechanisms could also leave traceable marks on rifle brass, and Loren intended to pick up his own.

  He jammed brass into his pockets until he could find no more. There were probably more casings out there, but he couldn’t see them in the dark. He straightened up again, looking for Patience and his Blazer, but he could see nothing on the mesa besides fire and wreckage.

  The sound of a siren came gusting on the wind. It was time to leave. Loren dropped back into the arroyo and began moving along it. The weight of the flak jacket had him breathless and soaked with sweat. He picked up the Ingram where he’d dropped it, reloaded, put it in a pocket along with the jingling brass. Then he came upon the Blazer that the stranger had parked here. Its underside was clogged with tumbleweed that it had picked up as it scraped along the floor of the arroyo. Its door was ajar. He opened the door and saw the keys dangling in the lock.

  Loren had parked Archie Gribbin’s Jeep in the bed of the Rio Seco north of here, and had planned to walk to it along the arroyo, then drive to town along the riverbed. Now he wouldn’t have to walk all that way.

  He got in the Blazer and started the engine. It had already been shifted into four-wheel drive. As he revved it he looked down at the metal box that covered the machine pistols, grasped the latch, pulled it back. Two UZIs sat under their locked safety bar. He pressed 571, just as he had the other day, and the light went green. Triumph danced in his heart. He pulled the bar back and yanked one of the machine pistols free.

  Patience wasn’t the only one who hadn’t got around to changing a combination.

  A siren whooped by on the highway. Sheriff’s office or Loren’s own department, not the volunteer firemen. Their sirens didn’t have the Yelp setting.

  He drew the Mac-11 from his pocket, threw the gun out the window— he didn’t need it anymore— and then he put the Blazer in reverse. He thumped carefully down the arroyo, tumbleweed grating beneath his floorboards.

  “Cosmo, Cosmo.” Patience’s voice made Loren jump as it leaped from his radio. “Report your position. Over.”

  Loren put in the clutch and let the Blazer drift to a halt. His mind ticked over like the engine. Sweat dripped off his nose, patted on his jacket.

  Cosmo. That would be Cosmo Vann, another of Patience’s men who had been present on the night that Randal Dudenhof appeared. He hadn’t been connected with anything else—Rivers hadn’t reported that his schedule had been altered like the others—but apparently he’d been a part of this from the beginning.

  Or maybe he was just a late convert. Carried away by enthusiasm as Patience drew his line on the pavement and reenacted the Alamo.

  “Cosmo. Report your position. Over.”

  Loren tried to think like an Apache.

  He reached for the microphone and took it in his hand. He thumbed the Transmit button and tried to thin his voice, fill it with weariness and pain.

  “I’m hurt,” he said. “I need help.”

  What the hell. It seemed worth a try.

  He waited. The radio’s speaker hissed white noise for a long moment, and then Patience’s voice returned.

  “Bastard. You’re a dead man, you bastard.”

  Loren found himself snarling at the sound. He thumbed the Transmit button. “You ran, cocksucker,” he said. “You panicked and ran when the crunch came.”

  “I’m going to cut your fucking throat.”

  “Coward,” Loren said. “You don’t have the guts.”

  “I’m going to rip your nuts off.”

  “Listen to yourself, leader-of-men. You’re a failure, a disgrace. Why don’t you blow your fucking brains out?”

  “Come and get me!” There was the start of a laugh, high-pitched and hysterical, pure adrenaline bursting past his throat, and then the transmission cut off.

  More sirens whooped on the highway. Loren listened to them for a moment, then hung up the microphone.

  Come and get him. Right.

  “Hey.” Another voice on the channel, female this time. “Was that you, boss?”

  The woman’s voice was disbelieving. Loren laughed— Patience had been threatening murder on a public channel.

  There was no answer. Loren let out the clutch, began backing down the arroyo again.

  “Mr. Patience, do you copy? Were you on this channel?”

  The walls of the arroyo fell away and the Blazer jarred onto the dry gravel bed of the Rio Seco. Loren put the Blazer into first gear and spun the wheel.

  “Mr. Patience, do you copy? Have you completed your exercise? Over.”

  There was still enough light to see fairly well in the steep-sided river bottom. Loren didn’t bother with the headlights. The Blazer’s four wheels clawed at the uncertain ground and the vehicle lurched forward as gravel rattled against its bottom.

  “Mr. Vann? Did you request assistance? Over.”

  Gribbin’s Jeep loomed ahead, parked against the north bank. Vann must have passed it going the other way; maybe he’d even scouted it out. Loren pulled the Blazer up next to the Jeep, killed the engine, got out, opened the Blazer’s tailgate. Then he opened the back of the Jeep and started transferring the rest of the explosives and incendiaries he’d taken from the Wahoo Mine to the Blazer. Sweat and dust streaked his face.

  “This channel is to be used for official communication only.” Sententiously. “Unauthorized use is forbidden by federal protocols. Phony emergencies are subject to severe penalties.”

  Jesus, Loren thought. Patience really has them trained.

  He put the last box, wine-bottle incendiaries, on the front passenger seat, then threw a tarp over the bombs in back. He’d return for the Jeep before dawn— no police search would go out this far before light. Any evidence around the burning shack would be thoroughly trampled by firemen.

  Loren got in the Blazer and headed up the river again. Venus glowed softly above the horizon like a hovering UFO. Meditations on illegality flittered through Loren’s mind like a flock of blackbirds. Everyone in this scenario, he thought, was held there by unbreakable strands of guilt.

  Patience couldn’t ask anyone for help, not without admitting what he’d done. Loren was in the same situation. And the Fortunes and the other eco-activists couldn’t tell anyone about where the explosives had come from without admitting that the federal charges against them were true.

  But Patience was under a deadline. Four of his men were lying dead on the edge of the UFO landing field. If he was going to head off questions, he’d have to work out some kind of explanation for what had happened, an explanation that would give him an alibi and also account for what had happened to people under his orders.

  Unless, of course, Patience decided to roll up his pants legs and wade across the Rio Grande to Mexico. It was the most sensible thing to do, an
d therefore Loren assumed Patience wouldn’t do it. Patience had never done the sensible thing, not once.

  Meanwhile, all Loren had to do was assert his own innocence. He hadn’t really left anything on the scene that could absolutely convict him; and he would be conducting the first part of the investigation himself, or sharing the task with Shorty. If the feds were drawn into it, he’d have a head start on cleaning up the evidence that would point toward him, and emphasizing what pointed toward Patience.

  Where were you that afternoon and evening, Chief Hawn? I went hunting to clear my head, then I just drove around for a while. I went home and went to bed without listening to my messages, and I unplugged the phone. And by the way, if it’s credence you want, I’ve got some freshly killed birds in my freezer that might confirm my story.

  Loren laughed. This was glorious.

  The Rio Seco embankments widened, revealing Atocha’s lights gleaming on the bluffs on either side of the stream bed. Loren passed under the bridge and reached the point where Estes Street dipped into the river; he flicked the lights on and swung onto Estes going south. The engine roared as the Blazer climbed out of the riverbed, then swung onto Railroad Avenue heading east. Air pouring through the open window cooled the sweat on his face. He shifted out of four-wheel drive.

  Heading for ATL. Loren and Patience, each from the other’s point of view, had vanished into his own cloud of uncertainty, momentum and location unknown. Loren had to narrow the parameters of the experiment.

  “Mr. Patience, please report.” The female voice again. The message was repeated. Then: “We have received a call from the sheriff’s office that one of our vehicles was involved in an explosion and fire. There are casualties. Mr. Patience, please respond. Over. Are you ten-seven?”

  The message repeated several times, and then the voice ordered someone named Mr. Shrum to report to the fire site and see if any friendly personnel were there. Shrum reported that he was already there and about to contact local authorities.

  ATL glowed on the horizon, the perimeter lights casting an icy halogen gleam on the wire-topped fence. Loren turned off the road before he reached the facility and took the gravel outside perimeter road.

  The days of wind had piled thousands of tumbleweeds against the south side of the fence. Security cameras atop aluminum poles tracked slowly back and forth, the poles themselves swaying slightly in the warm gusts. Loren no doubt looked like one of ATL’s own perimeter patrols.

  Loren drove two miles along the road and made a U-turn, then started driving along the fence. He groped in his pocket for a lighter. When the cameras seemed to be pointing elsewhere, he lit the fuse atop one of the wine-bottle incendiaries and heaved it out the window. The pile of dry weed caught instantly. Loren continued his slow drive, flinging out one incendiary after another. Loren’s heart leaped with every explosion, and he burst out in laughter as he heaved the bottles. Silver-bright jellied gasoline poured through the fence as orange flames towered high, reaching for the stars. Wind-whipped sparks flew high over the razor wire, landing among the dry vegetation on the other side.

  It was just what the Apaches had done to Atocha in 1824, but a stranger wouldn’t know that. ATL had blinded itself to local history, and history was about to have its revenge.

  Come home, Mr. Patience, Loren thought. Your house is burning down.

  Come to the apocalypse, Mr. Patience. Come to the Days of Atonement.

  *

  By the time Loren reached the highway, the landscape behind him was moving, a black-orange monster rolling across ATL’s property. The Blazer rang with Loren’s laughter. The woman on the radio was calling for available units to investigate and announced she’d called the volunteer fire department. Since they— having local priorities well in hand— were fighting the fire Loren had started on the Figueracion Ranch, Loren figured they would be a while. Loren headed north, past the railroad bridge and the main entrance, to the north perimeter of the facility. He shifted to four-wheel drive and headed cross-country, staying north of the perimeter road and out of sight of surveillance cameras.

  Shrum’s radio voice reported from the UFO field that he’d found Blazer No. 6 near the site of the explosion and that Vincent Nazzarett’s body was next to it. It looked as if Vinnie had been shot.

  There were at least two other bodies on the scene, though he couldn’t identify them. The woman dispatcher announced that Nazzarett had been on a special exercise with Mr. Patience and that Patience hadn’t answered his radio. She would contact Mr. Patton at Vista Linda and ask him to take charge.

  The dispatcher probably had her hands full by now, and had other things to do than keep up the perimeter watch. Loren spun the wheel, pressed the accelerator, and launched the Blazer across the perimeter road at the shining silver fence.

  The chain link shivered and buckled and gave way. Aluminum poles tore from the ground. Piled tumbleweed leaped like frightened jackrabbits. Razor wire screeched wickedly along the roof, raising Loren’s nape hairs, then was left behind.

  Loren continued his slalom across country, dodging chollo, yucca, and ocotillo. He could see very little ahead of him, neither the glow of illuminated buildings nor that of the fire he’d started, just the next bit of scrub. And then there was a black line ahead, something higher than the flat horizon, and he slowed and came to a halt.

  There was an earthen mound stretching across his path, maybe ten feet high, stretching left and right as far as he could see. Stuck into it were things that seemed like traffic signs, round objects atop poles seen only in silhouette.

  He left the Blazer idling, took the Dragunov, and climbed the mound. The climb left him breathless.

  The mound was about twenty feet across. Lights twinkled distantly a couple miles away. Beyond was a crescent of flame, a wicked orange-red, its precise outline partly obscured by its own smoke. Loren laughed at the sight. For the first time he could smell fire. Behind him the woman dispatcher, her voice loud in the night, continued moving units around, continued asking Patience to check in.

  Loren stepped up to the nearest of the poles. It was a traffic sign, or something similar, an aluminum pole ten feet high set into a thing like a Christmas-tree stand and held against the wind with guy wires. The round sign atop the pole bore only the number 33.

  Loren looked left and right. The signs on either side were presumably 32 and 34.

  Whatever it was, it was none of his business. He could get the Blazer over the mound without any trouble, and that was what he had come to check.

  A helicopter roared out of the north, passed overhead at a low altitude and high speed. Forest Service, probably, come to check out the range fire.

  As the Blazer topped the rise, it occurred to Loren that he was rolling over the LINAC. Long shotguns buried in the ground, he thought, barrel-to-barrel.

  Maybe something more needed to go boom before Patience would show up. Maybe a range fire wasn’t enough for him.

  The more destruction, he thought, the wider the investigation. And Loren was just the person to make certain the investigation focused on Patience and his activities.

  Maybe this would all end up making Cipriano a hero. Deputy Chief Dominguez, he thought, shot while attempting to arrest the perpetrators. The murderers subsequently blew themselves up trying to set off an explosion to cover their crime.

  It was possible, he supposed, that the public was stupid enough to believe that. He doubted whether any investigators were— not unless their own superiors motivated them to drop the investigation.

  Which could be arranged.

  He came to a blacktop road and turned onto it, shifting the Blazer out of four-wheel drive. The lights of the main facility glowed ahead of him. He slowed the Blazer, downshifting, while he got his bearings. Another helicopter roared overhead.

  The security office, he thought, was in a metal-walled building on the other side of the facility. He hit the accelerator, shifted into a higher gear, pulled the cowl of his watch cap down over his fa
ce. The faster and less recognizable he was, the better.

  There were only a few cars parked by some of the office buildings— the area the employees called the Fairgrounds was otherwise empty. The strange jagged curves of Discovered Symmetries slid by on his right. He dodged between two buildings and saw Security HQ and its parking lot right ahead of him.

  Six identical Blazers were lined up in the parking lot, all reversed in their parking spaces as if anticipating a fast getaway. There were also about a dozen civilian vehicles. Just, Loren thought, like horses tied up at the cavalry corral. The lot was well lit, but Loren couldn’t see anyone in it. He drove into the lot and parked at the end of the row of Blazers.

  The dispatcher was having trouble getting Mr. Patton, or indeed any of the off-duty people, to report. It was a Friday night; most were off somewhere having fun.

  Loren stepped out of his vehicle, smashed the passenger-door window of the next Blazer with the butt of his UZI, and opened the door. He opened the gun compartment, pressed 571 with a gloved finger, and liberated another pair of machine pistols and several magazines. Helicopter blades throbbed through the air. There was a heavy smell of smoke. Loren put two of his three weapons back in his own vehicle, then stepped out the front of the line of Blazers, got on one knee, set the gun for full automatic, and opened fire.

  Joy filled Loren’s heart as bullets whanged off grilles. Headlights exploded. Blazers seemed to sink to their knees in submission as air gushed from punctured tires.

  There was sudden silence as the magazine ran dry. Over the ringing in his ears Loren could hear pleasant summer-rain sounds as perforated radiators drained their contents onto the blacktop. Loren gave a long war whoop as he dropped the empty magazine, inserted another, and opened fire again, concentrating his fire on the vehicles that hadn’t been sufficiently damaged the first time.

  When that magazine was dry he inserted another. Let the apocalypse be general, he thought, delighted with his capacity to destroy, and he turned and hosed the civilian vehicles. He didn’t want these people chasing him in anything— and any action that tended to the discredit of Patience was highly desired. He dropped the UZI onto the pavement, got in his Blazer, and backed out.