Clancy remembered his Pioneer training, and he also remembered many quasi-instructional episodes of The Young Warriors, a neat cartoon show where the characters were child Volunteers during the War of Independence, or sometimes Pioneers or Hitler Youth caught behind enemy lines during the Seven Weeks War. The show was not just after-school entertainment, but had been produced by Asgard Studios in conjunction with the NDF. Kids of both genders helped out the grownups by becoming junior guerrillas, thus precipitating many dramatic adventures. Each episode concentrated on some aspect of partisan warfare against a powerful American or Canadian enemy, everything from improvised explosives and how to place and use them, to codes and code-breaking, to sniper tactics.
There were several episodes on sniper tactics, in fact, so Clancy changed his position after every shot and moved fast. He knew the enemy would have night-vision gear just like he did, but it was largely restricted to line of light, so he tried to keep as much actual earth as he could between himself and his targets, who were now surrounding his house. Five of them were, at any rate. Two of them had detached from the landing zone in Clancy’s front yard and were now working their away around him from both the north and the south, trying to spot flank him, spot him in their infrareds, and kill him. Clancy knew he had to turn the flanking move on one or the other of the hostiles who were after him, get around one of them and put him between himself and the second enemy, and then he should break contact and try to escape and evade, but he couldn’t E&E with his mother and sisters still inside the house.
“Can you get hold of him by phone?” whispered Colonel Robert Campbell as he and his son as well as Tom Horakova crouched in a culvert just across the road from the house.
“Voice mail!” said Bobby despairingly. “He either forgot his phone or he has it turned off!”
A spotlight from one of the choppers swept over them. “They’ve seen us,” said Tom. “We need to move.” The trio charged across the road, firing their submachine guns, desperate to get close enough to the black-clad infiltrators so the helicopters wouldn’t fire their chain guns, for fear of hitting down into their own men. Sweeney was still firing ineffectually at the armored copters from behind cover about fifty yards away. Clancy Campbell was still zipping Hornet slugs into the yard, although he hadn’t scored another hit yet, but since he was now almost three hundred yards back up the hillside and moving, dodging the two Americans who were stalking him, that was explicable. Allura was firing from the window at the black shadows of her attackers.
“Getting a bit hot, eh what?” said Hart to his next-in-command, an American staff sergeant named Withers. “Right, in we go.” He slapped a charge of plastic explosive onto the side door of the house, hit a button on the timer. “Three, two, one…” The charge blew and splintered the door open. “Right, Merrick and Carlson, bag that sniper! Farouq and Jolson, make the new lot keep their heads down. Withers and Lumumba with me, we take out the targets and…”
Up on the ridge in front of Pole Mountain there was a pop and a flash and then a whistling streak of light. A shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile zipped overhead and slammed into the first helicopter, exploding and knocking it end over end in the air, slamming it into the ground almost a hundred and fifty yards down Pole Mountain Road, where it burned. The second pilot, with typical American gallantry, abandoned his ground team, soared upward and banked to the east. A second, almost casual missile exploded the copter in mid-air.
“Who the hell is that?” asked Bobby, from where he and the others lay prone behind several natural granite boulders that adorned the northeast corner of his wide front lawn.
“Those were Greenbats! The NDF must have had some kind of warning before we did,” said Robert Campbell the elder. “They couldn’t have gotten here that fast from the time your man called them from the station!”
Simultaneously a number of gunshots came popping from up on the hill behind the Campbell home, muzzle flashes flickering in the dark, and the Americans covering behind the corners of the home opened fire on the Northwest three behind the low boulders. For the next minute the action became indescribable, but as nearly as Bobby Three could ever reconstruct it:
* One of the Americans flipped a hand grenade through the shattered window Allura was using for a firing port, and Allura batted it back like a badminton bird. The two Americans on the north side of the house either didn’t notice it or couldn’t get hold of it in time to toss it away, due to being pinned down by Schmeisser fire from her husband and relatives, and the grenade detonated, killing both attackers.
* Sergeant Withers and Corporal Mawengi Lumumba, who were preparing to follow Colonel Hart into the house, were shot and killed by marksmen on the low hill behind the garage, using armor-piercing bullets that cut through their flak jackets. This hillside seemed to have suddenly become populated with at least a dozen active shooters. At some point around this time, NMA Warrant Officer Merrick and Specialist Carlson were also shot and killed up on the ridge by these unknown forces.
* Colonel Malcolm Hart entered the house and approached the bedroom door behind which Allura and the girls were barricaded, firing several bursts from his own submachine gun into the door. He pulled a second plastic explosive charge from his pouch, ready to slap it onto the door.
* Someone on the ridge fired a flare into the air, and then a second flare, illuminating the scene in a weird reddish light.
* A large black ground sedan with American Montana state government license plates roared down the road from the north, turned at speed into Bobby’s driveway, and couldn’t stop in time, slamming into the garage door. A man jumped out and ran into the house, ignoring the hail of bullets all around him.
* There was some confused shouting inside, then two struggling figures suddenly emerged from the bomb-shattered side door. One was the enraged Malcolm Hart, who was wrestling, kicking, and punching at the man who had arrived in the car, twisting for control of his weapon, which went off in several bursts as the two men grappled and rolled down the driveway. Hart broke free, then suddenly realized that he had lost his team, lost his air transport, and he was surrounded by irate Northmen with guns. He started to sprint across Pole Mountain Road. He didn’t make it twenty feet before he was cut down by a combination of rifles from the hillside and submachine gun fire from the Guardsmen and Major Horakova. The autopsy later revealed over 50 bullets in Hart’s body armor, and twelve more in his legs, arms, head and neck. These included one .22 Hornet slug.
Bobby ran up to where the second man lay in his driveway just as the flare died in the sky. He pulled out a flashlight. He recognized the American from the brief glimpse he’d gotten when he’d kicked Gabi Martine’s black ass back over the Road. “Blackwell! Are you all right?”
“The limey son-of-a-bitch shot me,” Blackwell replied, gasping. “Never mind me! Hart put a bomb on one of the doors in there! I think Allura and the children are in that room!”
Bobby ran inside. “Ally! Are you and the girls okay?” he shouted.
“Bobby?” cried his wife from inside. “Yes, we’re all right! What’s going on out there?”
“Ally, there’s an explosive charge on the door! Doesn’t look like the bastard was able to set the timer, but can you and the kids get out the window? Tom and my father are out there.”
“No, I’m here,” said his father behind him. “Crap! Is that thing live?”
“Dad, go around to the bedroom window and get Ally and the kids out that way,” said Bob. “I’ll try to get it off the door and out of the house.”
“The hell you will!” said Robert senior. “You’ll wait for the bomb squad! Allura, can you hear me? We’re coming around to the window. Don’t try to get out until we make sure there are no more hostiles out there.” They both turned and ran back down the hall and out the door. Within two minutes Allura and both girls had climbed out the window. Cathy was pale but silent. Morag had been crying but now she took her thumb out of her mouth and said, “Bad men!”
&
nbsp; “Yes, honey, bad men,” replied Tom Horakova. He took her from Cathy. “Very bad men. You know, I remember a night long ago when I was little, and I saw some bad men too. The same ones, unfortunately. They blew up our van that we drove from Chicago so we could Come Home.”
They moved around the house to the driveway. They saw Corporal Mike Sweeney by the garage talking to a group of armed men in civilian clothes, among them young Clancy Campbell and the two Civil Guards who had been called in from patrol. “No chivalry tonight, so you weren’t able to keep me out of this one, sir!” said Tash Briggs sardonically.
“Who are these people?” asked Colonel Campbell.
“Two of my people, and the rest are the Selkirks,” said Bobby, nodding in greeting. “Ray. John. Hatcher. Cullen. Much obliged.”
“Figured we owed you one,” said old Ray, lighting a cheroot. “And we damn sure owe this lady one. We brought everybody we could jam into our two skytrucks. Grounded up on Basin Creek Road and came in on foot from the back. You got a couple more dead dogs up there in the woods you’ll want to scrape up come daylight. You must be Colonel Robert Campbell. Your boy favors you.”
“He does,” said Bob senior. “Always pleased to meet an Old Fighter, Comrade Selkirk. Where on earth did you get Greenbat missiles?”
“I like to keep a well-stocked armory,” said Ray. “Gotta love that First Amendment to our Republic’s Constitution.”
“Clancy, are you all right?” asked Bobby.
“I’m fine, Dad,” said Clancy excitedly. “I got a couple of hits!”
“I don’t understand. How did you guys know what was happening and where to come?” asked Bobby Three.
“That Brandon Blackwell feller called us after he called you,” said Selkirk, nodding down to the man lying bleeding on the concrete driveway. “He said he wasn’t sure the NDF could get here in time.”
“Who’s that with him?” asked Horakova.
“That’s Danny,” said Johnny Selkirk. “She’s put a tourniquet on his leg and she’s holding pressure on the wound. He ain’t hit too bad. Looks like he’ll mend.”
“She came along?” asked Bobby in some surprise.
“Yeah, she’s gone native,” said John. “She’s one of us now.”
* * *
Several days later Colonel Robert Campbell Junior and Lieutenant Robert Campbell the Third visited Brandon Blackwell in the Teaching Hospital in Missoula, where he had been medevaced by helicopter from Basin. “I was pretty lucky,” Blackwell told them, standing by his bed, packing a few items into a suitcase Bobby had provided, a cane leaning on the bed beside him. “If that bullet had hit my femoral artery I’d be gone now. As it is, without that girl who applied the tourniquet and stopped the bleeding, I’d also be done for. Be sure to thank her for me, and I really appreciate what you guys have done for me as well.”
“Without your phone calls of warning my wife and my daughters would be dead,” said Bobby Three. “I owe you, Mr. Blackwell, big time.”
The Colonel handed Blackwell a large manila envelope of documents. “Here’s your intro pack from the Bureau of Race and Resettlement,” he told Blackwell. “This pretty much spells out everything you’re entitled to as a Homecoming present from the Republic, and how to get it. As a single man you’re entitled to a two-bedroom apartment or small house, free for a year, one bedroom to sleep in and one for any storage or professional needs. That’s for guys who want to start their own small businesses, fixing watches or doing something by hand, which happens sometimes. You can use that second bedroom for a home office.”
“What about zoning laws?” asked Blackwell.
“We don’t have any,” said Campbell senior. “One of the things you’ll be issued by your local BRR when you get where you’re going is a middling-thick book in nice, readable fourteen-point type. I think it’s about three hundred pages now. That’s our laws. All of them. We make it a point of pride to keep them all in one volume; if it ever threatens to get too big, we’ll repeal some to make sure we can keep it all in one cover. Anything that’s in that book, you damned well better obey. Other than that, you can do anything you want here. Anyway, getting back to accommodation, after the first year you can stay in your BRR housing if you want, at a fair rent, and after four more years as a renter you can buy, if you like, and you’ll be credited with the rent you’ve already paid as your first equity. Most new migrants prefer to move up the ladder, so speak, and so they don’t stay in their first Bureau housing, but some do stay in their first home here, all their lives. Sure we can’t persuade you to stick around Missoula, sir?”
“No,” said Blackwell, shaking his head. “I think I’ll head out to the coast. Seattle or Portland. I’ve been a bureaucrat all my life, and since I’m too old and out of shape to be much good on a road crew or a farm labor detail, I’m told they’ll be finding some papers for me to shuffle, and there will be more of that in the large cities. Besides, I’m a city boy originally, old Boston Brahmin stock. I was even a New Yorker before New York was overrun. Wide open spaces make me agoraphobic.”
“That’s a pity, Mr. Blackwell,” said Bobby. “We hoped you would stick around. My wife is especially grateful to you.”
“Yes, I saw her briefly that night,” said Blackwell. “Even seen from where I was lying on the ground she’s very beautiful, and those are three fine children you have. You’re a very lucky man, Lieutenant.”
“I am indeed,” said Bobby. “Before you leave Missoula, Mr. Blackwell, I hope you’ll go up onto Mount Sentinel and visit my wife’s mother’s grave. It’s a national monument now, attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year.”
“Funny you should mention it. I actually planned to do just that,” said Blackwell in a neutral voice, turning away. “It would seem a good way to start my new life here in this horrible racist dictatorship of yours.”
“I’m glad to hear you weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye to her,” said Robert the elder. “I should mention, Mr. Blackwell, that while we do not maintain a national DNA database in the Republic, the Bureau of State Security does maintain such records in the case of persons of interest, or who might become of interest, or anyone we think might ever need to identify for any reason. We took the liberty of running your DNA from the blood and tissue samples they took from you when you came in here. We found a match.”
“Of course you did,” said Blackwell with a sigh. He looked up at them. “Well? What are you going to do about it?”
“Were you really just going to just vanish into the Republic somewhere and say nothing?” asked Bobby Three.
“What is there to say?” asked Blackwell, spreading his hands. “No, really, what am I going to say to her? What in God’s name could she possibly want to say to me? I don’t think she even knows my name.”
“No,” said Campbell senior, shaking his head. “Georgia never told me your name and I never asked, and although I presume your identity is on record somewhere with the WPB in an old intel file from Operation Belladonna, after the war I never bothered to ask then, either. You’re right, it seemed irrelevant.”
“Nor is it relevant now,” said Blackwell.
“You saved my wife’s life and the lives of my children,” said Bobby. “Don’t you think they will want to know who did that?”
“From what I could see, Allura and that kid of yours with the twenty-two were doing quite all right on their own,” said Blackwell. “All I did was stumble in at the right moment and manage to get myself shot for my trouble.” Blackwell sat down heavily. “Do you know what my reaction was when Georgia told me she was pregnant? I did the gentlemanly thing, and I offered to put the abortion on my American Express card. What am I supposed to say to my daughter? ‘Hi, I’m your dad, nice to meet you, glad your mom was a better person than I was and so she didn’t have you dumped into a bloody plastic-lined trash bin like I wanted to?’ And once all that—once Georgia did what she did during the war for you guys, then my father laid out millions of doll
ars in bribes to keep my name out of certain files and databases. Otherwise the damned Secret Service would have abducted me and tortured me and dumped me at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay wearing concrete boots. Dad was so pissed off he cut my allowance to the bone and made me get a job, which is how I ended up as a goddamned bureaucrat, and later on as Gabi Martine’s zookeeper. I’ve spent twenty-eight years trying to make sure my name was never associated with hers in any way. I can see no reason to change that policy now. Why should I? What purpose would it serve for her to know? From what I can gather she’s happy, she’s got a great family and a job and a hobby she likes—is archaeology her job or her hobby, anyway?”
“Both,” said Bobby with a fond chuckle. “When she can’t do it, she teaches it. Look, Mr. Blackwell, I get what you’re saying. Yeah, this is a mess. I have no idea at all how my wife is going to react when I tell her, but I’ve got to tell her. I can’t keep a secret like this from her, even if it may be for her own good. It’s just not done on this side of the Road. Life’s partner means just that here.”
“Really, son, I haven’t got a thing to contribute to the family tree,” said Blackwell desperately. “I’m like most white males in America for the past hundred years. I screwed around until I was past forty, when it finally started to dawn on me that I wasn’t a kid any more and whatever I was going to do in life I’d better get on with it, although by then I was too old and tired and beaten down by this filthy world the libbies and the kikes have made to start over. I’ve been going into a cubicle at eight o’clock every morning and leaving at five o’clock every night, and stuffing my body with bad food and my mind with bad electronic images for almost as long as Allura has been alive, and that’s all I’ve ever done. Why would she want to know me at all? There’s nothing to know.”
Bobby Three looked at him. “I think my wife will want to know that she has a father who gave up his whole life, however pointless and futile that life was, who defied the tyrant’s laws by crossing that Road into the land of freedom, who attacked a heavily armed thug of democracy while he himself was unarmed, and who shed his blood in order to save her and her children from death at the hands of those who are the mortal enemies of all mankind,” he told Blackwell. “Ally has grown up around that kind of man all her life, not the least my own dad here. I think she’ll want to know her father is one as well.”
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