The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “And do you know what Volunteer Leach’s E & E station was?” asked Redmond.

  “No, of course not!” replied Cord irritably. “That was a standard security precaution. Everyone in the unit had such a place of refuge in case things went bad, but we never told one another where our E & E’s were, specifically to frustrate informers. You wear the ribbon, Colonel. You must know this. What was your bolt hole?”

  “I had two. A short-range hideout in the janitor’s office at Sammamish High School and a long-term regroup point in North Bend. Dr. Cord, we have come to believe that the secret to unraveling the answer to what happened at Ravenhill lies in something that took place during the conference at the Hoodsport safe house during the night and the early hours of the morning which immediately preceded the ambush. We understand that Trudy Greiner left the safe house at approximately three o’clock in the morning, and that she did so in her own car. Does that fit in with your recollection?”

  “Mmm, yes, I believe so. A white Nissan, I believe.”

  “We understand that she was supposed to arrive at the medical aid station driving a van which had been converted into an impromptu ambulance for use if needed. Is that right?” continued Redmond.

  “Yes,” replied Cord.

  “We are therefore working on the assumption that when she left the safe house she was headed to someplace else to collect that van. Do you know where?”

  “I believe you are correct, Colonel. Where was the van? That I couldn’t tell you for certain. I do recall that Commandant Murdock and Miss Greiner had a conversation off in one corner of a few minutes’ duration. I assume he gave her his instructions then.”

  “You don’t know if the van was parked or stashed somewhere? Or if it was delivered to her anywhere, by another driver, perhaps?”

  “Ah, I understand,” said Cord. “You are trying to deduce the possible presence of an as yet unknown party in the affair who might have been involved in the betrayal of the column. Very clever.” Redmond was slightly unsettled by the quickness with which Cord picked up on his line of reasoning. The man was no fool, however unpleasant he came across. “The answer is, I didn’t know, nor did I ask. We operated on a strict need to know basis and I didn’t need to know that particular detail. All I needed to know was that the medivac vehicle would be there at the Burger Boy if we needed it. Yes, it is possible she was meeting someone to pick up the van directly. In fact, I think it probable.”

  “Why is that, sir?” asked Redmond.

  “She would need a very secure place to park her own private car, one where there was no risk it would be found,” said Cord. “To the NVA during the revolution, Colonel, vehicles were almost as precious a commodity as guns and ammunition. It was very much like living in the old Wild West where one’s life depended in equal measure on one’s gun and one’s horse, and we learned to keep both very close. We never liked to park our cars and be separated from our transport for any length of time. Never knew when we might need to make a fast break. Instead of parking our vehicle in some remote spot and hoping it wouldn’t be found by the police, or towed away, or stripped by Third World thieves, we always liked to do a hand-over to another Volunteer when it was necessary to change into something more suitable for the job at hand. Then we’d arrange for pickup or to trade cars again afterwards. It didn’t always work out that way, of course. Sometimes we had no choice but to stash a car for a while. But we preferred not to, and so that’s why I think it is not only

  possible but somewhat likely that Miss Greiner was supposed to hand over her Nissan to someone else in exchange for the van.”

  “Mmmm, I see your point, sir,” said Redmond, rubbing his chin. Oh, hell, he thought. Let’s get it over with and hope the tirade isn’t so bad. “Doctor Cord, as reluctant as I am to introduce a religious aspect into this inquiry, are you aware of the fact that Commandant Thomas Murdock was apparently a follower of the old gods of the Norse mythology? Whereas Melanie Young was a Fundamentalist Christian?”

  “Murdock was a pagan?” scoffed Cord skeptically. “I don’t believe it! Surely he would have said something to me about it!”

  “Ah, well, perhaps it’s just a rumor,” said Redmond in some relief. “Unfortunately, I believe the well known liaison between Murdock and Volunteer Young was not mere rumor. We have become very interested in the personal relationship between Commandant Murdock, Volunteer Greiner, and Volunteer Young. Specifically, we understand that Murdock had been personally involved with Trudy Greiner up until the time that Melanie Young arrived from Montana to take up her assignment with the Olympic Flying Column. Murdock then allegedly broke things off with Trudy and took up with Melanie. This romantic triangle aspect has been suggested to us as a possible motive for Volunteer Greiner’s betrayal of the Column. What are your thoughts and observations on that?”

  Cord scowled. “I am ashamed to admit that entirely too often, our racial liberation movement was a revolting hotbed of unbridled lust.”

  “Cies! What a recruiting incentive!” whispered Nel sotto voce. Redmond shushed him, but Cord rambled on, oblivious. “Yes, I was aware that Murdock and Miss Young were committing the sin of carnality in the unmarried state, and before that the Commandant was doing the same thing with Miss Greiner. I am sorry to say that sort of thing was quite common and one simply had to learn to look the other way in order to be effective. I was especially disappointed in Miss Young’s wanton behavior, since she claimed to be a religious person. I attempted to speak to her about it on several occasions but she for some reason she seemed disinclined to discuss it with me.”

  “Indeed?” said Redmond, his eyebrows arching. “One does wonder why?”

  “I can only conclude that she retained at least some sense of shame regarding her carnal sin,” replied Cord pompously. “I hope that remedial diffidence has been sufficient to spare her some of the subsequent punishment she has endured in hell since her death in such a state of impurity.” Nel opened his mouth to say something, but Redmond caught his eye and shook his head. “As to that motivating Miss Greiner to do what she did? Who knows why a woman does anything? They are ruled by their emotions and not by reason like men are, or most men anyway. But I should have thought that the million dollars she was paid would also have formed some part of her motivation.”

  All of a sudden there was a buzz on the intercom on Cord’s desk. “Doctor Cord? I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but it looks like we’re coming down to the kill on that Omni Twelve on orbital track

  733,” the young man on the other end told him. “You’re sure?” asked Cord excitedly.

  “Affirmative, sir. The bogey is over Indonesia now and we’ve got Falcon Four closing on him,” said the voice on the intercom. “The target will be within termination range in about nine minutes. I think you’d better come down to the control room.”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, but duty calls,” said Cord, rising with alacrity. The prospect of imminent technology seemed to alter and revitalize him. “Want a ringside seat for one of the battles in the first war fought in space?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Redmond. Despite Cord’s irritating arrogance, Don was genuinely fascinated by anything to do with space and eager to learn more.

  They took a long elevator ride down to the control room. The Falcon program satellite command center was in a huge, cavernous chamber deep in the bowels of the earth, carpeted and air-conditioned and capable of surviving a direct hit with up to a forty megaton nuclear warhead, as Cord informed them proudly. The whole forward wall of the long room now showed the blue curvature of the earth, filling the lower left hand third of the giant screen. A small light blinked among the stars above the inverted blue bowl at about two o’clock.

  Cord took them into a glassed-in booth that contained several banks of screens and instruments. The scientist seated himself in front

  of a control panel and began flicking switches and pressing buttons. He assumed a professorial and somewhat condescending tone.
“What you are seeing, gentleman, is a fighter’s-eye view of war in space. This telemetry is coming from one of our unmanned Falcon orbital interception modules. That’s our target,” said Cord intently, pointing at the blinking light. “In this view we are filtering out all the assorted space junk surrounding the target, so we can concentrate on it, although if something gets in the way it will appear on the screen. We have been pursuing an American spy satellite, an Omni Twelve, launched in July from Canaveral. One of their newest and most sophisticated. Chinese technology and Korean manufacture. The Americans seem incapable of actually building anything advanced for themselves any more. It is run by an artificial intelligence chip designed by Dr. Saul Bloomberg of MIT, a gentleman of Hebraic heritage who is one of our worst enemies. Dr. Bloomberg has openly dedicated his life to erasing the Northwest Republic from the face of the earth, as he blames us for the loss of his precious goddamned Israel.”

  “Blames us with some reason, I am happy to say,” said

  Redmond with a proud snarl.

  “Indeed. You might say he is my opposite number. Bloomie and I spend our lives destroying one another’s work. He creates avionic polymers and amalgams he thinks to be plasma-proof, the Americans build aircraft and I create new plasma synergies to break through whatever they’ve come up with. That’s what I was doing when you interrupted me just now. Bloomie thinks his Compound 19 will restore American air supremacy so they can slaughter us all from the sky with impunity like we were so many Arabs. We will see how well Compound 19 holds up against my Green Magic ray. I think he and a few hapless American pilots are in for a surprise. Bloomberg doesn’t play fair, though. The little kike has tried to have me assassinated, twice. By the by, Colonel, next time you see Mr. Randall, please thank him again for saving my life on that second occasion. That American idiot with his grenade destroyed one of my computer drives and I lost some data. It was very annoying.”

  “I will, Doctor,” promised Redmond. “Two times? I’m impressed. I’ve only rated three attempts myself.”

  “Now, sir, let’s not get boastful, ek se,” warned Nel sotto voce. “I don’t think he likes the idea of being outdone in anything by a mere copper. By the way, when do we ask him about how he got into the NVA in the old days?”

  “Do you really want to sit through that?” Don whispered back. “Point taken, sir.” Egotist though he was, Cord was too involved with his instruments and the screen to take umbrage at Redmond being one up on him in the assassination attempt department. “We’ve been tracking that Ugly Bird for weeks, trying to get one of our Falcons within range,” Cord told them. “It’s quite a game, since neither of the craft has a milligram of fuel to waste and

  every maneuver must be calculated to the last micron.”

  “Rather than waste time in all this hanna-hanna and dancing about, why not hunt these spy satellites down and pick them off with plasma weapons from a manned craft?” asked Nel.

  “Because they’ve started arming these little guys with counterweapons that might hull one of our vessels and get some of our astronauts killed,” said Cord. “The State President has decided that’s an escalation we want to avoid. The problem is, it’s entirely too easy to get killed in space and there would eventually be fatalities. If they kill any of our space crews we’ll have to retaliate by taking out some of theirs. You know the iron rule: no one lays a hand on any of our Republic’s people, anywhere, anytime.”

  “We just got a reminder of that from talking to Bloody Dave

  Leach,” said Redmond.

  “Yes, David practices what he preaches, as you know. As the good burghers of Wellington, New Zealand found out. And to think I knew him when he was a mere homicidal maniac! So far, the shooting part of the space war is only between unmanned robot vehicles, and apparently ZOG is willing to keep it that way. For now.”

  “Good,” said Redmond with a sigh of relief. “My son Allan is at Landfall Station on Mars. He’s coming home soon and I want to be sure his shuttle has a nice, quiet re-entry.”

  “Luftwaffe Captain Allan Redmond?” asked Cord. “Why yes, I believe I remember him. He was on several of my training courses in astronavigation and spatial engineering. Very bright young man.”

  “So what’s happening now?” asked Nel.

  “Intercepting a satellite in orbit when it is trying to evade you isn’t an easy thing to do by remote telemetry, gentlemen,” said Cord. “You have all kinds of variables of gravity, trajectory, inertia, orbital centrifugal force, acceleration and deceleration to take into consideration. All that can get even more complicated when the target is equipped with various devices to escape and confuse pursuit, like this one is.”

  “What kind of devices?” asked Nel curiously.

  “Radar scrambling and distortion equipment making it impossible for us to lock on to it, helium balloons made of thin metal envelopes that surround the vehicle, create false images and serve as decoys,” said Cord, studying the screen and the instruments intently. “But they’ve now got a new wrinkle. That Ugly Bird can squirt a sort of smoke screen of silver nitrate particles that effectively blinds our radar for several minutes, almost like an octopus in the sea squirting ink to blind and confuse a predator while it escapes. Under cover of the silver nitrate cloud the Omni shifts direction a few degrees and assumes a whole new orbit, which we then have to plot out. Then we have to fire Falcon Four’s retros in a controlled burn to resume an intercept path and bring it within range of the Falcon’s plasma gun and laser. From the enemy’s point of view, the name of the game is for the target satellite to make like a jack rabbit, try to run us to death, exhaust our tracker’s fuel, thus losing it until we can get a manned shuttle to pick the Falcon up from orbit and refuel it, then re-launch it. But this bird hasn’t done that for a while now. We think he’s out of smoke. Now we’re close enough to try and nail him, but he is most likely also equipped with detectors that sense particle beam fire and set off a small gas-powered gyroscope that gives the satellite a short jerk or shift up, or down, right or left. Sometimes only an inch two, not enough actually to alter the orbit, but enough to avoid a particle beam that’s only a few millimeters wide. That satellite can literally dodge bullets, Colonel, and I don’t feel like wasting the Falcon’s plasma charges on it. Falcon has a laser as well, but I’d have to get a wee bit closer than I’d like to try and use it. It would be close enough so debris and shock from the explosion of the Omni might damage our own bird, not to mention any counter-weapons they might use. The laser beam is only a pin’s width and it’s possible we might not disable or destroy the enemy while depleting our own vehicle’s power

  resources. We’ll save the beams for taking out less athletic targets. Plus our own bird may need that juice to defend itself against an American interceptor later.”

  “So what will you do?” asked Nel. “Torpedo the bastard,” replied Cord. “Eh?” exclaimed Nel.

  “Falcon Four is also equipped with eight solid-fuel rocket torpedoes, two meters in length, each with a 10-kilogram warhead of plastic explosive wrapped with steel bands which will provide a wide spread of shrapnel. Even if we don’t get a direct hit, detonate the warhead close enough and a blast of several thousand hot metal shards the size of birdshot going through the skin of that Ugly Bird should take it out of action, render it just so much dead flying junk. But let’s go for a direct hit, shall we? I feel like seeing something vaporized. And I want Bloomie to see a nice big explosion.”

  “Eh?” asked Redmond.

  “Right now Bloomberg is sitting in Canaveral behind the controls of that Omni, just as I am here. I can sense his presence. Good. I am going to break his toy.” Cord spoke into a microphone. “Ready torpedos one and two!”

  “Aye aye, Herr Oberst!” came a voice on the intercom. Cord looked up and grinned like a little boy. “I like to imagine I’m a U-boat captain in the North Atlantic, part of a Wolfpack zeroing in on an American convoy. Or maybe Walther Schweiger lining the Lusitania up in my sights during the
first war! On these occasions my staff is kind enough to oblige me.” He turned back to his controls and monitors.

  “Does he still play with boats in the bathtub, I wonder?”

  wondered Nel in a whisper.

  “He’s a bit hard to take, that I grant you,” whispered Redmond. “But this is all very real, and dammit all, as much as he pisses me off, I have to admit that if there’s any one man the Republic owes its existence to, it’s Cord. Not even the Old Man. The Old Man gave us an idea, but Cord was the one who brought down the bombers. Napoleon once said that revolution is an idea that has found bayonets. The Old Man gave us the idea. Cord gave us the bayonets.”

  “Torpedos ready, Dr. Cord,” a scientist in a lab coat several chairs away said, staring into his own console.

  “Fire one and two!” shouted Cord gleefully. Two spinning glowing spots of fire seemed to whirl silently away from just below the camera’s range and out over the brilliant curving blue and white cloud-fleece of the earth. Redmond would have thought they would head directly for the light of the target satellite, but they seemed actually to be spiraling down towards the earth. Then the lights blinked out and for almost a minute there was silence except for low electronic bleeps and pings from the equipment.

  “Ugly’s firing retros, sir,” said one of the console people, a woman. “He sees the torpedos and he’s taking evasive action. One and two auto-correcting.”

  Redmond could not detect any motion at all in the light of the American satellite on the screen. Then all of a sudden it seemed to flicker. “Damn!” said another one of the men in white lab coats. “Silver nitrate cloud, Doctor Cord! Looks like they weren’t out after all. Radar’s real patchy, can’t get a solid fix. Torpedos twenty-eight point four miles and closing”