The Color of Fear td-99

by Warren Murphy

"Day-am right!" chorused his raiders, brandishing an assortment of shotguns, squirrel guns and semilegal machine pistols.

  A lieutenant in the uniform of the old Army of Northern Virginia stepped up and said, "We can't allow you men to go about toting them things."

  "What in hell's wrong with them?" Narvel bellowed.

  "They're not in period."

  "In what?"

  "Period. They're post-Reconstruction, except for them old squirrel guns. They're maybe okay, depending on what ammo you're using."

  Narvel Boggs stared in stupefied amazement.

  "And you'll have to get them newfangled cars off the battlefield, too."

  Narvel Boggs couldn't believe the words he was hearing. "Ain't you fellas been listening to the damn radio?" he barked.

  "Radios are twentieth century. Not permissible."

  "There's an angry regiment of the Ninth Pennsylvania Memorial Day Sappers barrel-rising this way, according to the radio."

  "If they come in peace, Ah imagine we'll give them a right passable welcome," said Captain Page.

  "The Rhode Island National Guard has sworn bloody vengeance and is camped out on the Washington side of the Potomac. If they ever ford the river, it'll be a plumb shooting bee."

  "Imagine they've calmed down a mite by now," Captain Page allowed.

  "And up in New York City they've organized their own Stonewall Brigade."

  "How can that be, suh? Ah am proud to lead the only descendant of that mighty band."

  "They ain't exactly forming up no sons of Stonewall Jackson, if you take my meaning."

  "What other Stonewall is there?"

  "The Stonewall Riots kinda Stonewall. It's a, you know, fairy kind of brigade. Call themselves the Stonewall Thespian Company. By that I figure they got some hairy-chested women littering their ranks."

  Captain Page paled noticeably. "They have usurped our good name?"

  "Usurped, besmirched and appear hell-bent on dragging it through mud and muck and mire and doubtless worse."

  "This is a most grievous insult," said Captain Royal Wooten Page in a harsh voice.

  "No telling what their unmanly antics will do to the good name of the true Stonewall Brigade."

  "If they come," vowed Captain Royal Wooten Page, raising a trembling fist to the pure blue sky of Old Dominion, "we must smite them to the last man."

  "Or whatever," added Narvel Boggs, a.k.a. Colonel Dixie, who then turned to his waiting raiders and announced, "We came to fight and we fight to stay!"

  A fiendish rebel yell leaped from every lip.

  THREE MILES away the war whoop was reproduced in a set of headphones clamped around the head of Mickey Weisinger, CEO of the Sam Beasley Corporation.

  "These fucking yokels sound serious," he said thickly.

  "They are," said Bob Beasley in an utterly unconcerned voice.

  "I can't just drop in there and make a speech. They'll tear me limb from fucking limb."

  "There are worse things."

  "Name one."

  "Oh," said Bob, ticking off items on his fingers, "pissing off my Uncle Sam, betraying my Uncle Sam and finding your balls clutched tightly in my Uncle Sam's hydraulic right hand."

  In the mobile communications van, parked in a thicket of piney Virginia woods, Mickey Weisinger crossed his legs protectively and croaked, "When do I go in?"

  "After the shooting starts," said Bob Beasley, snapping a microphone on.

  "Shooting? What shooting? Who's going to shoot who?"

  "Everybody."

  "Huh?"

  "Everybody's going to shoot everybody else once the California Summer Vacation Musketeers break through Rebel lines."

  "Whose side was California on during the Civil War?"

  "Our side," said Bob Beasley. He brought his lips close to the mike and said, "Musketeers, it's your day to howl."

  Mickey Weisinger wiped his moist brow with a silk handkerchief. "I just hope it isn't my day to die."

  Chapter 10

  The line of primer gray cars disappeared up Crater Road in a dusty cloud. The trailing car, windshield smeared with dirt, fell more than five car-lengths behind the others. It was a four-door sedan, Remo noticed.

  "Quicker to ride than to walk," Remo suggested.

  "Agreed," returned the Master of Sinanju.

  They started off, moving with an easy grace that oddly enough seemed to slow the faster they ran. The great worm of brown dust that had all but consumed the trailing Confederate car swallowed them up, too.

  Coming up on the sedan, Remo broke left while the Master of Sinanju veered to the right-hand side. Their hands snagged the rear door handles, popped them, and with a skipping hop they bounced into the backseat cushions. The doors closed with a perfectly synchronized double thunk.

  Ensconced in the rear, they rolled past the Confederate pickets who guarded the entrance to Petersburg Battlefield Park. Remo saw that they wore no boots. No shoes or socks, either.

  He and Chiun exchanged puzzled glances and settled down for the short ride back to the Crater. They sat perfectly still, knowing that the human eye was sensitive to sudden movement, and if they kept still the driver was unlikely to notice them in his rearview mirror.

  They would have probably ridden all the way to the Crater undetected except for the fact that a front tire hit a chuckhole and let go with a pop and a low hiss. The left forward corner of the car began to settle, and the driver tapped the brakes and banged his steering wheel with a hammy fist.

  He turned in his seat to reach for the tire iron that sat on the drive shaft hump. A helpful hand attached to a thick wrist obligingly handed it to him.

  The driver recoiled as if brushed by a stinging jellyfish.

  "Who the hay-ell are you two!" he thundered.

  "Passengers," said Chiun in a voice as bland as his papery expression.

  "Passengers in a hurry," clarified Remo.

  "Get the hell out of my car!"

  "When we have reached our destination," said Chiun.

  "And not before," added Remo.

  The driver threw open the door, cupped his hands over his mouth and set his elbows on the car roof. "Hey, you Johnnys! Lend a hand here. I just caught me two Yank spies!"

  The slapping of bare feet came up the road. Confederate troops surrounded the car on all sides. They began shoving musket muzzles in through the driver's window, some with their ramrods still jammed in.

  "Who are you boys?" a quavering voice demanded. It belonged to a cadaverous blond man with the double bars of a Confederate first lieutenant on his collar. His droopy mustache puffed out with every syllable.

  "I was just about to ask you the same question," said Remo in a cool, unconcerned voice.

  "We be the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band."

  "Is that a military unit or a musical group?"

  "Well, we do a little pickin' and grinnin' now and again," the lieutenant admitted. "But just 'cause we prefer the banjo to the bullet don't meant we can't scrap when we get a mind to."

  "Do tell," said Remo.

  "Now, are you gonna come out or do we perforate your skulking Yank breadbaskets?"

  "Open your window, Little Father," said Remo to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Gladly," said Chiun.

  The windows came rolling down, and more muskets intruded into the car interior, vying for a clear bead on the captured Union spies.

  "Are you a-comin' or are you a-dyin'?"

  "Neither," said Remo, snatching the lieutenant's musket from his unresisting fingers, along with a clump of adjoining weapons.

  He laid them at his feet. They clattered atop the bunch the Master of Sinanju had already harvested.

  "Hey! That ain't fair. You give us back our ordnance, hear?"

  "No," said Chiun.

  "Not until you change that front tire," said Remo.

  The lieutenant took a step back and raised his voice to a bellow. "Men! Commence firin'!"

  More musket muzzles crowded in through the windo
ws-only to be clapped flat as they were met by the hands of the Master of Sinanju and his pupil. They withdrew as if sprained.

  "Reinforcements!" the first lieutenant cried in a harried voice. "We be needin' reinforcements hereabouts."

  Additional knots of rifles angled in through the three open windows and were as quickly confiscated to form a kneehigh pile on the floorboards.

  After that no more muskets intruded.

  The first lieutenant tried to bluff it out. "You are surrounded. And must come out," he said firmly.

  "Not a chance," said Remo, slapping away a stealthy hand that tried to slip in and recover a weapon.

  "There is no escape. We are not a-gonna go away."

  "Fine."

  "We are prepared to starve you out," the first lieutenant warned earnestly.

  "Go whistle 'Trixie,"' sniffed Chiun.

  "That's Dixie,"' Remo reminded.

  "Please," begged the first lieutenant, "this be my first real fuss, and Ah don't wanna go home to my pappy with my honor all in tatters."

  "Fix the tire and we'll think about it," Remo told him carelessly. And during the hesitant pause that followed, he lifted a filigreed musket from the pile and began taking it apart with steel-boned fingers.

  An anguished wail near the trunk became a semiarticulate "That's my great-great-great-great grandpappy's 1861 Springfield. He shot it from Chickahominy clear to Spotsylvania! It's a prized family heirloom!"

  Remo wrenched the firing lever loose and tossed it out the window, saying, "Bet I can fieldstrip this antique before you guys can get that tire changed."

  Remo lost that bet, but not by much. A jack came out of the trunk, the car cranked up, lugs spun off, a fresh tire swapped for the flat and the sedan dropped back on four good wheels before Remo could separate the barrel from its mounting.

  "Nice time," said Remo as the sedan finished rocking on its springs.

  "I was a pit-crew chief at Talladega six years runnin'," an eager voice told him, adding, "Can I have grandpappy's Springfield back now?"

  "After you drive us to the Crater," said Remo.

  "We will have to accompany you, a-course," the first lieutenant said sternly.

  "Why don't you drive?" suggested Remo.

  "A singular suggestion," said the first lieutenant, ducking behind the wheel. He started the engine, then called out to his troops. "You men form a double column behind this redoubtable war wagon and follow smartly. Ah will drive at a suitable trot."

  Driving at a trot was the first lieutenant's sincere plan, but once the car began bouncing along the road, his foot became exceedingly heavy on the gas. He started to wonder if his barefoot state had something to do with the problem when he felt the steely fingers clamping the back of his neck and realized they had been there some minutes.

  "What are you doing, you confounded Northern spy?" he demanded.

  "Steering," said Remo, giving the first lieutenant's head a sharp twist to the left. The First Lieutenant's hands on the wheel obligingly steered to the left, taking the coming turn at very high speed. He had nothing to say about the matter, he was astonished to discover. In the rearview mirror the Kentucky Boot less Bluegrass Band, straining to catch up, broke into a dead run.

  "We are putting my band behind."

  "They'll catch up," Remo assured him.

  As they approached the loop in the road before the Crater, the first lieutenant noticed the olive drab tanks parked here and there among the Confederate gray cars.

  "Whose tanks be these?" he asked.

  "Stonewall Brigade."

  "Sure they ain't Sheridan's?"

  "Search me," said Remo. "Keep your shoulder down. I need to see to steer."

  A finger came off one of the first lieutenant's neck vertebrae and tapped another. The lieutenant's foot came off the gas and tapped the brake more smartly than if he had had something to say about it. The gray sedan eased to a stop, and the rear doors fell open.

  The first lieutenant grabbed for the door handle when a thick wristed hand reached in through the open window and snapped the steel lever clean off, then threw it away.

  "Why don't you set a spell?" Remo told him.

  "Ah can get out the other door, you know."

  "Barefoot boys have crunchy toes," Remo pointed out, shattering a stone under the heel of one shoe.

  "Reckon Ah'll await my men," said the first lieutenant, tucking his precious toes under him where they would be safe from the Yankee devil spies. After all, he was a picker, not a fighter.

  THE MASTER of Sinanju following, Remo walked over to a knot of good ole boys brandishing assorted shotguns and modern rifles.

  A man in some sort of gray buttoned tunic, the Stars and Bars of the late Confederacy whipping from his broad shoulders, turned at their approach. He had a wide, beefy face and thick black hair piled high on his head in a lustrous Elvis pompadour.

  "What manner of soldier is that one?" asked Chiun.

  "Looks like a Confederate Captain Marvel."

  "Nonsense, Remo. He is at least a general. Behold the many golden stars upon his proud shoulders. As ranking Master, it is my duty to treat with him and accept his abject surrender."

  "Ranking Master?" said Remo, but Chiun had already hurried ahead. Remo didn't bother picking up his pace. If there was going to be trouble, Chiun could handle it. After all, Remo had driven the car.

  NARVEL BOGGS, a.k.a. Colonel Dixie, Scourge of the South, saw the tiny little man approach. His eyes went past him to the fruity white guy who brought up the rear.

  "Looks to me like an advance guard of them New York Stonewalls," one of his trusty raiders muttered.

  "He does have that look about him. Not exactly swishy, but them's certainly faggy garments."

  "'ppears to be a chore for Colonel Dixie," said Narvel Boggs, hitching up his golden sash and striding forth to meet the walking insult, the good ground of Virginia quaking with his tread, his black eyes striking intimidating sparks like twin meteors streaking toward his foemen.

  On the way he passed the impossibly old Asian, who greeted him. "Hail, O illustrious general of the South."

  "One side, slope," growled Colonel Dixie, who threw his protective cloak around the fair flower of Southern womanhood and the cream of Dixie manhood, but no other persons.

  In that moment Colonel Dixie, the Meteor of the Second Civil War, stood poised on the brink of eternity. And never dreamed it. The face that launched a thousand comic books, TV cartoons, lunch boxes, coloring books and CD-ROM games stood a hairbreadth away from being peeled from its skull by a flurry of exceptionally long fingernails, when from a screen of trees just west of the Crater came a bloodcurdling battle cry.

  "HURRRAAAH!"

  And out of the pines came a wave of blue uniforms pushing shot and smoke and the stirring storm of battle ahead of it.

  The deadly fingernails withdrew.

  And the Third Battle of the Crater was under way.

  Chapter 11

  The California Summer Vacation Musketeers poured out of the trees, screaming like banshees, fully two hundred strong. They wore Union blue, with light blue infantry piping, and welded assorted muskets, including Maynard rifles, Brown Bess shotguns and Sharps carbines.

  For a frozen moment the Unified Confederate Disunion Alliance stood rooted, the Sixth Virginia Foot, Stonewall Detachment of the Virginia National Guard and Colonel Dixie's Raiders alike. Down Crater Road the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band skidded to a callused stop, hesitated and then came pounding up, venting a whooping rebel yell that froze the blood.

  Over the din a lone voice called, "Prepare for action, men!"

  It was the ringing clarion voice of Captain Royal Wooten Page, CSA. He clambered atop a tank and spearing his plumed bicorne hat on a cavalry saber, leaped fearlessly into the fray, waving it aloft for all to see. "Follow me!" he cried.

  He got about a dozen feet before the dashing figure of Colonel Dixie swept in, tripped him and appropriated his saber.

 
"For God and Dixie!" Colonel Dixie bellowed, slashing at the sky with the saber-speared hat. "Not necessarily in that order!"

  All along the Union line officers followed suit, lifting their chapeaus high on their swords.

  Drawn inexorably by ancient enmities their ancestors had believed laid to rest in a courthouse surrender at Appomattox, two opposing waves of men surged toward one another, collided and ran together like oil and water mixing.

  At first the overwhelming Union numbers stood to take the day. But the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band, recovering their muskets from the back seat of the car where they had been stashed, made a flanking maneuver and opened up with a withering enfilading fire that cut many a man down.

  Unfortunately, due to the confused disposition of the opposing forces, they struck down nearly as many Confederate brethren as Union foes. History recorded it as a brilliant if desperate stroke, but of course the unwritten truth was that it was an equal mix of panic and sheer idiocy.

  From other quarters reinforcements put in their appearance.

  The First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry, which had been hiding in the easternmost reaches of Petersburg National Battlefield, came slipping up to see what all the commotion was about. When they grasped the enormity of what their startled eyes beheld, they picked up stones and sticks and waded in.

  The Louisiana Costume Zouaves also poured into Crater Field. They took one look and after some hesitation took the Union side of the engagement. Confusion ensued.

  Confusion became a close-quarters tumult, and tumult gave way to a ferocious frenzy of clubbing and fisticuffs as the nearness of friend and foe alike precluded reloading of muzzle-loading rifles.

  "BEHOLD, Remo," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju. "Your long-lost roots."

  "Looks like a giant barroom brawl," Remo Williams remarked from the high ground of Cemetery Ridge.

  Chiun narrowed his eyes to imperious knife slits. "Once begun, the madness of war cannot be halted."

  "You saying there's nothing we can do?"

  "The madness must be allowed to run its course."

  "I'm for stepping in and stepping on toes."

  "What will that accomplish?"

  "You can fight or you can hop. But you can't hop and fight at the same time."

  "True, but an army possesses toes in multitude. You have only two feet to stamp with."