Backshot

by David Sherman

  “Buddha’s drooling lips,” Ollwelen cursed, “that’s just the point I’ve been making about your personal security all along! Only I already know what’s wrong with it: You don’t have any!”

  Al-Rashid exchanged glances with Ollwelen and then said, “Very good, sir. But what about you? This message,” he nodded to the FTL Union message still blinking on the screen, “is about you, not the Cabbage Patch. Can’t I convince you to increase your guard, to stop these late-night visits to Ramuncho’s and restrict your public travel and appearances? I could arrange for a double. It is only common sense for a head of state to take these simple precautions, sir. I’m begging you—”

  “The man is speaking perfect sense, Jorge!” Ollwelen exclaimed, leaning forward in his chair and jabbing his cigar at Lavager.

  Lavager regarded his Minister of War and his head of security carefully. “Locker, Franklin, I hear you. But no. I am not going to be a prisoner in my own country, in my own house. Franklin, you keep up your guard, but be discreet about it. You’ll just have to adjust your security to meet my personal idiosyncrasies, that’s the way I want it to work. Gentlemen, I repeat, there is no security system that can’t be breached, and there is no one in any government who is indispensable either. I am expendable. You protect the Cabbage Patch and I’ll protect Jorge Leberec Lavager.”

  “Dammit, Jorge, you’re like the man who wouldn’t fix the leak in his roof because it didn’t rain that often!”

  Lavager laughed. “I know, Locker, I know, and why bother to take a bath; you’re only going to get dirty again?” He chuckled but was silent for a long moment, looking intently into the cloud of tobacco smoke in front of his head. Then: “Franklin, I’m going out to the Cabbage Patch as planned. I told you both to set this up last week. I hope neither of you called ahead and warned them I was coming. Today’s the day. But I want to arrive there like anybody else, unannounced, drive up to the gate and see how alert the sentries are, that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t understand, in light of this warning, sir. I recommend air transport if you really must go out there today.”

  “No. We’re driving. Franklin, as a security man you should know it’s always a good idea for the boss to pull a surprise inspection. I want to see things for myself. I want to see if there’s a chink in your armor.”

  “But—?”

  “Jorge! You may be right, but leave it to Franklin here to fix the problem! No damned reason for you to go running out there!”

  “Yes, there is. Those inspection tunnels: They’re your Trojan horse. Now gentlemen, let’s get a move on.”

  Al-Rashid hurried off to arrange transport. “I need to go back to my office at the ministry, Jorge,” Ollwelen said as he stood to go. “Need to get something there before we depart. I’ll meet you outside in five minutes.” Lavager casually nodded his okay. Back at his office Ollwelen made a call.

  The Medina Farm, Between New Granum and the Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  Fifteen-year-old Gina Medina was alive because she wasn’t home when the men came for her family in the night. They took them all, including the farmhands who lived with the Medinas, into a barn and killed them there.

  Gina’s love for the wilderness saved her life. She’d gone into the woods in the late afternoon with her dog, Roland, entered the secluded glade deep in the forest that was her secret refuge, and smoked thule until she fell asleep. It was long after dark when she awoke. Gina loved the forest. There were no creatures inimical to humans on Atlas except other humans, so wandering in the woods was totally safe, and the long walk home in the dark with Roland by her side was the perfect ending to her day. Her parents had long ago accepted Gina’s wanderings and, as long as she pulled her weight on the farm, they let her go with a parental shrug of the shoulders. And she did carry her weight on the farm. Next to the forest, she loved growing things best. But what she discovered when she got back to the farm that night was horror beyond her wildest nightmares. Later she could not remember much of the rest of the night, the discovery of the bodies of her parents and the farmhands, the destruction of the vehicles and the communications system. Dimly, she realized if she was to find help she would have to walk the twenty kilometers to the next farmstead. And what if whoever did this came back?

  The sun was well up when she spotted the pall of smoke over her father’s farthest cornfield. She knew what to do about that.

  En Route from New Granum to the Cabbage Patch

  It was a brilliant day in New Granum, warm, sunny, clear, blue skies. “A perfect day for a ride in the country!” Jorge Liberec Lavager exclaimed, breathing in the fresh morning air. He looked at the gardens growing around the buildings on Executive Center. “Farmer’s delight, eh, Locker?” he slapped Locksley Ollwelen heartily on the back.

  “My dad was a distiller,” Ollwelen said glumly.

  “Yeah, I can see that by the red in your eyes, Locker. Had a bit too much of that old family bourbon last night, did you? Bad news when you got back to your office?” Ollwelen smiled weakly. He did look a bit peaked and shaky just now. “You should have invited me over.” Lavager chided his minister and then laughed.

  Lavager was in an excellent mood that morning, despite the warning message and the opposition of both Ollwelen and Franklin to his trip, but he’d been looking forward to it all week and the weather was cooperating beautifully. They were standing in the shade of the main entrance to the government building, waiting for Franklin al-Rashid to join them with their transportation and security detachment.

  “The hell with waiting, Locker, let’s take my car and just you and me, we’ll drive on out to the Cabbage Patch,” Lavager said suddenly.

  “But—”

  “Come on, we’ll show up out there like tourists, lost and asking for directions. See if they can recognize us. Besides, we convoy out there and everyone’ll know we’re coming. We might as well make an announcement in the media.”

  “Jorge, you can’t just, just—” He gestured in frustration. Lavager laughed again. “I know. I’m a prisoner in my own land. Well, I thought I’d try.”

  Three heavily armored landcars rolled to a halt at the bottom of the steps below where the pair stood. Several burly security officers, followed by al-Rashid, piled out of the vehicles and rushed up to Lavager.

  “Follow us, sir,” one of them said. The others surrounded Lavager, their eyes never resting on him but roaming all over the landscape, looking for signs of possible danger. They protected him with the bulk of their own bodies.

  “You see why I don’t like this security business, Locker? I already feel an attack of claustrophobia coming on.”

  “You ride in the second vehicle, sir,” al-Rashid ordered.

  “Wait a minute, Franklin, do we really need all this security? Nobody knows where we’re going. Dammit, I wanted to arrive out there as inconspicuously as possible!” He gestured at the three large cars and all the guards.

  “Sir, this is just standard security for a head of state.”

  “Well, I resign then! As of this moment I am plain Mister Lavager!” Al-Rashid looked at Lavager in astonishment, his mouth half open.

  Lavager shrugged. “Oh, all right. I know, I know. But no, if I’ve got to put up with this farce I’m riding shotgun in the first vehicle. If you aren’t the first dog in line, the view never changes, eh Locker? We learned that on those long forced marches when we were lieutenants, right?”

  Ollwelen started. “What?”

  “Locker, what is the matter with you this morning?”

  Ollwelen grinned sheepishly. “Well, Jorge, you riding in the middle car is to protect you from roadblocks in the front, and vehicle attacks from the rear,” Ollwelen protested. “I need to ride in the first vehicle to support the fire team.”

  Lavager glanced curiously at his defense minister. “I was hoping we could ride together, chat and enjoy a cigar on the trip out.” He shrugged. “But if that’s the way you want it, Locker, you can ride in the
second vehicle, but I’m riding up front.”

  “Oh, I’ll ride with you, Jorge,” Ollwelen said quickly. “I wouldn’t want to miss one of your cigars,” he added, grinning.

  “That’s more like it.” Lavager slapped Ollwelen on the back again and got into the first vehicle. The officer in charge of the security detail cast a questioning glance at al-Rashid, who only shrugged as if to say, “He’s the boss.”

  “Put the windscreens down,” Lavager told his driver, “and take it easy. Keep it down to forty kilometers an hour. I want to enjoy the fresh air and the countryside. We’ve got all day to get there.” Lavager produced his travel humidor and extracted two Davidoffs. “You get one when we arrive,” he told his driver, patting the man on the shoulder, “but I don’t want anything to distract you while you’re driving.”

  Despite the chances he always took with his personal security, which gave al-Rashid fits, the bodyguards liked being around Lavager. He was a no-nonsense type of person who always considered the comfort of his security detail first. They especially appreciated his late-night rendezvous at places like Ramuncho’s, because he never called them out of their beds to stand watch over him on those occasions. Beyond the city limits, the road wound through endless fields of ripening corn. The plants stood a full two meters high on either side of the road, giving the impression the convoy was driving through a green tunnel. A heavily armed security agent sat in the back of Lavager’s car, monitoring various scanners that would indicate the presence of living things up to one hundred meters to either side of the road. He also had at his fingertips an array of defensive weaponry that could be employed to virtually level the corn within that one hundred meters.

  “What’s your name?” Lavager asked, twisting around to look at the security agent.

  “Leelanu Lanners, sir.”

  “Are you sure you know how to use all those weapons?” Lavager asked, eyeing the man’s laser rifle and sidearm.

  Lanners grinned tightly. “Very well, sir. I’m a pretty good shot with just about any personal weapon.”

  Lanners faced Lavager and nodded, but his eyes kept moving, watching their surroundings. Lavager noticed Lanners’s constant eye movement. “Were you ever in the army?”

  “Yessir, I gave it a try. Twenty-four years. Then I decided I didn’t want to make a career of it.”

  “Pity. Another sixteen years and you could have retired.”

  Lanners shrugged. “My twenty-four in the army counts toward my time in the security service, so it all works out.”

  Lavager nodded; the army and the security service were both armed government services. He looked to the sides of the road and suddenly shouted, “Look lively back there! See all that corn? We’re being ‘stalked’!” He laughed enormously and thumped the driver on his back. The man grinned but kept his eyes on the road. Through his own onboard monitors he could both see and speak to the drivers of the two vehicles behind him; they were also busy scanning the terrain. With al-Rashid monitoring everything in the third vehicle, the other two cars in the convoy contained men totally alert, weapons ready to deliver immediate fire. “I feel young again!” he said suddenly. “Locker, remember that song we used to sing back in the old days? Come on, join me in the chorus,” and he began to sing in a fairly decent tenor voice an old ditty that was popular in the army when he was a young officer:

  “To the ladies of our Army our cups shall ever flow, Companions in our exile and our shield ’gainst every woe; May they see their husbands generals, with double pay also, And join us in our choruses at Happy Hour, oh!”

  They had been driving for about half an hour when the sensors on Lavager’s car warned his driver of an anomaly in the roadbed just ahead of them. There were no telltale signs from the infrared monitors, just what appeared to be a slight hump in the ferro-asphalt that the computer sensed shouldn’t be there. It was so tiny the car had driven over it before the driver realized what it was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the New Granum Road, Northeast of New Granum, Atlas

  A command-detonated mine exploded under the second vehicle with a tremendous craaak ! The concussion threw everyone in Lavager’s vehicle forward in their seats while the force of the explosion lifted the second heavy armored car a full two meters into the air before it came crashing down in flames to bounce off the road and plow into the corn. When its fuel cells ignited, the explosion threw a fireball and a greasy column of smoke high into the air. Pieces of ferro-asphalt and parts from the destroyed vehicle fell to earth in lazy arcs, bouncing, smoking, and skittering over the roadway. The driver in the third vehicle whipped around the gaping crater that appeared in front of his vehicle.

  “Floor it!” al-Rashid yelled over the comm. Ambushers who had lain hidden along the left side of the road then opened fire with lasers and rocket-propelled grenades. Instead of trying to outrun the fire, Lavager’s driver turned his vehicle straight into the corn at maximum acceleration, bouncing one of the assailants off his hood and over the roof of the car. Laser beams hit the car, but most were harmlessly bled off into the earth by its armor. One lanced through the window and took the driver’s head off in a spray of blood and shredded skull fragments. The dead man’s hand remained grasping the accelerator lever. Lavager reached over, pried the lifeless fingers loose, unfastened his seat belt, released the door mechanism, and shoved the corpse out into the corn, which was making a thud-thud-thunking sound as the vehicle rammed across the rows. Clutching the steering column, Lavager slewed the vehicle around. Huge gouts of rich, dark earth spouted up from beneath the roaring vehicle. He applied the brakes and the car plowed to a stop. Suddenly it was quiet.

  “Where are they?” Lavager asked as he released the catch to the onboard shotrifle. He checked the magazine, inserted a round in the chamber, took the safety off.

  “One hundred and fifty meters to our rear,” Lanners answered. “I make out—Good God!—a dozen!

  No, more! Coming this way.” A huge explosion from the road marked the destruction of the third vehicle, the one al-Rashid had been in.

  “Arm yourself,” Lavager told Ollwelen, who had been sitting stiffly in his seat all the time. “Are you hit, Locker?” he asked when the man didn’t move.

  “N-No—I don’t have a weapon!”

  Lavager ignored Ollwelen. “How about your onboard weapons system? Can you use it?”

  Lanners swore. “A bolt must’ve taken the damned thing out, sir! We’ll have to use our personal weapons.” Grenades began ripping through the corn over their heads and exploding behind them.

  “They’re ranging on us!”

  “Franklin!” Lavager was on the communications set now. “Report!” There was no answer. Lavager didn’t expect one, because a second column of greasy, black smoke was now curling up from the road. It spoke volumes about al-Rashid’s fate. And if that wasn’t all, the cornfield, which was very dry, was catching fire.

  “They’re coming!” Ollwelen shouted. Sure enough, from a short distance ahead they could hear the sound of men crashing through the corn. Without even considering flight, Lavager prepared to fight. “Dismount! We’ll form a firing line, use this car as cover, come on, move it, Locker! Get your ass in gear! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Before Ollwelen could answer, Lavager was outside in the corn using the hood of the vehicle as a brace as he sighted the shotrifle in the direction of the oncoming attackers. Lanners, a laser rifle in his hands, took up a position on the opposite side of the car.

  “No!” Ollwelen suddenly shouted as he jumped away from the car. “Look! The fuel cell has ruptured!

  Get away from here!”

  “Into the corn! Run!” Lavager shouted and the three crashed through the rows of stalks, putting as much distance between them and the damaged land car as they could. It exploded in a huge ball of flame. The concussion knocked all three men headlong to the ground. Now fires were starting everywhere around where the trio lay, gasping and panting in the hot, still
air.

  “What’s on the other side of this field?” Lavager wheezed.

  “I think it’s another road, sir,” Lanners answered. “It’s about a kilometer over that way,” he pointed behind them, “I think. Damn, where are they?” he asked, meaning the ambushers.

  “They’ve got those fires to contend with,” Lavager grunted. As if confirming this statement someone began screaming from somewhere behind them. “Burn, you bastard, burn!” Lavager growled. “Let’s get out of here. Come on.” He tapped Ollwelen on the shoulder and the three resumed their dash across the corn rows. It was very difficult running because they stumbled over piping at intervals between the rows, the farmer’s irrigation system. Obviously, the farmer wasn’t aware yet that his corn was on fire—or that the irrigation system had been sabotaged. They had gone only about two hundred meters farther when they stumbled out into a grassy pathway about twenty meters wide running the entire length of the field parallel to the rows of corn. “We’ll make our stand on the other side,” Lavager said. He sprinted across and took up a prone firing position behind a corn row on the other side. Ollwelen and Lanners flopped down beside him. The three lay there panting, their bodies running with perspiration and the air was now so full of smoke from the fires that breathing was becoming difficult. From back the way they had come they heard many voices. “We may not stop them all, but we’ll slow them down,” Lavager said. “They’re between the fires and us. We’ll really screw them over when they step out into that cleared space.” He grinned at the other two, then his grin vanished.

  “Where the hell’s your weapon, Locker?”

  “I-I didn’t have a chance to get one,” Ollwelen gasped. Lavager shook his head. “Get ready,” he told Lanners, then coughed when a gust of wind swept the increasing smoke into his face. “We’ll be asphyxiated if we don’t burn to death first,” he said when his throat cleared. “When we get out of here I’ve got a job for you, Leelanu Lanners. So shoot like you voted for me in the last election—straight and often.”