Ancient Shores

by Jack McDevitt

  “Look,” said Pipe.

  Three of the cars that had been parked off the access road were moving. Their headlights were off, but it didn’t make any difference because the top of the escarpment was flooded with light from the moon. They were keeping a respectful distance. Pipe spoke into his radio.

  April felt her stomach tighten. She wanted to be something more than just a bystander. But she could not bring herself to pick up a rifle.

  To a degree, she was responsible for the standoff. They had mishandled this, she and Max. They’d been so busy with the discovery itself that they’d lost sight of the political implications. They could have thrown a blanket over everything, kept it quiet. The media and the press had been inclined to laugh, and April should have allowed them to do so until she’d taken time to think out the consequences. But she’d been too busy enjoying the media attention. Calling press conferences. Blab, blab.

  Damn.

  One of the three cars, a black late-model Chevrolet, had begun to pick up speed. It pulled ahead of the others, came around to the south, swung in a large circle toward them, and nosed up to the security fence. A rear door opened, and the female marshal got out. She was carrying a bullhorn. “Chairman Walker,” she said.

  Her voice boomed through the instrument.

  Walker showed himself, stepping out into the open. “What do you want?”

  April looked at her watch. Midnight.

  The bullhorn fell to the marshal’s side. “Chairman, it’s time to leave.”

  The wind played with Walker’s white hair. “No,” he said.

  “You’re under a court order.” She came forward to the fence until she could have touched it. “Don’t do this.”

  “You leave me no choice.”

  Pipe’s hand found April’s shoulder. “Keep down when the shooting starts. Better, get into the ditch and stay close to the wall. After a while they may hold up and offer a chance to surrender. If they do, show them this and give yourself up. But you will need to do it quickly.”

  He passed over a large linen handkerchief.

  A white flag.

  “They’re still dug in around the perimeter.” The radio operator pressed his earphone close and looked at his commander. “Horace, we are locked and loaded.”

  Gibson nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What’s the Rock Team status?”

  “They are in place and ready to go.”

  The plan was simple enough. The weakness of the defenders’ position was the fact that they were strung out with a ditch at their backs. If he could drive them into the ditch, it was over.

  Bolt Two would bomb the chain-link fence that screened the mounds. When the fence was down, they would fire concussion grenades into the Indians’ positions and follow up with heavy automatic-weapons fire. One and Three would go in with the ground force while the Rock Team (which was settled in a sheltered area twenty feet below the edge of the cliff) came over the top. With luck, the battle would be over within seconds.

  There was a delay while Boomer, Max, and two of the visitors (who introduced themselves as Wally and Scott) finished putting the skis on the C—47. They were on a seldom-used strip behind the National Guard armory. When the aircraft was ready, the passengers hurried out of Sundown’s offices and boarded. The cargo hold had benches, but it wasn’t very comfortable.

  Max, with a heavy heart, watched them disappear inside, one by one. Hawk walked over and stood beside him. “Thank you,” he said. “I know you don’t want to do this.”

  “I don’t guess anybody does,” said Max.

  He informed the tower he was headed for Fort Moxie. They gave him clearance as he finished his preflight check.

  Scott sat down in the copilot’s seat. “Mind?”

  “No,” said Max. “You fly one of these?”

  “I’m just here to watch a pro, Max,” he said casually.

  Max wondered whether the shooting wouldn’t all be over by the time they arrived. He gunned the engines, and the old cargo plane began to move.

  As he lifted into the air he was trying to visualize the summit at Johnson’s Ridge. He’d probably have to come in from the southwest. The landing space would be short, and the longest run would take him toward the cliff edge. He could angle more toward the north, where he would be pointed at the trees instead of over the side. But that would cut his available space by about sixty yards.

  He wished Ceil were here.

  The mood in the cargo hold was subdued.

  “Maybe that’s them,” April said, pointing at a lone helicopter.

  “I don’t think so.” Pipe peered through his binoculars. “That thing’s got too many guns sticking out of it.” He looked at April. “Keep down,” he said.

  Fear whispered through her.

  The helicopter kept its distance, tracking back and forth at a range of about three hundred yards. Adam came in behind them and knelt beside the rocket launcher. “All right, Will. You sure you know how to use it?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “But I still think we should take the chopper out.”

  “No. Stay with the plan.”

  Pipe grunted disapproval, loaded the weapon, and put it on his shoulder.

  “All we’re doing,” he complained, “is alerting them that we have the launcher.”

  “That’s correct, Will. That’s exactly right.” Adam’s hand squeezed April’s shoulder. “We’ll be okay,” he said.

  “Ready,” said Pipe.

  The chopper, apparently on cue, veered and raced toward the defenses. April saw flashes of light beneath its pods, and Adam pushed her to the ground.

  “Fire,” Adam said.

  The launcher kicked, and the rocket rode a tail of fire out past the incoming aircraft. Simultaneously a series of explosions ripped the ground in front of her. Metal fragments thunked into the earth, and black smoke blew over them. The helicopter roared overhead, and the distant tattoo of rifle fire began.

  A long section of the fence was gone as surely as if it had never existed, replaced by a series of burning craters.

  “Everybody all right?” asked Adam.

  One by one they answered up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now they know for sure that we have the launcher. Let’s see if they keep their distance.”

  “This is an NBC news report.”

  The sitcom Angie just dropped off the screen, and Tom Brokaw appeared standing in front of a display showing the location of Johnson’s Ridge. “Firing has been reported in the vicinity of the Roundhouse. We believe that U.S. marshals have begun an effort to seize the structure by force from a group of Sioux who have refused to comply with a court order to abandon the site. Details are sketchy at this hour because of a general news blackout. A press conference is scheduled twenty minutes from now. Meantime, here’s what we know….”

  “Son of a bitch.” Gibson in one of the choppers hit the switch on the phone. “Rock Team, hold off till you hear from me.”

  Charlie Evans and his two cliffhangers were waiting on a narrow shelf twenty feet below the summit. “Roger,” said Charlie.

  “It’ll be a few minutes.” He switched frequencies. “Bolt Three.”

  “Bolt Three here.”

  “Follow us down.”

  Gibson was not going to allow the bastards to blast one of his Blackhawks. He descended in a wooded area on the south and gathered his assault force. He had nine people at his disposal, plus the Rock Team. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We are going to have to do it the hard way.”

  “They’re coming,” said Little Ghost. “Pass the word.”

  Shadows had come out of the woods and were gliding toward them. “Everybody sit tight,” said Adam.

  The marshals drew closer, moving in a broken line. They were in black and were hard to pick up against the woods, even in the moonlight. Adam waited until they were within about 150 yards. Then he tapped Little Ghost on the shoulder. “Now, John,” he said. “Keep it high.”

  Little Ghost
fired a half-dozen rounds at the stars. The shadows stopped, waited, and came on again.

  “Adam,” said Little Ghost, “it’s not going to work. If we’re going to stop them, we better do it.”

  Max saw the flashes from about ten miles out. “We’re too late,” he told Scott.

  The radio came alive: “C—47, you are in a restricted air zone.”

  “Uh, that’s a roger,” said Max. “I’m lost.”

  “Suggest you go to two-seven-zero.”

  “Stay on course,” said Scott.

  Max frowned. “That’s a war up there. We’re too late to stop it.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Okay, Max thought. In for a nickel…

  The radar picked up a blip in the north. “Coming for us,” said Scott.

  Max nodded and tried to look as if he did this kind of thing every day. He snapped on the intercom. “Okay, folks,” he told the cargo hold, “we’re going to be on the ground in a couple of minutes. Buckle in.”

  Ahead, the chain of ridges and promontories rose out of the plain. He picked out Johnson’s and adjusted course slightly to the south. Visibility was good, and the wind was directly out of the northeast at about forty knots. “Not the best weather,” he said.

  His copilot nodded. “You’ll do fine.”

  The radio told him in cold tones he was subject to arrest.

  Max dropped to two thousand feet, cut speed, and, five miles out, went to approach flaps. The landing area was smaller than he remembered. He saw the Roundhouse and the fires.

  An armored helicopter drew alongside. Max looked out his window. A man dressed in black battle fatigues sat in the open door with a rifle in his lap.

  The radio burped. “C—47, turn around. You are in violation.”

  The escarpment was coming up fast. He eased back on the yoke.

  A blast of automatic-weapons fire and tracers cut across his nose. “We will fire on you if necessary.”

  “They’re bluffing,” said Scott.

  Max passed over a swatch of trees, throttled down, and felt the main landing gear touch.

  The plane lifted, settled again.

  Voices were screaming in his earphones. The tail gear, which was also wearing a ski, made contact.

  He cut power. The problem with the ski landing was that there were no brakes available. He couldn’t even reverse engines. It was simply a matter of letting the aircraft come to a stop on its own.

  The Roundhouse was off on his right. He could hear the stutter of automatic weapons.

  “What’s at the end of the field?” asked his copilot.

  “Another short flight,” he said.

  The Roundhouse slid by. In back his passengers were silent. Snow hissed beneath the skis.

  They passed between the parking lot and a couple of rapidly retreating police cruisers. The cars threw up snow.

  Ahead, at the limit of his lights, he was looking at a void.

  He thought briefly about gunning the engines to try to get back into the air or yanking the aircraft left to spill it into the trees. But it was really too late to do anything except ride the plane to the end.

  The noise in his earphones had ceased.

  He hung on.

  They bounced over a ripple in the snow.

  The void yawned larger. And spread horizon to horizon.

  The plane slowed.

  And stopped.

  A Blackhawk roared past.

  Max couldn’t see much ground in front. “Everybody stay put,” he told the passengers.

  “Nice landing, Max,” said his copilot.

  He glanced through his side window, unbuckled, and looked out the other side. “Plenty of room,” he said, sitting back down. He revved the left engine.

  “Hey,” said Scott, “be careful.”

  “It’s okay,” said Max. “This baby’ll turn on a dime.”

  It was true. Max got some protests from the hold, and the voice in his earphones came back, but he brought the aircraft around and taxied toward the Roundhouse.

  While Max turned the plane, Gibson recognized his opportunity.

  Moments later, the defenders ducked as a barrage of heavy fire came their way. On the left side of the defenses, Andrea saw a grappling hook loop up over the cliff edge and bite into the earth.

  “The plane’s coming this way,” said Gibson’s senior deputy. Its lights illuminated the parking lot as it passed and headed in the general direction of Horace’s position.

  “It damn sure is. What the hell are those fools trying to do?”

  His radio operator pressed his headphones to his ears. “Bolt Two requests instructions.”

  “To do what?”

  “Shoot, I guess, Horace.”

  “Goddamn, no. They must all be crazy out there.”

  The operator was listening again. “The Rock Team’s over the top.”

  Max angled toward the Roundhouse. The night was filled with gunfire.

  Asquith’s voice came from the back: “Can’t we move any faster than this?”

  And the linebacker: “This is no time for halfway measures, Max.”

  Several of the others, in a surprisingly wide range of tones, supported the sentiment. Max throttled up and made directly for the hole in the security fence, for the middle of the crossfire. Bullets clattered against the fuselage, and he thought how angry Ceil was going to be when she got her plane back. One of the windows blew out.

  He wheeled up against a mound of earth, could go no farther. “Okay,” he said, cutting the engines.

  In back, they were already throwing open the cargo door. Ben Markey’s cameraman, a tall, blond kid about twenty years old, knelt in the opening, adjusting his equipment. When he was ready, he turned on the lights. “Okay,” he said. “Go.”

  Ben Markey, who was already talking into his microphone, nodded to Walter Asquith, who had been standing in the doorway. Asquith leaped out of the aircraft into a spray of bullets. One caught him in the leg and another in the chest. He crashed heavily into the snow.

  Gibson, horrified, saw the incident from his forward position, saw two other people jump out of the plane and throw themselves across the man on the ground to shield him, saw the open cargo door and the inner cabin filled with more people. He had never witnessed such idiocy. Dumb sons of bitches. He turned to his operator. “Cease fire,” he said. And to his senior deputy: “I do not believe this.”

  He suddenly realized he was on national television. He saw Ben Markey, sprawled on the ground, trying to avoid being shot, but talking into a microphone. He saw the cameraman panning the injured man, the fires and the mounds and the armed people on both sides.

  In those few seconds the gunfire trailed off and stopped.

  The black government car pulled up. Elizabeth got out on the run. “What the hell’s going on here?” she demanded. She saw Asquith and caught her breath. “What happened?”

  The passengers were still coming out of the plane, climbing down one by one, some managing it easily, others needing help. Police cars pulled up, lights blinking. The wheelchair came out. “Who are you people?” Elizabeth demanded.

  A couple gave names, but Gibson was too far away to hear. She looked in his direction. Horace was thinking how best to handle it: Round these people up, but take advantage of the cease-fire to undercut the position of the Native Americans. He could do it. He knew he could.

  “You can see what’s happening here,” Markey told his microphone. “Walter Asquith, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature last year, has been shot.”

  Asquith? thought Gibson. My God. There’ll be hell to pay.

  The linebacker knelt beside Asquith, trying to stop the bleeding, while a man with a gray beard tried to make him comfortable. “You guys got a medic here anywhere?” the woman demanded as an ambulance pulled up.

  Asquith’s eyes were glazed, and he died clutching the linebacker’s sleeve.

  The body was placed in the back of the ambulance. After the vehicle drove awa
y, Gibson came forward and identified himself. “I’ll have to ask you people to come with me.”

  “Why?” asked the man with the beard. He was of about average height, and the cast of his features suggested a mild temper, but he confronted the marshal with barely suppressed rage. “So you can go on with your war?”

  Gibson stared back. Nothing was easy anymore.

  “Just arrest the whole bunch,” said Elizabeth, keeping her voice down.

  “Who are you?” Gibson asked the man who had spoken. He had recognized two of the visitors but not this one.

  “Stephen Jay Gould,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. The camera moved in, and the spotlight illuminated him for the national audience. “I don’t think we’re going to cooperate. If the government wants to kill anyone else, it’ll have to start with us.”

  They were beginning to line up now, forming a human buffer between the sides.

  “Gould,” Ben told the microphone, “is a paleontologist.”

  The camera panned to a tall, aristocratic figure.

  “Charles Curran,” Ben said, holding the mike for him. “Theologian.”

  Curran might have been preparing to discipline a disorderly child. “This is more than a dispute about property rights,” he said. “Johnson’s Ridge doesn’t belong to one government, or even to all governments. It belongs to everybody.” He looked directly into the camera. “Tonight, its protectors are under siege. To that degree, we are all under siege.”

  “Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Historian.”

  Schlesinger’s brown eyes flashed behind hornrimmed glasses. Gibson had a sudden sense of the uselessness of his fire power.

  “Scott Carpenter. Astronaut.”

  Max’s copilot. Still looking capable of riding into orbit, he nodded to the invisible audience.

  “Gregory Benford. Astrophysicist and novelist.”

  Benford was of medium height, bearded, wearing an oversized hunting jacket that he’d probably borrowed. He scarcely looked at Gibson. Then he waved the chairman forward. Walker tentatively took his place in the line.