After America (30 page)

“Orgastically.” Milosz grinned.

The Blackhawk swooped around far to the west, well away from the main concentration of enemy forces. But even so, ground fire reached up for them as they hammered low over the unlit warren of Greenwich Avenue and the West Village. Metallic pings and pops signaled a couple of lucky hits, but the pilot forged on, describing a snaking path up the island that never exposed them to a line of fire for more than a few seconds. As they crossed West 23rd Street, Gardener toe-tapped Milosz on the side of his boot and jerked her thumb, pointing east. Milosz had a clear view of seven or eight rocket-propelled grenades as they described tightly swirling arcs through the air to detonate in a spectacular constellation of starbursts against the facade of a high-rise. Falling glass and metal twinkled in the light of other fires. And then they had swept past and the destruction was reduced to unseen flashes and sheet lightning.

Master Sergeant Wilson, he noted, had his eyes closed and might even have been sleeping. Veal yawned expansively. Milosz knew it was common among combat veterans, especially airborne forces, to doze fitfully while flying into a landing zone. It was not bravado. This was simply one of the few times over the next few days they would get to sit quietly without having to remain constantly alert to enemy movements. Unfortunately, Milosz had never learned the art of blocking out the infernal racket of a helicopter in flight and so contented himself by furtively sneaking glances at the air force woman.

She was a fine and fierce-looking warrior encased in her body armor and festooned with weapons, and it had been many months since Milosz had enjoyed any quality time with any woman. He sighed and shook off such thoughts as best he could. This was going nowhere. She was very heavily armed.

“Help you, Sergeant?”

Damn, she had caught him sneaking a peek.

“No,” he replied, bluffing. “You catch me daydreaming of better world, yes, except it is not day, and there is nowhere better in the world to be.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s nice work if you can get it,” Gardener happily agreed, although she looked as though she knew exactly what he had been up to. She didn’t seem to care, though.

Milosz reached through his body armor to his sweat-soaked T-shirt and pulled out the small cross he wore on a chain around his neck. He kissed it and asked God for the strength to keep his mind on the job and out of Technical Sergeant Gardener’s pants, where it seemed inclined to stray.

“Two minutes!” barked the Blackhawk’s crew chief. He had stuck a Velcro patch on his uniform that read
NUMBER
ONE
INFIDEL
.

Milosz saw Gardener smiling at it and was annoyed to find himself feeling a brief pang of jealousy.

Veal blinked groggily like a man awakened far too early from a much-needed nap. Wilson came awake like a cat, all at once.

“Lock and load,” he ordered. Magazines came out of ammo pouches. Wilson and Gardener both tapped mags against their helmets before slapping them into the magazine well. Milosz skipped the meaningless helmet tap and locked a round into place. For good measure, he pulled a fat forty-millimeter high-explosive grenade from his webbing. As he slid the 203 into the breech, he tried to crush the image of his very own weapon slipping into the air force lady.

Oh, Milosz, he scolded himself. Pope John Paul would be very disappointed.

He leaned sideways as the chopper began to angle around for a fast insertion. They were setting down on a clear, flat rooftop, and Milosz fired up his night vision goggles, set for low light amplification, and slapped them down over his eyes, turning the world a cool, fuzzy green.

“Ten seconds,” said the Number One Infidel.

The Blackhawk slowed to a hover as the crew chief threw the ropes out. Milosz was up and on the rope first, grabbing it with his hands.

The chief sought clearance from the cockpit and received it.

“Go-go-go!”

Milosz stepped out of the aircraft, his feet gripping the cord between his ankles in one fluid motion. He slid down into the maelstrom below.

Texas Administrative Division

“You have more of these?”

Miguel held up the heavy black goggles to admire them. They did not look very comfortable, but if they did what Aronson claimed and allowed the wearer to see in the dark, they would be more than worth a little discomfort. The Mormon leader—Miguel had come to recognize him as the head of their party—shook his head.

“I am afraid not,” he said. “We only have two pair. We originally picked them up to keep an eye on the herd at night. It never occurred to us that we’d need them for any other reason.”

Miguel placed them back on the faded Formica top of the table in the diner attached to Leona’s general store. He made no comment on Aronson’s lack of foresight. The night vision goggles had been designed for soldiers to use in night fighting. Surely it must have occurred to someone in their party that they might have a purpose beyond babysitting cattle through a long Texas evening. It was not his place to question other people’s judgment, however. After all, he was the man who could not save his own family. At that thought he could not help taking a quick, flitting glance at his daughter to reassure himself that she was nearby.

Sofia was no more than a few feet away at another table in the diner, helping sort through stores brought up from the basement. She was still very subdued, but he could tell she was making an effort to be pleasant with the new people. For their part they were solicitous of her feelings, and Aronson’s wife Maive in particular seemed to be trying very hard to look after her. Miguel was grateful for that. He moved the night vision goggles off the road map they had spread out on the table, where it covered a dark black stain left by whoever had been having a meal here when they Disappeared. All the remains were gone now, respectfully removed and buried in soft ground at the back of the store. Not that there were many “remains” as such, just a lot of clothing, stiffened and stained by the noxious organic waste that the energy wave had left behind when it hit people. Not knowing the faith of those they had buried, the Mormons had enacted a small brief ceremony of their own that seemed specifically tailored to mourning those who were not of their church. Miguel had kept a respectful distance, but Sofia had seemed interested in the unusual prayers and display of faith, and he had no objection to her watching more closely if the Mormons did not mind. They did not.

“It is a pity about the goggles, then,” he said. “We will need to hit them at night if they are as numerous as you say.”

“There were at least two dozen of them, I’m sure,” Aronson said.

The cowboy nodded. “I have never heard of Blackstone’s men traveling in small bands.”

Aronson looked up from where he had been studying the map and frowned. “You keep referring to them as Governor Blackstone’s men, Miguel,” he said. “But they are just bandits. Blackstone has outlawed them.”

Miguel waved away the distinction.

“They serve his ends,” he said, “even if he denounces them. I have spoken to other settlers about this. Many agree with me. As do the banditos from south of the Rio Grande. Did you know they will not cross the agents’ territory? They consider it Blackstone land already.”

Aronson looked like a professor challenged by a particularly obdurate student, but even if he felt like arguing, Willem D’Age was in no mood to be distracted.

“We need to catch up with them, to cover this ground as quickly as possible,” he said as he swept a hand over the map. “And we will need to travel at night. Is that right, Miguel?”

He nodded. “Not at first, when we set out from here. But yes, we must assume they have scouts out the closer we get to them. We will need the darkness then. It is the only way. There are many more of them, and … they will be seasoned killers. Your party, Aronson. It is …” He trailed off.

Aronson conceded the point with a lift of his shoulders. “No, you’re right; we are not like them. There’s no point pretending otherwise.”

“We will need to take them by surprise,” Miguel said. “It will be difficult and unpleasant. Very unpleasant. I have been thinking about how we might do it and have written down a few ideas and a list of supplies we will need.”

He reached into his jacket pocket to fetch an old folded envelope on which he had sketched out his plan, such as it was. Instead, he accidentally brought out the photograph he had taken from the homestead just before they left. Seeing his wife smiling and surrounded by their children, he felt as though he had been struck a blow just below the heart.

“Excuse me,” he said quietly as he returned the photograph carefully to his pocket.

The day was heating up outside, turning into one of the warmer days Miguel could remember in quite some time. It had been a hard winter in East Texas, but the air in the diner grew thick and close as morning closed in on noon. The Mormon women, with the help of Sofia and the two boys, Adam and Orin, were progressing well with the job of restocking the group’s supplies. He was glad that Sofia had work to distract her. It was undoubtedly better that she not spend today in the saddle dwelling on what had happened back at the homestead. Helping these people would help her; he was sure of it. Unfortunately, there could be no doubt that helping the Mormons would also serve to put his daughter in the way of grave harm, because that was where Miguel himself was heading.

“It will be a difficult business scouting this town,” he said as they surveyed the map of Crockett. “Although if I was driving a herd of stolen cattle and looking for an easy time of it, I would probably graze them here on the southeastern edge of the city. Near this school or college.” He pointed at a cluster of buildings and playing fields on the map.

“Well, none of us are real cattlemen, Miguel,” said Aronson. “We’re willing to take your counsel on that. So then, do you think that’s the direction we should approach from?”

“Not directly,” he said. “And we do not even know they are there in town, let alone camped in this particular field. If they are, it would be best if we came in through cover. You cannot tell from this map, but we must hope there is forest or brushland along any line of approach we might take. But unless there is someone among you who knows this town well, we shall just have to be careful and scout it out properly.”

The screen door behind him creaked open, admitting to the diner a giant by the name of Ben Randall. He carried sledgehammers and clothing wrapped in a giant bundle.

“Got what you wanted,” he said to Miguel.

“Good. Just put them over there on the table next to the women.”

Randall unburdened himself of the load, which landed on the table with a dull crash. He was one of the biggest men Miguel had ever seen, some sort of engineer in his former life who’d been working on an oil rig somewhere off Indonesia when the Wave struck. He had grown up on a farm, however, and of all the Mormons, except Peter Atchison, their senior horse wrangler, he seemed the most comfortable in the wild. Joining them at the map, he wiped a thin film of sweat from his brow as he appeared to take in all the squiggles and lines converging on the town.

“Guess we’d better pray for some cover.”

“Pray if you must, Mister Randall,” Miguel said. “But I believe the good Lord will look after those who are best prepared and who have investigated their enemies.”

Aronson looked troubled, and it was not long before he spoke up. “On that matter, Miguel. How are we to approach this? I am not comfortable splitting up our group. We would have to leave one or two men behind with the women, including Sofia, and even that is no guarantee of their safety. And what happens if our scouts do find these agents in Crockett? They will then have to backtrack for the other men if we are to have enough guns to have any chance of pulling this off.”

Randall and D’Age looked to the cowboy for an answer. That was only natural. Unlike Miguel, they had no experience of leading men in a situation like this and, until they were attacked by the road agents, probably had precious little experience of fighting them, either. Miguel had been bossing vaqueros for twenty years, during which time he had regularly had to enforce his will with boot and fist. And of course he had had his fill of deadly violence escaping from Mexico with his family on Miss Julia’s boat. His brow creased, and he grunted as he pushed away the memory of the massacre yet again. It flashed before his eyes many times every day, distressing him greatly. Until Sofia was safe, surrounded by the armies of Presidente Kipper, he could not indulge in the weakness of memory and regrets. First came her safety, then came vengeance, and only then, if he still lived, would there be time for mourning.

He chewed his lower lip as he thought over the difficulty Aronson had raised. A couple of errant whiskers got caught between his teeth.

“You are right,” he said. “I must admit I have been worrying about this very matter all morning. The bandit gangs are pushing much deeper into the Federal Mandate than they have before. And there seem to be more of them. I do not think it would be wise to split up into smaller groups that could be easily picked off. Altogether we have, what, six men, two boys, your two women, and Sofia. If they can all pull a trigger to protect themselves and if we are careful, that is enough to give the agents pause. A smaller group, however, they will simply overrun, especially if they know there are women to be had.”

Aronson nodded, seemingly satisfied with that line of reasoning. “So we all travel together.”

“Yes,” said Miguel. “But if we are successful in tracking them, only the men will fight. There will be work for the women tending the animals and, when we are done and if we are lucky, looking after the wounded. This fight will be no place for them.”

The chatter of voices from the other side of the diner had gone quiet while Miguel spoke. He turned around to find Sofia and the two Mormon women looking at him. He thought that his daughter might say something in protest. He recognized the flame of indignation in her eyes, but before Sofia could speak, Maive Aronson leaned across a bag full of beans and squeezed her arm.