Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (126 page)

Mitch was tending the bacon cooking on the stove, bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows. "Good morning."

"Nothing is good until there's coffee," Stasi said. She picked up a cup and headed for the pot on the stove.

Lewis had out his well-oiled hunting rifle and was carefully checking it. "Just in case," he said.

"That's a good thought, darling," Stasi said. "Kirsch was packing a heater when he came to see me, and I expect his boys are too."

Lewis shrugged. "I hope it doesn't come to that. But I'm going to bring it along."

Stasi sat down at the table, watching Mitch hook the bacon slices out of the pan onto a plate. "How about you, darling? Are you armed?"

He didn't look up. "I have my old service revolver out in the apartment but I don't have any ammunition."

"What use is that?" Stasi asked.

"Given that six months ago I went on an amnesiac fugue and tried to throw myself in the river, do you think I keep a loaded gun around?" Mitch put the last piece of bacon on the plate.

"I do see your point," Stasi said. "Still, you could bring it along just for the stage value. Loom and look threatening, darling. You do that so well."

"I'll keep that in mind," Mitch said.

They headed out in Alma's truck well before sunup, all three of them crammed in the cab. Lewis was driving, which meant Stasi was substantially sitting in Mitch's lap since Lewis had to reach the shift, but there was no down side to that. Well, except for banging her head on the roof when they went over a bump.

The sky was just beginning to pale above the walls of the box canyon as Lewis edged the truck up the last slope to the mine. Some of the snow had melted a little. It wasn't impossible to drive all the way in as it had been last time, though it was slippery enough. The Silver Bullet Mine seemed quiet and deserted in the clear pre-dawn morning, walls black against white slopes. The air was completely still. There was not even the faintest sound of birdsong from the trees above the mine buildings.

Mitch got out of the truck behind her, closing the door quietly as though reluctant to break the stillness. "In the bleak midwinter," he quoted. "Earth stood hard as iron."

"It is midwinter," Stasi said. "Tonight. Tomorrow is midwinter's day."

Mitch grinned. "Oh the rising of the sun and the running of the deer?"

"The deer had better not run anywhere around here darling, or Lewis will shoot them."

Lewis shook his head, leaning in to get the rifle from behind the seats. "You've all been glad enough when I went hunting last fall."

"Oh none of us mind a nice saddle of venison," Stasi said airily. "And free is always the right price. Beef prices are sky high."

"And that roast venison with apples was really good," Mitch said.

Lewis closed his door and looked around. "We're ahead of them," he said, his eyes keen.

"I should think so," Mitch said. "They didn't have any reason to leave at 4:30 in the morning."

"Then let's find a nice place inside to wait for them," Lewis said. He glanced at Mitch. "What did Sampson say about getting the Guard up here?"

"He said he'd think about it." Mitch grimaced. "I laid it on thick about a Tesla device of paramount importance to the government, a real matter of national security. But you know how Sampson is. 'National security?' Repeating everything without committing. Hopefully he'll put a bug in someone's ear, but we can't count on it."

"Right." Lewis nodded. "Ok. If we have to handle it ourselves, we will. Let's find a place that's defensible and has a good field of fire."

Stasi thought she must have looked alarmed, because Mitch said, "We're going to talk to them. This is not the wild west." Only it was. Which somehow did not reassure Stasi one bit.

A
lma woke to watery predawn light and the faint sound of a bird in the tree outside. She shrugged on her bathrobe and padded down the hall, peering out the bathroom window to see the eastern horizon bright and nearly cloudless. The field behind the little hotel was white, the snow sculpted into weird lumps and cornices like frozen waves, but the wind had died overnight. A decent day for flying, most likely.

She hurried into her clothes and went down to the dining room, not surprised to see that she wasn't the first person up. At least one of the others was dressed like a flyer, and there were a couple of burly men talking about the roads from Dubuque. Truckers heading to Des Moines, she gathered, and wished them luck.

The waitress brought her eggs and bacon and coffee, and she attacked them with vigor, watching the light swell outside the windows. It looked as though it was going to be sunny, and she could see a snowplow at work on the runways, the pavement already bare and black behind it. The truckers paid their bill and left, and she retrieved the newspaper they'd abandoned. The forecast was for clear skies and warmer temperatures over the next few days. After yesterday, she was hardly inclined to trust the Weather Service, but at least the skies matched the forecast this time.

"Good morning, Mrs. Segura." Tesla rested his hand on the back of the chair opposite hers. "May I join you?"

"Of course."

The waitress appeared immediately, ready to fuss over the gentleman's order, and Alma allowed herself a sign of relief. She would have felt guilty waking Tesla at this hour, but she didn't have much compunction about going up and banging on Jerry's door.

"I've been thinking about our problem," Tesla said, breaking a slice of toast into three neat pieces. "I think I understand what's happening — it's an unfortunate side effect, unforeseeable at the time the device was built — but as I consider the question, I've begun to wonder if we don't have more cause for concern."

"More cause?" Alma repeated. Given that the device was knocking planes out of the sky like a giant fly swatter, she really didn't like the sound of that.

"I'm afraid it's a possibility we have to consider. As your friend Ras Iskinder may have mentioned, I have developed the first principles of a machine that journalists insist on describing as a 'death ray,' and as a result, I have been approached by representatives of a number of governments who have expressed interest in buying the design."

"I thought Iskinder said you'd offered it to them," Alma said. Jerry had been very clear on the subject.

"Yes, and to one or two others," Tesla answered. "But I've been approached by rather more. Including representatives of powers I would prefer not to see possessed of such a device. I am beginning to wonder if we shouldn't consider the possibility that those parties are currently attempting to gain control of the Silver Bullet."

Alma stared at him. "Do you mean to say you think some foreign agent, some spy, might have turned on the machine to see if it works? And might be up there right now trying to steal it?"

"I don't know. But I don't think we should discount the possibility."

"I do wish you'd mentioned this sooner," Alma said, with what she thought was commendable restraint.

"I hadn't worked out the possibilities," Tesla said.

That changed things. They needed to get in the air as soon as possible, get home as quickly as possible, in case Tesla was right. And she needed to warn Lewis and Mitch — a telegram, she thought. I'll wire from the field here and have them confirm the message to the field at North Platte. In the back of her mind, she could hear Stasi's incredulous voice —
what are you going to say, darling? Look out, bad guys after the death ray, exclamation point?
— but she pushed that worry aside. She'd think of something, just as soon as she got Jerry out of bed —

No, there he was, limping across the dining room, and she pushed back her chair. "Excuse me, Dr. Tesla. I need to send a telegram. Jerry, I want to get out of here as soon as we can. Take care of the bill for me, will you?"

"Yes, all right —"

She swept past him without stopping for explanations, and flung herself into her mink. It was warmer outside, the air lighter — definitely a better day for flying, she thought, and hurried across the road to the main terminal.

The manager professed himself delighted to start fueling the Dude, and promised her the choice of takeoff spots as soon as her passengers arrived. He also agreed to take her telegram to the Western Union office in town, and she frowned for a moment over the form before settling on the message.

Rivals after thing in mine. Use caution. Confirm by wire to North Platte Field.

She handed it over along with two dollars, the cost of the telegram plus a tip for the boy who'd carry it into town on his bicycle. Surely that would be enough — surely Mitch and Lewis would understand what she was saying. And if not, she told herself firmly, they'd wire her at North Platte and she'd just have to pay for long distance to tell them directly. If only Jerry would get Tesla moving.

But there they were, the handyman from the hotel with them, pushing a cart that held their suitcases. Alma nodded her thanks to Jerry, tipped the handyman, and bundled them toward the plane.

L
ewis looked around the abandoned mine building carefully. The light was growing, sunrise made brighter by the snow outside. Mitch was carrying in a pack full of emergency supplies while Stasi stood under Tesla's device, looking up. It brooded like an enormous spider, quiescent. Its cables snaked around the metal legs and across the floor.

Lewis took a deep breath. As defensible places went, this wasn't great. Half the windows were broken, and there must be a couple of dozen of them on the ground floor, all along both sides of the room. It was as big as a hangar, the ceiling rising to four stories at the back where the building abutted the mountainside above, and with all that open space and all those potential entrances it would take six or eight men to cover properly. They had two men and one gun. That made the hunt more difficult.

There was the mine office, a square box in the corner with a sturdy door, but it was just clapboard and had no windows. You could lock yourself in there, as presumably the mine managers in days past had locked up the payroll, but once you were in there you were trapped. There were no other exits and no way to see what was going on.

Lewis looked up. The platforms and struts that had originally handled the ore trolley were better, and it looked like one catwalk passed the upper story windows near the mountainside. A guy could probably climb out onto the slope above the mine. Which was something. And the platform's field of fire covered nearly the whole building. But how sturdy were those things? He shook his head. Fifty years old and no maintenance for the last thirty. And if you got stuck up there you were like a bird in quicklime, exposed from below and no way down except a ladder that was completely open. That was a bad deal.

And then there was the mine head itself. A dark tunnel led back into the mountain, the tracks for the old ore carts running down the center of it. It sloped gently away into darkness. Lewis walked over and looked down, playing his flashlight beam along. A series of light bulbs were staggered along the ceiling, but the switch didn't work. Presumably the battery that was powering Tesla's device wasn't the same one that worked the lights. That was probably dead years ago. A big, dusty tunnel leading nowhere. Lewis glanced around. But the minehead itself was defensible. There was space on both sides of the entrance, plenty of room for a couple of people on each side, shielded by solid rock. Yeah, he could pretty much hold anyone off from this position if he needed to, as long as they weren't willing to take the kind of casualties it would take to rush him. If six or eight men rushed him, he could probably get three or four of them before they closed, and these were just thugs, not the kind of crazy mad infantry he'd seen on the Western Front, going over the top into machine gun fire. These guys wouldn't do that. They weren't getting paid enough to get shot. The only problem was that the best he could do this way would be to hold them off, and it would become clear to them pretty quickly that he was just one guy with a gun.

"Adding it up?" Mitch asked quietly, putting both packs down beside them.

"Yeah," Lewis said. He couldn't really fault Mitch for not being armed, but it was kind of inconvenient. "I think our best bet is to hang on to the minehead."

Mitch nodded, looking around at the space. "I think you're right." He glanced up. "But a guy could do some damage from those catwalks."

"I was thinking that too," Lewis said. "But if I'm up there, and you're down here with Stasi…."

"That makes you the insurance policy," Mitch said. "We'll try to talk them down, and if we can't, you can warn them off. They won't immediately know how many guys are up there, and you're damn accurate."

"And you're out to dry," Lewis said. "If Stasi's right and they're packing heat."

Mitch shrugged. "We scoot for the mine entrance. You cover us. There's not any way for them to approach that isn't exposed to somewhere above."

Lewis looked up, taking in the grid of catwalks. "To that one there," he said, pointing to one near the ore hoist. "And it's got that big metal pulley for cover." He glanced down at the packs. "What have you got?"

"Water, warm clothes, first aid kit, some sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, crackers and peanut butter." Mitch hoisted one up. "Toilet paper and Hershey bars and candles. I like to be prepared."

"Can't argue with that," Lewis said. "It sounds like we're ok for a couple of days if we have to be."

"That was the idea. And there are some blankets out in the truck I haven't brought in yet."

"Ok," Lewis said. "Let's count on putting this stuff back here inside the minehead, and then I'll go look for a spot up on the grid."