Arc Riders (21 page)

The colonel peered at the card in the beam of an aluminum flashlight. “Thank you, sir,” he said. His armband had a five-pointed
star in a white circle. It wasn’t the regular Military Region 5 insignia. “You have two companions. Where are they now?”

“You have no right to question me,” Weigand said coldly. The forklift drove up the aircraft’s ramp. Echoes multiplied the
already deafening noise.

The airmen pointed their M16s at Weigand. His acoustic pistol was in the side pocket of his tunic. He’d be better off to chance
his strength and speed, but even that was a sure loser. Two of the riflemen were several meters back, far enough that Weigand
couldn’t hope to dispose of them by hand before they could fire.

The loadmaster detached the straps holding the team’s Conex in place. The forklift bounced forward over the rollers and clanged
its forks into the grip points welded onto the bottom of the container. The engine revved, spewing dizzyingly thick exhaust
fumes.

Weigand placed his hands on his hips and glared, arms akimbo, at the officer. “Colonel,” he said, “I don’t know what you think
you’re doing, but it’s a bad idea. Trust me. It’s a very bad idea.”

The colonel grimaced. “Sir,” he said, “I’m carrying out the orders of Lieutenant General Oakley—”

“The base commander here?” Weigand said, shouting to be heard. The forklift backed away, carrying with it the Conex. “Then
he’s out of his mind—and so are you if you take his orders. Our mission
and
our equipment”—He jerked his chin in the direction of the forklift; though Weigand’s body didn’t move, he noticed one of
the airmen’s hands twitched on his rifle—“are critical to the war effort.”

“We understand the significance of what we’re dealing with, sir,” the colonel said. “Believe me, we want to have you on our
side. We intend to have you on our side. Come with us, please. You’ll have to come anyway, and it’ll be better afterward if
everything stays friendly now. But you’ll have to come.”

Weigand chuckled. “Yes, of course,” he said. He strode calmly toward the ramp. The nervous airman hopped two steps back, keeping
well clear of the grab for his weapon that just might have occurred had the fellow been less alert.

The team had screwed up, had overegged the pudding. Weigand, the man in charge, had screwed up. By suggesting on the manifest
that the team and its hardware were a war-winning top-secret project, they’d aroused the interest of locals who had more immediate
needs for weaponry.

Weigand was sure he could get clear before long, but time suddenly was a factor. As the US establishment fell under the weight
of an unwinnable war, it became more and more likely that the collapse would crush the team as well.

There weren’t going to be many more flights to Southeast Asia. While Weigand didn’t recall the team’s survey of the timeline
precisely enough to know what was going to happen to Travis AFB during the spasms of civil war which completed the nation’s
destruction, he was sure it wouldn’t be anything good.

The air outside the cargo bay was hot and dry and thick with the smell of jet fuel being pumped into the C-141’s tanks. The
Conex and forklift were being chained into place on the lowboy.

“If you’ll get into the backseat, please, sir,” the colonel directed. An airman held the door open for Weigand. Another airman
got in on the opposite side. They were going to sandwich Weigand in the backseat, making it virtually impossible for him to
jump from the car while it was moving.

“Pauli, we’re auditing the situation,” Gerd Barthuli said through the bone-conduction speaker in Weigand’s headband. “Rebecca
has you in sight, and we’ve taken precautions to avoid joining you for the moment.”

“Gerd, Colonel,” Weigand said sternly as he bent to enter the car. “I want you to know that I expect to be on that aircraft
when it leaves here in an hour!”

“General Oakley will discuss matters with you in detail, sir,” the colonel said. He didn’t sound concerned.

Before the colonel got into the car’s front seat, he drew a pistol from his belt holster and held it in his lap as he sat
down. Whoever these people were, they seemed to be professional enough to be sure Weigand was going wherever they wanted him
to go.

Weigand’s only options were whether he chose to arrive dead or alive. The M16s were too awkward for use inside the vehicle,
but the officer’s pistol was not. Weigand didn’t doubt the colonel would shoot him through the front seat if he had to.

“Pauli, all right,” Barthuli said. “You’re hoping to escape in time to leave on the present flight. We’ll help from this side.”

Another great transport staggered aloft, the roar of its engines dissipating slowly as it reached for altitude. Weigand wondered
if it carried supplies and men to the war zone, like the aircraft his team had arrived on. The partial load on their own C-141
was another sign of how completely war had stripped the US of the matériel necessary to fight.

The lowboy turned cautiously and drove back down the access road by which it had approached. The colonel nodded; his driver
brought the car around to follow. Only one runway was lit, and only occasionally did Weigand see another moving vehicle. Clumps
of grass grew through cracks in the asphalt roadway.

The lowboy turned into the lit interior of a hangar nearly a kilometer from the transport’s berth. The great doors began to
slide closed even before the car was fully inside.

The hangar contained pallets, three light armored cars, and at least a hundred uniformed troops. There were no aircraft. The
vehicles and personnel all bore the blue circle-and-star insignia rather than normal US markings.

The sedan pulled up beside a group of officers, all of them male. In the near distance, a siren howled for a few lonely seconds,
then fell silent again. The airman to Weigand’s right got out and ushered Weigand from the car. The colonel remained seated
in the front seat, his pistol unobtrusively leveled.

A fat man wearing a white dress uniform rather than the light blue of Air Force personnel watched troops climb aboard the
lowboy. The men carried tools, including a bolt cutter with lever arms nearly a meter long.

The man in white gestured Weigand to him with a crooked index finger. Other officers watched alertly.

“You’re one of the specialists from DC, are you?” the fat man said. He turned his head to look directly at Weigand for the
first time. “What’s your name, then? Since we’ve got to call you something. I’m Oakley, and I fully intend to be President
Oakley before the year’s out. Do you understand?”

Oakley’s voice was rich and assured. He would have been a powerful speaker in a setting with better acoustics than this echoing
hangar.

“You don’t need to call me anything,” Weigand said flatly. “My business is on the other side of the ocean. It’s your business,
too, you know. Everyone’s business.”

The padlock dropped from the Conex, its hasp severed by the bolt cutter. Troops pulled open the container’s triple doors.

“I think the Chinks can wait, don’t you?” Oakley said. Both sides of his tunic front were covered with medal ribbons. “We’ll
get to them—never fear, we’ll get to them. But the first order of business is to put this country back on a proper footing
with a leader who knows how to lead!”

Oakley’s eyes were gray and as hard as chilled iron. “There’ll be places for all those who help me willingly. Places for you
and your friends. Be very clear in your mind, though: you
will
help me.”

He smiled. There was nothing amused in the expression. “Or if you manage to die instead, we’ll figure out your secret weapon
ourselves. So save yourself a hard time, why don’t you?”

Men carried the displacement suits from the Conex. Oakley stared at the equipment, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve seen that sort
of thing before,” he said. “But where’s the power supply? They are powered, aren’t they? Otherwise…”

“Pauli,” said Barthuli’s voice in Weigand’s ear, “we’re outside now. Do you have your facemask?”

“Gerd,” Weigand said, “I have a mask. What kind of transportation do you have?”

“We can transport them to where they’re needed, if that’s what you mean,” Oakley said, irritated to hear a question rather
than an answer to his own query. He didn’t comment on “
Gerd
.” Weigand needed the syllable to key his transmission to Barthuli.

“Pauli, the vehicle we have will barely carry the three of us,” Barthuli said. “We’ll have to leave the suits here, out of
phase. I’m sorry, but there’s very little time.”

As if the analyst had to tell him that
.

“I’ll show you how the armor works,” Weigand said, walking toward the lowboy at a steady, purposeful stride. He reached to
his headband and pulled the membrane over his face as he moved.

Gerd and Rebecca must have retrieved the gas gun from the transport. The four rounds remaining in the magazine wouldn’t fill
as large an enclosure as this hangar, but it would at least panic Oakley’s men. The effect of the gas would wear off completely
in three or four hours, but the people who saw their fellows drop as if poleaxed wouldn’t know that.

Oakley followed, a step behind. None of the officers surrounding the general had spoken since Weigand arrived.

“It is powered, then?” Oakley demanded. “The suits aren’t just for protection?” He didn’t appear to have noticed Weigand’s
facemask.

“That’s right,” said Weigand. “There’s no integral weaponry, but the skin’s rigidity permits the user to carry up to about
400 kilos. Hard to balance then, of course.”

He hopped onto the bed of the lowboy. Oakley grunted. A brigadier general with iron-gray hair held out his arm as a brace.

“Pauli, ready,” warned Barthuli’s voice. The hangar lights went out.

Weigand dropped flat and switched his faceshield to enhanced thermal imaging. He drew the acoustic pistol from his side pocket.

“Watch the spook!” General Oakley shouted, reaching for his pistol holster. “Don’t let the spook get into his—”

Weigand shot him point-blank, then shot the brigadier beside Oakley for good measure. They were the only people who’d been
watching Weigand at the moment the lights went out.

One of the technicians on the lowboy switched on a flashlight. Weigand waited till the beam jerked toward the main doors,
then shot the airman. The fellow pitched off the trailer as if sandbagged. His light spun to the concrete floor. The filament
shattered in a green flash.

Somebody started the engine of one of the armored cars. The structure was almost as hollow as the body of a drum. Distinct
from the shouts and mechanical noises pulsing within, Weigand heard the
choonk
! of a gas projector.

“Gas!” he screamed. “Nerve gas!”

An airman far across the hangar fired an automatic rifle wildly. His bullets disintegrated against the walls in yellow sparks.

Weigand crawled forward on all fours, staying low to avoid the random projectiles. They’d kill you just as dead as an aimed
shot would. The technician carrying the bolt cutter ran into him and pitched screaming the few feet to the floor.

Weigand reached the nearest suit, opened it, and set the control board on the inside of the backplate. He chose an infinite
sequence of seven days out of phase, punctuated by returns to the horizon of three seconds only. He moved to the second suit.

This location was about the last place Weigand would have chosen to abandon the armor, a busy and technologically advanced
portion of the temporal horizon. He didn’t think Oakley’s personnel could accomplish much in the three seconds they’d have
to deal with the suits, though. Anyway, it wasn’t as though Weigand had a lot of choice.

Forty meters from the lowboy, an airman scanned the hangar through an image-intensifier sight attached to an M16. Weigand
raised and aimed his pistol, though he wasn’t sure how effective acoustics would be at that range—particularly because the
gunman wore a Kevlar helmet.

Before the rifleman could fire—if that’s what he meant to do—he slumped backward and lay without twitching. The gas shells
had landed in the areas of the hangar where people were most concentrated. The rifleman had breathed a wisp of the gas. He’d
awaken some time around dawn, feeling refreshed though stuffy. There might be holes in his memory, but no serious long-term
damage.

When the shells burst, their pressurized contents cooled the air it spilled across. Through his facemask, Weigand saw blue
waves spreading in a ripple pattern from where each grenade had gone off. Barthuli or Carnes must have fired the full magazine,
though he’d heard only the first round.

The headlights on the armored car’s front fenders carved bright swaths across the hangar’s interior. The vehicle was four-wheeled
and boat-shaped: its small turrel carried a pair of machine guns.

The driver put the car in gear and turned slightly. Weigand recognized Barthuli and Carnes as the two figures in jungle fatigues
crouching to either side of the personnel door at the edge of the headlights’ illumination. They were probably safe as long
as they didn’t do anything to call attention to themselves, but—

The analyst held the EMP generator. If Barthuli aimed at the armored car while the headlights were on him, he’d probably get
both of them killed. It wasn’t just a matter of the vehicle’s gunner, if any. Barthuli would be targeting himself and Carnes
for everyone in the hangar with a weapon.

“Gerd, don’t shoot at the car!” Weigand shouted.

“Pauli, of course not,” the analyst said with a hint of inappropriate amusement in his voice. All right, he knew better, but
how was anybody to
know
how the crazy bastard’s mind was going to work?

The armored car drove through a layer of gas, invisible to the vehicle’s occupants. The turn tightened because the driver
dragged the steering wheel as he slumped back. Moving at the speed of a fast walk, the car collided with a side wall of the
hangar. The seven-tonne vehicle bounced back and hit the wall a second time. This time the engine stalled.