The Company of the Dead (37 page)

I might only need to squeeze off a shot. Maybe two.

He had his hands clasped together across his chest. The grip of the Beretta carved a tattoo on his palms. He had his back to the cache floor; knees bent against his abdomen, feet close together upon the roof.

Thirteen-round capacity, but only three left in the magazine. Fire, then kick, then fire and roll forwards, and then?

Just a crack of light above his eyes. He focused on it intently, wishing he had matches or a lighter. A torch. Wishing he hadn’t left the fucking Mauser in his bag.

Going to be a blinding glare when that door opens. Fire, then kick, then...

He judged that they were back on the road. The going had been smoother for a while now. First the slow procession between the border gates, then the interminable wait at the Confederate post.

If I was Watanabe, I’d wait till we were somewhere quiet.

Fifty grand plus the bounty was a tidy sum, but he would have to run far and fast. Kobe had promised a safe passage. Watanabe would have to make it look good if something nasty happened to his guests.

If I was him I wouldn’t do it. Still...

Fire, then kick, then fire and roll forwards...

Smooth asphalt was replaced by a wooden clatter. A bridge. There was a river about five miles from the border. The car rolled to a stop.

Kennedy felt the veins throb at his temples.

Ari cho wo.
Easy now.

Someone was unfastening the cache’s latch. Kennedy squeezed a finger against the trigger, a slight tremor back and forth across the metal.

“It’s me, Major. I’m okay.” Lightholler’s voice.

Very slick, Watanabe.

Kennedy exhaled, letting his finger slip from the guard, and eased the pistol into the sleeve of his jacket.

“Pleasant Valley’s up ahead. That’s where we change cars, fix you up with the appropriate papers...” Watanabe made a vague gesture in the air. “Then on to Nashville, another car change. We reach Memphis by nightfall. Tomorrow you see Arkansas.”

They were back on the highway. Kennedy and Lightholler were both still kneading the kinks out of their necks.

Watanabe continued, “I’ll assume I don’t need to ask you if you’re carrying any Union papers.”

“We don’t plan on returning any time soon,” Kennedy answered.

Lightholler was examining his fingertips. “That’s fine by me.” He flicked the nails against the inside of his palm, leaving red flecks in the creases. Looking through Watanabe with dead eyes, he added, “I need a smoke.”

Rose had said there was barely enough fuel to make Missouri, but fumes had brought them well across the state line. There’d been a flurry of transmissions from the conning tower at Jean Lesage after take-off. Apparently a number of pilots had decided to take unofficial midnight flights. The conning tower could see them on their radar, but without the scout’s transponder code for calibration the plane was just a vague blip on the screen. There were no attempts at interception.

Shine dozed while the world below turned.

Morning was a pale gleam. The cloud banks blushed against cobalt sky. They flowed storm-fast towards the heavens, snail-slow where they coated the forest-laden crests of the Boston Mountains.

“Where’s this place you’re looking for?” Rose probed again.

“Depends on where we are.”

“We’re just outside of Jacksonville. That puts us fairly close to Little Rock and a lot of radar. I’m thinking of setting her down some place. Got to find me a nice wheat field, is all.”

The ranch was at Morning Star, a small township on the outskirts of Hot Springs. There was a pile of maps under the co-pilot’s seat, but none showed any more detail than major cities. Hot Springs looked to be about sixty miles from the state capital.

Rose took to humming a tune. The back of his head swayed from side to side in accompaniment. Shine removed his headphones. If Rose wanted his attention, he could always rap on the canopy, as he’d done earlier pointing out the White River.

Looking back towards sunrise, Shine made out a few tardy stars twinkling on the horizon’s edge. One appeared slightly brighter at the edge of sunglow.

Make a wish.

Venus, Phosphorus, Lucifer... The Morning Star, winking at him as if in sly acknowledgment. He turned up the collar of his jacket and nestled against the canopy, crossed his arms and let the metronome of Rose’s head tick-tock him back to sleep.

Hardas had laughed at first, protesting that he’d got the idea from Morgan.

Piracy.

Capture a civilian boat, secure her crew, and leave them aboard the
Parzifal
. Siphon the fuel onto the new boat, disable the
Parzifal
’s radio and disarm her guns. When they got to port they could make an anonymous call, giving the authorities the whereabouts of the disabled barge. And the best part—the beautiful part—was that they could leave Newcombe aboard with the others.

Hardas had said a civilian boat, not Union or Confederate; not German or Japanese, for that matter. Hostilities thus far had been confined to the Germans and the Japanese. Seizing a Union ship while sailing under a German flag would be interpreted as an act of war. Taking a Confederate vessel was much worse—the betrayal of a fifty-year alliance.

Twice while Newcombe was still below, and once later on, quietly in Hardas’s ear, Morgan had asked, “And no one gets hurt?”

Mantra-like, Hardas had responded, “They won’t be armed, we just give them a scare. And no one gets hurt.”

They’d sighted the trawler less than an hour ago. That was when Hardas told Newcombe the plan. Newcombe asked for a weapon. Hardas refused. Newcombe demanded more money. Hardas asked how much more, and Newcombe replied, “Enough to make me forget about the bounty on your heads.”

They’d locked eyes. A smile formed on Hardas’s face. “It’s a deal.”

Newcombe said, “It’s going to cost you.”

* * *

Another bullet ricocheted off the flash guard.

“Damn it, they’re firing back,” Newcombe cried, flattening himself on the deck.

Hardas, at the machine-guns, sent another scatter of bullets across the trawler’s bow.

“At least give me your pistol,” Newcombe called out, edging back to the safety of the wheelhouse.

“Not on your fucking life. Morgan, hit the throttle.”

Morgan leaned forwards on the stick till he felt the joint about to give. Every crash of the
Parzifal
’s hull on the wave-tossed sea jarred his wound. Newcombe clambered to his side, seized a handful of his windbreaker and shouted, “Where’s the other gun?”

“Get back up there, make sure the ammo feed is secure.”

Something smashed against the windshield, cracking a seam from edge to edge. Morgan felt the spew of glass shards against his face.

“Fuck you.” Newcombe spun away, ducking and making for the aft deck.

We shouldn’t need to fire a single round...

Morgan needed both hands on the wheel. The vibration made it impossible to focus.

“Don’t let them draw a bead on us,” Hardas called back from the gun-mount, fragmented through the splintered windshield.

What began as a couple of pot shots from the trawler had evolved into a barrage of gunfire. And she was moving faster than any trawler should be moving. Best guess: smugglers.

Morgan swerved. The compass spun crazily on its gimbals. The
Parzifal
careened, skewing Hardas side to side. His line of fire tracked lower, spraying against the trawler’s hull. It burst into flames.

This isn’t what we wanted
, Morgan thought. Something was unravelling. Playing itself out to an irrevocable conclusion. There was a light, so searing and bright that the air burnt. Hardas, hunched over the machine-gun, wasn’t moving. Newcombe was beside him.
How the hell had he found that pistol?

The waitress’s eyes were the dishwater colour of the coffee she poured for them. Lightholler followed her hips as she swung away.

The early morning traffic consisted of grey trucks that thundered by or pulled up for gas, seizuring to the mournful accompaniment of their air brakes. Outside the truck stop, the Cadillac was pulling away. Watanabe had promised to return in an hour. There was a problem with the other car, he’d explained apologetically.

“I don’t care if I never see him again,” Lightholler said.

“You’d better hope we do,” Kennedy replied. “We don’t hand him the other seventy-five grand, we’ll have him coming after us as well.”

Lightholler turned his attention to the window, shutting Kennedy out.

The waitress returned, balancing two plates of flapjacks, a newspaper bundled under her arm. Favouring them with what might have been her first smile for the shift, she nodded at the paper and said, “Let me know if you find anything good in there.”

Kennedy shifted his satchel to one side.

Lightholler spread the paper out on the table. “They were planning this for a while,” he said, after a few minutes of silent reading.

“The japs or the Germans?”

“Both.” He pointed to a piece halfway down the second page. “All those German divisions they’re referring to, the trains being rerouted in Arkansas and Georgia, the armoured columns in Arizona. There’s too many soldiers.”

“Could be German propaganda. Disinformation.”

“And those planes we encountered? What was a German carrier group doing so close to New York?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Kennedy murmured.

“It’s safe to assume that the peace conference in Berlin was a set-up. The Japanese can’t have wanted the initial talks aboard the
Titanic
to succeed. Both sides must have been planning pre-emptive strikes.”

“You don’t think the Berlin bombing was a response to fear that the Germans were falling in with Russia?”

“I’m becoming more convinced that’s exactly what the Japanese wanted all along. What I want to know is what you think.”

Their untouched meals were slowly cooling.

“I think that a couple of days from now none of this will matter.”

Lightholler lit a cigarette. “If the japs hoped to disable the German High Command, they’ve been far from successful. Everything we’ve seen in the last two days indicates that the German military is intact. There’s still someone holding the reins, which means this is far from over.”

An image began to coalesce in Kennedy’s mind. A desert plain at sunset, low clouds too red in the diminishing light. A crater-ridden plain both recognisable and alien at once. Twisted metal and the remains of tanks ... and something else that had fallen from the heavens. White bones blanched by more than sunlight in the sand’s sluggish tide. Waste Land.

“Back in the Lone Star,” Lightholler continued, “you asked me, what if the next border war occurs in this godforsaken hole? What would prompt a question like that?”

“This isn’t the time or the place to give you an answer.”

“Are you behind all of this?”

“No.”

“You showed me the writings of a madman, as if that might explain everything. What was it that convinced you, made it so important that you fuck up my life—maybe the entire world—just to complete your mission?”

“I can’t afford to tell you. If we get captured...”

Lightholler pointed to another item in the newspaper. “No word on Bureau fugitives wanted in connection with eight murders,” he quoted. “It’s a little late for caution, isn’t it? They’ll just put us both in an asylum, if we’re not hung for treason.” He ashed his cigarette. “I need to know more. I need to know what you did with the time machine.”

Hardas tossed the last of the bags in the back of the jeep.

“Did you pack the oilskins?” Kennedy asked.

“There ain’t a cloud in the sky, Major.”

“The weather boys on the
Patton
say we’re due.”

Hardas directed a glance at clear skies. “All that technology floating up there, and we end up with the most expensive weather balloon in history.”

“Your tax dollar at work, Commander.”

The stratolite had been operational eight months now. It crossed the Confederacy in unhurried arcs from the Nevada-Occupation Zone to the Atlantic and back in four months. One phone call from the director and it added Alpha and Bravo camps to its sweep as well. Webster’s eye in the sky.

Kennedy took in the surroundings; not that there was much to look at. A cluster of prefabs at the east end of the compound, a small airstrip, the motor pool and the armoury. Out on one of the training grounds, a squad of ghost dancers were finishing their manoeuvres. Eastern martial arts were actively discouraged elsewhere in the Confederacy. Here, karate-do and kendo were part of the basic training for men who might one day cause havoc in the Union’s streets; a necessary evil of Camelot.

“Let’s roll,” Kennedy said. “We should make the Rock by nightfall.”

Hardas took the wheel and spun onto the dirt track that ran to the camp’s gate. Five men crouched in the shade of a spread of palms by the roadside rose to attention as the jeep rolled to a halt. The oldest of the group approached the vehicle slowly.

“Hey, Tom. How you doing?” Kennedy asked.

“Can’t complain, Major.”

Kennedy’s glance encompassed the entire group. Mostly in their late forties, all had served with him in the 4th Mech-Cavalry; all had been with him at Mazatlan.

“Now, none of you get into any mischief while I’m away. I heard a couple of you got as far as Tucson in that last fade-out.”

There was a sprinkle of easy laughter among the veterans. One of them said, “Got to go native in a fade, Major Kennedy, sir.”

“
No
mischief, gentlemen. You need to set an example for the others.” He finished with a grin.

Tom Shine mustered a brittle cough. “My boy taking care of things, Major?”