The Vengeance of the Tau (33 page)

Come on,
he urged.
Come—

The first Vulcan-wielding jeep exploded in a shower of flames, metal fragmenting in all directions.

“We did it!” Melissa beamed.

The percussion of the blast forced an enemy vehicle equipped with a machine gun fifteen yards from the blown jeep to waver out of control and cross the path of another. As Blaine watched through his sights, they collided in a rolling cloud of twisted, shrieking metal that slammed finally into the remains of one of the blasted outbuildings. McCracken checked the area through the open view plate and found a second of the Vulcan-wielding jeeps bearing down on the M-60.

“Another shell!” he called to Melissa.

The tank shook from the impact of the minigun’s powerful 7.62mm ammo. Blaine steadied himself and sighted forward again, while Melissa pulled herself across the floor for a second shell. The jeep holding the Vulcan was already charging away.

“Hurry!”

An instant later, Melissa eased another shell into his hands and resumed her position in the pilot’s seat farther forward. McCracken slammed the shell home and returned to his sight.

“Counterclockwise, fifteen degrees,” he instructed. “Easy, easy … That’s got it!”

He aimed slightly ahead before firing. The shell thumped out behind the gun’s recoil. Blaine kept his eyes glued to the viewer and saw instantly that his aim this time looked slightly off. Fortunately, though, the jeep struck a ridge that slowed it enough for the shell to impact upon its rear. No flames this time, just a rolling carcass spilling its occupants into the air along the way.

Four down,
Blaine thought,
and four to go …

“Got him!” Melissa beamed.

“Still got plenty of company.”

The sight through the view plate confirmed his warning. The three remaining jeeps equipped with machine guns were speeding along toward the larger congestion of buildings and kibbutz residents. The final one with a Vulcan dragged a bit behind them.

“Change seats with me!” McCracken ordered Melissa, and shifted into the pilot’s chair, while she slid past him.

The moment he was seated, he began working the controls of the old warhorse to get it moving. The tank refused to cooperate at first, and it took several seconds of coaxing with the floor pedals as well before it lurched forward with a jolt. The top layer of plantings and ornaments were thrown off. A pile of dirt built up before the view plate, and Blaine jammed on the brake suddenly to force the debris aside.

A severe list to the right told him that only one of the tank’s treads was functioning properly, and McCracken compensated with the T-bar steering control as best he could. The gears screeched and whined in protest; the tank was a sleeping bear stirred from its hibernation ahead of the seasons. He figured he could fire without sacrificing significant pace or control, so long as Melly could take his place as driver.

“Watch what I do,” he told her. “Get ready to switch places again.”

The tank continued to shake the ornamental plantings off itself, as he shoved it on. Before him a determined charge by Nineteen’s commandos had neutralized one of the jeeps equipped with a machine gun. He searched the area for the final Vulcan-wielding vehicle and found it measuring off shots toward the kibbutz’s largest buildings, where most of the inhabitants were likely to have gathered.

“Okay,” he called to Melissa again. “Switch!”

They swapped seats without missing a beat, and Melissa took over the controls. Determined to succeed, she frowned in concentration and bit into her bottom lip with her front teeth, struggling to mimic McCracken’s moves. Her hands squeezed into the T-bar, but it took all her strength to keep it steady. Her arms began to throb, then shake. She bit her lip harder.

The jeep’s driver noticed the oncoming tank and shot forward before the gunner was ready. The man was nearly thrown from the jeep and was actually the first to notice the tank wavering out of control toward a small storage shed.

“Watch out!” Blaine screamed, raising the shell he had pulled from the rack to the loader.

Melissa tried with all her strength to force the T-bar to the left. It barely budged, and the tank began to list even more severely to the right. Nonetheless, Blaine had managed to work the turret control himself and then waited for the rushing jeep to enter his crosshairs. He fired on timing this time.

The tank’s rightward heave threw him off a bit, and impact came several yards in front of the target vehicle. The percussion of the blast, though, was enough to strip the driver’s control away, and the jeep slammed into a tree, its occupants left to Nineteen’s commandos.

“Uh-oh,” Blaine muttered.

The right side of the tank tore the side of the storage shed away, and McCracken managed to close his hands over Melissa’s on the T-bar before the rest of the structure perished as well. There were just two jeeps left now, both toting machine guns. The open view plate provided no sight of them, but the sounds of gunfire crackling in the wind gave him the bearing he needed.

“They’re behind a row of low buildings over there to our right.” Blaine gestured, replacing Melissa in the pilot’s seat. “Heading toward the fields.”

“Where the residents would have fled to …”

“Let’s get this thing turned around.”

The grinding of the tank’s engine almost drowned out his words, as McCracken worked the controls hard. It responded sluggishly. McCracken spun it to the left and demanded of it all the power it would give.

“Come on,” he urged. Then to Melissa, “Grab another shell!”

The tank jolted forward as the gears finally caught. The engine was screaming, and the smell of oil was thick in the air. Blaine didn’t ease back, the speedometer nearing thirty and the engine warning gauge well into the red. The only way to reach the fields and cut off the jeeps’ attack angle in time was straight ahead.

Through the buildings.

“Hold on to something.”

But Melissa chambered the shell she was toting first, just as she had watched McCracken do.

Blaine never hesitated. The old tank crashed through a small dormitorylike building, chewing up wood and plaster en route and rolling over the debris it created. The last of the building’s remains were still being spit from its treads when one of the jeeps passed fifty yards before it. The jeep’s machine gun hammered away at those kibbutz residents who had abandoned the precarious cover provided by buildings for a dangerous dash through the fields. McCracken looked to his right and saw Melissa’s eyes pressed against the targeting sight.

“Turret, twenty degrees right—I mean left!” she called to him.

There was no time for Blaine to argue, nor was there time for them to switch places. She realized it and so did he. He worked the controls as she had instructed.

“Got it!” she said, feeling for the firing button.

She pressed it. The shell thumped out.

“Yes,” Melissa said softly.
“Yes!”

The explosion rocked them. Before him, Blaine could see that the jeep was gone, in its place flaming charred metal with no real shape, scraps of bloodied clothing lifting off it in the breeze. Then black, rank smoke filled the inside of the tank’s cabin.

“We’ve lost the main gun,” Blaine realized, swiping the smoke away from his eyes.

“Still one more jeep to go.”

“Where? Can you see—”

“There! A hundred feet dead ahead.” She looked his way. “Running away.”

McCracken smiled and pushed the tank’s engine till the smell of oil was added to the other noxious vapors already filling the cab.

The jeep’s driver saw the onrushing tank and turned quickly to the right. The suddenness of the move caught the jeep’s tires in the mud, and the tank gained the last bit of ground it needed. The jeep’s occupants managed to lunge free to be rounded up by Nineteen’s commandos, just before the tank rolled up its side and compressed it to half its former size. Tires blew out in blasts as loud as the shell explosions had been.

The tank sputtered and died. Black oil smoke belched into the cab, then followed McCracken upward as he threw open the hatch and helped Melissa out ahead of himself.

Arms over each other’s shoulders, they approached Tovah, whose wheelchair was being pushed through the soft dirt to meet them. Her face was deathly pale. She was still trembling.

“Such a concerted attack,” the old woman muttered. “Never before, I tell you, never before …” She stopped, then started again. “The Tau …”

“A safe assumption,” Blaine acknowledged.

The old woman’s eyes sharpened with realization. “They came for you! They must have!”

“No, Tovah,” Blaine said, with an icy stare fixed upon her.

“Then who—
Me?
No, it can’t be, I tell you. It can’t!”

“This operation didn’t come up overnight. It’s been planned for some time, days at the very least. They couldn’t have known I would be here.”

“Why?”
the old woman posed desperately.

“Because you’re the only one who can identify all the members of the original Tau, and one of them is behind the return. Now we’ve got to find him.”

“How?”

“Get me to a phone.”

Chapter 31

“
WELCOME TO MY HOME
, warrior,” the Old One said proudly, as morning rose over the place she called No Town. “No phone, no electricity, no running water. This place has been unchanged since I grew up here when people thought the Civil War could never happen. Got us some generators now and propane tanks. That’s about it.”

Wareagle nodded knowingly. The woods to which he had retreated for a dozen years were equally infused with solitude and a sense of timelessness. Once situated in such places, it was difficult to leave.

No Town stood close enough to the shores of the bayou for its sounds and smells to linger forever in the air. They had walked over land the last eight miles of the way after the waterway they were traveling on became too shallow for their boat. After abandoning it at around one
A.M.
, they had found shelter in a nearby abandoned barn. Heydan had made beds out of straw for herself and the Old One. Johnny rejected her offer to make one up for him and maintained a vigil long into the night. Whether he slept or not, she could not say; come morning he was the same stoic, tireless figure he had been the night before.

Catching first glimpse of No Town two hours after dawn was like taking a giant step back in time. Homes and small farms dotted the town’s outer perimeter. Drying laundry flapped in the breeze on clotheslines strung up behind the houses. Even at this early hour, plenty of people were out doing chores. Johnny could see a number of larger farms occupying the outlying land and figured, as the Old One had suggested, that almost all of No Town’s food supply was grown right here.

The buildings in the town center itself were formed of unfinished wood and clapboard. The signs above the few businesses were hand-painted or, in a few instances, simply scrawled. There was a general store, an outdoor produce market, a bakery that was already pumping the scent of fresh bread into the air, and a combination restaurant-bar-roominghouse that didn’t bother hanging a No Vacancy sign. Johnny could find no trace of a post office, but a small sign drawn in scratchy letters did advertise
BANK
. A sign carved in wood with a star above and below it revealed the sheriff’s office.

People on bikes or in horse-drawn carriages gave him a long look when they passed. When they noticed the Old One, however, they stopped and seemed to bow their heads in reverence, not taking their eyes off her until they were out of sight. In several instances she greeted them by name before they’d had a chance to announce themselves. Most times she simply bid them good day.

“I haven’t been back here in a dozen years,” Wareagle heard her mutter to Heydan. “Too long to remember the feel of everyone’s aura.”

Wareagle slowed, and the two women drew up even with him. He was conscious now of the fact that the two or three dozen residents about them had come to a dead stop and were watching their every move.

“Folks here don’t see white people very often, warrior. They see even less of Indians. Nice place to grow up, let me tell you, though.” The Old One turned to Heydan Larroux. “Maybe show you the house where I was born later, introduce you to my mammy.”

Heydan’s eyes bulged at the suggestion.

“Well, I’ll be gawdamned …”

Johnny turned toward the voice’s origin and saw a rail-thin black man emerge from the sheriff’s office. He wore a badge pinned to his shirt but had no gun. He stepped down from the curb and headed their way.

“Tyrell Loon, that you?” the Old One called in his direction.

“It be,” the sheriff returned happily.

He reached the Old One and kissed her hand, paying Heydan and Johnny no heed at all.

“I missed you,” she told him.

“We
all
missed you.”

“There was a need for my services elsewhere.”

“You fixin’ to stay?”

The Old One looked at him as if she were considering the prospects for the first time. “I just might at that. Years be ready to cash me in, Tyrell Loon. Person got to end things where she started them.”

Loon’s eyes scorned her. “You been sayin’ that since ’fore I had hair on my privates.” He stole a quick gaze at Heydan and then a longer one at Johnny. “What brings you back here?”

The Old One fixed her sightless gaze on Wareagle. “The warrior here saved my life. I come back to repay my debt.”

Tyrell Loon stuck out his hand and Johnny took it. “In that case, you done come to the right place.”

“And this here,” the Old One continued, “is my lady.”

“So you the one,” Tyrell said, taking one of Heydan Larroux’s hands in both of his and squeezing tenderly. “Was your donations built us the new school,” he said, and pointed to a small building at the very edge of town. He turned his finger toward an old church diagonally across the street from it. “Helped us rebuild the church, too. Gonna get us our own permanent preacher, soon as we can build him a house.”

“I never took much to men of that kind,” the Old One said. “Never saw the need.”