Directive 51 (65 page)

“He thinks he’s not good with people,” Chris said, grinning. “Can’t be persuaded otherwise.”

“Pooh. All he needed to do was ask for help; I’m glad you came along to do it for him!” Carol May Kloster looked at the sky. “If you all hurry, he can take off sometime before the storm hits, and I’m sure that would be a good thing.”

Heather and Bambi were working the crowd in front of the platform, looking for anyone with a weapon, when Bambi whooped. Grinning like a maniac, Quattro Larsen stepped forward. They embraced, laughing just as though it had been years instead of weeks.
Another thing we all have to get used to,
Heather thought.
Nowadays a thousand miles is a long way.

“I take it your giant mechanical bumblebee is working again?” Heather said.

“Giant—I’ll have you know, if there’s ever a National Museum again, that’s the one plane that for sure’ll be in it. At least after there’s another operating plane on the continent, besides my other one.”

“The Stearman’s flying?”

“That’s how Chris and I—Chris!”

Chris Manckiewicz turned from where he’d been taking notes on an intense conversation. “My entire history of the period,” he said, mournfully, “which is all future historians will ever know of our age, will be filled with the phrase, ‘But then Quattro shouted for me, and we had to go.’ ”

“We met at the
Washington Advertiser-Gazette
, a long time ago,” Heather said, sticking out her hand.

“I remember you, Ms. O’Grainne, and thanks for all your help on that day.”

“I had no idea at the time you were a pilot. And how did you get out here?”

If Manckiewicz could do anything, it was tell a story, and after a few minutes he’d made Heather laugh more than she had in weeks, describing the adventures of “a guy who thought the props must be the fake parts of the plane,” on his first trip as “assistant mechanic, copilot intern, master chef, and chief wailer-in-terror.” “But,” he added, “by the time we landed at Castle Larsen, I was approaching competence, though I am told I never attained the kind of copilothood that was first achieved by the one, the only, the Amelia Earhart of her generation—”

Bambi made a fart noise with her tongue.

“Which is one-third of the mission here,” Quattro said, smoothly. “I was kind of hoping your interrogation of Ysabel Roth is not complete, that Bambi Castro is still essential to it, and that you’d see the wisdom of leaving them both at Castle Larsen, actually.”

Heather grinned at him. “And you didn’t even mention securing the enduring loyalty of a critical Castle on the California coast.”

“Seemed rude and unnecessary.”

“Well, as for Roth, I don’t think we’ll get more cooperation out of her in another location, and we don’t have to guard her where she is. And we don’t have any way to hold employees against their will, nor—”

“Larry!” Bambi shouted and waved.

Heather turned around and found herself facing a guy who seemed to have been sent from Central Casting as “old sourdough”—baggy wool pants, rope suspenders, immense flannel shirt, floppy broad-brimmed hat, and bushy beard.
All he needs is an arrow through that silly hat.

He grinned. “Do you have any idea how great life is when I don’t have to fit the FBI dress code?” He stuck out his hand.

Heather looked down at her current outfit—a heavily stained men’s safari shirt (you could never have too many pockets), black-powder carbine on a sling, combat knife in an arm holster, camo pants, and calf-high moccaboots she’d traded a case of pre-Daybreak Coors for in Limon, Colorado—and said, “Well, I have to admit, I could get through quite a few more years without ever putting on black pumps, jacket, skirt, and a blouse. Biz outfits used to make me look like a giant poodle.”

“Me too,” Mensche said. “I don’t care
what
Hoover thought, speaking as an FBI agent, the pumps always
killed
my back.”

“Did you find Debbie?” Bambi asked.

“No luck yet. But she was alive when that bunch of women left Coffee Creek, and she was among the leaders, and at least I’ve established that no one ran into them around the mouth of the Columbia or on the south shore of Puget Sound. It was while I was up there that I persuaded the governor to invite you all to move the Federal government there, and now he seems to think that it was his idea and I was his brilliant assistant, so he thinks he owes me some favors. I’m planning to cash in on them by having him put out sort of a permanent APB for Deb. Meanwhile, I’m thinking maybe Deb’s group out of Coffee Creek headed east for some reason, gonna try to pick up the trail that way.”

“So are you leaving the FBI for good?” Quattro asked.

“Soon as they open an office, I plan to transfer to the US Marshals. I’m not looking to be Eliot Ness anymore. I’m thinking more Wyatt Earp.”

“Or Gabby Hayes,” Bambi suggested.

Word from farther up the line was that coal was getting hard to locate, so they were towing six coal cars in addition to Amtrak One and the supporting staff and troop cars, which made for a slow climb; they had crossed into southern Oregon a few hours ago, and stopped for the obligatory speech in Grant’s Pass, which seemed, like many smaller cities that had always been somewhat isolated, to be doing relatively well. The crowd had been enthusiastic, putting Graham in what Heather was beginning to think of as a too-good mood.

We’d have been in Olympia three days ago if it weren’t for all the whistle stops,
she thought.
It’s like he’s practicing running for president—and I guess with there being an election next year (again, dammit!) and his being the president, he might decide to run for re-election. Now there’s a . . . scary? cheerful? ironic? well, it’s a thought, anyway.

After Grant’s Pass, the rail line swung wide of I-5 and the modern roads, winding up through the Cow Creek country, threading between pine-covered, fog-shrounded mountains, turning back and forth in great swooping bends.
We started late, too, out of Ashland. For a daring escape, this has sure turned into a parade.

She was just checking whether there was any tea left—they had run out of coffee two days ago and she was still headachy from caffeine withdrawal—when the train’s brakes shrieked. Everyone and everything fell or slid forward. Chris Manckiewicz, in the corner and working as ever in one of his notebooks, grunted sharply in frustration.

Heather staggered to her feet and headed forward.
Oh crap, having to start on an up slope, and towing all this coal, it’s going to take forever to get going again.

Strange sound—familiar and yet not familiar—and then she realized.

She shouted, “Helicopters!” and dropped to her knees to peer over the edge of the window.

Here, where the rails made a wide 180-degree turn, there was a broad spot on the road to their right, and the creek was to their left, far down the hill; a Marine helicopter was skimming just above the road, dropping men in battle armor as it went, and they were rolling and diving into the brush between the road and the train, moving forward in a rapid buddy rush, each man advancing a few paces ahead of the man covering him, dropping, and covering the man behind him who ran forward in turn, a swift leapfrog to close the distance.

Shots cracked from the Ranger car; Heather rolled onto the floor as windows shattered from the Marines returning fire.
Their stuff has been sealed on shipboard all this time and they’ve still got modern smokeless powder and automatic. At least twenty of them to our nine Rangers and three Feds.

Manckiewicz rolled, punched the door, and darted into the Ranger car. Heather considered following—
get the guns together, better organized defense—no, I can probably do more good here, between the Rangers in the lead car and the president’s car, at least slow them up if they try to come through here, keep them from having this car to work from.

She rolled and came up beside a shattered window.
They want him alive, otherwise they’ d’ve bombed the train or shredded it with the helicopter’s guns. So—

She drew her 9mm and fired at a hand reaching over the sill of the window beside her; it was a relief that the gun worked at least once; she’d cleaned it just that morning, but the ammunition had been smelling strange for weeks, and she was using Crisco because they had no unspoiled gun oil.

Scrambling sounds outside the car. A burst of automatic fire from the Rangers’ car; apparently maniacal maintenance had kept a few of their modern weapons working.

One of the Marines outside poked a stick over the sill; careful not to waste a round, Heather didn’t go for that, but positioned herself carefully to see where the next try would come, watching both sides because it occurred to her that one of them might try crawling under the cars.

Another flurry of automatic-weapons fire, mixed with some deeper bangs from black-powder guns, from the car ahead. Then some bangs from far back on the train; Rogers and Machado, if she remembered right, had been taking a turn as snipers in the caboose, and either they had a shot at the attackers, or more likely the attackers were trying to flank them on that side.

The stick came in again, still on the road side of the train, but a moment later on the creek side, a stealthy hand reached up and tried the window; Heather aimed and squeezed the trigger, but it didn’t fire. She ejected the bad round as she crept closer; then there were two hands.

Heather took the least risky alternative and smashed across both hands with the pistol butt. The man shouted. Looking into his eyes, she jammed the gun toward his face, wondering what she could do with a prisoner in the circumstances but not wanting to kill him. As he leaned back away from her gun, the Marine’s injured hands lost their grip. He fell backward down the gravel-covered embankment, rolling toward the creek far below. She ducked back down; a shot hit the ceiling above her head.

Another Marine was halfway through the window behind her, leveling his weapon, as she rolled sideways; he fired, not aiming, and she came up, aimed, fired, and heard him shriek in pain; at a guess, she’d broken a bone in his arm, and he was unable to stop himself from sliding back out of the window.

Another sound penetrated her consciousness, a raspy buzzing with a sort of whining overtone;
some other aircraft? They must’ve sent everything they have.
A last couple of gunshots sounded in the Ranger car ahead; now it sounded like a bar brawl in there.

The door from the Ranger car slid open.

A Marine moved in. Heather tried firing her 9mm and came up with another dead round; the Marine kicked it out of her hand and presented her with a view straight into the muzzle of his own weapon. She raised her hands—

The thundering boom outside took both her and the Marine by surprise as the railroad car shook. For a moment they stared wide-eyed at each other, aware he could have been startled into killing her; then he stepped back, to give himself more distance, and looked out the window. “Fuck,” he said. She could tell he still had her in his peripheral vision, so she didn’t move, but she said, very softly, “What?”

“Don’t know. Did you all have air cover?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Because our chopper just blew up. I don’t know what hit it, but it sounds like a lawn mower engine up in the sky.”

Heather listened and heard the same rattling buzz she’d heard before; she turned cautiously to look and saw a biplane.

“The fuck?” he said, looking at it around her.

“Cropduster with an antitank rocket?” she said. “Nobody told me we had anything that would fly except the Gooney.”
If we win it won’t matter and if they win I don’t want them to go looking for Quattro Larsen.
“Even
that
wasn’t working this morning.”

“Fuck,” the Marine said. “So we’ve got your train and you’ve got us; it’s a standoff unless—”

Heather heard another, more familiar, sound, the stuttering, coughing roar that had to be the Checker Cab of the Sky. She held her breath, then made herself relax.

“That’s another plane,” he said. “Must be one of yours, can’t be one of ours.”

“If I keep my hands where you can see them, can I put them down?”

“Yeah.” He pointed his rifle away from her but kept it on his hip where he could swing it back; she put her hands down on the back of the seat in front of her. “Escalera, USMC, I’m a corporal.”

“O’Grainne, OFTA, I run it.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.”

“I bet.” There was another, smaller explosion outside. “God, that chopper is burning like mad, someone really hit it with something.”

“Did you have friends on there?”

“Shit, we’ve been at sea forever, a carrier’s like a small town, after a while you know everyone.”

Heather waited with her captor; after a time they heard the rumble and thud of the DC-3 landing. “Smart enough to land out of sight and range,” the Marine said, with grudging approval.

“While they figure out which side is in charge,” Heather said, “don’t lose track of this: I clubbed one of your guys pretty hard and he rolled down the slope into the ravine. Make sure they find him; he’s probably still alive but he might not be in great shape.”

“Okay, thanks.”

More time went by; Heather figured that to land on the road, out of sight of the train, they must have come down a mile or more away, so this was going to take time. She just hoped there were enough—

They must have had that bullhorn in a clean box,
Heather thought, missing the words because of the strangeness of hearing amplified speech again. “—Alpha Company, Second Ranger Battalion. Your aircraft has been destroyed, and we have you surrounded. We have functioning automatic weapons, and there is no escape route; we have both ends of the train under observation and can fire on any point around the train. Please release the president and his party unharmed. You will be treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions, and we intend to release you as soon as possible.”