Ill Wind (60 page)

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Morris turned her horse and stopped. “General, look!”

Bayclock muttered an oath. In the distance a fire blazed at the base of the electromagnetic launcher. It looked as though a bomb had devoured the entire facility, and fingers of flame licked the sky.

#

“Halt, who goes there!
”

After the long, relaxing ride to the microwave facility, Spencer’s first thought was that someone must
be
playing a joke. Upon seeing the glint of two rifle barrels, his second thought was to answer as quickly as he could. “It’s Spencer—don’t shoot!”

“Rita Fellenstein,” said Rita beside him, just as quickly.

The gun barrel wavered,
then
dropped as a twangy voice said, “Yeah, it’s Spence. Darn—I thought we’d get to shoot our first live ones.”

Spencer kept his hands up, still unsure of what was going on. “Uh, can you tell me—” And then it hit him. “My God, Bayclock is here already!”

The voice in the darkness turned grim. “Things are going crazy back at the EM launch site. You’d better hurry into the microwave trailer for a report, pronto.”

Spencer didn’t reply. He kicked his mount with his heels, urging the horse to a gallop. Rita charged along beside him, her Australian hat flopping back against her neck.

When they reached the blockhouses, Spencer listened without a word as he was brought up to date. The technician at the telegraph unit spread her hands. “Romero managed to keep us updated in real time, up until the railgun fired.”

“Are you sure the railgun blew up?”

The tech shrugged. “Who knows? That’s what it looked like.”

Rita leaned forward. “What about Bobby?”

“I don’t know. We can’t see the balloon, but that doesn’t mean anything. He could be down to refuel.”

Spencer clenched his jaw, furious with himself. If only he had waited another hour at the launcher before returning! He tried to calm down; he needed to think clearly. Except for Rita, his closest advisors had been at the ill-fated railgun site.

“So what do we do?” said Rita. “Have we lost our long-range strike capability?”

“That pretty much goes without saying,” said the technician.

“Then we’re up a creek,” said Rita. “Bayclock’s boys can be here in three hours if they want!”

“If that’s the case,” said Spencer, “there’s nothing more we can do.”
Come on
, he thought. What happened to the whiz kid? The going got tough, and now he’s supposed to deliver.

Rita turned toward the blockhouse door with a determined look on her face. “I’ll take a couple of ranchhands and scout out Bayclock’s position. We can take along some of those citrus-oil explosives and lob the army a couple of nasty presents. Psych warfare. If we leave now, we can get there and back before dawn. We’ll stop by the launch site to check things out on the way, and send somebody back if the telegraph isn’t up when we get there.”

Spencer felt as if he had been hit over the head with a bagful of Higg’s bosons. He shook his head. “I don’t know—”

“I wasn’t asking permission, Spence,” said Rita. “Why don’t you just go do something you do best—like double the output power from those microwave satellites? Keep yourself busy and out of the way.”

#

Half an hour later, Spencer stood grim-faced as Rita swung a long leg over her horse. Her saddlebags were packed with explosives, pyrotechnics, and ammunition. Two ranchhands accompanied her, both grinning nervously as she leaned over to spit a tiny wad of chewing tobacco before setting out.

“See you in a couple of hours.” She leaned over and pecked Spencer on the cheek. “If you get a hold of Bobby, tell him I’m on my way.”

“He’ll be happy to know that.” Spencer slapped her horse on the flank. “Get going—you’ve got a job to do.”

“Make sure the catapult operators are ready for the morning light,” Rita called. “They might look like they’re over the hill, but they know what they’re doing. Just ask Romero.”

Spencer watched as Rita and her two companions rode off into the darkness. He stared until they faded from sight. He sighed,
then
turned back to the microwave trailer when he heard a voice calling him.

“Quick! We captured two people coming in from the west.”

A chill ran down Spencer’s back.
Oh great
, he thought. Nobody around here has any military savvy, and we’ve just
captured
our first prisoners of war?

He jogged down the dusty path, nearly stumbling over ruts in the darkness. On the old road to the microwave farm, Spencer met a guard walking behind two people—both quite tall, a man and a woman, their hands behind their backs. Even in the starlight Spencer could see the man wore a cowboy hat, and the woman tied her long hair in a
pony tail
. They didn’t look like what he expected of Bayclock’s troops.

The guard said, “Hey, Spencer, come see what we’ve got here.”

The prisoner’s voice had a strong cowboy twang. “Are you Dr. Lockwood? Am I glad to see you!”

“I bet you are. Who are you?”

The cowboy pushed himself forward, ahead of the guard. “I talked to you on the shortwave. I’m Todd Severyn. From the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.”

Chapter 71

Rita Fellenstein stood in the stirrups, craning her neck to spot the glow of Bayclock’s campfires. For once she was thankful for the petroplague, since the general had no access to infrared goggles or other high-tech nighttime defenses. At least she didn’t think so.

Even better, his troops were not familiar with the landscape.

Rita intended to use her advantage to the max.

The two ranch hands started to whisper, but Rita put out a hand for silence. So far, she had spotted no roving patrols, but she didn’t put it past Bayclock to send out random point squads.

Still without word from the damaged railgun site, Rita rode with the ranch hands and looped south, coming in from behind the camp. Bobby Carron had told her about the “check six” nomenclature of fighter pilots to guard their rear at all times, but he thought the general might not apply that on the ground.

She really liked Bobby. It was good to finally have a guy stand up and spar with her instead of awkwardly shuffling his feet like the ranch hands did. But Bobby had nothing to do with her raid now. She pushed thoughts of him out of her mind.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rita caught a glimpse of a man on horseback in the encampment; beyond, she saw the glow of several fires masked by low dirt berms dug by the weary soldiers.

Rita patted her saddle and withdrew three cans of Bobby’s citrus-based explosive. She secured her rifle at the back of the saddle and whispered back at the other ranch hands. “Don’t get too close or stay too long. We just want to goose ‘em. Ka-boom!” Rita flicked the reins and clucked. “Let’s go!”

Their mounts stormed toward Bayclock’s encampment. Rita bent low on her horse. With the heels of her boots, she urged her horse to a gallop.

Bayclock’s troops had bivouacked in a circular cluster a hundred yards across. Rita and the others split off, riding around the camp. Her breath quickened as horse hooves made a thumping sound in the desert night.

The troops lay on the ground, using their packs as pillows; three men tended the fires. Someone in the camp struggled to his feet. His silhouette looked wildly around as he started shouting.

Rita released the spring-wound timing mechanism on her first grenade and hurled it, rapidly followed by two other canisters. By the time the first explosion erupted, gunfire peppered the air. Bayclock’s troops shot their weapons blindly into the night. Rita could hear the
zing
of bullets ricocheting off the ground. Another
boom
rolled over them with a flash of light as they turned and galloped back toward the microwave farm.

Only four of the canned explosives went off. Although the small bombs probably caused little damage, Rita could tell by the shouting and gunfire behind them that they had thoroughly stirred up Bayclock’s troops.

#

“Until we spotted your complex from Las Cruces pass, we didn’t know if we’d ever find you,” Todd Severyn said, squatting on the ground from sheer exhaustion. “It was pretty touch-and-go there for a while.”

Beside him, Heather Dixon agreed. She looked ready to drop. Spencer felt sorry for them, and yelled for someone to bring a full canteen of water.

Heather sat next to the fire, hugging her knees. Her face smudged with dirt, she stared mesmerized into the flames as Todd continued his tale. She looked lost, as though life had let her down once too often. It took an effort for Spencer not to stare at her. He wondered if she and Todd were somehow . . . involved. They sat apart, but after such a difficult journey, that wasn’t surprising.

Lately Spencer found himself thinking about being alone, wondering if he might ever find that girl with the sunburned nose.

He nodded at Todd’s description of the journey after Connor Brooks had killed their companions and stolen the satellites. The Wyoming man unballed his fist and rubbed his dusty jeans, as if to crush the memory of the disastrous trip.

Spencer felt sick to hear the loss of the smallsats. They had come so close! He tried to find some hope that the lost satellites might somehow find their way to the microwave farm. With the Seven Dwarfs still working overhead, it was a shame they couldn’t use the low-orbiting satellites as part of their high-tech defense against Bayclock.

But with the new set of satellites gone and the railgun apparently destroyed, not to mention the general’s troops massed in the foothills, he found it difficult to be optimistic. What did it matter anymore? Why were they fighting at all? Why the hell had
Bayclock
bothered to come here?

Spencer wondered if his group should just abandon the microwave farm before the army slaughtered them all. They could hide out in the mountains, send out guerrilla teams to harass the occupied area, until one day they managed to drive away the military barbarians. Fat chance! His one small consolation was that another ten smallsats remained safe at JPL.

Todd said, “So what’s the next step, Dr. Lockwood? You might as well put us to work helping you. No use moping around—not with the general here. Time to fight!”

“We already fired the first shot,” Spencer said, “but that seems to have put our railgun out of business and damaged the whole launcher facility. That was really our best chance.”

“Is there anything else you can fight with?” Todd asked.

“We had an extensive war council before the troops got here,” said Spencer. “Gilbert Hertoya had experience fielding high-risk weapons in the Persian Gulf, and we did just about everything he suggested. We’ve still got the ranchers and people from the town lying in ambush, and of course there’s always the catapult squad. Right now we’ve got a team tossing some
home-made
grenades into the general’s camp. But every one of these is a last-ditch effort, nothing that can cause any sustained damage. I don’t have any more rabbits to pull out of my hat.”

He hesitated,
then
dropped his voice. “I hope to God that everyone’s all right up at the launcher site.”

Heather continued to stare at the flames, but she spoke in a low, deep voice. “What about your microwave antennas? If they provide so much electricity, why can’t you fry people?”

Spencer had to pull himself out of Heather’s wide eyes before he answered. He glanced at Todd, but the
oil man
gave a tired smile, as if amused at Spencer’s preoccupation. “Uh, it takes too much power to harm anyone with microwaves—the atmosphere would break down long before the power levels got high enough to harm human beings.” He continued to think it through. “Relatively low powers
can
do nasty things to metals or electronics, but after the petroplague there’s not much of that stuff in use anymore.”

Heather said, “The general’s rifles are made of metal.”

Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but stopped as her words sank in. “You’ve got a point. I’ve been thinking about using microwaves to attack the wrong target!

“We’re beaming energy from space at relatively low power levels, about a hundred times less than the sunlight that strikes the Earth—that won’t hurt anyone if they stand in it all day long. Remember the cellular telephone scare? Cellular phones were monsters compared to this.”

He spoke faster as he started to get excited. “But Bayclock’s troops
are
carrying all kinds of metal. Guns, knives, bayonets—and that stuff heats up like crazy when exposed even to the microwave power levels we’re beaming down right now!”

Todd grinned. “It would give them one hell of a hot foot!”

Spencer chewed on his lip. “If we can boost the energy by a factor of four and irradiate his troops for twenty minutes, things might get hot enough even to set off explosives. At the very least the troops might drop their weapons and head for the hills!”

Todd looked down at his big hands and flexed them. “So what do we do?”

Spencer thought for a moment. As far as he could tell, it was sometime after midnight by now. He hadn’t heard the sentry warn of Bayclock’s approach, and that would give them at least an hour warning. Perhaps Gilbert’s pre-emptive railgun strike
had
set Bayclock back, or maybe the general had sent his vengeful troops up to take over the launcher facility instead.