The Last President (37 page)

“I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but then again Lord Robert is crazy. Being crazy is his major strength. If he can pull something like that off, they might hit Pale Bluff tomorrow afternoon, and if my husband is there for that, I want to be there with him.”

“That was what I thought you might be feeling,” General Phat said. “It's really very natural and human, isn't it?” He walked to the office door and opened it slightly. “Mister Lyle, would you come in here, please, as we discussed?” Then he looked Bambi squarely in the eye, with complete sincerity. “I am so sorry for this.”

The moment was so odd that she froze. Before she realized, two men had come through the door, and one was behind her. She started to struggle only as he grabbed her arms, but they knew what they were doing and she was handcuffed quickly.

General Phat sighed. “We are rapidly losing aircraft and pilots. Right now the most advanced working airplane on the continent is being risked in an exposed forward position, but I can't do anything about that. But I can't let the situation be worse. I can't let you take your plane into Pale Bluff until things are less dangerous, Bambi. I thought you'd understand but obviously you don't.”

“Don't plan on having me or my plane ever again,” Bambi said.

“It's a chance I'll have to take. I can't lose you—or the plane—right now. You're under arrest till the EMP or till blackout ends, whichever comes first. At that time I'll try to square it with you. But for the moment, I'm sure you've been through enough arrests from the other side to know that there's nothing personal and these men don't want to hurt you.”

ABOUT 11 HOURS LATER. PALE BLUFF, WABASH. 4:15 AM CENTRAL TIME. SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2026.

Quattro Larsen had been awake since the rain had stopped, about half an hour ago, unable to sleep longer because he was so on edge. He always slept badly without Bambi. He had been hoping she'd make it back before blackout, but meanwhile, well, blackout wasn't till noon, and the last rainclouds now billowed down beyond the eastern horizon, with a wind rising from the west. Pre-dawn twilight seemed brighter than usual, perhaps because there had been so little light the last few nights, perhaps due to the almost-half moon well up in the sky.

It was light, he was awake and dressed, and he really wanted to know what the hell was going on over east. He stuck his head into the ground crew quarters and said, softly, “Cup of coffee in it for anyone wants to be door gunner for me.”

Caleb made it to the door first by carrying his shoes rather than trying to put them on, and only vaguely stuffing his shirt into his pants. Quattro felt a slight pang at having lured the guy with coffee, but on the other hand, he didn't seem to be complaining.

“Take a sec and put your shoes on, Caleb, the job is yours. Nice clear day, maybe a little windy.”

“I can't sleep anyway. It's getting near, isn't it, sir?”

“We're going to fly out and find out how near. I'm hoping they're still sorting things out at St. Francisville, and if they are, we'll just take a quick pass around and remind them that real Daybreakers are not supposed to like Mister Gun. At least not Mister Gun in the Gooney. And maybe lay some bombs where they'll make people nervous and slow them down. If we find them on the way here, it's the same program but more urgent, and we get back here as fast as we can.”

He'd been sleeping in the DC-3, partly as a guard, partly for a quick takeoff if he had to, mostly because it was home, and so his little oil stove, percolator, and coffee stash were there. As they huddled around the hot pot for a few minutes till the coffee was ready, he gave Caleb a lightning review on how the Gatling worked, how to clear it, and most importantly, “now, you leave that locked down, 'cause I'll aim it with the plane and we don't want you shooting holes in the plane or yourself on your first mission. You keep your seat belt on and your feet on the braces. Crank when I holler crank, stop when I holler stop, and yell ‘Jam!' when it does, which it will. Then wait for me to yell that we're level and clear before you try to unjam it. We are going out with a crew of two, and we are coming back with a crew of two, and if you fall out that door, I'm a pretty awesome pilot, but swinging around and catching you might be more than I want to try, 'kay? All right, now about the bombs—”

As he poured the coffee, Quattro explained the basic mechanics of lightly screwing together the three glass jars that formed the shape of the bomb: the big piece with fins, filled with turpentine, the nose piece filled with strong acid, and the little sealed vessel that went into the nose tip, with a blob of mercury in it. “Never tighten down hard, always remember it's thin glass meant to break. Put them in the ready rack with the fins facing you. If one of them starts to sputter just toss it out the door. You hand load them one at a time into the bomb rack, tail toward you, so they roll down and come out pointed nose first. Never, never-ever,
don't
load another bomb till the first one clears, and if you have to push a stuck one through, holler so I know, and wait till I take the plane up high and level it off, because you'll have to kind of hang partway out the door and poke it with the mop handle that's on the bracket there. The one rule about that is
poke the fins, not the nose
.”

Caleb's eyes widened. “Uh, yeah.”

“I know it's obvious but you'd be surprised how many obvious things people get wrong. And with bombs I don't like surprises.”

Caleb clearly enjoyed the coffee, taking it with enough sugar and powdered milk to make it something of a meal in its own right, but he also seemed at least as eager as Quattro to get into the air.
Probably the same damn silly romantic streak I've got. He's gonna be able to tell people he was the door gunner for the Duke of California, I guess, and if there was any place much left to dine out, he'd be dining out on that. Next to that, what's a hot cup of aristocratic privilege?
“Now, let's make sure you know how to strap in, since I won't be able to help you with it when it's time to rock and roll. But till I need a gunner, you might as well ride front seat. It's mostly a reconnaissance flight, and two sets of eyes will see more.”

The takeoff was smooth, and they gained altitude in a wide swing to the west, staying high in hopes of seeing before they were seen. Quattro angled a little north to pick up the Little Wabash River, following it for a few miles till turning east along the bullet-straight county roads.

Mornings and evenings were good times to see detail, but the immense swarming camp that suddenly appeared below them would have been impossible to miss.

“Holy crap,” Caleb breathed.

“So right, dude. And we're only—I'm gonna set it to circle and see if I can read a mile marker through the binocs—”

“No need, I'm from around here, man, that's where County 13 takes a bend and becomes County 9. They're only sixteen and a half miles from Pale Bluff. And look at all that smoke rising; they're cooking already this morning.”

“Probably fixing a meal for the guys that are supposed to run in and kill us,” Quattro agreed. “All right, I'm going to circle once to get my bearings and see if I can figure out where the leaders are sleeping. You might as well go back and get ready on the bombs.”

They had circled twice when Caleb screwed the last fuse into the last nose, lowered the bomb rack out the door, and announced, “All ready!”

“All right, going in, put the first one on the bomb rack and don't let him roll till I yell ‘now!'”

It was not a steep dive by any means, but it felt strange and Caleb clung to the locked-down bomb rack until, as the plane leveled off, zooming low over the tribal camp, Quattro shouted, “Now!”

Caleb let the first one roll; it was about as long as his torso, holding three gallons of turpentine besides its fuse. He turned, hugged the other, set it on the bomb rack, looked down to make sure it was clear, and saw the flash of the first bomb bursting below. He kept hugging, lifting, and letting them roll, as fast as he could, and shouted “fifteen!” as the last one went.

“Hold on!” Quattro put it into a climb; through the open door, Caleb could see that there were fires blazing up from a couple of tents, people running around, and arrows and rocks flying ineffectively into the air.

The plane leveled off as they drew away and higher. “Strap in.”

Caleb did, checked the Gatling, and waited to turn the crank. This time the enemy knew they were coming, and scattered before the stream of bullets that Quattro walked down one long aisle of tents and up another; twice, Caleb cleared jams, but for a Newberry Gatling, this thing really hadn't worked badly at all. As they climbed up for another reconnaissance circle, Quattro said, “Well, that was pretty much just spite. They know we saw them and a few of them are hurt or dead, and some more had a bad scare. It won't slow them up even five minutes, but at least they know we don't like them.”

• • • 

During the ten minutes or so it took to return to the airfield, Quattro dictated and Caleb scribbled. “The second I brake the props, run and wake up the ground crew and tell them to get out here; won't need any more fuel but if I can get some reloading I might be able to get in a few more bomb-and-shoot runs before we're in blackout. But don't wait around for an answer; just wake'em up, get'em moving, and then run to HQ with that note. Tell them it's extremely urgent, and from me, and that your orders are to only put it in the hands of Colonel Birdsall.”

They had been in the air such a short time that the linen tires had not begun their usual deflation; the plane touched down almost as well as it would have on the old rubber. Quattro taxied around to the arsenal end of the hangar, killed the engine, and yanked the prop brake. The props had barely thudded to a stop when Caleb jumped out and ran across the gravel toward ground crew quarters.

Quattro had shoved the ramp against the door and was rolling another load of bombs up when the ground crew rushed in to take over and begin loading; that gave him a moment to check his watch. Not quite 6 a.m. yet; it had already been a busy morning. Someone handed him a sandwich and a mug of chicory; he gulped it down without tasting while the crew ran through the checklist. By that time Asanté Collins, his regular gunner/bombardier, had scrambled there from the barracks, and they were ready to go again. “We'll get that turnaround down to five minutes next time,” the chief assured him.

“Seventeen minutes from just waking up to ready to go isn't too shabby as it is,” Quattro said, “but yeah, they'll be running toward us for about four hours to come, and that's nearly all before blackout, so we can fly against them all that time.”

Collins nodded. “Is it going to do much good? Bunch of guys running through a field, I can spray but I don't know that I'll get many hits.”

“Yeah, and it's way too wet to get a prairie fire going in front of them, too, at least this morning. Mostly we just do what we can and hope to slow them down a little, but most of the effect will probably just be to scare them and make them lie down for a minute or two while we're right overhead. I wish we could do more but I don't see how.”

“Yeah, well, I think you're right. At least we help them understand that they are not wanted, and it's always possible we'll hit a leader or something, if they have leaders now. I'm ready when you are, Your Dukeliness.”

Quattro laughed and switched hats back to his flying helmet. The two of them ran the checklist one more time, and took off.

• • • 

When they heard the plane coming in, the tribals running at the front of the group scattered into the ditches beside the road and lay down; Quattro circled to strafe and bomb along the ditches. “Too wet to get a grass fire going,” Asanté shouted.

“You still got some ammo left?”

“About ten-fifteen percent reserve—”

“When I say use it, do it.”

As soon as Asanté was strapped in again, Quattro climbed steeply up and away, as if departing, and said, “Hold on tight, I'm going to come in out of the sun, fast and low, once I loop around.”

This worked somewhat better; Quattro flew virtually as if doing a touch-and-go parallel to the road, keeping his speed up but flying only about ten feet off the abandoned, grassy field. The road was raised a couple of feet, just enough for Asanté to be able to rake it chest high, and because the running tribals had not been ordered to take cover, and were bunched up like the main pack in a marathon, many more bullets hit bodies; when Quattro circled around one final time, they could see that there were dozens of people lying on the road.

But even as Quattro pointed the nose homeward, Asanté pointed out, “They're just stepping right over their dead and wounded and coming right on,” and Quattro noted that they had been almost two miles closer than their night camp.

When they landed again, Pale Bluff was awake. Troops were moving through the streets and out into the orchards, toward their positions along and behind the outer walls. The reserves were mustering in the town park by the Civil War memorial. Civilians carried bags and boxes to their support stations. “They might not win but they won't be unprepared,” Quattro said quietly.

“Ready now,” the ground chief said. “Four twenty-two. And we topped up your fuel and lye. We'll get it under four next time.”

This time they flew very low and crossed the T on the enemy column, shooting up the avant garde (but most of them made it safely into the ditch), raking back along the road until they were out of ammunition, then bombing their way back up to the head.

This attack had no more effect than the previous one. The advancing Daybreakers had already flung the corpses into the ditch and were back at a run. Quattro made a low pass at full throttle, scaring them back into the ditch with the roar, but Asanté, looking back through the main door, saw them standing up as soon as the plane had passed.