The Peace War (27 page)

He must mix truth and lies just right. It would be along afternoon.

The hallway was brighter now. As the sun set, its light came nearly horizontally
through the rips near the ceiling and splashed bloody light down upon them. The air
patrols had spread over a vast area, and the nearest tanks were several thousand meters
away; Ebenezer's man had coordinated a series of clever decoy operations — the sort of
thing Wili had seen done several times against the Jonques.

"iDel Nico Dio!"
It was almost a shriek. The lookout at the end of the hall jumped
down from his perch. "It's happening. Just as he said. It's flying!"

Ebenezer's
sabio
made angry shushing motions, but the group moved quickly to the
opening, the
sabio
and chief Jonque forcing their way to the front. Wili crawled between
them and looked through one of the smaller chinks in the plaster and concrete: The
evening haze was red. The sun sat half-dissolved in the deeper red beyond the Enclave
towers.

And hanging just above the skyline was a vast new moon, a dark sphere edged by a
crescent of red: The bobble had risen off the top of the Tradetower and was slowly
drifting with the evening breeze toward the west.

"Mother of God," the Alcalde's man whispered to himself. Even with understanding,
this was hard to
grasp. The bobble, with its cargo of afternoon air, was lighter than the
evening air around it, was the largest hot air balloon in history. And sailing into the
sunset with it went the Tinker hostages. The noise of aircraft came louder, as the hornets
returned to their nest and buzzed around this latest development. One of the insects
strayed
too
close to the vast smooth arc. Its rotor shattered; the helicopter fell away,
turning and turning.

The
sabio
glanced down at Wili. "You're sure it will come inland?"

"Yes. Uh, Naismith studied the wind patterns very carefully. It's just a matter of time —
weeks at most — before it grounds in the mountains. The Authority will know soon
enough — along with the rest of the world — the secret of the bobbles, but they won't know
just when this one will burst. If the bobble ends up far enough away, the other problems
we are going to cause them will be so big they won't post a permanent force around it.
Then, when it finally bursts..."

"I know, I know. When it finally bursts we're there to rescue them. But ten years is
long to sleep."

It would actually be one year. That had been one of Wili's little lies. If Lu and the
Peacers didn't know the potential for short-lived bobbles, then It suddenly occurred to
him that Della Lu was no longer in his sight. He turned quickly from the wall and looked
down the hallway. But she and Rosas were still there, sitting next to a couple of Jonque
goons who had not joined the crush at the peephole. "Look, I think we should try to make
it back to the tunnel now. The Peacers have plenty of new problems, and it's pretty dark
down in the street."

Ebenezer's man smiled. "Now, what would you know about evading armed men in the
Basin?" More than ever Wili was sure the
sabio
recognized him, but for now the other
was not going to make anything of it. He turned to the Jonque chief. "The boy's probably
right."

Wili retrieved the generator, and one by one they descended via the rope sling to the
ruined garages below the apartment house. The last man slipped the rope from its
mooring. The blacks spent several minutes removing all ground-level signs of their
presence. The Ndelante were careful and skilled. There were ways of covering tracks in
the ruins, even of restoring the patina of dust in ancient rooms. For forty years the depths
of the L.A. Basin had been the ultimate fortress of the Ndelante; they knew their own
turf.

Outside, the evening cool had begun. Two of the
sabio's
men moved out ahead, and
another two or three brought up the rear. Several carried night scopes. It was still light
enough to read by; the sky above the street was soft red with occasional patches of pastel
blue. But it was darkening quickly, and the others were barely more than shadows. Wili
could sense the Jonques' uneasiness. Being caught at nightfall deep in the ruins would
normally be the death of them. The high-level conniving between the Ndelante and the
bosses of Aztlán did not ordinarily extend down to these streets.

Their point men led them through piles of fallen concrete; they never actually stepped
out into the open street. Wili hitched up his pack and fell back slightly, keeping Rosas
and Lu ahead of him. Behind him, he could hear the Jonque chief and — much quieter — Ebenezer's sabio.

Out of the buzzing of aircraft, the sound of a single helicopter came louder and louder.
Wili and the others froze, then crouched down in silence. The craft was closer, closer.
The
thwup-thwup-thwup
of its rotors was loud enough so that they could almost feel the
overpressures. It was going to pass directly over them. This sort of thing had happened
every twenty minutes or so during the afternoon, and should be nothing to worry about.
Wili doubted if even observers on the rooftops could have spotted them here below. But
this time:

As the copter passed over the roofline a flash of brilliant white appeared ahead of Wili.
Lu! He had been worried she was smuggling some sophisticated homer, and here she was
betraying them with a simple handflash!

The helicopter passed quickly across the street. But even before its rotor tones changed
and it began to circle back, Wili and most of the Ndelante were already heading for
deeper hidey-holes. Seconds later, when the aircraft passed back over the street, it really
was empty. Wili couldn't see any of the others, but it sounded as if the Jonques were still
rushing madly about, trying to find some way out of the jagged concrete jungle. A
monstrously bright light swept back and forth along the street, throwing everything into
stark blacks and whites.

As Wili had hoped, the searchlight was followed seconds later by rocket fire. The
ground rose and fell under him. Faint behind the explosions, Wili could hear shards of
metal and stone snicking back and forth between concrete piles. There were screams.

Heavy dust rose from the ruins. This was his best chance: Wili scuttled back a nearby
alley, ignoring the haze and the falling rocks. Another half minute and the enemy would
be able to see clearly again, but by then Wili (and probably the rest of the Ndelante)
would be a hundred meters away, and moving under much greater cover than he had right
here.

An observer might think he ran in mindless panic, but in fact Wili was very careful,
was watching for any sign of an Ndelante trail. For more than forty years the Ndelante
had been the de facto rulers of these ruins. They used little of it for living space, but they
mined most of the vast Basin, and everywhere they went they left subtle improvements —
escape hatches, tunnels, food caches — that weren't apparent unless one knew their
marking codes. After less than twenty meters, Wili had found a marked path, and now
ran at top
speed through terrain that would have seemed impassable to anyone standing
more than a few meters away. Some of the others were escaping along the same path:
Wili could hear at least two pairs of feet some distance behind him, one heavy Jonque
feet, the others barely audible. He did not slow down; better that they catch up.

The chopper pilot had lifted out of the space between the buildings and fired no more.
No doubt the initial attack had not been to kill, but to jar his prey into the open. It was a
decent strategy against any but the Ndelante.

The pilot flew back and forth now, lobbing stun bombs. They were so far away that
Wili could barely feel them. In the distance, he heard the approach of more aircraft.
Some of them sounded big. Troop Garners. Wili kept running. Till the enemy actually
landed, it was better to run than to search for a good hiding place. He might even be able
to get out of the drop area.

Five minutes later, Wili was nearly a kilometer away. He moved through a burned-out
retail area, from cellar to cellar, each connected to the next by subtle breaks in the walls.
His equipment pack had come loose and the whole thing
banged painfully against him
when he tried to move really fast. He stopped briefly to tighten the harness, but that only
made
the straps cut into his shoulders.

In one sense he was lost: He had no idea where he was, or how to get to the pickup point
the Ndelante and the Jonques had established. On the other hand, he knew which
direction he should run from, and — if he saw them — he could recognize the clues that
would lead to some really safe hole that the Ndelante would look into after all the fuss
died down.

Two kilometers run. Wili stopped to adjust the straps again. Maybe he should wait for
the others to catch up. If there was a safety hole around here, they might know where it
was. And then he noticed it, almost in front of him: an innocent pattern of scratches and
breaks in the cornerstone of a bank building. Somewhere in the basement of that bankin
the old vault no doubt-were provisions and water and probably a hand comm. No wonder
the Ndelante behind him had stayed so close to his trail. Wili left the dark of the alley and
moved across the street in a broken run, flitting from one hiding place to the next. It was
just like the old days — after Uncle Sly but before Paul and math and Jeremy except that
in those old days, he had more often than not been carried by his fellow burglars, since he
was too weak for sustained running. Now he was as tough as any.

He started down the darkened stairs, his hands fishing outward in almost ritual motions
to disarm the boobytraps the Ndelante were fond of leaving. Outside sounds came very
faint down here, but he thought he heard the others, the surviving Jonque and however
many Ndelante were with him. Just a few more steps and he would be in the-"

After so much dark, the light from behind him was blinding. For an instant, Wili stared
stupidly at his own shadow. Then he dropped and whirled, but there was no place to go,
and the handflash followed him easily. He stared into the darkness around the point of
light. He did not have to guess who was holding it.

"Keep your hands in view, Wili," her voice was soft and reasonable. "I really do have a
gun."

"You're doing your own dirty work now?"

"I figured if I called in the helicopters before catching up, you might bobble yourself."
The direction of her voice changed. "Go outside and signal the choppers down."

"Okay." Rosas' voice had just the mixture of resentment and cowardice that Wili
remembered from the fishing boat. His footsteps retreated up the stairs.

"Now take off the pack — slowly — and set it on the stairs."

Wili slipped off the straps and advanced up the stairs a pace or two. He stopped when she
made a warning sound and set the generator down amidst fallen plaster and rat droppings.
Then Wili sat, pretending to take the weight off his legs. If she were just a couple of
meters closer..." How could you follow me? No Jonque ever could; they don't know the
signs." His curiosity was only half pretense. If he hadn't been so scared and angry, he
would have been humiliated: It had taken him years to learn the Ndelante signs, and here
a woman — not even an Ndelante — had come for the first time into the Basin, and equaled
him.

Lu advanced, waving him back from the stairs. She set her flash on the steps and began
to undo the ties on his pack with her right hand. She did have a gun, an
Hacha
15-mm,
probably taken off one of the Jonques. The muzzle never wavered.

"Signs?" There was honest puzzlement in her voice. "No, Wili, I simply have excellent
hearing and good legs. It was too dark for serious tracking." She glanced into the pack,
then slipped the straps over one shoulder, retrieved her handflash, and stood up. She had
everything now.
Through me, she even has Paul,
he suddenly realized. Wili thought of
the holes the
Hachca
could make, and he knew what he must do.

Rosas came back down. "I swung my flash all around, but there's so much light and
noise over there already, I don't think anyone noticed."

Lu made an irritated noise. "Those featherbrains. What they know about surveillance
could be-"

And several things happened at once: Wili rushed her. Her light swerved and shadows
leaped like monsters. There was a ripping, cracking sound. An instant later, Lu crashed
into the wall and slid down the steps. Rosas stood over her crumpled form, a metal bar
clutched in his hand. Something glistened dark and wet along the side of that bar. Wili
took one hesitant step up the stairs, then another. Lu lay facedown. She was so small,
scarcely taller than he. And so still now.

"Did... did you kill her?" He was vaguely surprised at the note of horror, almost
accusation, in his voice.

Rosas' eyes were wide, staring. "I don't know; I t-tried to. S-sooner or later I had to do
this. I'm
not
a traitor, Wili. But at Scripps — " He stopped, seemed to realize that this was
not the time for long confessions. "Hell, let's get this thing off her." He picked up the gun
that lay just beyond Lu's now limp hand. That action probably saved them.

As he rolled her on her side, Lu exploded, her legs striking at Rosas' midsection,
knocking him backward onto Wili. The larger man was almost dead weight on the boy.
By the time Wili pushed him aside, Della Lu was racing up the stairs. She ran with a
slight stagger, and one arm hung at an awkward angle. She still had her handflash. "The
gun, Mike, quick!"

But Rosas was doubled in a paroxysm of pain and near paralysis, making faint
"unh,
unh"
sounds. Wili snatched the metal bar, and flew up the steps, diving low and to one
side as he came onto the street.