Page 10 (1/2)
The Cave: Strategic Air Command&039;s old headquarters at OjfuttAir Force Base has seen better, and worse, days Better when it was a buzzing hive of planes and blue uniforms, jet exhaust in the air, and the camaraderie of men who know that they&039;re the best in the world at what they do Worse in the su blossoms of thermonuclear heat that reshaped the landscape They turned sand to glass and flattened anything that wasn&039;t built to bunker specifications in a hurricane of wind, pushing first out fro back toward the mushrooreat hangars have been rebuilt, SAC&039;s old underground catacoe unifor flies, its spiderish black-and-white design stark and forbidding against the blue of Omaha&039;s skies
Thirty-six hours after the bonfires died, Valentine, Ahn-Kha, and a strong young Grog nathen across the old base south of Bellevue
Ahn-Kha selected Khiz-Mehetto
Valentine remembered the rest of the revolt as little but a confused series of impressions The Twisted Cross barracks afla Gunfire clattering in the distance, dying off, then starting up again Fresh ash lifted skyward, turning the wind bitter
Valentine had stayed out of the struggle at the request of his friend, who feared that in the confusion, some Golden
One would shoot him down as a one of their Twisted Cross overseers
The killing did not stop until after dahen the last guards in the watchtowers outside the walls either fled or were brought down by snipers The towers inside the walls unexpectedly revealed , and they caineers The Golden Ones shot as far and as well as their Gray One brethren, many of whom lay dead in the upper floors of the Great Hall and in the little barrack houses outside the two gates of the ghetto
With a few hours&039; rest and some warm food inside him, Valentine decided to push on southward He knew the Twisted Cross would not take the Golden One revolt lightly, and that they&039;d be back soon with everything the General had Ahn-Kha shared Valentine&039;s fear of the co threat and refused to be parted from him
"Ahn-Kha, your people need you more than I do"
"My David, here I am just one more set of hands With you, I a Golden Ones with the Freeholders, honored to stand at the side of a friend In which role can I help o to the General&039;s Cave and throw a little sand in the gears of the Twisted Cross war machine before it could return to O But noould take e In preparation, he and Ahn-Kha "liberated" flamethrowers and explosives from the Hall&039;s armory
Khiz-Mem made the pair a trio after Ahn-Kha drafted hiuide Ahn-Kha assured Valentine that the young Grog knew every corner of the aboveground part of the old Strategic Air Com strength, shouldered the weight of flaes, food, as well as his own pistol and rifle Ahn-Kha carried the other flahter load Valentine had an additional satchel full of grenades-white phosphorous incendiary grenades a the others
Ahn-Kha exahetto "With these, they burn the houses of those they would punish I should like to give the Hooded Ones a sample of their own fla day&039;s walk south of the ghetto, but Valentine did not want tothe base with the city center
What was left of the Twisted Cross ghetto-police had taken that route; discarded equipe of the rail line likesoeance
So the trio took off west before turning south, retrieving Valentine&039;s sub its way south with Valentine scouting well ahead, sweeping the slers&039; trails of Omaha with his ears and nose, the party took its time He wished he had another few days to look for Duvalier, they weren&039;t very far from the rendezvous point
The day had a hint of autumn to it; even the afternoon heat had a cool quality to it that the summer days had lacked
They spotted a scout plane midday If the little ship was not the ill-omened red-and-white one from the Dunes, it was its twin sister It flew up frohetto As they watched it from a halt, Valentine explained to Ahn-Kha the story of its use in the Dunes
"So that means they will attack soon," Ahn-Kha said
"Yes, they&039;ll hit your people before the Golden Ones can get organized"
"Our people, my David, our people From this day forward, you will always be accounted a member of our clan, and welcome in the Hall"
"I hope there&039;ll be a Hall-and people to do the welco the little plane
At another break, in the roofless ruins of a warehouse, Ahn-Kha showed Valentine how to use the flamethrower It consisted of three tanks on a backpack fraer tanks containing gasoline with a thickening agent The arden hose attached to a wide-ood thirty yards with a frightening roar of flame
"I saw some burnt-out ruins in Wisconsin once where the Kurians had been doing so under the supervision of the Reapers I wonder if they were teaching their ure out how so e could be done without explosives"
"You er, my David," Ahn-Kha said &039;This pack is half-empty now You must use very short bursts, and even then you have only a few Why do we carry these all this way?"
"I want to do the saer scale The Hooded Ones are terrible, but the ones working them are vulnerable Maybe more vulnerable than the General knows"
After a final hard ed areas outside the base in the late afternoon The scouts shared a heartrootdown at the outer edge of the camp The perimeter fence consisted of two lines of fence topped with concertina wire The main part of the base was hidden behind a lip of low hills; concrete observation bunkers set a this, the western edge of the base
Khiz-Meue and pointed to the wire and the area beyond
Ahn-Kha patted the youngster on the head and turned to Valentine "Between the wires are uard posts well concealed behind the wire Not all are manned all the time The General still does not have all the men he wants, but he has plans for this place He trains new soldiers always Oive recruits experience"
"They got an experience, all right," Valentine said, trailing his binoculars over the open prairie surrounding the base It would be a nightet in-there were probably trip wires within the concertina, if not Reapers prowling like guard dogs "I don&039;t thinkto work for me here"
"I told you-our people are resourceful There is a small tunnel, which stretches very far It opens out on the far side of the old concrete road behind us A few have used it to escape We cannot go through it in great nuoes bad within Khiz-Me You have to crawl the whole way It opens within the base in a livestock barn, at the pigpen sluice"
"Fantastic," Valentine said He was not sure if Ahn-Kha&039;s knowledge of English extended as far as sarcase They use dogs on the base, so odor may confuse the around to the west in a final arc to the exit hole for the escape tunnel
"Strange how things turn out We dug this to let our people get out, but ill use it to get in"
"Not we," Valentine said "I I don&039;t think we should all go in, especially at night"
Ahn-Kha opened his ines caused theround Valentine and Ahn-Kha climbed up to the cracked and uneven remains of the old expressway and looked out at the western border of the base
A coluside the rail line bordering the Cave, turning out froate that Valentine could now see farther to the south A four-by-four scout car led the coluenuine ar truck, twenty-two in all, mostly old two-and-a-half-ton ar trailers A few of these carried er seat Double-axle pickup trucks towing cannon followed the are-painted U-Hauls In the beds of the pickups, unifor each other
Valentine plucked a piece of grass and chewed it as the procession of ht passed by
"I see some of our people still wish to serve the General," Ahn-Kha observed, as more utility trucks rolled by, their slat-sided beds filled with armed Golden Ones and Gray Ones
"My species hasn&039;t cornered the ood and bad everywhere"
"I would have ear
"So dust settle as the column bumped off to the north at a steady ten , the Twisted Cross Reapers would be in Oh
They went back to the outlet, an old cee pipe by the interstate, broken open by some force of war or nature
"I believe you should letelse," Ahn-Kha insisted
"Suppose we are crawling through your tunnel as a Reaper passes overhead Hea few feet under his boots, don&039;t you think?"
Valentine turned over the PPD and his reun If I&039; place at the river I told you about There should be a hu: rocks, firewood, whatever There may be a note in there, and you can act on it as you see fit Or go back to yo-our people in Omaha"
He unwrapped his old nylon hammock, placed the flae within its webbing, and then wrapped it all up in a blanket He cli the sack behind him
"See you at sunup," he said, and backed into the hole
The escape tunnel was a wonder of ile through it like ashoulder span Wood held it up in soated aluminum in others, and beneath the road and rail line Valentine crawled through a real concrete tunnel The building of this thingstory in itself; he promised himself to hear the whole tale frorew pitch-dark as he left the opening behind Valentine hated the abyss of absolute dark The dark of the grave, of death Even his newly sensitive eyes were useless; only the Reapers could hunt here He i out of the darkness behind hi around his neck He reached into a pocket for a leather tobacco pouch and brought out the diaift He had bound it in a little harness loop of leather, which he now hung around his neck The coloas like a tiny little piece of the sun with hieable size He sniffed the day s the burden behind hi process; he had to stop every ten minutes to rest He learned to do this under the too-infrequent air tubes the Grogs had poked through to the surface Rats and field mice had taken up the tunnel as a convenient home; he smelled and heard them all around even if he couldn&039;t see the, Valentine inched down the tunnel It was kind of like rowing a boat, except for the absence of boat, fresh air, and water He would scoot his buttocks a foot down the tube, which see his i behind with a pull at the nonexistent oar
The piggy srail, his stink-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel As it intensified to the point where he no longer needed his Wolf&039;s nose, he pulled with renewed energy When he felt his probing hand come away smeared with filth, he kneas at the end
He left the pack where it was Fighting disgust, he smeared his face and hands with the soiled mud He would have to rereasepaint fro to survive this, eh? It&039;s a one-way crawl, and you know it
The tunnel bowed into an upward slope Above, he saw a length of ten-inch pipe with a funnel at the end-running vertically through the tunnel He put away his coht could be seen around the edge of the funnel He listened with hard ears, but heard only faint animal noises from above
Valentine moved the funnel The wide part covered a hole chipped in a concrete basin, just below dirty grating apparently set on the floor above The sround easily enough He clih the hole in the bottorate
He paused to listen again and then lifted the grate He peered into the cepen of the barn In one war in a pile Across a low partition he could see another pigpen and its cluster of sleeping livestock
He cliave him the once-over, but flopped back on its side when it saw he bore no slop pail Valentine reconnoitered the lowest level of the unlit barn It sounded and ss shared the basement with a tractor and a horse-trailer on blocks, now filled with chickens
He dropped back into the tunnel and began to transfer his equip tickle at the edges of his mind
He lifted his arsenal out of the tunnel The pigs took one look at the flah-filling device and began to gather around and oink in excite for sounds of investigation
He hid the satchel charge and flamethrower behind the tractor and climbed up a series of ladders to the hayloft The sht back a rush ofto the shadows, he surveyed the land as best he could
The barn stood behind the apartments of the officers&039; residences In the distance he could see a concrete tower at the restored airfield As far as he knew, the Twisted Cross air force consisted of a single two-seat scout plane, but perhaps the General had plans to increase his fleet in the future A bunker-flanked huround marked the entrance to what Khiz-Mem called the Cave, the nuclear-blast-hardened headquarters of the Twisted Cross
The biggest aboveground structure on the post was the ar Valentine could see the front of the building froh loft of the barn Built on the concrete foundations of a hardened airplane hangar, a network of rail lines ran parallel across the wide area in front of it before turning toward the ate It reminded Valentine of pictures he had seen of the Ger to Khiz-Me enor down tracks in the concrete columns that held up the reinforced roof Valentine could see sparks thrown by welders even now, in the dead of night, as work proceeded on the multiacre structure They lit lines of boxcars inside, and Valentine could ures within the machine shops and workbenches inside
Soas power plant supplied electricity for the entire base, including for the electrified perimeter fence he knew to be in the works He uards at the ate He wondered if the tracks ired with explosives-if so, ita train through the gate More barracks stood behind the low ring of hills that sheltered the base fro eyes, and two more looked like they were under construction Valentine did not know if the hills were natural, man-made, or the remnants of crater rims caused by nuclear explosions in &039;22
A Reaper lurked soate He sensed another near the Cave and possibly two near the hangar, though those last were at the edge of his range
Valentine forced himself to rest in the hayloft for fifteen minutes He was exhausted froh the tunnel, and he needed to think now that he&039;d seen the hangar He had a lot still to do this night
The rational part of hiet back to Southern Command hat he had learned Certainly the Twisted Cross needed to be taken very seriously Left untouched, the General would eventually have enough Reaper-human pairs to consume the Free Territory Teams of Twisted Cross could destroy the border posts and principal bases as easily as they&039;d destroyed the Denverites at Fort Rowling He knew Southern Coency plan to fall back into thecould you feed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the hills?
The Twisted Cross had weaknesses hidden behind their black-and-white flag of terror This General, whoever he was, see his arets as he trained uide as many Bear teams as they could afford to send up here, and this General&039;s all-conquering arht be stillborn in the act of creation
Valentine&039;sto the Golden Ones, betrayed twice by Kur, and now in full revolt Perhaps there were other Grogs elsewhere, equally mistreated and exploited, ould follow in their footsteps if just shown the way Given ti, the Cats could-
But the Golden Ones didn&039;t have ti prepared, and Valentine knew that the Twisted Cross Reapers would hit the ghetto in the darkness They&039;d go in to kill, not occupy, and leave daylight points to the support troops The threat to Southern Coht
If Valentine could use the deht lose a few more of his precious Reapers
Just the act of debating his course was an admission of surrender, in a way If it was the fate of the Golden Ones against duty, duty would lose
A few ht, Valentine lurked outside the Train Hangar He had found a blue ju with a pair of aloshes He piled the sword, flae in a wheelbarrow, threw the blanket over theate to the officer&039;s coate, and the sentry stepped out of the shadows and into the light, shotgun under his arainst the cool air
"Sorry, that took way longer than I thought," he called to the sentry "It turned out she had twin calves, and I just couldn&039;t get the second out I ended up having to pull it round by getting a piece of twine and drawing its head around," Valentine said, firing off the sule verbal broadside But it got hiuard
"Hold it, no!"
Valentine&039;s aruard fell over with a stunned look on his face, perhaps not believing that a huuard&039;s jacket and hat and tossed the shotgun in the wheelbarrow
He left his weaponry in a shallow depression in the , covered it with the blanket, and began scouting the Train Hangar He found a four-wheeled pushcart, piled it with a few itean to push it around the paveht boxcars in three rows in the Train Hangar, with guards and dogs protecting the cargo within None of the workers approached the guards any nearer than they absolutely had to Valentine looked in the open side door of one and discovered that the ordinary-looking boxcars contained more of the metal coffins, perhaps each with a Twisted Cross soldier floating inside and ani one of their Reapers
Valentine let his hard ears roaer The laborers ondering what happened to the Golden One labor that usually was here to help theh and collected the Golden Ones They had been placed in a special co searched for weapons; others believed they had been taken as hostages to ensure the reliability of the General&039;s puppet on the throne back in Oht in the city Then orders had coh to strip the base of anyone who could be trusted to use a rifle properly
"The General&039;s really lost it," one commented after Valentine had wandered away and he checked over his shoulder Valentine&039;s Wolf ears still picked up every disgruntled word "First he tries to bite offchunk of his best teams, and now it sounds like there&039;s a trouble in O it cool down, he always demands scorched earth He can&039;t win a war because he refuses to ever lose a battle He always talks about how patient he is, but-"
"Watch it, you I don&039;t want to be put on a list because I was talkin&039; treason"
"It&039;s not treason to say there should be ned on to this for the carrot, a big stretch of land to calllike my old man has It&039;s been four years of step and fetch, and still no ring, no land"
"I&039;d be happy if they just got the hair-backs working again I&039; my back here"
A concrete control tower stood within in the center of the hangar It sat on a base that Valentine saw housed a spiral staircase, going down as well as up The toidened out to a bowl above, and four Twisted Cross soldiers stood atop it Machine gun e of the bowl Valentine pushed his cart past bunkers standing outside the hangar at the corners The strongpoints didn&039;t worry hined to cover the approaches to the yard, not the interior He looked across the cavernous interior, trying to figure out where the satchel charge ood and how to deploy it
He brought his cart outside again, ostensibly heading for the junk pile When he returned, the weapons were still hidden in plain sight in the wheelbarrow He put them on his scrap cart and pulled it toward the center of the Train Hangar
As he approached the ashed guard tower, a sentry challenged him
"Just a sec, buddy-where do you think you&039;re going with that shit? Nothing&039;s allowed to be stored by the cars, even te the cart, and pointed across the yard to a line of workbenches against the far wall He bumped over the last set of tracks, deeply recessed into the floor of the Train Hangar next to the tower, and an eight-foot-long e of his leg
The guard stepped around in front of hio around Just because the lieutenant ain&039;t here doesn&039;t mean I can&039;t take your number"
Valentine picked up the steel rod and moved to put it back on the cart Suddenly he uncoiled his body, swinging it up and catching the guard under his aruard&039;s rifle fleay, batted by the steel rod as its owner turound
A whistle blew from somewhere near the boxcars Valentine pulled the cart to the door at the base of the tower and shouldered the flamethrower first, its nozzle clipped to the tanks He put the satchel charge over the other arun in one hand and his sword in the other, the dangling nozzle of the fla on the uard was on the stairs above Valentine could hear his rapid-fire breathing as if thein his ear He put down the sword and heavy weapons
He bent and ju in the air as he went He fired the shotgun in the
Nearly at the top, he could see the ceiling above Valentine pulled the pin on one of the concussion grenades, counted two quick heartbeats, and tossed it up into the balcony
"Grenade," soood Valentine was already running back down the stairs to his other weapons when the explosion hit
Even with concrete and two loops of the metal staircase to protect hi seemed to slon, and he felt closed off fro underwater Off balance, he lifted his gear and cli himself like a drunk
The men in the tower had either jumped or been blown out of the fifteen-foot-diauns still rested in their ruously on the floor
A flutter in the air, like bird wings beating against a --the Reaper almost had him when it juyears of psychic sy the wires of his puppet was an apprentice, not a Master, and the Reaper tumbled as it landed
Valentine had time to take up his sword as it rose Before it could point its gun, he slashed doard, catching it at the knee He juun barrel, and the bullets tore through the empty air where he had stood an instant before Now the Reaper was seriously off balance, and another ind stroke by the Cat caught it across the neck The head wasn&039;t severed, but the central spinal cord was; the Reaper dropped to the ground, helpless Its black teeth bit iue
Valentine ignored it, unhooking one of the strap-ends of the dee and pulled both starter fuses froan to hiss and smoke Valentine spun like an Olyle strap held in his hands and sent the bricks of plastic explosive arcing off toward the lined-up boxcars
They ether like that, but they et for Valentine&039;s explosives He heard the thunk of the charge bouncing off a wooden boxcar&039;s roof, and he dropped behind the yard-thick concrete wall of the guard tower The part of his ht wondered for a moment why the General would use wood for his boxcars, and the answer carenades Metal would be too hot in the sun-it could cook the es, as well
He picked up one of the white-phosphorous grenades and covered his ears and nostrils against as conified the tower-shaking boom from the explosives With debris still in the air, Valentine pulled the pin and released the safety handle on the grenade He pitched the hissing grenade into the destruction in the center of the boxcars Shots froh the air around him, and he dropped back down before they could improve their aim As he continued to throw as fast as he could pull pins, he saw the first grenades explode The phosphorous bo white particles into the splintered wood all around it Fires devoured paint and wood in half a dozen places
He heard the sound of footsteps at the botto down thecries that brought a savage satisfaction
He turned on the pilot light of the flae of the parapet with the nozzle pointed at the boxcars
Valentine loosed a long strea the line of boxcars nearest the tower, painting the roofs with orange and yellow flaasoline roared as it consu down the sides and filling the Train Hangar with black smoke Fire, the most ancient of terror weapons, was as effective on the Twisted Cross as on the Golden Ones The boiling flames silenced the shots frouards ran for their lives, so their weapons as they escaped fla down from his concrete nest, Valentine exulted at the havoc wreaked below No wonder Ali enjoyed lighting fires; the results were spectacular The fla but harmless compressed air Valentine dropped it and uns With precise movements, he opened the aun and slapped horitted and a snarl on his face, he pulled back the bolt and fired a burst at a group of guards running toward the boxcars The gun chattered, steady as a rock in itsa pool ball with the cue Crouching, he concentrated on keeping anyone fro the boxcars He could feel the roaring heat al
Two thin, nude figures staggered out fro in front of them He cut them doith the 50 and fired a burst into the cabin of a train engine being backed into the hangar to tow out soh to pierce the thin ineers juine and ran Another nude Twisted Cross operator crawled froe, burned on his hands and feet Valentine fired until the pale for
Valentine heard orders shouted beneath the tower He looked over the side and saw automatic rifles pointed up at hirazed hot across his skin and he registered a hard tap, as if a doctor had taken his reflex hae of bone just below his eye, and then a second later the pain hit
My God, I&039; yet, he put a hand to his face, tracing the heat and feeling open skin with his fingertip The bullet had torn a furrow up his face from his chin to the corner of his eye