Allison looked through the periscoped hull. The crawler was so close to the security perimeter, the towers and domes of the Enclave blocked her view to the north. The Enclave was a city, and their final dash would take them well inside its boundaries. "We'll be sitting ducks." Her sentence was punctuated by the swelling roar of a stub-winged jet that swept almost directly over them. She hadn't seen or heard it till that instant. But the aircraft wasn't strafing. It was loafing along at less than one hundred meters per second, a lowlevel recon.
"We have a good chance," Wili's voice came suddenly in her earphone. "We won't make our run until the patrol planes are in good position. We should be in their blind spot for almost five minutes."
"And they'll have other things to worry about," said Paul. "I've been talking to the Tinkers coming in on foot. They all know the site of the Peacer generator now. Some of them have gotten pretty close, closer than we. They don't have our equipment - but the Authority can't know that for sure. When Wili gives the signal, they'll come out of hiding and make their own dash inwards."
The war went far beyond their crawlers, beyond even the Livermore Valley. Paul said a similar battle was being played out in China.
Even so, victory or defeat seemed to depend on what happened to this one crawler in the next few minutes.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Della slipped on the earpiece and adjusted the microphone to her throat. She had the undivided attention of Avery, Maitland, and everyone else in earshot. None of them except Hamilton Avery had heard of one Miguel Rosas, but they all knew he had no business on a maximum security channel. "Mike?"
A familiar voice came from the earpiece and the speaker on the terminal. "Hello, Della. I've got some news for you."
"Just calling on this line is news enough. So your people have cracked our comm and recon system."
"Right the first time."
"Where are you calling from?"
"The ridgeline southwest of you. I don't want to say more - I still don't trust your friends.... It's just that I trust mine even less." This last was spoken low, almost muttered. "Look. There are other things you don't know. The Tinkers know exactly where your bobbler is hidden."
"What?" Avery turned abruptly to the situation board and motioned for Maitland to check it out.
"How can they know? You have spies? Carry-in bugs?"
Mike's forced chuckle echoed from the speaker. "It's a long story, Della. You would be amused. The old US Air Force had it spotted -just too late to save the world from you. The Tinkers stumbled on the secret only a few weeks ago."
Della glanced questioningly at the Director, but Avery was looking over Maitland's shoulder, at the terminal. The general's people were frantically typing queries, posting results. The general looked up at the Director. "It's possible, sir. Most of the infiltrators are north and west of the Enclave. But the ones closest to the inner zone boundary are also the closest to the generator; they seem to have a preference for that sector."
"It could be an artifact of our increased surveillance in that area."
"Yes, sir." But now Maitland did not sound complacent. Avery nodded to himself. He hadn't believed his own explanation. "Very well. Concentrate tactical air there. I see you have two armored vehicles already tracking along the boundary. Keep them there. Bring in more. I want what infantry we have moved there, too."
"Right. Once we locate them, they're no threat. We have all the firepower."
Della spoke again to Mike. "Where is Paul Hoehler -the man you call Naismith?" Avery stiffened at the question, and his attention returned to her, an almost physical force.
"Look, I really don't know. They have me working a pointer relay; some of our people don't have their own satellite receivers."
Della cut the connection and said to Avery, "I think he's lying, Director. Our only lever on Mike Rosas is his hatred for certain Tinker potentials, in particular bioscience. He'll resist hurting his personal friends."
"He knows Hoehler?" Avery seemed astounded to find someone so close to the ultimate antagonist. "If he knows where Hoehler is..." The Director's eyes unfocused. "You've got to squeeze that out of him, Della. Take this conversation off the speaker and talk to him. Promise him anything, tell him anything, but find Hoehler." With a visible effort he turned back to Maitland. "Get me Tioulang in Beijing. I know, I know. Nothing is secure." He smiled, an almost skeletal grimace. "But I don't care if they know what I tell him."
Della resumed the link with Mike. Now that the speaker was off, his voice would sound in her ear only. And with the throat mike, her side of the conversation would be inaudible to those around her. "This is just you and me now, Mike. The brass thinks they got everything they can out of you."
"Oh yeah? And what do you think?"
"I think some large but unknown percentage of what you are telling me is bullshit."
"I guessed that. But you're still talking."
"I think we're both betting we can learn more than the other from talking. Besides - " Her eyes fixed on the Renaissance trigger box sitting on the table before Hamilton Avery. With a small part of her attention she followed what Avery was saying to his counterpart in Beijing. "Besides, I don't think you know what you're up against."
"Enlighten me."
"The Tinker goal is to bobble the Livermore generator.
Similarly for the attack on Beijing. You don't realize that if we consider the Peace truly endangered, we will embobble ourselves, and continue the struggle decades in the future."
"Hmm. Like the trick we played on you at Mission Pass."
"But on a much larger scale."
"Well, it won't help you. Some of us will wait - and we'll know where to wait. Besides, the Authority's power isn't just in Livermore and Beijing. You need your heavy industry, too."
Bella smiled to herself. Mike's phrasing was tacit admission he was still a Tinker. There were deceptions here deceptions she could penetrate given a little time -but neither of them was pretending loyalties they did not have. Time to give away a little information, information that would do them no good now: "There are a few things you don't know. The Peace has more than two bobble generators."
There was a moment of silence in her ear. "I don't believe you -How many?"
Della laughed quietly. Maitland glanced up at her, then turned back to his terminal. "That is a secret. We've been working on them ever since we suspected Tinker infiltration -spies, we thought. Only a few people know, and we never spoke of it on our comm net. More important than the num-ber is the location; you won't know about them till they come out at you."
There was a longer silence. She had made a point.
"And what other things make 'Peace' unbeatable?" There was sarcasm and something else in his words. In the middle of the sentence, his voice seem to catch - as if he had just lifted something. As was usual with a high-crypto channel, there were no background sounds. But the data massaging left enough in the voice to recognize tones and sublinguistical things like this sudden exhalation. The sound, almost a grunt, had not been repeated. If she could just get him to talk a little more.
There was a secret that might do it. Renaissance. Besides, it was something she owed him, perhaps owed all the enemy. "You should know that if you force this on us, we'll not let you grow strong during our absence. The Authority" - for once calling it `the Peace' stuck in her throat-"has planted nukes in the Valley. And we also have such bombs on rockets. If we bobble up... if we bobble up, your pretty Tinker culture gets bombed back to the Stone Age, and we'll build anew when we come out."
Still a longer silence. Is he talking to someone else? Has he broken the connection? "Mike?"
"Della, why are you on their side?"
He'd asked her that once before. She bit her lip. "I-I didn't dream up Renaissance, Mike. I think we can win without it. The world has had decades now more peaceful than any in human history. When we took over, the race was at the edge of the precipice. You know that. The nation states were bad enough; they would have destroyed civilization if left to themselves. But even worse, their weapons had become so cheap that small groups - some reasonable, some monstrous-would have had them. If the world could barely tolerate a dozen killer nations, how could it survive thousands of psychotics with rad bombs and warplagues?