“Ah-ight.”
Shorty looked startled but said nothing. Farley saw that he’d got hold of a carton of Luckys to bring along with the water and rations he was pulling from the rubber rafts. He caught Shorty’s eye and tapped his wristwatch, then hurried past him and through the radio room.
In the bomb bay Boney was already pulling the cylindrical fuse booster from the thousand-pounder stuck in the rack. Farley set a hand on Boney’s shoulder and eased by him on the catwalk.
Plavitz stood in the top turret, swiveling the guns around to face the oncoming transports. Farley went around him and nearly got hit in the leg by the muzzle of a Browning M1919 .30-caliber machine gun as it suddenly poked out of the crawlway from the nose. He danced back and Garrett followed the weapon out. The big man picked up the machine gun and straightened as Everett came out behind him, bandoliered by ammunition. With four men in it the pit was crowded as a rush-hour bus.
“Don’t embarrass the Army, boys,” Farley said, and climbed into the cockpit.
Garrett set the Browning on the deck and swung down from the forward hatch. Everett handed the weapon down to him, passed him the ammo, and followed him out.
In the pilot seat Farley switched off the interior lights. “Wen, Shorty,” he called over his shoulder. “Time to go! Boney! How’s that firecracker going?”
“Done,” came Boney’s nearly uninflected voice behind him. “I tucked it away.”
“All right. Check your ammo and get behind a rock outside. Plavitz! How you making out up there?”
“Apart from not knowing where we are or who’s coming after us,” came from behind and above, “I’m ready as a pig at a luau, captain.”
Farley snorted. “All right, then.” He climbed back down into the pit and looked up at Plavitz. “It’s you and Martin on board once Wen and Shorty clear out,” he called up. “I’ll direct fire outside. You know the drill.”
“Press the shiny red button till they go away.”
“Only once it’s clear they want to make us go away first.”
“Roger that.”
Farley took one quick look around and then knelt and grabbed the bar and swung down from the hatch to the alien ground.
Broben faced away from the bomber in a half crouch with his pistol drawn. Farley’s first thought was that the transports had arrived and unloaded, but a quick glance showed them still approaching. They had slowed to a crawl. Farley unsnapped his holster and stood close to Jerry and drew his own .45. “See something?”
Jerry shook his head, still scanning the twilight canyon. “Heard something. Someone. Plain as day, and close.”
Farley widened his eyes and looked around. He couldn’t even see the crew behind the rockfall cover they had taken, and all of them knew better than to make any noise. “Maybe you’re spooked,” he said.
He turned back to Jerry just as a woman’s voice directly in front of them said, “Don’t shoot.”
Farley aimed and Broben aimed but there was nothing to aim at.
“Don’t shoot,” the woman said again. “We’re here to help you.”
“Prove it, sister,” said Broben.
Four figures appeared out of thin air not ten feet in front of them.
Even as he squeezed the trigger Farley registered that the strangers all had their gloved hands high and wide and empty, fingers spread. The gun went off but missed its mark, though the tallest figure took a step back.
“Jesus Mary what the holy shit,” said Broben. He held his fire but kept his aim.
The tall one stepped forward, hands still high. “Will your aircraft fly?” she asked in a lilting accent.
Farley raised an eyebrow at the anonymous figure. Like the others she wore some kind of tight-fitting black uniform set with thin and hard-looking panels, like a matte-black flak suit with a visored balaclava. The woman and two of the others had stubby weapons, bigger than a pistol and smaller than a rifle, slung bandolier-style and pointing down.
“We have very little time,” the woman insisted. “Is your aircraft able to fly?”
Farley studied her. “Who are you?”
The one without a gun, who was also the smallest of the four, spoke up. “Please, she is correct,” he said, and nodded at the approaching transports. “We must hurry.” His accent was different from the woman’s. Farley couldn’t place either one.
“We can get you out of here,” the woman said. “But we have to go now.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Farley told the woman. “But we’re not leaving our aircraft.”
“You can’t fight the entire city,” the small man said.
Farley looked him up and down. He looked like he was wearing some kind of padded dance leotard. “You should get your people out of here before it gets ugly,” he told the small man. “I don’t have time to—” He broke off.
The two who had not yet spoken were staring up at the bomber’s nose.
He turned to see what they were looking at but saw nothing that seemed odd to him. The front bubble, the cheek gun, Shorty’s artwork. Maybe it was the bomber itself.
Farley turned back. Now the tall woman was staring up at the bomber, and the other three in her party were staring at her.
Broben glanced back at the ship, then looked at the strangers. “What’s the deal?” he said.
As if moving of its own accord the woman’s hand came up to pull the top of her balaclava. The mouth hole stretched in some parody of astonishment as the balaclava slid off her head.
“You gotta be kidding me,” said Broben.
Farley could only stare in mute wonder.
Shorty stepped out of the waist door clutching a canvas duffel. He saw the woman and stopped cold and said, very slowly, “Holy moly. I’m better than I thought.”
The woman looked from the nose art to Farley. Farley felt a jolt of recognition and his palms grew slick. Long black windswept hair and pale green eyes in a pale face that was long and angular and determined. Stern and regal and refined.
The woman’s face and everything around her lit with sudden bluewhite light as the transports parked behind the bomber in a V and turned on a bank of blinding spotlights. The twin .50s chuddered as Martin opened fire with the tail gun.
Farley didn’t so much as flinch. Even as the firefight erupted all around him and the others moved to find cover he stood rooted to that foreign ground and stared at the face that also adorned the hull of the Fata Morgana right behind him.
Something shattered and the light went dark.
TEN
Farley stared numbly at the pistol in his hand. He pulled back the slide and saw that a round was already chambered. He frowned.
He was sitting with his back against a boulder. Broben crouched beside him with his own pistol out, peering past the edge of the rock and looking as if he wanted to shoot at something but wasn’t sure what.
Farley looked for the four newcomers and couldn’t find them. Then the girl moved and he saw that she was crouched behind a low boulder, peering over the top with her blunt weapon beside her. One of her confederates crouched down beside her, still in his ski mask. He had no weapon. Their outfits were no longer matte black. They had taken on the shadowed mottling of the rock they hunched behind. They were very hard to see unless they moved.
Beyond them Garrett and Everett lay prone behind the main wedge of rockfall, a little up the rise. They’d lugged the .30 cal up the slope and propped it on a rock, with Garrett sighting and Everett beside him to feed the length of ammo belt. Boney and Shorty squatted behind their own small boulders with pistols drawn. The remaining two new arrivals had taken up positions behind the rockfall. Their outfits now matched the landscape behind them as well. Shadows had stretched across the valley floor and it felt like night here by the canyon wall.