The panzer hadn’t been identified, but Hart was reasonably sure it was the one Verner was riding. Her contacts had seemed anxious to do business, even with her flimsy story, which meant that the smuggling business was slow right now. It didn’t seem that many other runs were in progress and the mystery panzer was headed in the right general direction. There were other paths to Verner’s destination than the one she had decided to block, but all involved a lot of heavy terrain. Verner’s run to Quebec would have gone a lot faster if they had taken the track through the plains. Perhaps the suit had anticipated opposition and chosen a less obvious route. If so, he was smarter than she thought. Or else his friends were. Or maybe he was just plain lucky.
The copter report placed the panzer too far north to reasonably expect that they would double back and take the lower road through the Snake River Plains. That meant they would be crossing the Rockies, somewhere in the wilder country. There were not many cities or even towns up there, and they’d be avoiding the few that were. Unless they were planning a long detour north, the likeliest crossing would put them out in Sioux territory somewhere near Great Falls, so that became her next stop. Great Falls passed for a city, but it was surrounded by badlands, prairies, and outback, none of which were her best working environments. And that’s where they would be.
She had wanted to tie this one up herself because she was mostly to blame that Verner was still running around. She should have made sure that the Elves had done the job on him in the ambush. Now she couldn’t hope to nail him herself out there. Tessien was better in the wild places than she was. She wanted Verner gone before he reached civilization again.
She stopped at a public telecom, slotted a credstick, and punched a number. She waited while the connections were made and a voice on the other end repeated the Last four digits of the telecom code.
“Jenny, have our skinny friend meet me at Far Side North.”
“Will do, boss.”
The Thunderbird sat hunkered to the ground, quiet for the moment as Sam watched Begay crawl around the blackened scar on the side of the vehicle. The Navaho cursed as he fussed with the soldering gun, repairing damaged circuits.
“Why couldn’t it have been Pinkskins that we ran into out here? With all their trying to be more Indian than Indians, their fragging arrows wouldn’t have touched the T-bird. No. We got to flop on some lost patrol of fragging Wildcats. Drek, but there ain’t no beauty in that.”
“Wildcats?”
“Sioux special forces.” Begay hopped off the T-bird and spat. “With anti-vehicle missiles, too. Missiles! What kind of mouse-minded idiot issues a squad missiles for a trek in the mountains.”
“Maybe somebody was looking for panzers?”
“I didn’t tell them we were coming.”
“Neither did I.”
Sam handed a water bag to the rigger. Begay swigged the water and spat again, then tossed the bag back to Sam. “Pretty slick the way you forced their Hummer into the ditch. Better shooting than I would of figured you for.”
Sam shrugged off the praise.
“Woulda been easier to hose the Hummer.”
Sam shrugged again. He didn’t want to tell Begay that he had frozen once the sights had aligned on the Sioux military vehicle. He had not been able to pull the trigger. The lighter vehicle had been able to pace the normally faster panzer across the forested slopes, but it had no protection against the panzer’s cannon. The Sioux had shown great courage in chasing the panzer and it wouldn’t have been right to kill them. The Wildcats were just doing their jobs; Sam and Begay were the interlopers. The panzer guns didn’t load gel rounds, so he had looked for a way to make them abandon the chase. The only thing he could think to do was to block the way, and the only way he could see to do it was to drop a tree in front of them. He had been appalled at how easy it was once the stream of projectiles from the T-bird’s cannon buzz-sawed through the forest giant’s trunk, If Begay thought that was fancy shooting, let him. He hoped the Wildcats weren’t injured too severely when their Hummer had crashed.
Leaving Sam to his silence, Begay went back to complete the panzer’s repairs.
Sam’s head hurt from interfacing with the vehicle’s targeting system. It didn’t seem to matter what the technology, any interface always left him with the ache, and now a faint nausea. The latter might simply be reaction from the chase. He hoped so.
The pocket of his coveralls felt weighed down by the case of instruction chips the professor had given him. Scanning a few of them on the panzer’s computer hadn’t done much for his peace of mind. They made him nervous, and he hadn’t even tried any of the exercises yet. The familiar hurt of machine interface was a lot more comfortable; he understood that, or thought he did. It made a lot more sense and seemed a lot more real than all of the professor’s talk about magic.
“She’s patched,” Begay announced as the soldering gun rattled back into the tool bin.
“Good. We’ll move at dark then?”
“Can’t wait. Gonna have to move fast till we get out of Sioux territory. Those Wildcats will get word out and have half the Sioux military down on our heads. Only easy way through Sioux territory is to avoid being spotted, and it’s too late for that.” Begay scanned the landscape. “Gonna cut north. It’s the shortest way out of Sioux Lands. Longer overall, but healthier, because there are more places to hide. You still willing to fly the ultra-light?”
Sam looked up. It would mean interfacing with the craft’s sensors. “If you think it will help.”
“Eyes in the sky never hurt. When we hit the badlands, we can’t afford to waste time running up a blind canyon.”
“Let’s go then.”
They were mounted in minutes, Sam in the gunner’s couch because Begay didn’t want to launch the drone just yet. The Thunderbird howled into the twilight.
Hart sat listening to the chatter on the Sioux military radio channels. Civilian possession of a receiver able to pick up those channels was illegal within Council lands. That didn’t worry her too much; her very presence in the Sioux Council was illegal, for she had no valid entry permit. As soon as her translator told her what was happening, she smiled. This time she had guessed right. She was only hours away from the quarry and well-positioned to intercept. If she sent Tessien on the right sweep, before long they’d have Verner for good.
32
A sound like a dog’s bark startled Sam from the reverie of flying. He had been daydreaming, reveling in the freedom he felt at the controls of the little Eagle. The ultra-light was slow and sluggish compared to the sleek mono-wings he had flown in Japan, but after the claustrophobic confines of the panzer, the open sky around him was a joy. Half-dreaming he may have been, but not so far gone he couldn’t tell that the noise he’d heard had come from the radio. A glance at the Comm panel showed no light indicating an open channel with Thunderbird. The sound was a random burst of radio noise, then.
He checked the navigation screen. Seeing that he had drifted a bit from the planned course, he banked the Eagle into a gentle turn to Correct the error. The late afternoon sky was a brilliant blue, spotted with islands of cloud. In the distance, he could see an occasional thunderstorm cell towering among its fluffier kin. Beneath him, the land stretched away in a subtle tapestry of gray and brown, with only the occasional patch of dark green.