“Soldiers, señor,” the Mexican temporized. “May I see your authority, please.”
“I’m Mark Silver, and this is Jack Harris. Here’s our I.D. We’re liaison to get you Mexican outfits to Sacramento.”
“Good. Our transport is there, on the next street beyond these shops. We’ll be ready to move on at dawn.”
“Bullshit! You get your butts in gear and bust ass for Sacramento now. I’ll give you a squad to go along and hold your hand. We expect Oulram’s fascists to hit within the week, and your unit’d better be there!”
Mulder took sudden interest. “Eighty-Five, inform the President and the Joint Chiefs that we may want to scrap Onslaught and go to Kangaroo.“For the others’ benefit he translated in a hoarse whisper: “Kangaroo involves coming down from Red Bluff to Willows and Woodland, then westward over to the coast, bypassing Sacramento until the paratroops cut it off from Stockton. That’ll give us time to make a diversionary landing near Eureka in Humboldt Bay.”
On the screen, the Black lib-reb civilian, Harris, plucked at Silver’s sleeve.
“Prisoners? Where?” Silver looked. “Oh, for God’s sake!” He went to stand nose to nose with the Mexican commander. “You let those women go, God damn you to hell! Now! Prontol Enliende Usted!”
The officer murmured something about female spies and guerrillas. Silver raised a hand toward his waiting troops. The Mexican shrugged and shouted an order.
Moore turned Magellan slowly around until one camera pointed at the prisoners. Three Mexican soldiers were going among them and cutting their bonds. They made shooing gestures. All but two of the women scattered, running close enough to Magellan’s hiding place to allow glimpses of bare breasts, pale limbs, and eyes scarlet with firelight and terror. The two who stayed behind huddled close to their Mexican protectors.
The captives had reason to fear. A guard motioned surreptitiously, and five or six of his comrades slipped back into the shadows where the lib-rebs could not see. Magellan’s sensors picked up crashing sounds, shouts, screams, and laughter. They heard the rattle of gunfire.
“Pendejos!” the Mexican officer swore, so loud that he might have been sitting on Moore’s lap; they had forgotten that Magellan’s mike was homed in on him. “Hijos de putas!”
Silver thrust out a fist. “Call off your doggies, capilan! My last word!”
The gunner manning the heavy machinegun on the APC growled, “We don’t need these dinkers to fight for us, sir. Let’s thumb ‘em!”
The Mexican officer barked a command. Five soldiers emerged sheepishly from the alley. One man’s trousers showed dark, wet-gleaming spatters.
An M-25 made gobbling noises, and the five Mexicans jittered backwards and fell.
Somebody groaned, “Shce-it, David…! What’d you do that for?”
Guns appeared everywhere as both parties scrambled for cover.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease your fuckin’ fire, you mothers!” Harris screamed.
One more shot would bring on a barrage. Everybody thought it oyer. Then the Mexican officer held out his hands, palms up. Silver did the same. Their subordinates howled for order.
Chaos ensued. A dozen Mexican soldiers came forward to demand the life of the lib-reb who had shot their companions; officers and civilians squabbled and argued; one of the two female prisoners who had stayed with the Mexicans, a slight-figured blonde, squatted on the curbstone and wept hysterically while her protector comforted her.
“Jesus!” Moore swore suddenly.
Magellan’s rear-view screen showed a round-cheeked, swarthy face inspecting the machine from less than a meter away! One of the Mexicans returning from pursuing the captives had decided to take refuge behind Magellan’s dumpster.
“Keep Magellan quiet!” Mooredirected unnecessarily. “Pray the bastard doesn’t look too carefully!”
The man did. He bent, tapped Magellan with his rifle-butt, displayed surprise that turned to excitement and then to fear. He hallooed for his comrades. Koestler’s team had probably painted Magellan some stupid military color and put “U.S. ARMY, TOP SECRET” all over it! They should have stencilled it “CITY SANITATION DEPARTMENT.” Too bad the Mexican could read English.
“Get it the hell out of there!” Koestler rasped. “Which way, colonel?” Eighty-Five’s imperturbable voice replied.
“I don’t give a…!”
“It doesn’t understand orders like that,” Moore scolded. “Eighty-Five, back out, down the alley away from the fire “
The Mexicans were already there, followed by three of Silver’s doggies. AH four screens showed boots, hands, and puzzled faces.
Voices jabbered in English and Spanish. Silver and the Mexican officer jostled their way into the mob.
“Damn, it’s some kind of bomb!” Silver whinnied. “Jack, get the…!”
Feet threshed and kicked. For a moment the cameras rocked, but Magellan was too well balanced to tip over. The alley emptied.
“Now what?” Moore inquired in jaundiced tones.
“Get up speed, get away from the goddamned fire! Hide it!”
The machine’s engine thrummed, and the cameras bounced and blurred as Magellan obeyed. They saw empty doorways, overturned boxes, dumpsters, dustbins, and garbage. A Mexican soldier loomed up, then danced away in astonishment. Bullets from his automatic weapon whined off the brick walls. One clanged off Magellan.
Eighty-Five announced calmly, “Minor hit. Mo damage.”
“In there… that store!” Koestler cried.
Magellan stopped. Its side-and rear-view screens showed shadowy buildings, waving flashlights, running figures, and torches. Ahead, in a cul-de-sac courtyard lined with what had been small, artsy shops, was a boutique, its door broken and show window smashed. Obediently Magellan made for the door, only to find the bottom section of the panel still in place. The machine bashed against it, but the sturdy wood held.
“Up! Through the display window!”
Magellan extended delicate, hooked arms, caught the wooden sill half a meter above itself, then retracted its climbers and hoisted itself up. A claw shot out to catch the comer of a metal stand inside the window, but the flimsy thing collapsed in a shower of ringing metal tubing and broken mannequins. Magellan dropped back upon the sidewalk with enough racket to alert every lib-reb in California. Nearby, a voice cried unintelligible words in Spanish.
Magellan tried again. This time its claws got purchase on the two-by-fours that formed the underpinning of the display inside the window. Its engine whirred as it lifted itself up.
“Por allal” A soldier ran past brandishing a rifle, followed by a sallow-faced barrio youth in a windbreaker and tight pants. The latter scrambled to a stop and howled, “Aqui, aqui! Ola, pendejo, aqu’d Venga!”
The kid must have seen Magellan’s scratch marks on the cement wall below the window. The device itself was buried beneath frilly garments, mannequins, brass tubing, and glitter paper.
The soldier returned slowly, rifle at the ready. Lessing found himself willing the machine to leap out of the window and make a run for it. Magellan probably couldn’t: it needed to get up speed first.
“G-One!” Moore instructed.
Something popped, and a ball of flame burst like the Fourth of July five feet behind the soldier and the kid Both flew forward. The boy smashed into the ceiling inside, above the window display, then flopped down into the wreckage on top of Magellan. The soldier cartwheeled on through the window and crash-landed among the plundered glass cases inside the shop.
“Frag grenade,” Moore stated tersely. “Got three rubes of three each.”
Lessing wasn’t paying attention. He was staring at the face pressed against Magellan’s left view-screen. The features were crushed and broken, one eye open, the other gone. Blood dripped down over the cheeks like languid, crimson tears and thence onto the lacy negligee beneath. The face belonged to one of the mannequins; the blood came from the body of the barrio kid, impaled upon a spear of tubing jutting up from the mess, half in and half out of the window.