At last they got underway again and careened on across the bridge with sirens blaring. Metal clanged and crunched as their armored escorts smashed obstructions aside. People scuttled, screamed, and dodged for cover. One of the armored cars battered a furniture van right through the bridge railing and over into the river. The driver made a last-second, flying leap back onto the parapet and saved himself.
Then they were through, spilling into the tangled interchange that led north past the Glorious House of Christ Arisen — what had been the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts before the Born-Agains got hold of it. The congestion thinned as they approached Virginia Avenue.
They met their first opfocs at an intersection near the Whitehurst Freeway: two old M551 Sheridan tanks with their Army insignia blacked out and a cluster of smaller vehicles. A man in paratrooper camouflage uniform leaped out and waved at them, but Gillem only yelled “Red Cross!” and kept going. The fire engines were right behind.
“Full speed ahead!” Wrench yodeled.
Lessing had a sudden flashback of a rolling ship and a storm-driven sea. A lantern-jawed captain hung bravely onto the helm. Goddamned movies! He had thought he was over that!
“Roadblock!” Gillem squawked.
“Go straight through!” Goddard yelled back.
“Can’t… tanks!” Their ambulance skidded and fishtailed to a stop.
They might have ploughed right through the hastily built barricades of boxes, dumpsters, and road signs piled in front of them, but the Porter laser cannons of the three M717 Cicero IFV tanks demanded obedience. A score of camo-uniformed soldiers rose cautiously from behind emplaced machine guns, and an officer trotted over, signalling them to turn around and leave.
Gillem pretended innocence. He leaned out, pointed at the oily smoke visible over the rooftops ahead, and banged on the red cross painted on their ambulance door. His meaning was clear.
The officer, a lanky Black youth, came on over. “Listen, man,” he said, “didn’t you get the dinkin’ message? Nobody but nobody’s goin’ through here tonight!”
“God damn it, we’re medical,” Gillem protested. “There’re people in there. You can’t—”
“We just did.” The other grinned and spat. “Once we git them terrorists out… dead or surrendered… you’re welcome to patch up what’s left.”
“Terrorists?” Goddard pushed forward. He had taken off his PHASE cap, but his collar tabs still identified him. “What terrorists? Look here, I’m a doctor…”
Thankfully, the Black didn’t recognize the insignia. “I don’ care if you’re jumped-up Jesus Christ! Turn that muh-fuh around and bong before I put you all under arrest… or turn you into hamburger!”
“Come here!” Goddard crooked a finger. “What?”
“Come here, you Black, mother-fucking, nigger son of a bitch.”
The officer’s features turned two shades darker. He marched up to the ambulance, his hand on his holstered pistol.
Goddard pointed what looked like a commando knife at him. He pressed a stud, and the blade leaped out of its hilt to fly across the intervening four meters and bury itself in the officer’s chest. The man opened his mouth and craned forward to see what had hit him. His knees started to sag.
“Always wanted to try one of these babies!” Goddard exulted. “The Russians used to make ‘em: a spring-loaded knife that shoots its blade like a poggin’ arrow.”
Gillem was out of the cab at once. He slipped an arm around the Black officer’s shoulders. The man tried to call out, but his eyes were already glazing over, and a ribbon of red had begun to trace its way down his chin. Gillem walked carefully toward their ambulance, keeping the dying opfo between him and the soldiers watching from the barricade thirty meters away. He and Goddard pulled the man up into the cab.
If they were very, very lucky, it would work. The excitement and the fading afternoon light would make it appear that the officer was getting into the ambulance of his own accord. Too, the men at the barricade had no reason for suspicion.
Gillem clambered back up into the driver’s seat, surreptitiously pushing the officer’s dangling legs in ahead of him.
“Now!” Goddard panted, “Drive this mother! When we get up to those tanks, Wrench, you reach up from behind and wave this bastard’s arm! Make him look real lively and friendly! Wipe the blood off his dinkin’ face!”
“You are absolutely crazy!” Lessing shook his head in dismay. “They’ll have passwords… orders…”
“So what else do we do?”
No answer came to mind. The initial shock was wearing off, and Lessing’s mental combat-control was coming back to life. They had to get into the hotel. Liese was in there. So were Mulder and a lot of others.
They drew up to the barricade, the Black officer sandwiched between Goddard and Gillem, with Wrench leaning casually on the backrest behind them.
It was amazing: nobody noticed. People see what they expect to see.
A young White soldier came out, squinted up at the cab, then signed to the tankers to let them pass. Wrench waved the dead man’s arm energetically.
“Don’t overdo it, you pogger!” Goddard growled.
“Hey…! Wrench the puppelmaster!” the little man crowed. “Sings, dances, plays de banjo, waves de arms like a darky!”
“Zip itup!“Lessing rapped. He pointed out the window at several clumps of soldiers waiting beside tarp-shrouded trucks along the road. Weapons gleamed dully, and the ruddy firelight glinted off combat armor, helmets, masks, and battle-gear. He estimated the mop-up force at two hundred or more.
“What do we do?” Wrench’s jitters returned.
Goddard twisted around to confer. “We go in first,” he said. “We’re the innocent medical team that never got the message not to come to this party. As far as we know, this is a terrorist spesh-op, and the bastards’ve set the hotel on fire. We’re here to rescue people. Once we’re inside, we go up to Mulder’s suite and get him and our other people out. Then we take the penthouse elevator down to the basement power tunnels. Lessing, didn’t you map an escape route through there?”
Lessing only grunted assent.
“Something the matter?”
There was. He jabbed a thumb at the corpse lolling between Goddard and Gillem. “Knifing this fellow with his troops right behind him was the dumbest, most reckless thing I’ve seen in a long time. You damned near got us all killed. We might have talked our way in if you hadn’t been so impatient.”
“Jesus!” Goddard snarled. “I’m tired of talk. Now is the time for killing, not talking!”
“And I’m tired of you, Goddard! You’re a fucking fanatic.”
“Fanatic? Fanatic! You’re God damned right! Fanatics are people who change things! Otherwise we’d still be back in the caves! A fanatic is a guy who believes enough in his cause to win! Alexander the Great was a fanatic. He endured godawful hardships, and then cried when he thought there were no more lands to conquer! Jesus Christ was a fanatic. Why die on the cross when it would’ve been so easy to shut up and run his old man’s carpenter shop? Muhammad, Gandhi, Columbus, Cortez, Edison, Joan of Arc, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Florence Nightingale — the First Führer — history’s full of fanatics who spent their lives humping for what they believed, rather than sitting at home on welfare drinking beer and watching TV! It’s the safe, timid, little people who never win big, never lose big, never do anything, and never are anything. Oh, they bitch and whine about ‘fanatics,’ but they’re happy to profit from those fanatics’ blood and tears, their discoveries, their inventions, their struggles, and their martyrdoms! Damn it, we’re up against people who know what racial survival is all about! Those people play hardball. Either we play better than they do, or we’re out of it! Now, Lessing, you join the game or get the fuck off our team!”