Boxes of ammunition came crashing down, starting his work for him. He had to duck out of the way.
He retrieved the box of high explosive grenades from the fallen clutter, ripping open the top of what resembled a very special egg carton. He filled the blousy lower pockets of his tunic.
He didn't waste any time. Popping his head into the cockpit, he could just make out the line of armed men up on the valley's rim. There were hundreds of them now. Standing in a dark, still line.
He primed two grenades, tossed them at the control panel and scrambled back to the ops cell, banging his knees and elbows without caring a damn. He just managed to slam shut the compartment door when the twin blasts blew it open again. But the door had absorbed most of the force, and except for a huge ringing in his ears, Meredith was untouched.
Smoke.
Meredith scrambled out through the hatch. As soon as his boots hit the snow, he primed three grenades in succession, lobbing them forward into the ops compartment. Then he flattened himself on the ground along the armored side of the M-100.
The machine's belly shook and groaned under the blasts. But the armor and insulation contained the power. The design was so good that there were not even any secondary explosions from the stored ammunition. The machine had been far more reliable than its human masters. And that, Meredith figured, was that.
He hustled over to the remainder of the crew. Krebs and the NCO were rigging a litter for Parker, stripping down branches the M-100 had sheared off during its crash. Ryder knelt behind a fluff of evergreen boughs, on guard.
Krebs looked up. "I don't figure those guys just went away, by any chance?"
Meredith shook his head.
"Why don't they come for us?" Ryder asked nervously. "Why don't they make a move?"
Meredith did not know. They had crossed into a world where the best analysts found their knowledge to be spotty. Behavior and allegiances did not fit the sensible, predictable patterns that gave bureaucrats a chance to get their forecasts right. There were countless armed factions in Armenia, representing indigenous nationalists, occupiers, sectarian Moslems, obscure irredentists, and splinter groups more closely aligned with a particular family or valley than with any coherent platform. The only thing of which Meredith was reasonably certain was that the men who lined the valley's rim were not Islamic Union forces, since they would have been in uniform.
What would Taylor have done in such a situation? Meredith wondered. Would the old man have made one last valiant stand? That sounded like the obvious thing, but Meredith didn't really think so. Taylor always found a way out of spots like this — really, this was minor stuff, by the old man's standards. He remembered Taylor in Mexico, bluffing his way through situations where the odds were impossibly against him.
"I'm going out there," Meredith said suddenly. "I'm going to try to talk to them. There's a good chance they speak some Russian."
Krebs looked at him sadly, without any of his usual "grizzled old warrant" banter. The NCO simply carried on with the construction of the litter. And Parker's eyes wandered ineffectually from one man to the other, propelled by misery.
Unexpectedly, Ryder spoke up. "I'll go with you, sir. You shouldn't go out there alone."
"It isn't necessary," Meredith said.
"I want to go," Ryder said adamantly. But he looked frightened.
Meredith shrugged. It was an hour for every man to make his own decisions. Anyway, it might be better to have a white face out there beside his own. There was no telling how these partisans or whatever they were might react.
Suddenly Parker arched from the bed of evergreen boughs where his comrades had laid him while they prepared the litter. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes looked through Meredith.
"Get the colonel, get the colonel," he cried. "We've got to go back for the colonel."
Krebs gently pressed the captain back down on his green bed.
"It's all right," the old warrant said. "The colonel's just fine, don't you worry." The old soldier's voice managed a tenderness Meredith could hardly credit. "Don't you worry," he repeated. "The colonel can take care of himself." Meredith noticed that Krebs's eyes were glistening. "You just lay down and keep still now. The colonel said he wants you to keep still."
"No time like the present," Meredith said. He dropped his pistol belt in the snow and emptied the last grenades from his pocket. He left his rifle where Krebs had propped it against a tree trunk.
He began to trudge up through the trees.
Ryder followed, jogging through the snow with his knees high like an old-fashioned runner.
It was very beautiful to Meredith in the little strip of forest. The boughs were heavy and white, and as he moved away from the wreckage of the M-100 the world seemed a pure, clear place. It was not a bad place to finish up, if it came to that. Far better than many of the other places where he had spent time.
And he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had done good work. The strategic communications set had been on the blink, for some reason, but he had been able to relay the results of their mission by conventional means — including the brilliant surprise about the Japanese homeland space shield. If he had to die, he was going to die in a world he had already changed for the better. His nation and his people would prosper.
He thought of his wife, suddenly and luxuriously. He owed her so many debts on promises unkept. Hard to be a soldiers wife. Maureen. But she would get over him. She was a handsome, handsome woman, still young and so full of life that life would not be able to resist her. He was sorry that he would not hold her again, sorry that he had not done better by her.
"Sir," Ryder called after him, panting heavily at the burden of climbing up through the snow. "Maybe we ought to call out or something. To let them know we're coming. In case they're jumpy or something. "
Yes. The kid was right.
Meredith began to whistle. Then he smiled, and it bothered the whistling, so he forcibly tightened his lips. Taylor would appreciate it, he thought. Proudly. And he marched up toward his fate, whistling "Garry Owen" and remembering the guidon in his pocket.
The trees came to an abrupt end. Up across a smooth low slope of the sort richer cultures used to teach their children to ski. a skirmish line of armed men stood silhouetted against the winter sky. The valley was very small, a matter of just a few contour lines on a map. The sort of place easily overlooked during a planning session, or perhaps noticed, then rapidly forgotten. Its only distinguishing feature was transient — the hundred or so armed warriors standing slightly hunched against the wind, many of them bearded, all of them with the hard look of men who had been fighting for a long, long time.
Meredith stopped whistling. He continued to walk up the slope until he was within easy calling distance of the line of men. The guerrillas watched without a trace of emotion.
When Meredith sensed that the distance was right, he stopped. Ryder's footsteps came to a crunching halt in the snow beside him. Cold wind rinsed down the slope.
As good a time and place as any.
"Hello," he called out in Russian. "We're service members in—"
Dozens of the men raised their weapons in unison.
"Don't shoot," Ryder shouted in English. "Don't hoot."
A man in a black kid hat barked an order, and the men lowered their weapons partway. Obviously a leader, he stepped forward, his bearing proud, and came a little way down the slope toward Meredith and Ryder. Another man followed, and Meredith pegged that one as a bodyguard.
The two guerrillas halted about ten yards up the slope from Meredith and Ryder. The bodyguard's trigger finger looked naked through a woolen glove, tickling the old Kalashnikov automatic rifle in his hands.