But when you saw what we had done, you'd be back again next year, next decade - and we'd have to do it all over again without the bluffs. So, Mr. Martinez, I think it best you learn what you're up against the first time out. People like Schwartz are just the beginning. Even if you can rub out them and services like MSP, you'll end up with a guerrilla war like you've never fought - one that can actually turn your own people against you... You do practice conscription, don't you?"
The President's face hardened, and Strong knew that the northerner had gone too far. "We do, as has every free nation in history - or at least every nation that was determined to stay free. If you're implying that our people would desert under fire or because of propaganda, you are contradicting my personal experience." He turned away, dismissing Brierson from his attention.
"They've arrived, sir." As the tanks rolled into position on the smoking hillsides, the personnel carriers began disgorging infantry. The tiny figures moved quickly, dragging gear toward the open tears in the earth. Strong could hear an occasional popping sound: Misfiring engines? Remnant ammo?
Tactical aircraft swept back and forth overhead, their rockets and guns ready to support the troopers on the ground. The techs' reports trickled in.
"Three video hard points detected... " Small arms fire chattered. "Two destroyed, one recovered... Sonoprobes show lots of tunnels. Electrical activity at... " The men in the picture looked up, at something out of view.
Nothing else changed on the picture, but the radars saw the intrusion, and the holomap showed the composite analysis: a mote of light rose leisurely out of the map, five hundred meters, six hundred. It moved straight up, slowed. The support aircraft swooped down upon it and
A purple flash, bright yet soundless, seemed to go off inside Strong's head. The holomap and the displays winked down to nothing, then came back. The President's image reappeared but there was no sound, and it was clear he was not receiving.
Along the length of the van, clerks and analysts came out of that stunned moment to work frantically with their equipment. Acrid smoke drifted into the conference area. The safe, crisp displays had been replaced by immediate, deadly reality.
"High flux nuke." The voice was calm, almost mechanical,
High flux nuke. Radiation bomb. Strong came to his feet, rage and horror burning inside him. Except for bombs in lapsed bobbles, no nuclear weapon had exploded in North America in nearly eighty years. Even during the bitterest years of the
Water Wars, both Aztlan and New Mexico had seen the suicide implicit in nuclear solutions. But here, in a rich land, without warning and for no real reason -
"You animals!" he spat down upon the seated northerners.
Swensen lunged forward. "God damn it! Schwartz isn't one of my customers!"
Then the shock wave hit. Strong was thrown across the map, his face buried in the glowing terrain. Just as suddenly he was thrown back. The prisoners' guard had been knocked into the far wall; now he stumbled forward through Martinez's unseeing image, his stun gun flying from his hand.
From the moment of the detonation, Brierson had sat hunched, his arms extended under the table. Now he moved, lunging across the table to sweep up the gun between his manacled hands. The muzzle sparkled and Strong's face went numb. He watched in horror as the other twisted and raked the length of the van with stunfire. The men back there had themselves been knocked about. Several were just coming up off their knees. Most didn't know what hit them when they collapsed back to the floor. At the far end of the van, one man had kept his head. One man had been as ready as Brierson:
Bill Alvarez popped up from behind an array processor, a five-millimeter slug gun in his hand, flashing fire as he moved.
Then the numbness seemed to squeeze in on Strong's mind, and everything went gray.
Wil looked down the dim corridor that ran the length of the command van. No one was moving, though a couple men were snoring. The officer with the handgun had collapsed, his hands hanging limp just a few centimeters from his pistol. Blue sky showing through the wall above Wil's head was evidence of the fellow's determination; if the other had been a hair faster...
Wil handed the stun gun to Big Al. "Let Jim go down and pick up the slug gun. Give an extra dose to anyone who looks suspicious."
Al nodded, but there was still a dazed looked in his eyes. In the last hour his world had been turned upside down. How marry of his customers-the people who paid for his protection - had been killed? Wil tried not to think about that; indirectly those same people had been depending on MSP Almost tripping on his fetters, he stepped over the fallen guard and sat down on the nearest technician's saddle. For all New Mexico being a foreign land, the controls were familiar. It wasn't too surprising. The New Mexicans used a lot o f Tinker electronics - though they didn't seem trust it: much of the equipment's performance was degraded where they had replaced suspicious components with their own devices. Ah, the price of paranoia.
Brierson picked up a command mike, made a simple request, and watched the answer parade across the console. "Hey, Al, we stopped transmitting right at the detonation!" Brierson quickly entered commands that cleared Martinez's image and blocked any future transmissions. Then he asked for status.
The air-conditioning was down, but internal power could keep the gear going for a time. The van's intelligence unit estimated the nuke had been a three kiloton equivalent with a seventy percent radiance. Brierson felt his stomach flip-flop. He knew about nukes - perhaps more than the New Mexicans. There was no legal service that allowed them and it was open season on armadillos who advertised having them, but every so often MSP got a case involving such weapons. Everyone within two thousand meters of that blast would already be dead. Schwartz's private war had wiped out a significant part of the invading forces.
The people in the van had received a sizable dose from the Schwartz nuke - though it wouldn't be life-shortening if they got medical treatment soon. In the division command area immediately around the van, the exposure was some what higher. How long would it be before those troops came nosing around the silent command vehicle? If he could get a phone call out -
But then there was Fate's personal vendetta against W. W. Brierson: Loud pounding sounded at the forward door. Wil waved Jim and Al to be quiet. Awkwardly, he got off the saddle and moved to look through the old-fashioned viewplate mounted next to the door: In the distance he could see men carrying stretchers from. an ambulance; some of the burn cases would be really bad. Five troopers were standing right at the doorway, close enough that he could see blistered skin and burned clothing. But their weapons looked fine, and the wiry noncom pounding on the door was alert and energetic. "Hey, open up in there!"
Wil thought fast. What was the name of that vip civilian? Then he shouted back (doing his best to imitate the clipped New Mexican accent), "Sorry. Mr. Strong doesn't want to breach internal atmosphere." Pray they don't see the bullet hole just around the corner.
He saw the sergeant turn away from the door. Wil lip-read the word shit. He could almost read the noncom's mind: the men outside had come near to being french-fried, and here some silkshirt supervisor was worried about so-far-nonexistent fallout.
The noncom turned back to the van and shouted, "How about casualties?"
"Outside of rod exposure, just some bloody noses and loose teeth. Main power is down and we can't transmit," Wil replied.