“Obviously, they want to insure that their troopers will hate us so much, will consider us so despicable, so vile, we’ll be shot on sight, no questions asked,” Geronimo reasoned.
“Mighty clever of the rascals,” Hickok commented.
Geronimo stared at Mitchell. “It would seem you have a lot to learn about our Family.”
“I already know all I need to know,” Mitchell responded defiantly.
“Which reminds me,” Hickok stated. “There’s something I need to know from you.”
“I won’t tell you a thing!” Mitchell declared.
“I think you will,” Hickok disagreed. His left hand slowly drew his left revolver and raised the gun until the barrel was touching Mitchell’s nose.
He cocked the hammer. “I want to know what you’re doing here, and I want to know now.”
“You’d better tell him,” Geronimo offered.
“And if I don’t?” Mitchell boldly asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.
“Well, then, Arthur,” Hickok said, grinning, “I reckon I’ll ventilate your nostrils with my Python.”
Geronimo grimaced and took a step backward. “Just don’t splatter his blood all over me! These are clean clothes I’ve got on!”
Hickok’s steely blue eyes bored into Mitchell’s. “What’s it gonna be?”
Mitchell gaped at the gleaming metal barrel of the Colt Python and felt a shiver rack his body.
“I’m gonna count to three,” Hickok announced. “One.”
Mitchell’s mind was racing. He knew it would be tantamount to an act of treason to disclose the information the gun fighter wanted.
“Two.”
Mitchell’s mouth was abnormally dry. He wasn’t a coward, but he disliked the prospect of dying needlessly. What purpose would it serve to be—
“Three,” Hickok finished his count.
Before Mitchell could find his voice, the Warrior pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening.
Geronimo shook his head and sighed. “Now look at what you’ve done.”
Hickok’s moccasined right foot flicked out and nudged the form at his feet. “Kind of pitiful, ain’t it? They sure don’t make soldiers like they used to.”
Chapter Two
Where had they all gone?
The huge man stood on the crest of a low hill, in the very middle of U.S.
Highway 287, and gazed to the south. In the distance could be distinguished the outskirts of Fort Collins, Colorado. His scouts had just informed him the city was deserted, utterly devoid of life, abandoned.
What the hell was going on?
Despite the freezing temperature, the big man was only wearing a black-leather vest and fatigue pants, as well as a pair of moccasins, the traditional Family attire. His arms, both bulging with extraordinarily massive muscles, seemed impervious to the frigid conditions. Piercing gray eyes surveyed the terrain ahead. The wind stirred his dark hair, causing his bangs to fall down above his right brow. His brawny hands rested on the handles of his matched set of Bowie knives, one knife on each hip, the sheaths attached to his brown deerskin belt.
Why would they do it? Evacuate an entire city?
The sun was poised in the eastern sky, heralding the dawning of a new day. A flock of sparrows frolicked in a field to his right, chirping happily, enjoying the November morning.
Was it a ploy? Were they trying to lure him into a trap?
He glanced over his right shoulder at the convoy waiting on the highway below: 3 jeeps, a half-track, and troop transports. The 3 jeeps, the half-track, and 2 of the troop transports had been confiscated from soldiers in the Twin Cities. The remaining vehicles had been appropriated after the battle in Catlow, Wyoming, the conflict referred to as
“Armageddon” because of its significance to the Freedom Federation.
The Freedom Federation. He faced front, reflecting.
Initially, the idea for the Freedom Federation had been proposed by the Leader of the Family, the wise and wizened Plato. The Family couldn’t hope to oppose the Civilized Zone on its own. Fortunately, the Family knew of three other groups, three other organized, or partially organized, outposts of humanity struggling to make a go of it amidst the rubble and ruins of a once-mighty civilization. One of these groups, called the Moles, lived in a subterranean city 50 miles east of the Family. The second group, now known as the Clan, had once dwelt in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. With the Family’s assistance, the occupants of the Twin Cities migrated to a small, desolate town in northwestern Minnesota that had been known as Halma. This town was only 8 miles southwest of the Home, the walled compound occupied by the Family. The third group in the Freedom Federation, controlling the territory once known as eastern South Dakota, was the association of superb horsemen called the Cavalry.
These three groups, in cooperation with the Family, formally signed a peace treaty governing their relations with each other as their first official act. Their second official act was to declare war on the Civilized Zone.
And here I am, the big man told himself, leading an invasion of the Civilized Zone, our column hundreds of miles inside the enemy province, driving toward Denver, Colorado, the capital and administrative seat of power for Samuel II.
The man with the Bowies frowned, displeased. Why couldn’t someone else be here instead? Why couldn’t he be back at the Home with his beloved wife, Jenny? Why didn’t Plato—
“We are ready to move out,” someone said behind him, interrupting his reverie.
The big man turned. Parked ten yards to his rear was the SEAL.
Three men stood not five feet away. The speaker was a small man, not much over five feet in height, dressed in black, baggy clothing and holding a katana, a Japanese sword, by its scabbard in his right hand. His Oriental features displayed a degree of concern for the man with the Bowies. “Is anything wrong?” he inquired. “You appear troubled, Blade.”
Blade shook his head. “I’m fine, Rikki,” he lied.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi didn’t believe Blade was telling the truth, but he tactfully refrained from making an issue of it. If something was bothering the chief of the Family’s Warriors, then Blade would divulge it in his own good time.
The man on Rikki’s right pointed at Fort Collins. “Do we go in today?”
he asked his leader. This man was almost as large as Blade. He wore an unusual seamless dark-blue garment sewn together by the Family Weavers. Stitched on the back of this garment was the ebony silhouette of a skull. His hair and his mustache were both a peculiar, distinctive shade of silver, the hair cut short and the mustache drooping around the corners of his mouth. He carried a Wilkinson “Terry” Carbine in his right hand.
Under his left arm was a Smith and Wesson Model 586 Distinguished Combat Magnum in a shoulder holster; under his other arm was a Browning Hi-Power 9-millimeter Automatic Pistol. A curved scimitar was in a leather sheath strapped to his belt and angled along his left thigh.
“Yes, Yama,” Blade replied. “We go in shortly.”
“Why do you suppose we haven’t encountered any opposition?” asked the third man. He was of average build, and dressed all in green, his attire custom-made by the Weavers and patterned after the illustrations of medieval apparel contained in several of the books in the Family library.
His blond beard was neatly trimmed, jutting forward on his pointed chin.
Because he wore his hair long, he tied it into a ponytail using a six-inch strip of leather. He clutched a compound bow in his left hand, and a quiver full of arrows was affixed to his brown belt and slanted across his right hip.
“I wish I knew,” Blade told Teucer. “I can’t imagine why Samuel hasn’t launched a counterattack.”