Mayeaux worked his jaw, feeling helpless as he watched the authority of the Presidency crumble beneath him.
“That’s just great, General. So what you’re saying is that I should just sit here and let everything take care of itself? History would really love me for that. I’m sure they’d erect a Mayeaux Monument right there on the Mall, with the three monkeys of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil! What the hell are you trying to pull on me? Because I talk with an accent do you think I’m an idiot?”
His military advisors stared blandly back, not offering any solution. As he simmered, Mayeaux got the distinct feeling that they were waiting for him to slip up, to make a wrong move, and then they would crawfish in to accomplish their own agenda.
Were they going to initiate impeachment hearings? He drew in a breath, suddenly panicked. Or would it be a military coup?
He glanced at the Secret Service agents standing at the corner of the room for reassurance; it was getting hard to trust anyone nowadays, and he couldn’t feel secure in his dealings even with his own staff. Where the hell was Weathersee?
Mayeaux pushed his chair back from the table and strode from the room, accompanied by his Secret Service entourage. Not one person in the Situation Room stood as the Chief Executive exited.
Chapter 70
From his lookout position in the rugged Organ Mountains, General Bayclock searched the sprawling White Sands valley. Behind him on a volcanic outcrop, his two colonels and Sergeant Catilyn Morris waited for him to decide their next move.
At the base of the mountain, he had directed his troops to rest and inspect their weapons for the final march across the valley. Five miles to the north, they had left the group of noncombatants, cooks, water carriers, supply haulers, food handlers, tent carriers. Bayclock had needed the additional personnel to get this far, but now that he was within sight of the enemy, he insisted on having only the front-line troops present.
Sergeant Morris scrambled up the rocky slope. “See anything, sir?” The two colonels huffed after her, pulling at lone clumps of grass for support.
“Let me have the binoculars,” Bayclock said.
Sergeant Morris rummaged in her pack and pulled out a reconditioned olive-green pair of binoculars. She pointed to a thin line running up the tallest peak on the other side of the valley. “That’s the electromagnetic satellite launcher, sir. Five miles south is the microwave antenna farm. Lockwood’s group has holed up in those few support buildings there. No major defenses, no perimeter fortifications.”
Not listening, Bayclock adjusted the binocular sights; the knob squeaked. “I’ll be damned!”
“What is it, sir?” Colonel David inched up on his hands and knees. Colonel Nachimya, commander of the Base Personnel group, joined him. Neither man was a true soldier in Bayclock’s opinion—neither were flyers, and neither had ever held a real command, but had merely worked in labs or administrative offices all their careers. Bayclock didn’t have many choices.
He wished he had paid more attention to the lectures at the National War College. He had blown off theoretical discussions on ground attacks, interested only in the methodology of air superiority. In his blood Bayclock was a fighter pilot. But right now he’d trade almost anything for a copy of von Clausewitz.
“Sir?” said Sergeant Morris. “Is anything the matter?”
Bayclock handed the binoculars to Colonel David. “A balloon—can you believe it? What the hell are they doing with a hot-air balloon?”
The colonel searched the sky. “Dr. Nedermyer insists that Lockwood’s people are completely focused on that solar-power project. At the Phillips Lab I’ve worked around scientists like that for years. My bet is they’re using the balloon to gather information about the weather.”
Bayclock turned to the other colonel. “And what do you think, Tony?”
Colonel Nachimya stared across the valley, but he made no move to take the binoculars. “Observation post maybe? You could see our troops approaching from a long way off, sir.”
“That was my own thought. If that’s so, they already know we’re here.” Bayclock studied the area around the distant, glittering antenna farm, unable to see people from this range.
He struggled to his feet and handed the binoculars back to Sergeant Morris. “Assemble the troops. We’ll get this over with in a hurry, attack under cover of darkness. I don’t trust any of those bastards we’re up against.”
As the sun set behind the broken mountains, shadows extended across the valley like fingers of death toward the rebellious scientists. By this time tomorrow, Bayclock’s troops would have engulfed Lockwood’s group and reestablished order, at last.
In the radio trailer, Juan Romero concentrated on a circuit diagram he had sketched himself; he hoped it would improve the microwave satellite switching algorithm. Before the petroplague, intricate new designs had been constructed on workstations optimized for specific configurations. But the overrated software annoyed Romero—why spend so much time studying electrical engineering if you were just going to be a computer jock? He felt a rush of pride to see that he could still do a circuit diagram the old way, with a brain and a pencil.
Static clicks from the telegraph interrupted his thoughts. He grumbled about Bobby Carron picking the worst time to run a test from his observation balloon. Romero listened to the first few lines of code, and then his face tightened. “Hey, Spence!” His own hoarse voice surprised him.
Gilbert Hertoya trotted out of the blockhouse, ducking around an array of cables. “What you got?”
Romero glanced up, but continued relaying Bobby’s message to the microwave facility five miles to the south. “It’s Bayclock. He’s here already! Where’s Spencer?”
The short engineer blinked. “Oh, crackerjacks! He and Rita headed off for the microwave facility before dark. They should get there within an hour.”
“Bobby’s got Bayclock’s troops pegged at ten miles out. No solid count on the number, but there’s at least a hundred.” Romero felt panic clogging his voice. He tugged on his drooping moustache. “What are we going to do?”
“Do you think they’ll attack after dark? Can Bobby estimate how fast they’re moving?”
“Just a minute.” Romero tapped furiously on the switch. The telegraph line from the balloon came back to life. “They’re still coming down from the foothills. He estimates they’re traveling under three miles an hour.”
“Okay.” Gilbert set his mouth. “Keep relaying everything to the farm, and let me know when Spencer gets there. I’ll set the railgun up for a pre-emptive strike.”
Romero looked up at the other man. “You mean, go on the offense? Shouldn’t we give them a warning or something?”
“Ask them to surrender? Ha!” Gilbert’s face was grim and looked very old. “We’re not playing by parlor rules. Bayclock is the aggressor. Time to scare the hell out of him.”
The memory of the capacitor banks pre-firing on the first railgun test nearly smothered Gilbert’s optimism. Now that Bayclock’s army was breathing down their necks, he knew it could easily happen again. Or something even worse.
Gilbert refused to wait for Bayclock’s army to start shooting at them. The general was on the move, marching closer. As far as Gilbert was concerned, there was no point in negotiating—they hadn’t asked for the invasion force, had done nothing to incite the attack. But Bayclock had come strutting in, uninvited.