Seventeen of the group must be eighty years old, and the rest looked like they would be more at home in a library, squinting through coke-bottle glasses. Well, Romero thought, running his palms over his face to slick down his long mustache, if life gives you limes, it’s time to make margaritas. He chuckled at that. He really enjoyed playing Pancho to Spencer’s Cisco Kid, overdoing the stereotyped Mexican much the same way a cartoon Frenchman wore a beret and slapped his forehead with a ‘Sacre Bleu!’ Romero hoped Spencer knew it was a joke.
He stepped up to the ten-meter-long bar cannibalized from the scraps of the railgun launcher. Ropes dangled from the bottom of an oversized bucket bolted to one end; a set of heavy-duty springs from disassembled truck shock absorbers hung on a rotating base anchored to the other end, weighted down with concrete blocks. Buckets of rusting scrap iron made indentations in the white sand.
Romero clapped his hands to get their attention. “All right, listen up!” He pointed to three old men standing in front. “Grab onto the rope and cock back the lever. The rest of you, stand back. Remember, there’s only one of these catapults, so if you get in the way and splatter yourself all over the workings, we’ll lose our heavy defense.”
No one laughed at the joke. If he didn’t explain, the safety lesson would be lost. “You three—be careful no one’s in your line of fire. The rest of you got that?”
The three old men strained against the ropes as they dug their heels into the loose sand. The metal arm of the catapult came back, groaning at the limit of its flexibility, until it lay quivering, parallel with the ground.
He held up a hand. “Do not let go of that rope!” Romero scrambled beneath the catapult arm. Reaching up to the base, he connected a hook around the lower part of the arm to secure it. “Okay, keep the rope taut, just in case, while I load the bucket.”
Romero and three helpers struggled with scraps of iron, dumping them into the oversized bucket. Satisfied, he stepped back and nodded to the boys. “Okay, release the lines—slowly!”
Shooing them away from the coiled weapon, Romero gathered the gang around him. Perspiration ran down his face. “That’s all it takes, ladies and gentlemen. Remember, don’t let go of the ropes until the safety hook is on.”
A feisty-looking woman with white hair sticking from under ten-gallon hat held up her hand. “Son, how do we shoot this thing?”
“Rotate the base to aim the throw. Unfortunately, the distance varies with the weight of the projectile, so our range is always going to be a rough guess. When the catapult is in position, the trigger is that line that runs from the hook.”
“Can I try it?”
Romero said, “Satisfy your curiosity now, rather than waste time in battle.” Ducking under the catapult arm, he picked up the trigger line, then walked back to the elderly woman.
“Now, if you’re frightened, I can help you. All it takes is a quick pull—” He hadn’t finished his sentence before the woman viscously yanked back the line.
The catapult slammed forward and banged against the restraining bar in front. Seventy pounds of rusty bolts, twisted nails, sharp cutting pieces of metal flew in a low arc like a cloud of bees. The team watched the metal disperse until they lost sight of it; seconds later, it rained down in a cloud of dust a football field wide, kicking up debris as though an invisible warplane had strafed the desert floor.
The old woman cackled. She clenched both fists above her head in triumph. “Ha! Just let those bastards try and get through that!”
“Bank’s going hot,” Gilbert Hertoya said at the railgun controls. “Charging capacitors!”
“Notify Bobby—we’re ready for ranging.”
Spencer put a finger in his ears to muffle the sound in case one of the capacitors pre-fired and caused a catastrophic failure. It was another weak point in the defense—they were using research apparatus for weapons, and no one seemed concerned but him. Even though this was a full dress rehearsal, things still hadn’t come together. His stomach was sour with worry.
Gilbert jerked a thumb at Rita by the control blockhouse twenty yards away. She knelt next to Romero, who was relieved to be back from his hours with the catapult team. The two busily worked a makeshift telegraph connected to a severed telephone line. Wires, a small speaker, a battery, and a couple of resistors with a switch completed the apparatus.
Two days ago, the dead telephone line had run along Route 57, as useless as a magic wand in a science lab. Rita had supervised tearing the wires down from the utility poles, and now one end was connected to Romero’s telegraph machine; the other ran to Bobby Carron’s observation balloon a thousand feet in the air.
The short scientist dug an elbow in Spencer’s side. “Think she’s worried about Bobby up there?”
“The way they’ve been acting, you’d think the petroplague removed their libido inhibitors. No wonder the other ranch hands are sulking around and not getting their work done.”
Gilbert threw Spencer an exaggerated glance. “You aren’t jealous are you?”
Spencer dropped his hands, totally shocked. “What, jealous about Rita?” He had never even looked at Rita that way. After years of working together, she was just “one of the crew” to him.
“Whatever,” Gilbert said, “but personally, I think you ‘doth protest too much.’”
Spencer snorted and looked away. “I’m not even remotely jealous.”
“Right.”
“I’m not!”
Gilbert raised an eyebrow.
Spencer started to speak, but stood quiet for a long minute. “It’s just that Rita is the last person I’d expect to see getting dopey over someone. I guess I was starting to feel lonely myself.” He smiled wearily. “Looking for that girl with the sunburned nose, I guess. Too many Beach Boys songs.”
Gilbert smiled. “No problem, old man. I miss my own family, and they’re just in Alamogordo.”
Arnie yelled from the blockhouse. “Charging complete. Five seconds!” They put fingers in their ears, anticipating the sound.
A loud crack sizzled through the confined chamber. Spencer tried to follow the five-pound sabot as the railgun accelerated it down the tracks in a blurred streak. He smelled metallic ozone from where the plasma armature ionized the air.
“There it hits!” Gilbert pointed downrange. Spencer had to squint to see the dust kicked up where the wide-area munition pummelled the desert.
Rita waved from where she and Romero squatted by the telegraph. She slapped the radio man on the back and straightened, then pointed up in the air to Bobby’s balloon. “From Bobby’s guesstimate the projectile hit five miles away and spread out in an elliptical area fifty by twenty yards. If the metal bearings separated like we think, everything in that area should be shredded like mozzarella cheese on a pizza.”
Spencer brightened. “Get the results analyzed by tonight’s tech meeting.” He shook his head as Rita threw him a snappy salute. She’s totally lost it, he thought.
But Gilbert looked dismayed when Spencer returned to the railgun. The small engineer had a foot up on the base of the gun, reaching up to run a hand along the railing. Scorch marks marred the surface of the once-gleaming metal.
Spencer frowned. “What’s the matter?”
Gilbert shook his head. “We shorted out some capacitors. Unless we get this whole rail replaced, we’ll be up a creek.”
“But you’ve got miles of railing to work with.”
“That’s not the problem,” said Gilbert. “Yeah, we can replace the railing, but we have to take the whole friggin’ railgun apart to do it—and that will take nearly five days.”