He met my eyes. I was giving him an out and he took it. He gestured his Lieutenant over to stare at my badge, then shouted, “Stand down all! Mission’s terminated. Sergeant— get everybody back aboard!”
The Lieutenant looked livid, the squad baffled. But, being what they were, they obeyed without question. I watched them boarding the gunships, keeping the Captain at my side. Then I walked with him to his ship. Barbara followed.
He muttered to her, “I hope you know what you’re getting into!”
“We know,” she said, and laughed. “You go! And I advise you to keep going before they con you into doing something that obliterates what’s left of your honor! Special Strike Force dressed up as Feds!” She laughed again, with more contempt than I had heard in the laugh of any woman.
It stung the Captain into swinging around, staring at this terrible girl-child. She stared back, her gray eyes as hard as agate. “And if you’re thinking of shooting us up after you’re airborne—don’t try it! The first ship to fire a burst will get hit by five Strelas.”
“Strelas! You’ve got Strelas? How the hell—”
“Old models. But still fully operational. So flake off, and keep going!”
He still hesitated, then asked quietly, “How old are you?” “A little younger than Alexander when he’d conquered half of Asia. Older than Cleopatra when she’d captured all Egypt. And older than Von Helm when he’d shot down his fiftieth enemy. Does that answer your question?”
“Hell on earth!” He turned and climbed into his ship. The hatch slammed and the choppers took off. They circled above us, as though deciding what to do, then shot away inland.
I swung on Barbara. “You’ve got Strelas? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Strelas? Of course we haven’t got Streias! But if that poor bastard of a Captain reports we have—that might keep their gunships away!”
Now we had no option; we had to evacuate the Cove. We had used up our real source of strength; the belief by outsiders that we were weak and helpless. We had been able to ambush our attackers only because they had thought they were about to overrun or arrest a bunch of unarmed pacifists. Now they would over-react—especially if the Captain reported how we had jumped him and threatened him with Strelas. Personally I doubted that he would. From his expression when he left I suspected he would take Barbara’s parting advice and keep going. Probably he and his squad would convert to bandits. Anything to avoid explaining to his Colonel how he had let himself be ambushed by children and bluffed by one fake SS agent We had to move, and we prepared to move, but the prospect of Fairhaven as our future home was so depressing that we hung on in the Cove, hoping that in the growing confusion, we would be ignored. That the Feds would leave us alone. As they did. When our next threat came it was not from the Federal Government but from the Government of Maine, which had taken upon itself to start acting like an independent state. As its Governor had taken on the role of a local Dictator, with the National Guard as his private army, “keeping the peace” throughout Maine. And for all Settlements the term keeping the peace carried overtones of “getting the girls.”
Soon they would come and try to get ours and we prepared to evacuate when they did. Evidently they had heard rumors of Strelas for their aircraft kept well away from the Cove, but our scouts, watching the road into Standish, reported that truckloads of troops and tanks on transporters were moving into the town, ostensibly to restore law and order after outbreaks of rioting. But Guardsmen were filling the local bars with stories about the number of fertile women they had liberated from the other three Settlements in the State, and how they would soon be rescuing the ones we were supposed to be holding captive.
Legally we were now in revolt. Outlawed. “Wearing the wolfs head.” Fair game for anyone. We knew we had a way out, but we didn’t want to take it until we had to. And when we had to we found that way suddenly blocked.
XVII
Our escape route was blocked by the arrival offshore of a Coast Guard cutter. Our relationship with the US Coast Guard had always been good; they were fellow sailors and our boats seldom got into trouble. But on that foggy September morning the sight of the white ship with her blue and red stripe lying off the Cove was an omen of trouble to come.
Enoch went out to find why the cutter was there and returned with bad news. “Lieutenant Jenson’s the Skipper. All he’ll say is that his orders are to stop any boats from leaving Sutton Cove.”
“His orders? Whose orders?” demanded Yackle. “The Federal Government has no right to interfere with our fishing. We have an agreement with Washington—”
“He doesn’t take orders from the Federal Government no more. Told me Coast Guard’s reverted to local control. The States are regaining their rights—they are!” He sucked moodily on his empty pipe. “Jenson’s taking his orders from the Governor of Maine. When I asked him why, he said he had to take orders from somebody!”
So Lieutenant Jenson was stamped by the same die as had marked the Captain of the Strike Force. In a collapsing civilization they were disciplined men cut adrift, looking for some authority to tell them what to do. Judith had accused me of being feudal, of seeking someone to serve. To serve perhaps—not to obey blindly!
“One cutter can’t blockade us,” said Jehu. “We’ve more’n fifty boats, most of ’em faster than that one out there. He can’t stop us all—even if he tries to sink us. And I doubt he’d do nothing like that. Not Craig Jenson!”
“Craig Jenson’ll do as he’s told,” snapped Yackle. “It’s the Ranula hell want to stop. And board. Captain Rideout, do you think you could get past him?”
The Captain of Ranula tugged on his moustache and shook his head mournfully. “No way I can think of. He could come alongside as he liked, and I couldn’t stop him. Not without a lot of shooting. And against his guns there wouldn’t be much point to that now, would there? Not with the children aboard.”
“What about at night? Could you slip past him in the dark?”
“With his radar—night’s as clear as day.”
“Not quite,” I interrupted. “I’ve got a radar spoiler in the shop. I’ve been rigging it in Sea Eagle.” They turned to listen and I explained, “It’s a gadget that masks a radar echo by making it look like a rain storm. Useful for creeping inshore on a raid.” I fidgeted, uncomfortable at having to confess I knew about such things. “Of course, it doesn’t work if there’s good ECM defense—”
“Good what?” asked Yackle.
“Electronic Counter Measures. Sophisticated radar. But that cutter of the Coast Guard will only have a standard rig, and the spoiler might fool it.”
“It’d have to be at night, then?” said Captain Rideout. He sighed. “I guess it’s worth trying.” He looked out of the window. “There’s a fog closin’ in.”
“That cutter’s come here today,” said Enoch. “So to my mind it looks as if those tanks of theirs are likely to be coming down the road right soon. What do you think, Chuck?”
“I think you’re probably right.” Yackle rested his face in his hands, then looked up. “In fact I’m sure you’re right. Cutter or no cutter, we’ll have to move today. Gavin, can you finish rigging that spoiler thing by this afternoon. That may be all the time we’ve got.”
I promised to try, and went to my workshop, cursing the indecision which was endemic in the Settlement. As usual, everything had been left too late. I lugged the spoiler unit down to Sea Eagle, which was lying alongside, and found her with engines running, Barbara at the wheel, and Midge about to cast off.