“Gavin!” Judith was climbing up through the hatch onto the roof. Her expression said that her news was bad. “Captain Rideout’s calling—”
“He hasn’t left Fairhaven, has he?”
“No.” She caught her breath. “He says that his radar has just picked up six choppers. Four large and two small. A hundred clicks down the coast. And they’re heading our way!”
XIX
They came low out of the south, two gunships and four transports. They came closed up and without evasive action, circling the Point as if supremely confident or else unsuspicious. Either they didn’t know we were here or they knew we were armed with nothing better than rifles. And that we had not been able to clear the tunnel of containers in the forty minutes which was all the time we had had to get ready for their arrival.
I had done what I could. There were eight of us on the roof, Judith in the Surveillance Center, and the rest under Enoch covering the main hall and the entrance tunnel. We might gain an initial instant of surprise if they thought the Pen was deserted. After they got over that it would be fighting container to container, corridor to corridor, stairway to stairway. If there were green troops in those choppers then we stood a small chance of driving them off. If they were experienced fighters we stood no chance at all. The only tactics I had been able to tell the team was to stay behind cover and shoot straight when the shooting started.
Banks of fog were still driving across the Point but it had cleared enough for me to be able to see the landing pad at its tip. The four transports were going down to land, one by one. The two gunships were circling above them. I picked up my binoculars and watched the first transport down. I watched the hatches snap open and the lead section jump out. And my guts cramped. This was the end. Those were Troopers!
But they didn’t act like Troopers making an assault landing. The first men out moved almost casually to the edge of the pad, hardly glancing toward the Pen as they stood waiting for the rest of the squad to deplane. There was a flash of color in the open door. Sam, beside me, gripped my arm. “Women!” he hissed. “Women—by the Light!”
And not ladies being helped down from the hatch. Women being pushed through it, to be rounded up by the waiting Troopers and herded off the pad and into the scrub. Captive women! Three more Troopers followed the last woman pushed out, then the turbines of the transport picked up speed and it lifted off, women and Troopers crouching together against the blast from its rotors.
In quick succession the other three transports landed, discharged their prisoners, and took off as soon as they were empty. Each in turn went lifting into the overcast, heading east, as if each was trying to get away as quickly as possible from something of which it was ashamed. Fifteen minutes after the aircraft had arrived there were only the two gunships circling overhead and some sixty women being herded along the road toward the Pen by twenty Troopers.
“What’s going on?” asked Sam from beside me.
“Evil in action!” came Judith’s voice in our earplugs. She must have slewed a wharf camera round and watched the landing. Her voice was thick with fury. “Those are women taken from looted Settlements. Brought here—”
I cut her off. “Cool it! There are only twenty guards. We can take twenty easily if we keep our heads.” I wasn’t at all certain we could, not twenty Troopers. The Force might have lost its honor; it still had its lethal skills.
“There’ll soon be more!” muttered Sam. The two gunships were now landing and their occupants disembarking. I looked through my binoculars. “Civilians!” I said, then I caught the flash of insignia on braided uniforms. “Civilians and brass!”
So that’s why the Pen had been filled with stores, why the guard had been withdrawn! That’s what the Administration had been planning when it decommissioned the Federal Penitentiary! This was to be one of the refuges, the “safe houses,” which it had been preparing for itself and its friends. The ’same kind of place that Sherando had become. Only here they had had to bring their own girls. Or rather, somebody else’s girls.
There were more people disembarking, among them women who were being helped out, not pushed out. Those would be wives, daughters, and female politicians who had played along with Futrell. That bastard—
“Easy, Mister Gavin,” said Sam, touching my arm. “Cool it, you said!”
I drove from my mind the face of the man I hated and stared at the evil spread out below me. As the captives were driven nearer the Pen I could see that they were young, some little more than children. Staring at the wildness around them, at the wilderness of rocks, sea, and scrub. At the Pen looming ahead. The Troopers were too occupied with turning back girls trying to escape or urge forward others hanging back to look toward us. This was the ultimate shame. American women being herded like captured cattle. Or like the captives from some defeated Greek city: women being driven toward enslavement by the soldiers of democratic Athens.
The civilians and the brass were still grouped near the gun-ships, talking together as if trying to dissociate themselves from the infamous scene taking place in front of them. Some were glancing at the sky as if expecting the arrival of more transports or gunships. If we were to take them we must take them soon. But we could not fire into that mixture of guards and captives. Sam, the best marksman in the settlement, was cursing his frustration. “Couldn’t knock off any of them soldiers yet. Not without a chance of hitting a girl.”
The girls were putting up the kind of fight you don’t usually get from prisoners. Groups of them kept breaking away to ran back toward the civilians on the pad or into the underbrush. Troopers were chasing them, dragging the ones they caught back to the main herd. Hitting them to keep them moving, but not hard enough to damage them. Usually any group of prisoners can be subdued by killing the first who disobeys orders. But these were prisoners who must not be killed or seriously injured, and now the frustrated guards were trying to persuade rather than force their captives to keep moving. They too were starting to glance at the sky.
A couple of fast-running girls got back among the civilians, dodging between them with two Troopers on their heels. The brass and civilians scattered, some of them obviously protesting to the Troopers. Men and women who perhaps only now had realized what was going on. A couple of civilians were knocked down, a General lost his hat, the girls dodged round the choppers, were grabbed by the crew, and dragged fighting back along the road. The officer in charge of the guards halted his squad just short of the wharf to let the two be brought in and other escapers be rounded up. His curses, threats, and entreaties floated up to us watching from the roof.
My com pinged and I heard Midge’s voice. “Mister Gavin—I’m offshore. I’ve just picked up another chopper. Twenty clicks southeast and coming fast”
Only one ship; so there was still hope.
“Also, Mister Gavin, those boats from Fairhaven. They know what’s happening and they’re coming full speed. Should be here by eleven.”
“Midge—you stay offshore. And if we’ve gone under by then, tell those boats to high tail it back to Fairhaven. You go back there too!”
I didn’t get any answer and was still repeating my order when out of the west came a command ship, flying at full speed. It swept over us, banked, and then hung above the wharf. The officer in charge of the guards was looking up toward it, obviously receiving orders. “Their boss is in that chopper,” I muttered. “If only there was some way to nail him.”
I was studying the machine through binoculars when Sam’s rifle cracked. I swung on him in fury, there was no way to down a command ship with a rifle. I choked back my curses and spoke on my com. “They know we’re here! Fire at will!” Then I looked back at the chopper.