《The Amtrak Wars I : Cloud_Warrior》12

It was a flash-flood.

An angry foaming, twenty foot-high, mud-coloured wall of water crashed
against the outside bank of the upriver bend then careened crazily down
towards them, carrying trees and boulders in its wake.  'The raging
torrent exploded against the exposed flanks of the first five cars in a
great cloud of spray then swept over and around them to engulf the rest
of the train.  Huge trees swept down river, slamming, like floating
battering rams, into the sides of the lead cars with tremendous force,
causing branches as thick as a man's body to crumple like matchwood.

The Lady reeled under the repeated blows.  The lead cars tilted over
and stuck at a crazy angle as boulders carried along the river bed by
the current became wedged underneath the wheels, held in place by the
unbroken branches of the trapped trees.  Startled trail-hands in the
lead cars picked themselves up off the floor.  Buck McDonnell's voice
boomed through the train telling everyone to hold fast and stay at
their stations.

Up in the saddle, Hartmann hauled himself upright.  The execs around
him balanced awkwardly on the sloping floor and ran through the
well-rehearsed damage control procedure.  Conditions were verging on
the chaotic but nobody lost their cool.

'We're jammed fast,' yelled Barber, the First Engineer.

'All wheels are underwater, rear end has only ten per cent traction and
we've got a ruptured passway between cars five and six!"  'Is that
where we've angled over?"  asked Hartmann.

'Yes sir!'

'Any radiation inflow?"

'Not enough to show on the dial,' said Barber.  'The hatches on both
sides close automatically when the air seal is broken."

Hartmann nodded and put himself on the visicomm circuit to address the
crew.  'Now hear this.  A course error caused by the thick mist we woke
up has put us in a dry river bed.  What began as bad weather has got
worse and we've been caught in a flash-flood.  The Lady has taken some
superficial damage and we have lost traction due to a buildup of flood
debris.  But the worst is over.  This storm will soon blow itself out
and then we'll get The Lady back on the road.  So sit tight and look
chipper."  He grinned?'This command has never had a wagon train sink
under it yet."

His words brought a smile to Steve's face.  He looked around him and
saw that the tight, strained faces of the other crewmen had also
cracked open.

Just as Hartmann finished speaking, the NavComTech picked up a low
strength call from Jodi Kazan sandwiched between several bad bursts of
static.  'Have attacked Mute ?.  broken up ... Booker and Yates have
gone down ... hit by .  .. Request ..."  There followed the warbling
tone of the automatic Mayday distress signal.

The NavComTech responded by switching on the fore and aft Navigation
lasers.  He left the red beam on the lead car pointing vertically
upwards and put the green on what was known as 'sweep and creep'.  This
caused the beam to rock back and forth, quartering the sky, North,
South, East and West, from horizon to horizon, then repeating the same
pattern, 'creeping' round in a clockwise direction at five degree
intervals.  The laser was, in effect, performing a similar function to
the rotating beam of a pre-Holocaust lighthouse.  And if Kazan picked
it up - as she was bound to if she was within range - all she had to do
was fly down the beam towards the source of the light.

Baxter, the F.O.O sounded the alert in the flight-car, told the crewmen
of Kazan's imminent arrival, and ordered them to prepare for
landing-on.  Buck McDonnell, who had wriggled through the emergency
hatches on either side of the broken passway passed through the flight
car to check that the weapon turrets in the rear cars were correctly
manned.  He buttonholed Steve and the other wingmen and told them to
take their rifles up top to cover the ground-crew waiting to receive
the incoming Skyhawk.  'It's blowing a storm out there so it may take
all of you to hold her down.

The guns are in case some Mutes decide to hitch a ride."  He passed
through to Car Nine.

Steve hurriedly donned his helmet, took his air carbine out of the
rack, checked the magazine and the compressed air bottle under the
barrel, packed a couple more mags into his breast pockets and went out
through one of the starboard hatches.  Inside the cars the sound of the
storm had been muffled.  Now he faced its full fury.  The wind tore at
his clothes, made him gag as he tried to draw breath, and pinned him to
the balcony rail.  Below, the flood waters swirled past at breakneck
speed, sweeping broken trees and bushes downstream.  Ahead, he could
see the lead cars of The Lady curved across the torrent, twisted over
like the broken wall of a dam.  She rocked violently in a burst of
spray every time she was struck by another uprooted tree.

Gus tugged at his sleeve.  'Here she comes!"  he yelled.  He pointed
across the flight deck.

Steve peered through the rain-swept murk and saw two disembodied
lights; the landing lights of Jodi Kazan's Skyhawk.  She appeared to be
about a hundred yards away on the port side of the wagon train, heading
up river into the teeth of the gale.  As she crabbed nearer, Steve was
able to make out the aircraft more clearly; its swept-back wings
rocking wildly from side to side.  Now he could see the red and white
dot that was Jodi's helmet in the slim cockpit pod underneath.

'She's never going to make it,' yelled Steve to the grizzled
crew-chief, who was crouched on all fours on the deck above him.  The
wind was gusting from seventy to over ninety miles an hour.  What the
hell was she going to do?  The maximum speed of the Skyhawk was
eighty-five miles an hour.  Simple arithmetic told him that Jodi was
going to end up flying backwards.  A conventional landing over the rear
cars and onto the flight deck was impossible.

Jodi had evidently come to the same conclusion and, in the few vital
seconds when the windspeed slackened, she edged ahead of the wagon
train.  She evidently planned to drift in sideways at full power,
letting the wind carry her back level with the flight-deck.

Steve suddenly understood what she was trying to do and was quietly
appalled at the prospect.  It would mean standing up on the exposed
flight-deck in the teeth of a howling gale that threatened to blow him
off his feet and into the water.  It would mean reaching up and
literally grabbing her out of the air as she drifted across.  The
Skyhawk was not heavy - half a dozen guys could easily handle it, and
her ground speed would, with luck, be virtually nil.  But her motor
would be turning at full revs.  If they weren't careful, someone was
going to be shredded by that goddam propellor... Steve blotted the
gruesome image from his mind and leapt up onto the deck, leaning into
the wind beside the crew-chief and his men.

'This could be tricky!"  yelled the crew-chief.  He had broken out some
lengths of rope and the ground crew stood ready to lash the Skyhawk
down.  But first, they had to pull her out of the air.

Gus White clambered out of the duck-hole and grabbed Steve's arm.  Like
everyone else, he was drenched to the skin.  'Shee-yitt!"  he
screamed.

'She's still loaded with nap?

Steve stared through the lashing rain at the bucking Skyhawk.  One of
the containers was still clipped to the starboard rack.

Gus pulled at his arm.  'If she hits hard and that goes up - I' He took
a step towards one of the duck-holes.

Steve grabbed the neck of Gus's fatigues and hauled him back.  'Stay
right here, you yellow bastard!"  Gus tore himself free angrily and
stood his ground, stung by Steve's accusation.  'Why the hell d'she
come back now anyway?  Why couldn't she have ridden this out and come
back when it was all over?"

There was no time to reply.  Jodi Kazan's Skyhawk swept in towards them
on a level with the flight deck.  When it was about twenty yards away,
the wind suddenly slackened.

Instantly, Jodi cut the motor.  She'd obviously thought about that
too.

The Skyhawk rocked from side to side, slipped backwards and lifted,
putting the three wheels six feet off the deck.

This was it.  There was only one bite at this cherry.

Steve, Gus, and the ground crew leapt up and dragged the Skyhawk out of
the air.  Somehow Steve managed to get his hands over the edge of the
cockpit oblivious of the fact that his left elbow was resting on the
racked napalm canister.  He hauled downwards, adding his full weight to
the aircraft.

Gus got one arm over the nose.  As their heads came level with the edge
of the cockpit they saw why Jodi had come back now instead of
waiting.

Her flight fatigues were soaked in blood that seeped out of a hole
above her right breast pocket.

Steve had little more than half a second to register the scene.  He
glimpsed the barbed point of a crossbow bolt sticking out through the
back of her seat.  To judge from the angle, it must have come up
through the floor between her legs.  Jodi's head lolled forward.  With
the dark visor of her helmet clipped shut it was impossible to tell if
she was still alive.

The ground crew struggled to lash the Skyhawk down.  A howling,
shrieking, demonic blast of wind lifted it off the deck, tore it from
their grasp, turned it over and slammed it upside down against the roof
of the car behind.  Steve and the others stared horrified and helpless
as the wings crumpled under the impact, struts sheared, and the cockpit
toppled sideways, crunching like the pendulum of a disintegrating clock
into the side of the wagon train.  A great burst of orange flame
streamed back along the car as the napalm canister exploded then, an
instant later, the wind swept the blazing wreckage into the raging
waters.

And she was gone.

'Smokin' lumpshit ..."  murmured Gus.  The wind tore the words from his
mouth.

Steve and the other crewmen crouched on the deck in a state of shock at
their narrow escape, staring in disbelief at the smoke streaming from
the heat-blackened, blistered skin of the next car; the only sign that
Jodi Kazan had been there, just seconds before.

'We had her,' muttered the crew-chief.  'We had her!"  Overhead the
thunder roared for the last time.  Steve felt it sounded like a
triumphant, faintly mocking finale.  To what his sixth sense told him
was merely the overture.

Motor-Head, who was the leader of one of the two groups attacked by
Jodi, Booker and Yates gathered the scattered survivors and brought
them to where Mr Snow sat.  The storm had subsided.  The dark clouds
that had gathered had been torn apart by the wind, washed white by the
rain and dried by the emerging sun into fluffy, soft-edged shapes that
faded into the blue sky as they drifted westwards.

The Bears from the other group, under the command of Hawk-Wind joined
them.  Many of the warriors had suffered splash burns, some had been
burned more extensively.  All bore the pain stoically as was the custom
among Mute warriors but it was clear to Mr Snow that several would not
survive their silent ordeal.  He could do nothing to help them.  They
needed surgical skills that exceeded those he possessed as the clan's
medicine man.

'I need a drink,' he whispered painfully.

Motor-Head sent a warrior to fill a skin-bag with water from a nearby
stream.  The Bears squatted patiently in a half-circle before Mr Snow
while the water was brought to him.

Mr Snow swallowed the bagful without removing it from his lips.  He
wiped his mouth and throat then let out a long, world-weary sigh.  His
head still hurt.  He felt the bump gingerly and addressed Motor-Head
and Hawk-Wind.

'How many of your warriors kissed sharp iron?"

'Four hands plus one,' said Motor-Head.

'Six hands,' said Hawk-Wind.

Fifty-one dead.  It could have been worse, reflected Mr Snow.  If the
arrowheads had managed to drop all their fire-eggs ... It was
unfortunate that Cadillac had not found pictures of these things in the
seeing-stone.

'Convoy and Brass-Rail, my clan-brothers, fell to the cloud warriors,'
said Motor-Head.  His eyes glistened with tears.  While it was not
worthy of a warrior to yield to pain, it was perfectly acceptable to
express grief.  'I would be revenged."

'Now is your chance,' said Mr Snow huskily.  His throat felt as if it
had been reamed out with red-hot fish hooks.

Every bone, every fibre of his lean, hard flesh ached, burned, felt
consumed by power that had passed through him.  'The iron snake is
trapped in the Now and Then River."

He pointed down the slope in the direction of the lower line of
trees.

Three columns of smoke rose where the grass still burned from Jodi's
napalm strike.  'The sand-burrowers in its belly must come out to free
the snake.  That will be the killing time.  But you must be wary.  They
have sharp iron that-strikes long blows with the speed of a rattler's
tongue.

You must be brave but not foolish.  You must hunt them as you would a
fast-foot - quietly and with great cunning."

Motor-Head leapt to his feet and crossed his arms angrily.

'She-ehh I Are the Bears to hide when their blood runs hot?  I'
'Hey-YAHH!"  roared the warriors.  Even those with burned faces and raw
swollen lips joined in the traditional response.

Mr Snow rose painfully to his feet, steadied his aching legs and jabbed
a warning finger under Motor-Head's nose.

'Listen, bonehead!  There is to be no fancy, toe-to-toe knife work.  I
didn't just give this my best shot to have you all mown down!  This is
not a rumble over a piece of turff.  We are taking on an iron snake
full of sand-burrowers.  They don't fight the way we fight.  There's no
stand-off.  They are not going to wait while you spit on the ground."

He swept his eyes over the rows of squatting warriors.  'The moment
they see the end of your nose they are going to try and blow your heads
off!"  He waved an arm in the air.  'The way the cloud warriors struck
from the sky!  That's the way you must fight today!  You must be as
brave as Bears but you must strike like coyotes I We have to wear them
down.  Pick them off, one by one."

'Heyyy-yaahhh ..."  The response came as a reluctant growl from the
warriors' throats.  It was clear that they, like Motor-Head, were not
happy at the prospect, but Mr Snow's authority could not be challenged
when expressed in this forthright manner.

'Go - quickly!"  ordered Mr Snow.  'The river runs dry.

And remember - the sand-burrower is not a man, but an animal.  You do
not fight animals.  You hunt them."  He stretched his left arm towards
them, his hand extended, blessing the path they would take to the
river.  'Go!  May the great Mother guide your arm.  And may she drink
the blood of our enemies and not from your cups!"  'Hey-yahh!"  cried
the warriors.  They leapt to their feet and shook their weapons at the
sky.  'Hey-yah!  Hey-yah!

Hey-YAHH!!"  Mr Snow watched them lope away towards the trees and the
Now and Then River that lay in the valley below.  A party of
clan-elders summoned by a runner from the settlement's forest hide-out
joined him and together they set about the doleful task of despatching
the dying.  This was done with the aid of a narcotic shag, the dried
shredded fragments of a psychedelic mushroom the Mutes called Dream
Cap. Taken onto the tongue and swallowed, Dream Cap quickly induced a
state of anaesthetised euphoria.

When it could be obtained, it was used in the crude bone-setting
operations and basic surgery performed by some medicine men.  Its
purpose here was not primarily to ease the pain of dying but to loosen
the bond between the warrior's spirit and his earth-body.

The elders gave the drug a few minutes to take effect, then aided by Mr
Snow, killed the hideously burned warriors with a quick knife thrust
through the heart.

It fell to Mr Snow to despatch Little-Feet, a young, fourteen-year-old
Bear whose left leg had, in places, been burned through to the bone.

He placed his hand on the boy's forehead and put the point of his knife
on the slim chest.  His hand trembled.  His eyes glistened with
tears.

Little-Feet's drugged eyes fluttered open.  He made an effort to focus
on Mr Snow.  'Will I go to the High Ground, Old One?"

'Yes,' said Mr Snow.  'When the sun goes through the western door, you
will walk the golden islands in the sky and when you are rested you
will come again to our people as a child of the earth and do mighty
things in our name."

'But I have not chewed bone,' said Little-Feet.  'I have no
standing."

'In the eyes and the heart of Mo-Town our great sky-mother, you have
great standing,' said Mr Snow.  'She has told me this.  You have braved
the fire of the cloud warriors and are truly a great Bear."

'I would have standing in my eyes also,' said Little-Feet.

'Let me die with my hands on sharp iron."

Mr Snow took the boy's hands and placed them over his own on the handle
of the knife.  Little-Feet gripped his hand and wrist tightly.

'Now!"  he cried, pulling hard on the knife.

'Drink, Sweet Mother!"  Mr Snow thrust the long blade swiftly and
cleanly into Little-Feet's heart.  'Mo-Town drinks,' he said,
quietly.

He sat back on his heels and watched the boy's life ebb away.

And wished yet again that, with the help of the Sky Voices, he might
truly understand why the world was ordered thus.

ELEVEN

The storm which had swept over the wagon train cleared with the same
mysterious rapidity with which it had developed.  Less than an hour
after the flaming wreckage of Jodi Kazan's Skyhawk had plunged into the
raging flood waters, the Now and Then River had been reduced to a
narrow ankle-deep stream linking a chain of muddy pools, leaving The
Lady from Louisiana high and dry, its lead cars lying tilted across the
river bed, trapped amidst a crazy tangle of trees, boulders and sodden
vegetation.

Hartmann, the wagon master, was relieved to see clear skies overhead
but he, like Steve Brickman, sensed that The Lady's ordeal was far from
over.  He ordered Colonel Moore, the Senior Field Commander to despatch
his linemen to form a defensive perimeter around the wagon train while
Stu Barber, the First Engineer, took-a party out to inspect the flood
damage.

Steve had a word with Ryan, the wingman who had been made acting
section leader following the loss of Kazan, then sought out Buck
McDonnell and asked permission to take a small party downstream to look
for Jodi.

The big Trail Boss turned him down flat.  'She was skewered, roasted,
then drowned in mud sauce, Mister.

Nobody walks away from that.  Besides which, we don't waste wingmen on
bag jobs.  Get back to your post and get ready to fly."

Wearing sealed helmets fitted with armoured glass visors, moulded face
plates, air fdters and two-way radios, and clad in flexible body armour
that gave them the fearsome anonymity of warrior ants, the linemen ran
down the ramps dropped from the belly of the train and formed quickly
into eight-man combat squads.  Each man was armed with a
three-barrelled air rifle and bayonet.  Spare magazines, six
canister-type flame-grenades, a machete, reserve air bottles and
rations were carried in belt packs and pockets on the chest and
thigh.

The force was led by Captain Virgil Clay, the Junior Field Commander
and they were followed out of the wagon train by Barber, the First
Engineer, Buck McDonnell, and the twenty-strong damage control party.

Clay, known by his radio call-sign 'ANVIL TWO', sent two squads
upstream, two down, and sent three more squads up each bank to cover
the open ground on each side.  Aboard The Lady, the rest of the crew
manned the weapon turrets, or stood ready to reinforce the groups on
the ground should the perimeter come under attack.

They didn't have long to wait.  Ginny Green, the first lineman to clear
the mud-slide on the right-hand bank took a bolt through the chest.

The impact of the ten inch-long missile lifted her clean off her
feet.

Arms outstretched, her body did a sloppily executed back-flip and hit
the ground like a sack of rivets.  The seven linemen behind and on
either side of her hit the deck, shoved their rifles out in front of
them and peered cautiously over the top of the bank.  The first guy to
poke his head up got a bolt through the back of his neck.

'Shit!"  cursed the squad leader.  He ducked below the top of the slide
and flipped the transmit switch on his helmet from the squad channel to
the Field Commander's.  'Anvil Two, this is East Side One.  We have
struck out twice and are taking fire from both banks.  Advise.  Over!'
Clay's voice came back through his earphones.  'East Side, this is
Anvil Two.  Mow the lawn.  Standby to jump-off.

Out."

'Mow the lawn' was lineman jargon; a call for an extended, heavy burst
of out-going fire in which a stream of bullets were pumped into every
hummock of grass, every bush or piece of scrub in the fan-shaped area
that formed a group's immediate front.  Anything that could furnish
cover for a Mute warrior was riddled with lead.

Stu Barber, the First Engineer, moved under one of the wagons and spoke
to Hartmann via one of the outside tv cameras fitted for that
purpose.

Buck McDonnell, toting a three-barrelled air rifle, stood guard beside
him.

'It looks a real mess,' he reported.  'But apart from a few dents and
that broken passway seal, we don't appear to have suffered any
structural damage.  The big problem is the debris that's piled up under
the wagons.  We're not going to be able to move until that's cut away
and I reckon it'll take a good six hours.  Maybe more.  I'm going to
need at least a hundred men out here if you want The Lady back on the
road by sundown."

Hartmann chewed over his reply.  'You've got twenty out there now.

I'll give you another forty.  If Clay's force is sufficient to contain
this attack, I'll release more men later.

Mr McDonnell, will you come aboard and organise the work-party?"

'Right away, sir!"  McDonnell stepped up to the camera.

'llh, I don't know whether you've noticed but these river banks are a
mite too high for comfort.  We don't have a clear horizontal field of
fire from the top turrets to back up our perimeter defences."

'I'm aware of that, Mr McDonnell,' replied Hartmann.

'But we are facing an undisciplined lightly-armed enemy.

Individually brave and tenacious, but without any overall military
organisation.  I'm sure our men can hold the line until we dig
ourselves out."

'Yes sir!"  McDonnell threw a salute at the camera and hurried
aboard.

Another screen picked up the Trail Boss as he ran up the ramp into the
wagon train.

A few minutes later, Big D entered the saddle.  He was just in time to
hear Anvil Two come on the air with the news that they 'had hostiles
wall to wall'.  Both up- and down-river sections had reported incoming
fire and the men on the east and west banks were pinned down.  Five
linemen had been hit, three fatally.  As yet, no visual contact had
been made with the enemy.

'I thought these lump-heads were supposed to stand up and fight,'
muttered Colonel Moore, the Senior Field Commander.

'Maybe we have to stand on their toes first,' said Buck McDonnell.  He
turned to Hartmann.  'Our boys have got to storm those banks and break
out, sir,' he urged.  'We mustn't let 'em pin us down in the river
while we're trying to move The Lady."

'The thought had occurred to me,' said Hartmann drily.

He hit the transmit button.  'Anvil Two, this is Lady Lou.

Message.  Over."

Clay responded instantly.  'Anvil Two loud and clear.

Over."