Air Force One, Part Three (2)
“This was supposed to be impossible,” the second agent says. “There is something we do not understand.” Some of the truckers have run back inside the Wolverine and the agents have let them go. Some of them have even gotten to their trucks. It won’t do any good. The great olive helicopters appear over the treetops: the big troop-carrying kind. Some of them are already maneuvering toward the ramps that connect the parking lot to the highway. Anne is helping him stand up and she’s yelling something at the agent, trying to be heard over the roar of the massed choppers. Mick knows he should pay attention to her, but it’s so amazing to see massive machines coming in over the trees, hovering in the air. There are nine of them, floating to every point of the compass with one more left over to descend on the old Wolverine at the center. They always pause before carefully settling down, hovering tentatively like huge locusts wondering what’s good to eat. A plague of helicopters. Men, soldiers, are hopping out of them as they near the ground. There are plenty of them. Each one of these big two-rotor jobs must hold ten or twelve soldiers easily. And each soldier holds a machine gun. They gesture with their weapons to warn back the truckers who have gotten as far as their cabs, and those men climb down again. Even the customers of the Wolverine — the veterans of many years on the wild roads — know the end of a fight when they see it. A moment ago, they outnumbered the men with guns by a factor of five. Now the men with guns suddenly outnumber them, to nearly the same degree. And the guns involved are quite a bit nastier-looking. They’re Air Force troops. But they’re all in winter-weight solid dark blue uniforms that he’s only seen once or twice before: not the light blue shirts and dark slacks that he’s used to — the uniforms that always reminded him of bus driver’s outfits. And isn’t this just the cherry on top? After everything that’s already happened, seeing Air Force troops land irresistibly at the Wolverine feels very much like staring into the headlight of an onrushing train, from the standpoint of a man with his ankle caught between the rails. Even without his personal reasons for wishing to avoid the notice of the United States Air Force, it would still be very disturbing to see Air Force enlisted men carrying machine guns. The proper role in life for airmen is to take care of airplanes. Officers are then supposed to go up and get their asses shot off in the airplanes. He wonders if these kids actually know how to use their guns. If they’re Air Force people, they’ll have a checklist for firing them. “’Step 5: Disengage safety mechanism’,” one airman will say to another, marking off the item with a grease pencil on the clear plastic covering of the Weapons Activation Procedures in Emergencies Manual (WAP-EM). “Roger!”, the other airman will say. “Safety mechanism disengaged!” “‘Step 6: Aim weapon at civilians!’” Mick looks up to see an old man coming to a halt a few paces away. His face looks like he’s had at least his fair share of post-apocalypse UV: his tanned face contrasting with snow-white hair. He is wearing a dark blue uniform like his men, but his shoulder tabs have the silver eagles of a “full-bird” colonel. The agents stand calmly, hands at their sides and their weapons long since holstered, neither moving away nor speaking any word as he approaches. “Agent Page,” he nods to the chief agent, then looks down at the body of the slain trucker. “I must say it looks as though this could have been handled better. What a shame that you did not call us in at once.” Then he turns toward Mick and the innkeeper feels something even through his shock. He is still shivering, possibly feverish, and certainly in no condition to judge anyone or anything that’s happening on this strange morning. But as he looks at the old man’s weathered face, he feels suddenly convinced beyond the possibility of doubt, and without need of evidence, that no one in the entire previous course of his life has ever seen him so clearly as this old man’s gray eyes do, or so much as he would wish himself to be seen. Looking into the man’s eyes is like discovering his best friend, his father, and his savior. Yet this should be the last man in the world he would want to meet. “And Mr. Goulish,” the old man’s voice issues from a place of infinite understanding and compassion. “It looks like we should be getting you inside!” The Flood “Man, this is bullshit.” Jack nods, but glances away nervously, wondering whether the guards might have heard. Probably not — with the background noise of a couple dozen men in the dining room. When the guards herded them in here, Jack made sure to get a place near the center of the room just to make sure that he wouldn’t be too conspicuous. Now he feels that his irate neighbor is threatening to negate that advantage. On the other hand, the guards standing in pairs at each exit from the big room seem anything but interested in their civilian charges. They stand carelessly, automatic weapons hanging from straps on their shoulders, talking to each other in undertones when they talk at all. When he thinks about it, Jack isn’t certain whether all that apparent ease is good or bad. “I don’t give a shit who these guys say they are,” the trucker persists, and Jack feels compelled to look at him. “I got a load of beets that won’t do me any damn bit of good if they ain’t in Evanston the middle of next week. Are these federal bastards are gonna worry about that?” He’s a severe-looking man: lean, with his black beard trimmed close to his face. He looks like the type who wouldn’t have any big problem with a couple of dozen unarmed truckers taking on a hundred or so soldiers. The man laughs, too loudly for Jack’s comfort. “I don’t think so. More likely they’re gonna put a hole in me just like they did to that crazy fuck this morning. That’s what those bastards are good at, right? Listen,” the man leans closer to him and lowers his voice until Jack can barely hear him. “seriously — I talked to some of the other guys. We’re thinking about maybe waiting until tonight. Then we knock some of these kids on the head, take their guns away, and clear the hell out of here. What do you think, man? Are you in or not?” Jack is horrified, and realizes too late that he’s letting it show when the trucker frowns at him. “You got a problem with that, man? You like the idea of staying here until these federales find their damn airplane? You think they’ll be real nice then and let us go?” The suspicion in the man’s voice is significantly more frightening to Jack than the machine guns hanging from the guards’ shoulders. “No,” Jack says quickly. “I mean, it’s a good idea. I just — want to size these guys up first. We have to know what we’re getting into. And don’t forget we got Annie in here with us, and they got Mick upstairs.” “Don’t worry about Mick,” the trucker says. “We’ll get him out of there when the time comes. And as far as Annie goes —” the man grins briefly. “Hell, I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s recruiting people right now!” Jack obligingly glances across the room to where Anne is sitting at a table near the front wall, talking to several men at the table just as casually as if she were taking a break from preparing dinner. Maybe if she’s in on this scheme it’ll be a little better thought out. And then again, maybe it won’t. She has never struck Jack as the military type. “Don’t you worry man,” the trucker says, rolling a new cigarette. “We got it planned out right. It’ll work! You decide you’re in — we’ll talk some more.” “But hey, check out whatever you can think of, man. Make sure we know everything we’re up against before we rock and roll. That’s a real smart idea.” He lights his cigarette, then regards Jack through blue smoke. “Were you in the Wars, man?” he asks suddenly. “You look about the right age for it, maybe, if you came in toward the end.” “No,” Jack looks at the man quickly. “I was in Wisconsin when the FC took over there. I was just a kid. We hid out until it was all over.” “Rough times, man,” the trucker shakes his head. “But I guess you learned to be careful, anyway, right?” “Yeah,” Jack replies. “That’s what I learned.” When Jack promises to use his well-trained instinct for caution to “check things out” the man leaves him at last. He has a smoke of his own, then, to settle down for a few minutes and think things over. It seems crazy to talk about overpowering guards and taking their guns. A bad scene from a Nineties martial arts movie. On the other hand, waiting to see what the US Air Force will decide to do with the eyewitnesses to Air Force One may not be the cleverest course you could come up with, either. If that’s even who they are. He wasn’t kidding about wanting to “check things out”. Jack has been nervous since the instant these men jumped out of their helicopters. In the hours since then, with time to observe, his nervousness has slowly metamorphosed into near-panic. It’s not just because they’re soldiers with guns. In his time, Jack has seen more soldiers with guns than anyone knows. The problem is that there’s something not quite right about these men, and Jack fears that he knows exactly what it is. If he’s right, there’s very likely no other man among the legitimate inhabitants of the Wolverine who knows just how much danger they are all actually in. So — there does not seem to be much of an alternative. OK. Well, no one has asked to use the restroom yet. That’s as good an excuse as any. Jack blows out the last of his smoke, stubs out the cigarette, and gets up to make small talk with his guards. The two that he approaches stop talking and turn toward him as he draws near, not bothering to hoist their weapons. Both men are tanned, but with an odd undertone: as though their natural coloring might be Polynesian or American Indian. Yet their features seem within the broad range of European-derived North Americans. Both look very fit, but not at all large. Fine-boned. They both seem to be roughly in their mid-twenties, which would make them a few years younger than Jack — but their eyes belie their appearance. Jack feels a chill when they look at him. And that chill is an old, familiar feeling. The soldiers look at him with eyes that have seen a lot more suffering and cruelty than you ought to be able to be fit into the first quarter-century of even a soldier’s life. And they have enjoyed it. One of the two ignores him entirely, but the other watches him come with an almost insolent look. Meeting the soldier’s gaze for an instant, looking into his perfect dark eyes, Jack knows with a sickening kind of certainty — not only does the soldier indeed have a secret, but he also knows perfectly well that, for whatever reason, Jack can see it. And he could not possibly care less. And that tells Jack — everything he needs to know. “The, um. The bathroom?” he stammers like an idiot. “Later,” the soldier says, smiling slowly. “We will take care of everybody at once.” Mick smokes a lot, and all the guards know it by now. He’s made sure of that. He’s gotten friendly with them, over the endless months in the labs. He can get cigarettes from the PX because of his status as a researcher, and he shares them with the poor enlisted bastards who are posted around the building, ostensibly to make sure that the scientists are not “disturbed”. Most of them are teen-agers, not many years older than Melanie, the daughter that he hasn’t seen for over a year. They’ve been drafted just like he was, and half of them probably want nothing more than to go home and see their families just as bad as his own family wants to see him. His plan was to walk outside as though he were simply out for an innocent late-night smoke. If he emerged to find a guard, he would simply light up and then offer one to the guy. Mustn’t smoke in the AI Lab, you know. All those expensive computers. Chat for a few minutes, and retreat to try again somewhere else in another week or so. He ruins weeks of careful preparation by being too eager in the last thirty seconds. Seeing the spot unguarded as he hoped, seeing the road of his escape clear before him, he forgets all thoughts of concealment. Nothing matters now but speed. He turns immediately back to the door and retrieves the bag of gear that he has slowly hoarded over the months, in preparation for this moment. And when he turns back again to take his first step into the night, he finds himself face to face with Pat. It seems that the door was guarded after all. In recent months, Pat has become his best smoking-buddy. He’s a great kid, drafted the day he turned eighteen but not complaining about it. His hair is obviously red even when it’s cropped within an inch of his skull. He’s a real Irishman — or at least descended from real Irishmen, while Mick only has the name of one. The first time they had a smoke together they joked about it, Mick affecting a thick Irish accent and telling decade-old drinking jokes that the boy had never heard, growing up in genteel Bloomfield Hills. “Hey Mr. Mick,” he says, voice perfectly flat, “You planning a trip?” “Hey, Paddy,” Mick says back, dumbfounded. They stand facing each other for ten seconds that feels like an hour. Patrick looks back at him from the edge of light cast by a dim, shielded bulb above the door. Just drop the bag! Make it a joke! “What, a trip? With this little bag of stuff? Nothing of the sort, me lad! Why, I was merely planning to start me a little hardware store, you see.” He wouldn’t have reported you. He would have let you go back inside and you could have tried it again another night, on somebody else’s watch. Will one damn night make a difference? Just turn around. Please, just turn around! “Paddy,” he says instead, “come with me! You can live with us up North. We were starting a farm. You could help us. You know they’ll never find us up there — they don’t have the manpower now.” He stops, to breathe. “I guess you don’t think much about your country,” the boy says. “I think — Pat, listen. Please. I have a family. I have a wife and a little girl who haven’t seen me in a year. We had food stored up, but — Paddy, you know how things are, outside of the cities. They need me. I have to go.” The boy looks back, his face set. Probably thinking that their whole friendship was just part of one big con, all just a set-up for this moment. Is that exactly what it was? “Your country needs you too, Lieutenant,” he says. The man, two and a half times the boy’s age, looks back expressionlessly, thinks of his wife and daughter waiting for him, and makes his decision. And here is something odd. He has spent much of the last year helping to define the fantastically intricate data structures and algorithm-generation strategies that will permit an artificial intelligence in a Bolo battle-tank to “understand” the world around it. Struggling to turn an inanimate object into a living thing. He spends his last ten seconds at the US Army Advanced Computing Research Center thinking of exactly how he will go about turning a magnificently designed, flawlessly engineered, beautiful and intelligent living thing into an inanimate object. Killing on a Sunday. “Listen, Paddy,” he says again, raising his hands in the I-don’t-want-any-trouble gesture. Essentially, he is lying. And the boy, in the last seconds of his life, believes him. Having taken a step closer without the boy realizing it, he now tosses his bag at the boy’s face. The rifle is in the boy’s right hand. Now, startled, he raises his left arm to block the inconsequential projectile. Taking him by his left elbow and wrist, Mick spins him counterclockwise. That, plus two quick steps and a hard thrust sends the boy headfirst into the cinder-block wall. Mick advances and kicks the rifle out of his limp hand. He thinks of finding something to tie and gag the boy with. He’ll be miles away before the boy can regain consciousness and free himself. But the body rolls over and stares at him with lifeless eyes, the neck broken. He sits up in bed, grabbing the blankets like a drowning man clutching the shore. For him, sixteen long years have passed since that cold spring night. Red-haired Patrick Downey will always be eighteen. “Happiness?” big trucker laughs once, but not too loudly. Nobody at the table wants to draw the attention of the guards, and no trucker who’s ever been to the Wolverine would ever want to seem disrespectful to Annie. “Happiness” is just — not a word that a trucker would normally use. The mistress of the Wolverine didn’t often get to talk to her customers, but when she did have a chance, usually late at night, the conversation would often turn — you might call it philosophical, but that wouldn’t be quite right. In fact, none of the men who were drawn to talk with her on those rare evenings quite knew what to call it. They just didn’t have the vocabulary. Her conversations might remind them in some ways of being in church, at least for those few who had ever been inside one. Yet she was nothing like the ministers that any of those few men had actually seen. Nor did her conversations seem much like the hellfire and brimstone sermons one was likely to hear in those broken-down chapels. Perhaps it was natural enough that the preachers of a burned and ruined world should speak of nothing but fire and destruction. On the other hand, it did get old after a while. Anne’s talks were always half full of questions, and the men’s halting attempts to answer her. She got them thinking about things, and those thoughts would persist when they were out there on the road. Why do people do what they do? And how about you yourself? Did the Wars happen because of how people behaved? And if so — what exactly was wrong with the way things had been? Now that the Wars have come and gone, now that so much has passed away and so much has changed — are things different? Or is there at least the possibility of a difference now? And what, exactly, would that difference be like? What would it mean in your life? Because if there is to be a difference this time, if we’re not going to rise again only to see the Wars come back and lay us low again — maybe so low that after a few generations no one will even remember what heights we once reached — then the difference has to show up in your life. It has to show up in what you decide to do with your thirty or fifty or eighty years on Earth. Or it will never be real. A few times men had been outbound on the road, thinking something over from one of those late-night sermons or group-therapy sessions or whatever they were, and they’d gotten so stirred up by it that they’d just turned their rigs right around in the median and come straight back for another dose — not worrying about the extra cost of the fuel or how soon their loads had to get somewhere. Tonight, though, even among all those nights, is something quite a bit different. After having seen the Airplane last night, and then this morning seeing more Feds than they thought were still alive in the whole world all descending on the truck stop — a lot of the guys are definitely in a mood to ask What’s It All About. That, plus the fact that it doesn’t look like anybody’s going anyplace for quite some time has given Anne’s usual table by the front wall an overflow audience. On top of all that, there’s no beer being served to dull their wits. The only game in town tonight is smoking and talking, and a good third of the confined customers of the Wolverine have gathered around to listen.
Copyright © 2000 Michael Goulish |