Conquistador (23 page)

The fleeing mob disappeared in a cloud of dust as the hail of bullets chewed at the surface of the ground; clods of earth, bits of cut reed and body parts spurted up out of it. The dust was less as the finger of red fire speared into the edge of the swamp, but the fourteen-foot-high wall of reeds shook and toppled as if God were running a Weedwacker across them. When the gun fell silent her eyes were ringing, and a huge, shallow, irregular bite had been taken out of the tule swamp. It was covered with a thick mat of bullet-cut reeds, with here and there an arm or torso or head protruding.

Adrienne prudently went down on one knee as the helicopter slowly moved out over the swamp, the reeds bowing away from its prop wash in rippling waves. It was moving slowly for an aircraft, but faster than a man could run.
Much
faster than a man could run on foot along narrow paths through a bog. Occasionally it would stop to fire the minigun, or let the door gunners lash the swamp with the .50-caliber Brownings mounted on each side; once it made a curving run at almost reed-top level and ripple-fired the rocket pods, probably at some clump of hostiles, or an island with the round huts of a
ranchería.
Flame bellowed skyward, crimson and orange against black smoke; that spread as the reeds themselves caught fire. Their roots were in the damp mud, but the stems and feathery tops were dry with summer, and the flames danced through them.

She sighed, and let the tension drain out of her.
And to think this morning I was in a good mood,
she thought sourly; even the smell of the place came back, when mortal fear left.

She propped her rifle and Simmons's against the dead horse, checked the semiconscious man once more—no change that she could see—and looked out toward the mouth of the clearing. Plumes of dust were approaching across the flat valley floor, Land Rovers and the armored car; they rolled into the pocket with a whine of heavy tires on clay. Soldiers jumped down, and others manned the pintle-mounted heavy machine guns and belt-fed grenade launchers, scanning the reeds. A medic and stretcher party ran over to her; a man with a red cross on his arm bent to check Simmons while others hurried past to collect the other Scout's body, zipping it into a plastic body bag.

“He's stable,” the medic said after a moment; he quickly rigged a plasma drip and hung the bag up on a collapsible stand to let gravity take the liquid into the wounded man's veins. “How much morphine did you give him, Miss Rolfe?”

“One full shot from the field kit, Corporal.”

“That ought to hold him; I wouldn't like to use too much when there's danger of shock. Better leave this one in the leg for them to deal with at Rolfeston Hospital, but this . . .”

He took an odd-looking instrument out of his satchel, something between a pair of scissors and a narrow spoon, stripped the covering off it, and slipped it down the shaft of the arrow to the tear in the victim's flesh. Then a quick push . . .

Jim Simmons quivered back to full consciousness, his eyes opening wide. “Bloody hell!” He gasped, straining rigid.

The medic plucked the arrow free, looked at the head—it was stamped out of cheap sheet metal, of the type used for trade across the frontier—and flipped it away; the wound bled freely until he swabbed it clean with something that stung, from Simmons's quiet swearing, and bandaged it.

“They'll stitch that in the hospital, sir,” he said cheerfully. “And get the other one out. I've given you a broad-spectrum. . . . You've had your tetanus boosters? Good, good; this one just nicked the shoulder blade, and with any luck you'll be walking again in a couple of months.”

“Kolo,” Simmons said. “My tracker?”

“Oh, the Indian?” the medic said. “No problem. An in-and-out bullet hole; I sewed it up and put him out. He'll be fine. And
you
have to rest, sir.”

Simmons managed a slight smile as the stretcher bearers lifted him. “Now
you'll
have to cage those condors, Adri,” he said.

Heinrich von Traupitz was riding in a Hummer in the lead of the convoy; he leaped down almost before it stopped, snapped a few orders to his sergeant, and then strode over to her. He was livid with anger as he watched the body bag and the injured man pass by. Literally livid, his pale face splotched with patches of red on the cheeks. He tore his militia cap off, crumpling it in his hand.

“Bastard acorn eaters,” he swore softly. “We'll show these filth the price of a white man's head! Clean them out once and for all! The Old Man has ordered all the Bay Area Families to call up a militia platoon from their affiliates, and three more from Rolfeston; and there are aircraft coming, and a recon drone—the biggest mobilization in ten years. ”

A sharp cry brought her head around. Schalk had locked the head of the Indian she'd shot in the crook of his elbow, and another hand clamped on the back of his head. As she opened her mouth to snap an order he made a quick wrenching motion, and there was a snap like a green branch breaking. The Indian's body jerked once and went limp. As if prompted, the militia soldiers began finishing off the other wounded Indians with bayonets or shots to the head, and von Traupitz nodded approval.

Adrienne opened her mouth in sheer inertia, closed it, and shrugged, coughing in the bitter reek of the burning reeds. Schalk simply liked killing people—black people by preference, but anyone would do at a pinch—and the young militia officer wasn't in a taking-prisoners state of mind. He'd probably ignore her if she tried to interfere in his chain of command, too. The last thing they needed now was another inter-Family head-butting match.

Well, may God have mercy on any redskin you catch, Heinrich, because I don't think
you're
in the mood for it.

The officer was probably thinking about his children-to-come; it
was
a bit shocking to have an incident like this happen so close to the settled zone. Silently, she picked up the rifle the dead Indian had been using and pulled back the bolt, holding the weapon up so that light ran down the barrel. It wasn't new, but it was well cared for, the metal bright and gleaming. She ran a finger over the inside of the action and brought it to her nose; the unmistakable nutty odor of fresh Break Free gun oil. She worked the operating rod again, very slowly; the resistance was smooth and easy, without any feeling of grit from dirt or sand, and no loose parts rattled when she shook it. And the woodwork of butt and forestock had been lovingly cared for as well, buffed and polished and oiled.

Hmmmm,
she thought, noting a filed patch where the serial number should be on the receiver.
I'll have to check with Nostradamus about any missing weapons. If nothing was stolen in the past day or two, then whoever this Indian was,
somebody
taught him how to shoot and how to maintain a weapon.

That was very, very,
very
illegal—hanging illegal.

“I need some help and transport, Heinrich,” she said pointedly to the militia officer. “I still have my mission to complete. It would be pretty silly to let the hostiles interfere with that.”

“Oh! Oh, sorry, Adri. Yes, of course, Cuz. There's another helicopter coming to our campsite to lift you and those damned vultures out, along with one for the wounded; no expense spared.”

Getting the condors into the cages proved to be even more unpleasant than she had anticipated; Jim hadn't been exaggerating about their using projectile vomiting as a defense mechanism, and these had been very well fed on rancid camel, now half-digested. With malice aforethought, she called Schalk van der Merwe in to help her; if he was going to let his bloodlust cost her a potential lead on this ratfuck, he could at least suffer a bit for the error. It meant she had to smell him as they sat in the Hummer on the way back to the campsite, but at least it was mutual.

As they rolled and jounced over the plain of dried grass, four aircraft passed by in the other direction, swooping down from above the Coast Range and passing at barely a thousand feet, close enough to see the grinning shark-mouth markings. They were twin-engine prop planes, sleek Mosquito fighter-bombers built new locally to a classic World War II design and modernized with fancy electronics. Each mounted eight .50-caliber machine guns in the nose and rockets beneath the wings, and the internal weapons bay carried a ton of cluster bombs and napalm.

These hostiles are going to learn there's something
much
worse than being chased into a swamp and ignored,
she thought.

Salvatore Colletta smiled and spread his hands. “Hey, Cap'n,” he said. “It's just a bit of an accident, eh?”

John Rolfe reined in his temper. That shouldn't have been particularly difficult; he'd been brought up with the belief that self-control was the first mark of a gentleman. There were several open scowls down the long table, and some of the fine china coffee cups clanked back into their saucers with dangerous force. The heads of all the Families were here, and many of them had their heirs by their sides as Rolfe did, acting as assistants or simply to learn the procedure. It struck him with a sudden shock that four of the Primes were the sons of the men he'd brought in at the founding of New Virginia.

“So, no need to get upset,” the Colletta said, still imperturbable.

Although if self-control makes a gentleman, that would mean Salvo was one, too. I doubt he ever says or does anything without thinking twice. He was like that even as a young man, and he's gotten colder as he gets older. Right now,
I
feel like pounding the table and yelling.

Rolfe looked out the tall windows and over the green tree-lined streets of the young city named for him, and calmed himself for a moment by watching the distant whitecaps on the indigo waters. Unfortunately, that also reminded him of the reason for this meeting of the committee. When he turned back, his face was a polite mask.

“Mr. Colletta, introducing smallpox to the Hawaiian islands is not a minor matter,” he said, his voice deceptively mild.

The Colletta's eyes narrowed thoughtfully as they met the deceptive calmness of Rolfe's leaf-green gaze. There was not the slightest trace of fear in them; Rolfe knew from half a lifetime's experience that there was nothing on earth that could terrify Salvo, from land mines to a political dogfight. There was plenty of respect there, though. Salvatore Colletta fought to win, not to make points.

“Hey, it's not like I did it deliberately,” he said, spreading his hands. “Giovanni, tell the Old Man.”

Rolfe's eyes turned to the Colletta's eldest son, hiding a trace of sympathy behind a quirked eyebrow. Growing up with Salvo as your father would be enough to drive anyone crazy. Young Giovanni—equivalent to John, and John Rolfe was the boy's godfather—was taller and fairer than his father, a legacy of his Prussian mother. He spoke with stolid earnestness that could have concealed anything.

“Sir, we loaded a full cargo of Selang-Arsi wares in Toushan.”

That was this world's equivalent of northeast China, near FirstSide's Yingkou, inhabited by a weird mixed people the scholars said spoke Tocharian, whatever that was.

He'd never found the time to look into it further; the trans-Pacific trade had never been very important, until now, and he'd let the Collettas handle it. He'd been prepared to let them have Hawaii, too—if it proved possible to take it over without much effort. He'd made it clear that he would not approve annexation if it took a big garrison to hold the place; the Commonwealth still had less than sixty thousand people. Australia had seemed more important in the long run, thinly inhabited and rich in gold.

Giovanni went on: “The cargo included several hundred tons of assorted textiles—silks, cotton, wool and wool-and-silk rugs. We used some as presents with the Hawaiian chiefs. I'm told that's probably how the disease spread.”

Rolfe nodded noncommittally and looked over at Solomon Pearlmutter. The Pearlmutter looked in turn at his son, who'd studied medicine on FirstSide and worked with the University of New Virginia's medical department.

“Abraham?” the Pearlmutter said.

“Sir,” the younger man replied. He leaned forward to look at Rolfe. “Yes, that's probably what happened. I've examined the cloth. There are scab fragments containing live virus in some of the wool blankets and rugs. Unless it's exposed to bright sunlight, high heat or extreme cold, the smallpox virus can last indefinitely on something like that. The moderate temperatures and high humidity in a ship's hold would be ideal.”

The Colletta shrugged again. “Hey, we didn't cry when all the local Injuns dropped dead of flu and measles and menin-whatsis, did we? This is just another accident, only from China instead of FirstSide.”

Rolfe bit back,
No, we didn't cry. And we didn't infect them deliberately, either.
Back in the 1940s he'd been vaguely aware from high school history classes that European diseases had wrought havoc in the New World, but nobody had suspected just how
much
havoc.

I don't pretend to be a humanitarian, but there are limits,
he thought.
I'm perfectly prepared to take advantage of the plagues, but not to start them with intent. I don't think there's
anything
that Salvatore wouldn't do, just for the sake of convenience.

Saying that aloud would mean an irreparable break between the two Families, which would endanger the stability of the whole Commonwealth. He'd need solid evidence to challenge the Colletta or impose any sanctions on the Family. As Chairman, he
could
order an investigation . . . on the other hand, there would also be hell to pay politically if he put Gate Security onto the matter, unless he came up with damned solid proof. There was always a little murmuring among the other Families about the Rolfes' dominant position.