Conquistador (70 page)

He dismounted at a hand gesture and unlimbered the machete from his saddle. “Now this takes me back,” he said, as he took his turn.

The blade was a slightly flared rectangle of good steel, heavy and sharp; he waded in, reminding himself that they needed a path wide enough for horses, not just men. Brushwood and branches and thorny vines fell with a
ssss-chunk!
as he struck with blows that might have been timed by metronome, flicking or kicking the cut stems aside when he had to. The ground turned muddy under his feet, but they didn't come to an actual river, just a laneway of lower growth that carried the overflow of the winter storms down from the mountains. Sweat ran down his face and flanks and back as he breathed deeply with the exertion, an agreeable enough sensation—which wasn't something he'd ever thought he'd say about breathing in the LA basin! Back FirstSide, he'd be choking on the air. . . .

Henry Villers came up to spell him. “Nice job,” he said. “I thought you did your fighting in dry places, Warden Tom.”

“Mostly—Euphrates to Hindu Kush, with excursions north. But my battalion got sent to the Philippines for a while during the war—Abu Sayyef tried a revival. Jungle work.”

“What happened?”

Tom grimaced. “Some of us died. All of them died . . . not a happy time. At least it isn't raining here, and there aren't many civilians to get caught in the cross fire.”

“I was a dry-area fighter myself,” the black man said; he took over, competently enough, if without the machine accuracy and strength of the ex-Ranger.

“Kuwait?”

“Gulf War One, right,” Villers said. “Marines—we did the ‘hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle' part while you army pukes played at being Rommel's Desert Rats.”

“Ah . . . I think Rommel
was
the Desert Fox and
fought
the Desert Rats,” he said, hesitating until Villers turned and grinned at him over his shoulder.

“Man, you fell for that one! I hung out with some Brits during the buildup; they still have that dumb-ass rodent painted on their tanks.”

Tom nodded acknowledgment at the hit. “What was your MOS, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Hey,
every
marine's a rifleman—even the women. Seriously, it was infantry—I carried the squad's Minimi,” Villers said; that meant he'd been a machine gunner. “Anyway, it wasn't much of a war. Never saw anyone so anxious to surrender as those Homers. Taking care of them slowed us down worse than fighting would have.”

“Best kind of war,” Tom said sincerely. “Even better if you're piloting a Predator through a satellite uplink from Florida.”

“Right on, brother,” Villers said, panting, dropping back to let Schalk Botha replace him at the front. “Christ, I'm thirty-eight and I feel every year of it. Should have spent more time in the hills hunting deer this spring.”

All the men took turns at the clearing, until they were up and through the slough and into more of the cottonwood forest.

“We'll camp here,” Botha said. “We'll need firewood—”

“And I'll help put up the tents,” Henry Villers said smoothly, with a toothy smile.

Tom filled in the unspoken codicil and smiled to himself:
Draw your own water, Mr. Boer, and hew your own wood.

Kolomusnim finished his chant to the setting sun, lowered his arms and dropped the tuft of burning grass he'd been holding and ground it out under one callused heel; a waft of acrid smoke drifted past them. Adrienne stopped her running sotto voce translation an instant later, and Kolo trotted off toward the Glendale Narrows.

They were camped on the low terrace that had been the original site of El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, not far from the Los Angeles River itself; there was still water in the stream even in July this far north. The party had pitched its tents amid a grove of walnuts and oaks, a place of dappled shade with plenty of grass for the hobbled animals; it gave them shelter, but they had only to walk a quarter mile north to be in open grassland with a view that stretched nearly to the sea. They'd waited here all day, meaning to make the passage through the pass and into the San Fernando after dark, and after the Indian tracker had scouted it. There was a coffeepot at the edge of the fire, and an iron kettle with a mix of beans and bits of dried meat bubbling in it.

Good to have him check before we go through,
Tom thought.

Kolo came back to the fire two hours later; they were all sitting on the ground around it, using their saddles as seats or backrests, and he could feel the leather pushing into the small of his back. The expedition's supplies didn't run to camp chairs; they were mostly food in the form of hardtack, beans, jerky and dried fruit, three small camouflage-patterned dome tents with collapsible titanium-strut frames, and their weapons and other gear.

“Ten men,” the Indian said abruptly, spooning food onto a plate and pouring coffee into a tin cup. “Six who watch, four who rest.”

Kolo ate, then placed the map of the pass through the Glendale Narrows and into the San Fernando Valley on the ground, with stones to weight the corners. He drew the big knife at his belt to use as a pointer. Tom leaned closer, conscious of the hard, dry smell of the man, like an ox that had been sweating in the sun.

There was a good reason that the region was called
narrow;
the hills pinched close, only a few hundred yards apart at their narrowest point, and most of the bed was the Los Angeles River. It was the only eastern exit to the valley; freeways used it back FirstSide, and it was a rough track here.

The Indian went on, with Simmons lending a hand with vocabulary; sometimes Kolo would drop into his own language, and the Scout translated.

“Ten men. They camp beyond the narrows—a mile—make like it's a hunting camp, some horses, tents. But always two-threes—”

“That's two groups of three,” Simmons said.

“—on hills above narrows. With guns, guns like Long Shot carries—”

“Telescopic sights,” Simmons put in, and Kolo grunted affirmatively.

“And they are hidden. Not badly, for white men; well enough to fool other white men. Change one-three every four, five hours.”

“What did they look like?” Botha put in.

Kolo described them in exhaustive detail; he couldn't read or write, but he seemed to have what amounted to a photographic memory for plants and animals, including people. Botha listened, then shook his head.

“Andries Rhoodie.
Ach, cis,
Andries, I had hoped you were not such a fool, but I didn't hope too much. The others . . . Konrad de Buys, Wilhelm Gebhard , Benny Lang, and Ernie Graaf; I can't place any more.”

“You know them?” Adrienne asked softly.

“They're among those I would have expected to be in on this, miss,” Botha said, his square face clenched in anger or pain.

“Do you think your Prime would know?” she said.

“
Nie.
Not officially. He would wait, and listen, and keep silent, and then move only when he saw which way the cat would jump,” Botha said, with a shrug of his massive shoulders. “That's Slim Hendrick for you.”

Tom spoke: “How many of your, ah, former countrymen would be in on this? In enough to fight, that is.”

Botha shrugged again. “Hard to say. It's . . . not easy, losing your country. Knowing you can never go back, never see the place you were born, swallowing defeat.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, missing the look Kolomusnim shot him from under lowered brows. The Afrikaner went on:

“And then here, it
looks
like there's a chance to get our own back. Tempting. More than ten. Less than a hundred, I think.”

Tom looked at the map again, and then took out a larger-scale one that showed the whole of the LA basin and its surrounding mountain ranges.

“Offhand, I don't think they're waiting for us, specifically. Just for anyone who might be poking his nose into the Mohave without good reason, probably to report rather than kill.”

“Or possibly report most, and kill if they see a couple of specific people—like me,” Adrienne said. “Either would be fatal, literally or metaphorically. And it means they must be getting ready to strike. They couldn't keep this up for more than a month or two; people would start asking questions if they neglect their farms and shops for that long.”

“Well, we could go back and try one of the other passes,” Tom said. “The Sepulveda over the Santa Monicas, or go east and take the Cajon over the San Gabriels.”

Adrienne shook her head. “That would cost us days, and anyway, a hundred men are enough to guard most of the easy passes across the mountains. The difficult ones are dangerous themselves, for a party this size with horses and mules—and we need those supplies to get across the Mohave. It's really quite good strategy, as long as they don't have to do it very long.”

Botha sighed regretfully. “Then we have to kill them. Quickly, quietly. Even then, when they don't report in, there will be suspicion—the Collettas will know somebody went by, if not who.”

Kolo spoke, and grinned; it was a slow, cruel expression, and the cut-a-circle-and-tug gesture he used on the top of his own head was unmistakable.

“Not if it looks like Indians did it,” Simmons translated, wincing a bit. “And the Collettas and Batyushkovs
have
been stirring up the Mohave tribes, so it would look natural enough. Alarming, but not pointing to us.”

Adrienne looked at Tom. “Suggestions?” she said. “You're more experienced at this sort of operation than any of us.”

Tom let out a long breath and looked at the map, calling up old habits.
This isn't a pleasant hunting trip,
he told himself.

“All right, their main weakness is that they've split up,” he said. “Six of them there in the pass, the rest a mile away at their base camp, sleeping or doing chores.” He thought a moment in silence. “When do they change their watchers? Do they have someone bring food?”

His questions went on. Kolo answered; there was nearly a mutiny when young Schalk Botha was told to stay and help with the camp along with Sandra Margolin.

He was still sputtering about being treated like a girl when his father's hand cuffed him across the side of the head: “Shut up and do as you're told, boy! Or I send you back to your mother!”

Tom grinned a little. “You're staying here because everything has to be ready to move quickly,” he said to the young Afrikaner. “Once we've . . . accomplished the mission”—
Killed ten men and created a lot of widows and orphans,
he added silently to himself—“we'll need to get through the narrows as quickly as possible. There isn't much traffic, I understand, but that isn't the same as none. We'll need the horses and the pack-mules brought up, and fast.”

The young man ran a hand over his sparse silky beard. “
Ja.
I understand. I'm to guard the woman.”

Tom's grin grew harder to control as he watched Sandra steam; Tully quieted her with a wink behind the young Afrikaner's back. Adrienne rolled her eyes silently; he could hear her thought:
What am I, chopped liver? One of the boys?

“Everyone understand what they have to do?” he asked when he'd finished laying out the plan; they all nodded. Kolo looked at him with a degree of surprised respect, as if he hadn't expected anything so competent.

“Then let's do it, people. Let's go.”