The Fracas Factor (19 page)

Freddy Soligen said emptily, “My boy, Sam, is up there on that hill with Stonewall Cogswell.”

Chapter Seventeen

Joe looked at the telly screen.

He said, “I know that knoll. I’ve fought that Military Reservation three times.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Warren said in self-deprecation, “How well I know that you know it. It was the first time I ever met you, Joe Mauser. I was pinned down with my company there. We were both with the Marshal in that fracas. He sent you in after me. I’d copped a couple. There weren’t many of my lads left unwounded by the time you got there. You carried me, or dragged me, for something like three kilometers through the enemy fire.”

“Yes,” Joe said musingly. “That was a long time ago. I’d almost forgotten. I think I got a bounce in rank from that, although I don’t think we were on lens at the time. The Marshal was always good at taking care of his own. He didn’t give a damn whether or not his men were on lens when they did something.”

Max said, “What’n the hell’s all this got to do with it?”

Joe looked at him and said, “We’re going out to Montana. There’s a little arroyo that leads up to that knoll from the rear. It’s the way I got the Lieutenant-Colonel out years ago. If I have my history right, it’s where one of Custer’s troops were ambushed a long time ago, during his final fiasco.”

Paul Warren said, “This is ridiculous.” He turned to Freddy Soligen and said to him, “Your boy will have to take his chances like all the other lads in that fracas. Meanwhile, how about our business? You have the word of an Upper; if you reveal the names of the high ranking bureaucrats who head the subversives, you’ll be bounced two castes.”

Freddy didn’t seem to care.

Joe said, “All right, Freddy, Max. Let’s get going.” He looked at Warren. “Well, Paul?”

Paul Warren gaped at him and said indignantly, “Do you think I’m drivel-happy? I wouldn’t go into that holocaust for…”

And Joe interrupted, saying coldly, “You owe me a life, Paul Warren. I dragged you out of there something like ten years ago. You’d copped three hits. You wouldn’t have lasted two hours. You’re Category Military. You’re an Upper and consequently consider yourself a gentleman. Are you coming?”

“Yes,” Warren sighed. “You put it right forcefully, Major Mauser.” He came to his feet and said, “We’re in a great hurry, but do I have the time to phone my wife?”

“Why, for Zen’s sake?” Freddy blurted. “Every minute counts.”

Warren gave him the eye. “Because none of us are going to come back from this, Soligen.”

“Go ahead,” Joe said. “We’ve got some preliminaries. Freddy, get your lightest portable telly camera and whatever other equipment you’ll need to shoot what’s happening up on that knoll.”

“Why?!” Freddy asked angrily. “I don’t want to cast any telly. I want to get my son off that hill!”

“Because there’re no cameramen on the knoll and we want to cast what’s going on. Bitter Dave Langenscheidt can’t get away with this curd. He’s butchering those lads when they’re trying to surrender. Like Paul said, he’s trying to finish off Cogswell once and for all, and the funker doesn’t give a damn about taking everybody else on the hill with him. Now, what do you have in the way of weapons around here, Freddy?”

Paul Warren was on the tellyphone, his face wan. He spoke softly, so the others couldn’t hear what he was saying to his wife.

“Weapons?” Freddy asked. “I don’t have any weapons. Oh, yeah. Sam left a 30-30 Winchester in his room. He carried it in his first fracas. In this one I think they’re using Springfields.”

“Get it,” Joe said. “Any any ammunition for it that you can find.” He turned his eyes to Max. “What are you best with, a rifle or a revolver?”

Max said, “I can’t hit nothing much with a pistol.”

“All right. You take the Winchester. I have my.44 Smith & Wesson. Warren has his sidearm. That’ll have to do. We don’t have the time to hunt up some more guns.”

Freddy came back from an inner room laden down with telly equipment and the Winchester.

He said worriedly, “Joe, I’m not going to be able to cast from that hill. I’d need a lot of equipment and a crew for that. All I’ll be able to do is film it, to be run later.”

“All right,” Joe said. “We’ll film it. We’re going to get that bastard Langenscheidt for this.”

Paul Warren had finished his call. He turned back to them and said to Joe, “How’re we going to get there? That knoll is in approximately the center of the Little Big Horn Military Reservation. And time is running out by the minute.”

Joe tossed the Winchester to Max Mainz and headed for the transport terminal of Freddy’s apartment. “Come on,” he said, dialing for a four-seater capsule. “We’ll vacuum-tube over to Billings.”

They crowded into the capsule, Freddy’s equipment filling most of the space. Joe dialed, even as Warren was pulling the canopy over them, and the others were buckling their belts.

“And how in the name of Zen do we get from Billings to the reservation?” Warren asked. The capsule began to sink into the bowels of the vacuum-tube transport system for the initial shot.

“We rent the fastest hovercar we can locate,” Joe said.

“Wizard, but that only takes us to the edge of the reservation. Assuming we can rent horses there, it would still take us a coon’s age to get to the knoll.”

“We’re not stopping at the edge of the reservation,” Joe said grimly.

Paul Warren glowered at him. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t take a vehicle onto a military reservation while a fracas is in progress. Certainly not any kind of vehicle which postdates the year 1900.”

“There’s always a first time,” Joe said. “If I have a very clear picture of what’s going on there, we can come up behind Cogswell’s position. Bitter Dave will be facing him. The hill won’t be completely surrounded, since Landenscheidt doesn’t have enough men for that. To completely surround it, he’d have to stretch his lads so thin that Cogswell would sally out and break through his lines. No, he’s advancing on a fairly narrow front.”

“Damn it, Mauser! If we’re caught riding in a powered car, I’ll be tossed out of Category Military and be disgraced. Soligen will be expelled from Category Communications and probably fined every share of Variable he’s accumulated.”

“Me, too,” Max said. “I’d be tossed out of Category Military.”

“Shut up, Mainz,” the Lieutenant-Colonel said angrily. “What in Zen have you got to lose, you little spy?”

Max snarled, “Look who’s talking. At least I don’t order murders.”

Paul Warren glared at him, even as the capsule suddenly surged forward. He said, “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“You guys ordered us to kill Doc Mitfield. If I’d known he was going to be any more than roughed up a little, I wouldn’t have gone along. But your Minuteman, Art Prager, shot the poor cloddy.”

The Lieutenant Colonel’s face was pale. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Balt wouldn’t condone anything like that, and it was Balt who arranged the whole thing.”

“Only a short time ago,” Joe said, “he sent five men after me in Mexico. They bombed my car, then machine-gunned it—with an illegal machinegun, by the way—and then they attempted to kill Max.”

Warren said, “I’ll confront Balt Haer with this, if and when I return.”

“You do that,” Joe told him. “If you can beat me to him.”

In Billings, Warren and Soligen hurried to rent a fast car, while Joe and Max located a bookstore and bought maps of the area of Montana they were interested in, including military field maps of the reservation. Within a quarter of an hour of their arrival, they were on their way.

The edge of the Little Big Horn Military Reservation was approximately ninety kilometers to the east and included the Custer Battlefield National Monument. They made it in about half an hour. Avoiding any settlements near the border of the reservation—there were none on the reservation itself—they took off across the country.

“I still think that this is madness,” Warren said. “If Bitter Dave has any cavalry scouts out, they’ll spot us.”

And Joe growled back, “He doesn’t need to have any scouts out. He knows where Stonewall Cogswell is, and he’s concentrated every man in his command before whatever entrenchments the Marshal’s lads have been able to dig. When his artillery has softened them up enough, he’ll go in, cavalry and all.” Joe checked his field maps carefully and finally came to a halt.

“We’re about three kilometers from the knoll,” he told them. “About a kilometer and a half from where the little arroyo starts. I don’t dare get any closer. There’s always the off chance that we’ll be spotted, though I don’t think it’s likely. This is pretty wild country, especially since they pulled out all farmers and other former residents and gave it over to the fracases.”

He had pulled up in a clump of mesquite and now the four, got out. They camouflaged their vehicle, heaping fallen branches over it.

“Let’s go,” Freddy said in despair. “That hilltop must be like the moon by now.”

“You’d be surprised how experienced sappers can dig in against a barrage,” Joe said, in an attempt to console him.

But Joe wasn’t that optimistic. From what little he had seen of the action, Cogswell’s forces were making no answering fire at all. On the face of it, all of their field guns had been silenced. Either that, or their ammunition was gone.

They headed off, Indian style, one behind the other. Joe had shouldered Freddy Soligen’s tripod, Warren had taken a gadget bag, but the telly reporter still had a considerable burden and was swearing under his breath. Joe led, keeping his right hand empty in case he needed to draw, the tripod slung over his left shoulder. Max followed, rifle loaded and ready for action. Freddy came next, and Warren brought up the rear, his holster unbuttoned. They hurried along, though not too quickly. Joe didn’t want them to be out of breath if they ran into a patrol and had to shoot it out.

Joe wondered, briefly, why he seemed to be in command of their small expedition. Paul Warren, a lieutenant-colonel, out-ranked Joe, who had only been a major while he was in the Category Military. But then, he was no longer a soldier. Moreover, Pual Warren was only along under pressure.

Joe halted quickly and sank down behind a small ridge. The others dropped, too, and Warren came crawling up. “What goes on?” he whispered.

Joe pointed and whispered back, “The beginning of the arroyo. They’ve got a Maxim gun there. A Maxim or a Vickers.”

Paul Warren took it in. Although born an Upper, he had spent long years in the fracases with Stonewall Cogswell and wasn’t unknowledgeable.

“It’s a Vickers,” he said, “with a four-man crew. It could keep Cogswell’s whole regiment at bay.”

“And Cogswell doesn’t have a whole regiment any more,” Joe whispered. “Well, we’ll have to take it.”

Warren looked over at him. “Take it? We’ve got one rifle and two handguns. They’ve got a Vickers and undoubtedly other weapons. Who do you think you are, Wild Bill Hickok?”

Joe said thoughtfully, “It would be possible to crawl around them. But suppose we did? If and when we got to the top of that damn hill, there’d be no way of coming down again, with or without any survivors. And by the sounds of that shelling, there still are survivors.”

“All right,” the other said. “So we take them. At least, we’re behind them. They don’t know we’re here, and the machinegun is pointed the other way.”

Joe turned, made motions for Max to approach, and signaled to Freddy Soligen to remain where he was. Max crawled up, and Joe pointed out the machinegun nest. It had sandbags in front, but no cover behind. There was a large pile of ammunition boxes slightly to one side and behind the sandbags. The Vickers gun was equipped to hold out for some time.

Joe whispered to Max, “You go over there to the right and get yourself into as concealed a position as you can. After the first shot is fired, try to knock them off. The range isn’t too bad. Here let me adjust those sights.” He took the Winchester from Max’s hands, squinted down at the machinegun nest, estimated expertly, and then worked quickly on the sights. “That ought to do it,” he muttered, handing the gun back. “How much ammo did Freddy give you?”

“Twenty rounds.”

Joe winced. “Twenty rounds? Is that all he had? Well, don’t waste any.”

Max began to crawl off on his belly. Perhaps he was inexperienced, but he seemed to have the instinct for it.

Joe pointed and said, “Paul, I think your best bet would be to get over there about thirty meters. What kind of gun do you have?” “38.”

“Six-inch barrel?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve got more gun than you have, but we’ve still got to get to nearer range. As soon as you get over there, we’ll start crawling in as quietly as possible. Well get just as close as possible. When they finally spot us, we’ll open fire. I hope the hell Max distracts them.”

“Right,” Warren said. “Uh, Joe.”

“Yeah?”

“If you get through this and… I don’t, will you look up my wife? We’ve got two kids…”

Joe felt an empty feeling in his belly. “I didn’t know you had children, Paul.”

“Well, I have.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to help. If anything happens to me, Paul, will you tell Nadine Haer about it?”

“You mean, Balt’s sister?”

“That’s right.”

“Wizard.” Paul Warren began to crawl off.

It went approximately as planned… approximately.

Joe and Paul Warren had gotten to within twenty five meters of the foe before one of them, as though utilizing ESP, suddenly spun and spotted them. He yelled and begun madly swinging the British Vickers about.

Joe had jumped to his feet, leveled the 44, and began rapid fire. The gun was a revolver, not an automatic, and he wasn’t going to have time to reload.

Things blurred then. Joe could hear Max’s rifle in the background, firing away as fast as the little man could cock the lever. Joe’s gun fell empty, and he dropped to the ground and felt desperately for cartridges in his jacket pocket, even as he heard the Vickers begin its chatter of death. He got three rounds into the gun, but could afford the time for no more. Max was holding their attention, drawing their fire.