The Fracas Factor (2 page)

“Hey,” Max protested. “You shouldn’t say anything against what the Temple says and Category Religion.”

“Yeah,” Joe sighed. “What was good enough for Daddy is good enough for me.”

“Sure,” Max said in relief. He didn’t want to get into an intellectual hassle with his idol.

Joe turned left just before the former town of Dolores Hidalgo.

He said, “We’re coming up on San Miguel de Allende, or what’s left of it. This is the town where Jim Hawkins and I nearly met our Waterloo. We damned near copped our last one.”

“Who’s Jim Hawkins?”

“Best buddy I ever had. We stuck together for the better part of a decade.”

“What happened to him?” Max said, feeling an edge of jealousy. He didn’t like the idea of his companion ever having a closer friend than Max Mainz.

Joe’s voice went low and somewhat strained. “I had copped a minor hit in a charge in a fracas between Lockheed-Cessna and Douglas-Boeing. He didn’t know it was minor and headed for the shell hole I’d fallen into. Just as he got to the rim of it, a mitrailleuse gun nearly cut him in two.”

“Oh,” Max said. “Sorry. What happened in this here town of San Miguel, whatever you called it?”

They were coming up on the former art colony now. Joe took a deep breath and said, “We were out on a scouting patrol He and I and sixteen troopers; we were trying to make contact with the enemy. We made contact all right.”

They had entered the town and Joe was driving toward its center. “Up ahead there is the Zócalo,” he said. “Almost all Mexican towns have one. The central park, bandstand in the middle, iron benches to relax on during the mid-day sun, fantailed grackles to sit up in the trees and shit on your head.”

“Yeah, but what happened?”

“The Pemex lads happened. There were eighteen of us, armed with 30-30 carbines. There were about a hundred of them—at first. More came up later. See that church over there?”

“What church?”

“Well, it used to be a church. They shelled it down, trying to root us out. It was where they were bivouacked. When we came sneaking in, they were across the square in a former restaurant where they’d established their mess hall. All except a skeleton guard they’d left in the church. We slammed into the place and finished off the guard before they knew what hit them. Most of their guns and ammunition were stacked in the church. Things had been so slow the first couple of weeks of the fracas that they’d relaxed vigilance. There were even two Vickers machine guns which we took over. They tried to storm us and we knocked them over like tenpins. Then they settled down and tried to finish us off one by one. One of the Vickers guns was up in the bell tower. We had to keep a couple of men up there, both to operate the gun and to check out new arrivals of Pemex lads. There was practically no cover up there, so one by one we took casualties.”

“Zen!” Max ejaculated. “Then what happened?”

“We sent two of the troopers out on their horses to get a message to Colonel Bomoseen, the stupid Upper who was commanding Texas Oil.”

Max said, “You shouldn’t oughta talk about an Upper that way, Joe. Hell, for that matter, you’re a Low-Upper yourself, these days.”

“Ummm,” Joe said, letting the hovercar come to a halt momentarily while memories came back to him. “We’d succeeded in our mission. We found out the Pemex Lads were filtering in from this direction. He could have come up with our whole force and clobbered them. Jim and I thought we had it made. We’d get a bounce in rank, maybe even a bounce in caste. But Bomoseen was a cloddy. He didn’t relieve us for three days. The others brought up mountain guns and that’s why not much of the church is left. By the time it was all over, Jim and I were the only two left on our feet. He was bucking one of the Vickers guns and I had the other. Thank the Holy Jumping Zen we had all the ammunition, their ammunition, in the world. We gave them enough casualties to fill a field hospital. That’s one good thing about those big stone blocks that make up a church—they give good cover.”

He started up again and headed up the steep street in the direction of the Queretaro road beyond. They had reached a flat stretch, just beyond a deserted hamlet Suddenly, the hovercar stopped.

Joe Mauser scowled. This simply didn’t happen. He had gotten fresh powerpacks before leaving Greater Washington. Vehicles, these days, were practically foolproof. Among other things, you had alternate, emergency motors and an alternative emergency power pack to take you to the next repair facility.

He got out and lifted the rear bonnet, and checked. He was no mechanic, but he understood the workings of a hovercar. Both of the power packs were dead—which was unbelievable.

He got back into the car, still scowling.

Max said, “What’s wrong?”

“Zen if I know,” Joe growled. He brought forth his pocket transceiver with the intention of calling the nearest repair facility. He didn’t like to do it. It would mean that he’d have to use his credit card and that would mean a recording in the computer data banks that he had expended credit. That would mean that anyone checking, for whatever reason, would know he had been traveling through this part of the United States of the Americas.

The transceiver was dead.

Max said, “Here come a car down the road. We can hail them.”

Joe Mauser had not lived in the world of the Category Military, the world of the fracases, without an instinctive something that combat men need to survive. He snapped open the dashboard compartment and snatched out his Smith & Wesson.44 and a box of cartridges.

“Come on,” he snapped to Max. “Somebody’s got an electronic damper on us.”

He pushed the door open and headed for the field, calling back over his shoulder to Max, “Are you heeled?”

Max was scrambling after him. “You mean, have I gotta gun? Hell no. You’re an Upper, you can carry a gun, even when you’re not in a fracas. But I’m a Lower. They throw the book at you.”

“Oh, wizard,” Joe groaned.

Chapter Two

The country was semiarid. Vegetation consisted of cactus, maguey, and an occasional dwarfed mesquite tree. The fauna, Joe knew, consisted almost exclusively of lizards, rattlesnakes, and an occasional Gila monster. Rabbits were few and far between. It was the kind of country in which a sensible man preferred to be on horseback.

Crouched low, Joe, followed by Max Mainz, plowed as fast as he could go through the sand and gravel. He got about one hundred feet from the car and plopped down behind a clump of maguey, that desert plant of Mexico from which pulque is fermented and tequila distilled. There was a slight depression in the ground and he flung himself into it. Max sprawled down on the flat area beside him.

“What in the Zen’s going on?” he complained breathlessly.

“Get into the deepest depression or behind the highest ridge you can find,” Joe Mauser snapped. Max was typical of the tyro in combat. He couldn’t see cover unless it was a foot or so high.

Max obeyed orders, mystified.

“But what in hell’s going on?” he said.

Joe checked the load in his long-barreled military pistol. All six chambers were full. He opened the box of cartridges and emptied them into the pocket of his sport jerkin.

He said, “Somebody’s out to get us, Max. They’ve put an electronic damper over this vicinity and knocked our car out and my transceiver along with it. We can’t travel and we can’t communicate. I suspect that whoever it was is coming down the road in that car. You seldom see a car on a Military Reservation, even when no fracas is in progress. There’s no reason to be here. No population, no agriculture, inadequate roads. No nothing. I hope the hell they didn’t spot us.”

It would seem that the occupants of the other vehicle hadn’t. As they approached Joe’s sport hovercar they slowed considerably. Even at this distance, Joe Mauser could make out that the black sedan was full of men. It slowed, something black detached itself from it and rolled under Joe’s car. Then it speeded up and took off down the road in the direction of San Miguel de Allende at a clip.

The explosion was such that it deafened Joe and Max momentarily and after a minute or two sprinklings of debris fell in their vicinity.

“A bomb!” Max blurted.

Joe grunted and took in his all but completely destroyed car. He said, “We’re lucky we’re not in it.” Which, on the face of it, was obvious.

Down the road, the black sedan quickly turned and headed back. It came to a halt near the ruin, and five men issued forth. Even at this distance, they didn’t look like locals, even if there had been any local folk. They were dressed like city people, and four of them carried pistols. But it was the fifth one that caused Joe to suck in breath. He was carrying a submachine gun. A Sten gun, by the looks of it from this distance. An old World War Two British Sten, illegal by the provisions of the Universal Disarmament Commission, backed by the New World Court which had ruled that no weapon invented since the turn of the Nineteenth Century could be manufactured, sold, used, or even possessed. Penalties for violating the Pact were stiff.

It was what had ruined Major Joseph Mauser, so far as his position in the Category Military was concerned. In a fracas in which Joe had served under Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, Joe had flown a glider for reconnaissance. He had claimed that the glider predated the year 1900, and it did, but not the advanced type sail-plane he was flying. Military observers from the Sov-world and the Neut-world hit the ceiling and brought the violation up before the International Disarmament Commission. Joe was stripped of his rank and of all his financial property, save the Inalienable basic Common Stock which had been issued to him by the government upon his birth and which was the right of every American citizen. He was also forbidden to ever again participate in a fracas, those battles between competing corporations, a corporation and a union, or two unions fighting for jurisdiction. Even the famed Marshal Stonewall Cogswell was court-martialed, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t been aware of what Joe was up to. He had been demoted to the rank of Brigadier General, a hard blow for a man of his stature and pride.

But now one of the five cautiously approached the bombed-out hovercar. He was the one carrying the submachine gun. And Joe was far from happy about it. The others, with pistols, were bad enough, outnumbering him four to one. Max was less than useless, he was a detriment, unarmed and not even used to this kind of terrain. But the Sten gun outranged Joe’s revolver, in addition to its greater firepower. Joe was going to have to do something about it.

The bearer of the automatic weapon in question stepped to within about ten feet of the ruined car and cut loose with the gun, spraying the vehicle from one end to the other. They must have thought that Joe and Max were still inside and that possibly one of the other of them had survived. There was precious little chance of that, but evidently the assassins were taking no chances whatsoever.

Something came to Joe. A submachine gun was so rare in this day and age that possibly the man who bore it was the only member of the group who knew its operation. Joe had read somewhere that there were tricky aspects to a submachine gun. You had to learn how to shoot them. The barrel would climb on you when you cut loose with a burst.

He leveled his Smith & Wesson over his left arm and took careful aim.

“Holy Zen, Joe!” Max whispered in protest. “You’ll give us away.”

“When they find out that we’re not in that car, they’re going to come looking,” Joe growled back. “And our footprints aren’t exactly invisible. Get ready to run for it.”

His target had stopped spraying the hovercar and stood still for a moment, peering at it. Joe ever so gently squeezed the trigger and shot him squarely in the belly. The machine gunner dropped his weapon and fell like a burlap bag of feed. The others stood there, gaping at him in astonishment.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Joe rapped, immediately on his feet. He knew that the others would take a few moments to get over their surprise and another moment or so to decide on the direction from which the shot had come. Possibly Joe and Max could be out of accurate pistol range by that time. The handgun, except in the hands of an expert, isn’t the most accurate weapon in the world.

He could hear Max plodding through the sand and gravel behind him. Joe had experienced country similar to this before. In fact, on this self-same Guanajuato Military Reservation. But city-bred Max Mainz was having his work cut out for him.

Joe rounded a larger than average mesquite, reached out, and grabbed the stumbling Max and drug him behind it too. Max was already panting with exertion.

Born a Low-Lower and probably used to taking trank and spending long hours sitting before the telly, rather than getting much in the way of exercise, he was in poor shape compared to Joe Mauser, in spite of his fewer years.

Joe peered around the gnarled bole of the tree.

The four were coming and Joe swore inwardly to see that one of them bore the Sten gun. He had been right; they were city dwellers and no more used to travel over this desert terrain than Max was. That was at least one advantage. But they were wise enough in the ways of combat not to bunch up. They had spread out in a row, about thirty feet between each man. There was no chance that Joe could wing a shot at one of them, miss, and have the bullet hit one of the others.

They were a bit far off and moving targets, but Joe fired two more rounds just for luck and also on the off-chance of giving them second thoughts about closing in.

But no, they kept on coming and his fire had given them indication of the location of the two fugitives. The one with the Sten gun paused momentarily and cut loose with a short burst which dug up the dirt about fifteen feet to the right of Joe and Max.

“Let’s get out of here,” Joe said. “We can’t let that funker get close enough to get a good bead on us or we’ve had it.”

“Right behind you,” Max puffed.

They took off again and heard several pistol shots, as though at least some of their pursuers must have spotted them. But they were as ineffective as Joe’s fire had been.

As he ran, he dug into his pocket and brought forth three of the.44 cartridges. He swung out the cylinder of the gun, ejected the three spent shells, and reloaded.