John Barnes - Directive 51

“He thinks he’s not good with people,” Chris said, grinning. “Can’t be persuaded otherwise.”

“Pooh. All he needed to do was ask for help; I’m glad you came along to do it for him!” Carol May Kloster looked at the sky. “If you all hurry, he can take off sometime before the storm hits, and I’m sure that would be a good thing.”

Heather and Bambi were working the crowd in front of the platform, looking for anyone with a weapon, when Bambi whooped. Grinning like a maniac, Quattro Larsen stepped forward. They embraced, laughing just as though it had been years instead of weeks. Another thing we all have to get used to, Heather thought. Nowadays a thousand miles is a long way.

“I take it your giant mechanical bumblebee is working again?” Heather said.

“Giant—I’ll have you know, if there’s ever a National Museum again, that’s the one plane that for sure’ll be in it. At least after there’s another operating plane on the continent, besides my other one.”

“The Stearman’s flying?”

“That’s how Chris and I—Chris!”

Chris Manckiewicz turned from where he’d been taking notes on an intense conversation. “My entire history of the period,” he said, mournfully, “which is all future historians will ever know of our age, will be filled with the phrase, ‘But then Quattro shouted for me, and we had to go.’”

“We met at the Washington Advertiser-Gazette , a long time ago,” Heather said, sticking out her hand.

“I remember you, Ms. O’Grainne, and thanks for all your help on that day.”

“I had no idea at the time you were a pilot. And how did you get out here?”

If Manckiewicz could do anything, it was tell a story, and after a few minutes he’d made Heather laugh more than she had in weeks, describing the adventures of “a guy who thought the props must be the fake parts of the plane,” on his first trip as “assistant mechanic, copilot intern, master chef, and chief wailer-in-terror.” “But,” he added, “by the time we landed at Castle Larsen, I was approaching competence, though I am told I never attained the kind of copilothood that was first achieved by the one, the only, the Amelia Earhart of her generation—”

Bambi made a fart noise with her tongue.

“Which is one-third of the mission here,” Quattro said, smoothly. “I was kind of hoping your interrogation of Ysabel Roth is not complete, that Bambi Castro is still essential to it, and that you’d see the wisdom of leaving them both at Castle Larsen, actually.”

Heather grinned at him. “And you didn’t even mention securing the enduring loyalty of a critical Castle on the California coast.”

“Seemed rude and unnecessary.”

“Well, as for Roth, I don’t think we’ll get more cooperation out of her in another location, and we don’t have to guard her where she is. And we don’t have any way to hold employees against their will, nor—”

“Larry!” Bambi shouted and waved.

Heather turned around and found herself facing a guy who seemed to have been sent from Central Casting as “old sourdough”—baggy wool pants, rope suspenders, immense flannel shirt, floppy broad-brimmed hat, and bushy beard. All he needs is an arrow through that silly hat.

He grinned. “Do you have any idea how great life is when I don’t have to fit the FBI dress code?” He stuck out his hand.

Heather looked down at her current outfit—a heavily stained men’s safari shirt (you could never have too many pockets), black-powder carbine on a sling, combat knife in an arm holster, camo pants, and calf-high moccaboots she’d traded a case of pre-Daybreak Coors for in Limon, Colorado—and said, “Well, I have to admit, I could get through quite a few more years without ever putting on black pumps, jacket, skirt, and a blouse. Biz outfits used to make me look like a giant poodle.”

“Me too,” Mensche said. “I don’t care what Hoover thought, speaking as an FBI agent, the pumps always killed my back.”

“Did you find Debbie?” Bambi asked.

“No luck yet. But she was alive when that bunch of women left Coffee Creek, and she was among the leaders, and at least I’ve established that no one ran into them around the mouth of the Columbia or on the south shore of Puget Sound. It was while I was up there that I persuaded the governor to invite you all to move the Federal government there, and now he seems to think that it was his idea and I was his brilliant assistant, so he thinks he owes me some favors. I’m planning to cash in on them by having him put out sort of a permanent APB for Deb. Meanwhile, I’m thinking maybe Deb’s group out of Coffee Creek headed east for some reason, gonna try to pick up the trail that way.”

“So are you leaving the FBI for good?” Quattro asked.

“Soon as they open an office, I plan to transfer to the US Marshals. I’m not looking to be Eliot Ness anymore. I’m thinking more Wyatt Earp.”

“Or Gabby Hayes,” Bambi suggested.

Word from farther up the line was that coal was getting hard to locate, so they were towing six coal cars in addition to Amtrak One and the supporting staff and troop cars, which made for a slow climb; they had crossed into southern Oregon a few hours ago, and stopped for the obligatory speech in Grant’s Pass, which seemed, like many smaller cities that had always been somewhat isolated, to be doing relatively well. The crowd had been enthusiastic, putting Graham in what Heather was beginning to think of as a too-good mood.

We’d have been in Olympia three days ago if it weren’t for all the whistle stops, she thought. It’s like he’s practicing running for president—and I guess with there being an election next year (again, dammit!) and his being the president, he might decide to run for re-election. Now there’s a… scary? cheerful? ironic? well, it’s a thought, anyway.

After Grant’s Pass, the rail line swung wide of I-5 and the modern roads, winding up through the Cow Creek country, threading between pine-covered, fog-shrounded mountains, turning back and forth in great swooping bends. We started late, too, out of Ashland. For a daring escape, this has sure turned into a parade.

She was just checking whether there was any tea left—they had run out of coffee two days ago and she was still headachy from caffeine withdrawal—when the train’s brakes shrieked. Everyone and everything fell or slid forward. Chris Manckiewicz, in the corner and working as ever in one of his notebooks, grunted sharply in frustration.

Heather staggered to her feet and headed forward. Oh crap, having to start on an up slope, and towing all this coal, it’s going to take forever to get going again.

Strange sound—familiar and yet not familiar—and then she realized.

She shouted, “Helicopters!” and dropped to her knees to peer over the edge of the window.

Here, where the rails made a wide 180-degree turn, there was a broad spot on the road to their right, and the creek was to their left, far down the hill; a Marine helicopter was skimming just above the road, dropping men in battle armor as it went, and they were rolling and diving into the brush between the road and the train, moving forward in a rapid buddy rush, each man advancing a few paces ahead of the man covering him, dropping, and covering the man behind him who ran forward in turn, a swift leapfrog to close the distance.

Shots cracked from the Ranger car; Heather rolled onto the floor as windows shattered from the Marines returning fire. Their stuff has been sealed on shipboard all this time and they’ve still got modern smokeless powder and automatic. At least twenty of them to our nine Rangers and three Feds.