Citadel Run Page 8

  “Of course we know all about the Cavalry,” Colonel Jarvis stated. “As a matter of fact, they won’t remain free much longer.”

  “What do you mean?” Blade demanded.

  “Sorry. That’s another little surprise I’ll save for later.” Jarvis smiled.

  Geronimo openly glared at the colonel. He was the one who had ventured into Cavalry territory; he was the one who had arranged for a treaty between the Family and the Cavalry, both forming what Plato had designated the Freedom Confederation; and he was the one who had married a Cavalry woman. The prospect of his newfound friends being subjugated by the army infuriated him.

  “As to why we are here,” Jarvis was saying, “we owe it all to you.”

  “Come again?” Blade said.

  Colonel Jarvis pointed at the stockade. “The reason we’re in the Twin Cities, the reason all those people are locked up, and the reason so many of them have already died is because of you.”

  Blade shook his head, unwilling to accept the blame. “No way!”

  Jarvis put his hands behind his back and adopted a stern visage. “I don’t appreciate being called a liar! I’ll explain it for you, so you’ll see I’m telling the truth.” He paused, watching the abject faces in the compound.

  “You see, Samuel was perfectly willing to leave these people alone, to continue monitoring their activities but otherwise allow them to live out their petty little lives in strained desperation. The Twin Cities population wasn’t due to be reabsorbed for a year or two. But then something happened.” Jarvis grinned at Blade. “Then we learned of your trip to the Twin Cities. We discovered your plans, how you intended to lead these people out of the shambles and aid them in establishing a new life near your accursed Home. We couldn’t allow that. We don’t want your Family becoming any stronger than it already is. So Samuel devised a brilliant strategy. Send out a special unit under my command to forcibly contain these degenerates and ship them to one of our Reabsorption Centers near Denver…”

  “Reabsorption Centers?” Geronimo repeated.

  “Of course! You don’t think we’d allow these depraved, maladjusted misfits to be absorbed into the general populace of the Civilized Zone without first reeducating them, without aligning their diminished mental capacities with the prevalent social consciousness required of all upright citizens, do you?”

  “But how?” Blade needed to know. “How did you find out about our plans? From one of your listening posts outside our Home?”

  “No,” Colonel Jarvis responded. “Our high technology wasn’t necessary this time. We used an informant.”

  “An informant! Was it someone from the Family?” Blade demanded.

  “No. I’ll let you meet him.” Jarvis scanned the area.

  Blade, attracted by the rumble of the generator, glanced to the southwest. About fifty yards from the stockade was the truck housing the generator, and it wasn’t alone. Blade counted fifteen troop transports in all, not including the one they came in. Evidently, the Army intended to utilize the big trucks to relocate the Twin Cities population.

  “Ahh! There he is!” Jarvis had spotted someone nearby, standing with a group of troopers. He waved, beckoning the person to join them. “Here he comes now.”

  Blade didn’t recognize the informant. He was a small man, with tiny dark eyes and a small, pointed nose. He wore faded jeans and a torn blue shirt.

  “Blade, Geronimo,” Jarvis said as the grubby man stopped at his side, “I’d like you to meet Rat.”

  The name rang a bell, but Blade still couldn’t place him. “Should I know him?”

  “Probably not,” Jarvis answered. “I believe it was Hickok who encountered Rat on your first trip to the Twin Cities. You and Hickok are the best of friends, aren’t you, Rat?”

  “Where is he?” Rat asked in a squeaky voice. “Where is the prick? You promised I could have him!”

  “And I’m a man of my word,” Jarvis declared. “Unfortunately, Hickok escaped on the way here and…”

  “Escaped!” Rat shouted, nervously looking around the field.

  Jarvis laughed. “Relax. We’ll protect you. We have an agreement, remember? Besides, what can Hickok do against all my men? He’s one man against one hundred.”

  Rat was rubbing the stubble on his narrow chin. “You don’t know Hickok like I do, Jarvis. We’re not safe until you have him in custody.”

  The colonel’s eyes had narrowed at Rat’s manifest lack of respect. “It’s Colonel Jarvis to you,” he said angrily.

  “No offense meant,” Rat hastily apologized.

  “I remember now,” Blade mentioned. “Hickok told us about you. You were one of Maggot’s crowd, the ones who used to run the Porns. Hickok said you managed to get away during his final fight with Maggot.”

  “Yeah, I escaped that bastard!” Rat snapped, his intense hatred for the gunman distorting his features. “I hid out. Some of my buddies gave me food and water and told me what was going on. They told me how Hickok made Bear the new head of the Porns. Most of the Porns went along with it because they hated Maggot’s guts. But a few of us didn’t like the idea one bit. And then I heard how Hickok was coming back, how he’d promised to lead everybody from the Twins. Mr. High and Mighty! Well, I knew I had to stop you guys, so I gambled and snuck out of the city.”

  “He contacted us,” Jarvis detailed, “one of our outposts surrounding the metropolis.”

  “Yeah,” Rat continued. “They were real interested in you guys. I offered them a deal. If they would help me become boss of the Porns, I’d help them get you.”

  “We modified the arrangement somewhat,” Jarvis elaborated. “In exchange for the information he had concerning Alpha Triad, we offered him Hickok’s head on a platter.”

  “You made a deal with this worm?” Blade inquired, calculating his insult would annoy Rat.

  “Who are you calling a worm?” Rat demanded, peeved.

  “When it suits our purpose,” Jarvis said, “we occasionally establish pacts with…” He glanced at Rat distastefully. “Outsiders.”

  Blade recalled his trip to Fox and the Family’s fight with the Trolls.

  “Like you did with the Trolls?”

  “Exactly.” Jarvis nodded. “We have a lot of territory to reconquer. We can’t be everywhere at once. We lack the personnel to place permanent listening posts near every inhabited town and hamlet. On the other hand, we don’t want the people living outside the Civilized Zone to organize and oppose us, so whenever we locate a group like the Trolls, crude, primitive, savage barbarians devoted to looting and killing, we form a pact with them. In exchange for their continual harassment of the people in their vicinity, we supply them with a few guns and other items. It’s an extremely effective system, because it fosters anarchy and disrupts any efforts at organization.”

  “And later,” Blade deduced, “when Samuel is ready, you’ll waltz right in and enslave everybody with a minimum of opposition.”

  “Deucedly clever, don’t you think?” Jarvis asked.

  “Yes,” Blade conceded. “You don’t miss a trick.”

  “We try not to,” Jarvis said.

  “You’re not as clever as you’d like to believe,” Geronimo said baiting the colonel.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You haven’t defeated everyone in the Twin Cities,” Geronimo informed him.

  “We’ll catch Hickok. It’s only a matter of time,” Jarvis assured them.

  “I wasn’t referring to Hickok,” Geronimo stated. “I was referring to the Wacks.”

  Colonel Jarvis laughed. “Those demented idiots? Who cares about them? They’re not organized. They’re a bunch of lunatic cannibals, nothing more, and they hardly pose a serious threat to the Civilized Zone. For your information, we did ambush about six dozen of them at that hospital they use for a base of operations. Killed forty-nine, if I recall. We’ll get the rest, eventually. There’s no rush.”

  “So what now?” Blade asked. “Do you truck us all to the Civ
ilized Zone?”

  Colonel Jarvis gazed at the crowded stockade and thoughtfully stroked his jutting chin, his brown eyes squinting in the bright afternoon sun.

  “Yes, we do. But we have a problem in that respect. We have sixteen available transports. Even if I pack in these filthy swine like sardines, the most I can cram into any one truck is forty. That means my trucks can carry six hundred and forty prisoners, all told, and there wouldn’t be any space left for my men. So the most I can take back with me is five hundred and forty prisoners. But we have seven hundred and thirty-one, which is one hundred and ninety-one too many. Let’s round the figure off to two hundred. What do I do with the excess?”

  “You could let them go,” Geronimo offered. “I know Blade and I wouldn’t object if you decided to leave us here.”

  Jarvis chuckled. “The only way I’ll leave you here is if you are six feet under.”

  “Forget it, then,” Geronimo said. “We haven’t mastered the technique of breathing dirt.”

  “Sir,” Captain Rice mentioned, “should we place these two in the stockade with the others?”

  “Why not? They might find a few of their old friends inside. They can talk over old times.”

  “Before we go,” Blade commented, “I’d like to know what you meant earlier.”

  “About what?” asked Jarvis.

  “When you said something about playing golf.”

  “Oh.” Jarvis swept the area with his right hand. “This land my men constructed the stockade on was once a golf course. Do you know what golf was?”

  “I’ve seen some books in our Library on it,” Blade divulged. “A game of some kind, where you went around smacking this dinky little ball all over the place with funny-looking clubs.”

  “Exactly. Well, this field was once known as the Columbia Golf Course, according to my map.” Colonel Jarvis started to walk away, then stopped.

  “I’ll see you later and we’ll have that meal I promised. In the interim, you can enjoy the company of the Porns and Horns and Nomads.” He paused.

  “Damn strange names! Where do you suppose they ever got names like that?”

  “I know,” Blade volunteered. If he continued to be marginally cooperative with Jarvis, the officer might become complacent and lower his guard long enough for them to make a break for it.

  “You do?”

  “The last time we were here,” Blade disclosed, “we learned a few of the facts. It seems there were two main factions left here after the evacuation.

  One was in Minneapolis, the followers of a pornographer and drug dealer, mostly street people. The other group was a religious one based in St. Paul. The leader of the religious faction started referring to the pornographer and his band as, aptly, Porns. The Porns retaliated by calling the religious group the Horns.”

  “The Horns? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It had something to do with insulting their sexual prowess,” Blade revealed.

  “Horns?” Jarvis pondered a moment. “Hornbill? Horned lizard? Horned? Horny?” He laughed, comprehension dawning. “Horny! That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why they became known as the Horns!”

  “So we were told,” Blade confirmed.

  “And when Zahner began his outcast splinter group he called them Nomads because they didn’t owe allegiance to anyone,” Jarvis recounted.

  He glanced at Blade. “Thanks for the information. It will make my report complete. I’ll see you later.” He waved and departed, heading toward the northern sentry tower.

  “He’s awful polite for a fascist,” Geronimo remarked bitterly.

  “Move it!” Captain Rice barked.

  The twelve soldiers surrounded the Warriors as Rice led them to a gate in the center of the western side of the stockade.

  Blade saw a multitude of faces turning their way, watching them with hostile interest. What kind of reception would they get if they were tossed in there? After all, none of those people knew them. The three groups had met Hickok and Joshua, but not Geronimo and himself. How would they react to complete strangers in their midst? Considering the circumstances, they would view the Warriors with suspicion and fear.

  They might turn on the two newcomers and beat them to a pulp.

  A pair of troopers stood at attention in front of the gate.

  “Open it!” Rice ordered.

  One of the soldiers removed a key from his left front pocket and unlocked a large padlock attached to a bar in the middle of the gate.

  “I’d like to register a formal complaint,” Geronimo said as the soldier swung the gate open. The other troopers present trained their M-16’s on the gate, effectively preventing anyone inside from bolting.

  “If you have a complaint,” Rice stated, “I’ll take it to the colonel. What is it?”

  Geronimo nodded toward the crowded captives. “After all the trouble you went to just to capture us, the least you could do is supply separate cells with indoor plumbing.”

  One of the soldiers cut their bonds, and they were rudely shoved into the stockade.

  Chapter Eight

  His blasted left shoulder hurt like the dickens!

  Hickok hurried, striving to ignore the pain, his injury the result of his uncontrolled plunge to the road surface after bailing out of the troop transport.

  Things weren’t as bad as they appeared.

  Sure, Blade and Geronimo were still in the hands of the Army. Sure, Joshua was alone in the SEAL a mile or so ahead. Sure, their plans had been shot to heck and back. But there was one bright spot on their horizon.

  He had his Pythons!

  Come what may, he was ready for it!

  He was hastening toward Moore Lake. His only hope of rescuing Blade and Geronimo depended on reaching the SEAL. The soldiers were unaware of the special features incorporated into the vehicle, and the special armaments could be used to devastating effect.

  All he had to do was reach the SEAL.

  That was all.

  If the jokers on his heels didn’t catch him first.

  He knew there were two of them and they’d been on his trail for some time. They’d probably found the point where he left the highway and dove into the woods.

  Let ’em catch up!

  He’d blow the varmints away!

  Or would he?

  Hickok leaned against a tree, slightly winded, checking for any sign of his pursuers.

  Nothing yet.

  What if he did shoot them? he asked himself. The shots would draw other soldiers, maybe even the Wacks, to his position. Gunfire would advertise where he was for anyone interested. So what should he do? Try to outrun them? Hide and hope they passed him by? Or take them out quietly?

  Hickok glanced around, seeking a potential weapon. His eyes alighted on a broken limb five feet away. He walked over and picked up the branch.

  It was about four feet in length and relatively straight, with the thicker end blunt and ragged and the thinner part tapered into some semblance of a point.

  Not much, but it would have to do.

  He resumed running, deliberately applying extra pressure as he pounded his moccasins on the ground. His tracks had to be fresh and clear if his plan was to succeed. The element of surprise had to work in his favor, and it would if the soldiers were intently concentrating on his sign, on his footprints.

  Time passed.

  Hickok came across the spot he’d been searching for, an ideal location for an ambush. To his left stood the charred trunk of a tree, the apparent victim of a lightning strike. Only ten feet of the burnt trunk still stood. To his right, six feet from the tree trunk, was a giant boulder, the side of the boulder facing the trunk essentially flat while the other side was tapered and rough.

  Perfect.

  He ran around the trunk of the tree and stopped dead in his tracks.

  Slowly, carefully, he retraced his steps, walking backwards, meticulously placing his feet in the exact print or impression he’d made while first coming around the trunk. When he w
as between the trunk and the boulder he tensed his leg muscles, took a deep breath, and leaped as far as he could in the direction of the boulder. He landed in front of it and moved to the other side, scrambling up the boulder until he was just below the rim.

  Okay.

  Let them mangy wimps come!

  They did.

  Within minutes, Hickok heard them approaching through the underbrush. For a couple of supposedly professional military types, they made more noise than a pregnant horse! He clutched the branch and patiently waited, unwilling to risk a peek and jeopardize his chances.

  “He’s moving faster,” someone whispered.

  “Think he knows we’re after him?” inquired a second man.

  “No way. The jerk doesn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground,” replied the first voice.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the second man.

  “His tracks stop.”

  “They what?”

  “They stop right here,” said the first man.

  “How can tracks just stop in the middle of nowhere?”

  “They can’t,” stated the first man, evidently the tracker. “I must have made a mistake. Let’s go back a bit.”

  Hickok slowly counted to himself, and when he reached ten he launched his body over the top of the boulder.

  Bingo!

  The two soldiers were almost directly under the gunman, one of them kneeling and examining the tracks while the other was staring at the charred trunk. Something warned the second man, perhaps his sixth sense, but whatever it was he suddenly looked up and tried to bring his M-16 into play.

  Hickok wasn’t Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the Family’s exceptional martial artist, but he had been trained in hand-to-hand combat, spending years under the tutelage of a Family Elder with vast experience at infighting, and the gunman applied his knowledge now as his life hung in the balance. He lashed out with his right leg, his foot catching the standing soldier in the face and knocking him aside. The kneeling tracker glanced up, puzzled, his mouth widening in alarm.