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Article Excerpt
Last month, Charlie Finlay took us back to the days of the American Revolution. This month he takes us into the future with a decidedly different take on matters of State....
IN THE TEXAS PANHANDLE, the heat made everything shimmer. Still, the blur on the horizon was definitely a convoy of trucks. They rolled over the old broken highway, kicking up spumes of dust that the wind bowled north, as if even the dirt were eager to escape such a desolate stretch of land.
Marine Captain Mungus lowered his binoculars. "Sanders," he said to the driver of his open-top humvee. "Remind me why we're out here in this god-fucked waste."
Sanders, whose left eye socket was covered by a dirty patch of gauze where he'd been slashed by shrapnel, closed the book he was reading, and lifted his head. "Because no one else is crazy enough to come here."
"Right," Mungus said. He looked around at the rest of his Recon unit, vehicles and men spread out in the shade of the abandoned rest stop on the side of the old highway. "So what's that convoy doing out here?"
"Reason says they came this way because they didn't expect to see anything or anyone either."
"Mm-hmm." Mungus looked toward his flagtank, and to the tattered banners that snapped at the end of its antenna. "Is that still the stars-and-stripes we're flying?"
"Blood red, bone white, and true blue, sir. Bit ragged and faded, but still proud and free."
"You think they've seen it?"
"Well, as we've seen them, they've had a fair chance to see us," Sanders said, which wasn't quite true, as their unit was sitting still, and aside from the sparks thrown up by the welders trying to patch the shielding on one of the three tanks, they didn't stand out in any way from the dusty brown landscape around them. A fair streak made him add, "Although if they had seen it, they would likely be reversing their direction."
"Maybe they're desperate men," Mungus offered.
"Could be," Sanders replied skeptically. "Maybe they've seen those Arklahoma women, since they're coming from that way."
"I was married to one once--desperate about sums it up."
That bad marriage, along with no job and no prospects, was what sent him out to the desert to join Recon. Best decision he'd ever made. He stood in his seat, knuckled the grit from his eyes, and peered through the binoculars again. He counted fourteen, maybe sixteen, trailer trucks in the convoy, with a couple mounted guns on pickups, roving as flankers for an escort, and a fuel tanker riding in the middle of the line.
It didn't make sense. There was nothing out here but ghost towns and tumbleweed, not all the way to the Mexican gobernador's base in Albuquerque. Which was why Mungus brought his outfit out here to hide after their last raid north to the rebel states for food and fuel.
He lowered the binoculars. The sun's glare made him squint, but he could see his own troops well enough. The more alert had also noticed the clouds of dust and were stirring the rest from their usual afternoon torpor. They amounted to barely a hundred and fifty men, not even company size, although they still carried battalion colors. And he only had three tanks, and one of those useless with the shielding peeled off, plus a half dozen of the two-man dee-pee-vees and a motley fleet of LAVs and humvees. Some of those were sitting dead until they could refuel.
They were supposed to protect the open roads, but the fuel truck in the center was too much to resist.
He picked up the radio. "Wake up, Recon. We're deploying for Operation Bake Sale."
There were shouts along the shell of the rest stop, and men tugging on equipment as they ran toward their vehicles. Sanders sank down in his seat and mumbled, "I don't like it."
Mungus ignored him.
"We're going to blockade both sides of the highway, just west of the bridge," he said into the radio. "Lopez, you've got the road. Leave one lane open, with room to squeeze by the tanks."
"Yes, sir," came the rough voice of the platoon sergeant. Both tanks rattled toward the road, followed by a group of humvees.
"Giuliani, take your bottle rockets up on that hill, and that hill there." He stood on the back of his seat and pointed. Giuliani was a small man who looked like a bookkeeper, with a pocket protector to keep leaky pens from ruining his one good shirt; he leaned out of the window of his LAV at the far end of the lot and nodded confirmation.
"And Guns," Mungus said.
"Yeah?" Giuliani replied over the radio.
"I want snipers spread out along the length of that convoy once they stop."
"Like I don't know my job?" the voice came back.
"That's 'don't know my job, SIR.'"
Giuliani saluted Mungus from his window as the LAV rolled down the exit ramp, followed by more of the eight-wheeled vehicles. They bounced over the old curb and crossed the hills toward their position.
"Talley?" he said, calling the last of his sergeants, also the oldest and most experienced.
The radio crackled. "Yes, sir?"
"Sprinkle surface mines across the riverbed, make them think twice about trying to go off-road that way. Then go do that thing you do so well."
"On it."
The dee-pee-vees, little two-man go-carts with guns mounted on back, zipped off behind the old rest stop and out of...
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