She thought about running to the infirmary but wasn’t sure whether you were allowed to run in . . .
“my condition.”
She walked, briskly, to the infirmary.
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER . FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. 9:45 A.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. DECEMBER 11.
The first non-medical person to hear the news, besides Heather, was Sherry, which just seemed right; this particular infirmary liked her as a gofer, so she was frequently their runner and gradually picking up nursing, record keeping, and all the other things that might make her useful, to add to her old social-work skills. When Heather saw her rocketing by the door, she just stopped her and told her.
Sherry grinned. “Wow. And you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t get morning sickness, but I now know that a lot of people don’t. And I’m a big girl, as you may have noticed; Lenny was small because of his condition but he said his whole family was short and skinny, so it’s probably not a real big baby, and even if it is, there’s plenty of room anyway. I might not even start to show for another few weeks, the doctor says. But he had enough working gadgets to be able to tell me, yep, I’ve got a healthy little person inside me.”
The younger woman hugged her. “Heather, I know for you it’s probably a pain in the ass—”
“Or somewhere around there. Eventually.”
“Pbbt. You are walking proof that the world is going to go on, and the human race isn’t beat yet, and that’s how I’m going to look at it. Listen, I’ve been seeing a nice guy named Everett, he’s a civilian contractor guy, used to be part of base security, and him and me just got quarters together—we were thinking of throwing a housewarming—can we throw you a little party? Just something to celebrate, because there’s something to celebrate? Here it is two weeks before Christmas; why don’t we let a little happiness into the world? Say yes or I’ll keep talking till you do.”
Heather said yes. On the way back to her office, she noticed that Benning was kind of pretty, this time of year, when the sun was shining.
TWO DAYS LATER . COLUMBUS. GEORGIA. 7:15 P.M. EST. FRIDAY. DECEMBE R 13.
“Car bearings work okay with corn oil, especially if you never go faster’n twenty,” the driver explained, “and it turned out that the historical-re-creation guys had a guy who knew wheelwrighting. So he put the wheels on this old school bus—’scuse me—” He reached up with the long pole and lifted the grapple off the tow rope; momentum carried the old school bus forward, and he set the grapple down on the next eastbound cable. “And took off the cab roof so I could use this here pole, and the only steering we need to do is to not hit the posts and not hit the other buggies. And the old thing rolls along like a kid’s quacky duck.”
Heather watched idly as the operator kept the cable buggy moving; he’d become good at a craft that hadn’t existed two months ago and wouldn’t have existed if an engineer who volunteered at a museum hadn’t happened to be the main restorer on an old steam thresher, and realized it had an engine big enough to drive the cable system. Allie and Arnie were chattering away, talking and pointing at things, in the seat behind her; at least it looked like they were happy with each other again.
Could be the problem was all in Arnie’s mind.
I feel pretty good myself.
Their first trip out of the DRET compound since getting here, and it was for a party.
The party itself was pleasantly, predictably dull; everyone congratulated Heather and looked for a nice way to say that it was a shame Lenny couldn’t be here for this. She was asked if she was hoping to have a boy or a girl (“Yes,” she would say, “it would be so much easier than having a monkey or a platypus”); if she had thought about names (“Leonardo if it’s a boy—that was Lenny’s full name—and Riley if it’s a girl—that was my mother’s name”), and if she felt well (“Strong as a moose, let’s not start pretending I’m a blushing flower now!”)
Most of the conversation, though, was about the upcoming move to Athens. The state of Georgia was donating the new TNG District, and the campus of the University of Georgia would be the capital buildings for the foreseeable future. The move was already under way now that the Corps of Engineers, under the hasty tutelage of Georgia’s dozens of old railroad buffs, had pieced together a viable pathway for the three operating steam locomotives that they’d managed to find. Conveniently, the line that hauled coal to the U of Georgia power plant was still in business, so there would be access directly to the campus/government buildings.
They were using the lines through Atlanta, because they needed only minor repairs for the moment. Given that Atlanta might not be re-inhabited for generations, the Corps was planning to rehab the connection from Bishop to Madison, because rail traffic between Benning and Athens, a major military base and the new national capital, with a war on, was anticipated to be very heavy.
There were two other good reasons for doing the project, according to one pleasantly drunk young engineer that Heather found herself talking to—it cut a hundred or so miles out of the trip, and whereas Atlanta was dead and couldn’t possibly do any legislators any favors to get the rail traffic, Macon was functioning pretty well.
Everett’s bread and hummus were delicious, and a French chiropractor did talk Heather into the single glass of red wine “for the iron, to be sure, it’s just for the iron, and you don’t have to enjoy it even one little bit, if you are too American for that!”
She’s probably right, but how will I ever explain it to Lenny if I give birth to a Frenchman?
Much of the time she felt like she was trying to remember the whole party so she could tell Lenny about it afterward, but it felt good rather than sad.
Lenny, I am going to bore our child
stiff
with reminiscences about you, guy.
On her way back from the outhouse, Arnie took her arm and guided her into the darkness of the side yard. “Allie’s bringing Everett around to here. You know what his security company guards?”
“I don’t know, nukes?”
“Some of those. Mostly, though, for some years they’ve had the contract to run and guard the special facility where they keep the politically awkward cases.”
“Which are what?”
“Well, originally . . . School of the Americas was here—the place where America trained right-wing dictators and their secret police, and sometimes helped them plan coups. There was also a research arm, where DIA and some other agencies interrogated Soviet or Cuban agents that we knew the coms wouldn’t want back. And now and then, the facility held American radicals, usually ones who had been ‘disappeared’ while overseas. Basically the Department of Never Seen Again.”
She shuddered. “I thought those days were over, but since there’s a war on—”
Arnie held up a finger. Allie and Everett joined them in the dark. Sherry’s boyfriend was a very dark-skinned African-American, tall and fit, with close-cropped hair and beard. He didn’t bother with formalities. “Okay, you didn’t hear this from me. But it’s true. The secret holding facility has a couple new guests—one of them is General McIntyre, who used to be the base commander. He’s there because he wouldn’t arrest and hold the other one—”
“Graham Weisbrod,” Heather breathed. “Is he all right?”
“Except that he’s rightfully the President of the United States, and he’s in jail, he’s just fine.” Everett glanced around them. “Look, I don’t know what it’s about, and I ain’t a lawyer, but I don’t think the Continuity Coordinator gets to pick the president, or decide when the Constitution applies. That sounds all backward to me. And I took an oath back when I was in the service myself, to support and defend the Constitution—not to work for any old guy who said he might give us our Constitution back sometime. You understand? I just . . . it’s not right. So here’s the other thing you didn’t hear from me. General Phat, I guess, doesn’t want to have McIntyre and Weisbrod in his secret stockade, so they’re going to move them up to someplace outside Athens. Seems to me that what with passing through a lot of empty country . . .” He shrugged.
“If we wanted to do something, would you help us?” Heather asked.
“I’d sure want to be a guy that you could ask.”
“We’re asking,” Allie said.
“Then I guess I’ll try to help. Enough for tonight, see you in a day or so when I have an excuse to bump into one of you. I’ll let you know through Sherry.” He vanished into the crowd; Heather went the other way. Arnie and Allie were about to have a quarrel, she could tell, and she preferred to be well away from them before it started.
Well, I suppose Arnie has a point. Being volunteered for a coup, or a countercoup, without being asked first,
is
outside the usual boyfriendly duties.
FOUR DAYS LATER . IN THE RUINS OF ATLANTA. GEORGIA. 1:15 P.M. EST. TUESDAY. DECEMBER 17.
“I feel like I’m in a damned costume,” Heather complained to Arnie.
“We all are,” he said, pulling his hat lower and making sure the bandana was still up around his face.
Sergeant Rogers chuckled. “That’s good, a costume. I guess it is.” He too wore jeans; a big flannel shirt (to hide the body armor, just unwrapped that morning and not yet deteriorating); the broadest hat he could find, low over his face; and a bandana covering his nose and mouth. “I guess we look like the James gang or something.” That little chuckle of his was beginning to creep Heather out. “I just want to thank you for letting me be in on this.” He and nine Rangers from Third Battalion were the nucleus of the force; Everett, who had once been a Ranger himself, hadn’t had much choice about whom he could recruit on four days’ notice.
Heather had persuaded them to let her come in as an added gun. She hadn’t mentioned that she was pregnant. Everett hadn’t ratted her out about that either, or else the Rangers had figured if she didn’t care, why should they? Whatever the reason, she was grateful; she didn’t think she could have stood to be on the sidelines for this.
Everett sat now, quiet and staring into space;
everyone waits for action their own way,
Heather thought.
Bambi wants to chatter like a mad sorority girl, I get cross and whiny, and as far as I can tell, Rogers thinks everything is slightly funny and there for his amusement.
“Checklist, Plan B,” Everett said, looking around at the five Rangers who were present. “It’s still possible that somebody’s been turned or caught, or something big came up at the last minute. The steam train from Columbus is supposed to be flying two American flags on the front and back cars, with two red flags on the front of the locomotive. One of our guys is in charge of those flags, and his backup is one of ours, too. Check?”
“Check,” they chorused.
“So if it’s one American flag down, Rogers?”
“Package is not on the train but everything else is fine, so we pull down the block from the track, let them roll by, and if it’s safe there’ll be a note dropped from the last car.”
“Two American flags down, Machado?”
The short skinny man did not move from the crate where he sat with legs spraddled, but his voice was loud and clear. “Package is not on the train, we’re blown, run for it.”
“Extra American flag, Diem?”
“Package is on the train, proceed with operation, expect surprises or difficulties.”
“Extra red flag on the front, everybody?”
“Come in prepared to shoot, sir.”
Everett had them recite, more times than Heather could count, “Two American two red, go by plan. One down, let it pass. Two down, run. Three up, make it up. Three red, fight.”
Everett had rolled off two trains ago, reset a switch, and hung a flag; hours later, Heather and the main team had dropped out of a boxcar and hurried under cover while everybody up front was busy dealing with backing the train out of the siding it should not have gone into. Since the engineer had already been hitting the brakes after seeing the flag, and there was literally at that point not another train for miles, there was no danger, just a loss of time; since Heather and the rest of the team were not officially on the train, they were not missed when it rolled again.
Now they waited at the chosen interception point, where an observer—Sherry, taking her turn up there—in a high window could see the train far off, but the oncoming train wouldn’t see the barricade of semi trailers across the tracks too soon. The objective was to have them come to a dead halt so that the locomotive, and the five cars carrying security forces and the prisoners, stood just opposite this warehouse.
“Train,” Sherry sang out. Everyone stood up, stretched, reached for gear, and froze when Sherry added, “Three American flags and three red flags.”
They’ve got Graham, things have changed, expect to fight.
Heather felt the pit of her stomach roll over.
Hey, Leonardo,
(she didn’t know why but she was sure he was a boy),
hang on, kid.
The time before they heard the steam train’s whistle screaming, and the grinding of wheels on rails as the brakes tried to take hold, was long; the time before the train came to a halt, where they had planned, longer still. They had moved forward into their positions by the doors; three Rangers had darted across the tracks to take up their places behind Dumpsters and wrecked cars. Rogers barked, “Go!”
Heather was with Everett and the slim man named Machado; they were tasked with rushing the second car, where Weisbrod and McIntyre were supposed to be, if their informant was right and if no plans had changed in the interim. Heather was just putting her hand on the door handle when it slid open. Kim, the Ranger on the train in charge of securing the car, had opened it. “In,” he said, and they dashed in.
There was a dead soldier propped in one corner. Heather had a nasty moment when she saw Graham and General McIntyre lying face down on the floor, but Weisbrod said, “We’re all right, Sergeant Kim is just making sure we stay that way.”
Kim gestured at the dead man. “He said he was sent to secure the prisoners, and I told him they weren’t his prisoners anymore, but he was mine. So he went for his weapon. Bad move. I think he was Georgia Guard. So I made our special guests lie down flat, locked the doors, and waited for you. There was some shooting up forward, but my orders were to just hold this car.”