Silence came across the miles. “Can you get her back?”
“Not by direct assault. That city isn’t walled, but it’s over a hundred feet uphill, and they still outnumber us. Storming that . . . even if it worked, the butcher’s bill would be ugly. Nothin’ to stop them killing her right off, either. If I try to besiege them? Well, right now we’ve got them dazed, but they’ll get their wits back, maybe call up overwhelmin’ numbers to finish us off, or block the river back to
Eagle.
”
“You’re giving up?”
“Didn’t say that. There’s something I’m goin’ to try, but it’s damn dangerous, bit of a long shot.”
Another long silence. “I’m leaving things in your hands. You’re the expert.”
“Thanks, Chief. We’ll be in touch tomorrow, one way or another.”
She turned to her command group, where they gathered around the folding table with the photographs of the city made with the carefully hoarded Polaroid.
Town, really,
she thought. For all the massiveness of the monuments and works, the housing didn’t look to have room for more than a few thousand permanent inhabitants. She turned the screw of the oil lantern, and the yellow flame grew brighter. A big tropical moth beat its wings against the glass. She shooed it away and traced a line with her finger.
“This looks like the best approach,” she said, drawing a line up from the south, where the tumbled outlying hills of the plateau came right down to the water. From the picture they were covered with thick scrub.
“This building here is where they were, and this courtyard is where the . . . ceremony took place?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Toffler said. Beads of sweat glistened on his balding scalp. “By the big pond.”
“That’s it, then. Any questions?”
“Ma’am,” Ortiz said, “I still think it’s inappropriate that you lead this operation in person.”
Alston nodded. “Acknowledged, Mr. Ortiz. However, I have certain skills that’ll increase the probability of success. So does everyone else I’ve picked.” From a very large pool of volunteers, surprisingly large.
Amazing how many people will clamor for a chance at probable death. Though I should talk.
She looked at her watch. “Twenty hundred hours. Let’s get going. If they move the hostages, things could get very sticky indeed.”
There were five in the party. Herself and Swindapa, of course. Lieutenant Hendriksson, who came from rural Minnesota and went bow-hunting for deer as a hobby; she had her weapon in her hand, a Bear compound, and a carefully padded quiver over her back. Pulakis and Alonski, cousins from a small mining town in west-central Pennsylvania. They were hunters as well, good shots with the crossbow, and both built alike—square young men the same width from pelvis to broad shoulders, long-armed, moon-faced under cropped black hair, their little blue eyes calm. Both of them could probably bend horseshoes with their hands. It was just as well to have a couple of heavy lifters along.
A final check. Everyone was in loose dark clothing; she and the Fiernan were carrying their twin swords, with the .357, a blowgun, and the sling for distance weapons. Swindapa and Hendriksson had stocking caps to pull over their light hair. Burnt cork for rubbing on face and hands also went around; Alonski finished and began to hand it to her, then halted, wincing in embarrassment.
“I’m covered,” she said dryly. She took up a final piece of equipment from the table, a slender section of hollow tubing, broke it down at the joint in the middle, and tucked it into her harness. “Let’s go.”
She turned to Ortiz. “Lieutenant, in the event of failure, don’t throw good money after bad. Withdraw. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’m.” He didn’t look happy about it, but on the other hand, she didn’t intend to fail.
“Mr. Toffler, you have the signals?”
“Flashlight for Phase One, flare for Phase Two, yes.”
“Then let’s be about it.”
Martha sat in a corner of the cell, head in her hands. It was very quiet. Lisketter lay staring; she hadn’t made a sound or a voluntary movement since she stopped screaming, during the rite. When they’d pulled the jaguar off her and the priest-king in his costume of furs had come to take its place.
Catatonic shock,
she thought. Probably better. The stucco friezes made it plain what Martha’s part in tomorrow’s ceremony would be, the cutting and then the feasting.
Now there was a sound—the intolerable taunting buzz of the ultralight going by overhead, freedom just beyond arm’s reach. Her head sank wearily down on her knees again.
Then the sound altered; shouting came beneath it, a growing roar. After a moment, the faint light of watchfires that shone through the slit above her head grew brighter.
“Here,” Alston whispered into the hot wet darkness of the river.
Slow and muffled, the paddles slid the rubber boat toward the shore. Trees grew almost to the edge, roots grew into the stream, amid thigh-deep water.
Do they have leeches here?
she wondered, as they gripped at branches and made the boat fast. The water felt tepid and stagnant, and smelled of swamp. She went over the side, holding her swords high in one hand, and waded up to dry—drier—land. The cotton of her trousers clung wetly; she slipped the long
katana
back into the carrier across her shoulders and the short
wakizashi
into her belt. Then she took out the pipe, fitted the sections back together, and pushed a round through the plastic mouthpiece and into the tube. It was a steel needle five inches long, with the base set into a plastic bead; a dozen more waited in a case at her waist.
Through a gap in the foliage she could see the riding light of Toffler’s craft, circling over the city ahead. Binoculars brought it closer, although not close enough to see the figure beneath or the night-sight goggles on his face. Not particularly modern ones, Israeli-army surplus bought from a catalog by someone on Nantucket before the Event, but they worked. She brought up the flashlight, braced it against a convenient stem, and blinked it on. Three long, one short . . . and hope that nobody on the plateau was looking in precisely the wrong direction. The undergrowth buzzed with insects, and with slight crinkling and rustling noises. Nightbirds sang or croaked or screeched. Somewhere close a bull ’gator bellowed, announcing his territory to the saurian world.
She waited, controlling her breathing and feeling the sweat slide gelid down her flanks and spine.
Might have to do it twice. . . .
No. The riding light on the aircraft returned the signal. She turned her head; the others had the boat tethered and tucked away out of sight. There was just enough light to see their faces as they approached. She knelt in the damp earth and laid down the photograph, then shone a reddimmed light on it for a second. Swindapa put a hand out to help her steady the curling square of paper, grinning in the dark.
Young
, Alston thought, with a wrench of the heart that she thrust aside with an effort of will. Calm, calm, she could only be centered and calm at this moment.
Don’t try to hurry.
In
Heiho
speed is not the true Way: Speed is the fastness or slowness which occurs when the rhythm is out of synchronization.
“This heading,” she whispered, tucking the aerial shot away again. “Follow me.”
Her head swung, sighting through the trees on pieces of easily recognized higher ground. It was appallingly easy to get lost in the dark, in unfamiliar brush. They moved forward, placing each step carefully. She pushed vines aside, unhooked from thorns, ignored unseen slapping branches that gouged for her eyes. Every thirty seconds she clicked her tongue softly and they all halted, listening.
Good. Quiet.
Swindapa quietest of all, and the others not much worse. Steeper ground, crawling on all fours. The lip of the plateau above them now, cutting off half the sky, and the rooftrees of thatched buildings beyond it. She looked at the compass and the landmarks, wiped the dirt and moisture off her palms on the sleeves of her jacket.
Excellent.
And it was about time for Toffler to—
A crash came from above, muffled by distance. Shouts. They waited; she could hear Swindapa trying to match her long slow breaths. A glow began to silhouette the rooflines ahead of her. She grinned, a silent snarl.
World’s first firebombing.
The homemade napalm would send those roofs of dried grass up like tinder, and they were an easy target, even in the dark.
“Go!” she hissed.
They surged up the final steep section and then sank down again, flattened to an earth roadway of pounded, colored clay. A log retaining wall loomed ahead of them, probably set to prevent erosion along the edge of the plateau. Two guards were walking along it, looking northward toward the fire, talking and pointing.
Most excellent,
Alston thought. These Olmecs seemed to make war to a rigid set of rules and conventions—duels by champions, taking prisoners for sacrifice; she had an intuition that they’d refused to talk because trying to get captives back was an outrageous defiance of custom. Their fighting garb was a clue as well, designed for formalized, almost ritual combat out in the open by day. She intended to wring every possible ounce of advantage out of that.
She touched Swindapa’s shoulder and pointed to the right-hand of the pair; the men were only sixty feet away, and at that range the Fiernan was eye-punching accurate with the sling. An egg-shaped lead shot went into the pouch. Alston raised the mouthpiece of the blowgun to her lips, took a deep breath, aimed . . .
huffft.
The man on the left stopped talking and went stiff. He turned, shaking; she could see his jaws gaping wide in a spastic yawn. Then he toppled forward like a cut-through tree.
God. Must have caught him in the spine.
Swindapa leaped upright as Alston fired. Her body flexed as she swept the sling twice around her head and loosed. A fraction of a second later there was a hard
thock
sound, just as the second guard was drawing breath to shout. He fell across the body of his comrade, leaking gray and pink from a skull shattered above the ear. The Americans dashed forward and flattened to the earth by the bodies.
“Uh-oh,” Hendriksson muttered.
Another man was standing between two bestial statues, looking over toward where the guards should have been. Hendriksson rose to one knee and drew an arrow through her compound bow; the four edges of the hunting broadhead glittered slightly in the distant firelight. The wheels on the tips of the stave flipped over as she drew to the ear and loosed. Another arrow was on the way before the first struck, but the man had time for one strangled shout. They sprinted past him, into a lane between two buildings atop mounds. Alston looked again at her compass and matched it against the memorized image viewed from the air.
“This way. Go, go!”
They ran; speed was more important than stealth now. A quick glance to her right showed the rooftops there aflame, and people swarming about them, forming bucket chains from the ponds and tearing at thatch with hooks on poles. Toffler circled above, the firelight red on the wings of his craft, now and then dropping another Molotov when it looked as if the workers might contain the blaze. The commando headed left, toward the larger building that crowned a mound at the avenue’s southern end. There was a wide doorway, flanked by monumental stone heads, and a spear leaning against one—probably the men here had gone to help fight the flames. Inside was a courtyard surrounded by wooden pillars, with rooms leading off from it, and corridors at the corners. Men stood at the entrance to one. When they saw the raiding party they began to shout; two turned and dashed off down the passageway they guarded.
“There!” Alston shouted.
Crossbows snapped, the bowstring slapped against its guard, Swindapa’s sling whistled. Two men fell, and another three retreated behind the angle of the wall. Their shouts rang loud.
“No help for it,” Alston said grimly, drawing her
katana.
“Go for them.”
They sprinted around the colonnade. The Olmecs were waiting, in the straight confines of the corridor, a splash of color moving in the darkness.
Sekka no atari:
the words flowed through her mind, but it was as if she were watching her own actions and commenting.
Spark of the flint;
to strike without windup, without raising the sword.
It is not possible to deal this blow without diligent practice
, Musashi had said.
She’d had sixteen years of it. Her edge flashed in under the Olmec’s rising elbow, landing on the drum-tight skin just below his floating rib. Thumping jar of impact, elbows down, hands clenching as she ripped the curved blade across his gut. Ignore the falling body, turn as the blade swept around. Swindapa was backing up, parrying the blurring strokes of the stone-edged rake, clang and clatter and bang and rattle in the murk.
Fast,
she thought, as her body reversed stance to point her the other way. The Olmec was very fast. The blade came up, and her body went forward with the downstroke. Another grinding thump as the vertebrae of the neck parted. Hendriksson and the others were swarming silently over the last Indian, shields pinning him back and short swords stabbing. Alston ignored them and sprinted down in pursuit of the two who’d run first. They were bent over a door set into the painted adobe wall, a door made of strong hardwood and secured with a thick hide knot. One of them turned at the last minute to meet the point of her shoulder.
“Ufff!”
Their lungs gasped out air almost together, hers a controlled half-shout to add force to the blow, his an involuntary gasp;
mi no atare
, the body-strike. Even braced for it, she felt as if she’d rammed herself into a wall. The Indian was shorter than she, but half again as heavy and built like a solid block of mahogany. He staggered, though, falling backward. Her legs moved sideways again, sidethrust kick, the most powerful in the Empty Hand repertoire. Usually a bit slow, but here she was in perfect position for it. The heel caught him in the throat just as he started to straighten. She used the leverage of that to kick off and spin around, ignoring him—larynx crushed at least.