Amerika (46 page)

Helmut smiled a cold, reptilian smile. “Wait, sergeant. We have been fired upon, attacked, and we must now defend ourselves with the utmost deliberation.” He turned and marched back to his command post. Within minutes the base was fully mobilized for attack.

Devin was saying goodbye to his father when they heard the distant rattle of gunfire.

“It’s started,” Ward said, and he and Jeffrey ran to the car.

“I’ll be right there,” Devin said. He embraced his father a final time and then put his arm around Billy and led him aside.

“You’re going to fight,” Billy said. Not protesting, just stating a hard fact.

“Sometimes you have to,” Devin said. “But I still believe the best kind of resistance is nonviolent. It’s sort of funny actually, we’ve got to fight to get on the air so that I can tell people not to fight.”

“What do you want people to do?” the boy asked. “Don’t go along. America will only be divided if we let it. We can ignore their boundaries. We can refuse to participate. We can own ourselves. That’s the best thing of all.”

Billy bit his lip. “Why does it have to be you?” Devin held him close, feeling his hair soft on his cheek. “I just happen to be somebody they’ll listen to,” he said. “This has been a long time coming. Maybe it’ll be the start of something. They’ll know what to do. I’m just going to remind them.”

Billy turned his head away. “People will be killed. Maybe you.”

Devin nodded slowly. “Freedom has a price, like everything else. Some people will die, but at least they’ll have died for something. I guess you can’t five for something unless you think it’s important enough to die for.”

The boy was blinking back tears. “I want to go.” “Next time.”

“Then don’t you go, not without me.”

“I won’t be without you, Billy. I’ll never be without you, or you without me. You stay here and help your grandfather. He needs someone strong like you. This is a good little town. If things work out, maybe we could settle down here.”

“Wherever you want is okay with me,” his son said. “Just don’t leave me. Please, Dad. I love you.”

Billy’s tears flowed freely now. Devin saw Ward and Jeffrey, waiting in the car, ready for battle; his time was up, for this morning, maybe forever.

“I love you too, Billy, more than you can know. I love your brother, too, and wish he was here. Try to remember one thing. It may not make sense now, but it will someday. I couldn’t love you this much if I didn’t love freedom more.”

He kissed the boy, held him close, kissed him again, then turned and hurried to the car. As they drove away, he allowed himself to look back and saw his father and son, arm in arm, waving goodbye.

The heavy iron gate lurched open and the first motorcycles shot out, followed by rumbling tanks and glistening armored personnel carriers. The SSU’s jet-black helicopters rose gracefully into the morning sun and hovered, like bumblebees buzzing near a flower, while the unit’s awesome ground force uncoiled like a huge snake along the road to Milford.

Helmut Gurtman smiled as he watched from his command helicopter, for he saw beauty in the power of his machines and the precision of his men. He had waited a long time for this; as he had destroyed the squalid exile camp, now he would smash the smug little town that had bedeviled him for too many months. He had left behind only a token force to guard the base, for he wanted the full iron fist of his might to pound down the people of Milford. They had almost escaped him, but this morning’s attack by the boy on the motorcycle had provided the excuse he needed: he had been fired upon and now he would fire back, with a fury these people would never forget.

Gurtman had only contempt for Andrei Denisov’s “new policy.” As a soldier in the field he knew there was only one policy, as old as war itself: the power of the conqueror that forced the submission of the conquered. Men won wars in order to enslave their enemies, not to quibble with them.

He watched contentedly as his first units entered the town. The tanks and attack vehicles unleashed a deadly barrage of machine-gun fire, shattering windows and immobilizing any would-be defenders. Within minutes
his
forces occupied the town square. It was here where Helmut expected serious resistance. As the merciless machine-gun fire continued, his men leaped from their vehicles and began to kick down doors, firing as they went.

Helmut watched with pride; it was a textbook attack, perfectly executed.

Except his troops found no one to vanquish; there was no one around.

He saw his men pull back from the stores, confused and huddled in the street. He soon received radio confirmation of what he had guessed: “No resistance, sir. Nobody is here.”

“They’re in the houses,” Helmut shouted. “Search the houses!”

As his men fanned out along the tree-lined residential streets that opened off Milford’s town square, Helmut ordered his pilot to land. His anger was rising; Ms desire to hover god-like above the attack was not so keen as his lust to plunge headlong into the heat and joy of battle.

His helicopter had barely touched down when he leaped out and ran to the nearest house. He found his men inside, puzzled, clumsily knocking over antique furniture as they searched for victims who were not there.

“Search the cellar!” Helmut commanded. One of his men opened a door to a dark basement, and tossed a grenade down the stairs. The house reverberated, windows shattered, and when the debris settled, one of the soldiers ventured into the cellar and returned to report, “Nothing but stored things down there. Canned tomatoes, peaches, ail kinds of stuff, blown to smithereens.”

Helmut Went out to the street. Up and down its length, the story was the same: his men could find no one.

A lieutenant rushed up to him. “They’re hiding, sir,” he reported nervously. “What shall we do?”

“Find them,” Helmut said coldly. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “Burn one house on each street.”

He watched with little satisfaction as his men rushed to obey his order. Within minutes, four houses were ablaze and smoke rose high above the town.

Helmut received a radio message from one of his patrol helicopters.

“Major? Are you there?” The sound of heavy static and machine-gun fire almost overpowered the radio operator.

“Yes, what is it?”

“We’ve found them. They’ve fired on us.”

“Where?”

“In the gram silos, south of the town.”

“Let’s go,” Helmut shouted, and leaped into his helicopter to lead the attack.

Amanda became aware of the gunfire at the same moment that Jackie left Justin’s room and ran downstairs to ask what was happening.

“I don’t know,” Amanda admitted.

“Don’t you care?” her daughter asked.

Amanda shut her eyes. “Maybe I’d rather not know,” she said. It was true. She knew that Devin was out there, starting his revolution, risking his life, pursuing his mad or noble destiny, and she did not want to imagine what his fate might be.

Someone knocked on the door. After a moment, Amanda opened it, and found two members of their defense force detail there, with a young woman whose face was somehow familiar. “She says she’s supposed to be here, Mrs. Bradford,” one of the soldiers said.

Amanda stared at the woman in confusion. “I’m Kimberly Ballard,” the newcomer said. “Devin sent me.”

“Let her in,” Amanda said, and Kimberly stepped inside, looking terribly weary.

“How is he?” Amanda asked. “Devin?”

“I don’t know,” Kimberly said. “We were up all night, getting ready for the . . . the attack. He wouldn’t let me go with them. He told me to come here. I almost got caught; it’s terrible in town.”

“You must be tired,” Amanda said. “You can have my room.”

Then Jackie, who had silently watched this exchange, pointed toward the window. “What’s that?” she cried.

They looked out the window and saw the smoke rising above the town, less than a mile away. “My God, Mom, it’s like a war,” Jackie cried. “What if they come here?”

The three of them went onto the porch for a better view, and the young defense force lieutenant who was in charge of their protection rushed up to them. “Please, ladies, stay inside,” he said.

“What’s happening?” Amanda asked.

“It looks like the SSU is attacking the town,” the soldier said.

“That can’t be,” Amanda said. “I talked to my husband last night. Colonel Denisov gave orders for the SSU to stay on its base.”

The lieutenant gazed again at the four pillars of smoke rising over the town. “Ma’am, it looks like those orders have been disobeyed,” he said.

“They won’t bother us, will they?” Jackie demanded.

The lieutenant looked at Jackie with a quiet resolve on his face. “I hope not, miss. Now, if you’ll all please come inside.”

When the women had returned indoors, the lieutenant ran to the communications truck parked in the driveway. Soon he had the force’s Chicago headquarters on the line. “We’re under attack,” he shouted. “Repeat, under attack. SSU forces are in full assault on the town of Milford. We need help!”

As Gurtman’s finely honed troops raced toward the silos south of Milford, a ragtag band of nearly a hundred townspeople and Exiles finally began its attack on the SSU base to the north of town.

Two ancient Caterpillar bulldozers, borrowed from a nearby construction site, emerged from a ravine and went rumbling toward the fence surrounding the base, drawing heavy fire from the twenty-odd soldiers who had been left behind to guard the barracks. As the defenders fired furiously at the bulldozers, a hundred men, townspeople and Exiles, scattered around the perimeter of the barracks, attacking the fence with explosives. By the time the first bulldozer crashed through the fence, a dozen explosions had shattered its perimeter and the invaders were pouring into the compound, firing as they came.

The outnumbered SSU troops fought back with then-superior firepower. Devin, Jeffrey, Clayton, and Alan were soon pinned down behind a burning truck. Devin and Jeffrey fired back with M-16s; Alan carried only a doctor’s black bag.

“Haven’t got a grenade in there, do you?” Devin yelled.

“Scalpel, just in case things really get tough.”

“Where the hell did Alethea say the damn communications center was?” Clayton asked.

“We got separated from her,” Jeffrey said. “I t
hi
n
k
she said it’s in that middle barracks, across from Gurtman’s apartment.”

Devin stuck his head up, then hit the dirt as another burst of automatic-weapons fire raked the truck. “It’s times like these that make me wonder whether it would’ve been easier to put a message in a bottle and float it down the Missouri,” Devin said, deadpan.

The towering grain silos stood like sentinels on the outskirts of Milford, monuments to the county’s more prosperous past. The concrete loading pads, grain cars,
and storage silos that surrounded them formed a natural fortress.

Helmut, high above them, nodded with approval. It was a good place for the townspeople to make their stand; resistance always made the game more interesting, the victory more sweet. He nodded for one of Ms attack helicopters to go in for a closer look. It dropped within a hundred feet of the nearest silo, when suddenly a barrage of sniail-arms fire blazed from one of the grain cars. The helicopter shuddered, struggled for an instant, then crashed and exploded into a mighty bail of flame.

“Pul! back,” Helmut commanded. “Wait for our ground forces.”

Ten minutes passed before his tanks and attack vehicles could traverse the narrow road that led from the town south to the silos, but Helmut waited patiently, savoring the battle to come.

His tranquillity, however, was shattered by -another radio message, an emergency broadcast from his base.

“We are under attack,” it said. “Outnumbered . .

Helmut gasped, then bellowed out the order for everyone to return to the barracks.

Chapter 17=

As
soon as
Peter got the call from Fred Sittman he raced up the stairs to the helicopter pad atop the Federal Building. Within minutes, Sittman himself arrived, piloting an old U.S. Army chopper, and Peter scrambled aboard. Four old transport helicopters hovered nearby, packed with armed guardsmen.

“Our equipment’s no match for theirs—but I bet our boys are,” Sittman declared.

“Dammit, Fred, what the hell’s that madman Gurtman up to?”

“I dunno. He’s not answering our messages. But according to my boys at your house, he’s flat-out declared war on the town of Milford.”

Peter slumped in the co-pilot’s seat. “My God,” he moaned. “Amanda and Jackie and Justin are there ...”

“They’re not alone,” Sittman assured him. “Five of my boys are with ’em. They say there’s a lot of shooting going on, but so far nobody’s bothered them.”

Peter looked down as the outskirts of Omaha fell away beneath them. He knew it was at least a thirty-minute flight to Milford.

“Hurry,” he pleaded. “Please hurry!”

As the SSU began its sudden retreat from the silos, its force was some three
mil
es south of Milford and had to pass through the town and go another four miles north to reach its base. Under normal conditions the tanks and attack vehicles might have made the journey in twelve to fifteen minutes but the conditions they encountered were far from normal.