Arc Riders (25 page)

“
Rebecca, come support me now!
”

One of the bullets that hit the driver had keyholed, spinning most of the man’s breastbone through his chest cavity. Both
lungs were collapsed, and his heart had been chopped into hash. There was no carotid pulse. The FM radio, flung into the darkness
through the disintegrating windshield, continued to make the night shimmer with a rap song.

Carnes swallowed and slogged toward where she saw Pauli hunching on their side of the road embankment. The acoustic pistol
was buttoned into the side pocket of her tunic. She took it out as she moved, bending forward to stay as low as she could
without crawling.

The lieutenant reloaded and fired again. This time he was shooting in five- or six-round bursts, but his fire was no more
accurate than it had been initially. He was more danger to the team than he was to the enemy, though at least his tracers
and muzzle flashes would draw the hostiles’ attention.

Carnes reached the low embankment, then raised her head just to eye level. The night had a hazy clarity through her faceshield,
as if the landscape were drawn with sticks of pale pastels. A third rifle fired from the rising slope across the road. The
bullets slapped angrily against the truck’s sheet metal. The lieutenant dived for cover beneath the vehicle.

The shooter was only a blur to Carnes, even though the muzzle flashes told her exactly where to look. She remembered Pauli
had ordered her to use thermal imaging. She switched the faceshield to infrared, saw all three of the attackers clearly through
the shielding vegetation, and pointed her pistol at the nearest of them some fifty feet away.

She pulled the trigger. The pistol quivered. The ambusher, unaffected by the acoustic weapon, continued firing at the truck.
So did his two companions.

Carnes clicked her trigger twice more, then held it down for several seconds. The grip of the acoustic pistol grew alarmingly
hot, but the riflemen shot without pausing.

“Rebecca, wait!” Weigand ordered. “Wait till I tell you when!”

Carnes crouched and looked at the big ARC Rider. He was struggling to make some adjustment on his EMP generator. She didn’t
see what good a magnetic pulse would do against nonelectronic weapons.

One of the ambushers got up and started to cross the road, firing his automatic rifle from the hip. Before Carnes could react,
the fellow pitched backward unconscious from an invisible blow. Gerd Barthuli was still alive and clearly more alert than
Carnes seemed to be.

“Rebecca, get ready,” Weigand ordered. He lifted his torso over the embankment, his EMP generator shouldered. “Now!”

One of the ambushers let out a terrible scream and leaped to his feet. Carnes swung her acoustic pistol in a desperate arc
as though it were a fly swatter, mashing the trigger down. The man grunted and doubled up.

The third rifleman shifted his stance and shot at Weigand. They were close enough together to throw rocks at one another.

Three spurts of rock in an asphalt matrix blasted up from the road surface; one of the bullets retained enough integrity to
ricochet outward with a banshee howl. Then that shooter, too, screamed, turned, and tried to run away. Carnes aimed at the
man’s bent back and again held her trigger down. The ambusher flung his arms out and sprawled on his face.

The acoustic pistol burned Carnes’ hand. She dropped it. It hissed on the damp soil.

Pauli stood, drawing his acoustic pistol. He held the EMP generator in his left hand.

Gerd was standing beside the truck. The lieutenant stuck his M16 over the hood of the vehicle to fire another blind burst.
The analyst wrenched the weapon away from him.

The ambusher lying on the feeder road was a Caucasian in American fatigues. He was breathing stertorously. Carnes pried the
M16 from his unconscious grip. The barrel was hot from continuous firing.

Carnes pushed through the brush to the other two ambushers, who were lying close together. Pauli followed her. “The acoustic
pistols won’t work through vegetation,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “They converge at the first change in the refractive
index in the line of sight, whether it’s a leaf or a man’s skull. I had to get them to jump up so that you could get a clear
shot at them.”

“EMP did that?” Carnes said. Her throat felt as though it had been sandpapered.

The other ambushers were blacks, again carrying M 16s and wearing American uniforms. One of them was a Spec 4. He held his
stomach and cursed in a desperate voice. Weigand kicked his head back with a jolt from his acoustic pistol.

“Not EMP,” Weigand said. “I modified the generator so that it could also induce a mild current in human sensory nerves at
a distance of fifty meters or so. It’s quite harmless, but it makes you feel as though your skin’s being dipped in acid.”

Barthuli and the lieutenant joined them. “They killed Benji deader’n shit, didn’t they?” the lieutenant said. “Jesus, Jesus
Christ.”

“They were Americans,” Carnes said. “They are.”

“Yeah,” agreed the lieutenant. “Waiting for something with a Red Cross to come by. Hoped they’d get drugs. Morphine, Demerol,
Percodan… Jesus, Jesus Christ.”

He shook his head. “I guess we better take them in, hand them over to the MPs at the gate. Notice they didn’t risk
their
sweet necks getting involved.”

The lieutenant looked from Weigand to Carnes, the only one of the team wearing rank tabs, and added, “Or I suppose we could
shoot them here, Major?”

“We take them in,” said Rebecca Carnes. She wanted to cry, but her eyes were as dry as her throat was.

March 17, 1967

T
he Old Executive Office Building was perhaps the most ornately beautiful structure in the entire district. In Grainger’s time,
everybody had called it OEOB, unless you worked there—then you called it the White House. That was what your business card
said if you were on the National Security Council Staff, which was housed there.

Walking with Nan Roebeck through the wrought-iron gates and down the broad stone steps into the courtyard, then up more steps
and into the foyer where three guards waited, Grainger experienced a déjà vu of unsettling proportions. In the marble-floored
foyer, he walked her right up to the desk and presented his 1967 driver’s license to the guard attending to visitors.

“Mr. Calandine. He’s expecting us at 2100 hours,” Grainger said softly. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Nan Roebeck,
in a period-correct skirt and blouse, fumble in her 1967-style huge handbag for her ID.

The ID check wasn’t by computer, that was one difference from Grainger’s memories. The guard consulted a list and then punched
an office phone number on an archaic base unit with square buttons that lit when depressed. He spoke into the handset and
then hung up.

By then, Nan’s ID was on the high mahogany counter. The guard took it, checked it against his clipboard, and pulled out two
clip-on badges with large Vs for
Visitor
printed in red on them.

“Wear these. Step this way.”

Now came the weapons check. It too was primitive, cursory. A hand search of Nan’s purse detected nothing. They waltzed through
an ancient security arch that was set for metal only and was unable to recognize any of Grainger’s acoustic weapons as dangerous.

Once through the arch, the guard said, “Down the hall to your left. Take a right. The elevator’s halfway down on your left.”

And they were in. The elevator doors were painstakingly chased brass. The floor buttons were round and stayed depressed when
you pushed them.

When the elevator doors opened onto the second-floor landing, the high-ceilinged corridor was empty. Doors on either side
were closed, the moldings around and above them as ornate as were the stairs behind. Nan Roebeck walked over to the winding
stairs and touched the wrought-iron and gold leaf and mahogany. “This is… beautiful.”

“Best in town. The doorknobs here all have the original insignia of some service or office on them—”

Grainger heard footsteps and shut his mouth. The man coming toward them wasn’t Calandine, but his stride was purposeful.

“For Mr. Calandine?” said the man, putting out his hand but not giving his name. He was six-foot-six, with a bushy black mustache
and a huge helmet of curly black hair. “This way.”

Grainger was getting the feeling he was in over his depth. Roebeck cast him a furtive look. There was nothing to do but follow
along, down the corridor, around a corner, and through a door into an anteroom.

“We’re meeting in my boss’s office,” said the tall guy. Grainger nodded without listening as a secretary was introduced and
held out her hand, which he shook. Behind her desk was the cagle-headed seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, on a CIA-blue
wall.

“Would you come this way?” said the woman, and: “Coffee? Tea? A cold drink?”

Through two double doors they went, and he heard Nan ask for coffee, so he did the same. “Black, please,” to cover his consternation.
They were, without doubt, in the CIA director’s office in OEOB. The paintings behind the huge desk and beyond the football-field
conference table were from the national collection, the furniture was historical, and the ambience was all power.

The tall guy said, “Take a scat,” and motioned toward the conference table. The chairs at the table were dark blue, covered
with leather hides of actual animals turned into furniture. Strange to be back in that sort of milieu. Their guide smiled,
and the huge mustache quivered. “We have a couple more people coming, so let’s wait.”

The tall man didn’t want to make small talk. Okay. Where the hell was Calandine?

The coffee came, in Lenox cups with the agency seal. Spooky wasn’t the word for this place. This was someplace Grainger had
never been, in any timeline, and had no interest in being. This was an abode of elephants. Elephants can crush you underfoot
without even noticing.

Grainger kept his eyes on a painting of an ancient boat in sunset. Rocbeck, beside him, kicked him gently under the table.
The tall man sat down opposite him and opened a folder containing an empty legal pad.

You couldn’t ask what was going on. You had to wait. He hoped to hell she knew that. Under the table, there was plenty of
room to slide his acoustic pistol out of his pocket and hold it one-handed between his thighs. Shoot your way out of the NSC?
From the second floor? Not likely. But he had to do something….

“Mr. Calandine will be joining us?”

“Not necessary,” said the black mustache, twitching above the tall man’s lips like an animal in pain.

“I wonder if you could tell us—” Nan Roebeck began as the doors opened again and two more men stepped in, one florid-faced
blond with a khaki suit and a briefcase, the second short and rotund in a blazer and slacks, with hair combed back from a
pronounced widow’s peak and a huge head with Germanic features.

“That’s what we’re here to do, ma’am,” said the khaki suit, slapping his briefcase down on the table.

The tall guy nodded. There were to be no introductions, no cards exchanged, Grainger realized as the florid-faced man in khaki
began to speak.

“The Soviets have a mind-control weapon and they’re using it on the National Security Advisor,” he said flatly. “We know it’s
portable, highly directional, and emits at probably around 11.5 cycles per second. What we don’t know is how to stop it.”
He pulled charts from his briefcase and laid them out with grave precision, so that they faced Roebeck and Grainger.

Soviets?
Soviets
just means “friends,” or some such. Grainger racked his brains, and then realized that the man meant the Russian-dominated
USSR.

“How do you know?” Roebeck asked with more presence of mind than Grainger had shown.

“We know, young lady,” the short rotund man said with patronizing cordiality, “because it’s our job to know.” His voice was
grainy and cultured. Grainger was now sure that this was the senior officer in the room. Some very senior officer, given the
room in question. “I want you to be very sure that we know.” Twinkling eyes and the jovial, conspiratorial smile of a seasoned
agent-runner took the sting out of his words.

Nan Roebeck flushed and sat back, grasping the blue leather arms of her chair hard with whitening fingers.

“Mr. Calandine,” said the tall man with the mustache, “felt that you needed to have these specifics.” He tapped the charts
on the table. One was a map of DC. One was a credible drawing of an acoustic device that no Soviet or Russian or all the combined
technological skills of the entire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could have made in this century. “Mr. Calandine felt
that you might have some light to shed on how one counters such a device.”

Fuck. Grainger was going to hang Calandine out to dry, first chance he got.

The three intelligence officers stared at Grainger while his mind raced. “Earplugs,” Grainger said. Did they understand sound
cancellation in the mid-20th century? Probably not. “A… wet… suit. Lead-lined baffles. Glass-sandwich soundproofing. Or… let
us handle it.” He had to take the initiative. He was here as a representative of Los Alamos’ super-secret national security
and intelligence component, one of the nuclear lab’s baddest bad boys. That was the legend that had gotten him this meeting.
Need to know, especially technical need to know, was sure to extend to a rival intelligence service, even in these ancient
times. So he stonewalled. “Give us some idea what else you have besides basic drawings and this map of… possible past incidents….”

He pulled the map closer to make sure he was reading it right. That’s what it was. Time- and date-marked points, all in the
temporal past. “Give us some tracking data on the targets you’ve identified, or what you’ve got for site intel, and just stay
out of our way.” Any number could play this game.

“We can’t have you running around town shooting possible perpetrators, not when we can’t explain why we’re doing it. This
can’t blow,” said the rotund man. He tripled his chins and laced his stubby fingers. The cordial smile was gone from his face,
but his hooded eyes still twinkled.