Sato said nothing.
“Your plan is to conquer China?” Nick repeated stupidly. “Eighty-seven million of you elderly Japs trying to conquer a country with a population of… what?… one-point-six billion people?”
“Exactly,” Sato said again and it didn’t sound quite so funny to Nick this time. “But China is a country of one-point-six billion people that has imploded far worse than your United States, Bottom-san. Economic disaster. Cultural chaos. Inflation. Stagnation. Riots. Revolt of the military. Total breakdown of their outmoded Communist political system. Warlords. Civil war.”
“So Japan is just trying to conquer a chunk of it.”
“Hai, Bottom-san. Merely a chunk. Perhaps a third of it—but the most productive third. Including Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. India—another UN ‘peacekeeper’ there—can have much of the rest. Negotiations with India are ongoing.”
Nick thought, India with its one-point-eight billion people or whatever it is now. Holy shit, Japan and India and Indonesia and the Islamic Caliphate are carving up the world while we freebase flashback and blow ourselves up.
Restraining the urge to weep again, or laugh, or bark at the moon just visible on the monitors rising above the smoke-hazy eastern horizon, Nick said, “And little Keigo Nakamura was going to be the heir apparent of this possible Shogun who may be ruling over a new empire of three-quarters of a billion people.”
“Probable Shogun,” said Sato. “And yes. Although a shogun is not exactly a king and although power does not always descend through the oldest—or only—son, if Hiroshi Nakamura becomes the first Shogun in one hundred and sixty-four years, Keigo Nakamura would have been the daimyo most eligible for ascension to the Shogunate upon his father’s death… if the other daimyos, keiretsu warlords, would have agreed.”
“All that going on,” murmured Nick, but the bead-microphone was clearly transmitting his murmurs, “and the stupid little twerp was over here in the States shooting a video documentary about flashback.”
“Yes,” said Sato.
“And you let someone kill him,” said Nick.
“Yes,” said Sato.
“Well, if that screwup didn’t earn you an order to commit seppuku from Old Man Nakamura, I can’t imagine what would,” said Nick.
“Yes,” said Sato.
“Boxcar One, this is Boxcar Two,” came ninja Willy’s voice over the truck-to-truck comm net. Willy was driving the second vehicle. “Do you see that boy on a horse, Sato-san? Over.”
Boy on a horse? Nick looked from display to display. The ride had been so uneventful, except for this truly weird conversation, that he’d forgotten all about where he was and what was going on outside the sealed vehicle.
“Roger, Boxcar Two,” replied Sato on comm. “I’ve been watching him for some time now, Willy. Over.”
Nick finally found the screen showing the boy on a horse. The mini-drone sending the images seemed to be only forty or fifty feet above the kid. The boy seemed to be about Val’s age—thirteen or fourteen at the most.
No, Nick corrected himself, Val’s older. He just turned sixteen a few weeks ago. And I forgot to call him to wish him happy birthday.
This boy was spanic, shirtless, shoeless, and wearing only dirty, raggedy shorts that looked to have been cut down from a man’s pair of chinos, and he was mounted on a nag so old and swaybacked that the boy’s bare toes almost touched the dusty earth. The boy and old horse were scrawny enough that ribs showed through scabbed brown flesh on both of them.
“I don’t see a phone,” said Bill from his position in the top gun bubble turret of the other vehicle.
“Me either,” said Joe from their own gun bubble.
“Boxcar Two, Boxcar One,” broke in Toby from where he rode shotgun in the front of the second Oshkosh M-ATV. “It could be in his pocket, voice activated. The kid could be sending coordinates to artillery right now.”
“Roger that, Toby,” Sato said calmly. “Has anyone heard anything?”
Nick realized that the drone was sending audio as well as the video feed, but when he managed to match frequencies with it, all he could hear was the wind through the dry grass around the kid and the occasional lazy swish of the swaybacked horse’s tail.
“Negative that, Boxcar One,” replied four voices.
“Boxcar One and Two,” continued Sato. “Has anyone seen his lips moving?”
Again, four negatives came back over comm. Nick felt like an idiot. A left-out idiot.
“Boxcar One, I have the fifty-caliber mounted,” said Bill from the bubble of the second truck. “He’s about a hundred and thirty meters east of us. I can reach him easily.” Easiry. They were obviously all speaking in English for Nick Bottom’s benefit.
“Roger that, Boxcar Two,” said Sato. “Please keep tracking him until we are out of sight about a kilometer ahead. Joe, do you have him?”
“Yes, Sato-san.”
“Allow Bill to keep his eye on the child and the horse. You keep pivoting and report anything else.”
“Roger that, Sato-san.”
“Boxcar Two… Bill?”
“Hai, Boxcar One?”
“I am watching the monitor but driving, so please be sure to tell me the second the boy moves… especially if he turns his horse around. Please tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing. Watch the drone monitor when we pass out of visual.”
“Hai, j-shi,” came Bill’s fast, sharp response.
Tell me which way his horse’s head is pointing? thought Nick.
When they’d passed over the little rise and started descending into a broad valley toward a bridge over a dry riverbed, Nick asked, “What was all the questioning and talk about my feelings and Japan and China all about? I don’t believe it was random.”
“It is about Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev and your meeting with him tomorrow morning, Bottom-san.”
“Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? And what do you mean my meeting with the guy? You’ll be there, too, won’t you?”
“Negative, Bottom-san. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev contacted us, Mr. Nakamura himself, to arrange this meeting, and Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev stipulated that it must be just with you. No one else.”
Nick tried to shake his head. “I don’t get it. And even if he does want to talk just with me, what’s that have to do with all the talk of countries coming part, Japan, China, the whole nine yards?”
“You must understand what Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev is,” said Sato over their private comm link. “What he represents.”
“He is a drugrunner,” said Nick. “What he represents is a giant shitload of money.”
“Yes, Bottom-san, but there is much more. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s parents also went through this loss of a nation’s culture and integrity when the Soviet Union imploded.”
“Well, boo-hoo for them,” said Nick. “Besides, isn’t Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev Chechen? He and his parents should have been cheering when the old USS of R went belly up.”
“His father was Chechen, Bottom-san. Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s mother was Russian and he was raised in Moscow…”
“I still don’t see…” They were approaching the bridge. Ahead of them, I-25 cut a long shallow ramp through the opposing valley wall. The somewhat greener, somewhat grassier bottomlands here were interrupted by ancient cottonwood trees, both standing and fallen.
“Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev represents not only Russia’s waning interest in the parts of the United States currently occupied by the forces and colonists of Nuevo Mexico, Bottom-san, but also the Global Caliphate’s very active interest.”
“You saying the drugrunner is a shill for the Muslims? That they want control of what used to be Arizona, Southern California, New Mexico, parts of…”
“I am saying that it is very unusual and interesting that Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev contacted Mr. Nakamura and agreed to an interview with you, Bottom-san. Insisted upon an interview with you. Have you had any dealings with him in the past that we do not know about? If so, it i
s very important that we know of them, Bottom-san.”
“No, nothing,” Nick said truthfully. The DPD had tried to arrange interview times with the man after Keigo Nakamura’s murder, since the late video-documentarian’s people had said that Keigo had interviewed him just days before he died, but Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev had been a ghost. They couldn’t even contact his people. The local Santa Fe cops and New Mexico highway patrol people—all of them on someone’s payroll, of course—hadn’t even tried to help. The FBI, Nick knew, had also struck out with the Russian-Chechen-Mexican-Muslim drug-and gunrunner.
“I still don’t see…,” began Nick.
“Boxcar One, Boxcar One,” came Bill’s voice from the turret of Boxcar Two, “the boy is turning his horse around… looks like a hundred and eighty degrees. Yes, he’s stopped.”
“Very well, Boxcar One,” Sato said calmly. The security chief was throwing switches on his panel. “Stand by to…”
At that instant the 120mm HEAT high-explosive antitank round struck the transparent Kevlar bubble atop the first Oshkosh, beheaded Joe in a microsecond, and poured the hypersonic lava of its shaped charge down over Joe’s immolated corpse and into the small space where Sato and Nick sat.
1.12
North of Las Vegas, New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15
FOR NICK THERE WAS ONLY an instantaneous sensation of great heat, then a terrible pressure as a solid wall of darkness surrounded him and pressed in on him, and then nothing.
In the second Oshkosh–Land Cruiser M-ATV thirty meters behind them, the driver Willy—whose real name was Mutsumi ta—saw Sato’s vehicle get hit. The gun bubble on top shot two hundred feet into the air with a pillar of flame seemingly supporting it. Sato’s Oshkosh flipped, hit the left edge of the bridge it was crossing, and dropped down into the empty riverbed, trailing guard rail and concrete rebar behind it and rolling a dozen or so times. Pieces of flaming metal had flown off the leading Oshkosh upon impact of the tank or artillery shell and now the large back hatch sliced the air toward ta’s vehicle like a 300-pound piece of shrapnel, missing by ten inches. In the riverbed below, more geysers of flame erupted from every sprung hatch, air vent, and the entire rear of Sato and Nick’s burning, tumbling truck.
ta jerked his Oshkosh off the highway to the right so hard that the huge vehicle actually teetered on its right wheels for a few seconds before crashing all wheels back to the earth. The patch of Interstate thirty meters behind where he’d been an instant before exploded upward and outward as a second HEAT round slammed into the pavement. A third exploded just to the left of ta’s Oshkosh where it had been tilting seconds earlier.
There were at least two tanks firing.
Toby shouted in Japanese from the right seat, “I saw the flashes! Two tanks, hull down, just at the base of the hill about one klick ahead.”
ta reached the steep bank of the riverbed and drove straight off, all 25,000 pounds of the Oshkosh seeming to hang in air for an eternity before it fell below the level of the riverbanks, all the wheels compacting fully on the TAK-7 independent suspensions.
The north bank of the riverbed exploded behind them.
“Three tanks!” shouted Bill in Japanese from the gun bubble. “Saw the third flash.”
ta’s M-ATV crashed through willows and fallen cottonwoods before skidding to a teetering stop in the sand near the south bank. They should be out of direct-fire view and range of the tanks, ta knew, although mortars or artillery could get them easily through indirect fire.
“Infantry!” shouted Bill from above. Bill’s real name was Daigorou Okada. “Saw them just before we dropped. Several hundred, I think. Carrying small arms and RPGs and TOWs.”
“Where?” asked Mutsumi ta in his slow, calm voice. He’d have to find out if his boss, Sato, was alive, but that could wait a minute until they understood the tactical situation and could find a way to get into the fight.
“Coming out of holes due south about halfway to the tanks,” said Okada, his own voice more calm and professional now.
Toby, whose real name was Shinta Ishii, had been busy on the vehicle-to-vehicle comm lines, trying to raise Sato or Joe, real name Tai Okamoto, or the gai-jin with them. There was no answer.
“How did the drones and sats miss the tanks?” asked Shinta Ishii in Japanese when he broke off trying to raise Sato’s truck.
“Probably good cryocamo blankets covering the buried hull-down tanks and people in their holes,” said ta. “Keeping the temperature exactly that of the soil. Someone’s going to have to go out there to give us a look at what’s coming.”
“Hai!” said Shinta Ishii from the right seat. He disconnected his comm and other umbilicals, slapped the restraint release, pulled a PEAP temporary air-supply and comm system from the dash and clipped it in place on his helmet, took a video camera and 9mm pistol from the glove compartment, opened the passenger door, and rolled out.
A second later the image flowed to the Oshkosh’s monitors from Ishii’s camera as it was tentatively shoved above the edge of the south bank. Ishii did not raise his head.
About a hundred infantry in light armor were crossing the half kilometer or so between them and the riverbed. Behind them came three tanks.
NICK BOTTOM RETURNED TO consciousness with the sound of gunshots popping all around him. It got his attention.
No, it wasn’t gunshots, he realized as his eyes began to focus. The front part of the truck’s cabin had filled almost instantly with solid foam. Now that foam was evaporating or deliquescing or whatever it was doing, one loud pop at a time.
Nick hit the big release button at the center of his harnesses and they snapped back even as his sarcophagus of a crash-couch hissed and pulled back. Nick fell headfirst onto the ceiling and almost broke his neck as his helmet met hot steel with a loud bang.
The Oshkosh was upside down at an angle. The driver’s side seemed to be buried in the dirt. Some sort of metal fire panel had slammed down behind his and Sato’s seats and now that panel was glowing cherry red with bright white spots. The heat threatened to make Nick swoon. The fire behind that panel, Nick knew, must be terrible. Unless Joe the top-gunner had gotten out another way, he was dead.
Remembering Sato’s advice, Nick unclipped his suit’s O-two and comm channels, removed the PEAP—Personal Egress Air Pack—bundle from the console, took two tries to clip it into place on his helmet and oxygen mask, and plugged the mobile PEAP comm links in.
“Sato?”
No response.
Heaps of loose items and metal debris had tumbled onto the truck’s ceiling where Nick now crouched, sliding down under Sato’s hanging body, but when he leaned over to look up at Sato in the driver’s seat he still couldn’t be sure if the security chief was alive or dead.
Sato’s eyes were closed; he looked dead. His body hung from the straps. The blast from behind had ripped most of the red samurai armor off Sato’s right arm and Nick could see with a single glance that the arm was broken. Some of Sato’s blood had spattered the dark windshield panels and other video monitors and more blood was now dripping from the arm onto the ceiling-turned-floor.
Nick tried to remember the names of the men in the second truck.
“Willy?” he called on comm. “Toby? Bill?”
No response. Not even static. Maybe the PEAP comm unit wasn’t working. Or maybe the second truck had also been hit and destroyed.
After making sure that his 9mm Glock was still clipped on the belt on his armored hip, Nick crawled across the seat, grabbed his heavy duffel bag from where it had dropped onto the ceiling, and kicked the passenger-side door open.
He threw the weapons-duffel out first and then followed. The right side of the Oshkosh was raised about four feet above sandy soil, a trickle of river, and a line of burning willow bushes. Nick wedged himself over the edge and dropped the four feet, grunting with pain when he hit. He didn’t think anything was broken, but his entire body felt bruised as if after a good beating. Sweat dripped out of the eye sock
ets of his mask.
He took a deep breath to get some fresh air, but he was still on the thirty-minute PEAP air supply. He left it in place.
Nick grabbed the duffel bag before the flames got to it and dragged it and himself twenty feet away from the burning Oshkosh along the steep, sandy riverbank. He saw now that the huge M-ATV had done a corkscrew off the bridge above, tumbled flaming across the floor of the riverbed, and dug its heavy snout and right side into the heaps of soft sand just short of the riverbank on this side. Whether “this side” was the north or south bank of the river, Nick had no idea.
Nick pulled the Glock from his hip, unzipped the duffel, and looked at the weapons he’d brought. They seemed all right. He looked back at the burning Oshkosh.
The rear of the big truck was totally engulfed in flames and those flames were working their way forward along the shattered outside of the vehicle. The steel tires were melting. Ammunition from somewhere, probably next to the absent top gun bubble, was cooking off at random and rounds were impacting in every direction.
“Well, fuck,” breathed Nick.
He staggered back to the truck.
This side was too damned high to get up onto while he was in armor so he scrambled as high as he could on the twelve-or fifteen-foot-high riverbank, clambered up onto a shattered, steaming wheel, and crawled along the passenger side of the truck. The door was open but he still had a clumsy time of it as he wedged himself into the black, smoking hole and let himself drop until his feet were on the center console.
“Sato!!”
No answer. He called for the others in the second truck: no response. Maybe he just didn’t know how to reset the comm frequency.
Sato still hung upside down from the straps, his body leaning a little toward the driver’s-side door. The heat in the front part of the cabin was much worse than it had been just a minute earlier and Nick could see white parts of the fire bulkhead beginning to melt.
He pulled himself under Sato’s hanging body, tried to keep the naked and broken arm to one side, braced himself and his shoulders and upper body under Sato like a crouching if underweight sumo-wrestler, and hit Sato’s harness release with his Kevlared fist.