“Blue Group, this is Blue Boy Leader. Come in on me. Commence firing at two hundred yards. Avoid hitting the Blue Boy if possible, but we are going to sweep those motherfuckers clean. Conk, play the Anthem.”
Gene Conklin flicked a switch and racked a CD in the Discman sitting on the floor of Blue Boy Two. Owen, no longer inside himself, leaned forward in Blue Boy Leader and cranked the volume.
Mick Jagger, the voice of the Rolling Stones, filled his earphones. Owen raised his hand, saw Kurtz snap him a salute-whether sarcastic or sincere Owen neither knew nor cared-and then Owen brought his arm down. As Jagger sang it out, sang the Anthem, the one they always played when they went in hot, the helicopters dropped, tightened, and flew to target.
The grayboys-the ones that were left-stood beneath the shadow of their ship which lay in turn at the end of the shattered aisle of trees it had destroyed in its final descent. They made no initial effort to run or hide; in fact half of them actually stepped forward on their naked toeless feet, squelching in the melted snow, the muck, and the scattered fuzz of reddish-gold moss. These faced the oncoming line of gunships, long-fingered hands raised, showing that they were empty. Their huge black eyes gleamed in the dull daylight.
The gunships did not slow, although all of them heard the final transmissions briefly in their heads: Please don’t hurt us, we are helpless, we are dying. With that, twining through it like a pigtail, came the voice of Mick Jagger: “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man Of wealth and taste; I’ve been around for many a long year, stolen many man’s soul and faith…”
The gunships heeled around as briskly as a marching band doing a square turn on the fifty-yard line of the Pose Bowl, and the.50s opened up. The bullets plowed into the snow, struck dead branches from already wounded trees, struck pallid little sparks from the edge of the great ship. They ripped into the bunched grayboys standing with their arms upraised and tore them apart. Arms spun free of rudimentary bodies, spouting a kind of pink sap. Heads exploded like gourds, raining a reddish backsplash on their ship and their shipmates-not blood but that mossy stuff, as if their heads were full of it, not really heads at all but grisly produce baskets. Several of them were cut in two at the midsection and went down with their hands still raised in surrender. As they fell, the gray bodies went a dirty white and seemed to boil.
Mick Jagger confided: “I was around when Jesus Christ had His moment of doubt and pain…”
A few grays, still standing under the lip of the ship, turned as if to run, but there was nowhere to go. Most of them were shot down immediately. The last few survivors-maybe four in all-retreated into the scant shadows. They seemed to be doing something, fiddling with something, and Owen had a horrible premonition.
“I can get them!” came crackling over the radio. That was Deforest in Blue Boy Four, almost panting with eagerness. And, anticipating Owen’s order to go for it, the Chinook dropped almost to ground-level, its rotors kicking up snow and muddy water in a filthy blizzard, battering the underbrush flat.
“No, negative, belay that, back off, resume station plus fifty!” Owen shouted, and whacked Tony’s shoulder. Tony, looking only slightly odd in the transparent mask over his mouth and nose, yanked back on the yoke and Blue Boy Leader rose in the unsteady air. Even over the music-the mad bongos, the chorus going Hoo-hoo, “Sympathy for the Devil” hadn’t played through to its conclusion even a single time, at least not yet-Owen could hear his crew grumbling. The Kiowa, he saw, was already small with distance. Whatever his mental peculiarities might be, Kurtz was no fool-And his instincts were exquisite.
“Ah, boss “Deforest, sounding not just disappointed but on fire.
“Say again, say again, return to station, Blue Group, return-”
The explosion hanmered him back in his seat and tossed the Chinook upward like a toy. Beneath the roar, he heard Tony Edwards cursing and wrestling with the yoke. There were screams from behind them, but while most of the crew was injured, they lost only Pinky Bryson, who had been leaning out the bay for a better look and fen when the shockwave hit.
“Got it, got it, got it,” Tony yammered, but Owen thought it was at least thirty seconds before Tony actually did, seconds that felt like hours. On the sound systems, the Anthem had cut off, a fact that did not bode well for Conk and the boys in Blue Boy Two.
Tony swung Blue Boy Leader around, and Owen saw the windscreen Perspex was cracked in two places. Behind them someone was still screaming-Mac Cavanaugh, it turned out, had somehow managed to lose two fingers.
“Holy shit,” Tony muttered, and then: “You saved our bacon, boss. Thanks.”
Owen barely heard him. He was looking back at the remains of the ship, which now lay in at least three pieces. It was hard to tell because the shit was flying and the air had turned a hazy reddish-orange. It was a little easier to see the remains of Deforest’s gunship. It lay canted on its side “in the muck with bubbles bursting all around it. On its port side, a long piece of busted rotor floated in the water like a “ant’s canoe-paddle. About fifty yards away, more rotors protruded, black and crooked, from a furious ball of yellow-white fire. That was Conklin and Blue Boy Two.
Graggle and bleep from the radio. Blakey in Blue Boy Three. “Boss, hey boss, I see”
“Three, this is Leader. I want you to-”
“Leader, this is Three, I see survivors, repeat, I see Blue Boy Four survivors, at least three no, four I am going down to-”
“Negative, Blue Boy Three, not at all. Resume station plus fifty-belay that, station plus one-fifty, one-five-oh, and do it now!”
“Ah, but sir boss, I mean… I can see Friedman, he’s on fucking fire”
“Joe Blakey, listen up.”
No mistaking Kurtz’s rasp, Kurtz who had gotten clear of the red crap in plenty of time. Almost, Owen thought, as if he knew what was going to happen.
“Get your ass out of there now, or I guarantee that by next week you’ll be shovelling camel-shit in a hot climate where booze is illegal. Out.”
Nothing more from Blue Boy Three. The two surviving gunships pulled back to their original rally-point plus a hundred and fifty yards. Owen sat watching the furious upward spiral of the Ripley fungus, wondering if Kurtz had known or just intuited, wondering if he and Blakey had cleared the area in time. Because they were infectious, of course; whatever the grayboys said, they were infectious. Owen didn’t know if that justified what they had just done, but he thought the survivors of Pay Deforest’s Blue Boy Four were most likely dead men walking. Or worse: live men changing. Turning into God knew what.
“Owen.” The radio.
Tony looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Owen.”
Sighing, Owen flicked the toggle over to Kurtz’s closed channel with his chin. “I’m here, boss.”
Kurtz sat in the Kiowa with the newspaper hat still in his lap. He and Freddy were wearing their masks; so were the rest of boys in the attack group. Likely even the poor fellows now on the ground were still wearing them. The masks were probably unnecessary, but Kurtz, who had no intention of contracting Ripley if he could avoid it, was the big cheese. Among other things, he was supposed to set an example. Besides, he played the odds. As for Freddy Johnson… well, he had plans for Freddy.
“I’m here, boss,” Underhill said in his phones.
“That was good shooting, better flying, and superlative thinking. You saved some lives. You and I are back where we were. Right back to Square One. Got that?”