“Ink smudge page; make that 16.”
“Whose sticky fingers?”
“NTN sled-dog … Stormer pointed to a LaRaza honey-pot …. full-tit legionnaire got a wall, a blindfold, a fag … and 5 minutes. Didn't take the blindfold. We had her buried outside of Matamoros; don't mess with Texas.”
“Noseeums affirmative. ” And the BUZzZzZ .... went on for eight seconds. Figured my honey-pot might get antsy. “Maybe we don't get dropped Ms K. Mystery mole threatens military nuke forever a mystery. If Scrum lost his Leopards and Russki 130s … with split forces anything might happen.”
“Nukes are solutions to cubic equations … a BATTLE MASTER result you told me without explanation; gotta have three zeros to the state-function or the option doesn't pay. Comprende? So what are we … turtle-doves. Into the valley-of-death Dr Scranton.”
“...d... closed circuit does not allow loss-of-security discipline … Bitch …!
“You're so cute when you're angry lovr-boy.”
“Weather-vixen barfs - - don't snip me off like that, sled-dog!”
click-clickclick … “Horny weather-vixen is pissed!”
Wavering static-ic=i@c#ic … “I caught that sleet; save it for the riverside boys and girls where everything's delightful. Approved GO follows: West of Lake Nacimiento , across I-5 Federal mobile force at Fresno got split. Big ticket choices when they decided to surrounded with mobile, a pincer movement and then drive a reserve infantry column straight through the city.
“Scipio Africanis at Carthage.”
“Not this time. Scrum cut them to pieces. His city-column moving due east with a few heavy tanks hit-the-flanks of both pincers and when reserve LV Mobsters never showed the shattered Blue-bellies got picked off. Slaughterville, unit-by-unit destruction factored with tank-supported klans. Banskis redirected assault broke their will. Among the free-fire engagements Militia homeboy rocketeers and mousrs ate Ford pie till they barfed. Thank the Military nuke!”
“Right time right place … bet we paid plenty for that one strike.”
“Wrong time wrong place … make any difference when U-235 is the message?”
“Take at face value - - Federal F4s hit the pad're convoy. Even the Argentines complained … they're frisky now with a couple battleships and carriers after they retook the Falklands and captured the Muzzi-wogged Brit Atlantic fleet. No Chilian phosphates for the Federals.”
I'd been chewing on my leather mouthpiece and finally spit it out. “Militia drove those paired bishop-busses for months, loaded with fresh trained recruits from Bear Mountain resorts. Even painted the Jesuit Cross on the roof. Federals just got tired of it. ”
“Roger sled-dog. Even better to the south.”
We are south. We are not better. South sucks. Vibrations shake my graphite-fibre shell. “We're approaching drop zone. Got to nocom through the landing … hate to have a dozen Agros shooting up our ass five minutes after we land.”
“Roger sled-dog. “Bite the big one.” …. BzzZZzZ..... Statix statix … “Pad-breaker alarm just sounded – stay-alive sled-dog. Fuck 'em hard.”
Pad-breaker; impossible! Ms K annoyed. “Billion$ of zillion$ and a 6 oz electromagnetic cores our AAA-encryptian. You're gonna tell me DishRag Scranton it's just because analog noise cannot be digitally reproduced … deep nature carries truth, but no algorithm!
“Yep.” Shit.
“We are winning. I mean we have just won California. Nine seconds to drop. Why are we here?”
“Will you marry me?”
“WTF!”
Poufffff sounds like poufffff ….. inside of an MRI! Five seconds after release , and slipping under 250 knots my cocoon breaks open - - parts flying away behind me and the wing-suit inflates. Sun and cold topped by silver clouds I skid on slippery air. Pilot banks the A-10 north bleeding gifted Mig-25 flares like every satellite between Japan and Jamaica didn't nail us. Sixteen color heads-up helmet display tells me everything, but how to keep Ms K. alive. Three seconds apart, our silky airing yet twenty meters ahead and above, fifty meters north Ms K. tumbles slowly in turbulent air. Her graphite cocoon-tail has not separated … a 3-foot-long crescent moon troubling cold, dense Sierra air 2000 feet above Terra toasta!
Dropped short, but expected to fly over by a mile and land west in tree-less desert washboard. Under our flight-path burned black chaparral falls away into high desert. “Try a jack-knife 3-2-1 ...” Just beyond Johnsondale ... 35:58 N … 118:32 W. Near 4700 feet. Ground zero. I know this much, from our real-time micro-probes and static-fringed satellite link.
The M90-C40 penetrated 65-meters of sandstone before exploding 90 KT into a 500 foot deep bubble of nuclear soup; gluons, pions, no-see-ums … terra-firma you are so fucked burned deep and scorched black now for a mile everyway. Edge of the pit tints frost green, in morning sunlight, frosted from sand just vaporized into quarks and electrons only to diffuse against entropy optimized its native human glass. What fuckers we are.
“Sure kept the energy together,” I carp as if 500 feet was a dreamgirl.
“Poly-boron the chipmunks tell me.” Voice harshly fluttering, she struggles … struggling … to damp out the tumble.
“Poly-boron 'eh … oh you can't suck that bling, if you don't steal the zing,” I copper into the dry aether between us and pray for a steady, snarly reply. But fat nucleii and slim neutrons don't explain everything. Federals fuel-stock and munitions storage vaporized after the nuclear blast into an air-petrol 2500-degree plasma of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen ions. Lots of protons … lots of very fast very deadly protons. “Feckin-A use your mouth Ms K!”
The conventional, classical explosion behaved so similar to the atomic … compressor with an Americium shield. “You know Majorana,” I pip?”
“A Manhattan with twists of dry cherry and plum.”
“Four ... and you're under the host. Quark plasma is like that, a so-called Majo-cocktail.” I slide behind her, cutting off turbulent vortices which smoothing propagates for'ard. Sneering. “Named after the Brit-Intelligence assassinated Italian physicist who discovered energy-expressing nuclear gluons in 1937. Cambridge boffin really, Majorana saw that protons gotta suck-face someway! He commuted between Cambridge and Mussolinis pride, Fermis lab in Palermo … Majorana kept a young mistress there employed as a seamstress in one of the Jewish fashion houses. Nice celebration rewards party that -- for finding both neutron and anti-neutron simultaneously - - frolicking on the visiting Brit royal yacht. Frolick - - getting fucked-to-death by a Welsh royal for his trouble. Bet foreplay martinis served by the patriotic Duchess tasted as good as a ricin-coated cunt !
Ms K. snarks. “Buried at sea … as are we all. Look! Flower-pot below … where have all the flowers gone …?”
Flower-pot … shape of this below-surface nuclear splash … a deep melt-hard bulb leaching upward in a V-shape. Like our wingsuit foreplay now; I'm chattering lewdly to Ms K. to keep her from vomiting till she squashes turbulence , gains the slipstream and swings over beside me. Don't die baby though digi-mag displays Ms Ks cracked helmet. Face-guard took a loose bolt ripping away her outer mask. Goggles and oxygen remain … that and back-mounted hardware streaming data to our circling A-10.
First surprise, the A-10 not a KFIR. Some retired dentist flew one in Iraq, and tossed a robo-walker to fly this one … Novocaine he said steadied his paws. “I'm dizzy Will so feckin-A dizzy think I'm gonna … wait, found a vinegar/baking soda release. My chance, but don't fuck me dead you bastard for a million-hit-day. 3-2-1 …..”
I watch like a Rolex. Tail section sloughs into the aether … Ms Ks wind-suit dives dives suckskin below me till Aramid-Mylar catches Avogadros riff … inflates … she rises and I fall to meet her …
“Barker one to sled-dog … do you read me sled-dog ...”
“Copy down, Barker.”
“Hard itch, bu'cha got barker. You're coming in hot and high gonna land in Gooberville.”
Second surprise we have boots-on-the-ground.
Passing hell, that's passing center of Johnsondale at 750 feet. Radiation monitors glow yellow … radioactive isotopes mostly traqpped in the unground buld. Glider-probe Ms K. released 7 sec ago whimpers *0.35 Siev* “Sorry Charlie you just missed fucking me an extra 60 times ...”
“I calculate 120!”
“Liar.”
“Gusty. We gonna spill wind, like the ol' pirates to stay in ECEP. My Finder trends NNW at 0.75 miles.”
“Roger lovrboy. Burn pattern solid to 0.56 miles, with a dozen micro-volcanos round-abouts where the underground fuel-storage caverns were carved. Federals really packed in gas and desiel for the attack on Fresno. Radiation and heat … Barker must have backed off.”
Static … static … “Negative, sled-dog. Federals patrolling in RadNots!”
High class Mobsters, chubby Mobsters with an inch of cigarette filter, extra sheet of nickle-phosphor and ¼ inch lead film. “I see none, Barker. Speed 40 ft/sec … altitude 250 feet. No direct thermal signature below. At altitude current radiation 55 mSiev.”
“Roger sled-dog. Come in right over me I see ya two flying for slipstream. Romantic as hell. Plan landing 100 yards past me.”
“Release parashell at 75 feet.”
“M16 releases … same for DW. Was that a tracer round zipped by?”
“Twinklestar rotate 90-degrees to tack and surface-min. REM sweet-pea, they shoot armed journalists. Ankle brace locked?”
“Locked and loaded. Dropping lead-film belly-sheet. Feckin-A flash from the ground lover-boy. Sound spectrum looks like a 140-grain FMJ not 22.5-mm.”
While flying you can live within protocols, lift/drag/torque... a nine-dimensional envelope that postcardsI want to Live … What exists is what is permitted. Parenthetic, a 'well done' flits in from the aether. Scrum pays attention to detail, at 60 MPH! Ms locks in a turn, banking under me; two rounds zing up from the ground splitting the distance between us. Our drogue balloons snap up-and-down; I pop the deflector fin under-belly for straight down. I can feel the air-wash from Ms Ks on my rear balloon … just as a bullet snickers through it. Over target Barker! Diving fast - - - 90 – 60 – 30- 15 – know how fast a 7.62-cal goes when it shatters off your titanium helmet? And the balloon implodes beneath me. That and the 3-A Kevlar and neoprene metal weave of the wingsuit keep me alive … keep us alive … Ms K. bounces, flattens, flips and rolls thirty meters ahead of me. She gets I think a dirty face. Laying flat spread out on the desert washboard three FMJ rounds bracket her body.
Barker's somewhere 300 meters west. “Crazy man Ms K!” I warn. She has crawled toward target, toward a dried out sand-curdled pine size of a concrete pipe.
“Barker or a RADNOT,” queries Ms. K? She has nursed the digicam. “Barker one barker one do you copy?” She stands too long for a panoram and bullets take a piece of her rubber heel.
“Idiot!” I jump up, shed the wing-suit and do a Charlie-jog till I see Ms Ks ass in camo. Lead bees fly. “That's agro Barker.” An FMJ furrows my steel knee-plate; damned right knee already has a stainless pin. Me, roll and move, jag left, a twenty step streak then shoot-from-kneel clip-zip 30 5.56s into the last brine-sage hiding the last barrel-flash sprayed onto my heads-up. The rough pebble wash runs no more than 10 feet high. Dunky toward the end. More than a green plant, it's a bitch. Ever see blood spray from a buzz-cut throat? Scream ? Spurts, then a filmy red dew follows. Filmy dew on a breeze set to become cold. What is it … August … might get September snow in these foothills. “Should I circle left for his cover?”
“Didn't have one.” I am psychic! No more shooting. “Not ours !”
“Wish so.” Rolling right, I have my arms over Ms Ks back; the A-3 is shredded! She moves one arm, one leg then another, then her helmet. Alive. Piss on it. I say. “No more!” I'm not feeling good about this gunplay.
“Or the RADNOTS feeling great! Killed barker, or infiltrated between us. He said to expect patrols. Barker, do you copy.” Silence.
“He said shit to target and suck us in!”
“Sending repeat still sending stream to HRI?”
“Different satellite … lower battery life … error test, but not correct.”
I am crawling up her back in a deep washboard rill behind the pine-log. Saved her life; so did the titanium helmet with 3 creases down the side. “Got rib-burn Will, from a round straight-on that unzipped the A-3, but lead couldn't clip the spyder-silk undie. Burst on a brass bra-plate; damn my nipple is sore. Pretty sexy, you think? I'm horny. Could get lots if you could get to my belly.”
“Damned well hope Sarg Boo is editing this stream. He's got the hots for you.”
“I know. He clips everything when you talk dirty. Oops .. he just signaled. HRI thinks they need to bring us back.”
“Why?”