Page 107 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

“Truth,” Nejas said. “I don’t want to quarrel with you or upset you, Skoob, but I don’t want to lie to you, either. You’d think I was talking out of a video screen if I tried it.” He didn’t think much of the relentless good news that kept coming from the fighting fronts either, then.

Trying to keep the landcruiser operational was a never-ending nightmare. It would have been a nightmare even had Ussmak himself been warm. Frozen water in all varieties got in between road wheels and tracks and chassis and cemented them to one another. The intense cold made some metals brittle. It also made lubricants less than enthusiastic about doing their proper job. Engine wear had been heavy since the landcruiser was airlifted here, and spare parts were in constantly short supply.

As he thawed out the cupola lid so it would open and close, Ussmak said, “Good thing we have those captured machine tools to make some of our own spares. If it weren’t for that and for cannibalizing our wrecks, we’d never keep enough machines in action.”

“Truth,” Skoob said from back at the engine compartment So Ussmak thought, at any rate. The howling wind blew the gunner’s words away.

Ussmak took tiny, cautious sips of air. Even breathed through several thicknesses of cloth, it still burned his lungs. Little crystals of ice formed on the mask. His eyes, almost the only exposed part of him, kept trying to freeze open. He blinked and blinked and blinked, fighting to keep them working.

“Good enough,” Nejas said some endless time later. “What we really need is a flamethrower under the chassis of the landcruiser. Then we could melt the ice that freezes us to the ground in a hurry.”

The crew started back toward the barracks. Ussmak said, “I’ve been talking with some of the males who’ve been here a long time. They say this is bad, but local spring is a hundred times worse. All the frozen water melts-by the way they make that sound, it happens in the course of a day or two, but I don’t think that can be right-and whatever was on top of the ground sinks down into the mud. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can get it out again.”

“You served in the SSSR before, didn’t you?” Nejas said. “Did you see any of that for yourself?”

“I saw the mud in local fall, before I was hurt,” Ussmak answered. “That was bad. It just comes from rain falling on the ground, though. From all I’ve heard, the mud that comes in spring, when a winter’s worth of frozen water melts, is a lot worse.”

He looked around at the white expanse through which they slogged. A lot of the drifts were higher than a male was tall. Winter had a long way to go, too; all of Tosev 3’s seasons were twice as long as those of Home in any case, and here in Siberia winter seemed to rule most of the local year.

His sigh turned the air around him smoky. Softly, he said, “I hope we last long enough to see how bad the local mud is.”

Rance Auerbach stared out across the snowy east-Colorado prairie. He didn’t see anything much, which suited him fine. He wanted to be off fighting the Lizards, not making like an MP. What he wanted and the orders he got weren’t the same beast.

He wasn’t the only one on whom those orders grated, either. Lieutenant Magruder rode up to him and asked, “Who is this guy we’re supposed to be looking for again? Waste of time, if you ask me-not that anybody did.”

“Fellow’s name is Larssen, says Colonel Nordenskold.” Auerbach laughed. “One squarehead telling us to go find another one. The colonel got word from General Groves that this Larssen plugged two guys and then headed east. They don’t want him to make it into Lizard country.”

“Why do they give a damn? That’s what I want to know, and nobody’s told me yet,” Magruder said. “If he’s a bastard and he’s heading toward the Lizards, why shouldn’t we let him be their headache?”

“Colonel Nordenskold told you just as much as he told me,” Auerbach answered, “so I don’t know, either.” He could make some guesses, though. He’d led the cavalry detachment that had escorted Groves-who’d been a colonel then-all the way from the East Coast to Denver. He didn’t know for certain what Groves had carried in that heavy, heavy pack of his, but he suspected. The explosions in Chicago and Miami hadn’t done anything to make him think he was wrong, either.

If Groves wanted this Larssen stopped, it was probably because Larssen had something to do with those explosions. If he made it through to the Lizards, who could say what would happen next? The likeliest thing Auerbach could think of was Denver going up in a flash of light If that happened, the U.S.A.’s chance to beat the Lizards would probably go up with it.

If, if, if… All of it was guesswork, and he knew as much. All the same, that wasn’t why he kept quiet about it. The fewer people who knew about heavy-duty bombs, the less chance word about them had of reaching the Lizards. Other speculations he would have shared with Magruder, but not these. He wished he hadn’t been in the position to make these particular guesses himself.

Magruder changed the subject: “He’s going to get past us on abicycle?” He patted his horse’s neck. The animal whickered softly.

“He’s supposed to be good at roughing it,” Auerbach answered. “Maybe he’ll ditch the bike and try it on foot. This is a big country, and we’re spread thin. He might slip through. Hell, Bill, he might already have slipped through. And the other thing of it is, he might not be within a hundred miles of here. No way to know.”

“No way to know,” Magruder echoed. “So here we are, out beating the bushes for this one guy instead of doing something to twist the Lizards’ little scaly tails. That’s a hell of a thing. He must be one really important so-and-so if they want him caught so bad.”

“Does sound that way,” Auerbach agreed. He felt Magruder’s eyes on him, but pretended he didn’t. His lieutenant might not know as much as he did, but wasn’t bad at piecing things together.

Auerbach peered south from US 40. Somewhere a couple of miles down there was the little town of Boyero. A squad was going through there now. The rest of his men were strung out along the dirt road that led from Boyero to the highway, and north of US 40 toward Arriba on US 24. Farther north, troopers from Burlington took over for his company. One lone man shouldn’t have been able to slip through that net, but, as he’d told Magruder, it was a big country, and they were spread thin.

“One thing,” Magruder said, perhaps trying to look on the bright side: “It’s not like he’s going to be able to fool us by making like he’s somebody else. There’s nobody else on the road to pretend to be.”

“You’re right about that,” Auerbach said. “Country like this, there wouldn’t have been a lot going on even before the Lizards came. Now there’s nothing.”

Behind heavy clouds, the sun slid toward the distant-and now obscured-Rockies. Auerbach wondered if Larssen had the guts to move at night. He wouldn’t have wanted to try it, not on a bicycle. Maybe on foot… but, while that upped your chances of slipping through, it also slowed your travel and left you running the risk of being far from cover when day found you.

A rider came pounding down the dirt road toward US 40. Auerbach spotted blond hair around the edges of the helmet and nodded to himself-Rachel Hines was the most recognizable trooper in his co

mmand.

She reined in, saluted, and said, “Sir, Smitty and me, we think we seen somebody heading our way across the fields, but as soon as whoever it was spotted us, he went to ground. He couldn’t hardly think we were Lizards, so-”

“So he must have thought we were looking for him,” Auerbach finished. Excitement tingled through him. He hadn’t expected to run across Larssen, but now that he had, he was ready to run him down. “I’m with you,” he said. “We’ll pick up every other soldier on the way to where you and Smitty were at-that way, in case this turns out not to be Larssen, we won’t give him a free road east.” He turned to Magruder. “Bill, you stay here and ride herd on things. If we run into trouble, send more men after us.”

“Yes, sir,” Magruder said resignedly. “Why did I know you were going to tell me that?”

“Because you’re smart. Come on, Rachel.” With knees and reins, he urged his horse up into a fast trot. Rachel Hines had galloped to give him the news, but stayed with him now. Every few hundred yards, they’d gather up another trooper. By the time they got back to where Smitty was waiting, they headed up a squad’s worth of men.

“We’re gonna get the guy, eh, Captain?” Rachel said. Auerbach heard something of the eagerness he felt in her voice. “Don’t quite know why we want him, but we’re gonna get him.”

“Yeah, reckon we are.” Auerbach heard the question in Rachel’s voice, but if he wouldn’t give out his guesses for Magruder, he wouldn’t do it for her, either. He turned to the troopers he’d brought in his wake. “Isbell, you and Evers hold horses. If we get in trouble out there, one of you ride like hell back to the highway and tell Lieutenant Magruder to get reinforcements up here.” The men he’d designated both nodded. He peered out over the prairie. He saw no signs anybody was out there, but Larssen was supposed to know what he was doing. “Okay, let’s spread out and get him. Be on your toes. He’s got a gun and he uses it.”

---