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As they straggled back from their quarters, Streicher was there waiting, positioned so that he cast a dramatically long shadow. There were now only two of his boys flanking him. There had been all four of them around for the first workout phase. Vickers wondered what the other two were doing now. Fenton fell into step beside him.
"You think Streicher's going to give us any idea of what we're training for?"
Vickers grunted and hefted his Yasha. "I doubt it."
Stretcher pointed out in the direction of the cult's abandoned ring of pillars.
"For a hundred meters, out to that last clump of trees, we've laid an electronic combat course. There are mines, traps and flip-ups of both good guys and bad guys. The idea is to get to the other side and back again as fast as you can without either being shot or blown up. There's nothing actually lethal in this system, but there is some stuff that can shake you up some. As the flip-ups and the holograms come at you, you'll find that some represent hostile opposition while others will be i
There were some growls among the general nodding. No professional ever wanted anything to do with combat simulators. Nobody actually protested, however, despite all the low grumbling. Streicher allowed himself a sardonic smile.
"One last thing, ladies and gentlemen, as you move into the combat run you'll find that the system has been tuned to the maximum degree of skill. Consider it a test of all these highly touted reputations."
Morse was the first one up. He was armed with a 12 guage Neilsen Autoshot with a police stock. As he loaded it, Streicher described the course.
"It's a two-way street. All the way to the end and back again. You'll find that we've laid out a complex of trenches, wire and sandbags. All real World War I. You can use them however you like. There's also a three-meter wall and a steel culvert. You go over the wall on the way in and through the culvert on the way out. That's mandatory. Move ahead, Mr. Morse."
Morse nodded and started toward the ring of pillars at a slow, careful walk. Streicher called after him.
"You're on the clock, Mr. Morse. If you don't complete the course in four minutes, you do it over."
Morse broke into a reluctant trot. The ground fell away quite steeply beyond the pillars and he was quickly lost from sight. There were a few seconds of silence and then all hell broke loose. There were explosions, the wump of sound shocks and the rapid-fire bark of Morse's shotgun. Multicolored smoke billowed up. Some of the recruits glanced at each other. There was a slight pause and then another eruption of noise.
"Two minutes. He's had half his time."
Streicher stopped his clock at 3:55 as Morse came trotting back through the ring of pillars. He looked out of breath and a little the worse for the wear.
"Just under the wire, Mr. Morse."
Morse flopped down onto the ground.
"Thank Christ; I wouldn't want to go through all that again."
Streicher gri
During the four days that Vickers had been at El Rancho Mars, he had learned to take Debbie and the three other girls a whole lot more seriously than first impressions had indicated. They were clearly hardened professionals and, since they were so exceptionally striking, he wondered how it was that he hadn't heard about them before. Debbie looked both practical and sexy in cut-off jungle greens. There was nothing frivolous about the lightweight M20 that she cradled on her left arm. One of Streicher's boys handed her a banana clip; she slapped it into the machine gun with the ease of long practice and then set off for the pillars at a purposeful lope.
Debbie was back in 3:12. She looked a good deal less ruffled than Morse.
"You're up next, Mr. Bronce."
Bronce flexed. A long-barrelled ultramag nestled in a brown leather shoulder holster next to his perfect pects. To Vickers it was a somewhat lightweight weapon for the kind of course it seemed to be. Bronce, on the other hand, was as struttingly confident as ever. He started down the course as if he were aiming to break a record. As soon as he was out of sight the firing started. When he was about a minute into the course, Streicher looked down sharply at a unit on his wrist. He tapped a button. The explosions stopped. Streicher signalled to his two boys.
"Curtis, Gomez. Something's happened to him and he's down. He probably walked into a beanbag. You'd better go in and fetch him out."
Curtis and Gomez hurried down the course. They came back lugging the limp body of Bronce. Fenton moved beside Vickers.
"He'll be madder than hell when he wakes up. The asshole likes to think he's Superman."
Streicher, Gomez and Curtis came back from the house where they'd left Bronce in the care of Hey Nurse.
"I hope that hasn't put you off, Mr. Vickers."
"I could think of better things to be doing, but what the hell."
"What the hell, indeed. You want to go ahead?"
"Whatever you say."
Gomez was in charge of handing out the ammunition.
"How many clips do you want?"
"Three."
He handed Vickers three clips for the Yasha. Vickers taped two together back to back and dropped the third into his pocket.
"Start the clock, Streicher."
Streicher had been right when he'd said that the course was "real World War I." The slope beyond the pillars was an untidy mess of trenches, razor wire, sandbagged parapets and flat representations of buildings like an unfinished movie set. He had no time, however, to stand and get his bearings. The computer that controlled the training course was programmed to play him like a rat in a maze, tracking his footfalls with sound sensors, following his body heat with thermals and all the time barraging him with an infinite variety of unpleasant surprises. An explosion of bright orange smoke went off uncomfortably close to him. He dived into the nearest trench, feeling that there was quite enough anxiety in his professional life without having to put himself through vicarious simulations. He hit the floor of the trench on all fours. A life-size cartoon samurai flipped. He let go a short blast from the Yasha and it went down again. There was an explosion behind him. This time the smoke was Prussian blue. A hail of rubber bullets slammed into the wall. He lay flat for a second and then scuttled, frogwise, up the trench. He really was a rat being goaded through a maze. Flip-up! A Nazi soldier on the edge of the trench. Burst! Gone! Red explosion! Green! Two trenches intersect. Flip-up! This time it's a little old lady. Don't fire! Magenta explosion and he's at the wall. The bad news is that it's made of vertical logs, Fort Apache style. The good news is there's a rope. Scrambling one handed and complaining how he's an assassin, not a fucking commando. Almost to the top there's a flip-up firing high velocity beanbags. Swing! Bean-bags miss but only just. Swing back, twist, bring up the Yasha. Burst, and the bad guy's gone. Straddle the top. The logs are sharpened to points. Drop. The clip in the Yasha is empty. Pull out, reverse, slam it. For an instant, he thinks about Debbie's legs, and then on again.
He's going across an open space and suddenly he doesn't feel so good. His own legs are heavy and his stomach's churning. That bastard Streicher! There's a Burroughs Tube in this set-up. He's being drenched with subsonics. He's surfing on solid ground and rubber bullets are snapping at his heels, but it's the end of the course. Hit the button and back. Flip-up, burst. Flip-up, burst. Flip-up good guy, hold your fire in the nick of time. Boom! Boom-boom! The smoke is lime green. Here's the culvert. Down on hands and knees. There's something black blocking the pipe. Fire ahead blindly. He's almost deafened but it's gone. Out into the light again. YLO gunman. Z-i-i-ppp! Down into the trench. Crawl, crawl, crawl. There's gas and his eyes are tearing. And then he can see the tops of the pillars and he's through, doing his best to look nonchalant as he walks back to the group. The asshole likes to think of himself as Superman.