第23节

'C'mon, Brickman! If I've gotta put my ass on the line to nail Mister

Magic, I wanna know what she's providin' in the way of back-up. You

were there when she spooked Wallis and the other guys. You tryin' to

make out you and she didn't connect over this?"

'No. But all I got were a series of sensations, not the workshop

manual." Steve hesitated. 'The best way to explain it is to imagine

Mr Snow is a radio transceiver and she's a heavy burst of static. When

he switches on, she's gonna swamp the air-waves and block out all

incoming and outgoing signals. If she can prevent his brain from

functioning coherently then, in theory, he won't be able to draw in

these forces or direct them outwards on to a specific target.

'Sounds plausible. Question is, will it work on the day?"

'That's something we're gonna have to take a chance On."

'Great. That really builds up my confidence. One last thing. That

business with Roz and the message from Clearwater. Was that for

real?

Did she really come through then or were you just juicing our

feathered friend?"

Steve smiled knowingly. He warmed his hands one last time then rose to

his feet. 'No point in answering that, is there? You don't believe in

all this magic shit."

Malone's eyes narrowed but his battered face was not unfriendly.

'Gidd-outta-here I' Since leaving the Clan Kojak on the shores of Lake

Mi-Shiga, Steve, Cadillac and Clearwater had followed, wherever

possible, the line of the ancient hardway listed on Federation maps as

Interstate 80. In the pre-Holocaust era it had been part of a

continuous east-west ribbon of concrete that began in the Big Apple and

ended at Denver, Colorado, passing through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,

Iowa and Nebraska on the way.

They had long since gone off the left hand edge of the map that Steve

had found on board the aircraft they had stolen at Long Point, but the

clans they met along the way all agreed that if they continued towards

the setting sun they would reach the edge of a wide endless river.

Since they had already crossed the Mississippi, Steve knew from the

maps he'd seen during his training at Rio Lobo that this had to be the

Miz-Hurry - the Mute name for the Missouri.

The crumbling weed-covered remains of Interstate 80 had finally petered

out some miles from the river, but eventually they found themselves on

the edge of a one hundred foot high bluff overlooking the east bank.

On the far side lay the buried remains of Omaha. The headquarters of

Strategic Air Command, sited at Offut AFB just south of the city had

made Omaha a prime target in the global nuclear war which brought 20th

century civilization to an abrupt end.

In the public archives which could be accessed via COLUMBUS, the blame

for the Holocaust was laid firmly on the Mutes; the role played by the

Russians was ignored, the very existence of the USSR, along with all

other nation-states beyond the borders of the USA, had been erased from

the records and the minds of the Federation's soldier-citizens.

According to COLUMBUS there was only one continent, America: only one

race, Trackers - born to inherit the blue-sky world once it had been

cleansed of the subhuman scum spawned in the hell-fires of the

Holocaust, the incendiary tidal wave of murder and mindless destruction

that had burned every city, township and hamlet to the ground and which

- as everyone knew - had been the work of the degenerate, drug-crazed

hordes who had fathered the Mutes.

It was an agreeable fiction: the historical fact, insofar as it

concerned Omaha, was that the air base, the city and its riverbank

neighbour, Council Bluffs, Iowa, had been obliterated by a multiple

strike which included both air and ground bursts.

A single H-Bomb would have sufficed, but despite the endless attempts

(some genuine, other entirely fraudulent) to reduce the stockpiles of

nuclear weapons, the politicians and the generals who held the fate of

the planet in their hands were still wedded to the concept of

overkill.

The first missile obliterated its target, the remainder merely

rearranged the glowing ashes and ensured that the key personnel

sheltering in SAC's bomb-proof bunker beneath Offut AFB stayed there

permanently.

The initial fire-flash which, in its first few milliseconds of

incandescent life was hotter than a solar flare, had vaporized all the

timber-frame houses and reduced their brick-built neighbours to

cinders. The four bridges linking the two cities, scarred and riven

but still standing after the first blast, had disintegrated in the

second, their steel-work fusing with stone and concrete into huge

red-hot gobbets of volcanic lava which had been hurled i