Cowboy Angels Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  PART ONE - WORLD WAR THREE BLUES

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART TWO - LOOK FOR AMERICA

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART THREE - A HIGHWAY BACK TO YOU

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  WHITE SANDS, OCTOBER 1977

  Also by Paul McAuley

  Four Hundred Billion Stars

  Secret Harmonies

  The King of the Hill

  Eternal Light

  Red Dust

  Pasquale’s Angel

  Fairyland

  The Invisible Country

  Child of the River: The First Book of Confluence

  Ancients of Days: The Second Book of Confluence

  Shrine of Stars: The Third Book of Confluence

  The Secret of Life

  Whole Wide World

  White Devils

  Little Machines

  Mind’s Eye

  Players

  Cowboy Angels

  PAUL MCAULEY

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Cowboy Angels © Paul McAuley 2007

  All rights reserved

  The right of Paul McAuley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cowboy Angels first published in Great Britain in 2007 by Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  This edition published in 2008 by Gollancz

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 5750 8706 4

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset by Input Data Services Ltd, Frome

  Printed and bound in Great Britain at Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

  The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  ‘We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: “Damn, we’re Americans.” ’

  Lieutenant-General Jay Garner

  For Georgina

  and

  for Jack Womack

  PENNSYLVANIA, JANUARY 1981

  ‘They’re Americans, Adam. Americans like you and me. Americans who want to rid their homeland of Communist tyranny. Americans who are laying their lives on the line to return liberty and freedom to their version of the US of A. Their government may not be the perfect model of democracy, I’ll give you that, but they uphold the Constitution, they’ve kept the flame of liberty burning for fifty years, they sure as hell deserve our full support. And here you are, got up like an undertaker, ready to sell them out.’

  ‘Go easy on me, Tom. I’m just the messenger.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Then I guess you’re just obeying orders too, like those bloodless nine-to-five office workers who’ve taken over the Company. Jesus, Adam. I’d be happier to hear that you side with Jimmy Carter and his merry band of quitters. At least it would mean you still believed in something.’

  The two men were sitting either side of a government-issue steel desk. Adam Stone in a black wool overcoat and a black suit, the briefcase on his lap handcuffed to his left wrist; Tom Waverly in a brown leather jacket and combat fatigues, greying hair caught up in a loose ponytail and pulled through the clip of his baseball cap, cradling a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Trucks roared past the makeshift office every couple of minutes, shaking its plywood walls. A space heater blew baked air and the smell of burnt wiring. Music thumped out of a battered mini-system.

  ‘You want to know what I believe?’ Stone said. ‘I believe that the time for crude interventions like SWIFT SWORD has passed. I believe that these so-called Free Americans don’t have a chance of winning their war unless we back them up with a lot more than a secure resupply line. And the country’s tired of war, Tom. It doesn’t want to be dragged into another quagmire. That’s what the election was all about, in case you didn’t notice.’

  ‘So you are siding with the quitters. Adam Stone has turned peacenik. I never thought I’d see the day.’

  ‘And I never thought you’d take something like this so personally.’

  ‘How else am I supposed to take it? How are General Baines and his men supposed to take it? Jesus Christ, Adam, we’ve been working on this for six months, we’re all tooled up and ready to go, and at the very last moment, only a couple of hours before the show kicks off, we’re told that we aren’t going to get the tactical support we need. Okay, I admit it’s hardly a surprise. Carter slid into office on an anti-war ticket, Senate delayed implementation of SWIFT SWORD until after the election, and Baines has been taking calls from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State all week. But it’s still a callous and cowardly act, and I’m as sorry as hell to see you fronting for it.’

  Tom Waverly took a sip of Jack Daniel’s. He was red-eyed and drawn, looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. ‘How did it ever come to this? Here we are, two of the first guys to have been shot through a Turing gate. Key players in the first operation to organise a coup d’état in an alternate America. The fall of the American Bund? They teach eager new recruits all about it. We’re in the fucking textbooks, Adam, and what have they got us doing? You’re about to deliver history’s worst Dear John letter, and I’ve just wasted three months running SWIFT SWORD’s training and morale programme. Fact is, Baines’s troops were trained and ready to go before they came through the mirror. They’re good, disciplined soldiers who don’t need to be told which end of a rifle is which, or how to run an assault course in full pack. And they certainly don’t need me to tell them that the Communists are the bad guys. My so-called training programme consisted of making sure they got hot meals three times a day, running back-to-back movie shows, and giving their officers access to all the liquor and whores they could handle. Which was plenty, believe you me. Those boys were so hot-blooded I had to bring in working girls from as far away as New Orleans to take care of them. I admit it was kind of fun to organise, but it wasn’t what you could call real action.’

  ‘It looks like you’re dressed up for action now,’ Stone said.

  When Stone had arrived at SWIFT SWORD’s camp, he’d been warned by Bru
ce Ellis, the colonel in charge of perimeter security, that Tom was in a bad way. ‘Baines will take his own sweet time organising an escort to his HQ,’ Bruce had said. ‘While you’re waiting, you could maybe talk to Tom, try to calm him down.’ But Tom had already been half in the bag when Stone had found him, and he’d been getting steadily drunker ever since, alternating between self-lacerating bitterness and blustering bravado. And he kept identifying with the Free Americans, too, saying things like we’re ready to go . . .

  Saying now, ‘You miss it, Adam? Being in action?’

  ‘Not a bit.’

  ‘Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter. I know you miss it as much as I do.’ Tom leaned back in his chair and crossed his boots on top of the desk. The wings of his brown leather jacket, a scuffed antique with fleece collar and cuffs, fell open, revealing the .357 Smith & Wesson revolver and the throwing knife hung on his customised shoulder rig. ‘You and me, Adam, we’re not the kind of guys who should end up pushing paper across a desk, signing off reports on aid programmes and friendship initiatives, and tootling around golf courses in those little buggies at weekends, shooting the shit at the nineteenth hole while we wait for our first heart attacks. Don’t you think we should go out on our own terms? Wouldn’t it be better to burn out than fade away?’

  ‘I think you’re drunk, Tom. You always get this way when you’ve had a few too many.’

  ‘Yeah? What way is that?’

  ‘Sentimental, mostly. Maudlin. Listen, I’ll be happy to share that bottle with you and talk about the good old bad old days, but I have to get this little job done first. Why don’t you use that phone on your desk and find out where my escort has got to?’

  ‘He’ll be here soon enough. Ease back, my man. Relax. You’re not in the DCI’s office now. This here’s my house. You want a drink? Loosen your tie and have a goddamn drink. We can shoot the shit and listen to Bobby Dylan until your man gets here.’

  ‘I thought I recognised the voice,’ Stone said, grabbing at the chance to change the subject, ‘but the songs are like nothing I remember.’

  ‘It’s a new album. A friend of mine black-bagged a cassette tape through the mirror, and I had one of the wizards in Technical Services transfer it to disk. Bobby Dylan has had himself some kind of mid-life crisis and turned to evangelical Christianity, but he can still make a point when he wants to.’

  ‘He sounds pretty funky.’

  ‘ “Funky”, huh? Where did a straight-arrow guy like you pick up a word like that?’

  ‘I believe it was in the Nixon sheaf, that time we worked together.’

  ‘Oh yeah. You buried yourself in the New York Public Library, doing your socio-political research, and I got to hang out with those zippies or yippies or whatever the hell they called themselves. Happy times.’ Tom toasted Stone with his bottle, took a sip. ‘Tell me something, and don’t lie. Bruce Ellis put you up to this little visit, didn’t he?’

  ‘He mentioned you were here. And because I have to wait for this damned escort, I thought I’d stop by and catch up.’

  ‘Colonel Bruce Ellis,’ Tom said, with a teasing lilt. ‘As I recall, he was a brand-new lieutenant when you two went through the mirror together. It was the first time for both of you, wasn’t it? A couple of virgins lost in the wild woods of that wild sheaf. And look at you now, all grown up and working for the DCI’s office, thinking it gives you the right to meddle in other people’s business. Well, it doesn’t. And besides, there’s no need.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve seen you in a couple of years—’

  ‘First time, I believe, since I saved your life.’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten. Do you want me to thank you all over again?’

  ‘It was embarrassing enough at the time. You don’t owe me anything, Adam. Don’t you ever think you owe me, that you have to somehow pay me back.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that it’s been a long time. I stopped by because I wanted to see how things are working out for you.’

  ‘Well I guess you can see where my career’s headed - straight into the crapper, like my fucking marriage. How that worked out, thanks for asking, is I got to keep the clothes I was wearing when I walked out, and the car I drove off in. Brenda got the house and everything else when the divorce was finalised, she threatens to use my disks as skeet-shooting targets every time it looks like I’m gonna step out of line, and now her boyfriend has moved in, the slick son of a bitch. Fucker wants Linda to call him Daddy, like he’s part of the family, but Linda isn’t having any of that. She calls him Robert to his face, Mr Hair Oil when she’s with me.’ Tom’s expression softened for a moment. ‘My little girl’s grown up strong and smart, Adam. And she’s not so little anymore. She’ll be twenty this April, wants to join the Company as soon as she graduates from NYU. You can imagine what Brenda has to say about that.’

  ‘Nothing good, I bet.’

  Tom’s ex-wife was employed by the analytical arm of the Company, turning raw data into finished intelligence, so she’d always had a pretty good idea about what his clandestine work in Special Ops had involved. Her attempts to persuade him to transfer to a safer position had sparked a series of spectacular and legendary rows that had eventually led to their divorce.

  ‘You still going out with that photographer?’ Tom said. ‘Nora what’s-her-name?’

  ‘It didn’t work out. I guess I’m kind of in between relationships at the moment.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it. I know I’m no advertisement for marriage, but I always thought you’d make the ideal all-American father. Clean-cut, hard-working, loyal . . . I guess we should drop “loyal”, given why you’re here.’

  Stone let that one go.

  Tom put his head to one side, listening to Dylan sing about naming animals in Eden. ‘I guess he does sound a little bit funky. But it doesn’t matter what the man chooses to do, he’s always cool. Always has been, always will be. He doesn’t care what other people think. He just does his own thing.’ He took a sip of Jack Daniel’s and said, ‘These poor guys are going to get slaughtered if they don’t have any backup.’

  Suddenly sounding tired and sober and sad.

  ‘That’s not the idea,’ Stone said.

  ‘Maybe it isn’t. But that’s what going to happen.’

  A horn blared outside, long and loud.

  Tom checked his watch and said, ‘That’ll be the guy come to take you up the hill.’

  Stone’s pang of relief was immediately tempered by guilt. ‘As soon as I’ve seen the general, I’ll come straight back here and have that drink with you.’

  ‘It stinks, Adam. Jimmy fucking Carter is going to let Baines’s men go back through the mirror and commit suicide because that’s easier than finding some way of standing down and repatriating five thousand soldiers. You know what this reminds me of? The Bay of Pigs.’

  ‘I don’t know it.’

  ‘It’s part of the same history as “funky”, and this particular doppel of Bobby Dylan. Look it up. One thing I’ll tell you now, the only thing we’ve learnt from all the different Americas we found through the mirror is that we haven’t learnt anything at all.’ Tom Waverly screwed the top onto the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and stood up, saying, ‘Let’s go, compañero.’

  Stone hesitated for a moment. On the one hand, he had a politically sensitive delivery to make, and didn’t really want to have Tom Waverly around when he made it in case Tom got it into his head to cause some kind of scene. On the other, he felt that he should keep his old friend under close watch in case he was working himself up to do something reckless . . .

  He said, ‘If you want to ride along, be my guest.’

  ‘You bet. I’m all done here.’

  Adam Stone’s escort, Captain Gene Lewis, was a muscular young man with lustrous black hair and dark, contemptuous eyes who drove his Jeep with reckless speed, overtaking a string of trucks lumbering toward the staging area, barely slowing when he swung onto the dirt track that climbed to the farmhouse wher
e General Wendell Baines had his headquarters.

  Tom had taken the shotgun seat. He turned to Stone, gestured at the wide valley spread below the ridge, and said, ‘Ain’t that something? ’

  Two thirty-foot-diameter Turing gates - clones of the primary, which had been opened onto the Free America sheaf at Brookhaven in 1978 - stood under a raked steel canopy at one end of the huge concrete apron where trucks, half-tracks and light tanks were drawn up in neat rows like the audience for the world’s biggest drive-in cinema. The low winter sun glowered through a haze of diesel smoke, and in this apocalyptic light soldiers were lining up to receive ammunition and grenades from quartermasters, standing in front of a field altar where a military chaplain elevated the host, or sitting around oil-drum braziers amongst piles of equipment.

  In the Free America sheaf’s version of history, the USA had fallen to a Communist revolution in 1929, and a cabal of disenfranchised politicians, bankers, and businessmen, backed by loyal elements of the army and navy, had occupied Cuba and Haiti and established a government-in-exile. Operation SWIFT SWORD, approved by President Floyd Davis just before he’d been defeated by Jimmy Carter in an election so close there had been recounts in fifteen states, had been set up to help the Free Americans strike at the Communist heartland. It had brought a division of Free American troops into the Real through a Turing gate at Guantánamo Bay and transported them to a camp a few miles outside Gettysburg, where they had been equipped with modern weaponry and trained in its use.

  According to the original plan of campaign, the Free Americans would have re-entered their sheaf at Gettysburg, and the Real would have defended the Turing gates and built up resupply routes while the Free Americans staged a fast, hard march across Pennsylvania and Maryland to Washington, DC, destroying the seat of the Communist government, inciting a popular uprising, and bringing another version of America to the Pan-American Alliance. But because the centrepiece of Carter’s campaign had been a promise to end the so-called wars for freedom that Davis and three Republican presidents before him had fought across a dozen versions of America, and scaling down support for SWIFT SWORD was the first step in making good on that promise, the Free Americans would now either have to fight their war on their own, or return to their version of Cuba.