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The sniper got Queever, the young miner who had proven himself an excellent self-taught shot though he’d never held a weapon until the previous week, but the rest of us made it back to safety.
In talking it over later, we decided Murphy had been forced to wear what he probably thought was a heavy bulletproof vest, but it had turned out to be filled with explosives and a few pieces of tin designed to act as fléchettes. Murphy probably had not realized he was a walking bomb—the sweat was simply from his being in physical danger for the first time in his life. I’m sure some part of him suspected he was a pawn that could be sacrificed.
Pelloponensis had inadvertently escaped with the manila envelope. After testing the closed version for a trap, we decided it either contained nothing but air or a single sheet of thin paper.
You’re fucked, it read, with the seal of the Coal Country Firemen beneath.
I was the only one wounded. I had a few pieces of shrapnel in me. Sikorsky extracted them with a pair of tweezers and stitched me up with fishing line from the office. One sliver was too deep for him to reach. I’ve since seen it on X-rays; it appears to be minding its own business, probably encased in some sort of protective cyst my body formed around it. I tell the doctors it is my “decoration” for the fighting at Number Four.
Sadly, it’s the only one ever issued, at least to my knowledge. I am hoping this memoir might change that.
• • •
THE SECOND RIOT CONTROL—
“No. The hostages go right by the entrance.”
I had little use for Prapa or Murphy.
All the equipment was handy. The trick, as Sikorsky said, was not being around when it went off. It was entirely possible that as soon as the fans began to move the finely ground dust, friction between particles or heat from the motor could set off the explosion, killing all of us.
• • •
Luckily the water mains were all in the mine buildings. Otherwise the fire trucks might have been able to put enough water on us to make shooting back impossible while they stormed Number Four.
• • •
Over the next three days we lost three more. David Valentine, a student of the Civil War that divided the former United States more than two hundred years ago, once told me that General Lee lamented the loss of some key troops in one action or another. Lee noted that troops he lost were gone for good, whereas the enemy seemed to have limitless replacements. We weren’t even doing as well as that other generation of rebels; the last casualties we had inflicted were those in the assault after Bleecher was set on fire.
Just holding out was a form of victory, however. The first evidence that we had that there were repercussions for our “strike” came in the form of a limousine. I had seen one or two in Ohio during our search for Gail Post two years ago. This was the first one I’d seen in the Coal Country. It was not an elongated one, but rather a simple, overlarge sedan with blacked-out windows and shining grillwork.
“What the hell’s that?” an office strongpoint observer asked, looking through a hole in the wall with binoculars. He woke Pelloponensis (we had an informal arrangement that one of us guarding the strongpoint could sleep while the other two kept watch on the approaches and each other) who stared blearily through the glasses as he strapped on his hard hat.
“White stripe across the roof. Church, most likely,” Pelloponensis said.
Again, the fire engine loudspeaker announced that a cease-fire was in effect.
We took advantage of the cease-fire to hurry back to the cave mouth, bringing the accumulation from the rainwater catchers. We’d run out of lives at this rate before the soap ran out, but water for bathing was running short.
A black-suited figure strode out across the gap between trooper and firemen vehicles and the scrap-heap protection in between them and our own shot-up lines. White showed at his collars and cuffs, and he wore a red silk tie. He strode purposefully, as serenely as if he were walking up his home church aisle in a ceremony.
“That’s the Guidon,” one of the regular churchgoers said. “He
’s right below the Archon in Baltimore. He’s out here a couple of times a year for graduations of Youth Vanguard and investments of new clergy.”
“I have an offer,” the churchman called. “Let’s put a stop to this foolishness, my children.”
“That’s what’s always pissed me off about the damn Church,” Sikorsky said. “We’re always children. I’m a fuckin’ grown-up. I can figure out whether to wash before I go to bed or when I get up, I don’t need a church bulletin telling me which saves more soap and water in the long run.”
“I like your nonbathing solution,” Pelloponensis put in. “Saves everything all around.”
“Who wants to go get a face full of this message?”
He looked like a senior churchman. He was heavy, with a red nose that had nothing to do with cold.
“I go,” I said.
“I wonder if he’ll be wired.”
