'Fucking whoopee!' Gumshoe exclaimed, clearly growing excited. 'So what do / do?'

  Suddenly, they all heard a distant bass rumbling sound. The whole bell tower shook as if in an earthquake.

  Looking out, Michael saw, to his amazement, that the great mother ship had started to revolve, slowly at first, all its lights still flashing, then quicker, ever quicker, until its sharp edge and flashing lights had merged into a single, rapidly swirling, eerie whitish glow that illuminated the whole of the White House and the grounds all around it. Then the mother ship ascended, slowly at first, metre by painful metre, as if struggling to break free from some invisible force, perhaps the force within the White House, maybe only Earth's gravity, gradually shrinking as it rose higher and higher towards the clear, star-filled sky. Growing smaller as it ascended, it was soon the size of a weather balloon, then resembled a spinning, ethereally glowing plate, and finally looked like no more than a large star surrounded by that same eerie glow.

  At that point it stopped moving. The bell tower stopped shaking. Absolute silence reigned for a brief moment. Then the silence was broken.

  Michael saw the explosion before he heard or felt it. The large star abruptly turned into a flare of silvery light that expanded in all directions, cutting through the sky's darkness, obliterating the stars, spreading out until it filled the whole sky and turned the night into day. Then Michael heard the

  explosion and felt the force of the blast, the dangerous shaking of the whole bell tower. He squinted and rubbed his eyes and spat swirling dust from his mouth, then looked up again to see that brilliant sky turning into a web of silvery striations that coiled and bent and swept upwards and drifted down, gradually letting the stars reappear as its tendrils reached back to Earth.

  'Holy shit!' Ben exclaimed.

  Then, as they all looked up in awe, the spinning, glowing footballs, which now numbered hundreds and had continued to shoot up and down, to and fro, left and right, started exploding in mid-flight, the debris flying everywhere, glinting dully in boiling clouds of smoke. Some blew apart while others melted completely or broke into large, glinting pieces of metal that fell to Earth as fiercely burning balls of fire. They crashed against the White House roof, into the trees, onto the lawns, some of them exploding a second time to further illuminate the darkness with fountains of brilliant red sparks.

  This sight was, if anything, more spectacular than the first, a light show to beat all others, and it went on a long time, the explosions seeming never to end, until only a few footballs remained in a night sky smoke-streaked and filled with geysering sparks. Those remaining footballs did not explode, but merely drifted down to the ground, expiring like dying birds, sinking gently into the darkening grass as if trying to seed it. They remained there, grey and motionless, dead, as the sparks faded away, leaving darkness, and the smoke dissipated. A vast silence now reigned.

  'Jesus!' Gumshoe exclaimed, breaking the silence. 'I don't fucking believe it.'

  Then it happened again.

  The gfeat mother ship that had been hovering above the Pentagon, across the Potomac River, also ascended high in the sky, then exploded with the force of a hydrogen bomb, flooding the sky with light, illuminating the ground below for miles around, and again shaking the bell tower with its blast. No sooner had it faded away than the other flying saucers hovering all over the capital, saucers of all sizes, began exploding, one after the other, creating another spectacular light show. Finally, even as the red-hot glowing debris of those saucers was still falling to earth, the footballs over the other major buildings of the capital began exploding as those over the White House had done, creating a different kind of spectacle: balls of fire and showers of bright red sparks in billowing clouds of black smoke.

  When it had finished, when the last of the saucers had fallen, another vast silence reigned.

  'Oh, boy!' Gumshoe exclaimed, breaking the silence.

  'They all malfunctioned,' Lenny Travis said. 'Every damned one of them.'

  'Maybe you were right,' Richie Pitt said, turning to Michael. 'Maybe that energy field inside the White House was feeding off those saucers and finally drained them.'

  'Maybe,' Michael said. 'And maybe it was deliberate. Maybe the cyborgs — or whoever's in control of them — deliberately aborted those saucers because they're no longer required.'

  The rest of the group stared in disbelief at him, wondering what he meant.

  '"No longer required"?' Ben said. 'What the hell does that mean?'

  It means that whatever the cyborgs are planning has rendered the saucers obsolete. It means that whatever's going to happen, its going to happen in there.'

  Which means we still go in,' Ben said.

  'Right,' Michael confirmed.

  They all gazed at the White House, then down at the south lawn where, to their surprise, the cyborgs, Prowlers and SARGEs

  A 7 n

  were still protecting the building with their weapons. They knew this because the weapons were still moving, covering north, east and west.

  So what do I do?' Gumshoe repeated.

  'We're going to fight our way into the White House,' Ben told him, 'and we're taking along six Speed Freaks picked by me. We want you to lead them.'

  'Why me?'

  'Because Snake Eyes is gone and they respect you even more than they respected him. Because they only feel comfortable with their own kind and they think you're their kind.'

  Gumshoe looked directly at Michael. 'How's that with you?'

  'It's fine with me,' Michael said.

  Nodding, smiling slightly, Gumshoe turned back to Ben. 'I may be able to gain the trust of the Speed Freaks,' he said, 'but I want a particular friend by my side.'

  'Who's that?' Michael asked.

  Gumshoe grinned and spread his hands in the air.

  'The Cowboy,' he said.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  From: our time is running out.

  extraordinary electronic interference causing telecommunications to break down intermittendy but with increasing frequency and likelihood of soon failing altogether, force field being penetrated by same interference and likely to be breached within hours.

  flying saucers launched to protect gaps in force field have all exploded in mid-flight and those on the ground are malfunctioning.

  computer network crashing, radar already dead.

  if this situation cannot be remedied all may be lost and this may be our last communication, the bird must signal if successful and let us come in. good luck and

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  'A wagon-train massacre,' the Cowboy said. 'We just encircle the whole goddamned building and keep moving around it, firing and bombing them on the move, whittling them down and gradually closing in until we can enter the place. It's as easy as falling off a log, though a mite more dangerous, I'll admit.'

  'It's fucking suicidal,' Lenny Travis said, 'so you can count me out right there.'

  'I think it's way out,' said Gene 'Greaser' Madsen, one of the chosen Speed Freaks. 'That sounds like my kinda show, man.'

  'Hear, hear,' Jake 'Jewboy' Hammerstein, another Speed Freak, added. 'Let's not fuck around, guys and gals.'

  'And while we're at it,' Richie Pitt said, 'What's she doing here? This ain't the fucking scene for a Long Hair. Send her back to her knitting.'

  'Fuck you,' Bonnie said. 'I was leader of the Wild Cats for a while and there was nothin' that you Short Hairs did that we didn't do better. I'm in because my goddamned friends are in and where they go, I go.'

  'Good girl,' the Cowboy said.

  They had gathered together in the basement of Ben Wilk-erson's apartment building to get to know each other, select their weapons and coordinate a plan of attack. The Speed Freaks were high on speed, others were smoking Mary Jane, a couple

  were sipping from botdes of Bud and a few were avoiding all temptations and sticking to chewing gum.

  The six Speed Freaks, all favouring a Hell's Angels image, had taken a pile of chairs at one side of the room, with Bonnie, a soul mate, in the middle of them, while Ben's gang — Gumshoe, Michael, Lenny Travis and Richie Pitt, all dressed more conservatively — were sprawled in chairs at the other side.

  The two sides had a healthy respect for each other, but cooperation with other groups didn't come naturally to the Speed Freaks and without Gumshoe's presence in the room they might have split already. The Cowboy, the odd man out, being twice the age of the others, his sardonic gaze hidden in the shadow of his stetson hat, was relaxing in a chair beside Gumshoe, his booted feet on a table. He had a sly little smile on his face as he carefully rolled a normal cigarette. No Mary Jane for the Cowboy.

  'So who the hell are you anyway,' Lenny Travis said, 'to tell us how to make the attack? A wagon-train massacre, for Chrissakes! Where the hell did you get that?'

  'From books,' the Cowboy explained calmly.

  'The Cowboy's an expert on the history of the Old West,' Gumshoe quickly explained. 'He's also a former USAF test pilot who ended up working in the Space Surveillance Centre and learnt an awful lot about the cyborgs. He's also my friend.'

  'And proud of it,' the Cowboy said.

  'Three cheers for fucking friendship,' another Speed Freak said, 'but it don't get us nowhere.' His name was Luke 'Satchmo' Armstrong and he was as black as the ace of spades, born and bred in the North-east Quadrant five years before the cyborgs took it over and pushed the blacks out. 'You ask me, what we need, brothers and sisters, is the answer to a very simple solution. Who goes for what mother?'

  'Mother?' Richie Pitt asked, perplexed and turning to Gumshoe, hoping for a translation.

  'A target,' Gumshoe explained obligingly. 'In this case, the Full Metal Jackets.'

  'Or those fucking clones, the Men in Black,' another Speed Freak, Emiliano 'Zapata' Gomez said, his chocolate-brown eyes flashing dangerously in his dark, mustachioed face.

  'Yeah, them too,' the fifth Speed Freak, Jack 'The Knife' Kline added. 'Not to mention the walking dead.'

  'No, not them,' Ben Wilkerson said. 'We don't touch them at all. We happen to know that the walking dead have all been brain-implanted to make them totally pacified, so there's no need to harm them.'

  'Also,' Michael added, 'we might be able to revert them to their old selves if we gain the cyborg technology. That's what happened in Freedom Bay when the US took over.'

  'The walking dead came back to life?' the sixth Speed Freak, Larry 'Rubbermouth' Ramone asked. 'You gotta be kidding me! What the fuck were they like when they came back to life?'

  'The same as they'd been before,' Michael told him. 'No difference at all.'

  Rubbermouth gave a low whistle of surprise, then let his green gaze take in all the others. 'One way or the other, we all got friends and relatives abducted and turned into the walking dead. They might still be in there right now, so let's go in and get 'em out.'

  'Hear, hear,' Ben said.

  Michael had never ceased to be shocked by the rough street language of Chinatown, particularly as practised by the Speed Freaks, but he knew that this particular bunch, despite their lowlife way of talking, were brighter than they seemed and would almost certainly do what was required of them. In many cases, as he now knew, these young men were sad cases, the rejects of a society turned upside down by the cyborgs, most with parents lost through abduction, most without proper education.

  Gumshoe was one of them, but certainly a cut above them, and Michael sensed that he had kept himself slightly apart from the others in order to preserve what was best in him, though he would never dare show it. There was a dreadful sadness in this

  and it made Michael, who was actually younger than Gumshoe, feel a lot older.

  'So where do we stand,' the Cowboy asked, 'since I've just been shot down?'

  'Not quite,' Gumshoe said. 'A couple of the guys here agree with you that we should go in shooting.'

  'A fucking wagon-train massacre!' Lenny Travis repeated in disgust.

  'What's wrong with that?' Bonnie asked. 'It might be the only way. The White House is defended all the way round, after all, by those damned cyborgs and Prowlers and SARGEs, so why not turn it into a wagon train, hammering at it with bombs and bullets and gradually closing in on it? I say we don't have a choice.'

  'Good girl,' the Cowboy quiedy repeated, lighting up his hand-rolled cigarette and inhaling luxuriously.

  'The old guy strokes the ego of the Long Hair,' Greaser said, 'and it's supposed to be goddamned fuckin'

  tactics. Nevertheless, I think he might have a point. That fucking building is defended right the way round, so we gotta take it from all sides.'

  'Shoot and scoot,' the Cowboy said. 'In and out with cars and bikes. Lobbing bombs and firing guns and winding this way and that until the Full Metal Jackets are confused and don't know which way to turn.

  If we keep moving — and if we move fast enough — we can keep whittling them down to the point where we can actually break through their defences and charge in through the front doors. Just like the Indians did when they fought the settlers, attacking their wagon trains. Yep, it's cowboys and Indians time.'

  Jesus!' Lenny Travis exploded again.

  'He's got a point,' Michael said. 'The Speed Freaks have always specialized in hit-and-run raids — it's what they do best — so though we can't actually encircle the building, we can use what are essentially the same tactics.' How come?' Jewboy asked.

  'The cyborgs have closed up and sealed all entrances to the White House except the double doors on the north portico, so that has to be our point of entrance. The idea, therefore, is that you guys keeping racing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue with your hot rods and motorcycles, right in front of the north lawn, throwing bombs at any Full Metal Jackets outside the grounds, either distracting them or putting them out of action. Meanwhile, the rest of us will go in on foot, entering the grounds from the side, then come up behind the cyborgs on the north lawns while you have them distracted. We get into the building — either by sneaking in behind the distracted cyborgs or by putting paid to them — and once we're in, you guys can drive in through the front gates, then follow us in on foot to give us support

  ... I think it might work.'

  'I agree,' the Cowboy said.

  'So do I,' Gumshoe added

  'All those who agree raise their hands,' Ben said, raising his own hand first.

  Everyone put up his hand except Lenny Travis. But when he saw all the other hands raised, he sighed and added his vote.

  'Okay, that's decided,' Ben said. 'You guys . . .' He nodded to indicate Gumshoe and the six Speed Freaks. 'Give them hell from your motorcycles and hot rods, concentrating on Pennsylvania Avenue, while the rest of us go in on foot with personal weapons to tackle the north lawn. What about you, Bonnie?'

  Bonnie raised her painted eyebrows and widened her big eyes. 'What about me?' she said.

  'You can hitch a ride in one of the hot rods or go in on foot with the rest of us. What's your choice, lady?'

  'Well . . .'

  'I agree with Richie,' Michael said on an impulse, 'though not for the same reasons. I'm sure Bonnie's as competent as anyone else here, but she's still the only woman present and I don't like the thought of that. I mean, it doesn't seem right that we should let a woman—'

  'What? Bonnie exploded. 'You're puttin' me down as a woman? Who the hell do you think you are?'

  Shocked by Bonnie's vehemence, Michael almost recoiled, aware that everyone was staring at him, some of them grinning.

  'I just meant—'

  'I don't care what you meant. I only know what you're implying. You're implying that I'm one of the weaker sex and as such should be kept away from the action. Well, fuck you, Mister Nice Guy. Don't shit on my parade. I was biking with these guys when you were bein' taught fine manners and male chauvinism in some fancy school for rich kids. You don't know how to fight, but I do and you can take that as read. Over and out, mi amigol'

  Shocked even more, deeply hurt, feeling betrayed, Michael hardly knew what to say and so kept his mouth shut. He was stinging even more from the mocking grins of the Speed Freaks when Gumshoe gallantly came to his rescue.

  'He wasn't putting you down in any way, Bonnie, and he didn't deserve that. He was just concerned, that's all.'

  'Fuck him,' Bonnie said. 'I have my pride. I don't need his concern.'

  'Okay, that's enough,' Ben said. He turned to Michael. 'You just pinched Bonnie on a sensitive nerve.

  She'll settle down in a minute.' Turning back to the others, he said, 'Okay, guys, what about the weapons?'

  'The whole fucking works,' Satchmo said with a big smile. Bombs and bullets of every calibre and weight. The whole goddamned shooting match.'

  'We've got it all here,' Ben said. 'A bit old, I grant you, picked up on the black market, but they worked for that old US Army Special Forces regiment, the Green Berets, so they should work for us.'

  The weapons pulled out of the lockers and distributed by Lenny Travis and Richie Pitt were a mixture

  of Colt Commando 5.56mm semi-automatic rifles, MI6A2 Armalite semi-automatic rifles with night-vision aids and M203 grenade launchers, and .45-inch Colt handguns. Everyone in the room was given a handgun and one or other of the semi-automatics, with spare ammunition for both weapons.

  As they would initially be firing from their moving vehicles, either hot rods or motorcycles, it was decided that the Speed Freaks should begin by harassing the cyborgs with the .45-inch Colt handguns and their own home-made bombs, which they kept in canvas satchels slung across their shoulders, only using their semi-automatics — which needed two hands for effective aiming and shooting — when they had breached the north lawns and were preparing to enter the White House proper. Though Gumshoe would be with them, he had already come prepared with his customary bulletproof vest and his conveniently small, light Glock 19 semi-automatic handgun.