Those Meddling Kids
Chapter Three
by Technomad
Pueblo, Colorado, Occupied Territory
General Vlad Bratchenko was in a very good mood. He'd been transferred to Pueblo just a couple of weeks ago. He had a good feeling about this new assignment. He now had twice the personnel under his command that he'd had before, and a more responsible job.
His time in Calumet had been dreadfully frustrating. He'd been in overall command of a mish-mash of rear-echelon troops, mostly Latin American allies, and had been plagued by an American partisan band calling itself "The Wolverines." The men he'd been forced to work with were all but helpless against the enemy partisans, who knew the country intimately and were much better shots than most of his own command. Again and again, they had struck, and had melted back into the forboding mountains and forests before he could coordinate a counterstrike. They had also had the devil's own luck at finding weak places to hit at.
The direct commander of the Latin Americans, a Cuban named Ernesto Bella, had been furious at losing so many men, but Bratchenko suspected him of secretly sympathizing with the "Wolverines." Bella spoke frequently of his own time as a guerrilla commander in the Caribbean and Latin America, and Bratchenko knew that in some ways, he saw himself as still the same insurgent leader he had once been. Bratchenko thought that Bella would have been happier if he'd been on the other side. If he hadn't been so good at his job, and so insightful into what might work against the partisans, Bella would probably have been retired. With extreme prejudice.
However, Colonel Bella was back in Calumet, and Bratchenko wished him joy of the accursed town. Bratchenko had to admit that a lot of the men and women he commanded in Pueblo made the rear-echelon reservists and half-trained draftees that he'd had in Calumet look like an elite Guards regiment. However, there'd been almost no trouble around Pueblo, and they'd even had a few locals join the American Liberation Army voluntarily. The ranks had been filled out, as in other places, with people taken from the Americans' prisons or forcibly conscripted. Such men needed stern discipline, and that was what General Bratchenko could give them.
He stood at the entrance to his headquarters and surveyed his men. They were lined up, at attention, and looked as good as any troops ever had. Bratchenko knew what it had taken to bring them to that point. The ex-prisoners were particularly recalcitrant, but most of those who'd been conscripted were also resistant to Soviet discipline. Some of both groups had been in the US forces before the Soviet invasion, and they, in particular, had much to un-learn.
The men saluted him in unison, holding their hands in the correct, Russian, way, and he saluted back. With that daily bit of ceremonial done, Bratchenko dismissed the soldiers, and they dispersed to their various duties. Bratchenko went back into his office, to face the pile of paperwork that somehow never got smaller. He smiled to himself, remembering the time he'd been helping interrogate a captured American officer. The American had been very hostile, but when he saw the paperwork all over Bratchenko's desk, he had nodded to it and said "You, too?" For a second, differences were forgotten as two professional soldiers nodded to each other.
If paperwork won wars, the Soviet Union would rule the world! thought Bratchenko, sitting down at his desk. At the top was a demand from higher up for Bratchenko to get busy and organize "donations" of livestock and food from the local ranchers and farmers. Bratchenko shook his head angrily. Don't those fools realize that this is nearly desert country? Do they think they're in the Ukraine or somewhere like that? Nonetheless, it had to be done, so he began making a list of steps to take for at least some livestock and food to be gathered. He was quite sure that the locals were hiding as much as they could, but between threats, appeals to help the town-bound Americans who really needed food, and judicious bribes in the form of extra rations of fuel, he thought he could at least show his superiors that he was making a real effort. And if that fails, there's always just sending in fake numbers! That had been the principle on which the Soviet Union had run since its foundation, and it had become routine.
Fred Jones, Shaggy Roberts and Scooby-Doo were seated in the passenger and back seats of Mr. Schmidt's big four-door pick-up truck. It was towing a large trailer full of unhappy bovines, whose mooing could be heard over the engine noise and sound of the tires. Behind them, another truck, this one with only the front seat in its cab, was towing another trailer of cattle. Daryl Bates was driving that one, with his brother Danny at his side.
Hidden in the trailers, the rest of the Wolverines were crouching, along with the recon team. They were all wearing civilian clothes, and were not armed. The plan was that they would claim to be relatives of the ranchers, drafted in to help with the work after the invasion. Fred hadn't been too sure about letting Daphne, Velma, Erica and Toni come along on this, but he'd been overruled.
"We're just as tough as any of you guys!" Toni had snarled, hands on her hips and glaring daggers at Fred. Beside her, Daphne nodded, giving Fred a look that boded ill for him when they had a chance for a private talk. "The Reds don't know who we are, so it's no more dangerous than for anybody else! And we might notice things you don't!"
"Yeah!" Velma had joined the Wolverine, scowling through her goggles. When the Army had discovered how nearsighted she was, she had nearly been discharged. Her technical and scientific skills had been deemed valuable enough for an exception to be made for her. At her suggestion, a pair of motorcycle goggles had been modified to carry the prescription lenses on which she depended. She did sacrifice a little peripheral vision, but she swore it didn't matter. And times were dangerous enough that her word was accepted. "I've got us out of a lot of jams, both before the war and now, with what I know! You need me!"
"Death rate's the same for us as for you male-type people. One person, one death. No more, no less." Daphne had become grimly fatalistic since the invasion, particularly after finding that her parents had been directly in the path of the Reds. She still hoped they were alive, but she had privately told Fred that she had long since braced herself for the news that they were dead.
"Okay, okay! You're all in!" Fred hadn't been a sergeant long, but he'd been de facto leader of Mystery, Inc. for some time before the invasion. He knew when to give in to his friends. And he had to admit the women had a point. They were all in danger, and if things went bad, they might need every friendly person they had. They depended on each other, and teamwork had saved them several times already.
They were coming up on one of the checkpoints around Pueblo. Mr. Schmidt slowed down. "Okay, keep cool. These guys are pretty slack. Just act like you've done this a thousand times before, and nothing's too likely to happen." When the truck came to a stop, two men came up to it. They were wearing a mishmash of Red and US uniforms, but the armbands on their arms with "ALA" marked them for what they were.
"Morning, gentlemen. Kind of a nice day if you've got to be out guarding a road," said Mr. Schmidt, cool as though he were speaking to neighbors of many years' standing instead of ill-disciplined collaborationist "soldiers." Fred looked them over unobtrusively, and wasn't too impressed. Even with their uniforms, he could see crude tattoos on their hands and necks, and they looked bleary-eyed, as though they had started early on a day's drinking.
"You got the cattle here for redistribution?" The leader put out a grubby hand. "Got anything for us poor soldiers?"
"You know I never forget you!" With a wink, Mr. Schmidt pulled a bottle full of a clear liquid out from under his seat. "This'll put hair on your chest!" As the soldier pocketed the bottle with a grin, Mr. Schmidt produced some papers. "This'll show you what we've brought. All in order."
The soldier glanced uninterestedly at the papers. "Yeah, these look all right," he grunted. He turned and waved at the other soldiers manning the checkpoint. "Let them through! They've brought cattle for redistribution!" The other soldiers cheered and raised the barrier, allowing Mr. Schmidt and Daryl to drive on into Pueblo.
Fred looked around curiously. Automatically, his eyes flicked around, checking for places where an ambush could be waiting, looking for spots that offered good cover to hide behind if a firefight broke out. He was glad they weren't armed, and wondered how the others were keeping Robert under control. Probably by sitting on him, Fred thought mordantly. He had been reluctant to bring the women along, and from what the Wolverines had told him and he had seen himself, Robert was a bit of a loose cannon on his good days. Fred just hoped that nothing would set the volatile Wolverine off. He'd rather have left Robert behind, but knew that the other Wolverines wouldn't have stood for it.
Dropping off the cattle turned out to be fairly easy. With everybody helping, the cows and steers were off the trailers quickly, milling around in a corral along with many others. With that done, Fred looked at Jed. "What now?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
"Mr. Schmidt told me it'd take till tomorrow for us to get fuel to drive back to the ranch. In the meantime, we're ranch hands come to town. We can wander around and look the place over. You can find out what you need to know, and we can go back to the ranch tomorrow and figure out what to do when we've got more information."
That sounded good to Fred. He gathered his followers up with a look and a gesture, as Jed did likewise with the Wolverines. They stuck close together in a tight group as they walked on into the town proper. While rapes had become less frequent as the situation stabilized, they were still far from unknown. Scooby Doo was the only protection they had; they had not dared to carry weapons lest their pose of "harmless kids working as ranch hands" was questioned. Being caught carrying firearms, or anything much more threatening than a folding knife, would mean certain death.
Pueblo looked like it had been fought over. There were quite a few buildings standing in ruins, showing bullet and shell holes, or burned down and not rebuilt. The people they saw were acting fairly subdued, skittering along the streets as fast as they could go and trying to stay inconspicuous.
They paused near a building that had apparently once been a store, but was now serving a new purpose. Over the entrance was a hand-lettered sign: Rancher's Rest. Over the wood boarding up what had been a plate-glass window was a list of prices for drinks and food. Fred and Jed looked at each other, then at the others.
"Shall we go in?" Fred was well-supplied with the scrip the invaders used for money, and American dollars still circulated freely in the occupied zone. They pushed open the door and walked in.
The interior was dark; most of the electric lights were either not working or just not on. Most of the light came from outside, through the unbroken windows. A roughly-improvised bar stood at one end of the room, and there were other people, mostly men but some women, sitting at an assortment of tables. Some of the tables were improvised out of whatever had been at hand, while others had apparently been salvaged from various places. The air was thick with smoke.
"Come on, let's order something," Fred muttered. They moved over toward the bar in a group. Fred was aware that conversation had become muted when they had entered, and people were giving them suspicious glances. Behind the bar, an old man gave them a cold stare.
"What'll it be, strangers?"
Fred pulled out some occupation scrip. "Beers all around. Any objection?" he asked, looking at the others. Everybody nodded, and Fred put the scrip on the bar. The old man nodded, drawing them the drinks and serving them in an assortment of glasses. The infiltrators took their drinks, went over to an empty table, and sat down. Fred took a pull of his beer. It was watery, weak and badly brewed, but he hadn't expected Coors. He had known that the invasion had destroyed the Coors breweries.
After a little while, the other patrons began taking an interest in the newcomers. "Haven't seen you in here before. Where are you from?"
Fred looked at Jed, letting the Wolverines' leader do the talking. "We're from Colorado Springs, originally. After the fighting was over, we were moved south, and we've been working for the Schmidts since then. This is the first time we've been off their ranch since we got here."
That seemed to satisfy the others present, and tensions visibly eased. Colorado Springs had been the scene of some very intense fighting. The cadets and teachers at the Air Force Academy had defended their school fanatically, fighting on in the rubble long after anybody else would have surrendered. Fred had heard Red prisoners praising the cadets, saying that their epic last stand would have got them the Hero of the Soviet Union if they'd been on the other side. And since Colorado Springs now lay in ruins, the infiltrators' presence was explained in a way that couldn't be easily disproved.
Fred and the others relaxed, listening to the conversation. From what they heard, it wasn't too difficult getting in and out of most of Pueblo. There was an area in the south of the town, though, that was heavily guarded, mostly by ALA soldiers. "Keep out of the ALA's way, if you can," they were warned. "Those guys are trouble, nothing else but!"
A few minutes later, trouble walked on into the bar. A knot of about ten ALA soldiers strutted on in, not seeming to notice the silence that fell when they entered. Fred could feel the tension ratcheting up, and he unobtrusively signalled his friends that it was about time they left. Beside him, Jed was doing the same thing. Scooby Doo laid his ears back and bristled the fur on his back, and Fred quietly reached down and took the dog by the collar. They weren't there to start a fight.
The ALA men seemed to relish the reaction they'd caused. Strutting up to the bar like they owned the place, they demanded beers. In the thick sudden silence, they were served, slapping occupation scrip down on the bar as though paying for their beers was performing an act of undeserved charity. While Fred hadn't cared for the beer he had bought, he knew how hard it was getting by in the occupied zone, and thought that the ALA were acting in their usual charming way. They sure know how to win friends and influence people, he thought.
Fred had feared that the ALA would focus on them, but there were a couple of vacant tables across the room, and that was where the turncoats headed. Once they were settled with their beers, they looked around, sneering at the ranch hands and townsfolk alike. They were outnumbered, but that didn't seem to bother them. They had the occupiers behind them, and they visibly enjoyed it.
After a couple of rounds of beer, the ALA began to get frisky. A couple of them stood up and went to a table where a couple of female ranch hands were sitting. The men who'd been with them were off in the men's room. "Hello, sweethearts! How's about coming over and keeping some lonely soldiers company? We're tired from all the hard work we do keeping the peace and making sure the fascists don't come back!"
The women reacted as though someone had dropped a live tarantula on the table. "Get lost, creeps!" one of them snarled.
"What do you mean by that?" hissed the ALA man who seemed to be in charge. He leaned over, shoving his face an inch away from the woman's face. "You giving us lip?"
"Leave them alone!" This was the men who had been with the women. They had come back from the toilet to find their companions being hovered over by the soldiers, and they clearly weren't pleased about that. "Why don't you try picking on someone your own size?"
"You getting hostile? Maybe you want a trip to the station?" The ALA men had been hit hard by the beer they had swilled. They leered at the ranch hands, cracking their knuckles suggestively.
Jed whispered: "Time for us to go, I think. There's a back door we can slip out through." Fred thought that was a wonderful idea, and as the locals got up from their seats, he and his companions did too, but headed unobtrusively toward the rear of the tavern.
The wisdom of Jed's decision to leave soon showed clearly. Not more than a minute after they'd slipped out through the back door, the sounds of a huge brawl could be heard clearly. From what Fred could tell, the ALA men were getting the worst of it. They'd been outnumbered, and were not popular enough for anybody not already in the ALA to want to take their part.
A siren sounded in the distance, and Scooby whined. "Ret's get rout of here!" Jed and the Wolverines stared at Scooby. They'd been told he could speak after a fashion, but this was the first time they'd really seen him do it.
"That's a real good idea. We'll just casually walk along this alley, take a turn away from the street we were on first when we come to a cross-street, and we should be out of most danger," Jed muttered. As calmly as though they were only out for a stroll, the infiltrators ambled along, not seeming to pay any attention to the hullaballoo going on behind them.
The rest of the day was taken up with prowling the streets of the town, making note of anything that would be useful to know. That evening, they found themselves bunking down in some old barns, breathing the smell of unforked dung and stale hay.
"Tomorrow, we'll be heading back out to the Schmidts'," Jed told them. Fred breathed a sigh of relief. This sort of thing was one of the hairiest thing he and his friends had to do, and he was always on edge when he was doing it. He was fully well aware that as a soldier wearing civilian clothes behind enemy lines, he could be shot or hanged perfectly legally by the Reds if he were captured or recognized. So far nobody had known them for what they were, but he knew that they weren't out of the woods yet.