Those Meddling Kids
Chapter Four
by Technomad
JedThe next morning, they rolled out of their nests, sneezing at the dust and other things that the hay had contained. Nobody complained, though. They had all slept in much worse conditions, and having a roof over their heads and someplace fairly soft to lie up was not to be despised.
They had a few cans of food, which they made do for breakfast, and put themselves as much to rights as they could. Jed knew they looked scruffy, ragged and dirty, but so did many other people in the occupied zone. New clothes were difficult to come by, and even cloth for repairing old clothes was scarce.
The girls nipped off to a secluded spot to relieve themselves, as the men tactfully pretended nothing was happening. Living in each others' pockets as they did, they had no secrets from each other, and modesty had been one of the casualties of the war. Even so, they did prefer some privacy for these things.
Once everybody was ready to go, Jed said: "I'll check and see if Mr. Schmidt is ready to head back to the ranch. If he is, we'll have to pack up and go, but I told him we'd probably need a full day to check this place out." Jed winked. "Mr. Schmidt knows how to spin things out, and the Reds' paperwork is a big help sometimes when he needs to do that!"
Everybody nodded. Scooby-Doo's ears lifted up, and he barked: "Right!" Jed and the rest of the Wolverines stared at him. They'd been told of Scooby's intelligence and capabilities, but most of them had not seen him in action.
Matt muttered: "We could have used a dog like that, back before the war."
Fred and the rest of the recon team smiled. "Maybe after the war you can get one. Right now, he's part of our group, and a vital member of the team." Scooby gave Fred a doggy grin and trotted over to stand at Shaggy's side, as they exited the barn to see what was going on.
Sure enough, there would be delays before they left town. When they found him, Mr. Schmidt was deep in a discussion with several harassed-looking officials about the number and quality of animals he had delivered. Pulling himself away with a visible effort, he said: "We're not going to leave until at least this evening. Go find something to do." Jed winked at his old friend before gathering his companions and heading off to do just exactly that.
"We were told that an area in the south side of the town was being guarded pretty heavily," Velma muttered, once they were out of earshot of others. "Maybe an innocent walk in that direction would be in order?"
"Yeah," Daphne agreed. "I've got a miniature camera here. It's hidden under my shirt. I can hopefully get some pictures that'll tell our HQ what's going on here, and whether we should do anything about it."
"Good God!" Erica exclaimed, in a low voice. "I hope you've got it hidden well! If the Reds find that on you, they'll have you strung up for a spy before you know it!"
Daphne gave Erica a bitter smile. "As long as I can harm them, what the hell do I care?" Jed noted that Robert's eyes grew very wide at this statement, and he was looking at Daphne like he'd never seen her before…and liked what he saw.
Unobtrusively, Jed rolled his eyes. Now I've got two of them on my hands! he thought. He had enough trouble keeping Robert in line, and hoped devoutly that Daphne, no matter how bitter she might have become toward the invaders, was less volatile.
FredAs they went farther west, they saw more and more soldiers. The ALA was much in evidence, but Fred could identify Cuban, Latin American, and Warsaw Pact soldiers as well. He'd seldom seen European Red soldiers other than Soviets themselves. At first, they were often difficult to distinguish from their allies, but he had had a familiarization course, and knew what to look for. The patches on the uniforms of the Europeans he passed told him that there were Poles present, and he was startled to run across a few undeniable East Germans, in their oddly Third Reich-styled uniforms.
"Something very fishy is going on here, Shag," Fred muttered. Shaggy nodded, his eyes flickering around, taking in their surroundings. Scooby was also on alert, his ears pricked up. At least his hackles were down; Fred didn't like thinking of what might happen if some trigger-happy soldier took it into his head that the dog was hostile. If a soldier or collaborator shot Scooby, they would have no recourse save an appeal to the soldiers' commanders, and he much preferred not coming to their notice if at all possible.
At the end of one block, they saw a barbed-wire gate across the street, guarded by what looked like actual Soviet soldiers. The infiltrators stopped, keeping their hands in sight and their faces carefully blank, as one of the Soviets came up to them, his AK over his shoulder.
"Is not permitted for Americans to be in this area, comrades," the Soviet said. His broad Slavic face was marred with an ugly scar across the middle, and he limped slightly. Fred figured that was why he would be stuck behind the lines in a place like Pueblo. He looked at the other Soviets in the vicinity, and he noticed that all of them also had visible injuries, or limped noticeably. One had a patch over one eye.
"Oh, sorry. I used to live in this part of town, back when I was little, and I wanted to see how it had come through the fighting. Didn't mean to break any rules, comrade. This is my first time back in town since the Liberation." While using the invaders' terminology stuck in Fred's throat, he could do it at need. He'd spent hours, as they all had, listening to the Reds' radio broadcasts, and he could sound like a good little Quisling when he had to.
"Is no problem. Still, you leave now." Having been sent to the rightabout, Fred and his companions turned to go. While their route seemed to be random, they were carefully figuring out just which areas of Pueblo were now no-go areas.
When they had some privacy, they pulled out a tattered prewar map of Pueblo that Fred had been given before they set out. As carefully as they could, they marked the streets that were blocked off, at the points where further passage was forbidden.
"It looks like the airport's off-limits," Jed commented. "And the areas near it."
"Makes sense," Daryl said. "That area would be perfect for them to store those missiles, if they're even still here."
"I wonder if they've got any military aircraft around here?" mused Erica. "Even if they've moved whatever missiles were still here, smashing those things up would hurt the bastards. For some reason…" her smile was pure evil… "they've been having trouble getting resupply and replacements from the Workers' Paradise."
"Like, don't assume that they would only use Warsaw Pact gear or equipment," Shaggy pointed out. "A lot of those ALA bastards use US-made M-16s of various marks, and we've seen them using US-built tanks, trucks and APCs before."
"But hitting the airport, whether or not the missiles are there, would harm their efforts," Matt said. "There's only so many aircraft they can have on this continent."
"And I bet there's fuel tanks there. We can maybe set those on fire!" Robert's eyes gleamed. "Bright, hot, crackly fire…cleansing the earth of their contamination." His smile was like a devil's leer.
Fred looked worriedly at Robert. He hoped that Jed, or the rest of the Wolverines, could keep their friend in check. While a berserker was a useful man to have around in a fight, they were very difficult to control at other times. He was just glad that they hadn't stayed longer at the Rancher's Rest. Berserkers and alcohol were a dangerous combination.
And, Fred noticed with some amusement, Daphne was looking at Robert with a predatory gleam in her eye. Daphne, much to his surprise, had turned out to be one of the most lethal of the old Mystery, Inc. group. Between her outrage at the fact of the invasion, and her fears for her family, she had taken to waging war with an avidity that startled and sometimes frightened him.
At least Velma can usually keep her in line! thought Fred. The two women teamed up, as a rule. Velma's cool thinking and knowledge, as well as her own skill with weapons, combined with Daphne's ferocity and enthusiasm to make a truly dangerous team. Fred wondered what would happen if they stayed with the Wolverines, and Daphne and Robert became "an item." He hoped that neither of the two female Wolverines was particularly interested in Robert. That sort of situation was guaranteed to end in serious trouble. And as heavily-armed as they were, the trouble could turn lethal.
Jed folded up the map. "Let's go back to the Rancher's Rest," he said. "I don't know about you all, but I'm hungry. We're well-found for money…at least, if you count this Monopoly money the invaders use…and I haven't eaten all day." That met with general approval, and they headed back out onto the street, headed for the Rancher's Rest.
When they got there, the lunch crowd was just thinning out. They got a table together, which looked to Fred like it had once belonged to a school lunchroom, and a harried-looking waitress scuttled over to offer them a badly-printed menu. Even though they had plenty of money, Fred's eyes went wide at the prices. Guess the war's got their supply system as badly screwed-up as ours is! he thought. He was grateful to be in the Army. At least in the Army, he could count on getting fed, being able to replace his clothes at need, and some sort of medical attention if he got sick or hurt. Too many people in the occupied zone had no such guarantees.
The menu's offerings were also not as varied as they would have been before the war. At least beef was in fairly plentiful supply, but side dishes were limited. Fried potatoes dominated the menu, with green vegetables marked as "if and when we have them." Pork, fish, and other meats were conspicuous by their absence. Fred nodded. The Reds were not close to the sea, and could not count on re-supply from their homelands. While they levied on the people in the areas they controlled, there were limits on what they could seize. If they took too much, the locals would either starve, or rise in frenzied rebellion. Neither of those outcomes was desirable from the Communists' point of view. The Reds honestly believed that they were doing the Americans a good turn by occupying their country, and having large-scale rebellions on their hands would not only damage that self-image, but would severely impact their campaign to "liberate" North America.
They all ended up settling for beef stew with fried potatoes on the side. To drink, there was the same watery beer they'd had the day before. Although Fred was not fond of drinking much before sunset, he ordered a glass of beer, as did the others. Inwardly, he reflected that one of the very few good things about the invasion was that some laws had gone by the boards, including the ones about underage drinking.
When the stew came, it was tasteless, and the beef in it was tough enough, despite hours of boiling, to make chewing it a real exercise for the jaws. But the Wolverines and Fred's group were all veterans, and knew better than to turn up their noses at anything edible. The potatoes, on the other hand, were surprisingly good. Fried in melted beef fat, they did a lot to make up for the stew.
The restaurant-cum-saloon was not too busy, and nobody bothered the infiltrators. There were a few other customers lingering over their food, so nobody spoke of things more consequential than the weather or the prospects for ranching and farming. In occupied territory, there was always the chance of an informer overhearing incriminating conversation and reporting it to the Communists.
Some informers were Soviets who'd been trained for years to pass as American. Those men and women were often incredibly insidious. They had impeccably idiomatic American accents, and could fool nearly anybody. They also had great skill at espionage and sabotage, and often caused huge SNAFUs if they were able to insinuate themselves into places where they had access to American communications. And since the Soviet Union consisted of nearly fifty nationalities, almost anybody could be a Soviet infiltrator.
Native-born pro-Soviet American infiltrators were a mixed lot. There were those who were true believers in the Soviets' cause. Many of them were educated types. Before the invasion, one of the very few places one could find out-and-out Soviet sympathizers in America was the academic subculture. Fred thought it had something to do with tenure, but he wasn't clear on the details. Luckily, most of those were not specialists in things that could seriously damage the American war effort, and had to confine themselves to menial jobs while in American-held territory, gathering such information as they could to be slipped across the lines to their Soviet friends.
Others were out-and-out criminals, sociopaths and crazies. While the Soviets utilized them, they were very unreliable and prone to getting caught. When caught, they would often blurt out everything they knew about whatever networks they had had contact with, in a vain hope of escaping execution. But they would not shrink from doing anything that would harm the American cause. Some were embittered by prison, others were just out to hurt whomever they could.
Just then, Fred's thoughts were interrupted by an ominous crackle from loudspeakers. "Attention! Attention! General Bratchenko has announcements to make! All citizens will assemble at the park! Attention! Attention!"
Fred looked at his companions. Shaggy, Daphne and Velma looked fairly unconcerned, but the Wolverines all looked very worried. Leaning close to Jed, Fred asked: "What's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost!"
"Fred, that General has the same name as one of the two top officers in charge of the Red troops in Calumet! I don't know if he ever saw us, but he damned well knows our name!" As they spoke, people were getting to their feet and filing out to the street, and Fred knew they couldn't stall for long.
Fred thought fast. "Did he ever see you up close? Close enough to know you if he saw your faces?" Jed shook his head. "Then just stick close by us, stay back in the crowd, and don't, for God's sake, act nervous or guilty!" Fred grinned as he got up. "Remember? We're just a bunch of poor innocent kids, refugees from Colorado Springs, who're working at the Schmidts' ranch! Stay cool!"
The Wolverines and the Mystery Inc. team filed out onto the street, following the crowds to the park where General Bratchenko would be speaking. It was quite crowded; although much of Pueblo's population was gone for some reason or another, there were many people who couldn't or wouldn't leave, and had had to get used to life under Soviet occupation. They were all looking very scruffy, which meant that the infiltrators would not stand out particularly.
At the center of the park, Fred could see a platform, with red flags flying above it and Soviet troops surrounding it. He was rather surprised that the Soviet general would expose himself so openly. Apparently there had been no partisan activity near Pueblo recently.
Robert muttered, very quietly: "If this were Calumet, he'd never dare do this!" Erica grabbed him from behind and slapped her hand across his mouth. When some people stared, she gave them a bland smile.
"Sorry-he has these spells sometimes. My little brother's all right, mostly, but ever since he hit his head, he does weird stuff sometimes. Nothing to worry about." That satisfied the onlookers' curiosity. There had been quite a few injuries during the invasion, and many families had one or more members who were "not quite right," in one way or another.
A premonitory crackle from the loudspeakers told them that things were about to start happening. Fred strained to see this Soviet general. He had infiltrated deep into enemy territory before, but had never before come across such a high-ranking personage. He wanted to take note of everything he could.
General Bratchenko did not look very impressive at first glance, but Fred knew that looks could be deceptive. The Soviet general had a sallow, lean, hollow-cheeked face, with a carefully-shaved short beard and moustache. He wore a fur cap like many Soviet soldiers did, and his uniform was bare of medals. Around him, Fred could see Soviet soldiers, alert for trouble. He saw that the soldiers were wearing striped jerseys under their uniforms, and knew that marked them as Spetsnaz. A cold chill went down his back. The Soviets treasured and husbanded their elite Spetsnaz soldiers, and did not deploy them as casually as they did ordinary soldiers, much less their ALA quisling troops. The presence of Spetsnaz told him all he needed to know about the importance of Pueblo to the other side.
Speaking through an interpreter, General Bratchenko began his speech. It was a mishmash of the usual Soviet boilerplate: the Soviets had come as liberators, not as conquerors, the American regime was fascist, racist, capitalist and unfair, and things would be much better once everything was running in proper Soviet style. Quotations from Lenin, and the current Soviet leadership, were scattered through the speech like raisins in cookie dough. Fred privately thought that any Soviet bigwig who was forbidden to quote Lenin would find himself all but deprived of the power of speech.
On and on the speech went, and Fred found himself bitterly regretting the beer he had drunk earlier. He wasn't the only one; there were quite a few people in the crowd who were exhibiting signs of real restlessness. Apparently General Bratchenko noticed it too. He wound up his speech with a "Urra!" for the Soviet Union and the glorious Red Army, and the American Liberation Army, and the crowd was free to wander away. Quite a few of them wandered in the direction of someplace they could piss, and Fred was not behindhand at that. Once he'd relieved himself, he looked around for his companions. To his relief, they were not far away, and nobody had twigged to who they were. There were quite a few strange faces in town, apparently.
Jed had found Mr. Schmidt; he'd been in the crowd too. At Jed's beckoning wave, Fred and the others came over to see what was up. Once they were all together, Mr. Schmidt said: "I was able to get the fuel we need, so it's time we loaded up and headed out on back to the ranch. I've got the passes we need to get out of town." Fred had never heard words that gratified him more. While he was used to infiltration and deep penetration of enemy territory, he was usually in uniform, and at least theoretically entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war, instead of being summarily shot or hanged as a spy.