And Thy Mother Read online

  “Well, Peter,” Jim said, as the conveyor belt’s cargo came out of the tunnel and into the room, “don’t you think you should, maybe, pay attention to your duties?” He placed his hand on Peter’s shoulder in a big-brotherly fashion and gently, but firmly, turned him around so that he was facing the belt again.

  The item on the conveyor looked like nothing so much as a pet carrier, something a person might use to transport a cat or dog to the vet’s office. When the container arrived in front of Peter, the belt stopped. Peter stood still, unsure of what to do next.

  “What would you normally do now, if I weren’t here?” Jim asked the nervous man.

  “I’d… open the box,” was the answer.

  “Well, then…” Jim said quietly. Peter opened the box.

  Inside the carrier, covered by a blanket and holding a small teddy bear, was a baby boy, sound asleep. Jim looked back at the assembled soldiers and summoned Mike and General Chambers to join him. None of the three had ever seen such a young child before, and they all found themselves at a loss for words.

  Peter took their collective silence as a sign that it was his turn to speak. “T-T-They usually are asleep w-w-when they get here,” he stammered. “They tell me, s-s-something about the… motion of the belt p-p-puts them… to sleep.”

  ”What’s that thing there?” Mike whispered, not wanting to wake the child. He was asking about a bar-code-like pattern, which had been stamped, hopefully temporarily, on the baby’s forehead.

  “Well,” Peter said, feeling a little more confident that these men were not about to kill him, “that tells the computer where this little guy is going to be… shipped to.”

  “Tell me something, Peter,” Jim once again affected his big-brother attitude, “Have you ever ridden on that train behind us?”

  “No.” He sounded like a young boy who had missed out on a special treat.

  “So… you’ve never been down that tunnel?”

  “No,” he responded with a shocked expression. “They told me I’d get shot if I ever went down there.”

  “Do you know what’s at the other end?”

  “No,” Peter said, adding hopefully, “but… I wonder about it a lot.”

  “Would you like to find out?”

  “Boy, I sure would,” he said, sounding like that would be the thrill of his life. Then his face clouded over again. “But, they said—”

  “Never mind what ‘they’ said—today we’re saying different.” Jim turned and picked up the baby as gently as he could. The child must have been either exhausted or very relaxed, for he continued to sleep. “Do you know how to drive that train?”

  “Well… yeah, they showed me a couple of times. It’s pretty easy.”

  “Good. Now, here’s the deal. We need to get this little guy back to the other end of the tunnel so he can be… repaired.”

  Peter looked at the baby and said uncertainly, “He looks… all right to me.”

  “No, he’s not well at all,” Jim said with conviction, despite the fact that the child was about as perfect a baby as can be imagined. He carefully handed the infant to Mike. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Mike agreed. “Poor little guy—he’s missing several… things.”

  “You’re a doctor?” Peter asked in awe.

  “I am… when I need to be,” Mike admitted.

  “So, my friends here are going to get on that train.” Jim said this loudly enough so that the troops heard him and began entering the cars. “Then you are going to take us and this little person back where he came from, so Doctor Mike can get him fixed up.”

  “Oh, boy… you think I could?” Peter asked in hushed tones, as if he were unable to believe that anyone would give him such an important job. Then, once again, he looked depressed. “They’re… expecting some more guests today, I heard.”

  “The guys in the suits,” Mike guessed.

  “That’s why this train is here. And, three guys from our team are upstairs, waiting for them to get here. Then, they’re going to take this train… down the tunnel.”

  “Well, your guests… called and said they’d be late, and your teammates are… still eating lunch. Besides, this won’t take long—we’ll be back before they finish eating.”

  “You sure about that? I don’t want to get in no trouble.”

  “I’m absolutely sure, Peter.”

  Reassured, Peter’s face lit up again, like a kid in a candy store. He bounded across the tracks, ran around the front of the train, climbed in and proudly assumed the driver’s position. Jim and Chambers followed, with Mike and the newborn bringing up the rear.

  Jim sat down in the seat right behind the driver, directing Mike and Chambers to sit in the other front seat.

  “This lever here closes all the doors,” Peter said, eager to display his knowledge of the train’s operation, “and this one here makes it go faster or slower.” He put his hand on the door lever, but Jim grabbed his hand, stopping him.

  “Leave all the doors open.”

  “Why?” Peter asked. “They say that's not very safe.”

  “I was thinking that we might run into some of your ‘teammates’ in the tunnel,” Jim answered, again speaking loudly enough for his troops to hear, “and if we do, we'll… want to say ‘hi’ to them.” He patted the holster on his hip to indicate the form of ‘greeting’ he had in mind. Peter didn’t understand, but the soldiers knew exactly what he meant.

  Jim turned to Peter again. “Now, one last thing—do you think there might be any more babies on that conveyor belt right now?”

  Peter thought a minute before saying, “Well, they don't come down to me, like, you know, one every minute, or one every five minutes, or anything like that. I might get one, or two real close together, but then maybe no more for an hour or more, but sometimes—”

  “Cut to the chase,” Jim was losing patience. “Yes, or no?”

  “I'd have to say… there could be… yeah.”

  “OK. I'm going to be watching for any babies on that belt there. If I see one, I’ll tell you to stop the train, and I’ll run over there and get him—”

  “Why?” Peter was confused.

  “Well, if you’re here driving the train, then that means no one is going to be over there doing… whatever it is you do for these little boys. And, you can’t just let them sit there, even for the short time you’re going to be gone… right?” Jim was appealing to Peter’s well-developed sense of responsibility, and it worked.

  “Yeah, I guess that would be a bad thing, to leave them all alone, even for a few minutes.”

  “Exactly,” Jim agreed. “So, just remember, you stop this train when I tell you to, but only when I tell you to, OK?” Peter nodded.

  “Then—let’s go,” Jim ordered. Peter pushed the throttle, the electric motors began to whine and the train began to move.

  “How fast do you want to go?” Peter asked.

  “Slow enough so that if we have to, we can stop quickly,” Jim answered, “but, on the other hand, I don’t want this trip to take all day.”

  “Me neither,” Peter concurred. “Besides, we gotta be back in time for the guests that are coming later.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said with a glance at Mike, “I'm all kinds of ‘concerned’ about that.”

  Peter’s thoughts about more children on the conveyor may have taken inordinately long to express, but they proved accurate. They had traveled only about a mile when Jim saw another “pet carrier” on the belt and ordered Peter to stop the train. This also coincided with their first encounter with Peter's “teammates,” two of whom happened to be standing about twenty feet up the tunnel from where the baby was. They watched the train stop, and a man run out from it toward the conveyor belt. Strangely enough, their first thought was…

  “Isn't that ‘goofy Peter’ driving that train?” one of them wondered aloud.

  “Yeah, I think it is,” the other one affirmed. “Doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to
be doing that? They might shoot him.”

  By this time, Jim had reached the belt, retrieved the carrier and started back toward the train. Only now did the goons turn their attention to him.

  “What's that guy think he’s doing?” the second man asked, frozen by indecision.

  Noticing that Jim’s uniform did not match his own, the first man finally realized, “He’s not one of our people!” His hours of training then kicked in, and he cried out, “Let's get him!”

  Jim was in no position to defend himself, as his arms were full of baby carrier, but the troops in both subway cars were not so encumbered. The soldiers did wait for a few moments, mostly to allow Jim to get out of any potential line of fire, but they also watched with amusement as the goons wrestled their guns from their holsters, checked their clips, checked the aim, cocked the guns… All in all, it seemed to the soldiers that this was probably the first time either of these men had handled a gun. Long before they were ready to fire, however, Jim was back in the train, and amusement had given way to boredom. A quick burst of machine gun fire ensured that the goons’ first attempt to fire a gun would also be their last.

  Jim handed the infant, carrier and all, to a startled General Chambers. He then returned to his position behind Peter.

  “Move!”

  Peter pushed the throttle and the train resumed its journey. Several hundred feet down the track, however, two more of Peter’s “associates” stepped into the path of the train and aimed their weapons. Peter automatically began to reduce speed.

  “I didn’t tell you to stop,” Jim reminded him, as his hand covered Peter's and gave the throttle a push.

  The two henchmen looked up from aiming their weapons and realized that the train was not going to stop. Their horrified expressions mirrored Peter’s as they made a last-minute attempt to leap to safety. One of them made it off the tracks in time, but the other was not so lucky; his foot was caught by a wheel of the train and instantly amputated. He didn’t have to suffer too long, though, as another burst of gunfire from the back car put both men out of their misery.

  Peter was not enjoying this trip so much anymore. “You didn’t tell me you were going to be killing people,” he whimpered, his voice more sorrowful than angry.

  “You’re right,” Jim acknowledged, “I didn’t—but sometimes, in war, you have to do things that are… unpleasant.”

  “Are we… at war?” Peter seemed more hopeful than scared by the prospect.

  “It isn’t what I wanted, but… it would seem that way.”

  “Are you the ‘good guys’?” The childlike innocence of the question surprised Jim, and would have made him laugh in almost any other situation.

  “Yes, we are,” Jim replied. “Of course, if you ask your ‘teammates’ the same question, they might make the same claim.”

  The mention of his co-workers filled Peter's voice with fear as he asked, “If you are killing my teammates, does that mean… you’re going to… kill me, too?”

  Jim moved beside the young engineer and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “No, Peter, we’re not.”

  “Why not?”

  Another question that caught Jim off-guard. “Because, I have no reason to… so far.”

  “Am I your prisoner?”

  “Do you want to be?” Jim asked impulsively. The question brought a smile from Mike and even General Chambers for its silliness, but to Peter it seemed to make perfect sense.

  “Yeah, I really do,” he said earnestly. “That way, if they ask me later why I did what I did—taking the train, and all—I can say I was a prisoner and had to do what I was told. Maybe they’ll think about that, and they won’t shoot me for going down the tunnel.”

  “So, if you say you were forced to do something,” Jim pretended to consider the argument, but was speaking to General Chambers as he did so, “you think they’ll forgive you? Interesting concept, don’t you think?”

  To the surprise of everyone, Chambers replied with apparent sincerity, “It’s worth a try, at least.” Jim and Mike exchanged glances, noticing the softening of the general’s usual hard-nosed, black-or-white attitude, and wondering to what degree that was due to the fact that he was holding a newborn infant for the first time in his life.

  Here was a man, Jim thought, who should have been a father.

  Jim turned back to Peter and removed his gun from its holster. He held it in Peter’s field of vision, so that he could see all the ammunition being removed from it. Jim even squeezed the trigger twice so that Peter knew the hammer was striking an empty chamber.

  “Now, Peter,” he said, pointing the weapon at the young engineer, “I’m not going to shoot you, as long as you do exactly as I say. OK?”

  “Yes, sir, Mister General,” Peter responded enthusiastically, as he resumed concentrating on his driving duties.

  “And, Peter, just for the record—he’s the general,” Jim indicated the man in the front seat holding the infant in the carrier. Looking directly at Chambers, Jim said proudly, “I am a colonel.”

  Again, surprisingly, Chambers had no rebuttal.

  The remainder of the ten-mile trip was similar to the first part. Jim had Peter stop the train two more times so he could collect other infants, and three more times they came under fire from the henchmen guarding the tunnel. While the element of surprise was a major factor, and because of it all of Peter’s “teammates” were dispatched, the firefights were not totally one-sided. One of Jim’s troops was slightly wounded in the arm by a stray bullet and, sadly, another was struck in the chest and killed.

  Jim was grieved to learn that one of his men had died in this venture, and even more so when he found out who it was. Staff Sergeant Roy Donovan, fifth of that name, was one of the finest soldiers he had ever known. He was the first man who greeted them when they had entered the camp that morning, Jim remembered, and the first one to be ready after Buck had given the orders to move out. He didn’t know who the enemy was, or how many of them there were, or what their odds of survival were, and he didn’t care. He always gave the best effort he had, whether it was fighting off enemy troops, or peeling potatoes. Donovan probably died today stepping in front of a bullet that would have killed another soldier—higher-ranking or lower-ranking; it didn’t matter. That’s the kind of man he was.

  Those words would make a pretty good eulogy for Sgt. Donovan, Jim thought. I hope I have a chance to deliver them.

  CHAPTER 26

  Jim emerged from his reverie to discover that they had reached the end of the tunnel and the train had stopped. They were in another station, very similar to the one from which they had set out. It also housed the other end of the conveyor, on which babies were placed for eventual delivery to Peter. A man stood in front of the belt, preparing to do just that.

  Jim made sure that Peter could see him reloading his weapon, and then he exited the train, heading for the man by the conveyor. Peter followed, pleading, “Please don’t hurt him, Mr. Colonel. You said you wouldn’t kill us.”

  “I said I wouldn’t shoot you, if you did as you were told. Right now, I don’t have time to be nice. You there!”

  The man looked around and saw a gun being aimed at him. He saw an Army uniform and an angry man in it, but then he also saw…

  “Peter? Why are you here? You’re supposed to be down at the other end of the tunnel. And, why is that man pointing a gun at me?”

  “We’re his prisoners,” Peter explained, “so you need to do exactly what he says, or he might shoot you.”

  “Do you know this man?” Jim asked.

  “Yes I do. This is Gary. He and I do the same job, mostly, only he works up here and I work down there. They trained us both together. I think they let him work up here because he’s smarter than I am…” Jim was tiring of this explanation until Peter did something either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. He stepped between Jim and Gary and into the path of the gun.

  “I don’t know what you think of him, or me, but he’s my friend
, Mr. Colonel, and I’m not going to let you hurt him. Do you hear me?”

  Parker was startled by this turn of events. He realized that, in Peter’s mind, what he had done was in fact very brave. He lowered his gun.

  “All right, Peter. I won’t shoot him, thanks to you.” Peter looked at his friend with pride in his face. Then Jim said to Gary, “I’ll give you the same deal I gave to your heroic friend here. Now, please pick up the baby and follow me.”

  The man was unsure what he should do until Peter said softly to him, “Prisoners… remember?” Gary did, and followed Jim’s instructions.

  “Now—everybody up the stairs,” Jim ordered. Buck led the way with the soldiers, followed by Mike, Chambers, Gary and Peter, each carrying a baby. Jim brought up the rear.

  At the top of the stairs, and at the count of three, the troops fanned out into a hallway, but found no threat from any direction. This building was not nearly as luxurious as the one they had set out from; no carpeting, no paintings, no fine china, no fireplace.

  “Probably because, by the time they get to this point, no one needs ‘impressing’,” Mike guessed.

  They got to the front door, still without being challenged. They went through that door the same way they had exited the stairwell, aiming their weapons in all directions. Once they were sure they wouldn’t be fired upon, they took stock of their surroundings.

  It was different from where they had been, but not too much so, Jim noticed. There were far fewer trees here than outside, but that was because there were more buildings. Many of these structures had a garden next to them, and while they were similar, there were enough differences to render each one unique. There were no roads, but the buildings were separated by wide pathways. All in all, it looked like a lot of other quaint little towns that he had seen.

  A noise caught Jim’s attention, and he turned to his right. About two blocks down, he could see a structure larger and grander than those surrounding him (that must be what Angela referred to as the “Second White House”, he thought), and it was from here that the commotion came. About a dozen people had come out of there and were running up the pathway toward him and his men, drawn by the unfamiliar uniforms. Mike Wilkins, standing in the front with Jim, saw the troops raise their weapons to meet this “threat” and quickly ordered them to lower their guns.