Audacious (40 page)

That had been this morning’s dream.

What was left tonight?

“Colonel, prepare to withdraw to the north as we planned. I’m going up to the rotunda to see how many more of the sheep we can slaughter. Then I will meet you at the north rally point with your sergeants.”

Colonel Müller glanced at his watch. “You have ten minutes. A second more and you will find no one there.”

“As I would expect of you,” Grant said.

He headed for the stairs. With luck, he just might get himself a Longknife in the next ten minutes.

Kris
dropped down the stairs, Jack and two Marines right behind her. Six very scared but very obedient teens tagged along behind them.

“You know, Jack, just once I’d like to end one of these dustups with a Peterwald puke to talk to. To really talk to. You know what I mean,” Kris said over her shoulder.

“Sure you’d want to hear what he’d say?” Jack asked. “Sure your Grampa Ray would want that?”

Kris wasn’t all that sure she cared what Grampa Ray wanted. He’d sent her into this mess with not one word of warning. Not one suggestion of what to look for. Several colorful and obscene suggestions came to her of what Grampa Ray could do.

Course, him being king, some of them might be treason.

Kris kept her own counsel.

They came to the third floor. The balcony here gave a view of the main floor below. But to actually get a shot into something down there meant showing way too much of Kris’s precious skin.

She headed down another level.

The second floor had the disadvantage of being covered with the bodies left from the earlier phase of the shoot-out. The teenagers blanched, but followed Kris as she led them out, gingerly low, walking past the bodies of dead friends.

The main floor looked like a slaughterhouse. And one in special need of cleaning. Probably qualified for one of the labors of Hercules.

Bodies were piled up. Some where they fell. Others were piled in front of people who used them to absorb bullets instead of themselves.

Sculptures had been upended because their bases afforded better cover. The shattered statues had been pushed around to afford protection to the people who cowered behind them.

Here or there another hand grenade flew. A rifle barked. Automatics spat. Beneath the staccato of battle, the whimpers and cries of wounded humanity filled in the lower octaves.

And over it all was the stench of blood and death.

Kris blinked away the general picture and focused on those that mattered to her.

There was Penny. Her orange dress now covered with the red of fresh blood, the brown of dried blood. But the lieutenant was still waving orders and reaching under her dress to toss a grenade to one Marine, or a magazine to another.

Fire at the moment was desultory. Whether because ammo was running low or people on both sides had grown reluctant to risk exposure, was not clear.

Kris noticed two Marines that had acquired rifles. Probably ones that fell from the hands of inexperienced casualties on the second-floor balcony. They fired sparingly.

Kris retrieved a bandolier from one dead shooter and tossed it over the rail. For a second the fire slackened. Then one gun went to full automatic, covering the trooper retrieving the spare ammo. A moment later, the second rifle was back on line, snapping off bursts.

Kris tossed a second bandolier. It landed close to the other Marine. In a minute, he was back going rapid fire.

At the rotunda, the fire seemed to slacken off in the face of the newly energized resistance.

Kris reached the end of the balcony and risked a glance over just as the figure of Grant von Schrader dogtrotted up to the edge of the rotunda.

“What are you guys, asleep,” he shouted. “You want your mamas? Did we rob a bunch of cradles? There they are. Shoot them. You got grenades left. Throw them.”

Kris drew a bead on him. And she would have put a full five-round burst into him if he hadn’t picked that moment to duck behind that bronze representation of Landing Day.

She would have loved to have a long talk with him, but because of his lip, the fire was growing hot again.

Kris decided today was no day for talking.

She reached into her bra and drew out the last of her booby bombs. She considered several places to toss the thing, then grinned.

She punched it for a four-second fuse and lofted it straight for the center of the bronze statuary.

It sailed through the air, ignored by most below, but watched by Kris. It plopped down right in the dead center of the statues, bouncing off one, then landing at the foot of the five great founding fathers of Garden City. They stood there, backs to each other, staring out at the land they had come so far for.

And when the explosion came, bronze feet and torsos and arms were converted to even more ancient bronzes: daggers, spears, and swords.

The gunners around the rotunda just kind of went to pieces.

“Good God,” Jack muttered.

“Have mercy on them,” Kris added, as Tommy did so many times before. “I will not,” she said for herself.

A second explosion hardly made its point with the echo of the first one still hammering Kris’s ears. But a moment later, its source became clear.

The familiar sound of M-6s on single shot, the hallmark of good Marines, swept the rotunda, only seconds before the Marines themselves in full-body armor and battle rattle swept into view.

Many still dripped riverwater or mud. But they were the cavalry, here at the rescue. They had no bugles, no proud streamers, but man, were they beautiful.

There were scattered cheers from Kris’s side of the great hall. Hands shot up in the rotunda.

Not everyone’s. Someone got off a shot at the leading Marine. That one died.

That was all it took to get any reluctant hands up.

Silence— lovely, empty silence— filled the hall.

Broken only by the moans and whimpers of those for whom peace had come too late.

54

Gunnery
Sergeant Brown stayed under the white dinosaur while the glass settled from the huge explosion in the rotunda. Only when the deadly glass shards finished tinkling off the cars did he risk rolling out and carefully looking around.

Darkness was back, though his eyes would hold the memory of that flash of bright light for a while to come. There was sporadic fire for a few moments. Some dude was always late getting the word. But it wasn’t long before even they woke up— or died— and silence broke out in all its glory.

And the quiet stretched and grew and Gunny knew that it was good. Anything was better than the unshirted hell they’d been in for… he glanced at his watch.

Only the last thirty minutes!

That was impossible. He raised his watch to his ear. It was still ticking. A fine old windup watch handed down from father to son for more times than Gunny wanted to think about.

It still ticked and insisted his eternity in hell had been little more than half an hour.

He shook his head.

As the quiet stretched into something that was almost a delicious peace, Gunny glanced over his shoulder. In the distance he could just make out the revolving lights of dozens of emergency services vehicles.

Why weren’t the ambulances moving?

He turned back to look for his fastest runner, someone he could send back there to get the lead out of that bunch…

And spotted dark figures skulking out of the north wing of the Gallery.

Not being an officer, Gunny might not know all the important stuff. But he knew the stink of rats leaving a sinking ship. Especially the stink of rats leaving a ship they had done their best to hole.

A slight change of plans here.

Gunny caught a runner’s eye, but sent her off to bring back the sniper team on the south end. Then he motioned to his own fire teams in the center to start their movement north.

The northern sniper team was led by Corporal Donovan. She never needed to be told where the action was. She and her partner were already up and doing a slow, low walk from car to car, headed north.

But Gunny needn’t have worried about his rats getting away.

They didn’t go all that far, maybe fifty yards, before they stopped at a tree surrounded by stone flower pots.

Half a dozen faced out. Four or five talked among themselves in the center.

If that wasn’t a well-organized rally point, Gunny hadn’t spent twenty years in the Corps.

And they waited.

That was what professional troops were supposed to do, wait to see if anyone detached or just lost showed up at the rally.

But after that last explosion and fire, the place was pretty quiet.

Gunny sure would have been tempted to keep the bugout boogie going.

But that looked to be an officer doing the look-around from the center, so good NCOs were waiting, just like they should.

Which gave Gunny’s team time to catch up, overtake, and pass them. Gunny spotted several good ambush sites and smiled.

When that bunch of rats moved north again, it would be right into his waiting arms.

As the seconds flew and Gunny’s Marines set up their kill zones, he watched the one he took for the senior NCO exchange words with the guy who had to be the senior officer.

Gunny heard not a word, but he knew the drill.

“Sir, we should move on. We can’t afford to lose a second.”

But the officer only glanced at his watch. Who was he waiting for? Gunny would bet money the officer knew personally the one who was holding them up— likely had served under him as a junior officer.

Maybe, another time, waiting would have served a purpose. Today, Gunny was prepared to make sure it didn’t.

And Gunny made up his mind.

He signaled to the crew in sight of him. Sleepy darts.

And they passed it along.

Sleepy darts were a risk, but Gunny was one of the many
NCO
s who were getting sick and tired of Greenfeld pukes doing this or killing that and no one living to tell the tale.

The officers might be happy not having to face the hard truth about the undeclared war they were in, but all the dancing around the truth made an honest fighting man just want to puke.

This call was Gunny’s to make, and he was making it.

These rats were beaten; he could see it in the hunch of their shoulders. They were walking into an ambush put in place by good Marines.

These dudes were going to wake up with a roaring headache tomorrow morning, and they were going to sing, sing, sing.

And kings and captains could just bite themselves if they didn’t like what a sweating, cursing Gunny Sergeant had done to them.

The enemy officer took a final glance at his watch. A final glance at the Gallery. Nothing moved out of it.

He signaled to his troops and a scout pair led off, quickly followed by others as the outer guards of the rally point folded themselves into a traveling column.

It was a beautiful work of art that Gunny was fully qualified to appreciate… unlike much of the crap hanging in the now-smoking building.

But they were moving right into his ambush.
His
work of art.

Gunnery Sergeant Brown grinned and drew a sight picture on the officer. He and his Marines were artists in their own right.

Come and see the art we do.

55

Who
said the only sight more sickening than a battle won is the sight of a battle you lost?

At the moment, Kris’s addled brain refused to cough up the answer to that question. And she had better uses for Nelly.

“Are you still jammed? Can you get out a call for medical services?”

“I am sorry, Kris, but yes, I am still jammed.”

Kris shook her head. The jammer had clearly lost, but either was keeping it on for pure evilness or forgetfulness.

Or maybe they hadn’t given the battle up for lost.

That was not a comforting thought.

Marines in battle gear now moved purposefully into the rotunda to disarm and secure the prisoners. “Captain DeVar, what’s your situation?” Kris called from the second-floor balcony.

One Marine looked up. “Ah, I’m Lieutenant Troy, ma’am. I think I’m in command, ah, Your Highness.”

Told Kris a lot about the company of embassy Marines.

“Lieutenant, secure your prisoners, set up a defensive perimeter here for the hall, then send armored detachments to check out the rooms in this place. They may find civilians who managed to stay lost through the shoot. They may find shooters trying to get away.”

“Ah, ma’am, I’m not sure I’ve got enough troops to tackle all that. And do you have any medical aid? We could sure use more out back.”

That told Kris all she needed to know about her company.

She nodded, thinking through what mattered most and shortening her list of priorities. “Lieutenant, secure your prisoners and the perimeter of the great hall against a counterattack. I’ll get us medical aid.”

Kris turned to Jack, muttering under her breath, “Where are those ambulances?”

They headed down the stairs. “Boys, stay close to us or you may be mistaken for prisoners. You deserve our gratitude.”

Admittedly, they’d turned their coats several times in the last— Kris glanced at her watch— only a half hour! Still, Bronc and his friends had done the right thing after doing the wrong thing.

“Marines coming in,” Jack called as they approached the main floor. It was good he did.

They were still blacked out from head to toe, a shadow of a shadow. That camouflage had probably saved their lives tonight. But now they were approaching fellow Marines.

There had been a fight here. Kids with rifles and men in dark clothes lay where they’d fallen.

Several of Penny’s hand grenades had been used here.

A statue had been rolled up to the stairwell exit. A marine and a security guard looked at Kris over pistol sights. Beside them, two or three more lay where they had died.

The Marine raised the aim of his automatic and whispered a dry mouthed “Semper Fi.”

And they passed within.

The south hall had gone from being a bright, gala party to a dark, bloody, slippery mess of groaning humanity. At least it groaned where it wasn’t deadly silent.