Redoubtable (8 page)

11

Jack
had his computer, Sal, project a picture of the stadium for him and Tilly. He tried to concentrate on her fingers as she took him on a walk through the stadium.

It was not easy.

Three million years of evolution had trained the male eye to look for movement . . . and the female form. As the truck bounced from pothole to pothole, it jiggled two beautiful examples of the female breast right in front of his eyes.

Normally, Jack considered himself a very disciplined man. Today, evolution was winning hands down.

So he kept his hands in his pockets and tried to keep his eyes on her fingers. At least his ears worked normally.

“The field is pretty much a mess. They’ve had people living there for the last two months,” Tilly said. “At least they dug latrines down at this end. Still, a lot of people have gotten sick.”

“What about water? Water in? Water out?” Jack asked.

“We have to water the grass most of the summer. Not a lot of rain then. Winter, we get lots of rain. It gushes off the seats in rivers. So, yes, a lot of water comes in and a lot has to be taken out. Why?”

“Because where the water goes out, I was hoping to take my Marines in. You know anything about the sewer system?”

Here, the gal shrugged, and Jack got a glimpse of even more of her. Her tank top covered little of her midriff, and the cutoffs were badly frayed. Everybody was wearing clothes that had seen better days, but Tilly seemed dressed to distract males.

Or attract them.

Yet the woman talking to Jack was self-possessed and unassuming. The clothes did not match the person they covered . . . or hardly covered.

One thing was sure; she had a tight hold on her rifle. And unlike most, her pocket bulged with a box of ammunition. She would not shoot herself dry in one lone magazine.

“I don’t know anything about the underground, just that there is a lot of piping and ducts inside the stadium where no one goes. My job that summer was mowing the grass and painting the seats.

“Here and here”—she pointed—“there’s room to march a band in from the parking lot. You should be able to drive your trucks right onto the stadium grounds.”

“I doubt if we can do that,” Jack said, pointing to where men stood with rocket launchers high on the entrance ramps that ringed the stadium. “We wouldn’t get halfway to the stadium before they blew us away.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Tilly said, and worried her full lower lip. “I never watched many war films. I didn’t like all that killing. It seemed such a waste. Now, there are a couple of guys I really want dead, and I don’t know anything about how it’s done.”

“Movies aren’t the place you learn how to fight,” Jack said. What he really wanted to know was more about the guys she wanted dead . . . and why. Instead, he asked, “Do you know how to use that rifle?”

“My dad used to take my brother hunting. Before they went out, he insisted my brother learn how to shoot. I went along to their target practice and beat them both.” She grinned. “Brother said I cheated. I had these two pillows to rest on.”

She glanced down at the “pillows.” “Dad got Mom and Bro up-country before things got too bad around town. I stayed behind, trying to get a boy to go with me.”

“What happened?” Jack knew if the boy had gone, Tilly wouldn’t be here.

“His dad’s a road engineer. Jackie has him working for her. She’s got his wife and son at the stadium. Sometimes he gets to visit them.”

“And you.”

“I tried to visit his son. Two of the guards said they’d help me if I’d just wait in the locker room. I think I could have taken the two of them, but they brought some of their friends.” Her words petered out, but her grip on the rifle got real tight.

“I managed to find a place to sight this puppy in. I only used three rounds. You get me a target. I’ll hit it. I’m good to two hundred meters.”

Jack didn’t doubt she was.

He concentrated the spy eye on the line of manhole covers stretching from the shipping entrance across the smaller parking lot to the road behind the stadium. He followed more sewer lids until he came to a tree-lined residential street not two blocks from the parking lot.

“Sergeant Bruce, get ready to spin off some small scouts. I’ve got a sewer line I want mapped.”

“Oh joy,” the sergeant replied. “When my DI said to suck it up and soldier, he warned me there’d be days like this.”

Jack pounded on the roof of the truck cab and shouted instructions.

Beside him, Tilly caressed her rifle like she might her firstborn.

Colonel
Cortez operated the risers on his chute. It had been a long time since he’d made a jump, and somehow it had gotten a whole lot harder to control one of these things since then. Still, he landed only twenty meters from his stick mate . . . and did so at a sedate walk.

As he spilled his chute, he took in his situation. He was in a farmer’s field, trampling green wheat not yet ready for harvest. The field consisted of several gently rolling hills. Off to his left, a four-lane road hugged the trees, which hid a decent-size river.

Unless he was blind, he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Traffic on the road at the moment was nil. A dozen Marines who had landed closer to the road spread out along the shoulder and prepared to stop anything going in either direction.

Colonel Cortez joined the fifty or so Marines humping their gear toward the road. Word was he’d have transportation along soon.

It was unusual, but it looked like everything was going according to plan.

Private
Lotermann hadn’t expected to have his very own command, not with just six months in the Corps, but here he was in charge of three trucks, responsible for getting them to Colonel Cortez.

He was on his own. It was a beautiful day. This was kind of fun.

“Turn left up here,” he told the driver.

The local riding shotgun for him had given up his seat in the cab, preferring to ride standing up on the truck bed. Now he stooped down to the vacant window.

“You want to turn right here,” he said.

“The map the princess gave me said we turn left,” Private Lotermann said, turning toward the volunteer.

And found himself facing a machine pistol with the arming bolt already pulled back and the safety off.

“I could care less about your princess. The Dragon Woman wants us to head for Tranquility Road, so that’s where we’re going.”

The gunman fired; the Marine private heard nothing.

Lieutenant
Commander Kris Longknife signaled the driver to turn off six blocks short of Tranquility Road. Three hundred meters up the quiet, tree-lined street, she had him stop.

The other two trucks full of Marines spaced themselves at hundred-meter intervals as they halted. Quickly, Marines dismounted and began filtering through the yards, covering for each other as they bounded forward.

“Penny, go with them. Get some scouts out,” Kris ordered, then turned to motion the trucks full of volunteers to come up to where she stood.

“Good luck with that bunch,” Penny said, looking around. She spotted Lieutenant Stubben and jogged to join him.

It took a lot of waving to get the trucks to join her. By the time they reached her, some of the volunteers were already walking along beside them. A few had tried to follow the Marines and seemed very unhappy when Marines paused in their advance to quietly send them back.

“What’s going on?” “Aren’t we going to fight?” “I came here for a fight, and I’ll fight those hard hats if they get in my way again.”

Kris would dearly have loved to turn this bunch over to a good DI and wash her hands of them. She doubted a harangue from her on discipline would do any good.

“Get out of the trucks. I’ve got to talk to you first,” was the best she could come up with.

It wasn’t like these were the first irregulars she’d led into battle. She’d had some really nasty experiences with civilians who’d insisted they could stand in the line and fight.

She’d also saved the planet of her birth with a ragtag and bobtail collection of rejects, reservists, and volunteers.

With a sigh, Kris surveyed this bunch. Other than eagerness, they had little to recommend them.

“Corporal,” she ordered under her breath, “take your fire team and spread them out in front of this bunch.”

“Yes, Commander.” The orders were given and obeyed. “Now what, ma’am?”

“I’m not sure,” Kris admitted, “but if something goes wrong among our so-called volunteers, I’m sure your Marines will know it before you and I do.”

“Yes, Commander,” the corporal said, and whispered further instructions into her mike. Her troopers stayed casual . . . but kept their eyes on the volunteers.

Kris then ordered the sniper to roam around, facing out. “Try to keep us from being disturbed.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kris began. “First, I would like to welcome you to the first annual, and hopefully last annual spring battle royal of Kaskatos. If you’re lucky and pay attention, you might live through today.” As Kris talked, she walked up the line of armed men and women, eyeing each one carefully.

Most of them treated their weapons like toys they’d gotten for Christmas and didn’t know what to do with. Rifles were pointed up, down, or held at the end of arms that just dangled. Pistols and machine pistols dangled the same way.

“You are my reserve,” Kris went on. “In War College, they teach that victory usually goes to the side that is still holding on to a reserve force when the crisis of the battle arrives.”

“And you’re gonna know when that crisis shows up,” a guy said.

Kris didn’t like his attitude. She liked even less that he was bringing up his arm with his machine pistol at the ready. It was fully cocked, and the safety was off.

Unfortunately for him, Kris had been waiting for something like that. She had her own automatic out and three sleepy darts sprouting from his chest before this optimistic assassin could get his own weapon up.

He fell backward against a truck; his weapon clattered onto the pavement.

Suddenly, the Marines were guns up.

“Guns down, volunteers,” Kris shouted. “Lower your weapons, or I’ll drill every one of you with a sleepy dart.”

“Why sleepy dart the traitor?” said someone with a machete, and used it to take the head off the guy Kris had darted. People jumped back, many looking quite shocked at the amount of blood that could spew from a human neck once the head was no longer attached.

“Everybody just stand where you are,” Kris ordered. “I wanted to talk to that puke.”

“Sorry,” the machete wielder said, and almost made it sound like he meant it.

“Corporal, have two of your Marines go down this line and see if anyone else has a weapon cocked and ready to start shooting.”

The Marines did. Kris spotted at least one fellow whose rifle was all too ready; she got her automatic ready for him to go violent like the last one.

No, this one was just very dumb . . . or ready to act that way to avoid the fate of the other. Once everyone was verified safe, Kris explained herself.

“I shot that guy with a sleepy dart because I didn’t want to start shooting just then, and I don’t want to start shooting now. The soft pop a dart makes is not going to alarm anyone, and that is the way we want Jackie and her thugs—not alarmed. If he’d sprayed us with his pistol, he might or might not have survived. But Jackie Jackson would definitely know we are at her doorstep. Do you understand me?”

The blank stares looked a bit more informed. While they milled about, Kris did a radio check.

“Colonel, you down?”

“I’m at point X-ray with third platoon, Your Highness.”

“Fourth platoon is at point Uniform,” came from its LT.

“Commander, I’ve got no action at X-ray, either coming or going,” the colonel reported. “As soon as your trucks arrive, I’ll displace two squads forward. I suggest that fourth do the same.”

“The trucks aren’t there yet?” Kris asked.

“Not in my line of sight.”

Kris tried them on net. Three privates reported that they were going as fast as they could but that the roads were a pot-holed mess.

The fourth private did not answer Kris’s call.

“Jack, you on net?” she asked.

“I’m at my target, about to go off net. I’ve got a cloak of invisibility that may help me out a bit.”

Cloak of invisibility? Kris shook her head; Jack would explain it when he wanted to. Right now, he might have a problem he wasn’t aware of.

“Jack, I’m not sure all our volunteers are on our side. One tried to gun me down here, and one of our truck convoys is not answering my calls.”

“I haven’t had any trouble with mine,” Jack replied. “But with Tilly leading the volunteers, a guy would have to be blind not to want to follow her.”

Why was Kris not surprised? It took a few seconds for Jack to continue. “But come to think about it, none of the three truck drivers I’ve got here are all that interested in following us. One of them in particular. Hey, guys,” Jack shouted, “have I got a deal for you.”

There was a roar of truck motors at the end of Kris’s street, and three trucks raced by, headed for Tranquility Road. Kris only got a quick glimpse, but it looked like the lead truck had a Marine slumped in the passenger seat.

“Jack, I think I just spotted our missing convoy, and it’s headed for Jackie.”

“I knew we should have done a full field security check on all those enthusiastic volunteers,” the Marine answered on net. “Looks like it’s time to play ball. Good luck, Kris.”

“Good luck to you, Jack.”

Kris blinked to change net. “First platoon, you are weapons free.”

12

Captain
Jack Montoya, Royal U.S. Marines, waved his rifle for emphasis. “You drivers are going underground with me and mine.”

Two shrugged and went where Jack pointed them. One looked ready to make a break for it, but couldn’t break eye contact with the muzzle of Jack’s borrowed M-6.

With reluctant steps, he went.

A Marine was waiting at the nearest manhole, clearly unhappy to be the stay-behind guy. He motioned the drivers below, then gave Jack a plaintive look.

“Hold the fort here. Don’t let anyone steal our rides,” Jack ordered.

“Aye aye, Skipper,” the Marine answered, resigned to sucking it up and soldiering where he was told.

Jack had to hurry the truck drivers along. One in particular really needed encouragement. At the end of the first tunnel, the sewer got bigger around. A glowing green chem light pointed Jack right.

About a block later, another light pointed left down a tunnel big enough to stand upright in. Jack got ready to jog.

And the third truck driver stumbled, bounced off the wall, and grabbed his foot. “I think I sprang my ankle.”

Jack put two sleepy darts in his butt and waited a second for them to take effect. As he fell asleep, Jack made sure the reluctant dragon was faceup and at no risk of suffocating.

“Either of you want to join him?” he asked the others.

Those two took off at a fast enough run to satisfy Jack.

Another chem light pointed Jack up a smaller tunnel; he would bet money he was now under the rear parking lot and headed for the service entrance to the stadium.

It got crowded when he got to where a ladder led up. A few Marines kept order, but most of the folks down here were volunteers. “Make a hole,” Jack called.

The civilians that were slow to get out of the way got their feet stepped on by either Jack or the Marines directing traffic. Jack went up the ladder without slowing down.

He found himself in a working basement with brightly painted pipes and air ducts. Sergeant Bruce and his LT listened to Tilly as she waved her arms to explain the layout of the building.

“There are four stairwells going up the inside of the stadium. That one there,” she said, pointing at a blue door, “and another like it about a quarter of the way around that way. There are two more. One is a long way down that corridor, and the last one is a bit farther. You go up four flights of stairs, and that puts you at the top of the entrance ramps. From there, you can head into the stadium, where the guys are with machine pistols, or back out to the ramps, where the guys are with rockets.”

“Sounds like the place to be,” the LT said.

“You take the long run down that corridor,” Jack said to the young officer. “Sergeant Bruce and I will take the one a quarter of the way around. We don’t bust out until my order.”

“Aye aye, Skipper,” the LT, said and took off at a gallop with two squads.

Sergeant Bruce was already headed for his station with his squad. Jack trotted after him.

Tilly also joined him in a jog that got her “puppies” bouncing right along with her.

Jack enjoyed the play . . . for about a second . . . and then got his head back where it belonged. He headed up the stairs without breaking stride and found himself quickly at a red-painted door.

Jack keyed his mike. “Lieutenant, Staff Sergeant Bruce’s squad is in position.”

Nothing came back.

“There’s a lot of steel and concrete around us,” Tilly said. “I’m not sure your radio gear works. None of ours did.”

“Crack the door,” Jack ordered.

Sergeant Bruce’s technician did. A spy scout showed nothing in sight, so Jack edged out. “Clear,” he announced softly. Sergeant Bruce whispered assignments to his troopers as they trotted silently past him.

Two went for the outside; the other ten headed inside, with Tilly right behind them, her rifle at the ready.

Jack found himself squatting low behind a bleacher seat with a good view of the field below. “Squad leaders, report who’s on net.”

“Squad one in place.”

“Squad two in place.”

“Squad three in place.”

“Squad four in place.”

“On my mark, take down anyone with a weapon,” Jack ordered. “Mark.”

Rapid small-arms fire filled the stadium.

Command
Master Chief L. J. Mong stood behind the bosun piloting Longboat 1 as it braked to a halt on the main runway at Lander’s Rest’s airport, spaceport, whatever. The bosun used the last bit of energy on the vehicle to turn off onto a taxiway before gliding to a stop, leaving the duty runway for the three longboats right behind him.

The command master chief studied the lay of the port. About a mile off to his right was a squat one-story terminal. At midlength, it spiked a four-story-high control tower. Several trucks waited in front of the tower, but there were no aircraft in sight. What was of prime interest to the chief just now were two tugs in that parked group. Either one could easily tow a longboat to a parking spot off the runway.

Nothing was moving.

“Should we land the landing party?” the chief master-at-arms asked.

“Not just yet,” the command master chief said. “They haven’t made their move.”

The other chief glanced around the field, a pained look on his face. “I don’t like sitting here, like some dumb duck in a shooting gallery.”

“Our intrepid princess is quite sure that these shuttles are an asset the bad guys want to capture in full running order.”

“I’m glad she thinks so. I just hope she got the bad guys’ chop on that.”

“I hear things often go the way she wants,” the command master chief said dryly.

“Me, I’m worried about the first time they don’t.”

“Longboat 4 just touched down, Command Master Chief,” the pilot reported.

“Ah, and now we have activity at the terminal.”

Several trucks and the two tugs now formed a procession winding their way from the tower across the taxiways toward where the longboats lay strung out like a bunch of beached whales.

“Chief Master-at-Arms, you may prepare to deploy your landing force at my order.”

“Thanks be to God,” the other chief grumbled, and headed aft to make it happen.

“Pass the word to the other boats,” the chief told the bosun in charge of the first lander.

“They are glad to hear that, Command Master Chief.”

Command Master Chief Mong waited for a long minute, watching the trucks slowly getting closer and dreading a mortar or rocket grenade salvo from someone who hadn’t gotten The Word from the princess that the landers were worth more captured than burned.

After a minute of stretching his luck, the chief thumbed his commlink. “This is the command master chief. Land the landing force.”

Behind the chief, the aft hatch whined as it dropped open. As soon as it was down, the chief master-at-arms started shouting for his rifle-armed sailors to “Go, go, go. We ain’t got all day. What kind of sailor hangs around in a target this big?”

Sailors raced from the open hatch to take up prone shooting positions in the grass at the edge of the taxiway.

Across the way, trucks slowed to a halt a good hundred meters shy of the boats.

“Time to see if us adults can talk our way out of this situation,” the command master chief muttered to himself as he headed out to see who on the other side was up for a talk.

Jackie
Jackson glared at the man riding in the back of the lead truck as it screeched to a halt beneath the balcony where she stood.

“The Longknife woman is coming,” he shouted.

“And you couldn’t just call to tell me,” Jackie said, waving her other phone.

“I tried. Something was wrong with the phone. You’d answer, ‘Yes.’ I start talking to you, and the phone would go dead. After three tries, I came as quickly as I could.”

“Stadium,” Jackie yelled at her phone. It started ringing immediately. It continued ringing. On the fifth ignored ring, she punched off.

“Find the guy in charge of the phone system,” she shouted at one of her lieutenants. “Shoot him and his family.”

“Will do, Your Terribleness,” the guy said . . . and ran.

Jackie reached for the bullhorn she kept on the balcony. She liked the feel of the handle in her hand, the way people jumped when she shouted into it. Sometimes she used it even when the phone system was working.

“Everyone, listen up,” she yelled. “Longknife and her henchmen will be here any moment. You, helpless little citizens, up on your feet. You can finally do me a service. Gunners, get ready.”

Below her, and on the roofs of the buildings across from her, people leapt to respond to her orders. Here and there someone got shot for responding too slowly. After three shots, there weren’t any slow ones left.

Jackie put down her bullhorn and picked up the detonator. That Longknife woman was in for one big surprise.

Kris
found herself in the unaccustomed position of watching as someone else started a fight. First platoon belonged to Lieutenant Stubben, and it responded to him.

On his order, the snipers took out the riflemen on the roof of the buildings across the street. The hostages used as human shields showed dismay and shock as they felt the wind from the killing rounds, but none of them were hurt.

The same could not be said for those with guns.

Utter silence hung in the air for a moment after that fusillade. Then smoke grenades landed in front of the mansions across the way. They rolled to a halt, spewing smoke. For a long fifteen seconds, nothing happened as the billowing green smoke swelled up and thickened to cover the windows, where no doubt people with those ubiquitous Greenfeld State Security machine pistols waited behind a cringing wall of human shields.

When Lieutenant Stubben determined the smoke was thick enough, there were low shouts of “Move it. Move it. Move it.” and fire teams of well-spread out Marines did indeed move.

Machine pistols chattered from across the way. One bullet even shattered the window Kris was looking out, leading Penny to suggest Her Highness might back off.

Kris didn’t.

She kept watch as no Marine went down to that poorly aimed barrage.

Doors shattered under trooper-applied explosives. Pistols sprayed on fully automatic. M-6s replied with single shots, and quickly the noise died with the gunners.

Kris headed across the street at a run, Penny and Chief Beni right behind her.

The great room of the first building held its own tragedy. The gunman had found his human shield in the way when he went for the first Marine in. He cut down three of his hostages before the Marine took him down with a single head shot.

Kris shook her head; despite all her efforts and those of her Marines, this was going to be a bloodbath.

“Hold it,” Chief Beni half shouted. “We got a problem. There are live wires coming into all six of these buildings.”

That must mean something to the chief but it meant nothing to Kris.

“Back out, Kris,” Penny shouted.

Kris backed, while waving at the hostages to follow her. Two of them were weeping over the bleeding ones, but a young mother gathered up five kids and drove them ahead of her.

Kris tried to help with the kids, but Penny was half pushing her, half dragging her out the door.

“I got it. I got it,” the chief shouted.

“You got what?” Kris said, standing in the doorway, and pushing back at Penny.

“I think someone rigged these houses to blow right after we took them. Everybody, look around,” he yelled.

“What’s a five-pound bag of coffee doing in the library?” a Marine hollered.

“Does it have a wire leading to it?” the chief yelled.

“It did,” the trooper said, appearing in the hall with said bag of freshly ground Mountain Grown Best, “before I yanked it out of it.”

“Give me your bayonet,” Chief Beni said, acquired the blade and sliced into the bag. Freshly ground beans poured out until all that was left was a large, ugly gray block.

“C-8,” Penny shouted, then added on net, “everyone, look for bags of coffee. They’ve got explosives in them, and our sniffers won’t spot the stuff surrounded by coffee.”

“Somebody really needs a wake-up call in the morning,” the chief said, looking the gray block of high explosives over to make sure it was safe.

“Someone’s going to be very unhappy,” Kris said, as Marines reported more bags found and stripped of their ignition wires. “Jackie is not going to like the surprise at all.”