Starfist: Hangfire (24 page)

Kerr hadn't seen it; it happened when he'd almost gotten killed, but he'd heard about it more than once.

"He earned it," Schultz snarled. He'd been with Doyle on that particular action.

"I know he did, Hammer," Kerr said, still chuckling. "That doesn't mean it's not bizarre." He reached out and clapped Doyle on the shoulder. "Keep alert and I think you'll do all right."

Then it was 1700 hours and Sergeant Bladon was back, rapping on the doorjamb. "Chow call!" the squad leader shouted.

"Chow call!" Kerr shouted back. The two NCOs left.

Doyle still sat on the edge of his chair, not sure of what to do.

Schultz turned his vid off and stood over Doyle. "Remember," he intoned. "This is the best FIST in the Corps. We have the best company commander. The best platoon commander. The best fire team leader.

You be the best."

Doyle swallowed. He'd heard an emphatic "or else" in that.

Schultz stepped back and said, "Chow call." When Doyle didn't get up he jerked a thumb in the direction of the mess hall. Junior men in the same fire team usually took their meals together. Schultz wasn't going to leave Doyle out of that tradition, even if he was a corporal and was really a pogue.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Olwyn O'Mol stood back in the shadows of a doorway across the street from the Free Library. He was why Sticks's headquarters was so heavily guarded. Sticks had refused to answer Claypoole because neither he nor any other member of the mob wanted to admit that a man like O'Mol existed in the well-ordered world the crime families had created on Havanagas.

A gust of icy wind blew cold rainwater into the doorway. O'Mol stepped farther back into the recess, tightening his cloak more securely about him. Absently, he fingered one of the several weapons he carried. Arms were necessary to O'Mol's survival. He was one of the most hunted men on Havanagas.

Only his wits and his caution had kept him alive—and his guns.

O'Mol and his confederates had been keeping a close watch on the three Marines since they'd come through customs at Intourist, but not for the same reasons the mob had been watching them. O'Mol needed help.

Olwyn O'Mol was descended from one of the families that had originally settled the world now known as Havanagas. For generations his ancestors had farmed successfully, cultivating crops imported from Earth which thrived in the Hanavagas soil. In time his people had become one of the major landowning families on Havanagas. Now the family holdings had shrunk to a few miserable farms. Most of their land had been expropriated by the mob, once it got control of the local governments. Ironically, most people on the other worlds in the Confederation would have still considered O'Mol a rich man, judging just by the property that still remained in his hands, but he smarted constantly over the forced reduction of his family's wealth and prestige. He dreamed of getting it back.

The first colonists on Havanagas, organized by a company based in northern Italy on Earth, had named the place Neo Milano. They had gone there for the simple reason that they wanted a chance to run their own lives on their own terms, the age-old motivation for moving to a new place. The population on Neo Milano had remained small over the years, and when the crime families—calling themselves the

"Havanagas Conglomerate"—started investing in the place, the natives had welcomed them with open arms. Havanagas had brought jobs, security, and tourism. Everyone benefited. But as Havanagas's operations expanded, droves of new settlers were required to run them, and many were rootless people recruited from all over Human Space. They owed everything to their employers. The original inhabitants found themselves being absorbed into this system, and most of them did not object to that. But Olwyn O'Mol did.

Life on Havanagas was good for those who did not ask questions, stayed in line, and let the crime bosses make all the major decisions for them. But ask for a raise or a promotion? Ask where all the money the Havanagas operations were making was going? Ask why your neighbor had suddenly disappeared without a trace? Any of those questions—or a dozen more anybody would normally ask of his government—got you "replaced." The mob on Havanagas was utterly ruthless in its enforcement of discipline.

Worst of all, the mob deliberately stifled its employees. For instance, Katie knew she would always be a whore. The mob had brought her to Havanagas to be a whore, and she would whore until she was too old to whore anymore, and then and only then would she be allowed to do something else, like help in the management of a whorehouse. She could live a long and comfortable life if she were careful, but she would never marry or have a family, get into another line of work, or capitalize on her intelligence and the first-class education she'd managed to pick up on her own. She could never share her interests with anyone, except maybe the john she was with for the night, and always the only thing he wanted from her was what he had paid for.

People like Gerry Prost were a little better off because they had careers elsewhere before being recruited for employment on Havanagas. But now that the mob paid his salary and bought his precious books for him, he was their man too, for the rest of his life. No library in the universe except the Free Library on Havanagas had the money to build a collection like the one Prost had put together, but the mob's pockets were bottomless and their methods effectively ruthless. Prost did not know this because he did not care to know. For him the end—exquisitely rare books available to those who worshiped them—justified the means. So do decent people accommodate themselves to evil.

Olwyn O'Mol vowed he would die before he'd live like that. So far, though, the mob had not been able to pin him down. He was rigorously careful about his movements, never staying in one place for very long, constantly on the move and never establishing a pattern to his moves. His confederates provided safe houses and hideouts for him. He became used to living outside what passed for law on Havanagas.

The few times he had been cornered, he'd shot his way out. Superstition had grown up around him, and there were many in the Havanagas underworld who were convinced Olwyn O'Mol lived a charmed life.

Huge amounts had been placed on his head, but no one had collected. O'Mol had discovered a great secret: when criminals settle down, when they become so powerful they run things, when they are no longer fugitives, relying on their wits and initiative to survive, then they become as vulnerable as the society upon which they once preyed.

O'Mol had been standing in this doorway for two hours now, since the agent assigned to follow the Marines had signaled that the trio had been picked up by Culloden. He had come to the scene personally and relieved the agent, whom he'd sent to watch the Frogmore instead. He knew where Culloden had taken the Marines and why. He had to know if they were allowed to return. His guess was that since the men had come in with women, Culloden would return them to the Free Library instead of their hotel—if they returned at all. Well, he'd know soon enough.

The "Havanagas Liberation Front," as O'Mol and his associates grandly called their tiny movement, posed no real threat to the mob—yet. But O'Mol had plans.

Havanagas had no army, navy, or even a police force. The mob kept control of things through a vast network of informants and agents, overseers and minor bosses, who ran and supervised every business enterprise and government operation on the planet. When force was needed to keep someone in line, goons were available. If a tourist was found cheating or creating disorder, the casino or park security personnel handled the matter—usually by putting the miscreant on the first ship off-world. If an employee went bad, he or she was quietly disposed of by professionals.

The inflexible rule on Havanagas was that tourists were never cheated or molested in any way, and while they were guests in the casinos and theme worlds on the planet, they should never be troubled by internal disciplinary problems. Thus, to billions of people Havanagas was the most peaceful and delightful spot in Human Space, and whole families pooled their life savings for a week or two in its pleasure palaces.

But the venery behind every aspect of Havanagas had not gone entirely unnoticed by the Confederation of Worlds. Politicians and social critics regularly inveighed against the Barkspiel show as appealing to the basest form of cupidity, enticing its millions of viewers to risk bankruptcy just to sample the transient pleasures of a fantasy world created by gangsters. But since there was absolutely no admissible evidence of crime or corruption on Havanagas itself—and since Havanagas and Barkspiel had become cultural icons—the families could only be attacked in their off-world enterprises, which would never reach the capos themselves, safely ensconced on Havanagas.

O'Mol knew he had to take out the mob leadership if he was to break their hold on his home. But he was shrewd and he was patient. He had initiated several low-key and very clandestine programs to weaken confidence in the families. Among them was a clever propaganda scheme designed to play on the natural discontents of a population under the total control of the mob, and a sophisticated campaign of cyber sabotage. His most recent coup had been wiping out all the records of a casino in Placetas, forcing the place to close down for a week. He had also engineered several successful burglaries. If you can't hit the mobster himself, he realized, then rob his bank.

But now he had begun to hit the mobsters, with a terror campaign against the lower-level family members—the assassination of an underboss here, a soldier there. Those first-level employees of the families were beginning to go around looking over their shoulders. That is why Johnny Sticks's headquarters was surrounded by armed men. O'Mol was beginning to make the mobsters understand what it was like to be under the gun.

And now these three Marines. Marines were fighters. No matter what their jobs—clerks, supply men, drivers—they were infantrymen and knew weapons and tactics. Olwyn O'Mol had a job for them.

Another gust of wind howled into the doorway. The street outside was deserted. Everything might hinge on whether these three, or even one of the three, would accept his offer. O'Mol had money; the robberies had been very successful.

O'Mol began to consider, as he did constantly, what he would do once he had broken the families'

hold on Havanagas. The rudimentary forms of civil government that existed on Havanagas would have to be expanded beyond mere caretaker status. There was a vast infrastructure to handle logistics, run the casinos and theme worlds, process the millions of tourists who visited Havanagas every year. What Havanagas lacked was a political structure to make fair and honest decisions about how the world would be run. O'Mol had no intention of closing down the parks and casinos. They could continue to run virtually by themselves. But Havanagas had no real laws or regulations, and there was no mechanism for a new government to obtain feedback from its citizens. Before the mob, the planet had been run by a loose confederation of landholders who remained essentially autonomous in their own geographical areas.

That would not work in a postmob environment.

O'Mol was thinking he would have to call on the Confederation of Human Worlds for assistance and that he would be the chief spokesman in that process, when Culloden's landcar pulled up in front of the Free Library.

Ah! O'Mol realized he had guessed right. He smiled as the three Marines got out of the car and mounted the steps, laughing and slapping each other on the back Culloden drove off. Now to make contact.

"You know me, Johnny," Juanita was saying. "You how I have good intuition. You also know I don't give a damn about that girl who was killed, the one that fool, Claypoole, is mooning over. Yes, Johnny, that one's an incurable romantic, in love with the ghost of that girl."

"And your valued intuition tells you?"

"There's a rat in the woodpile, Johnny. Nothing happens in this life by chance. There's big trouble in store for your family if you don't take action right now."

"We're in danger from three Marines, Juanita?" Sticks laughed. "Now if they were four—"

"No laughing matter, Johnny."

"I know, I know. I do trust your insights, Juanita. We all do. I could've killed them, but I didn't because I want to know who their contact is. It was very fortunate that you came to me. Oh, we were suspicious from the time they came through customs, and what you told me is very valuable. I owe you for that. Oh, sure, they were sent here, as you suspect. Only an idiot would fail to catch on to that. Jesus, Nast must be slipping in his old age."

"Yes? He's pretty damned quick on the draw, Johnny," Juanita said, tacitly reminding him of the failed assassination attempt in Fargo.

Johnny nodded and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Well, he was lucky, Juanita, but still, he's got fast reflexes, I hear. But our sources at the Ministry of Justice haven't all dried up, you know. We know he's up to something. He hasn't been seen in months, did you know that? What I can't figure is why he would send in these three clowns to make contact with his agent here."

"Maybe it's a diversion," Juanita suggested. "You look at the left hand and the right hand is free to move."

"Hmm." Sticks was silent for a time. "No. He knows we're too sophisticated and alert to fall for a substitution play."

"Well, get rid of them and there'll be no contact."

"I'm keeping my eye on them, Juanita, and when the time comes..." He drew a finger across his throat and smiled evilly. "They won't get out of here alive."

"Let me know, Johnny, before you kill them. I want to be there. I want to see their blood and hear their screams."

"Ooh," Sticks pretended to be frightened, "and we don't hold anything against the Marines, do we?"

Juanita's expression hardened. "Johnny, they blundered into my world and upset it. I cannot tolerate interference. What will you do to them?" She leaned forward eagerly.

"Oh, the usual. First we'll find out what they came here for. Nobody can resist spilling his guts after Hugo's been at them for a while."