Backshot (24 page)

“Received, Gamma. Stand by.” Soft static again filled Gamma Lead’s earphones. After a longer wait than the previous one, Hometown came back. “Gamma Lead, Racer requests you take a closer look. Can do?”

“Right up the exhaust pipe, if that’s what you want,” Gamma Lead replied, then on the flight circuit,

“Wing, let’s take a closer look.”

The flight of two Gyrfalcons of the Margelan air defense corps banked sharply and pointed their noses groundward. They were at Mach 1.25, so the object on the ground had no warning of their approach before they flashed above it at less than fifty meters.

A Hilltop Ten Kilometers East of the Cabbage Patch

The rain stopped while Lieutenant Tevedes was in the tree, but the trunk was still slick with dripping water. He had just started to climb down the tree when the sonic boom from the two Gyrfalcons slammed into him. The blast knocked him from the tree and rocked the lorry violently, throwing around the Marines inside it. Tevedes landed hard on one shoulder and flipped over with an audible cracking of bone.

“Doc!”
Sergeant Daly shouted, and jumped out of the cab to rush to Tevedes’s aid. He could barely make out the platoon commander in infra, but it looked like the lieutenant lay with his shoulders and head at impossible angles. Daly opened Tevedes’s face shields and saw the officer’s eyes were open wide and his mouth gaped like a beached fish gulping for water. Natron reached him seconds after Daly and swore as soon as he saw Tevedes’s face. “Don’t touch him,” he ordered. For the first time since they left the hidden AstroGhost, the corpsman raised his face screens. He bent low over Tevedes’s head and turned his own head so his ear was above the man’s mouth. He felt a puff of air and softly breathed a sigh of relief as he straightened back up. He removed his gloves, then as gently as he could, felt around Tevedes’s shoulders and upper body. He reached down and sharply pinched the inside of his patient’s thigh, but Tevedes didn’t react.

“Can you feel this?” he asked as he lifted Tevedes’s hand and bent it back. Tevedes croaked a noise. From the shape of his mouth, Natron was confident he’d said, “No,” though it might have been, “Ow!”

The corpsman did a couple more quick tests, then rocked back. “All right,” he briskly said to Tevedes, “here’s my off-the-cuff diagnosis. I think your neck is broken, and your spinal cord might be damaged. If I had another stasis bag, I’d put you in it and let the surgeons aboard the
Admiral Nelson
worry about you. But I don’t—and I can’t take any of the other Marines out of their stasis bags, because they’re liable to die if I do.

“So what I’m going to do is brace your neck and put you on a backboard to hold you steady. It’ll be enough to keep you stable until we get you back aboard the ship. Do you understand?”

Tevedes tried to say something, but all that came out was an almost inaudible, “p-p-p.”

“Planes, is that what you’re saying.”

“Y-Yeh.”

Natron looked up. “Daly, where are you?” he called out.

“Up here,” Daly called back. “Halfway up the tree. I’m looking for those aircraft.” He looked all around in both visual and infra, but didn’t see any sign of the two Gyrfalcons.

Directly Above Second Platoon

If Daly had looked straight up, he might have seen the two fighters turning in a very high, very slow, very tight orbit.

Gamma Lead transmitted the visuals he’d taken during his low pass over the lorry that had been identified as the same type as the one missing from the Cabbage Patch and was waiting for further orders.

They came. “Gamma, Hometown. We’ve got a positive ID from the registration number on that vehicle. It is the one taken from the Cabbage Patch. The intruders can’t have gotten very far, so run a search pattern north and east of the lorry. Transmit your infras to me, Racer says they are impossible to spot in visual and have very good infra damping.”

“Roger, Hometown. Gamma initiating search pattern north and east of the lorry.” Gamma Lead switched to local and asked, “You heard, Wing?”

“That’s an affirmative, Lead.”

“Drop to two thousand meters, one thousand meters spread.”

“Two thousand altitude, one thousand spread. Got it, Lead.”

“On my mark. One, two, three, mark.”

The Gyrfalcons turned on their wing tips and dove for their search pattern altitude, north and east of the lorry.

Doc Natron had Lieutenant Tevedes’s neck braced and his body strapped to a metal panel he found inside the lorry in fifteen minutes. Once the injured platoon commander was loaded, he turned to Daly. Both section leaders were dead, Gunny Lytle was in a stasis bag, and Lieutenant Tevedes was strapped to a backboard—and heavily sedated.

“Well, now, Sergeant Daly,” he said slowly, “it looks like you’re in command. What do we do now?”

“It looked to me like those aircraft are looking for us northeast of here,” he said. “We’re going southeast as far as we can, then turn straight for the puddle jumpers. Mount up.”

Natron didn’t move. “We’ve got six dead, and four more so badly hurt there’s no way they can travel via puddle jumper. So what are we going to do when we get there?”

“We’re Force Recon. We leave nothing behind, not even footprints. We’re going to pick the puddle jumpers up and take them with us. It wouldn’t do to leave them behind for somebody to find later on.”

“I like your thinking, Sergeant. All aboard this Ship of Fools.” He climbed into the cargo compartment to tend to his patients during the journey to where they’d left the puddle jumpers. Daly climbed back into the cab and told Nomonon to head southeast. As soon as he was sure they were far enough away from the search area, he’d stop and send an update to the
Admiral Nelson
. Maybe he’d request that the AstroGhost meet them where the puddle jumpers were hidden. That would make getting away from the searchers easier and might save the lives of some of the wounded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Room 1007, New Granum DeLuxe Inn

“That’s it,” Sergeant Ivo Gossner said when he’d decoded the burst transmission from the
Admiral
Nelson
. “It’s a go.”
They were going to assassinate a sovereign head of state!
He put some effort into controlling his trembling. Sure, Jorge Liberec Lavager wasn’t President of a world, merely the head of a nation-state, one of several on Atlas—but he
was
a head of state nonetheless. Gossner didn’t know of another instance where Marines had carried out a political assassination. He’d never even heard rumors of Marines conducting a political assassination, and there were rumors about
everything
Marines did, and a lot of things they
didn’t
do. Lance Corporal Bella Dwan was lying on the bed in their room. She had taken off her blouse and skirt before she lay down on top of the covers wearing just the undergarments she’d bought on the shopping trip the previous day. The undergarments in question were sexier than any Gossner knew her to own back at Camp Howard, and sexier than any he’d glimpsed on her since they’d checked into the hotel. He didn’t know if she was confident he wouldn’t try anything or if she was deliberately teasing him. Or he had to admit that it was possible she had no interest whatsoever in sex and assumed that he didn’t either. He had to control his trembling again, but this time it was because of the sight of her scantily clad body. When Ivo Gossner couldn’t see into her eyes, he found Bella Dwan to really be a very attractive woman. He forced himself to focus on her closed eyes and ignore the rest of her.

“Bella, did you hear me?”

She didn’t open her eyes, but she did say, “I heard you.” She grinned. Dwan’s grin was that of a big cat about to pounce on a grazing antelope. Gossner looked away so he didn’t see the look she gave him as she curled up into a sitting position with her legs crossed camp-style in front of her.

“Damn, it’s a go,” she said softly. Her eyes glittered with anticipation.

“So we need to get out there and see if we can do it from that empty building. Get dressed and let’s make like tourists.” He rose from the chair he’d been sitting in and went into the water closet without looking at her.

She watched him go with an expression on her face that, had he seen it, he wouldn’t have known what to make of.

Center Boulevard, New Granum

They walked past Ramuncho’s Restaurant on the other side of the street. Even though it was midafternoon on a business day, the street was nearly as crowded as it had been the previous evening. This time most of the people about were dressed in business garb, and walked purposefully as though they were rushing from meeting to meeting. Still, a large minority were obvious tourists out shopping, dining, or looking for parties. There were enough people shopping that Dwan’s oversized handbag didn’t look out of place on the street.

Gossner saw immediately that they’d been right when they decided they couldn’t pull off the assassination from the access alleys between the buildings; both foot and landcar traffic was far too dense for the maser to get off a full shot at the target. They circled the block to Ranstead Street and passed the front of the vacant building they’d entered the previous night. They knew neither the name nor the address of the building, but they both had a good enough sense of spatial relations to know where it was. Even if they hadn’t, they couldn’t have missed it—it was the only building on the block that had a “to let” sign on it. A dearth of shops and restaurants meant there were far fewer tourists on Ranstead Street, but there were nearly as many people in business garb as there had been on Center Boulevard. They wouldn’t be able to enter the building during the day, at least not through the front. They’d have to go in at night and simply wait until the target showed up at Ramuncho’s. The maître d’ had told them Lavager dined there often enough to justify holding a table for him, but how often was that, how long might they have to wait? And how might the raid on the Cabbage Patch affect his dining out? Would he stop going to Ramuncho’s until the crisis caused by the raid was over?

Gossner looked down the side street toward Center Boulevard and saw a tourist couple duck into the service alley that ran behind the vacant building. None of the other people on the street paid them any attention.

“Come on,” he said, and took Dwan’s hand. She skipped along with him. Her jauntiness jarred Gossner, but he didn’t display any discomfort. He glanced into the service alley as they passed it. He could barely make them out, but he saw the tourist couple, thinking themselves fully hidden, in a tight embrace.

“Is that how we’re going to get in the building during the day, Ivo?” Dwan asked. “Playing the young lovers making out in an alley?”

Gossner blinked; he hadn’t thought she’d even seen the tourist couple. “Do you have a better idea?” he asked in return.

“Let’s try it from the other end of the alley.”

“Whatever you say, dear.”

“You’re so sweet, Ivo.” She squeezed his hand and briefly lay her head on his shoulder.
Smart move,
Gossner thought. If anybody followed them around and saw them duck into the service alley, they’d think the obvious—that they wanted privacy without having to waste time going back to their hotel—or was Dwan doing something . . . Nah, not the Queen of Killers. When they approached the alley from the other end Dwan pulled Gossner’s hand around her waist and snuggled close. She looked up at him with an adoring expression and whispered something he didn’t catch. At least, he was pretty sure he heard her wrong; something about “jump” and “bones” and “after the kill.”

Nobody paid them any attention when they entered the alley, and in just a moment they were slipping through the shadows on their way to the rear of the vacant building. In the distance they could make out the tourist couple, who seemed to be in an even more intimate embrace than before. When Gossner looked back, he saw people passing the alley’s entrance; none of them even glanced down it. In daylight, he saw that all the detritus in the service alley was incidental rubbish, none of it organic. There was also a good deal less in the service alley than there was in the access alleys he’d looked down. Nothing was spilling from bins now, the sanitation department must have made a pickup since last night. He wondered what the schedule was. It wasn’t long before they reached their destination. They both looked carefully, but neither saw any sign that anyone had investigated the open ground-level window. In a moment, they were back in the basement.

Dim light filtered into the basement through the two windows on the alley side. It was enough to show them that the basement ran the length and width of the building and was indeed empty. They saw the stairway to the ground floor and headed for it. They stopped halfway up at the sound of voices from above.

“—my needs exactly,” a male voice said.

“And how soon would you want to move in?” a female voice asked. Footsteps that sounded like they were headed for the front of the building accompanied the voices.

“As soon as possible, actually. There are those few items you need to fix. What’s your timeline on the work?”

There was the sound of the front door opening.

“We can have it finished within a fortnight. Provided I can get a crew in to get started in—”

The voices were cut off by the closing door. Gossner, in the lead, turned around and sat heavily on the stairs. Dwan, a couple of steps lower, put her hands on his knees and leaned in so her face was close to his.

“Let’s take a look at that second floor room anyway,” she said. “We might still have enough time for the shot.”

“Yeah,” he said, though he thought they’d have to do it from the rear of Ramuncho’s or even from someplace else. He rose and led the way. The view from the second floor rear room was a sniper’s dream. The room was filled with shadows, the sniper could stand back from the window and be effectively invisible from Center Boulevard, even from the first several meters of the access alley leading to it. The view into Ramuncho’s window was at an angle, and not all of the interior was visible from the Ranstead Street building, but the part that was visible included the table reserved for President Lavager.

“I like it,” Dwan said. She stepped up to the window and examined the molding. “It’d be a snap to remove the glass,” she said. Shooting through an open window would be more accurate and effective than shooting through the glass, and if the glass was removed they wouldn’t have to risk attracting attention by opening and closing the window.

“The workers will notice if the glass is missing when they come in,” Gossner said.

“They’re just as likely to think it’s something the bosses forgot to put on the punch list,” Dwan said. He grunted noncommittally. As a boss himself, he knew that bosses didn’t always think of everything—but he wasn’t about to admit it. Then he had to stop thinking about it and help her remove the glass.

“Let’s go check out the Presidential Residence, just in case,” she said when they were finished.

“That’s a very good idea.”

But there were too many tourists and soldiers around the Presidential Residence for them to find a sniper spot.

Room 1007, New Granum DeLuxe Inn

They ordered a room service dinner so they could discuss their options while they ate. Gossner also wanted to check on what the local news media had to say about the raid on the Cabbage Patch. This wasn’t the time to get exotic; they went for roast beef, scalloped potatoes, and broccoli with hollandaise sauce. They skipped dessert, but did indulge in a pot of real coffee. Gossner activated the trid and picked a news channel. A perfectly coiffed and overly sincere-looking man in an immaculate suit was talking in front of a scene of devastation familiar to anybody who’d ever been on a battlefield after the shooting stopped. Gossner hit the “repeat segment” button on the trid’s control and the view changed slightly. It was the same location, just a few minutes earlier. This time, the view wasn’t static, rather it panned from left to right. What had obviously been guard towers were tumbled to the ground. Bunkers were blackened with the scorch marks of blaster fire. Several buildings were shattered, the obvious victims of internal explosions. People stood or walked about in the middle distance; most of them looked dazed, and some staggered.

This time the reporter wasn’t in the scene, though he was there as a voice-over. “You can see for yourself,” he said with earnest sincerity, “the destruction wrought by unknown raiders on the Union of Margelan’s agricultural research center called the Cabbage Patch. The destruction is horrendous to look at, absolutely horrendous. Words fail me.”

The images panning the field reached him and stopped, as did his voice. He wasn’t looking out at the viewer, but to the side, the area the image field had just covered. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the reporter to find words again. He turned his earnest face to the front and said, “I’ve never seen such destruction, and I’ve seen more destruction than most people have in my function as a reporter for UXN Instant News. Nowhere in my lengthy service of bringing the news to you have I seen anything to match this, not even in the aftermath of the most violent storms, or the crash of the TGA orbital shuttle three years ago.”

“He should see some of the things I’ve seen,” Gossner muttered. “I’ve been in places that make that look like a group of toddlers were left unsupervised for five minutes.”

“I guess he’s never been in the military,” Dwan murmured.

“Sure as shit not in the Marines,” Gossner said. They stopped talking and listened again.

“. . . was here just a short while ago,” the reporter was saying. “I was able to speak with him for a few moments.”

The trid image wavered for a second, then steadied with the reporter standing next to a dirty and obviously angry Jorge Liberec Lavager.

“Mr. President,” the reporter said in a tone of surprised awe, “who could have done this? Do you know yet? Has anybody been arrested?”

“Just give me one question at a time, Bil,” Lavager said, his voice strained. “We are certain of who the perpetrators of this atrocity are, and are taking steps to gather information to confirm it. Also, even as we speak, our army and air defense corps are conducting a pursuit of the felons who destroyed this important agricultural research facility. Don’t worry, Bil,” Lavager turned to face the cam, “and you at home, don’t you worry either. We’re going to catch the people responsible for this, and when we do, they are going to pay the maximum penalty.”

The image wavered again and reporter Bil was once more alone in the image. “President Lavager got rescue and clean-up operations begun here, and headed back into New Granum shortly after my interview with him.”

Then “Bil” took a few seconds to rearrange his face into an expression of earnestly sincere gravity, and said, “It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but normally reliable sources have informed UXN Instant News that President Lavager was on his way to the Cabbage Patch for a routine visit when his convoy was attacked, and several members of his party were killed. Again, this hasn’t been confirmed, but Army Chief of Staff General Locksley ‘Locker’ Ollwelen is said to be among the dead.”

“It wasn’t us,” Gossner said, surprised at hearing about the ambush.

“We’re on this mission because of the Central Intelligence Organization,” Dwan said, teeth clamped and eyes slitted. “Do you think maybe they’ve got a backup operation going here?”

Gossner considered the question for a moment, then shook his head. “No. They could screw up an ambush that badly, but I think they want to keep their DNA out of this. Remember, the target has enemies in other nation-states here, so it could have been one of them.”