Conquistador (63 page)

“Yeah,” he said, flushing a little with pleasure. “That was the first under my own byline. Nice of you to recall. I was wondering if you could give me a few words on the Toni Bosco matter? And maybe a picture?”

Well, I don't think reporters were
ever
that polite, FirstSide,
he thought.

Adrienne pursed her lips, seemed lost in thought for a minute, and then answered: “I think I might, Charlie . . . provided you do me a favor and keep quiet about my medium-term plans.” She glanced at Tom. “I have . . . well, an announcement I don't want leaking. I promise you'll get it first, when and if, if you'll humor me.”

“No problem, Miz Rolfe,” he said earnestly. “I appreciate that.”

“Ask away.”

“The Colletta has asked for a judicial session of the committee to investigate the death of his collateral, Anthony Bosco. Do you have any comment?”

“Just that, with respect, the Colletta should remember that Gate Security has plenary authority when operating FirstSide; that no Commonwealth court has jurisdiction over actions done there; and that that applies to the committee sitting in judicial session as well. I killed Anthony Bosco—and I make no bones about it—while on FirstSide, and while he was resisting arrest by an officer of Gate Security, and while himself shooting at Gate Security operatives. And killing one, in fact: Schalk van der Merwe, who left a widow and three small children. Anthony Bosco endangered the Gate secret and put himself outside the law; he fell on his own deeds. Instead of criticizing the Gate Security Force, the Colletta should be taking measures to exercise a tighter discipline on his collaterals.”

“Can I quote you on that, Miz Rolfe?” the reporter said, nearly slavering.

“You may,” she said.

The questions went on for a few more minutes. The reporter finished with, “And what are your immediate plans, Miz Rolfe? The ones you don't mind people knowing, that is,” he finished hastily.

“You can say that I'm going on an extended holiday,” she said, then smiled. “Just between me and thee, Charlie, and off the record, I'll be flying down the coast, and then looking for a crew to take
Sea-Witch
”—she turned to Tom for an instant—“That's the family sailing yacht—take
Sea-Witch
on a cruise to Hawaii, with some friends.”

She made it plain who the friend was in the way she looked at Tom. He felt himself grinning back—this was misdirection, but the look itself was quite genuine.

“Thanks a million, Miz Rolfe!” the reporter said.

“Disinformation?” Tom asked, when the reporter had gone and they were out of earshot of anyone else.

“Precisely.” Adrienne grinned and squeezed his arm. “Charlie won't publish anything he says he won't, but he'll stop gossiping when he stops breathing. Giovanni Colletta will find it a lot more believable coming as a rumor than as a magazine story, which he'd assume was planted. With any luck he'll really believe I'm off to the islands with my new boyfriend in tow and nothing on my mind but making out like a mad mink under the coconut trees on Waikiki. He's got that Madonna-whore thing, bad. Give you three guesses which category he puts me in.”

Tom gave her a round of applause, grinning. “And you'll have this yacht leave, too, won't you? With arrangements that'll make it look like we're on board.”

“Hell, yes,” she said. Then she hugged him and sighed. “Do you have any idea how nice it is to find a man who doesn't feel scared of a woman who can think?”

“Ah . . .”
Advantages of a FirstSide upbringing,
he didn't say. “The brains are up to the standards of the rest of the package,” he said.

By the light in her leaf-green eyes, it was the right thing to say. She pulled his head down beside hers and whispered, “But while we're here, why
don't
we go make out like mad mink?”

“So,” Tully said, rubbing his hands and looking around like a ten-year-old in a candy store, “what does Santa have for the good little boys and girls?”

Tom looked around the armory too; everyone in the prospective scouting party was there, except for the Indian tracker, who preferred to stick with his native tools. Hunting weapons were in one section of the long room; military stuff was in another, and in the center were workbenches, a reloading setup and a remarkably complete set of gunsmith's tools. Light came from two small barred windows high up on either wall, and overhead fluorescents. There was a comfortingly familiar scent of Break Free oil, propellant, brass and metal.

“I presume everyone's got their own rifle,” Tom said, and they all nodded. “Now, we're going to look, not fight, but it's always nice to have some insurance—you can sing or make love when
you
feel like it, but you fight when the
other
guy feels like it.”

“How about this?” Jim Simmons said, taking down a light machine gun from the rack. He looked at the two FirstSiders. “It's a Bren, rechambered for the thirty-aught-six round.”

Tom had heard of the classic design, but never used one before. It had a bi-pod at the front, pivoted on the takeoff for the gas cylinder, and a top-mounted thirty-round box. There was an alternative C-mag saddle drum holding seventy-five rounds. Tom hefted it; lighter than the 240s he'd used in the army.

“All right; might be nice to have an authoritative backup . . . I presume you can use it?” Simmons nodded, and so did Botha and Adrienne. “You can give Roy and me—and Sandra—a quick course on it.”

Adrienne pulled out three submachine guns—he recognized the unorthodox shape of a Belgian PN90, its synthetics and molded shapes an odd contrast with the angular wood and metal of the older designs. These had a built-in handgrip near the front, a laser designator and collimating sight, and a fifty-round magazine of transparent plastic that lay along the top of the boxy weapon.

“These might be handy,” she said.

“Good,” he said. Like any workman, he took a proprietary interest in his tools. They had only a few days to make sure everyone was familiar with all the tools at hand. “If it came to a close-quarter firefight, those
would
be handy. Now . . .”

He lifted down a wooden crate and took out blocks of a rubbery plastic substance, timers, detonators and wireless control units.

“Who knows how to handle Semtex?” he went on cheerfully.

“That's her: the
No Biscuit.
”

“
No Biscuit?
” Tom asked, walking around the small twin-prop plane and doing a quick check.

“That's what my flight instructor said whenever I did something stupid. ‘Bad student! Bad! No biscuit!' ”

The little amphibian was parked on a municipal airport just south of Napa town—an X of mown grass strips, a couple of timber-framed hangars, a receiving shed and a rudimentary two-story control tower with a wind sock, all drowsing under a clear blue August sky. The air was warm at noon but still carried a hint of morning's freshness, the green damp smell of the marshes to the south, sun-dried grass and a tang of gasoline, solvents and varnish. The craft had a tricycle undercarriage and a boat-shaped lower body; the wheel struts had sections of shaped board attached, with rubber gaskets to form a tight seal with the rest of the hull when they were retracted. The wing was high-mounted with pontoons at the tips, and there were two modest radial engines in smooth cowlings stained with streaks of black from the exhausts.

Closer inspection confirmed his first impression: The
No Biscuit
was built with stone-ax simplicity. The hull was a monocoque of laminated spruce with spruce springers and frames; so was the wing, apart from the main spar. The controls weren't just nondigital—they were plain old cables, not even any hydraulic assist. There
were
some modern electronics on the control panel, flat-screen displays for radar and such, but they were extras. He looked around and saw several more just like her, and a few others with tubby cylindrical bodies suitable for a land-based aircraft, but the same wings, engines and control surfaces.

“All designed and made here in the Commonwealth,” Adrienne confirmed pridefully. “Except for some engine parts and the cockpit electronics. We could make the engine parts and do without the digital stuff, at need, even if we're not up to making a C-130 or Black Hawk from scratch.”

Tom looked back at the Hummer parked beside the reception block while Adrienne went through her preflight check. Tom had taken the sensitive and heavy parts of their baggage himself, on the take-no-chances principle, since he was something of a demolitions expert and Roy wasn't. Tully and Sandy were supposed to be bringing along the rest of the bags. Instead they were horsing around, something that suddenly developed into serious lip-locking. He sighed; on the one hand, he'd seen it developing over the past weeks, and he certainly didn't begrudge his friend finding someone. On the other hand, when Roy fell he tended to fall hard.

Adrienne looked up from checking the engines. “Glad of that,” she said quietly. “Sandy deserves some happiness, particularly with someone who doesn't care who her maternal grandmother was.” A slight snort. “We Rolfes had something similar in our early history, certainly!”

“Ah . . .” Tom hesitated. “Tully's a great guy, you betcha, but he's had . . . problems that way. Two divorces.”

“Third time lucky, maybe,” Adrienne said. “And it's easier to stay married here. Fewer distractions; people stay put more.”

She gave a piercing whistle and the two broke apart; Sandra looked embarrassed and Tully didn't, but then . . .
I could count the number of times I've seen Roy embarrassed without taking off my socks,
Tom thought.
I mean, look at that Hawaiian shirt he's wearing!

They loaded the luggage into a cargo compartment, through gull-wing doors that opened just behind the six-seat passenger cabin. Tom took particular care with several small brass-bound leather trunks. There was no problem with carrying weapons openly here in the Commonwealth; outside the towns and the more settled farming zones everyone went ironed, and even inside them it didn't raise much of an eyebrow. The explosives and night-sight gear in those, though . . .

The rest of the gear was exactly what they would have packed for the holiday she'd described to Charlie Carson—the best way to look like you were doing something was to actually do it. Then he opened the door at the rear of the passenger compartment—it swung upward too—and handed everyone up. There was a wheeled stairway around somewhere, but boosting people gave him an excuse to grab Adrienne below the hips and lift her effortlessly high over his head.

“Show-off,” she said, grinning down at him.

“But you like what I show off,” he pointed out.

“Point taken.”

“Show-off,” Tully said as he settled into the seat behind the copilot's, and Tom edged past him.

“You're just jealous,” Tom replied. “But I forgive you. It can't be easy being the world's only hobbit. . . .”

“I'm not jealous,” Sandra said, and winked. “I'm too fond of breathing un-squashed.”

“Not a problem,” Adrienne said, “when dealing with a gentleman.”

The four of them laughed easily.

Tom stopped after a second, thinking,
Forgiveness is an odd thing,
as he settled into the copilot's seat and adjusted it—which required putting it nearly back to Tully's knees. Leather sighed under him; the aircraft had an unfamiliar smell, less ozone and synthetics than he was used to, more wood and oil and metal. His mind went on working as he watched Adrienne lean out the window to check the control surfaces, her feet moving on the pedals and yoke. The way her neck curved, and the little wisps that escaped the braid she'd made of her bronze-bright hair . . .