Honor of the Clan (15 page)

The heavy bag was filled with sand, as was what appeared to be a boxy, vinyl bench set against the wall. Andreotti grunted with effort, despite his own rigorously maintained physical strength, as he moved the two items over to give them some cover at an angle with a good view to the stairs. Digging underneath a pile of mildewing junk in one corner, he pulled out a rifle and a couple of decent pistols, a can of magazines, a couple of helmets. The bottom of the trunk yielded a couple of vests, so far down that they weren't even damp. They didn't smell so great anyway, and were only kevlar, but were a lot better than nothing, and likely to stop anything the enemy would fire in a basement unless he was stoned, stupid, or very well armored himself. Ricochets were a bitch.

He slapped the five-year-old's hand away when he reached for one of the pistols. "Not today. Sorry, son. Your hands are too small, and you're wound up—you just might shoot our rescuers by mistake. Don't pout. Strap on the helmet as best you can and get under this."

He didn't mention that if the enemy decided to blow up the house, or burn it down, they were fucked. He hadn't seen explosives or incendiaries in his cursory inspection of the place, which didn't mean they weren't there, but he hoped if they'd intended to demolish the house, they already would have. Besides, they went to special trouble to leave their warning. They'd want it noticed, and for word to spread.

He noted that whatever else the enemy was, he was apparently stupid. Or
expected
 the warning to have the opposite effect to the one normally intended. Sorting out that mess was above his pay grade. Right now, his job was to keep his remaining charge alive for the pickup. Pinky was far more important than he was.

He wanted to ask who the other body was, sure that the child would know, but the little kid was showing amazing composure for his age, and Caspar wouldn't risk breaking it. The boy had already winced, understandably, when he had called him "son."

"Tell me the truth about my daddy."

Andreotti jerked. "Alive, with the rest of DAG—most of them—somewhere else." He reflexively told Maise's son the truth. Yet another breach of his training.

"Fighting?"

The boy was no longer surprising him. This time the safe house operator considered before answering, "Not to my knowledge, but I'm not sure they'd tell me. Alive is all I know for sure, and I haven't seen any clues that anything with as much firepower as your dad's unit is out there raising hell."

"Okay," the child who was more than a child replied gravely, accepting the answer.

It was a long five hours, with him creeping out once to steal food and a large glass of milk, before returning down to feed and wait with Pinky. The basement had a bathroom, thank God, and he'd been able to grab some dirty clothes the boy had left on his living room floor. They were streaked with mud in places, but at least not peed in.

"If they saw you come in, aren't they going to be suspicious that everything is so quiet?" the five-year-old—genius, apparently—asked.

"Quite possibly. Or, they may decide I've somehow skipped out in fear and slipped past them. Either way, if I was here, I'd have to call the police, and I can't do that with you here, can I?" Caspar Andreotti was getting used to treating his charge at his mental age, not his chronological one. Or was it?

"When do you think they'll get us?" the boy asked. "I mean our rescue, not the police or other guys. Whoever you called for."

"Soon now," the house man answered. "Pinky, are you five, or are you just small for your age?"

"Do you think Joey—" His voice broke on his brother's name. "Do you think Joey would have agreed to say he was six, even if he didn't blab, if he was older?"

"No, Pinky, I guess I don't. So why did you hide how very smart you are?"

"What, and piss off Joey that bad? Or get stuck in school early, or up a couple of grades and be the punching bag of all the bigger boys? Or treated like a freak?" The last contained a note of hurt mixed with bravado—whistling in the dark—that told Andreotti that feeling like a freak hit way too close to home for the child.

"You
are
smart, aren't you? Never be ashamed of being smart, Pinky. It just saved your life." The grown man, closest thing present to a father, made sure he was both serious, respectful, and above all approving.

Talented and deserving of respect, or freakishly different with the need to keep hiding for self-preservation. Those were the stakes. If Pinky was "scary smart," which he was, then he needed to grow into a whole, functional "scary smart" guy. The Bane Sidhe needed those. Caspar hadn't missed the note of hero worship in the boy when he'd said "spy." In many people, that would be a red flag of unsuitability. This child was a natural. The organization's problem would be in deciding where to place him to do the most good.

The kid was never going to enjoy New Year's Eve again. Come to think of it, Andreotti figured they had that in common.

"Just one more question," Andreotti said.

"What?"

"How in the
hell
did you find out my combination?"

Mueller had almost enough sense of self-preservation to avoid eyeing the O'Neal women. Married wasn't always a problem on a distant deployment, but this wasn't that. It was still a separation, with his wife and kids up in Indiana, underground with the people running this whole conspiracy.

A hundred miles away or a thousand, it still wore on a man. The girl with the damned gorgeous heart-shaped ass had to be an O'Neal. She had this kind of light brownish-red hair with blond streaks. The red on female islanders, he had been warned, was like the red of mushrooms or tropical fish—a danger signal. Still, as she turned, the sweater she was wearing gave him a good silhouette of the top rack. She caught his eyes and smiled, before walking away to wherever she'd been going. She looked back over her shoulder at him, briefly, as she went. He got another smile.

He also got a thwack upside the head from Mosovich, whom he hadn't noticed coming up behind him. Situational awareness versus pretty girl was no contest. Especially in his condition.

"Forget it. She's a widow," he said. "No, don't get any ideas that means 'available.' She's a very recent widow. Like, of the action a couple of weeks ago."

He didn't have to say "off limits." The code was clear. Her departed husband had to be in the ground for a decent interval of time before she became available—and then he'd have to compete with all the guys who had also noticed her ass and tits, and a face that was distinctly not bad. A married guy with kids wasn't going to be—shouldn't be—high on her list.

"She didn't look very bereaved," Mueller heard himself say, earning another thwack to the back of his head.

"Down, boy. You know as well as I do—doesn't matter." Mosovich looked entirely willing to keep hitting him on the head as long as it took.

"Who was the poor bastard?"

"Ned Mortinson. Who turns out to have been fifty-something."

"Really? I hadn't had him picked out as a juv."

"Apparently he didn't have himself picked out as one, either. She's about twenty. For real. It wasn't a match made in heaven."

"You know her life history?"

"The O'Neals gossip like hell, turns out. Once you get in past their obsessive opsec. I asked around for a few basics before writing letters," Jake said.

"Obsessive opsec. Sounds like a very good thing to me."

"Yup. But on the island here? The world's biggest gossips—and not just the women. You could run a wine cellar on their grapevine."

"You gotta admit she's got one hell of a nice ass. Nice every—" Mueller sighed and drew himself up straighter from his habitually straight posture. "Yes, sir. What's on the schedule today?"

Chapter Nine

George Schmidt didn't like leading patched-together teams. This one was a thrown-together extraction unit, seeing that Papa was off-planet, Tommy was generaling, and Cally was incommunicado in what Shari O'Neal assured him was a vital matter for Clan O'Neal. Since he wasn't an O'Neal, by the Bane Sidhe's unwritten operating rules, that pretty much required him to drop the matter. He didn't have to like it. So he had Harrison as a wheelman, but he also had three random guys. One from Kaleb, whom he trusted, and two guys from DAG who'd been sitting around on base cooling their heels. Landrum was a good enough guy—raised Bane Sidhe like Schmidt himself, experienced operating as part of DAG, but a total cherry on Bane Sidhe ops. Kerry and Michaels were unknown quantities, though not to Landrum, who vouched for his teammates.

The rationale for landing him with three cherries was an extra man to make up for inexperience. Yeah, right. One more guy to maybe make a bad mistake operating like someone with a nation state's government behind them and the general
approval
of the Darhel. These guys' knowledge that Toto and Dorothy weren't in Kansas anymore was only intellectual. He figured the real reason for three newbies was to use the opportunities to get new men broken in on fieldwork fast, and to stave off troop boredom. The first rule of managing these guys was that you did
not
 want to let them get bored. A bored specwar operator was a bad specwar operator. Consummate professionals left too long without work would find themselves something to do—and whatever it was, nobody else would like it. Okay, a few female types might have a great time, but that was only a best case scenario.

DAG had no female operators. Bane Sidhe base had a good handful of upgraded juvs on hand at any given time. The Bane Sidhe guys knew the score, but the FNGs generally weren't going to believe these women were their superiors in strength and probably in training, too, until they were in a world of hurt. George himself had heard a pretty damned funny after-action report on Father O'Reilly's little talk with the women after the first incident. Unfortunately, she'd been incredibly gentle, and the guy had been shipped off right away to Island O'Neal. It wasn't that the guy had exactly refused to take no for an answer; he had more misunderstood the signals and the lady took offense. A broken jaw had a remarkably immediate sobering effect on a man. Anyway, the light damage and speed of his disappearance left the potential discipline problem intact. One of the problems with Nathan's more administrative and priestly background was that, good as he was with people, he didn't always get the ops types. Almost always, but there it was: almost.

This was a sucky assignment to take three DAG guys on, because it was going to punch all their damn buttons. Yeah, they were professionals; they'd get cold. They'd also be damned sure they already knew what to do because they'd click right into highly trained-in patterns. Change that: they were already in the zone. They knew this was Maise's wife and kids. They might as well have been born in the zone.

"All right people, listen up." He looked around at the four other men in the trailer that was the final staging location for the op. "You are not operating in DAG. You can't go in on reflex. You two," he pointed to Kerry and Michaels, who looked uncomfortable in the wigs that covered their military haircuts, and about as unhappy with the identical suits and ties.

"You're Mormon missionaries," he said. "You get the front door. When you get out of the car, think earnest and carry that book like you revere it, not like you don't want it. One of you pretends to knock on the door while the other one unlocks it. Just listen to your earbug for the beeps."

They hated the risk of not being able to communicate in event of surprises. Yeah.
He
was no way in hell going to tolerate anything other than tiny blips out of radio silence.
He
had a PDA, Harrison had a PDA. Relative risk.

"Landrum goes into the house area first as a meter reader, and waits at the meter until we go through the doors. Then you Mormons go in. Kerry, you look older, you're earnestly explaining to Michaels how this door knocking thing works for the little time it takes Duchess and me to come up the sidewalk."

He'd be riding a Vespa reproduction, with a little weenie dog in a carrier behind him. Harrison had dressed him carefully; with the bagged bottle of wine, he looked for all the world like a friend coming over for a little holiday cheer.

"I look at you curiously as I walk by to the kitchen door. Two beeps and we ready, three beeps and we go in."

This was probably the first entry the new guys had done where they had keys to the doors and were not allowed to do a complete room take-down. They hated it. Truth to tell, so did he. Their way was safer for the operatives. They weren't used to being a bit more expendable here. This mission was counter to all their training and experience. They never operated in CONUS, and their primary mission was putting down pirates and terrorists in city states, whether resource colonies or the handful of old pre-war cities that had been repopulated in various world locations. Terrorism was, unfortunately, alive and well. As in pre-war times, frequently it was a figleaf for good old-fashioned crime, kidnapping, extortion. That was DAG's experience. A black-bag entry on a private house in a quiet residential area, if not in broad daylight at least in twilight, was outside all their training.

"If you encounter hostiles, shock, don't shoot. If you even draw your firearm without damn good reason I will have your
ass
. Use your judgment on turning on lights." Their expressions said clearly that they appreciated having at least
something
where their judgment would be trusted. It was hard for pros to be cherries on anything.

"We get the survivors, the Mormons are out on point and stop at the car to chat with each other, then Duchess and I escort the survivors out to see my bike, Harrison pulls up and gets the survivors. Landrum covers our tail. The Vespa stays, the rest of us proceed independently to the rendezvous."

"And the bike?" Kerry asked.

"Oh. Cleanup gets it if possible." Of course the FNGs wouldn't know SOP yet.

"That leaves the survivors exposed in transit, sir," Michaels observed.

"Yes, it does. Cleanup will be coming in as we leave, along our exit route." He gestured to his brother. "They'll be listening in in case we need backup. Yes, there's exposure. This is a resistance organization. In the extreme, we're more expendable than DAG was. We hate to lose operatives, we can't afford it, but losses hurt less than exposure." These guys were in no way shy about exposing themselves to risk in a professional capacity. They'd done it time and again and would do it more. They were also professional enough not to take
unnecessary
risks.