Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) (13 page)

Chapter 22

Three days later, the team was still waiting.  The Ferret had not made an appearance, at least one that could be picked up by the array of surveillance gear searching for him.  Each of the three Marines was taking four-hour shifts monitoring the comms, waiting for that moment when something would be passed. 

Despite the peta-compression of transmissions, the transmission itself could be picked up by gear that the SOG could reasonably have.  Hundreds of compressed messages floating around could alert the SOG’s AIs that something was up even if they could not read any of them, so the Marines kept the airwaves clear.  That made sense, but it also made for pretty boring watches.  It had been three days without any contact from anyone else.

During the empty hours, Ryck and Sandy had ruminated about the relationship between Natural Plantation, that is, GKA Nutrition, and the Federation.  Ryck had fought for the company before.  He may have been in his Marine uniform, and the orders were from the Federation, but it was at the behest of the company.  Now, the company was providing a cover for the Raider teams.  Someone from the company had to have arranged their “jobs” and assignments.  Someone from the company knew not to come around the various pump houses to check up on things.   A Federation company on a free world could become a target if others knew they were cooperating with the Federation government on an offensive operation such as this, one bordering on, if not already way past, legality.

Çağlar had the watch, but the other two Marines were awake when the comms finally chimed.  Sandy had been explaining his newest theory that Mary Beth was in fact the one who had ordered the alien Sok d’Nath’s murder in the long-running Deep Space Chronicles, a theory Ryck thought was a red herring, when all three Marines froze at the soft chime.  There was a two-second lag as the comms software decompressed the message.

“Let me see that,” Ryck told Çağlar.

The message was succinct and to the point.  The Ferret had been pinpointed, and in all probability, knew something was up.  He was taking evasive action, and the nano-drones were fighting counter-surveillance to keep in contact.  An image of the man was sent.  He could have been right out of central casting:  just under two meters, around 55 years old, dark complected, and with the look of, well, a thug, to be blunt.

Up until this moment, there had never been a recorded image of the Ferret.  No one in the Federation even knew his identity, much less his name.  He’d been identified only through comms patterns, laboriously analyzed by teams of specialists and powerful AIs.  Now, with over 95% certainty, this man was the SOG #2, and he’d been flushed out.

The Ferret was on the move, heading directly for Popper’s, SSgt Kyle Nolan’s, team.  Unless the Ferret turned to the south, Ryck and his team would not be involved with the takedown.  Part of Ryck, a part he’d had to suppress ever since getting commissioned, wanted to call Popper, to give him instructions.  Ryck was the commander of this AO, but teams operated independently, and Popper was a skilled operator.  He did not need his commander taking his attention off the task at hand.

With the trap sprung, the nano-swarm was transmitting what it could gather.  Ryck and the other two Marines watched their screen with rapt attention as the Ferret faded in and out of contact as he tried to spoof and block the surveillance, but each time he broke contact, the swarm AI switched frequencies and bands enough to regain it.  Ryck watched as Popper’s team split into two and moved to intercept.  The Ferret, for all his reputation, seemed to be in panic-mode.  His countermeasures were going full-force, but he was simply running.

And that took him within range of Gas and Baby Girl, the two who split off from Popper.  Ryck watched nervously as the Ferret got within 2,000 meters, then 1,500 meters, then 1,000 meters of the two Marines.   This was well within their range, but that didn’t mean the team had a clear shot. 

Then, what Ryck had been waiting for was broadcast over the comms:  “Target Ferret down, I repeat, Ferret down.  Will confirm kill.”

Ryck let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.  A plan had actually worked just as it was written up, something of a rarity.  They had succeeded.  He and the other two Marines high-fived each other.

“Done and done,” Ryck said, relieved. 

He looked at Sandy, who was smiling, but that smile seemed forced to Ryck.

“You don’t think so?” Ryck asked him.

“Oh, probably.  But, well, oh, forget it, Skipper.”

“No, tell me.  What’s bugging you?”

“It just that, the Ferret, he’s been around for a while, and he’s been wickedly hard to locate.  Yet, when he ran, he never turned off his comms.  He never went ghost on us.  He kept transmitting.  Doesn’t that seem to be a real rookie mistake?”

“Yeah, but he’s never had Marines after him,” Çağlar said.

“Sure, Gollem,” Sand said, using Çağlar’s team nickname.  “But would that make someone in his position panic like that?  And where was his security?

“I’m probably being paranoid, but it doesn’t seem right to me.”

Ryck’s heart sunk as he took in Sandy’s statement.  His lieutenant was right, and Ryck hadn’t seen it.  He’d seen what he wanted to see.  That dead body in Popper’s sector might still be the infamous Ferret, but then again, it might not.  Whoever that was, he hadn’t acted the part of a criminal mastermind.

“No, you are not being paranoid.  Or if you are, it is prudent paranoia.  Complacency kills,” he said, quoting the sign at the gate of Camp Charles where every Marine started his basic training.

“AI, let me see all personnel in sectors 1-5,” he ordered.

When that showed hundreds, he amended that, “Delete known company work parties.”

An SOG commander could easily manage to become part of a working party, just as the Marines had, but Ryck had to start somewhere.  Ryck’s Marines showed up, as did several people in trucks moving up and down the main roadways.  Two people were just north of Ryck’s position, several were in the scattered private homes and one hostel in the area, and four more were close to a small waterfall along the main road.

“Give me visuals on the waterfall and those two,” Ryck ordered.

The four at the waterfall looked to be having a picnic of some sort.  They could be anyone, but they seemed legit, Ryck thought.  They didn’t seem to be anyone who had the weight of the Federation after them.

The two were a young man and woman, walking away from the hostel.  They were hand-in-hand, and as Ryck watched, the woman turned to nuzzle the neck of the man.  Hostels were open dorms, and if these two wanted some privacy, they would have to find a place outside.

“OK, I want visuals on those inside the homes,” he ordered, knowing that the swarm AI would redirect nano-drones as required to get inside buildings not already covered.

All three Marines watched as the screen split up into 12 views.  None of them knew what they were looking for exactly, just something out of the ordinary.

“Target has been terminated,” came over the comms. “Commencing search and collection.”

“Search and collection” meant Gas and Baby Girl would search the body for any usable intel and take DNA swabs to upload.  If the dead man was anywhere in the records of the major governments, they should have an identity within 20 minutes or so.

No one in the buildings stood out as suspicious.  Ryck felt like a voyeur, especially as one man was recorded as he grunted on the toilet.  If he was really the Ferret, he was taking his time to answer nature’s call.

Something was nibbling at the back of Ryck’s mind, but he couldn’t quite place it.  It was almost within reach, yet it kept retreating just as he was about to grab it.  He ordered the AI to go back to the picnickers.  The two men and two woman were all in their 30’s or 40’s, dressed casually, and looked more than a little into their cups.  A quick shift of the scanning mode revealed the four’s exhalations to have a heavy percentage of ethanol—in other words, they were well on their way to being drunk.  That fact alone did tend to eliminate them as suspects.

“Shift to the two lovebirds,” he ordered.

The screen shifted to four views of the two.  They were still slowly walking into the trees.

“Does that seem odd to you?” Ryck asked the others. 

“What, that they want to have some privacy?”  Çağlar asked.

“No, that they are going so deep into the woods.  If that was me at that age, I’d be wanting to get at it as soon as possible.  Look at him.  He keeps looking around.”

“Sure, Skipper, to see if they’re out-of-sight,” Sandy said.  “Besides, he’s too young to be Ferret.”

“We don’t know how old the Ferret is,” Ryck countered.  “Besides, that’s easy enough to spoof.”

“Well, she’s into him,” Sandy said.  “Look at her.”

Ryck had to admit that the young woman was
very
into the man.  Her hands were roaming, and she kept trying to pull him down onto the ground.

One of the nano-drones pulled higher and scanned back, giving a better view of the area around the two lovers.  Just to the south of them, Ryck noted the same access road over which Ryck’s team had observation.  If the two didn’t find someplace for their little liaison soon, they would have gone too far and would have to turn back.  At the edge of the screen, a small hover was making its way along the road.

And it clicked.

“Çağlar, Sandy, on the roof now, in position!” he shouted.

The two Marines didn’t hesitate and grabbed the sniper rifles before crowding Ryck out the door and up the ladder attached to the side of the building.

“What is it, Skipper?” Sandy asked as he and Çağlar flopped down beside the prone major.

“I think your paranoia was well-placed.  And I think our two lovers are at least partly involved with all of this. 

“AI, run me a history on those two,” he ordered into his PA.

“See that hover there, at our 2:00 O’clock?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s a pick-up, I’ll bet a month’s pay.”

Just then his PA chirped.  They’d gotten a hit on the dead man.  Franklin Terrahote had a record for extortion, assault, and burglary before disappearing off the grid some ten years ago.  This could fit the profile of someone who could rise to the SOG #2, but Ryck wasn’t buying it.  From his AT scores, he was pretty far from a braniac, and someone so high up the ladder should have some degree of mental acuity.

“And there’s our lovers,” Çağlar said as the two emerged from the trees.  Instead of retreating back, they stayed at the edge, 20 meters from the road.  Ryck was sure the two were waiting for the hover to travel over the kilometer or so that separated them.

They’re waiting for that hover.  But does that make them SOG or just a couple waiting to get a ride back home?
he wondered.

If they were indentureds, then this might have been their only chance at a discreet rendezvous, being dropped off by a company driver to be picked up on his return trip.

“What do we do, sir?” Sandy asked.

Ryck was positive the two were SOG.  Almost positive.  He tried to sort his thoughts.  If he were wrong, though, and they were not SOG and he did anything, heads would roll—namely his.  He couldn’t let that spill over to either of his two Marines.

“Give me the 569,” he told Sandy.

“Sir?”

“The 569, give me it.”

Sandy reluctantly handed over the meson sniper rifle.

“What’s the ECR of the M569 round?” he asked his AI.

“Twenty-five meters,” both Sandy and his AI said.

Ryck queried the scope as to the distance to the pair.  It was 1067 meters to the male.  He entered that and flipped the reticule, measuring off 35 meters from the man.  He flipped off the seek function, turning the round into a simple straight-trajectory projectile.  He took in a deep breath, let it half out, and squeezed the trigger.

A moment later, the jacketed meson round reached the programmed range limit, and the tiny meson generator blossomed into a glowing sphere of energy, which Ryck hoped would dissipate enough to incapacitate, but not kill, the man.  What happened was not what he had expected.

Instead of the two people dropping, an actinic flash of white filled his scope.  As his vision cleared, the woman was turning to run back into the woods while the man moved forward, suddenly armed and ready for bear. 

They’d had some very sophisticated shields protecting them, shields that had been invisible to the nano-drones.  Any doubt Ryck had about the two vanished.  No casual lovers had shields like that or went around armed.

“All hands, the Ferret is alive and running.  He is—” he started to pass as his mind processed what was happening.

Why is the Ferret in full protection mode?
he wondered as the man stayed put, obviously ready for action.

Then it hit him.  There was no other explanation.

“The Ferret is the female,” he passed, toggling the feed.

“Hans, take out the hover,” he ordered Çağlar as the pickup vehicle sped up to reach the man.  The Ferret could be just inside the tree line, ready for the pickup.

He was barely aware as Çağlar fired the M565.