The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (38 page)

“Toby English,” Kowacs said. “Lieutenant English, CO of the Ninety-Second.”

Sitterson looked at the Marine. “You’re . . .” he began, but his voice trailed off instead of breaking. He swallowed. “Oh, Christ,” he said very quietly. “Oh Christ help me if that’s true.”

“Sure, you can ask Toby,” Kowacs said. “The
Haig
lifted off this morning, but you can send a message torp after her for something this important.”

“He’s off-planet?” the security chief asked. His face regained the color it had lost a moment before.

“Yeah, but—”

“That’s all right,” Sitterson interrupted, fully himself again. He opened the door. “We’ll adjourn for now, Captain.”

Gesturing toward the petty officers waiting for direction, he added, “Two of you, get this one,” —Andy was on the floor, unconscious from shock or the medication— “into his cell and hold him. Just hold them all until I get back to you.”

“Sir, I—” Kowacs began.

“Return to your unit and await orders, Captain,” Sitterson said crisply. “This operation has been a success thus far, and I don’t intend to spoil it.”

Kowacs didn’t like to think about the implications of that while he and Sienkiewicz hitched a ride back to the barracks on a fuel truck going in the right direction. He didn’t like to think about Colonel Hesik’s smile, either.

But he couldn’t forget either thing.

* * *

Kowacs was typing his report, hating the job and hating worse what he was having to say, when Bradley and Sienkiewicz pushed aside the sound-absorbent curtains of his “office.”

“Bugger off,” Kowacs said, glaring at the green letters which shone demurely against the white background of the screen. “I’ve got today’s report to do.”

“Figured you’d get Hoofer to do that,” Bradley said. “Like usual.”

Kowacs leaned back in the chair that was integral with the portable console and rubbed his eyes. Hoofer, a junior sergeant in First Platoon, was good with words. Usually he’d have gotten this duty, but . . .

“Naw,” Kowacs said wearily. “It’s knowing how to say it so that nobody back on Tau Ceti or wherever gets the wrong idea. And, you know, burns somebody a new one for shooting a woman in the back.”

“She shouldn’t have run,” Sienkiewicz said.

“Right,” said Kowacs. “A lot of things shouldn’t happen. Trouble is, they do.”

He looked expectantly at the two non-corns. He was waiting to hear why they’d interrupted when they, of all people, knew he didn’t like company at times like this.

Bradley eased forward so that the curtain surrounding the small enclosure hung shut. “We went for a drink tonight at a petty officers’ club with Gliere, the Tech 8 in Sitterson’s office. The MilGov bars have plenty of booze, even though you can’t find enough to get a buzz anywhere else. He got us in.”

“Great,” said Kowacs without expression. “If you’d brought me a bottle, I’d be glad to see you. Since you didn’t—”

“Thing is,” the field first continued as if he hadn’t heard his commander speak, “Gliere’s boss called him back after the office was supposed to be closed.”

Kowacs raised an eyebrow.

“Pissed Gliere no end,” Bradley said. “Seems Sitterson wants him to clear the data bank of all records relating to the bunch we brought in today. Wants it just like that lot never existed—and the file overwritten so there aren’t any gaps.”

Nick Kowacs got up from the console. The chair back stuck; he pushed a little harder and the frame bent thirty degrees, out of his way and nothing else mattered.

He began swearing, his voice low and nothing special about the words, nothing colorful—just the litany of hate and anger that boils from the mouth of a man whose mind is a lake of white fury.

“What does he think we are?” Sienkiewicz asked plaintively. “They were on
our
side.”

“Right,” said Kowacs, calm again.

He looked at his console for a moment and cut its power, dumping the laboriously created file into electron heaven.

“That’s why it’s Sitterson’s ass if word gets out about what he did.” Kowacs continued. He shrugged. “What we all did, if it comes to that.”

“They’re still in the holding cells,” Bradley said. “The prisoners. I sorta figure Sitterson’s going to ask us to get rid of that part of the evidence. Cause we’re conscienceless killers, you know.”

“Except the bastard won’t ask,” Sienkiewicz said bitterly. “He gives orders.”

“Right,” said Kowacs. “Right. Well, we’re going to solve Sitterson’s problem for him.”

He sat down at the console again, ignoring the way the damaged seat prodded him in the back.

“Sergeant,” he said, “book us to use the drydock late tonight to wash the trucks—between midnight and four, something like that.”

“Ah, sir?” Bradley said. “The main aqueduct broke this afternoon. I’m not sure if the naval base has water either.”

Kowacs shrugged. “Sitterson said he’d get us a priority,” he said. “We’ll operate on the assumption that he did.”

“Yessir,” said Bradley.

“Who do you have on guard duty at Sitterson’s office tonight?” Kowacs went on.

“I haven’t finalized the list,” Bradley said unemotionally. “It might depend on what his duties would be.”

“The doors to the holding cells are controlled by the desk in Gliere’s office,” Kowacs said.

“Yessir,” Bradley repeated. Sienkiewicz was starting to smile. “I got a lot of paperwork to catch up with. I’m going to take the midnight to four duty myself.”

“So get your butt in gear,” Kowacs ordered. He powered up his console again.

“Sitterson ain’t going to like this,” Sienkiewicz said with a smile that looked as broad as her shoulders.

Kowacs paused, glancing up at two of the marines he trusted with his life—now and a hundred times before. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But you know—one of these days Toby English and me are going to be having a drink together . . . and when we do, I don’t want to look him in the eye and tell him a story I wouldn’t want to hear myself.”

As his men slipped out to alert the rest of the company, Nick Kowacs started to type the operational order that would be downloaded into the helmets of all his troops. Green letters hung in the hologram field, but instead of them he saw images of what would be happening later in the night.

He was smiling, too.

* * *

A jeep, its skirts painted with the red and white stripes of the Shore Police, drove past the District Government Building. Neither of the patrolmen spared more than a glance at the trucks hovering at idle along the four sides of the otherwise empty square.

Kowacs let out the breath he had been holding.

“Hawker Six,” Bradley’s voice whispered through the helmet phones. “They don’t want to come.”

“Get them out!”
Kowacs snarled without bothering about proper radio discipline.

There were more vehicles moving along the main north-south boulevard of Base Thomas Forberry. Every moment the Headhunters waited was another chance for somebody to wonder why a truck was parked in front of Security Headquarters at this hour.

Eventually, somebody was going to come up with the obvious right answer.

“On the way, Hawker Six,” Bradley replied.

They’d raised the sidings on each vehicle, so that you couldn’t tell at a glance that the trucks held the entire 121st Marine Reaction Company, combat-equipped.

You also couldn’t tell if Kowacs’s own truck carried thirteen internees—who would revert to being Bethesdan civilians as soon as the trucks drove through the Base Forberry perimeter on their way to the naval dockyard three kilometers away.

If everything worked out.

“Alpha Six to Hawker Six,” reported Daniello, whose platoon waited tensely in its vehicle on the south side of the square. “A staff car approaching with a utility van.”

“Roger, Alpha Six,” Kowacs replied.

Officers headed back to quarters after partying at their club. Maybe cheerful—and maybe mean—drunks looking for an excuse to ream somebody out. Like whoever was responsible for trucks parking in the parade square.

“Hawker Five—” Kowacs muttered, about to tell Bradley to hold off on the prisoners for a moment.

He was too late. The first of the Bethesdans was coming out between the arms of two Marines, just like he’d been carried in. Andy, a boy trying to look ready to die and with his injuries and fatigue, looking instead as if he already had.

“What—” Andy demanded.

Sienkiewicz stepped close; ready to club the boy before his shouts could give the alarm. Kowacs shook his head abruptly and laid a finger across his own lips.

The car and van
whooshed
by, their headlights cutting bright swathes through the ambience of Bethesda’s two pale moons. The van’s axis and direction of movement were slightly askew, suggesting that the driver as well as the passengers had been partying.

“Listen, kid,” Kowacs said, bending so that his face was within centimeters of Andy’s. “We’re going to get you out of the perimeter. What you do then is your own look-out. I don’t think Sitterson’s going to stir things up by coming looking for you, but Hesik and your own people—that’s
your
business. Understood?”

“Whah?” Andy said. The rest of the prisoners were being hustled or carried out. Andy stepped aside so that they could be handed into the back of the truck. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m fucking stupid!” Kowacs snapped.

There was an orange flash to the south. Kowacs’s boots felt the shock a moment before the air transmitted the explosion to his ears. It must have been a hell of a bang to people who weren’t a couple kilometers away like Kowacs was.

“Motor pool,” Sienkiewicz said, making an intelligent guess. “Late night and somebody got sloppy, drove into a fuel tank.” Shrugging, she added, “Maybe it’ll draw everybody’s attention there.”

“I’d sooner all the guards were asleep, like usual,” Kowacs replied with grimace.

“Hawker Six,” Bradley called. “Some of these aren’t in the best of shape; it’ll hurt ’em to be moved.”

“They’ll hurt a lot worse if we leave ’em for Sitterson, Hawker Five,” Kowacs replied. “Get ’em out.”

“Alpha Six to Hawker Six,” said Daniello. “Two vans headed north. They’re highballing.”

“Roger, Alpha Six,” Kowacs said. “No problem.”

What
could
be a problem was the way lights were going on in the three-story officers’ quarters lining the boulevard in either direction from the square. The blast had awakened a lot of people. The officers gawking out their windows couldn’t see a damn thing of the motor pool, now painting the southern horizon with a glow as red as sunrise—

But they could see Kowacs’s trucks and wonder about them.

Two marines stepped out of the building with an old man who hung as a dead weight. Bradley followed, kicking the door closed behind him. The sergeant held his shotgun in one hand and in his left arm cradled a six-year-old who was too weak with fever for his wails to be dangerous to the operation.

“Here’s the last of ’em, sir,” Bradley reported, lifting the child to one of the marines in the vehicle.

Andy looked at the sergeant, looked at Kowacs, and scrambled into the truck himself.

“Watch it!”
warned Daniello’s voice without time for a call sign.

Air huffed across the parade square as the two vans speeding north braked to a halt instead of continuing on. One of the vehicles turned in the center of the square so that its cab faced the District Government Building.

“What the hell?” muttered Kowacs as he flipped his face shield down and switched on the hologram projection from his helmet sensors. His men were clumps of green dots, hanging in the air before him.

The van began to, accelerate toward the government building. The driver bailed out, to Kowacs’s eyes a dark smudge on the plastic ground sheathing—

And a red dot on his helmet display.

“Weasels!”
Kowacs shouted as he triggered a long burst at the driver. His tracers gouged the ground short of the rolling target, one of them spiking off at right angles in a freak ricochet.

Most of his men were within the closed trucks. Bradley’s shotgun boomed, but its airfoil loads spread to clear a room at one meter, not kill a weasel at a hundred times that range. Where the
hell
was—

The weasel stood in a crouch. The bullet that had waited for Kowacs to take up the last, least increment of trigger pressure cracked out, intersected the target, and crumpled it back on the ground.

—Sienkiewicz?

The square hissed with a moment of dazzling brilliance, false lightning from the plasma gun Corporal Sienkiewicz had unlimbered instead of using the automatic rifle in her hands when the trouble started. Her bolt bloomed across the surface of the van, still accelerating with a jammed throttle and twenty meters from the front door of the District Government Building.

The explosives packed onto the bed of the van went off, riddling the building’s facade with shrapnel from the cab and shattering every window within a kilometer.

Kowacs had been steadying himself against the tailgate of his truck. It knocked him down as the blast shoved the vehicle sideways, spilling Headhunters who were jumping out to get their own piece of the action.

But the explosion also threw off the weasels in the second van who were spraying bright blue tracers in the direction from which the marines’ fire had come.

Klaxons and sirens from at least a dozen locations were doing their best to stupefy anyone who might otherwise be able to respond rationally.

Kowacs lay flat and aimed at the weasels. There was a red flash from their vehicle. Something flew past like a covey of banshees, trailing smoke in multiple tracks that fanned wider as they passed. Twenty or thirty rooms exploded as the sheaf of miniature light-seeking missiles homed on the folks who were rubbernecking from their barracks windows.

It was the perfect weapon for a Khalian commando to use to spread panic and destruction as they sped away in the night in a Fleet-standard van—presumably hijacked at the motor pool, where the previous explosion didn’t look like an accident after all.