Gust Front lota-2

by John Ringo

  O’Neal stared at his opponent across the dimly lit green expanse. The next move would decide the outcome of the contest. The stakes were high, but Michael O’Neal, Senior had been in tougher spots. There was always a way out if you tried hard enough, thought about the situation and acted with precision and violence. But he usually had better cards.

  “Raise you five,” said Cally.

  “Call.”

  “Two pair, kings high.”

  “Damn!” said Papa O’Neal, throwing his cards down. The pair of aces lay forlornly on the table as if mocking his inability to win a simple hand of poker against an eight-year-old. It was well past midnight and he should have had her in bed long before. But with news coming in from the fighting and her father on his way to the front, Mike Senior was waiting for her to fall asleep naturally. So far she was showing all the stamina of a professional gambler.

  “One more hand like that and you’ll be doing the dishes for a month,” Cally said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, well…” He tried to think of a retort but just gave up. What could he say?

  His pager went off and he pulled it off his belt. The device was hooked into the property sensors, not his phone; just because he was in his sixties didn’t mean he couldn’t use modern technology. And it showed that they had a visitor. First motion sensors and then metal sensors had detected movement on the long road into the farm. However, the device that monitored for subspace transmissions was quiescent.

  So, not Posleen then. Maybe the sheriff coming up to make sure he wasn’t making moonshine. Or at least not at the house where it might get found and be embarrassing. Best not to offer him a taste of the latest batch. Although it made little or no sense at this time of night.

  “We’ve got a visitor,” he said.

  “Friend or foe?” Cally asked seriously. She tossed down the cards she had been shuffling.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess we ought to go look.”

  * * *

  It was an unremarkable Ford Taurus. Probably a rental. The driver was a male. There wasn’t much else Papa O’Neal could tell, even with the high-definition light-amplifying binoculars. He waited in the front room of the house, screened by the light curtains over the windows, until the car pulled up to the front and stopped.

  The driver revealed in the glare of the security lights was a male, early twenties and alone. He looked faintly Hispanic — mostly because of his swarthy complexion — but could have been any of a hundred races and mixtures across the world. He was wearing an old and battered field jacket. It had a Special Forces patch on the right shoulder but was otherwise unadorned; “sterile” in the parlance of the special ops community. He also looked familiar, but O’Neal could not place the face.

  Mike Senior opened the front door and stepped out, watching the stranger warily. There was no reason for a total stranger to come to the house. Come to think of it, he had never had an uninvited visitor. With the exception of the law. But it wasn’t like he had much choice.

  “Mike,” the guy said on first sight and his face broke into a broad grin. “Long time, ’mano!”

  Papa O’Neal’s face creased in thought but his expression remained wary. “Do I know you?”

  “Shit.” The stranger shook his head in apparent chagrin. “How ’bout this: ‘Sometimes you get the feathers, sometimes you get the bones.’ ”

  Papa O’Neal tilted his head sideways and his mind wandered down a lot of years of memory. Then his eyes widened. “Harold?” he asked, incredulously.

  * * *

  “So that’s the deal man. Got a new life, new identity and I’ve been workin’ for the Man ever since. Just call me Lazarus,” he ended with a lopsided grin.

  “You work for the Company?” Mike asked, leaning back in his cowhide-covered chair.

  “No,” Harold said, with a shake of his head. “There really are groups nobody ever talks about.” He suddenly leaned forward in his own chair. “You know what fucked us, man. It was the bean counters in the States. The peaceniks and the politicians in uniform that would never let us do our job the right way. You know man, you did the job we were supposed to do!”

  “Sure, Harold,” said Mike Senior soothingly. “But that was then, man. Different world. Different enemy.”

  “No,” said the visitor with a shake of the head. “The enemy’s still the same. The rear-echelon bastards that sit in their air-conditioned offices and fuck everything up for the poor bastards that have to do the job.”

  “Harold,” said Mike Senior, with a gesture at Cally. She was on the other side of the room from him, behind the visitor’s chair, trying to work the puzzle box. He was indicating that Harold might want to watch his language, but he also hoped it would calm him down. He did calm down, but something else happened and it snapped Mike’s attention down to earth like a bolt of lightning. A sixth sense he had developed in more really bad places than he wanted to dwell on told him that something had changed in his visitor. And he didn’t think it was for the good.

  “Look, Mike,” said Harold, leaning forward and his voice dropping, “there’s a place for you.” He nodded seriously, his eyes boring into the sergeant who had trained him so many years before. “These are the people who know how to get the job done. Sometimes there are problems, the REMFs that don’t know when to crap or get off the pot. And sometimes they need a little lesson. You dig?”

  “Harold,” said Mike Senior, suddenly wishing that he knew what the hell was happening, “this is my place. I’m old, man. Real old.”

  “Don’ matter, man. So am I,” said the visitor, spreading his arms, “and look at me! They want experienced people. And with the call-up they are getting damned hard to find. Your name popped out of the computer and it was like a sign from God.”

  “I was wondering why you looked so good. Rejuv?” asked O’Neal.

  “We got all the support anybody could want,” said Harold. He leaned forward and swept his hands across in a negative gesture. “Whatever you want, we can get it. No questions. Whatever you want.”

  Mike nodded seriously and finally realized where they were in the conversation. This was not an offer that could be refused. Harold had told him that he was involved with a group that was outside constitutional bounds, had access to full Galactic medical technology and could obtain any weapon or support. The fact that nobody had ever had an inkling that such a group existed simply pointed out the fact that no one had ever talked about it. Ever.

  Since he had no intention of joining such a group, it would require that he never be able to talk about it.

  Leaving Cally in the room was a deft touch on the part of his former pupil. Harold assumed, perhaps correctly, that Mike would not want to kill him in front of the girl. Harold, on the other hand, would have no such qualms. One of the problems with being in the military is that you don’t always get to choose your acquaintances or trainees. In the case of Harold, Mike Senior had always secretly despised him. The man was the Compleat Sociopath. If he shot a five-year-old girl by mistake the only thing he would feel was recoil.

  This left Mike Senior in a bit of a pickle. And it was one he wasn’t quite sure he was going to survive. Harold had just as much experience as he did and he was physiologically years younger. Since Harold knew that there was a chance Mike Senior would turn down the job, he was undoubtedly armed and prepared to kill Mike and Cally. He would also be prepared to ignore or end any distraction. If Mike even offered to get up it would probably terminate the interview. With prejudice.

  The only thing that he could do was play along. Of course, Harold would suspect that he was playing along. That was what would make it so interesting.

  “Well,” said Papa O’Neal, steepling his fingers — the moment of thought had been a flash; there should have been nothing to betray his sudden insight — “That’s an interesting offer.” Just as he said it, his beeper went off. Again.

  Harold leaned forward so fast it made a cobra look slow and his hand moved towards his
side but Papa O’Neal simply sat very still and hoped for the best. When Harold also froze Mike smiled thinly. “Beeper.”

  Harold laughed. “Huh. Yeah. Yours?” The assassin leaned forward with his hands on his thighs.

  The weapon was either on his side or in a skeleton holster on the back. And who the hell could be coming to call? Papa O’Neal lifted up his shirt, exposing the beeper. The gesture looked totally normal as he pulled it off his left side. He could only hope and pray that Harold still thought he was in the dark.

  Harold’s hands remained in sight on his thighs. Side then. Papa O’Neal made a show of checking the beeper. “It’s my son,” he lied. “He’s on his way to rejoin his unit.”

  The sensors showed another vehicle. This one had a heavy metal signature. Either a large truck or a van with metal in it. The last time he had seen a signature like that was when he and his buddies came back from Dahlonega after a weekend shooting against the Rangers. It actually looked an awful lot like a van full of door-kickers. Since he didn’t expect reinforcements, he had to assume that it was friends of his visitor come to ensure the real orders were carried out.

  “As I said,” Papa O’Neal continued, “that’s a very interesting offer. Especially the rejuv. That is what we’re talking about, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Harold relaxing ever so slightly. “That’s part of the package.”

  “Well, God knows I’ve done some wet work in my time…” he said when Cally interrupted.

  “Grandpa, did Daddy give you the key to this puzzle box?”

  “No, honey,” he snapped, not taking his attention away from the visitor. At normal speed the van would just about be clearing the woodline. They might unload under cover and try to sneak up. Or they might barrel-ass right up to the door. If the second, they would be here in less than a minute. Which meant that time was about over for the conversation. “Figure it out yourself.”

  “I’m kind of in a hurry,” said Harold as if reading his mind. “I think I need a yes or no. Now.” He leaned forward and his right hand drifted downward.

  “Well, I never did like the balance on that Galactic piece of shit,” Cally said to no one in particular. There was a sound of a slide drawing back.

  Mike Senior closed his eyes just in time to block out the blood and brains from Harold Locke’s head as an exploding .380 round from Cally’s Walther PPK opened it up like a melon.

  He wiped his eyes, lunged to his feet and spit the soft-boiled-egg-like brains out of his mouth. “Good work, girl, but we got company.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I hurried. I was hoping he’d give some more away. Bunker?”

  “Yeah.” He paused for just a moment as she carefully safed the small pistol and started towards the command bunker. “How did you know?”

  “Your right hand twitches when you’ve got losing cards. That and you lied about the beeper.” She didn’t mention her first reaction. Why she had started trying to open the puzzle box right after they came in. It was because the man had looked at her like Grandpa looked at a chicken he was about to harvest.

  He nodded his head and smiled. “I don’t think you learned that from your father, did you?”

  “No,” she said, thumbing towards the door out in obvious emphasis. “But Dad didn’t teach me how to play cards. Mom did. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Rabun County, GA, United States Of America, Sol III

  0325 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad

  The team leader’s head came up at the crack of the pistol round and he shook it violently. There were two protectees though. One was a young female and the profile on the assassin did not make that a pretty picture. There was still a mission; the question would be how to proceed.

  He waved for the point to stop and turned to the technical expert. That worthy was deciphering the readout from the Galactic-supplied life sensors. He made a motion for three humans, one terminated. One male, one female alive. Male and female were moving.

  The team leader checked the location and gave the point hand signals to move to the opposite side of the house and do a covert entry. He waited impatiently for more intelligence.

  * * *

  Mike Senior finished strapping Cally into the Kevlar battle armor and threw his own on. Cally had pulled down her British 7.62 Bullpup and the sight of her with pistol and rifle made him think of other ways to spell her name. The drying blood flecked through her blonde hair was a sight to behold.

  “You’re a mess, Grandpa.”

  “You don’t look so hot yourself,” he snorted, fixing the last two straps in place and picking up his MP-5. The friction sling rode smoothly and he hopped up and down for a second to ensure there weren’t any rattles. “And the living room is going to be a bitch to get cleaned up.”

  “Sorry about shooting him, then. Not.”

  * * *

  The point monk checked the window for entry. He popped up a microcam and scanned the bedroom beyond. It looked like a spare, bed made, no one around, no personal items, no mess. Next he checked the window for tell-tales. It had magnetic alarms but they were easily bypassed. There were motion sensors in the room, however. He bypassed the window alarms, jimmied it and made a slow entry into the room. As long as you moved very slowly, the sensors would not detect you. If they were set to detect motion that slow, they would false-alarm on every breath of air. He moved into the room, the camera on his shoulder faithfully repeating the picture back to the team leader.

  * * *

  “They’re in the downstairs guest bedroom,” said Papa O’Neal. The command bunker was connected to the kitchen by a short tunnel. From it he had a commanding, and camouflaged, view of the approaches. He also had readings from the sensors scattered throughout the property and house. The sensors were not connected to alarms, so they were set on the highest possible threshold. Detecting false alarms from reality was something of an art. However, the bedroom also contained a small sound mike and camera. Occasionally kinky but old habits die hard.

  “Who is it?” asked Cally, sliding her Bullpup behind her back and checking the mine controls. She got the fun part; her job was detonating them on Papa O’Neal’s command. Well, she might let Papa O’Neal try a few. If he was nice.

  “Hmm, lemme see,” answered Mike Senior. “Black body armor. Black ski masks. Black weapons. Black boots. Gee, Santa Claus?”

  “Police?”

  “No, they’d have it across their backs in great big letters,” said Papa O’Neal, gesturing at the picture of the point moving stealthily down the hallway. “They’re good, though. Shame we’re gonna have to kill ’em.”

  * * *

  The point froze at the entrance to the living room. The body slumped across the rawhide chair was not one of the protectees. It appeared to be the target. He began to relax out of his crouch.

  * * *

  “That’s odd,” said Papa O’Neal.

  “What?” asked Cally, running a circuit check. The detonators were designed to take a low-voltage test current without actually exploding. Only two circuits were dead. Very good. And there was one claymore placed directly behind their visitors. As soon as Papa O’Neal gave the word, one special operations team was toast.

  “He just relaxed. If he was backup for Harold he should be more tense, not less.”

  “What else could he be?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s odd.”

  * * *

  The team leader looked at the tech with a puzzled expression in his eyes. Then he shrugged, picked up his cell phone and consulted a scrap of paper.

  * * *

  A red light over the phone in the bunker began to blink. Papa O’Neal looked at it with a puzzled expression and picked it up.

  “Michael O’Neal, Senior?” asked a faintly accented voice on the phone.

  “Yes,” said Papa O’Neal, warily.

  “Are you and Cally O’Neal in good condition?”

  “Yes.”

  “In general, if I might ask
, where are you?”

  Mike Senior chuckled evilly. “In a command bunker watching you and your point scratching your heads. Smile for the cameras!”

  “Ah,” said the commando, cautiously. “We were ordered to respond to protect you from one Harold Locke, an operative of… An operative who had been given a contract on you. You are in good health?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. That is good. We will withdraw then.”

  “Okay,” Papa O’Neal agreed warily. “You’ll understand if we don’t invite you to tea?”

  There was a dry chuckle. “Of course. Question: Do you want us to dispose of the body or would you prefer to yourself?”

  It was a good question. If there was an investigation the body would be a mountain of evidence pointing right at Cally. The fact that he was an assassin would not even be worth bringing up in a trial. There was no proof.

  The question really was: Did he trust these people not only to dispose of the evidence but to do so as perfectly as possible? In the end the answer surprised him.

  “Yeah. Thanks. Come to tea some other time. With a few less friends.”

  “God be with you, Mr. O’Neal.”

  On that odd farewell the group broke into activity. The point opened the front door of the house while three other black-clad troops slung their weapons and trotted forward. Two vans pulled up within seconds and, as the four in black on the inside bagged the body, another group in white exposure suits exited the second van. These individuals lugged in a variety of materials, mostly cleaning supplies and equipment, and began a thoroughgoing cleaning of the room.

  Once practically every scrap of blood and brain was cleaned up, they closed the curtains to the room and doused the lights. Papa O’Neal could not determine precisely what went on, but he had a pretty good idea. Many modern investigation techniques involved materials that fluoresced or are visible only under ultraviolet light. Undoubtedly the team was cleaning up these otherwise invisible bits.