by Drew Avera
Well, not everything was the same. The grenade in his hand with the pin already pulled was different.
“This is Hector Ramirez,” Fuller said. “People call him Mule.”
“I don’t know him,” Bill declared, gesturing with the armed grenade. “How the hell do I know he ain’t a Russian?”
“Motherfucker, do I look like a Russian?” Ramirez demanded, chest puffing up in indignation despite the threat of the grenade.
“Mule here is one of the pilots for Broken Arrow Mercenary Force,” Fuller explained, grabbing onto patience with both hands and not letting go. “They do contract work for the DoD.”
“Why the hell you bringing them types on my land?” Bill’s hand was shaking quite alarmingly, considering it was the only thing holding the spoon of the grenade—and their lives—in place.
“We got a job for you.”
“I don’t work for the Goddamned Department of Defense,” Bill said, spitting out the words.
“You used to.” Fuller shrugged. “I was there.”
“That was a long time ago.” Bill waved the notion away with the hand holding the pin and Fuller winced, hoping to hell the man wouldn’t lose it. “A different time, a different me.”
“What, is he a dupe, too?” Ramirez cracked.
“The fuck you just call me, kid?” Bill took a step toward Ramirez and the kid began to bring his pistol back up until James Fuller stepped between them.
“Come on now,” he insisted. “There ain’t no reason this has to get ugly. Bill, we’ve had our differences and I can’t lie and say there weren’t times I wanted to end you myself, but I never lied to you and I hope you remember that.” Bill’s beard twitched as his lip curled into a frown, but he shrugged reluctant agreement. “So, what say we all put away our guns and bombs and you let us tell you about the job?”
“Him first,” Bill insisted, nodding toward Ramirez. “Guns pointed at me make me nervous and my hands are already shaking.”
Fuller glared at Ramirez and the younger man shrugged and stuck his 9mm back in its holster.
“Happy now?”
“Happy’s such a big word,” Bill mumbled, squinting at the pin of the grenade as if he were having trouble focusing on it. “Anyone seen my reading glasses?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Fuller said, grabbing the pin from Bill’s hand. “Give me that damned thing before you drop it!”
Fuller took Bill’s other hand in his and held it tight, unwilling to trust the man’s failing grip on the grenade spoon, then slowly and carefully worked the pin back into the grenade. Three sets of shoulders sagged as held breaths were set free.
“Now, put that thing away,” Fuller scolded Bill. He pointed toward the Cobra mechs still pointing their weapons his way. “And get rid of this bullshit, too.”
“Okay, okay,” Bill acceded, slipping the grenade into his fatigue jacket pocket.
He slid his left sleeve back over his arm, revealing a touch-pad control strapped to his forearm. The fingers of his right hand played lightly over the pad as if it were the keyboard of a miniature piano, and the two hulking Cobras fizzled into a mass of static and then snapped out of existence, leaving behind only a curved sheet of plastic hanging down from the higher branches of one of the larger oak trees. The screen was almost transparent and he hadn’t noticed it at all when the projection had been live.
“What the fuck?” Ramirez breathed, staring at the space where the old Cobra mechs had been a moment ago as if he refused to believe it. “That was a hologram? That was incredible! I never seen a projection that looked that real!”
“Fucking cool, isn’t it?” Bill agreed, grinning broadly. Complimenting his tricks was, Fuller knew, the best way to get on the man’s good side. “I picked that shit up from a guy who worked for one of the old movie studios. Traded him a cargo container of pinto beans for it.” Bill laughed sharply. “Squirrelly motherfucker must have been farting for weeks afterward, but he didn’t care, it was food.”
“And you use that for security?” Ramirez assumed, still clearly impressed by the trick.
“It helps keep undesirables away.” Bill shrugged. “You can create an army with enough of this shit.” He touched the plastic sheeting demonstratively.
“Or hide an army,” Fuller interjected. “Which is why we’re here. We need transportation to Colorado Springs for at least a couple dozen mechs and their pilots, and we need to get there without setting off alarms at every security checkpoint between the Mississippi River bridges and the Rocky Mountains.”
“Oh, that’s all?” Bill rolled his eyes. “Anything else you’d like? The nuclear launch codes maybe? Or the President’s phone number?”
“Yeah,” Fuller admitted. “We kind of need to leave today. Like no later than sunset.”
“Are you fucking nuts, Catfish?” Bill exploded, hands waving wildly. “This kind of thing takes time to set up, even if I decided to do it, which I have not!”
“Time we ain’t got, brother. I’m gonna lay it out for you, we got a couple days, max, before everything is gone to shit. We got some bad guys who intend to finish what the war started and kill everything left of the United States government.”
“Shit,” Bill scoffed, “there ain’t nothin’ left of the United States government but a name. When’s the last time anyone let you vote for anything? Now, it’s just a bunch of vultures sitting on the corpse, waiting their turn to pick off the next juicy bit.”
“Well, now you got someone looking to jump the line. And if you think things are bad now, wait until there ain’t no one even trying to control it.”
“Someone,” Bill repeated, skepticism dripping off his words. “Someone who? Are we talking the Russians?”
“There are some Russians involved, but the biggest threat is something even worse.” Fuller leaned forward, knowing his audience and knowing what would grab his attention. “A traitor.”
“A traitor, huh?” Bill repeated. “Working for the Russians? The Chinese?”
“Working for himself. All he wants is to burn down everything, us, the Russians, all of it, so he can step in and take over what’s left. He’s gonna set himself up as the mafia don of all North America and force all the rest of the world to deal with him. Unless we deal with him first.”
“Well, shit.” Bill spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt and Ramirez muttered a curse and stepped back, checking his boots. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?” The man’s eyes glazed over in concentration, and when he looked up, Fuller swore he could hear the clicking of gears slipping into place inside his head. “2200 hours tonight. No earlier. Bring them here. It’s out of the way enough to keep the wrong people from looking.”
He turned and headed back toward the tracks. Through the tangle of trees and bushes, Fuller could see the tops of freight cars rising black and rust-brown. Only a few meters away, he paused and turned back, raising a finger in warning.
“And make sure you bring everything with you that you might need, including bedding, food, water and toilets.” He started to walk away again but stopped as if a thought had struck him. He spun around again, the finger coming back up. “Especially toilets. Ain’t no son of a bitch peeing or pooping in my damned train cars! Anyone who tries that shit, I toss ‘em off the side while we’re running and they can take their chances. And we don’t make no stops unless we have to. This ain’t no five-star fucking hotel. I run a bare-bones operation.”
“Don’t you wanna know about the pay?” Ramirez wondered.
This time, the man didn’t stop walking.
“Oh, don’t you worry none, boy,” Bill said, laughing sharply. “Someone’s gonna pay. Someone always pays…”
Chapter Eleven
Svetlana Grigoryeva stirred the plastic packet of freeze-dried stew with a plastic fork and little enthusiasm. Not that she hadn’t eaten worse. There’d been times when she would have killed for anything as luxuriously filling as reconstituted beef stew…times when she had killed for it
. But she had little appetite at the moment, handcuffed to a chair while Nate and the others readied their Hellfires for the mission.
Not that it wasn’t fascinating watching them work, seeing the transformation from a group of misfits who seemed to do little else but bullshit and bellyache to a well-oiled machine, a cluster of professionals doing exactly what they’d been trained for. Even Ramirez, the youngest and clearly least experienced, went about his tasks with a precise diligence that would have impressed her trainers back in Moscow.
“We aren’t going to have resupply out there,” Nate reminded them, raising his voice but not looking up from the cart full of belted ammunition he was loading into his Hellfire’s hopper. “What you have loaded in your mech is what you got, so leave the Mark-Ex missiles and go for rocket pods instead. God only knows how many enemy mechs we’ll be facing.”
“Yes, mother,” Jenny Armstrong murmured, just loud enough for Svetlana to hear her.
She could see that the older woman had already replaced the Marx-Ex launch tubes on her borrowed Hellfire’s shoulder with a squared-off pod housing a cluster of smaller, unguided rockets. Jenny’s mech was closest to the folding table in the corner where Svetlana had been deposited so they could keep an eye on her during the loadout, which had allowed her a ringside seat to the woman’s constant stream of muttered comments, most of them sarcastic and off-color.
She hadn’t thought Jenny had noticed her attention, but apparently, the woman was more perceptive than Svetlana had given her credit for. In one instant, Jenny was tightening the bolts on the rocket pod and in the next, she was leaning heavily on the folding table, her nose centimeters from Svetlana’s, the front sight of her SIG 9mm tickling the Russian’s upper lip.
“You got some reason to be ogling me,” Jenny wondered, her voice quiet and restrained, but pure hatred in her expression, “or are you into girls? ‘Cause I don’t swing that way and I might consider filing a sexual harassment complaint with the DoD if you keep it up.”
Svetlana smiled.
“Do you perhaps think this is the first time someone has pointed a gun at me, Ms. Armstrong?” She propped her chin up on a hand and stared into Jenny’s hazel eyes. “Do you think it intimidates me?”
The mercenary sniffed in amusement and slowly pulled the pistol away, stuffing it back into her shoulder holster. She straightened, then pulled out the flimsy, plastic folding chair opposite Svetlana and sat down.
“So, you’re a tough bitch. No surprise. The FSB doesn’t hire wimps.”
“Everything okay over there?” James Fuller called from halfway across the hangar, mustache descending in a frown.
“We’re fine, James,” Jenny waved a hand behind her without looking back. “Mind your own damned business.”
“You have been giving me the…,” Svetlana trailed off, hunting for the correct phrase. “The stink-eye for two hours now. Did I run over your dog? Steal your boyfriend?” She nodded toward the beef stew spilled over the floor. “Take the last of the freeze-dried stew?”
Jenny snorted a laugh.
“You’re a damned Russian spy. Ain’t that enough reason for me to hate your guts?”
“Is it? Are you a patriot, Jennifer Armstrong?” Svetlana looked her up and down appraisingly. “You seem a bit too jaded and cynical to me for that. Or am I wrong?”
“I’d call it realistic and pragmatic,” Jenny said, but she shrugged. “Just because I don’t have a high opinion of my government don’t mean I wouldn’t hate the assholes who destroyed my country.”
“I don’t blame you,” Svetlana allowed. “But those decisions were made before I was born, mostly by men and women who are no longer alive. Now our nations are locked in a death struggle, both terrified to let go.”
“Is that why you hooked up with this Bob dude? You wanted out of the game?”
Svetlana nodded.
“I suppose I did. But as so often happens when you want something too badly, I believed what I wanted to believe and didn’t see the truth until it was too late.”
“Sounds more like a bad relationship to me,” Jenny observed. “You sure you didn’t buy into the guy’s charm instead of his political philosophy? Wouldn’t be the first tough chick to fall for a smooth line and a handsome face.”
“We were never involved sexually.” Svetlana’s answer came quickly. A bit too quickly, she realized with the honest self-assessment which had made her a good field agent.
“Shit,” Jenny said, waving the answer away. “You’re a damn spy. I bet one of the first things they taught you was how to separate sex from love, trying to make it easier for you to seduce some poor sucker like this guy Patty they told me about, without getting emotionally involved. Bet they didn’t think it would work the other way around.”
“Men never do.” Svetlana felt a jolt of shock at the admission. Particularly since she’d never even admitted it to herself. “Except Robert. He knew. I wonder if perhaps it is because of the extra lives he has led. But he knew the way to my heart was through my mind, not my body.”
“You were in love with him and now, what?” Jenny wondered. “You want him dead?”
“He needs to die. He’s needed to die for decades now. He’s lived too long, seen too much for one man to stay sane.”
“I can live with that. But I worry about you, spy lady.” Her eyes were narrow, shrewd. “Women who’ve loved and been wronged don’t make rational decisions. Nate there,” she gestured back at the man, who was glancing their way curiously, “wants to bring you along. He thinks you’re on the level, and maybe you think you are, too. But you need to be thinking, as we girls like to say to the boys, with your big head. Because I will be watching you, Natasha…and if you go spooning after your Boris with little Valentine hearts dancing in your head, I will put a fucking bullet in you.” She cocked her head toward Svetlana. “Just so we’re clear.”
“Is your mech loaded, Jenny?”
Svetlana had seen Nate approaching but hadn’t said anything to Jenny. The older woman didn’t seem surprised, but didn’t turn to face the man, her eyes instead still locked with Svetlana’s.
“Are we clear, honey?” she repeated.
“Transparent.”
Jenny stood, jostling the table, and spun on her heel to face Nate.
“I’ll be packed and ready in five, boss man,” she told him, brushing past him and heading back to her mech.
Nate looked between her and Svetlana, confusion evident on his face.
“What the hell was that all about?” he wondered.
“Girl talk,” Svetlana told him, shrugging. “So, tell me, Nathan. What now? Do I ride handcuffed to the outside of your mech cockpit all the way to Suffolk?” She rattled the cuffs against the arm of the chair.
“We have supplies we’ll need to bring with us,” he said. He kicked the fallen plastic of the freeze-dried meal out of the way and stepped around behind her. “We’re about to load the pickup, but everyone here,” he waved at the others, “has to pilot a mech.”
Nate pulled the keys to the handcuffs out of his pocket and unfastened her cuffs, pulling them off the arm of the chair and pocketing them. Svetlana rubbed at her wrist and looked up at him. He was so earnest, so trusting. There was something about him that made her want to be worthy of his trust.
“What do you want to ask me, Nathan?” she said, smiling.
“I wanted to ask you…,” he began hesitantly, then trailed off. He offered her a hand and she took it, letting him pull her up to her feet. His hand was warm and dry and he smelled of a recent shower and even more recent work in the heat. She could feel his warmth, hotter than the background of the summer day.
“I wanted to ask you,” he started again, still holding her hand, his breath warm on her cheek, “if you know how to drive a stick shift.”
She laughed softly, tightening her grip on his hand.
“I am from Russia,” she reminded him.
He nodded, then fished in a chest pocket of his flight sui
t and pulled out a set of keys.
“Do me a favor and pull the pickup into the hangar.”
She took the keys, then leaned in and kissed him. His cheeks and ears reddened in embarrassment, and he glanced around to see if anyone else was watching.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said. “It’s been a while since anyone did.”
“We’re ready to load the truck, Nate,” Roach said from across the hangar, and Svetlana wondered if the younger woman had been watching.
“Are the others going to show up?” she asked Nate as he was about to step away.
“Die Valkyrie will be there, and I’m fairly sure Conrad from LV-426 was convinced by our little presentation. For which, much thanks,” he added with a nod. “As far as Westbridge goes, I don’t know. They seemed pretty skeptical about the whole setup. Catalina Loughlin is a straight-arrow type, button-down, by the book. I hope I didn’t mistake telling her about it at all. If she goes to the DoD with our story, we’re fucked.”
“And if she doesn’t come with us, will it be enough?”
He hissed out a breath, the corner of his eyes and mouth pinched with an almost physical pain.
“If I’m being honest, Svet, I don’t know that it’s going to be enough even if they do all show. We don’t know what we’ll be facing, but if I know anything about Bob Franklin, he wouldn’t try anything like his unless he knew he’d have overwhelming force, surprise and an ace or two up his sleeve. There’s too much we don’t know. I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything else he said that might help us?”
His tone was hopeful, and she felt guilty for killing the hope.
“He guarded his words carefully around me, particularly near the end. He didn’t even confess the peace conference had been moved to Colorado until the day he began packing the trucks. I wonder now if he was ever telling the truth, that there’d ever been any intention to have them in neutral territory.”