The Trojan Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I’ll take the lead,” he said. “Bob; you’ll come with me. Blake, Sam, Jack; stay where you are and keep an eye on the situation. If we need help, we’ll whistle for it.”

  “Gotcha, boss,” Sam Mason said. He was a former National Guardsman, but he hadn’t allowed his skills to lapse since his effective retirement. The sports bag slung under his seat contained his assault rifle and enough ammunition to fight a small war. Even if the cops let that past, they’d have real problems ignoring the grenades and the small quantity of C4 the team had brought with them. Blake had insisted that one could never have too little C4 and the Colonel was inclined to agree. “Just watch your back. You can never trust anyone who moves to Washington.”

  The Colonel scowled at him – Toby had moved to Washington – before he opened the door and slipped out onto the pavement. Bob Packman slipped down beside him, one hand in his pocket where he’d concealed his pistol. They both had concealed carry licences, but they couldn’t afford to attract any attention. Gun carry laws changed so often that someone could become a criminal merely by driving over the state line. He scowled at Packman until the former CIA agent took his hand out of his pockets and stood to attention. Wearing a civilian suit that didn’t quite fit him, he looked more like a gangster than a military man. The Colonel rolled his eyes, checked that his Sig Sauer was in a convenient position, and started to lead the way up the driveway.

  General Thomas’s home address had never been made public. It was a security precaution that dated back to the days when terrorists had tried to harm the morale of American troops by hitting their families back home in America. The media had probably been trying to bribe someone to disclose it, but for once the alien subversion of the media worked in their favour; they wouldn’t want someone of General Thomas’s statue publicly opposing the Galactic Federation. After the government had effectively signed away American independence, who knew what kind of reaction they’d have from the people? The Colonel had heard – from a drinking buddy who was still in the National Guard – that the Guard was being prepped for mass civil unrest. Rumours were flying everywhere, none of them good.

  “I feel as if I’m in a bad movie,” Packman whispered, as they crunched their way up the driveway. General Thomas – or his wife – drove an expensive car. “Do you think he’ll have a butler and a maid?”

  “Shut up,” the Colonel whispered back, not unkindly. Packman dealt with stress by making jokes; the Colonel grew colder and quieter. “Remember; we need to convince him to join us without any proof, or saying anything out loud.”

  He pressed the bell and smiled as he heard a series of chimes from inside the house. A long moment passed slowly, and then the door swung open, revealing a middle-aged mulatto woman with grey streaks in her dark hair. Two sharp brown eyes examined the two visitors and found them wanting. Judging from the faint look in her eye, her husband’s resignation had shocked her. General Thomas had been a natural lifer, someone who would have been happy to spend their entire lives in the military. And now he was a civilian again, even if all the paperwork hadn’t been processed. The Colonel understood how he must have felt.

  “He’s not in,” she snapped. The Colonel guessed that some reporters had already been to visit, even though they would have had problems finding the General’s address. But in Washington one could find out anything with a bribe to the right person. “He’s permanently out to you.”

  “We’re not reporters,” the Colonel said. The wife’s face twitched, suggesting that he’d guessed correctly. “We’re from the General’s former command, come to pay our respects.”

  The General’s wife studied them carefully for a long moment. Military wives spent quite a bit of time around their husband’s commands and some of them were often quite familiar with the soldiers under his command. On the other hand, they had been living in Washington rather than a military base for the last few years. The Colonel quietly prayed that he looked old enough to pass muster as one of the General’s first subordinates. Thomas had been a junior officer when the Colonel had been mustered out of the army.

  “Come on in,” she said, finally. “He’s in his office.”

  The interior of the Colonel’s house was far more tasteful than the outside, with a number of paintings hanging from the walls, illuminated by glowing lights set into wooden panelling. There were no signs of children, which struck the Colonel as odd; he’d had a wife and a family while he’d been kicking Saddam’s ass in Desert Storm. Maybe the General’s wife was barren, or maybe she simply didn’t want children. The Colonel had met a few military wives who fretted about what would happen to their children if their husband died.

  They stopped outside a wooden door. “Elliot,” the General’s wife called, “you have visitors.”

  The Colonel braced himself as the door swung open. It was clear that the General had been allowed to decorate the room to his own personal satisfaction. A single bookcase, crammed with books, dominated one side of the room; a second wall was covered in plaques and other legacies from his former stations around the world. The Colonel noted that some of them came from Ranger and Delta Force units and nodded in approval. Anyone who had served besides or commanded such units would have to win their respect to get a plaque. Some other units could always be depended upon to produce something even if their former CO had been incompetent or cruel. There were sycophants everywhere.

  General Thomas looked up at them from a desk covered in writing papers. The Colonel, who was old enough to recall the somewhat painful process of racial integration in the military, was pleasantly surprised. General Thomas might be wearing civilian clothes, but he managed to make it look like a uniform; his shaved head seemed to glisten in the light. There were plenty of officers who managed to look good everywhere, but the battlefield, yet Thomas had definitely seen the elephant. He had the look of a man who had little fear left in his soul.

  “Visitors,” he repeated. He quirked one eyebrow. “You do realise that I’m legally allowed to shoot reporters?”

  “Very funny, sir,” the Colonel said. He produced his notepad and held it out for the General to read. “Here are my credentials.”

  He saw the General’s dark eyes narrow. The message read THE ALIENS ARE BUGGING YOU. NOD ONCE IF YOU UNDERSTAND.

  The General nodded once, quickly. He picked up a pen and wrote a second message under the first in neat handwriting. WHO ARE YOU?

  THE RESISTANCE, the Colonel wrote. YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER. YOU NEED TO COME WITH US.

  I CAN’T LEAVE MY WIFE, the General wrote. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT WE WILL BE SAFE?

  The Colonel almost smiled. THE US IS IN DANGER, he wrote. NO PROMISES OF SAFETY ALLOWED.

  Thomas chuckled. “Well, that is all very interesting,” he said, aloud. He glanced down at the notepad and started to scribble another note. “I’m afraid I have no interest in serving as a lobbyist for your form.”

  He passed the notepad over to the Colonel. WHEN DO WE LEAVE?

  ASAP, the Colonel wrote. GRAB YOUR OVERNIGHT BAG AND YOUR WIFE’S BAG. WE NEED TO MOVE NOW.

  It was at that moment that they heard the gunshot.

  ***

  Julius Davenant disliked working with a partner, let alone three others, all of whom had dubious reputations for loyalty, but the orders from their employer had been strict. He also tended to dislike working on American soil – the FBI was one of the better detective agencies on Earth – yet he’d swallowed his fears. The money they were being paid was enough to allow him to retire to the Caymans or some other place where he could change his name and vanish into the multitude. Besides, he had to admit that all of the assignments so far had been ridiculously easy.

  The car pulled up beside the General’s house and they checked their weapons automatically. Washington’s police department wasn't the best in the nation, but no one expected the cops to hesitate when it came to sending cars out to see who was firing shots in one of the wealthier areas. The people who lived here were important; they p
aid taxes. A failure to get the cops out on time, even if it was physically impossible, would result in mutual recriminations and job losses.

  “Target the thumper now,” he ordered, as he switched his cell phone off. He’d paid good money for a model that was almost impossible to trace, at least not very quickly. Given access to the full resources of the NSA, the Washington PD might be able to trace the phone – but by then it would be buried or somewhere under the Potomac. “Hit it as soon as you’re ready.”

  One of his comrades looked up from the small device. “Thumper ready,” he said. “Now?”

  Davenant scowled. “Now,” he ordered. The Thumper made a sputtering noise as the switch was pushed. “Come on; hurry.”

  The four men climbed out of the car and headed for the house. If anyone had stopped to question them, they would have explained that they were federal agents – and they had ID to prove it. Their employers had provided the ID and, just out of curiosity, Davenant had had them run through the databases. They weren’t just impressively clean; they were real. And that meant that whoever was paying them was so highly placed in the government as to be nearly untouchable. His coat shivered around him as a blast of cold wind caught him in the face, but he didn’t let go of his weapon. The Thumper might have taken care of all the local security systems in the area, yet any professional knew how quickly things could go wrong.

  He scowled as he saw the door. If he was any judge, the flimsy wood panelling would be concealing something a lot stronger, making it almost impossible to kick down. Instead, he pushed one finger against the buzzer and smiled to himself as he heard the machine playing inside the house. If they were really lucky, the General himself would come to the door. The contract only demanded the General’s death, but he wouldn’t hesitate to kill the General’s wife if it meant the difference between getting away clean and spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison. Anyone who could identify them had to die.

  The door slowly opened, revealing a black woman who scowled at them suspiciously. God alone knew what she thought they were, but as her eyes opened wide Davenant pushed his gun against her chest and pulled the trigger. The heavy bullet slammed into her chest and she tottered backwards and fell to the floor, blood splashing out of the wound in her body. Davenant was already stepping over her gasping mouth and heading inside. They had to find the General and execute him before he escaped, leaving them without their pay and a murder rap. Behind him, one of his comrades dragged the body inside and closed the door behind them. No one would find the General’s wife until it was far too late.

  ***

  “That was a gunshot,” the Colonel snapped. He had his pistol out at once, looking for trouble. Someone was breaking into the house. He skimmed through his memory of their walk through the house to the study and realised that it would take several moments for the enemy to track them down – unless, of course, they had the General’s wife in their hands. She could tell them exactly where to find her husband. “How do we get out of here?”

  The General looked stunned. He’d never anticipated becoming a target in his own backyard, any more than anyone else in the United States had had to fear invasion. And his wife might have been shot and killed by the enemy. The Colonel could hear footsteps now heading towards them, footsteps that suggested that the enemy had abandoned stealth to search the house as quickly as possible. Someone outside might have heard the shot and called the police. He glanced down at his watch and discovered that it had stopped. So had the other two digital watches in the room, along with all the other electronic gear. The only thing that was still working was the clockwork watch the General wore on his right arm.

  “Come on,” the Colonel snapped. Fighting inside a house was dangerous enough when one knew the lie of the land. He had no idea how to get the General out the back entrance, or if there even was a back entrance. “We can’t stay here!”

  He opened the door, wishing for a grenade. The sound of enemy footsteps was coming closer; a moment later, a shadowy form came into view. The Colonel took aim and fired twice, feeling the satisfaction that came with scoring a direct hit when he heard a yell. He watched as the form tumbled backwards, just before someone half in hiding fired back towards him. They missed, but the shots forced him to keep his head down.

  “Bob, get the General out the rear,” the Colonel ordered. The General had found a pistol from somewhere and looked ready to go down fighting, but he was too important to be allowed to die. The resistance would need him. “I’ll hold them off.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Washington DC

  USA, Day 26

  “They killed Kenny!”

  “Good,” Davenant muttered back, as they pressed their way into the semi-darkness. “The bonus will only have to be split three ways.”

  The Thumper had taken out all of the electric gadgets in the house. There was no lighting any longer, apart from streams of light shining in from uncovered windows and open doors. Davenant was starting to feel as if using the Thumper had been a tactical mistake, even though it prevented the target from holing up in a panic room and screaming for help from the police. General Thomas might have resigned – or been sacked; the press reports were contradictory – but the police wouldn’t hesitate to answer a call from his house. They might be on their way even now.

  He glanced down at Kenny’s body and scowled. One of the shots had gone right through his forehead, which meant the person they were facing was either very good or very lucky. Handguns were rarely as accurate as the media made them seem and the shooter had been firing in the semi-darkness…and Kenny had been silhouetted against the light. If only they’d been able to find plans for the house…but the General had been able to get the plans put in the secure files. They had proved impossible to access without tipping their hand too much.

  “Keep low,” he muttered, as they pressed onwards. Every shadow could be hiding an enemy gunman, ready to plug them both. He would have given anything for a grenade or ten, but grenades risked drawing too much attention. The false IDs might not stand up to a through scrutiny. “We have to catch them before they get out of the building!”

  ***

  “They’re blocking our way out,” the General muttered. His combat instincts seemed to be kicking in, the Colonel noted absently. The enemy could be anywhere, hidden within the shadows. He hadn’t even considered the need to bring night-vision gear with him. And with the watches out, their cell phones were largely wasted too. They couldn’t call for help from the guys in the van. “Get up the stairs, quickly!”

  The Colonel nodded, allowing Packman to take point. He glanced up once as the former CIA agent headed up towards the light, his lanky form coming into view once or twice. There was a gunshot flash as one of their enemies fired towards him, the slug smacking harmlessly into the plaster. The Colonel fired back, but heard nothing apart from a curse. He would have liked to believe that he’d hit the guy, yet he suspected otherwise.

  “Go,” he hissed. The General nodded and crawled up the stairs, while Packman took up position to provide covering fire. It was a situation that called for grenades, the Colonel knew, and silently thanked God for the proof that the enemy weren’t carrying any grenades. He was tempted to hole up and wait for the police, but they’d have to explain what they were doing in the General’s house and why. The General reached the top and joined Packman, his handgun pointed at the enemy position. As soon as the Colonel followed him, they both fired twice into the darkness. There was no sign that they’d hit anybody, but it should discourage them from trying to give chase.

  The Colonel was breathing hard when he reached the landing, but the old exhilaration was flowing through him. A dark shadow appeared and vanished back into the shadow when they fired at it, a pair of shots coming back at them and striking the back wall. The General motioned for Packman to follow him towards a large window while the Colonel blocked the stairs, struggling to open it. As soon as it was open, the General pushed Packman out and
then waved to the Colonel, motioning for him to follow.

  “Hang on,” the Colonel said. His hand had closed around a metal container. It smelled like something from a cosmetic bag. “GRENADE!”

  He threw the container down the stairs, pulled himself to his feet and ran towards the window. Behind him, there was a crash as the object he’d thrown hit the stairwell and fell towards the ground. If they were really lucky, their enemies would dive for cover, convinced that a grenade was about to explode. How long would it be before they realised that they’d been duped?

  The window opened up onto a smaller roof, covering an outhouse. Ignoring the dangers, the Colonel clambered out of the window and jumped down to the ground. Packman and the General had already taken up covering positions; at the Colonel’s angry shout, they beat feet for the van. Behind him, a face appeared at the window, glaring down at them. The Colonel snapped a shot off at it, but the face jumped backwards and vanished back into the shadows. Cursing, the Colonel turned and followed the other two towards the van.