by John Ringo
“If they saw you come in, aren’t they going to be suspicious that everything is so quiet?” the five-year-old — genius, apparently — asked.
“Quite possibly. Or, they may decide I’ve somehow skipped out in fear and slipped past them. Either way, if I was here, I’d have to call the police, and I can’t do that with you here, can I?” Caspar Andreotti was getting used to treating his charge at his mental age, not his chronological one. Or was it?
“When do you think they’ll get us?” the boy asked. “I mean our rescue, not the police or other guys. Whoever you called for.”
“Soon now,” the house man answered. “Pinky, are you five, or are you just small for your age?”
“Do you think Joey—” His voice broke on his brother’s name. “Do you think Joey would have agreed to say he was six, even if he didn’t blab, if he was older?”
“No, Pinky, I guess I don’t. So why did you hide how very smart you are?”
“What, and piss off Joey that bad? Or get stuck in school early, or up a couple of grades and be the punching bag of all the bigger boys? Or treated like a freak?” The last contained a note of hurt mixed with bravado — whistling in the dark — that told Andreotti that feeling like a freak hit way too close to home for the child.
“You are smart, aren’t you? Never be ashamed of being smart, Pinky. It just saved your life.” The grown man, closest thing present to a father, made sure he was both serious, respectful, and above all approving.
Talented and deserving of respect, or freakishly different with the need to keep hiding for self-preservation. Those were the stakes. If Pinky was “scary smart,” which he was, then he needed to grow into a whole, functional “scary smart” guy. The Bane Sidhe needed those. Caspar hadn’t missed the note of hero worship in the boy when he’d said “spy.” In many people, that would be a red flag of unsuitability. This child was a natural. The organization’s problem would be in deciding where to place him to do the most good.
The kid was never going to enjoy New Year’s Eve again. Come to think of it, Andreotti figured they had that in common.
“Just one more question,” Andreotti said.
“What?”
“How in the hell did you find out my combination?”
Mueller had almost enough sense of self-preservation to avoid eyeing the O’Neal women. Married wasn’t always a problem on a distant deployment, but this wasn’t that. It was still a separation, with his wife and kids up in Indiana, underground with the people running this whole conspiracy.
A hundred miles away or a thousand, it still wore on a man. The girl with the damned gorgeous heart-shaped ass had to be an O’Neal. She had this kind of light brownish-red hair with blond streaks. The red on female islanders, he had been warned, was like the red of mushrooms or tropical fish — a danger signal. Still, as she turned, the sweater she was wearing gave him a good silhouette of the top rack. She caught his eyes and smiled, before walking away to wherever she’d been going. She looked back over her shoulder at him, briefly, as she went. He got another smile.
He also got a thwack upside the head from Mosovich, whom he hadn’t noticed coming up behind him. Situational awareness versus pretty girl was no contest. Especially in his condition.
“Forget it. She’s a widow,” he said. “No, don’t get any ideas that means ‘available.’ She’s a very recent widow. Like, of the action a couple of weeks ago.”
He didn’t have to say “off limits.” The code was clear. Her departed husband had to be in the ground for a decent interval of time before she became available — and then he’d have to compete with all the guys who had also noticed her ass and tits, and a face that was distinctly not bad. A married guy with kids wasn’t going to be — shouldn’t be — high on her list.
“She didn’t look very bereaved,” Mueller heard himself say, earning another thwack to the back of his head.
“Down, boy. You know as well as I do — doesn’t matter.” Mosovich looked entirely willing to keep hitting him on the head as long as it took.
“Who was the poor bastard?”
“Ned Mortinson. Who turns out to have been fifty-something.”
“Really? I hadn’t had him picked out as a juv.”
“Apparently he didn’t have himself picked out as one, either. She’s about twenty. For real. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.”
“You know her life history?”
“The O’Neals gossip like hell, turns out. Once you get in past their obsessive opsec. I asked around for a few basics before writing letters,” Jake said.
“Obsessive opsec. Sounds like a very good thing to me.”
“Yup. But on the island here? The world’s biggest gossips — and not just the women. You could run a wine cellar on their grapevine.”
“You gotta admit she’s got one hell of a nice ass. Nice every—” Mueller sighed and drew himself up straighter from his habitually straight posture. “Yes, sir. What’s on the schedule today?”
Chapter Nine
George Schmidt didn’t like leading patched-together teams. This one was a thrown-together extraction unit, seeing that Papa was off-planet, Tommy was generaling, and Cally was incommunicado in what Shari O’Neal assured him was a vital matter for Clan O’Neal. Since he wasn’t an O’Neal, by the Bane Sidhe’s unwritten operating rules, that pretty much required him to drop the matter. He didn’t have to like it. So he had Harrison as a wheelman, but he also had three random guys. One from Kaleb, whom he trusted, and two guys from DAG who’d been sitting around on base cooling their heels. Landrum was a good enough guy — raised Bane Sidhe like Schmidt himself, experienced operating as part of DAG, but a total cherry on Bane Sidhe ops. Kerry and Michaels were unknown quantities, though not to Landrum, who vouched for his teammates.
The rationale for landing him with three cherries was an extra man to make up for inexperience. Yeah, right. One more guy to maybe make a bad mistake operating like someone with a nation state’s government behind them and the general approval of the Darhel. These guys’ knowledge that Toto and Dorothy weren’t in Kansas anymore was only intellectual. He figured the real reason for three newbies was to use the opportunities to get new men broken in on fieldwork fast, and to stave off troop boredom. The first rule of managing these guys was that you did not want to let them get bored. A bored specwar operator was a bad specwar operator. Consummate professionals left too long without work would find themselves something to do — and whatever it was, nobody else would like it. Okay, a few female types might have a great time, but that was only a best case scenario.
DAG had no female operators. Bane Sidhe base had a good handful of upgraded juvs on hand at any given time. The Bane Sidhe guys knew the score, but the FNGs generally weren’t going to believe these women were their superiors in strength and probably in training, too, until they were in a world of hurt. George himself had heard a pretty damned funny after-action report on Father O’Reilly’s little talk with the women after the first incident. Unfortunately, she’d been incredibly gentle, and the guy had been shipped off right away to Island O’Neal. It wasn’t that the guy had exactly refused to take no for an answer; he had more misunderstood the signals and the lady took offense. A broken jaw had a remarkably immediate sobering effect on a man. Anyway, the light damage and speed of his disappearance left the potential discipline problem intact. One of the problems with Nathan’s more administrative and priestly background was that, good as he was with people, he didn’t always get the ops types. Almost always, but there it was: almost.
This was a sucky assignment to take three DAG guys on, because it was going to punch all their damn buttons. Yeah, they were professionals; they’d get cold. They’d also be damned sure they already knew what to do because they’d click right into highly trained-in patterns. Change that: they were already in the zone. They knew this was Maise’s wife and kids. They might as well have been born in the zone.
“All right people, listen up.” He looked around at
the four other men in the trailer that was the final staging location for the op. “You are not operating in DAG. You can’t go in on reflex. You two,” he pointed to Kerry and Michaels, who looked uncomfortable in the wigs that covered their military haircuts, and about as unhappy with the identical suits and ties.
“You’re Mormon missionaries,” he said. “You get the front door. When you get out of the car, think earnest and carry that book like you revere it, not like you don’t want it. One of you pretends to knock on the door while the other one unlocks it. Just listen to your earbug for the beeps.”
They hated the risk of not being able to communicate in event of surprises. Yeah. He was no way in hell going to tolerate anything other than tiny blips out of radio silence. He had a PDA, Harrison had a PDA. Relative risk.
“Landrum goes into the house area first as a meter reader, and waits at the meter until we go through the doors. Then you Mormons go in. Kerry, you look older, you’re earnestly explaining to Michaels how this door knocking thing works for the little time it takes Duchess and me to come up the sidewalk.”
He’d be riding a Vespa reproduction, with a little weenie dog in a carrier behind him. Harrison had dressed him carefully; with the bagged bottle of wine, he looked for all the world like a friend coming over for a little holiday cheer.
“I look at you curiously as I walk by to the kitchen door. Two beeps and we ready, three beeps and we go in.”
This was probably the first entry the new guys had done where they had keys to the doors and were not allowed to do a complete room take-down. They hated it. Truth to tell, so did he. Their way was safer for the operatives. They weren’t used to being a bit more expendable here. This mission was counter to all their training and experience. They never operated in CONUS, and their primary mission was putting down pirates and terrorists in city states, whether resource colonies or the handful of old pre-war cities that had been repopulated in various world locations. Terrorism was, unfortunately, alive and well. As in pre-war times, frequently it was a figleaf for good old-fashioned crime, kidnapping, extortion. That was DAG’s experience. A black-bag entry on a private house in a quiet residential area, if not in broad daylight at least in twilight, was outside all their training.
“If you encounter hostiles, shock, don’t shoot. If you even draw your firearm without damn good reason I will have your ass. Use your judgment on turning on lights.” Their expressions said clearly that they appreciated having at least something where their judgment would be trusted. It was hard for pros to be cherries on anything.
“We get the survivors, the Mormons are out on point and stop at the car to chat with each other, then Duchess and I escort the survivors out to see my bike, Harrison pulls up and gets the survivors. Landrum covers our tail. The Vespa stays, the rest of us proceed independently to the rendezvous.”
“And the bike?” Kerry asked.
“Oh. Cleanup gets it if possible.” Of course the FNGs wouldn’t know SOP yet.
“That leaves the survivors exposed in transit, sir,” Michaels observed.
“Yes, it does. Cleanup will be coming in as we leave, along our exit route.” He gestured to his brother. “They’ll be listening in in case we need backup. Yes, there’s exposure. This is a resistance organization. In the extreme, we’re more expendable than DAG was. We hate to lose operatives, we can’t afford it, but losses hurt less than exposure.” These guys were in no way shy about exposing themselves to risk in a professional capacity. They’d done it time and again and would do it more. They were also professional enough not to take unnecessary risks.
“Tramp” Michaels, so named for an incident in a Burmese whorehouse he’d rather forget, wasn’t real keen on their team leader. A thrown-together team of guys who never worked together, never even worked in the same organizations, no training, on a live op was asking for a goatfuck. Yeah, that was bad enough, but even for a juv this guy looked like a kid. Like barely fourteen. And now he was dressed in a cheap civilian suit like a weenie missionary carrying the Book of Mormon. At least it was something to do, but it wasn’t what he was trained to do. It wasn’t making it any easier to dump the volcanic rage he was feeling and click into the zone. Dead civilians he could deal with. Dead dependents of teammates — he really wanted to kill the guys who did this. Which was bad. Target identification could slow you down, get you or your teammates killed. And what about the surviving kid? No way this wasn’t going to fuck him up bad. Really wanted these guys.
He had memorized the map of the neighborhood, as a matter of course. As had Kerry beside him. “You okay, man?” he asked.
“Cocked, locked, and ready to rock,” his buddy affirmed. His left hand was closed into a fist so tight the knuckles stood out whitely, thumb grating across the index finger. His voice was tight with leashed anger.
“You too, huh? Into the zone buddy, into the zone,” Michaels, as always, found it easier to support Ketch than himself.
“Roger that.”
And that simply, the fury went from fire to ice for both of them, the ice at the familiar distance that allowed clean operation and got the mission done. It felt good, the familiarity. First, extract the kid. And the safe-house guy who had probably fucked up and let it all happen. Then find these other fucks and correct their breathing problem.
None of these thoughts stopped him from tracking the details of everything they passed as they moved in on the objective. As always, those details were preternaturally clear, and the world slow, as his thoughts clicked over miles in instants. He had become the machine, and there was the house.
“Mormons,” Kerry said.
“We don’t have to talk the talk, dude, we’ve just gotta walk the walk,” Tramp pulled up to the curb and parked smoothly.
Under other circumstances, since it was a mission necessity, it would have been an interesting way to get in close to the house and an interesting problem. At the moment, there was nothing but the now. Under the guise of saying a few words to each other, ostensibly about missionary stuff, he and Ketch got a good three-sixty look over each other’s shoulder after getting out of the car. He could see, way down at the end of the street, Schmidt on his bike. Time to move.
Despite their roles, when the two men turned to walk up the sidewalk to the front door, it was with the lithe coordination of wolves from the same pack, on the hunt.
Tramp was glad to see the door had a knocker. He mimed pushing the doorbell and stood, facing the door with his buddy in what they hoped was the sincere, angelic attention of men of God on a mission. Which they were, just not in the sense they were feigning. After all, God had a thing for wrath and vengeance against scumbags, too, didn’t he? Extraction first, but in the process observe all the details for the tracks and sign necessary to hunt some very bad people down. Bad people who had very much messed with the wrong pack.
“This is gonna suck for Landrum,” Kerry said. “Used to date Kerrie.”
“Ouch. What fuckhead assigned him to this team?” Tramp scowled in the general direction of the Schmidt shrimp, who was off his scooter and walking up the driveway with his paper-bagged wine bottle, looking credibly like some “friend” of the family.
“I don’t think it was Schmidt. Don’t even know if he knows.”
“Oh, great. Fucking brilliant.” Michaels stuck the key in the doorknob and turned as he heard the telltale clatter of the kitchen storm door opening. Acting, for a moment, nothing like Mormon missionaries, he and Kerry rushed in the front door, looking to both sides as he kicked the door shut behind them. Unhappily restrained by the order not to draw, each of them had a hand under his suit jacket, which was as close to drawing as they could get without breaking their shitty ROE.
The black fist spray-painted on the wall suggested that the tangos were indeed gone, which was great for the survivors, if true. If. Tramp followed his buddy down the hall to the left of the empty living room, backwards, guarding his six.
“This is the one to keep Landrum out of,” Ker
ry announced grimly as they turned into the first room, a bedroom that sat on the front side of the house.
Michaels glanced over his shoulder into the bedroom. The bastards had rather thoughtfully left the closet door flung open, giving a plain view of one of the best bits of cover in the room. Kerrie Maise sprawled across the bed, sloppily shot in four or five random places, other than the head shot at close range that had obviously killed her. The streaks of blood on the floor suggested that she had staggered backwards with the first couple of shots and fallen onto the bed.
With no time to feel, they cleared the room and sent the relevant click code. The grey and white splatter, some still stuck to the wall behind the bed, was one of those sights a guy really didn’t want in his head as the last memory of any woman he’d fucked. Despite his professionalism, the boil of rage threatened to swamp him.
He clamped a lid on it as they left the corpse behind to proceed on to the next room, which was evidently one of the kids’ bedrooms. Mercifully, it was empty, though tainted by a strong smell of puke. They sent the code and moved on to the master bedroom. A pair of clicks, the tone said Schmidt’s, indicated the non-survivor boy had been found. Clearing the last room on their list, they moved farther back to the holo/rec room, where Landrum waited, white-faced.
“Basement,” he said.
“Don’t go into the front of the house, dude,” Tramp told the other man firmly. Probably he would have been smart enough not to, but some things were worth making sure. You couldn’t un-see shit.
When Landrum’s face turned a rockier shade of pissed, he knew he’d been right to insist.
“No.” The word came out of his and Kerry’s mouths simultaneously, communicating that they would restrain the man physically if necessary.
Landrum spun on his heel and stalked off to the kitchen, followed by Kerry. Michaels, again, brought up the rear.