Honor of the Clan lota-10

by John Ringo

  The wood house was old, and the area was in a drought this year. It needed paint. Not that you could see that at night, but it was pretty obviously run down when he’d checked it out in daylight. Everybody honest was feeling the economic pinch. One more reason not to be one of the suckers in life.

  Patsies weren’t so much suckers as they were stupid. Another thing it was simply not good to be. Except Matt Prewitt was not as dumb as your usual patsy. Maybe not dumb at all. He’d confronted Bobby outright, in private, about their real role in this little operation. Thing was, he figured he could survive the search after. Knew a place he could get real good new ID, disappear. His additional price, which Bobby had been happy to pay, was to muddy the records, a lot, about his identity — in advance. It didn’t cost a damned thing, and who knew? The skeletally thin skinhead might even make it. If he did, it was a damned good audition for more work. Bobby won either way. The longer Prewitt stayed ahead of them, the more tracks they would leave for Bobby. Bonus for his money. Well, the Tir’s money, anyway.

  They hadn’t been too happy that he was going to stay back here, safe, while they did all the dirty work. A single cold look had quashed that. He wasn’t paying them so he could do the shit himself. He was doing enough just being here in person to ensure they didn’t fuck it up, which they really ought to be grateful for, since he wouldn’t personally kill them for a salvageable mistake on the job like he would for a blown job. He figured he doubled these two guys’ odds of survival just be being here to, so to speak, pull their chestnuts out of the fire if they fucked up.

  Finally the base of the building was soaked all the way around. Big thing now was make sure nobody got out. He and Prewitt had the kitchen door at the back, Gorton had the front door. The back of the house had one of those big, country screened porches, so they’d see anyone coming out in plenty of time.

  He and Gorton both had rifles, not because they couldn’t have gotten closer and used pistols, but because there was a really neat way to start the fire, nice and safe, from a distance. He had gotten incendiary bullets as something his mercenaries had put him onto. No fuses, nothing to fuck up, just shoot the damn house near the bottom where all the gas was. Any old beginner could shoot a house, and he’d had these guys on simulators and out to a range to make sure they knew how to fire the damn guns well enough to do their job. Just because somebody said they could do something didn’t mean they weren’t full of shit. Bobby had survived and gotten to his current position not just out of nepotism, but because he always, always checked.

  And, of course, he’d had himself checked out as well, because flaming bullets were cool and he wanted to get to fire at least one of them.

  Prewitt was a bit of a gun nut. He’d come decked out in camo that didn’t look military to Bobby — not like whatever he’d seen before — with multiple magazines for his rifle, with some kind of regular gun in a holster on his hip, and a big honking knife strapped to his opposite thigh. The effect was ruined by him having torn out the sleeves of the jacket to show off his tattoos. They were impressive tats, but it was kinda stupid when they were just lying around in the cold.

  Matt Prewitt didn’t like this job. He didn’t particularly dislike it. Whoever was in the house was kind of un-people, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t know them, he didn’t give a shit, he was getting paid a fuckload of money. The job was high risk, but then you usually didn’t get a fuckload of money for selling ice cream cones.

  The biggest risk, of course, were that these folks had some motherfuckers Bobby wanted to pull out in the open. Probably some fairly badass motherfuckers. That was the real risk, but he was cool with it. He’d gotten a bit too hot for comfort, anyway, and had been about to disappear and change his name, found the fixers for it and everything. That was the other big bonus for this job. Bobby was connected. He was connected about as high as you could be connected. Of course he hadn’t said so, but with that kind of money, and no worries about them being caught? Bold enough to be along and not care? That meant he knew he could get it taken care of if they got pulled in. Taken care of good, and right the hell then. This back-ass end of nowhere was obviously not the guy’s usual turf. Hence, connected and connected up high.

  He’d insisted Bobby fuck the records on his real ID to make him unfindable. In advance. Bobby had agreed, no problem. Matt had checked, and it was solid. Again, proof he was connected.

  So all Matt had to do was do his job and stay alive, and maybe he could become connected, too. That was as high in the scheme of things as a guy like him could ever hope to rise. The big enchilada.

  Before he disappeared, he really ought to do something for Alice. She was his sister; the only girl out of a handful of brothers. She’d just had her fourth kid. A kid’s uncle was important. Fortunately, a couple of his brothers were of a nice guy turn of mind and cared about the little brats. He spent a lot of time with the oldest boy, but figured four might be just too loud for his tastes. Still, his brothers didn’t have much, because the pay for being a nice guy sucked. He’d be doing okay after this, so he’d leave a good chunk with Barry. Barry was so straight it was like he got all the nice Matt missed. He’d make sure Alice didn’t smoke it, drink it, or shoot it.

  Speaking of shoot, his lack of attention was getting noticed. Bobby and Gorton had already fired, starting the blaze. A corner of the house hadn’t gone up. The bedrooms. Prewitt obligingly put his round in and insured a good, fast finish to the job. This was the part that would really suck, if anyone came this way. The fire was loud enough that they probably wouldn’t hear any screaming. Hopefully.

  The first thing out their door was a cat, ghost white in the light of the full moon. Bobby fired a shot off at it, but the boss’s marksmanship sucked, and Prewitt didn’t see no point to shooting the damn cat.

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” Bobby asked accusingly.

  “Ah, it was just a cat. Nobody feeds it here they’ll never find the damn thing anyway. Wasn’t expecting anything that little, and those suckers are fast,” he improvised.

  The bossman couldn’t argue that without making himself look bad, since he’d missed, too.

  “We’re still watching the door, right?” Prewitt asked, giving the guy an unsubtle reminder that it was his goddamned job and did he want it done, or what?

  “Yeah.” The cat was forgotten.

  They had one taker to come running out the kitchen door. Woman. Her nightgown was one of those long things, or a robe. It was on fire, making her look like something out of a movie. Prewitt took the head shot just as he realized she was carrying something. As she hit the ground, the baby began to cry.

  Beside him, Bobby took a shot, probably a mercy shot for the kid, but missed. Then the guy actually got up, pulling at Prewitt’s shoulder.

  “Oh, well. Gotta go,” he said.

  “Right.” Prewitt got to his feet, drawing his nine mil Glock in one smooth motion and putting two rounds into the back of Bobby’s head. “Even I wouldn’t leave a baby to burn, you sick son of a bitch,” he said as the body hit the ground.

  Matt turned and sprinted for the house. What the hell, he wasn’t getting paid now, anyway.

  The fire was burning fast, fast through the dry house, especially with all the accelerant. Matt Prewitt ignored the flames, taking the stairs two at a time and wrenching the outer porch door off its hinges in his adrenaline burst.

  He scooped up the baby and turned back down the stairs. The next to top one, one he hadn’t hit on the way up, collapsed under his weight, pitching him forward. Instinctively, he rolled to protect the child, feeling his ankle snap as he went down. Above him, the beam across the top of the porch fell in, to slide down the collapsing hand rail and land squarely across his back, flaming, trapping him. Turning onto his stomach in a vain effort to work free, wiggling the rest of the way down until the baby and his hands were on the compressed dirt path at the bottom of the stairs before he stuck fast, Prewitt reflected that it was good news and bad news that he c
ouldn’t feel his legs.

  As the flames really started to bite, Matthew Lamar Prewitt did his final good deed, one of the few in his life. He slid his hands right under the baby and rolled, hard, sending it turning like a little log, out of reach of the flames and smoke.

  Mercifully, the smoke from the burning stairs got him before the fire did. Prewitt had one final word to cough before losing consciousness. “Alice?”

  On the lawn, little Victoria Menendez began to squall herself hoarse, in which condition Gary Ward, of the Rabbittown Volunteer Fire Department, found her half an hour later.

  Bobby had forgotten one cardinal rule that the worst of the worst usually took care to remember. Even criminals have families.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They couldn’t use a conference room for the meeting. None of them were big enough. The atrium, however, had multiple advantages. For one thing, it could accommodate all thirty of the combat-ready DAGgers. including Maise. Then there were the operations teams, which had a certain overlap with some of the DAG troops who had been training for small group covert ops, urban and otherwise, Bane Sidhe style. Then there were the cybers and forensics people who had been instrumental in tracking down the killers and, lastly, the support staff — the cleaners, the cover prep people, the psyops profilers, the general intel weenies. Cally even noticed that a couple of the food service people had managed to snag themselves a spot on the list.

  It was natural. Everybody wanted to be in on this. They had, they believed, identified every individual who took part in the murders of DAG dependents and other loved ones. There were red noses and eyes here and there. The strangest case of hay fever had seemed to sweep through the base personnel and temporary residents all at once.

  Charis Thomason was a lovely black woman. She was no juv, and she was carrying about fifty pounds more weight than she should, but she had a vitality that was at odds with the intel stereotype. Her mahogany complexion held a glow, and her coal-black eyes sparkled as if life was a joke only she seemed to get.

  Tonight, she had abandoned her normal good humor, and her glow radiated another emotion entirely. She stood beside a high-quality, nearly new holotank, a big one, gripping a fiberglass pointer across her front like a sheathed sword.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it’s seven now, so I’ll get started. First of all, I’d like to thank Team Isaac for bringing in the AID of one John Earl Bill Stuart,” she said, tapping the pointer into the tank’s projection area like a magic wand, and a head shot holo of the man appeared, triggering a palpable wave of hatred in the room. “This device was the key piece of evidence that allowed us to pull all our other information into a cohesive picture of who and how many.”

  She paused while people looked around to Cally’s team, who were sitting together towards the back. The clapping was rhythmic, fierce, but it stopped quickly as everyone was focused on the information, not the kudos.

  “I’d also like to thank all the teams who brought in all the forensic evidence, of all kinds,” she said gravely. At another smattering of applause, she held up her hands, “Please, people. There’s more than enough people to thank, but I think people want to know what the end game is.”

  This elicited a growl.

  “Our first murder was Cordelia Beadwindow, niece of Sergeant Kevin Adams. We have two perpetrators. Robert “Bobby” Mitchell is Mr. Stuart’s direct contractor, and we believe is the architect of these attacks. We do not have his location. He hired all amateurs. He, of course, was using them as stalking horses and intended for us to find them. He does not wish to be found himself. We will find him. As the saying goes, he can run, but he’ll just die tired.

  “Sarah Andersen.” The display broke into a block of nine images, a head shot in the center of a very pretty, even beautiful, blond girl. The other images showed a number of images of the kind people posted on the internet of themselves. Bikini, drunken partying, prom dress, even a nude, as well as a security cam image of the same woman, light brunette. “Miss Andersen was a brunette for the crime, but usually wears her hair blond, and has returned to doing so. While she has no criminal record other than one count of underage drinking, I’m sure it will surprise no one that the little charmer socially terrorized her high school until she graduated two years ago. Envy driven sociopath, but obviously, money will do.

  “Miss Andersen lured Cordelia Beadwindow over to Mr. Mitchell, who did the killing. His DNA was found at the scene, Andersen’s was not. We do not believe she participated in the actual killing. Not that we care.”

  The intelligence department’s VP tapped again, changing the scene to a middle-aged woman with her husband, apparently at a barbecue or picnic. She was laughing and looked nice, her straight, light brown hair cut in a gentle pageboy, sans bangs. “Leellen Beadwindow. The bastards took over her car, ran her into a bridge, and then to make sure she was dead, they set off an incendiary charge under the wreck. Civilian autopsy indicated that she was killed by the fire.”

  Another tap, and the picture changed to an older man with weathered, wrinkled skin — the kind that indicated he didn’t laugh much.

  “The driver of the car. He left the tire marks of his personal vehicle and a cigarette butt at the scene.”

  There were several snickers in the room, mostly from the direction of field teams.

  “We have high confidence that that is the total number of participants in the Beadwindow murders.”

  “Next to the Coacher murder.” She waved the pointer and a man’s head appeared with a large red X in front of it. “Cullen Wayne Foster, deceased. Thank you, Team Bowie.”

  Again the room growled. The difference between its prior anger and its present satisfaction was palpable. A number of growls came out “hoo-rah!” Variations echoed from people who had a more specific service history and felt the need to be heard.

  “The Maise murders. For the sake of the family present, I will be brief.” Thomason had obviously prepared for this specific contingency. Four heads appeared in the tank at once. “From the top left, Robert Mitchell, again. Rahab Graber Bender, aka Candy Leighton.” The aging, bleached blonde was no Marilyn Monroe. Not quite over the hill, but compared to the fresh-faced juv girls in the Bane Sidhe ops teams, late twenties looked a bit past the cheap whore’s sell-by date.

  “Below, Gordy Pace, no middle name, and—” The man on the lower right had a satisfying red X over his face. ” — Reginald Erbrechen, deceased. Thank you, Cally.”

  The thanks had a note of irony, and Cally O’Neal got more than a few accusing looks. There had been a number of people who had devised creative ways for the captive to die, and were very disappointed not to be in on carrying them out.

  The other woman’s only response was a minuscule nod of acknowledgment, as if killing the man had been a minor administrative detail. Which, of course, it was. Smart way to play it, though. Just a professional matter. Bootleg copies of that segment of the holo were circulating widely, and provided some salve on the disappointments from not doing it personally or protractedly.

  “The Swaim murders are the last we have. So far,” Charis sighed. They were really going to have to hustle and take out Billy-Bob, which was the collective name she privately assigned to the duo. Their deaths should at least create an operational pause in the kin murders.

  “Horton Huey Scout,” she said, changing the image to the next perpetrator.

  “I’d wanna kill somebody, too,” someone mumbled from the back.

  “Horton Huey Scout,” she repeated. The man was a short, much-freckled redhead. “No, he’s not a relative,” she said. “Buckley footage of the scene, forensic accounting. He’s guilty as hell. Next.”

  “Bradley Willard Farris.” This one was tall and rangy, of indeterminate ethnicity. “We only had approximate height and weight from our footage, but he picked up the money with Scout, has known him for awhile, and footage from various cameras places him in Orlando at approximately the right time. Since he’s from Topeka, t
hat amazing coincidence is enough that we’re confident ordering his execution. I somehow doubt anyone here has a problem with that.

  “That’s it. We know who they are, we know where they are. They each stand condemned by the security council and are on the execution list as priority targets. We will be sending teams to carry out sentence. Are there any questions?” The last was meant to be rhetorical.

  “Comment,” Cally said.

  “Yes, Cally?” Charis replied.

  “There have been… discussions regarding this mission,” Cally said. “One of the problems with sending out half the damned Bane Sidhe, Clan O’Neal and DAG on seek and destroy missions is that if the Darhel don’t know where we are now, they’re probably going to figure it out. One way to avoid this is to just give all the information to the police and let them handle it.”

  The muttering that accompanied that statement was the sort of mutter Captain Bligh heard on the Bounty just before he got tossed in a rowboat.

  “But let me explain,” Cally said coldly. “No, let me summarize. One: Chain of evidence is broken. Two: The Tir will make it all go away even if it’s not. He may make the patsies go away, permanently, but that’s not the point. Three: Oh. Hell. No.

  “For years,” she said, striding onto the stage and walking back and forth, “we have been fighting in the shadows. For centuries among the Bane Sidhe. For most of my own life and that’s been a long-damned time. We have taken hits. We have had teams taken out. We have lost too many good people. But there was a code. No Darhel, no military and no dependents.