Broken Wings (John Hardesty Z04 Book 3)

by Clay Moore

  "I see. Are you from Eridani or are you from snake eyes?"

  "I am from snake eyes. I know that my duty is to this station. I'm pledged to secrecy and to protect the assets of the station."

  "What is your name?"

  "My name is Leticia."

  Something twigged in John's mind. He'd given her the once over with his eyes and engaged a little bit of conversation with her. Yet, he did not know what it was that he was not seeing. This Leticia was not exactly what she looked to be. She could be an agent provocateur sent by a rival agency on another planet. He rather doubted that. There was nothing on snake eyes words taking. Except…

  "Thank you, Leticia. I don't think I need your services anymore for right now. Would you bring in the station chief please?"

  Leticia performed a quick curtsy and walked out of the room. Then it hit him. She claimed to be from snake eyes, but the only culture and human space that performed curtsies still were beta Andromeda. Leticia was indeed an agent provocateur.

  The station chief entered the recovery room at that point. Oliver immediately turned to avoid the side of his current commander naked.

  "I never would've taken you for one of the squeamish agents," said John.

  "I have an answer now for why the women talk about you behind your back."

  "Sometimes they talked to me in front of my back. I understand what you're saying"

  John opened his steamer trunk and withdrew a new gray suit. He put on his typical costume including his shoulder holster and his blaster pistol."

  John suddenly remembered Leticia. She would've had enough time to go through his steamer trunk and find his stash of ammunition. If she was indeed an agent provocateur, then she could've doctored the ammo. John took his blaster out of his shoulder holster. Very carefully he removed the magazine from the blaster pistol. John laid the blaster pistol on its side pointing the ejection port into a plastic bowl that John found on his side tray. He injected the round from the receiver into that container. He put down the pistol on the side tray.

  "Arrest Leticia, now!"

  The station chief merely nodded and took. John said a few codewords into the receiver. That he turned off his communicator.

  "We should get some fast action. That nurse has been very popular amongst the men. She's not all that popular amongst the women. Why did I do that?"

  "Leticia is not from snake eyes." John stared into the eyes of the station chief until the chief shook his head in understanding.

  "An opposing agent?"

  "This is a lesson to learn. We seem to be the best at this espionage thing. A loves that feeling of being the best. The best way to have a rating as good as ours is to steal our information."

  "What are you going to do with her?"

  "How would a snake eyes gang member send a message along the lines of ' stay out' to another gang?"

  "They would kill that person in a rather gruesome fashion. They would then display that body in public."

  "Would beta Andromeda have a station here?"

  "I think they do. I sent a speculation to A. I haven't gotten anything back from him."

  "I think you just did get your answer. A sure has the sharpness to kill a couple of birds with a single stone."

  "I thought it was overload for him to send a Z-level agent here. Now I know why. What was your original brief?"

  "My original mission was to find and kill Anton Hecton."

  "I could probably hear his brief to you. He probably told you to make a visit to station S."

  "Where you see level once?"

  "No, I applied. I passed everything except for the kill. Without a license to kill I could not be a Z-level agent. How are you going to kill her?"

  "Right now I want you to send to agents over to her house or apartment or whatever she has. I want them to go through that house with a magnifying glass. Anything suspicious I want them to put into a bag and they're all going to carry that back here."

  The station chief got on his communicator. He spoke some command words. Then he hung up his communicator.

  "Why did I just send Harvey and Dennis out to her house?"

  "Once we kill her we have a period of a few hours where we can go through her apartment without fear of discovery. By the way, what is your name."

  "My name is Oliver Ali."

  "Okay, this is probably going to be the best place to till her. Do you see a hook or something up on the ceiling?"

  "Well, there's the hope that holds up the track that they used to move people."

  John nodded. He went back to his collection of luggage. John picked up his attaché case. He pressed his thumb against that particular area on the attaché case. There was the double-click in the latches popped open.

  One of his items that he put in his kit is a spool of paracord. John always thought of paracord is being the most useful form of the rope. With that, he could rappel down buildings, tie people up, and even hang them. John estimated the length of the roof that he needed. John unschooled the amount of paracord. John pulled the battle knife from him she's down the back of his suit coat. He cut the paracord and replace the battle knife. John took out a utility lighter from his right coat pocket. He fired it off and melted the end of the paracord. John threw about half of the rope over the track. Oliver caught the paracord and held it. John tied a handyman's knot. Just as he finished two of the male agents brought in Leticia. She was kicking and screaming and trying to raise a ruckus. No one would hear her. Part of the upgrades that a building receives when it becomes a station's soundproofing.

  It was no use trying to talk to her. John did not have all of his chemicals that he could because he was not expecting to perform a full-scale interrogation. So he is going to trust that she would incriminate herself. That was why he sent the other two agents out to her house. The door to the recovery room burst open. The two agents sent to retrieve her had her between them. There was some bruising on her face, and her clothing was torn. She put the big fight. The agents had paid her for that flight.

  When she saw what John had in his hands, she started to fight again. This time the men had good purchase honor body. She was also exhausted from the previous fight. The two men dragged her towards the center of the room where John stood. Finally, they stood her up in front of John. John made sure that Oliver was waiting to do his job. Oliver had two hands on the paracord ready to pull at his order.

  "It is no use denying that you are not an agent from another world. Your mannerisms and your voice inflections indicate that you are from Beta Andromeda. I don't have time to waste guarding you, so we are going to kill you. Do you have any last words."

  "I won't give you anything."

  John looked at Oliver. "See, I told you that she would not give us anything."

  During the previous speech, John had moved more towards Oliver. That also pushed him close enough to Leticia. It looked like Ali was doing was playing with the knot. Then in a quick move but not was around her head and on her neck. John pulled the hangman's noose tight against her neck and let go. Oliver started pulling on the rope and lifting her. The two other agents quickly came to his aid and together they raised her off the floor about 2 feet.

  Her talking and swearing stopped as the rope got tighter. Her kicking the air around her got less and less. Finally, her body was still.

  "You will keep her on the rope for at least two more hours. Oliver knows what I want to be done with her body. I need to send Beta Andromeda a message. Do you both understand?"

  "Two hours?"

  "By that time she should be really dead, and her face should be disfigured enough to put revulsion in it any human's mind."

  John could see that these two agents were significantly affected by participating in this execution. He would have to get Oliver to put in their records that they would never make Z-level.

  John took out his fighting knife from its sheath in the back neckline of his jacket. With his sword, he slit open the body's white traditional nurse's dress. H
e put back his knife. John grabbed both sides of the slit and pulled apart sharply. There was the sound of splitting fabric. It didn't take very much for John to be able to remove her dress. Then he slit off her panties and her brassiere.

  "When you take down her body, make sure you remove anything that might be in her hair. Then search the body orifices for anything that might be hidden there. Then do as your station chief orders. While I am on snake eyes, you are going to be fighting a lot. This next encounter there will be a fight. The reason is that I have to be seen seeking revenging myself upon this gang."

  "You heard, Z04," said Oliver, "two hours and then we put her in the Richter Park."

  "As an agent provocateur, she is supposed to put gum in our organization. One of the things that I need to do the work that I do is absolute trust in my tools. While I was unconscious, you brought my equipment and baggage from the hotel room to this location. That was the correct thing to do, except there was a counter agent here. One of the reasons that I have the steamer trunk is that one side of the steamer trunk has drawers. I use these drawers to store a lot of things. One of those things is my blasters and my ammo. What we have to do is assume that my ammo is compromised. I'm going to need a resupply."

  "How many 11.5 mm rounds do you need," Asked Oliver.

  "I'm going to need at least 10 magazines. That 60 rounds of 11.5 mm. I also like some belt hanging combat boxes for those rounds. Make it a total of 150 rounds."

  "We can handle hundred and 50 rounds. I have all the magazines that you might want for that weapon. I don't know about the combat boxes."

  "I will go with your armorer and see if you have them. We might be able to cobble adequate open substitution for the combat boxes."

  "150 rounds into a huge building. How are you going to win a fight like that."

  "What's your name again?"

  "My name is Luis, sir."

  "Well Luis, it all has to do with pacing. I'm going to move at a slow and deliberate pace. When the first couple of gang members were killed, I might be able to convince the other ones to run away. There is only one person who will not run away, and that will be the leader."

  "Still your loadout is only going to be 150 rounds. When I go into engagement, I might hit one in three."

  "I know you are an agent, but what specialty are you," asked John.

  "I'm a driver, sir."

  "I daresay that you could probably drive rings around me if I keep to the ground. What happens when I take to the sky?"

  "I would lose you."

  "Keep that in mind. If you are looking for advancements in the service, you need to make yourself indispensable in something. If you could pursue or keep a tail going regardless if the agent's in the air are on the ground, the service needs those kinds of people.

  "I started out my professional life as a Marine in the Eridani High Guard. One of the things that the Eridani High Guard Marine Corps emphasized was marksmanship. When I left the Marines, I still kept up with my marksmanship-at least with the pistol. That means I usually fire 10 rounds and hit eight."

  The crew of station S whistled at that number.

  "So my defense will be movement and kill them before they kill me. It will be killing one at a time and taking cover."

  John saw that Oliver was looking at his timepiece. That meant that Oliver needed to get this thing on the road. John sat back down to allow Oliver to take over the meeting."

  "When Paul and Harry get back, they will be the ones to plant our body here at Richter Park. That leads you to to get ammo and see if there is this thing called a combat box. There probably is, but it did not come in when I took over. The next thing that we are going to do is when he leaves here we are going to tulip ourselves. We're not going to carry a blaster pistol. So we will grab our submachine blaster blasters and all of the magazines that we can. We will put our ammo in those magazines and put them in shoulder satchel. We will also take a grenade each. We will follow him into the casino."

  "Yes that's a good idea," said John. "I just need you to be not visible wherever I actually am in the building. Being shouting range."

  "Yes, sir. Okay, you agents let's get going."

  The two agents went down to the armory and pulled the 150 rounds from the shelves. They also found that enigmatic combat boxes. These were plastic boxes with 11.5 mm squares inside the box. You could put a shot of 11.5 mm ammo in one of the squares. They didn't know how many of these he wanted to carry, so they brought four of them.

  While the two agents were out into the armory doing their shopping, John and Oliver were clearing out the ammo in his steamer trunk. They just didn't have the time to figure out which rounds had been tampered with. So John merely assumed that all of the shots have been doctored. Then the two agents arrived with the ammo and the ammo boxes and with the four combat boxes that had a clip that allowed it to clip onto a belt.

  Oliver had never seen combat boxes before, so he took one of the tables and opened it. He saw that the plate was arranged in three rows of 10 squares. From one of the known right ammo boxes, he took out around and placed it in the square. John could see the wheels in Oliver's mind whirling at the possibilities.

  "Did you see how many of these there were," he asked his men.

  "Well, we took out four of them in there appear to be about two more rows. I would say there were eight more combat boxes."

  Oliver shut the top of the combat box that he was touching. It was a simple black plastic box. If he and his men were carrying the full-sized 11.5 mm blaster pistol, having a few combat boxes on their belt would be a comfort. They could reload the magazines during a lull in battle and come out charging.

  "Okay, I need to have all of these magazines loaded. I need somebody to put a round in the chamber. Don't worry about trying to let the hammer down. There is a grip safety on this blaster."

  All of the men including Oliver sat at a table. They took rounds out of the boxes and put them in the magazines. In no time John had his 10 magazines. He had them only fill two of the combat boxes. These he had hung from his belt behind his back. That way there would be some concealment because of his suit coat. He picked up the blaster pistol and slapped a magazine and the pistol grip. He put the blaster pistol into his shoulder holster under his left arm. He put three magazines into the area under his right wing. He filled the left and proper outer suit coat pocket with the remaining seven magazines. He moved his slate from the left outer suit coat pocket and put it into the matching inner remaining suit coat pocket.

  John padded all of the areas in his suit coat and in his pants where he kept other items of need. Everything was in its place, so he turned to Oliver and said, "I need you to bring your data sleaze kit. I have my own, but one thing computer technology is taught me is redundancy."

  "I'll bring my kit."

  "Okay. I'm going to meander my way to the Dragon. When you have everyone you've assembled, please follow in my wake. Let me know when you come so I don't shoot you by accident."

  "That is an order that I can follow with enthusiasm, sir."

  John collects Oliver on the back. Oliver felt remarkably included in John's world now. Oliver knew that the Marine Corps was a tightknit organization. They patted each other on their backs to reaffirm their brother and sisterhood.

  "You can trust us, sir. At least you can trust us now with the mole removed."

  John looked deep into Oliver's eyes. He doesn't know when he had one over Oliver so entirely, but it was reassuring.