“But, I thought the commander is the last to leave,” the ambassador said, his voice wavering.
“This is a Federation embassy, sir, not an old wet-water Navy ship,” Esther told him, glancing at the DCM.
He’d met her at the landing pad and explained that even in the best of times, the ambassador could be somewhat “scattered,” was the phrase he’d used. The current situation only exacerbated that condition.
“It’s time, sir,” the DCM said. “You go, and I’ll take care of the loose ends here.”
An explosion from off in the near distance rocked the office windows, the sound muffled only somewhat by the embassy’s sturdy construction. The ambassador didn’t seem to notice.
“We’ve got at least 200 people at the gate now, begging to come in,” Major Ralph Kurtzman, her S3, passed to her on the P2P. “The ones in the rear of the mob are taking sporadic fire.”
With the ambassador looking right at her, she kept a slight smile on her face as she sub-vocalized, “Our orders remain in place. No one gets in until the embassy and the ambassador are secure.”
“Understood.”
“I can’t leave now. Greta, she’s . . .” he started before turning to the DCM and asking, “Kirk, where is Greta? Why isn’t she here?”
“Sir, I’ve got Captain McLamb and Alpha Company at the residence. They have your wife and will be off the planet’s surface momentarily,” Esther answered for the DCM.
“It’s time, sir,” Fehrenkamp said softly, as someone might speak with a child. “You need to go.”
Esther didn’t have time to sweet talk a man who had so evidently lost it, if he even had “it” in the first place. She was about to order the four Marines to bodily lift him from his chair when the DCM stepped forward, and taking the ambassador’s arm, helped him up. There was no doubt in her military mind that the DCM was running the show and probably had been for some time, but she could also see that he genuinely cared for the ambassador.
The old man let the DCM get him up and start him from around the desk.
The ambassador took three steps, then said, “Wait!” He moved back to his desk, then reached out to take the pen that was sticking in a wooden block. “My pen,” he told the DCM as if it was a vital piece of embassy gear.
“Sir, if you will go with the sergeant major now, we’ll have you up to the ship in no time.
“Sergeant Major, if you will take care of the ambassador now?” she said, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head at her brother, her sign that he needed to get the ambassador out as quickly as possible.
Two distinctive reports of a Marine Windmoeller and Holscher reached Esther, followed by panicked screams from outside the gate. One of her two snipers had engaged a target.
Hell, there goes the “no engagement” orders, Ether thought.
Admiral Jallaby, the sector commander, had briefed her while the battalion was in transit. It was imperative that the embassy remain secure and that the ambassador be removed from harm’s way, but until the Federation knew who was going to come out on top, there would be no taking sides in the conflict. Part and parcel to that was that if possible, there would be no engagements.
Which was pretty ridiculous, in her opinion. They were going into a hot zone, and with warring sides, the Marines would more likely than not to have to use deadly force to protect Federation citizens or locals. As a captain, Esther had commanded a secret mission of snipers, and she held them in utmost respect. Sergeant Jack Hilborn, one of her two snipers, had taken the shots, and while he might not be Master Guns Medicine Crow, Esther trusted his judgement, Admiral Jallaby’s directives be damned. Standing inside the embassy building, she wasn’t about to second guess the sergeant.
The ambassador hadn’t seemed to register the shots. He evidently didn’t realize that this was now a shooting mission.
“If you’ll come with me, sir?” Noah said, taking the DCM’s place on his arm and signaling Corporal Prostov to take the other.
He came close to carrying the ambassador as the Marines escorted the man out of his office.
Esther asked for a sitrep on the gunshots, and her AI flashed that two armed men had fired upon the crowd at the gate. Four of the people were down, their condition yet to be determined. The two men had been taken down by Sergeant Hilborn, probably KIA.
“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” Fehrenkamp said, interrupting her train of thought. “It’s just been over the last six months.”
Then he should have been removed six months ago, Esther thought. Would we be in this mess if someone competent had been in charge?
That wasn’t a very charitable thought, Esther knew. The Dorado Front had been around for years, and Esther wasn’t sure that even a competent ambassador could have accomplished much once the DF began to sweep aside the government forces.
“So, what’s the status of the evacuation? Where are we at with the classified?” Esther asked, which technically wasn’t under her responsibility.
With the ambassador out of the picture, the removal and destruction of sensitive materials was the responsibility of the DCM, his Regional Security Officer, and the commander of the Marine Security Guard, Gunnery Sergeant Tika Tasuaalo. Although a Marine, Gunny Taluaalo did not answer to Esther despite the fact that she commanded the NEO, but rather to the DCM.
If Fehrenkamp thought Esther was overstepping her bounds, he didn’t say anything, instead telling her, “Gunny T is destroying the classified as we speak. She should be done in 15 minutes.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with her when she’s done. I’d like her view on the situation.”
Which the DCM could take as a rebuke, she knew. Some Second Ministry folks felt like second-hand citizens to the First Ministry and the military, and they could be prickly when they thought they were being disrespected. To ask to speak to the gunny could infer that she didn’t trust the DCM and his staff.
Which was partially true. Not that she didn’t trust them over all, but for military matters, such as defending the embassy, she’d prefer to speak with someone who understood Marines and Marine tactics. Esther and her staff had gone over the embassy’s F101, the plan for the defense and evacuation that each embassy created, and it had seemed reasonable, but she still wanted to speak to the gunny face-to-face.
“No problem. I’ll let her know,” the DCM said.
“We’ve lifted off,” Noah passed on the P2P. “I’ll be back on the return trip.”
“Your ambassador is off the ground. He’ll be aboard the Fujiyama in thirty minutes.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over the one-oh-one with you. I’ve already given your Captain Tranh the list of our key players and their locations. All other remaining non-essentials are at the staging areas A, B, and C. As you can see . . .”
Esther listened as the DCM went over the ground situation. She was impressed with the degree of thoroughness, and she couldn’t think of much to ask. DCM Fehrenkamp evidently was at the top of his game. She forgot about asking for Gunny Tauaalo and instead dealt directly with him as they determined where would be the best placement of her Marines while they waited for the final decision on whether to implement a full evacuation.
“Let’s take a look at the grounds,” Esther said when the DCM was finished. “I’d like to get a visual in my mind of the layout.”
The DCM led Esther out of the office, one of his security team jumping out in front of the two. With almost 240 Marines in the compound, she didn’t know how much good a single bodyguard was going to do, but she held her tongue.
Fehrenkamp led her to the roof of the embassy. The ambassador had been lifted off the planet in a Marine Albatross, but the bulk of the evacuees were leaving on one of two ship’s shuttles.
“What’re the numbers now, Top,” she asked Master Sergeant McCurry.
“Two-oh-three gone, ma’am. We’ve got eighty-six here,” he said, pointing to the line of people filing in F-2.<
br />
“How many does that leave us with?”
“Sixty-nine. One last load. F-1’s due to be back in 42 minutes.”
“And that leaves how many left at the embassy?” she asked, turning to Fehrenkamp.
“Thirty-three, including the security guard detachment.”
Esther did a quick calculation in her head. Captain McLamb and his two platoons from Alpha had already taken off from the residence without a hitch. Bravo and Charlie were in the compound along with nine from headquarters. With the embassy’s 33, that left her with 263 bodies to get off the planet if the final order came. Each shuttle could carry 90 pax, and the two Albatrosses could carry 30 each in a pinch. Call it 240 if they packed it in tight, to include all 24 PICS Marines. Which meant they could not lift off with one flight unless she ordered the PICS Marines to molt and leave the combat suits behind, something she was loath to do.
“Do you need all of those thirty-three?” she asked the DCM as they started back down the ladderwell to the ground level.
“That’s my requirement. No choice on those numbers.”
Esther pulled up her disposition on her display. Bravo was holding the front gate and most of the perimeter. Charlie had one platoon completing the perimeter, one inside the embassy at the ground floor, and one helping Top handle the first wave of evacuees.
“Captain Kingery,” she passed on the command net. “I want Third Platoon to return to the ship. Get who you can on F-2, then the rest on F-1 when it returns. Send a squad from Second to take Third’s place loading pax.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am. But if I may suggest, let me leave one squad from Third. They’ve bene working with Top McCurry and know what he wants. I’ll take a squad from Second to make up the numbers.”
Esther thought about it for a moment, then concurred. She simply needed to lower the number of bodies on the ground, and what he said about his Third Platoon already working with the Top made sense.
Her AI, which was continually scanning the nets, decided right then that she needed to hear what Captain Gill was saying to the Three.
“ . . . no ID, but he says he’s Federation.”
“Show me visuals,” Esther ordered her AI.
Her AI picked two, one from the front and one from the side. A middle-aged man, dressed in safari chic, had pushed himself to the front of the mob at the gate. Around him, people were shouting for attention, demanding to get into the embassy.
If the man’s Federation, why is he out and about while the DF marched into the city?
“Get a retinal scan,” Major Kurtzman told the captain. “I’ll run it through the system.”
People shoved closer to the gate, smashing the man flat against it. They seemed to sense something was changing, and they wanted to take advantage of it.
“You need to act now, Ralph,” she passed on the P2P. “Send out a snatch team, get that guy, and isolate him away from the embassy until you can scan him for anything we don’t want in here. Then you can identify him.”
“Roger that, ma’am,” the major responded before giving the orders to Captain Gill.
A snatch team was normally used to penetrate a violent crowd to snatch an instigator. Very few mobs could or would stand up to the bulrush of a well-trained team, and the battalion had drilled incessantly at this.
Two of the PICS Marines were standing sentinel at the gate, more for show than anything else. But not entirely. On Captain Gill’s command, the two Marines moved forward to the gate and opened it about two meters, their shear bulk nicely filling the gap. When they stepped forward, the front of the mob recoiled. The moment the two PICS Marines stepped to the side, five more Marines, packed tightly, pushed out into the crowd parting them. With a coordinated pivot, they enveloped the man like some sort of giant, armed amoeba. Immediately back stepping, they returned to the opening of the gate and slipped back inside the compound as the two PICS Marines slammed the gate shut.
The entire movement took 14 seconds, too quick for the stunned crowd to react.
“Pretty impressive,” the DCM said from where he’d watched on his handheld screen. “No one in the crowd was even hurt.”
“That’s what we train for,” Esther said.
Not that we always get it right, even in training, she admitted to herself.
She was pretty pumped to see the snatch performed flawlessly.
The snatch team searched the man, and one pulled something out of his pocket. Esther immediately recognized a field holocorder, the same type carried by members of the press. A moment later, his identity was confirmed. De’Sander Yule was a credentialed reporter at large, meaning he was licensed by the Federation but worked as a free-lancer.
“Colonel? The guy’s a reporter. Credentialed. Says his cards were taken by the DL when he was with them. What do we do with him?” Major Kurtzman asked.
“What do we do? We give him back his holocorder and ask him if he wants a lift off-planet, that’s what we do,” she told him.
“But, he’s been with the DL all this time, ma’am.”
“As it his right as a reporter, Ralph. You know that. Find out what he wants to do.”
Esther knew what the major was driving at. This guy had been with the DL, so he had to have some good intel Captain Montoya, her S2 back up on the ship, would love to hear. But their hands were tied. As a Federation credentialed reporter, he had every right to pretty much go where he wanted, even to the enemy. And in this case, the DL wasn’t an enemy of the Federation, just to the local government. He probably ran afoul of local laws, but that wasn’t the Marines’ concern. To them, he was simply another Federation citizen, but one who could choose to remain until the planet came crashing down around his ears, if he so desired.
“His choice, Ralph. Search him, then send him to Gunny Vandervee at the cafeteria. If we can get him off planet, we’ll do it. If not . . .”
Which is bullshit, Lysander. I can imagine the CU going batshit if we left him.
Technically, Esther could leave him on the planet. He’d arrived during a conflict of his own free will. But the Correspondents’ Union was a powerful force that transcended governmental boundaries, and they could make things tough for her if they so desired.
“Roger that, ma’am,” Kurtzman passed back to her.
With Vandervee on her mind, she called him up, asking, “Gunny, how many non-Federation citizens do you have there?”
“Fifteen, ma’am. Seven Brotherhood, three Confeds, three Alliance, a San Marcan, and Cassovite.”
“OK, not as bad as I thought. You’ve got a Federation reporter on his way. Keep him with the rest. Are they demanding lift off-planet?”
“Just the Cassovite.”
The fifteen people had either been at the embassy on official business, or the ambassador—no, probably the DCM—had given them refuge when things went to shit. The Brotherhood and Confederation citizens probably didn’t want to be seen as being “rescued” by the Federation, so they wouldn’t ask for a lift.
If it gets hot, though, I bet you change your tune.
The Cassovite was a different story. A tax enclave of the wealthy, Casson had no navy nor much of anything else.
A rush of displaced air made Esther’s ear’s pop. She looked up, but she couldn’t see the aircraft that rushed just out of view. She heard and felt the ordnance that the plane dropped, though.
“Did anyone get eyes on that aircraft?” she passed on the open net.
“I did,” Sergeant Hilborn passed from his perch on the embassy roof. “It was DL. A Spyder. It dropped its load two blocks over.”
A Spyder was a Gentry-made atmospheric craft, cheap, reliable, and effective for what it was designed. The Marines could knock it out of the sky with any number of weapons, and she had to assume that the Vanity military could, too. The fact that it was flying over the capital with seeming impunity was pretty telling that the situation was going south quickly.
“That was a DL Spyder,” she told the DCM. “It dropped its b
ombs two blocks to the north. What’s there?”
“The Ministry of Commerce and the Alliance of Free States embassy.”
Damn, I wish I could get drones out there! she wished for the umpteenth time. She needed to see if the Spyder had targeted the ministry building or the Alliance embassy.
Her orders, however, were nothing Federation past the embassy walls, and that included her drones.
“Gunny,” she asked Vandervee on the P2P, “get one of the Alliance folks to call their embassy. Let me know if it’s still standing.”
“The Spyder’s coming around for another run,” Hilborn said. “I can barely pick it up, but it’s coming back, no doubt about it.”
“I’m coming back up,” Esther said.
With the DCM in tow, she ran up the ladderwell to the roof, six floors up, all the time scanning her various feeds, cursing the limitations placed on her Marines. A NEO wasn’t considered a combat operation, but Marines could die all the same.
Top met her at the door that opened onto the roof, one arm out, pointing to where Hilborn had picked his firing position, the other one motioning back-and-forth like a traffic cop directing her where to go.
“I’ve got a shuttle inbound, ETA four minutes,” he told her.
“Wave it off until we see what’s going on.”
A Marine Albatross could more than handle a Spyder, but things would be a little dicier for one of the Mount Fuji’s shuttles.
She ran up to Hilborn, who pointed to the planetary west, over the city center. She accepted his feed, and a split second later, her AI had centered the Spyder in her face shield display. The plane was still ten klicks away, so maybe 45 seconds. Her AI kept calculating a probable target location, but there were still too many variables at play.
“Sector Ops,” she said, and the Mount Fuji’s comm center patched her through to Admiral Jallaby’s operations center back on Port Florence. “I’ve got an incoming Spyder that has already dropped ordnance. Request weapons free.”
There was a momentary pause, one in which the Spyder closed the distance, and then the comms operator came back with, “That’s a negative. The DL aircraft targeted a government building, not our embassy. I repeat, negative. You are not granted weapons free.”
Blood United (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 5) Page 9