by Leo Champion
About fifteen other Army people were in the room, mostly on the floor, with their wrists zip-tied together and gags over their mouths. A couple of them showed the start of black eyes; Jester had been pleased by how little violence had actually been needed to overwhelm the Army guards.
“You are going to serve the rest of your hitch in a Black Gang for this,” Connor snarled. “This is kidnapping, this is assault, this is…”
“This is necessary, Lieutenant,” said Jester flatly. “Sorry about this discomfort. All we need is two hours, during which we will keep the airfield running exactly as it should be, before we untie you and turn ourselves in.”
The other combat engineers in the room, six of them with a mix of personal tasers, billy-clubs and makeshift blackjacks in addition to their M-25s, made noises of agreement.
“If all you’re going to do is keep the airport running fine, why are you taking it over?”
“Because the plane our friends are taking in is regularly scheduled – but it’s going to be arriving early without its cargo, and its departure won’t be scheduled. It’s also going to need some unplanned engineering, and we can’t have word about that getting out either.”
“You think the nomads are monitoring our radio networks?”
“The battalion commander thinks their advisers are, Lieutenant. We’re not taking chances on warning them any more than they already have.”
A knock at the door.
“Hadfield.”
“Come in.”
Six more Army troops were pushed into the room, their hands zip-tied behind their backs. The senior of them, a staff sergeant, wore on one eye what was going to be a real shiner of a bruise, and on his face otherwise a vicious snarl. His mouth was gagged with a tight bandanna.
“They held a gun on me, and a taser between my legs,” Connor told the man Jester understood to be her platoon sergeant.
“This is the last of the platoon, Dave,” said Hadfield. “We’ve already searched them for personal communications devices and holdout weapons.”
“Sit down,” one of Jester’s men gestured to the corner of the storeroom.
The six men were herded there. With twenty-one prisoners in a room the size of half a shipping container, it was crowded. Aside from a few pieces of cardboard box and the chair they’d brought in for the lieutenant, there was nothing to sit on.
“Leave two men to guard these ones,” said Hadfield to Jester, “and let’s go.”
“Borscht, Gonzalez,” Jester detailed a corporal and a private.
“My chair, Lieutenant ma’am,” said Corporal Gonzalez, who had been the one to bring it in. He gently tipped the platoon leader off it, sat down.
Jester checked that the two both had tasers.
“Two hours,” he told them. “Then you let them go and surrender, clear.”
“Clear, sir,” said both men.
“And now,” Hadfield said, “to take care of mechanics. You take Control, Jester.”
* * *
“Beginning descent into East Vasimir,” reported one of the pilots. “Radio on, please?”
“Anything resembling a distress code,” said Doom, “you will most sincerely regret.”
He really hoped Hadfield and Numminen had taken over the place without incident. It was a touchy, risky part of the plan because there were so many ways for someone to screw it up – for that matter, holding people at gunpoint was a good way to get someone shot one way or another.
But letting the Euros know, through traffic monitoring and probably observation from the mountains that there was something unusual happening at the airport… would get Bravo Company wiped out. It would probably cause the investment force to attack before the main horde even got to Kandin-dak, or Lavasseur to do something else. She did have possible air assets. This was unpleasant but necessary.
“Sir, we’re coming in early,” said the captain. “They’re going to know that.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Doom, hoping he was right.
* * *
“Don’t mind us,” Senior Lieutenant Jester said as, with a squad of his M-10-toting combat engineers, he pushed into Air Traffic Control. Men and women in Air Force blues, and a couple of civilians, looked up from radar screens and consoles as the engineers spread out to cover the room. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing.”
“What,” demanded a female lieutenant-colonel as she got up, “is the meaning of this?”
“Down, please.” A sergeant pressed the officer back down into her seat with a firm hand on one shoulder.
“Your duress codes,” Jester announced to the room, “are ‘Salt Lake’, ‘Andromeda’, and ‘Tango Whiskey Foxtrot’. If we hear any of those, the person who says them will be very, very sorry.” He raised his submachinegun for emphasis.
Heads in the room turned toward at the lieutenant-colonel, to see how the boss would react.
“We’re not going to disrupt anything,” said Jester. “Just making sure no word gets out of what we’re about to do. Hundreds of lives are depending on this, and I’m sorry it has to happen this way. In two hours we’re going to surrender ourselves, and we’re not going to interfere with anything in the meantime. Just – no distress codes and nothing unusual is going to happen.”
“What, Senior Lieutenant, are you and your men attempting to gain by this?” the lieutenant-colonel asked.
“The lives of our friends, Army and Air Force people. Now behave yourselves,” Jester said, “and nobody gets hurt.”
One of the air controllers, a warrant officer one, looked up from his panel.
“Flight CF-219 is coming in almost half an hour early.”
“Clear them for landing,” Jester said, “and don’t let anything slip on the radio, got it?”
Chapter Thirty-One
“All clear,” Faden reported to Doom, gesturing from the cargo ramp at the back of the C-175.
Rhee and another man had taken the plane’s two pilots, now with gags over their mouths and their wrists zip-tied together, out of the cockpit. Now the two were being walked out of the plane as Chip and Glass took over.
“Captain Numminen, I assume,” Doom said to the slim dark-haired Delta Company commander.
“Lieutenant-Colonel.” Numminen saluted.
“Looks like you’ve got this place secure,” said Doom. “Good job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Teams of mechanics with huge dollies were moving to the plane, beginning to attach the JATO rockets and drop tanks. A fueling truck, with a Legion man in the cab next to the driver, drove up.
“You’re going to need some men to hold this place down,” said Doom.
“Yessir. Three platoons, of the five available. We have First and Second Platoons left. They’ve got their parachutes and are ready.”
“Have them leave the parachutes.” Doom checked his watch. “We don’t have time for an assault landing. Bad idea in daytime anyway.”
“What are you going to do, then?” Faden asked.
“Make do. With what we have.”
The men of the two available platoons, loaded up for combat, began to pile into the back of the C-175 as the mechanics and refuelers did their work.
* * *
“This is CF-219,” Chip said into the microphone. “Requesting takeoff clearance.”
Doom could imagine air traffic controllers in the raised control tower, Legion men threatening weapons to their heads or near enough. There was hesitation, he could certainly tell.
“CF-219,” came a controller, “you are cleared to depart for Templeton. As scheduled.”
Chip, in the right-hand seat, looked at the older Glass in the pilot’s left-hand seat. Glass looked up at Doom, who was standing over them both with Faden in the background.
“Go,” Doom mouthed.
Wires ran into the cargo plane’s cockpit, through quickly-drilled holes just below the broad plexiglass windows. They were connected to a makeshift switch on one end, duct-ta
ped to the control board on the left-hand side, and jerry-rigged on the other end to the JATO rockets that had been screwed into hard points on the plane’s exterior.
Doom was no pilot, but he could tell the plane was heavier than it should be, between the weight of the drop tanks and the rockets, which the C-175 could physically have attached – physical hard points were standardized across all United States aircraft – but was emphatically, the Air Force warrant officer in charge of the mechanics had said, not built to operate.
“Sir, if you didn’t have these men pointing weapons at my crew, we wouldn’t consider putting them on you. I’m not going to be party to the destruction of an airplane, sir.”
“Then,” Doom had said, “I’m glad we do have these men pointing weapons at your crew. Do it.”
The warrant officer and his team were now under guard, alongside the refueling crew and the plane’s original pilots. They were being held, tied up and gagged for safety, in a store-room adjoining one of the hangars.
“Handles like a pig,” Glass muttered as he pushed the throttle forwards. “I suggest you sit down, Colonel.”
There were a pair of bucket seats in the back of the cockpit; Faden had the other one.
“Switch the radio to this,” Doom said, giving Glass a data chip.
Glass plugged the radio into the console.
“Battalion frequency,” said Doom to Faden. “We’re going to be mostly flying over jammed mountains and wastelands, so let’s talk with the fort while we still can.”
Engines powered up. The C-175 began to move along the runway, picking up speed and launching into the air. Glass pulled the stick back and applied power, aiming the plane’s nose up as he wheeled it around.
They’d fly north until they were out of sight of whoever was watching East Vasimir, then wheel over the mountains and head for Hubris, going slightly out of their way to fly through the un-jammed area around Diamond North.
“Live when you want to be, Colonel,” Chip said.
“We’re going to have to get the outside group to clear the way,” Doom said to Faden. “The radio man and those guys. Since there’s no time for an assault drop – they’ll have to silence the stingers long enough so we can land.”
“How do we warn them without letting the enemy know there’s a reason for that?”
“We can move them, at least. They’re only about five miles from the old city. Field intelligence says the radio man filed a report about the city. We’ll just tell him…”
* * *
“To go where I felt uneasy,” said Mullins. “That would be the old city.”
“You sure?” asked Hill. That was where most of the nomads would be, the ones not surrounding the fort.
“It was a clear order,” said Mullins. “You heard.”
“Why are we doing this?” Senechal asked.
Mullins turned to look at the helicopter pilot.
“I don’t argue with battalion commanders. Do you?”
It looked like there might have been something on Senechal’s lips, possibly about maybe being involved with killing lieutenant-colonels, but he didn’t say anything.
“Radio man’s right,” said Lennon. “Get our asses in gear and move out. They want us there for a reason, and I suppose we’ll find out soon enough what it is.”
Exfiltration force being used, Mullins thought. It made sense to him. What he didn’t like was moving toward the biggest concentration of enemy around, but there had to be a reason for that.
He just hoped it was a good reason, and one that wouldn’t get them sacrificed.
* * *
“They’re giving orders,” Lavasseur mused to Hecht from her office, “to an external unit. But they know we’re listening. There may or may not be an external unit.”
“I’m thinking they must mean the city, by the ‘where you felt uneasy’. They’re concealing it from us, but not very well.”
“Good call, First Lieutenant,” said Lavasseur. She was mildly impressed that a field grunt had that level of perception.
“Where else would a diversionary unit go? They’d be cut down and shredded if they approached from any other direction,” said Hecht reasonably.
“It may or may not exist. It might be only to distract you,” said Lavasseur.
“I’ll set guards anyway, then, Madam Colonel.”
“Very good.”
Lavasseur put her phone down. Bujold was hovering by her peripheral vision.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Madam colonel, Landsfarne Base commander says he’s launched planes toward the border, but they’re not going to cross without authorization.”
“I give him that authorization,” snapped Lavasseur.
“I told him that, ma’am. He replied he’s not going to engage American military targets with his own assets, without further authorization.”
Reasonable. But frustrating.
“Then I’ll have to get him that authorization,” Lavasseur said, wondering who that could be relevantly influenced, she could deal with. Ten years ago, damn it, the damn Dutchman would have done almost anything a Lavasseur had told him to.
* * *
Bastards, Staff Sergeant Clark thought, glaring at the two Legion men guarding them. They sat with rifles on their laps but tasers ready, watching them.
Watching the front of them. The Legion men had gone over everyone pretty thoroughly, but they’d missed the small holdout knife in Clark’s boot. With gestures to Corporal Leroy, that man had moved over and discreetly gotten the knife out. A a minute ago Leroy had, after some hard work, finished sawing at his zip-ties and was free.
Discreetly Leroy’s hands moved now to the back of the platoon sergeant, cutting at the tight zip-ties. Soon Clark’s own hands were free.
With his mouth gagged, Clark couldn’t give any instructions; he couldn’t even talk to the Legion men to distract them. But Corporal Leroy, a big black man, was looking at Clark: what do we do?
Clark gestured at the man on the chair, on the left. You get that one, he willed the corporal to understand.
On three, he thought, tensing up.
One – two—
Leroy sprang up a moment ahead of Clark, who pushed himself up and threw himself forwards. The Legion man on the chair fell backwards under Leroy’s crash-tackle, and then Clark, fueled by anger and exasperation, was on his own man, headbutting him in the jaw and slamming him against the wall.
He punched the man in the face again and again; Legion fucks! Hold us at gunpoint, do you?
Clark became conscious of hands pulling him away. Leroy.
“Cool it, boss.”
He’d beaten the Legion man to an unconscious pulp; blood covered his face as, released, he slipped bonelessly down the wall.
“You free the others,” Clark said. He hoped this door hadn’t been locked from the outside – but no, it didn’t look as though it even could be, without a chain and padlock.
“I’m going to raise the alarm.”
* * *
The C-175 was physically shaking as it flew over the wastelands, RPM and airspeed indicator dials well into the red zones. Digital indicators too were lit up with warnings, and Chip had shut down an audio warning a few minutes ago.
470 knots air speed, said the speedometer. Something like a hundred miles an hour above the big transport plane’s listed maximum.
“Can we go any faster?” Doom asked.
“Really, sir?” asked Glass. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Serious question. Can we take this plane any faster?”
“Colonel, we’re at the limits of what this plane can handle physically, and we’re destroying it,” said Glass. “That shaking? We’re pushing it past the limits, and forget about any kind of safe handling at this speed.”
“I’m taking that as a no?”
* * *
“Sir,” Corporal Rivera said to Senior Lieutenant Jester in the control tower of the East Vasimir airfield.
Jeste
r turned, his eyes following the corporal’s pointed finger. Cutting across the runways, hauling ass, were three tracked armored fighting vehicles with Marine markings. Coming straight for the control tower.
“Shit,” the combat-engineer officer mouthed.
Sirens began to wail from somewhere outside the control tower. The Legion soldiers in the control room looked at Jester. They’re on to us.
“Red alert,” came over speakers in the control room. “Repeat, red alert. This is not a drill. All East Vasimir units to red alert. All Foreign Legion personnel are to be placed under arrest immediately. Repeat, all Foreign Legion personnel are to be placed under immedate arrest.”
From somewhere came the distinctive snapping booms of M-31 fire.
Christ, thought Jester. Had someone resisted?
“What do we do, sir?” Rivera asked.
“Only one way in here,” said Lance Delgado. “We can take them.”
If Delgado hadn’t been across the room, Jester would have smacked the man.
Instead, he unslung his M-10, confirmed the safety was engaged, and placed it on the floor.
“We’re not going to shoot anyone. Put your damn guns on the floor right now,” he snapped.
Just in time. With a thump the door flew open and combat-armored Marines burst into the room – four, then four more, their M-31s raised to their shoulders and ready to fire.
“Hands up, motherfuckers!”
Jester’s were already raised. Looking around the air traffic control center – it was hard to take his eyes away from the three guns pointed at this head, but he managed it – he could see his men doing the same.
“On the floor!” barked a gunnery sergeant. “Right now, assholes!”
Careful not to let any of these twitchy young Marines think he was about to reach for something, Jester lowered himself to the floor with his hands spread.