Backshot

by David Sherman

  Gossner looked down the side street toward Center Boulevard and saw a tourist couple duck into the service alley that ran behind the vacant building. None of the other people on the street paid them any attention.

  “Come on,” he said, and took Dwan’s hand. She skipped along with him. Her jauntiness jarred Gossner, but he didn’t display any discomfort. He glanced into the service alley as they passed it. He could barely make them out, but he saw the tourist couple, thinking themselves fully hidden, in a tight embrace.

  “Is that how we’re going to get in the building during the day, Ivo?” Dwan asked. “Playing the young lovers making out in an alley?”

  Gossner blinked; he hadn’t thought she’d even seen the tourist couple. “Do you have a better idea?” he asked in return.

  “Let’s try it from the other end of the alley.”

  “Whatever you say, dear.”

  “You’re so sweet, Ivo.” She squeezed his hand and briefly lay her head on his shoulder. Smart move, Gossner thought. If anybody followed them around and saw them duck into the service alley, they’d think the obvious—that they wanted privacy without having to waste time going back to their hotel—or was Dwan doing something . . . Nah, not the Queen of Killers. When they approached the alley from the other end Dwan pulled Gossner’s hand around her waist and snuggled close. She looked up at him with an adoring expression and whispered something he didn’t catch. At least, he was pretty sure he heard her wrong; something about “jump” and “bones” and “after the kill.”

  Nobody paid them any attention when they entered the alley, and in just a moment they were slipping through the shadows on their way to the rear of the vacant building. In the distance they could make out the tourist couple, who seemed to be in an even more intimate embrace than before. When Gossner looked back, he saw people passing the alley’s entrance; none of them even glanced down it. In daylight, he saw that all the detritus in the service alley was incidental rubbish, none of it organic. There was also a good deal less in the service alley than there was in the access alleys he’d looked down. Nothing was spilling from bins now, the sanitation department must have made a pickup since last night. He wondered what the schedule was. It wasn’t long before they reached their destination. They both looked carefully, but neither saw any sign that anyone had investigated the open ground-level window. In a moment, they were back in the basement.

  Dim light filtered into the basement through the two windows on the alley side. It was enough to show them that the basement ran the length and width of the building and was indeed empty. They saw the stairway to the ground floor and headed for it. They stopped halfway up at the sound of voices from above.

  “—my needs exactly,” a male voice said.

  “And how soon would you want to move in?” a female voice asked. Footsteps that sounded like they were headed for the front of the building accompanied the voices.

  “As soon as possible, actually. There are those few items you need to fix. What’s your timeline on the work?”

  There was the sound of the front door opening.

  “We can have it finished within a fortnight. Provided I can get a crew in to get started in—”

  The voices were cut off by the closing door. Gossner, in the lead, turned around and sat heavily on the stairs. Dwan, a couple of steps lower, put her hands on his knees and leaned in so her face was close to his.

  “Let’s take a look at that second floor room anyway,” she said. “We might still have enough time for the shot.”

  “Yeah,” he said, though he thought they’d have to do it from the rear of Ramuncho’s or even from someplace else. He rose and led the way. The view from the second floor rear room was a sniper’s dream. The room was filled with shadows, the sniper could stand back from the window and be effectively invisible from Center Boulevard, even from the first several meters of the access alley leading to it. The view into Ramuncho’s window was at an angle, and not all of the interior was visible from the Ranstead Street building, but the part that was visible included the table reserved for President Lavager.

  “I like it,” Dwan said. She stepped up to the window and examined the molding. “It’d be a snap to remove the glass,” she said. Shooting through an open window would be more accurate and effective than shooting through the glass, and if the glass was removed they wouldn’t have to risk attracting attention by opening and closing the window.

  “The workers will notice if the glass is missing when they come in,” Gossner said.

  “They’re just as likely to think it’s something the bosses forgot to put on the punch list,” Dwan said. He grunted noncommittally. As a boss himself, he knew that bosses didn’t always think of everything—but he wasn’t about to admit it. Then he had to stop thinking about it and help her remove the glass.

  “Let’s go check out the Presidential Residence, just in case,” she said when they were finished.

  “That’s a very good idea.”

  But there were too many tourists and soldiers around the Presidential Residence for them to find a sniper spot.

  Room 1007, New Granum DeLuxe Inn

  They ordered a room service dinner so they could discuss their options while they ate. Gossner also wanted to check on what the local news media had to say about the raid on the Cabbage Patch. This wasn’t the time to get exotic; they went for roast beef, scalloped potatoes, and broccoli with hollandaise sauce. They skipped dessert, but did indulge in a pot of real coffee. Gossner activated the trid and picked a news channel. A perfectly coiffed and overly sincere-looking man in an immaculate suit was talking in front of a scene of devastation familiar to anybody who’d ever been on a battlefield after the shooting stopped. Gossner hit the “repeat segment” button on the trid’s control and the view changed slightly. It was the same location, just a few minutes earlier. This time, the view wasn’t static, rather it panned from left to right. What had obviously been guard towers were tumbled to the ground. Bunkers were blackened with the scorch marks of blaster fire. Several buildings were shattered, the obvious victims of internal explosions. People stood or walked about in the middle distance; most of them looked dazed, and some staggered.

  This time the reporter wasn’t in the scene, though he was there as a voice-over. “You can see for yourself,” he said with earnest sincerity, “the destruction wrought by unknown raiders on the Union of Margelan’s agricultural research center called the Cabbage Patch. The destruction is horrendous to look at, absolutely horrendous. Words fail me.”

  The images panning the field reached him and stopped, as did his voice. He wasn’t looking out at the viewer, but to the side, the area the image field had just covered. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the reporter to find words again. He turned his earnest face to the front and said, “I’ve never seen such destruction, and I’ve seen more destruction than most people have in my function as a reporter for UXN Instant News. Nowhere in my lengthy service of bringing the news to you have I seen anything to match this, not even in the aftermath of the most violent storms, or the crash of the TGA orbital shuttle three years ago.”

  “He should see some of the things I’ve seen,” Gossner muttered. “I’ve been in places that make that look like a group of toddlers were left unsupervised for five minutes.”

  “I guess he’s never been in the military,” Dwan murmured.

  “Sure as shit not in the Marines,” Gossner said. They stopped talking and listened again.

  “. . . was here just a short while ago,” the reporter was saying. “I was able to speak with him for a few moments.”

  The trid image wavered for a second, then steadied with the reporter standing next to a dirty and obviously angry Jorge Liberec Lavager.

  “Mr. President,” the reporter said in a tone of surprised awe, “who could have done this? Do you know yet? Has anybody been arrested?”

  “Just give me one question at a time, Bil,” Lavager said, his voice strained. “We are certain of
who the perpetrators of this atrocity are, and are taking steps to gather information to confirm it. Also, even as we speak, our army and air defense corps are conducting a pursuit of the felons who destroyed this important agricultural research facility. Don’t worry, Bil,” Lavager turned to face the cam, “and you at home, don’t you worry either. We’re going to catch the people responsible for this, and when we do, they are going to pay the maximum penalty.”

  The image wavered again and reporter Bil was once more alone in the image. “President Lavager got rescue and clean-up operations begun here, and headed back into New Granum shortly after my interview with him.”

  Then “Bil” took a few seconds to rearrange his face into an expression of earnestly sincere gravity, and said, “It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but normally reliable sources have informed UXN Instant News that President Lavager was on his way to the Cabbage Patch for a routine visit when his convoy was attacked, and several members of his party were killed. Again, this hasn’t been confirmed, but Army Chief of Staff General Locksley ‘Locker’ Ollwelen is said to be among the dead.”

  “It wasn’t us,” Gossner said, surprised at hearing about the ambush.

  “We’re on this mission because of the Central Intelligence Organization,” Dwan said, teeth clamped and eyes slitted. “Do you think maybe they’ve got a backup operation going here?”

  Gossner considered the question for a moment, then shook his head. “No. They could screw up an ambush that badly, but I think they want to keep their DNA out of this. Remember, the target has enemies in other nation-states here, so it could have been one of them.”

  Dwan looked at him for a long moment, before turning back to the trid. Gossner thought his answer mollified her, but he wouldn’t be willing to bet his life on it. Soon after, they headed out to find the target’s current location. But it soon became clear that he wasn’t in his usual haunts. They’d try again the next day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Fifteen Kilometers Northeast of the Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  The going was slower now that someone was looking for them. Daly told Nomonon to keep the lorry to low ground and under trees as much as possible. That meant Nomonon had to take a meandering route that went around hills and zigged and zagged along the irregular borders of clumps of trees. Fearing another strike from the sky, Daly put Sergeant Kare and his third squad on air duty, scanning the sky in all directions for aircraft. Whenever they spotted one, Nomonon pulled the lorry into the deepest shadows he could find until the plane disappeared over the horizon.

  “There’s more than just the pair that buzzed us, you know,” Kare said to Daly after the third time they’d had to hide from aircraft they’d seen heading in a generally northerly direction.

  “I expect they’ve got a full-fledged search on,” Daly acknowledged. “Once they found what we’d done to the Cabbage Patch, they probably started feeding everything they could into searching for us.”

  Daly checked his inertial map and silently swore; in the two hours since dawn, they hadn’t covered much more than half the distance to where they’d hidden the puddle jumpers. And the search was getting larger, covering and re-covering more ground. If escape using the puddle jumpers hadn’t already been impossible because of their dead and severely wounded, now it was totally out of the question because of the air search. As it was, escape would be easier if they didn’t go back for the puddle jumpers. But Daly didn’t think they could leave that equipment behind; if it was discovered, the equipment would point to the Confederation Marines as the raiders. At least they had the lorry. Now if the search didn’t spread too wide too quickly . . .

  A Hilltop, Ten Kilometers East of the Cabbage Patch

  “Hometown, Hometown, this is Walking Man. Over,” said Lieutenant Rak Svetlanacek, commander of the Fifth Independent Armored Cavalry Platoon, which had been sent to take out the lorry.

  “Walking Man, this is Hometown. Go.”

  “Hometown, we are at the coordinates where Gamma Flight saw the lorry. The lorry’s not here. Over.”

  “Walking Man, Hometown. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

  “Positive, Hometown. I’m standing in the wheel tracks where the lorry sat, but it’s not here.”

  “What are your coordinates, Walking Man?”

  Svetlanacek looked at his map display and read off the coordinates.

  “Confirmed,” Hometown said when he compared Svetlanacek’s coordinates with those given by the Gyrfalcon flight when they reported seeing the lorry. “Tell me about the tracks, Walking Man.”

  “They come from the southwest. I can see where the lorry stopped. There is evidence on the ground of several men moving about and one man lying down, but there are no tracks of anybody walking away. The lorry’s tracks go southeast from here.”

  “Follow the tracks, Walking Man, I will direct an air search to your southeast. Hometown out.”

  Lieutenant Svetlanacek took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Mount up!” he shouted to his soldiers. The thirty cavalrymen broke off their search of the area and reboarded their three armored cars.

  “Echelon formation,” Svetlanacek ordered when his men were all back on their vehicles. Corporal Mirko, the command vehicle’s driver, started his vehicle and headed out at the commander’s signal. The three armored cars headed southeast at speed, with Svetlanacek’s car in the tracks left by the lorry, one car fifty meters ahead of it and a hundred to its right, the other an equal distance to its left and rear. A hundred kilometers to the west, a flight of Gyrfalcons veered from the flight path to its previously assigned search area and headed due east to take up a search pattern in support of the Fifth Independent Armored Cavalry Platoon. Fifty kilometers to the north, two more Gyrfalcon flights broke off their searches, gained altitude, and headed south to newly assigned search areas. At the same time, a mounted infantry company on the New Granum Road turned off and headed east cross-country on an interception vector. Seventy-five kilometers to the south, an airborne battalion boarded Vertical/Short-Take-Off-and-Landing aircraft and launched. The VSTOLs began orbiting several kilometers south of the lorry’s one known position. Once the raiders were located, the VSTOLs would land their battalion to trap and crush the raiders.

  In the Air, Southeast of the Hilltop

  “Hometown, this is Mad Max. Over,” the leader of another flight of searching Gyrfalcons said.

  “Mad Max, Hometown. Go.”

  “Hometown, I think I have something on the ground, we’re heading for the deck to check it out.” Mad Max Lead transmitted his location.

  “I logged your location, Mad Max. You are cleared for the deck.”

  Mad Max Lead turned onto his right wing and dropped toward the ground, followed by his wingman five hundred meters to his left rear.

  On the Ground, Southeast of the Hilltop

  “Bogies, eight o’clock!” Corporal Pitzel shouted.

  “Hide us,” Sergeant Daly ordered.

  Corporal Nomonon looked for a heavier patch of trees, someplace that would offer more screening than the thin layer of branches under which the lorry was moving. He spotted one to his left and the lorry trundled under the denser cover provided by the branches of three huge trees. A moment later, the two Gyrfalcons shot by barely a hundred meters overhead; subsonic, the force of their passing shook the leaves and branches, but barely rocked the lorry. Daly couldn’t see the aircraft, so he listened intently to the scream of their passage. He swore when he heard them turn about for another pass rather than climb back to their search altitude.

  “Stand by,” Daly ordered over the command circuit, “they may have spotted us.”

  The lead Gyrfalcon shot past fifty meters to their left, then a change in the second Gyrfalcon’s doppler told Daly it was shifting to come directly at them. A line of explosive cannon shells erupted in the treetops, raining shattered branches and mangled leaves down onto the lorry.

  “They missed!” Nomonon squawked excit
edly.

  “No they didn’t,” Daly snapped back. “That burst was to make a hole in the canopy so they can see through it.” Then into the command circuit, “Everybody who can, dismount. Third and sixth squads, take the assault guns! We need to try to take them out on their next pass!”

  The twenty-two Marines who were still mobile scrambled off the lorry, bringing as many of their severely wounded with them as they could. Doc Natron stayed aboard with Lieutenant Tevedes, who he said couldn’t be moved. Third and sixth squads set up the heavy fléchette guns.

  “Here they come!” Daly said more calmly than he felt. “First section, right aircraft. Second section, get the one on the left. Wait for my command. Shoot in front of the sound.”

  The overhead foliage was too thick for them to see through until the aircraft were almost directly above them, they’d have to aim by sound rather than sight because when they saw the aircraft, it would be too late to hit them.

  Daly listened closely. This time the aircraft on the left came first. When he thought it was close enough, he ordered, “Second Section, fire! ” He barely had time to finish before he had to order, “First Section, fire !”

  Southeast of the Hilltop

  Mad Max Lead staggered as two plasma bolts and a spray of fléchettes struck the aircraft. The pilot flipped off the damage alarm that screamed in his ears and ran his eyes over his control panel. He had no idea what had hit him, but the control electronics in his left wing were out and his engine was overheating. He began sweating; he had little control over the Gyrfalcon now—and he had to stop the increasing heating of the engine. He eased the throttle back and tipped his nose up, which put him in danger of stalling, but he was too low to bail out and couldn’t survive ditching in this terrain.