by Blaze Ward
He was behind everyone else right now, unless and until someone turned around to look at him.
Whoopsie.
Accountant had gone pale. Mac was concerned, but still came off as a barely-out-of-school kid in over her head.
Rob knew better. He’d kicked in the door on a group of professional mercenary killers with the woman and learned a new trick from her along the way.
“Tomasito, I have heard terrible rumors about you,” Guadarrama announced, like some bizarre kabuki with dialogue added.
Four punks with only six hands free lurked around the booth in menacing ways. Left-handed, Rob didn’t think he could get them all with a stun grenade. Not from here, anyway.
Still, this was exactly the situation that had gotten Rob called on duty today. Miguel was still the sneakiest man in The Service, if push came to shove.
Rob sat his beer down and sighed audibly, just in case anybody was paying too close attention to him.
“There are stories going around, Tomasito,” Guadarrama continued theatrically. “Suggestions that you are being blackmailed by my enemies. That maybe you have already sold me out.”
The man fell silent and Rob slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. Up until those words, this might have all been a terrible misunderstanding that some fast talking and hand-waving could defuse.
But the accountant, Tomasito, had a packet on him right now. A small chip filled with all sorts of useful evidence that the man was indeed being blackmailed for. Except that instead of buying his life from another gang, Tomasito was investing in witness protection by the Ramsey government. A new life on another world, with enough of the money he’d stashed over the years to live comfortably while waiting for that high-powered rifle with a telescopic, gyro-stabilized, ballistic computer attached to come through a window some morning.
The packet was supposed to have ended up in Mac’s possession, perhaps during a hug at the end of the meal. Perhaps slipped across while holding hands.
They’d never believe the woman was merely an innocent girlfriend if they were about to make a spectacle of their accountant.
Hell, the only other supposedly innocent witness in here was that guy at the far end of the bar…
Rob could almost smell that realization as it hit the men around him. Heads perked up, almost like a colony of prairie dogs sensing trouble. Heads started to turn this way like a tide coming in.
Rob found the arming switch on the first grenade and pulled the nasty, gray egg from his pocket. Always get it clear before arming. Just in case you drop it. Words to live by.
Rob shifted his weight around like he was stretching and pushed the button. He chucked the thing sideways along the bottom of the bar, hoping it would roll and not hit any legs.
That rolling and bouncing deadly egg made one hell of an ominous racket that caused heads to rotate right back away from him, so Rob slipped a hand under his jacket and grabbed the pistol.
Pulse pistol doesn’t kill as well as a slugthrower, but it was a lot less noisy. Tended to burn and bruise painfully when done right, rather than punch holes in people, so you have a lower death rate when you shot. Useful, if you wanted prisoners but wanted them down, bleeding and scorched. And a charge cartridge held a lot more shots than a slugthrower.
Rob slid backwards off his stool and drew the weapon.
One of the nearby punks got a growl on his face and started to stand up, as if to say Going somewhere?
The grenade went off.
Mayhem erupted.
And Hell followed with him…
Rob shot the guy in the right shoulder. This close it blew him over backwards and took him out of the fight.
Second shot looked random, until you realized which one of Señior Guadarrama’s goons went down, staggering sideways into the only other one with his hands free.
Rob pivoted and shot the bartender on general principle, following the shot by vaulting over the bar in case incoming fire was about to demand the right of way.
Screams were starting to wind themselves up, like a tornado siren waking from that long, winter slumber to greet the first twister of spring.
Rob stayed low and tossed the other grenade back over the bar, set for impact detonation.
If you were smart, you’d stay down at this point.
Hammer of light. Thunder of sound.
Rob rose and shot anything that moved.
Señior Guadarrama was just now falling out of the booth from where Mac had stunned him. He was probably the safest, as he’d be assured of waking up, unless someone else in here had it in for him.
Rob shot a fifth and sixth man, both leg shots that just left a person with a limp for a few months. He wasn’t trying to maim or kill anyone today.
Unless someone demanded it.
The smart bunch of the punks in the room indeed stayed down at this point. A few flipped over tables, but he and Mac had the room between them, so you couldn’t get good cover.
And Rob was outnumbered about twenty-to-one, even with Mac protecting the accountant.
Just for the hell of it, Rob pulled out his identity card with his left hand as he shot number seven.
“Policia!” he yelled with a voice his first drill sergeant had taught him. It echoed off the walls in here like the voice of doom. “You are all under arrest.”
He didn’t figure many would fall for it, but it added another level of confusion. Especially if the Service needed to make the accountant disappear after this.
And then somebody blew the front door off the hinges with a shaped charge and heavily-armored trouble stormed the room firing.
Rob put his pistol and faux badge on the bar and his hands in the air, smiling.
Mac stayed down, but the only woman in here wasn’t likely to get shot accidentally.
A Heavy Rescue Assault Team generally had better manners than that.
The door behind him burst open as more cops came through the kitchen and pointed lots and lots and lots of guns at anybody still moving.
Weren’t that many, even after fifteen seconds.
But Rob hadn’t been playing around.
And Hell rode with him...
One of the Troopers walked over and kept the big gun pointed at him.
“Segura,” Rob said simply, not moving, hands up and a grim smile on his face.
The trooper nodded.
“Status?” the woman asked him.
Rob hadn’t realized it was a woman under all that armor, but it really didn’t matter. She’d saved his ass when he saved Mac’s.
“Mostly stun trauma,” Rob replied. “Bartender and four others with pulse wounds and will need your medics. Don’t think we’re in triage mode.”
“Understood, sir,” she said and vaulted the bar to inspect the semi-comatose bartender. Impressive in all that armor.
Rob waited for all the bad guys to be lined up on one side of the bar by two dozen angry men and women with guns. Cops finally showed up about fifteen minutes later. Or maybe that was when the people in charge outside finally let any through the barricades.
Rob recognized Ahmed, Detective Sergeant Ahmed McIntyre al-Inverness. They were drinking buddies, of a sort, and Ahmed knew what Rob and Mac did for a living.
The rest of the cops apparently got to stay outside in the drizzle.
“Do I wanna know?” Ahmed asked as he got close enough.
Rob and Mac were seated at a table he’d turned back upright after the room got largely emptied. The accountant had disappeared into protective custody, along with Señior Guadarrama and a few of his goons. Everyone else was out on the street, waiting their turn in the black maria.
“Probably not,” Mac spoke up now, having been largely silent. “And congrats on the promotion.”
Ahmed beamed. Detective Sergeant. Rewarded for helping Mac and Rob on an old case.
“What happened?” Ahmed asked anyway, gesturing around him as forensics folks did their thing.
Rob just smiled and pointed for
the man to sit with them. Him and Mac had beers in front of them, but Ahmed was on duty.
“Pretty sure it will leak to the press later as a gangland hit gone terribly wrong,” Rob said. “Or maybe Puerto Peñasco Police, working with planetary authorities, broke up a drug smuggling ring. Haven’t talked to my boss yet, so I don’t know what cover story will be used.”
“You two scare me,” Ahmed admitted.
He was Rob’s weight, four inches taller, so skinny. Not bad looking for a cop, even if he had to shave twice a day.
But he was a cop.
Rob and Mac were spies.
Rob shrugged. He started to say something, but his handcomm chirped.
He looked at the screen, but all it said was M.
No name attached, but the man didn’t need one.
M was actually how his predecessor had tended to sign everything. Miles Cavendish. Former Director of Lincolnshire’s Guardia Civil Interior.
Rob had always wondered if Miguel Cabrill had gotten the job entirely on his first initial, after that legend had finally retired.
“Hey, boss,” Rob said vaguely as he answered.
“Thank you,” Miguel said simply. “Now, if you and Mac can be spared, I have a need. You’ll have to move quickly, but something else has come up.”
“We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Rob said.
The line went dead instantly.
“Boss wants us for a post-mortem,” Rob said to Mac. He turned to Ahmed. “Someone will be in touch with the appropriate stories. I suggest you let them conduct the press interview with you and maybe the mayor standing close beside them so you look good on the tele tonight.”
Mac nodded and they both rose.
Ahmed shook his head.
“Seriously, you two frighten me.”
2
Rob still had stains from spilled beer and something on his knees from where he’d ducked down behind the bar, when they were ushered into Miguel’s office by Robin, the guy who had replaced Ben when Miguel’s old executive assistant got promoted to Chief of Staff.
After Stansfield Brightmeadow-Gates had been outed as a Fribourg Empire spy and executed. You didn’t trade back folks like Brightmeadow-Gates. They knew too much.
And the bastard had hired the team who had gotten that close to killing Rob, so Rob didn’t have a lot of sympathy in him on the topic.
Mac at least smelled nice, as he trailed in her wake and tried not to ogle her bottom too much. Fifty-two-year-old women were not supposed to have asses that nice. Rob was pretty sure there were rules somewhere that covered this.
But Miguel had wanted them now, rather than waiting for Rob to take a shower and smell less like a bar brawl, so he could just disinfect the seats after Rob left.
Or burn them.
Miguel Cabrill. Tall, stout, bald, gray. Mid-fifties in an indeterminate way. Lighter skin tone, almost Anglo, rather than the darker Spanic tones more common in Lincolnshire and closer parts of Aquitaine. Smarter than he looked. Cagier than anybody ever gave the man credit for.
He might have gone down for the Brightmeadow-Gates Affair, but had outmaneuvered everybody so many times they ended up asking him how to fix it because they were completely confused.
“Mac, Rob, I’ve had a chat with Dolf,” Miguel began, even before offering coffee.
Rob had a feeling they weren’t going to be here that long.
Rob nodded. It was Mac’s operation, and she’d handled it fine as near as he could tell, but she was a junior field agent, and he was an assassin. Age didn’t matter. Rank did, and he now outranked her considerably, since she had taken a lateral and a demotion.
She was still smarter than he was, if Rob ever managed to forget himself around her.
“What’s next?” Rob answered. Bright, helpful. Maybe he could still make his dinner reservations.
“Mac’s contact had the expected package with significant amounts of information,” Miguel said. “We’ll be all night digesting it, but I had Dolf go ahead and round up all of Señior Guadarrama’s men when the hammer dropped this afternoon. We got most of them.”
Oh ho?
The Service was in the law enforcement business now? Good to know.
Rob waited for the other shoe.
“Preliminary review of the files indicates that the gang was indeed smuggling in all manner of revolutionary equipment from a Salonnian contact,” Miguel said. “With Señior Guadarrama taken out, this end of the pipeline should dry up and local authorities should be able to get their arms around the rest.”
Rob nodded. Caught Mac doing the same out of the corner of his eye. Data Analysis, where she had originated, believed in the long, methodical build-up of evidence and information, like making a pearl. Most of the time Operations was there to run agents in the field, either delivering physical packages or extracting and inserting people.
Sometimes, you needed kinetic solutions, which was when people like Rob came into the picture. Things like today were why.
But there had to be another shoe. Rob waited.
“It is an interesting side effect of modern stardrive travel,” Miguel turned the conversation sideways now. Rob nearly pulled something trying to keep up with the way the man’s mind twisted. “Information can be anywhere on a planetary surface so rapidly as to be almost instant, but data can only travel though the medium of JumpSpace as fast as it can be carried.”
Rob had a bad feeling now.
“Meaning?” Rob asked, just because the old man had been looking at him when he stopped talking. Probably to make sure they were both still awake.
“Meaning Señior Guadarrama’s Salonnian contact won’t know he’s been removed from the playing field until someone tells him,” Miguel smiled. “We don’t know exactly who it is, but we know where. And can get you close. I’d like you to eliminate the other end of the supply chain as well, Rob.”
Yup. Handsome Rob, Assassin.
Sharp knife or blunt instrument, depending on your needs. The man with the lucky touch, at least so far.
“I haven’t been working this case, Miguel,” Rob countered. “It’s been Mac’s. I only knew enough to identify all the players and walk into that bar ready to kill everyone if she needed me to.”
“Understood, Handsome,” Miguel nodded. “This will need to be a team effort, because she has all the knowledge of the operation. Plus, the two of you work well together. That’s been demonstrated.”
Rob shrugged and settled his weight back as Mac leaned forward and took a breath. She’d yell at the man, even in his own office. Rob would enjoy witnessing that, even if he couldn’t ever tell anyone besides his old team, the Can’t Shoot Straight Gang. Jorge would get a giggle out of it.
“I agree,” Mac said, surprising Rob so badly that his head snapped around.
Her feisty grin did not help his peace of mind.
“But there is a secondary problem,” Mac continued, and Rob considered that he might still be able to make his dinner reservation tonight.
“And that is, Esm…Mac?” Miguel asked.
He’d started to call her Esme, like he’d apparently done for a decade, but Esme was someone else. Somewhere else. This was Mac.
“You’ll need significant time to digest all the contents of that package, plus whatever else you got from the others you hit today,” Mac said. “That blows the lead we’ll have.”
“Not necessarily.” It was Miguel’s turn to grin as Rob felt the jaws of the bear trap close around his ankle. “I propose to send someone from Cryptography with you who can dismantle all the security we might encounter around those files while in transit. You’ll arrive ahead of any warning they might have and be in place before the target can suspect anything.”
“Who?” Mac’s voice turned hard.
“Alicia Sepeda, if she’s acceptable to you.”
Rob really didn’t like the way Mac’s smile turned warm.
“Yes,” Mac said.
Simple as that.
; Rob had no idea who Alicia might be. The Crypto folks tended to be insular, a sub-division of Research and Development who did things that the rest of the Service might not have approved of. Rob had never dealt with them directly.
“Very good, then.” Miguel rose to shake hands, obviously dismissing them. “You shall depart around midnight. The information will be transmitted once we have everything arranged.”
Rob rose slower than Mac, and was second out the door.
He sighed as they started down the stairs to three. The Service didn’t believe in using lifts, even though they had them. Mostly used for outsiders who might need help or for hauling pallets around.
“It’s not that bad, Handsome,” Mac side-eyed him.
“This was supposed to be my month off, Mac,” he countered. “Just like last time.”
When a team of professional mercenaries had chased his tired ass all over town all day, nearly catching him more than once, until Mac had stepped out of her Data Analysis shell and become a field agent.
She shrugged. Not much to say on the topic.
“Interested in dinner?” Rob asked as they got down to three. “Got reservations and just enough time to take a shower and make them.”
“You go ahead,” she said. “Based on where we’re going, I need to do a few things around here. Probably meet you at the ship with Alicia, just before we lift.”
Rob studied her beautiful face, but she wasn’t giving anything away.
He shrugged.
It was a mission that would end in an assassination.
Physical or social had yet to be determined.
And maybe he could finally figure this woman out.
He doubted it.
3
Midnight.
Rob had made it to his reservation with about three minutes to spare. But instead of going dancing afterwards, he was being dropped at the starport by a Service vehicle. It had been a lazy evening at home, rereading bits of the file he’d just skimmed earlier for familiarization, and packing the tactical bag that Nigel Phipps had insisted on upgrading after the last difficulties. Most of the contents were far outside Service norms, but Rob didn’t care.