Redoubtable

12

Captain Jack Montoya, Royal U.S. Marines, waved his rifle for emphasis. “You drivers are going underground with me and mine.”

Two shrugged and went where Jack pointed them. One looked ready to make a break for it, but couldn’t break eye contact with the muzzle of Jack’s borrowed M-6.

With reluctant steps, he went.

A Marine was waiting at the nearest manhole, clearly unhappy to be the stay-behind guy. He motioned the drivers below, then gave Jack a plaintive look.

“Hold the fort here. Don’t let anyone steal our rides,” Jack ordered.

“Aye aye, Skipper,” the Marine answered, resigned to sucking it up and soldiering where he was told.

Jack had to hurry the truck drivers along. One in particular really needed encouragement. At the end of the first tunnel, the sewer got bigger around. A glowing green chem light pointed Jack right.

About a block later, another light pointed left down a tunnel big enough to stand upright in. Jack got ready to jog.

And the third truck driver stumbled, bounced off the wall, and grabbed his foot. “I think I sprang my ankle.”

Jack put two sleepy darts in his butt and waited a second for them to take effect. As he fell asleep, Jack made sure the reluctant dragon was faceup and at no risk of suffocating.

“Either of you want to join him?” he asked the others.

Those two took off at a fast enough run to satisfy Jack.

Another chem light pointed Jack up a smaller tunnel; he would bet money he was now under the rear parking lot and headed for the service entrance to the stadium.

It got crowded when he got to where a ladder led up. A few Marines kept order, but most of the folks down here were volunteers. “Make a hole,” Jack called.

The civilians that were slow to get out of the way got their feet stepped on by either Jack or the Marines directing traffic. Jack went up the ladder without slowing down.

He found himself in a working basement with brightly painted pipes and air ducts. Sergeant Bruce and his LT listened to Tilly as she waved her arms to explain the layout of the building.

“There are four stairwells going up the inside of the stadium. That one there,” she said, pointing at a blue door, “and another like it about a quarter of the way around that way. There are two more. One is a long way down that corridor, and the last one is a bit farther. You go up four flights of stairs, and that puts you at the top of the entrance ramps. From there, you can head into the stadium, where the guys are with machine pistols, or back out to the ramps, where the guys are with rockets.”

“Sounds like the place to be,” the LT said.

“You take the long run down that corridor,” Jack said to the young officer. “Sergeant Bruce and I will take the one a quarter of the way around. We don’t bust out until my order.”

“Aye aye, Skipper,” the LT, said and took off at a gallop with two squads.

Sergeant Bruce was already headed for his station with his squad. Jack trotted after him.

Tilly also joined him in a jog that got her “puppies” bouncing right along with her.

Jack enjoyed the play . . . for about a second . . . and then got his head back where it belonged. He headed up the stairs without breaking stride and found himself quickly at a red-painted door.

Jack keyed his mike. “Lieutenant, Staff Sergeant Bruce’s squad is in position.”

Nothing came back.

“There’s a lot of steel and concrete around us,” Tilly said. “I’m not sure your radio gear works. None of ours did.”

“Crack the door,” Jack ordered.

Sergeant Bruce’s technician did. A spy scout showed nothing in sight, so Jack edged out. “Clear,” he announced softly. Sergeant Bruce whispered assignments to his troopers as they trotted silently past him.

Two went for the outside; the other ten headed inside, with Tilly right behind them, her rifle at the ready.

Jack found himself squatting low behind a bleacher seat with a good view of the field below. “Squad leaders, report who’s on net.”

“Squad one in place.”

“Squad two in place.”

“Squad three in place.”

“Squad four in place.”

“On my mark, take down anyone with a weapon,” Jack ordered. “Mark.”

Rapid small-arms fire filled the stadium.

Command Master Chief L. J. Mong stood behind the bosun piloting Longboat 1 as it braked to a halt on the main runway at Lander’s Rest’s airport, spaceport, whatever. The bosun used the last bit of energy on the vehicle to turn off onto a taxiway before gliding to a stop, leaving the duty runway for the three longboats right behind him.

The command master chief studied the lay of the port. About a mile off to his right was a squat one-story terminal. At midlength, it spiked a four-story-high control tower. Several trucks waited in front of the tower, but there were no aircraft in sight. What was of prime interest to the chief just now were two tugs in that parked group. Either one could easily tow a longboat to a parking spot off the runway.

Nothing was moving.

“Should we land the landing party?” the chief master-at-arms asked.

“Not just yet,” the command master chief said. “They haven’t made their move.”

The other chief glanced around the field, a pained look on his face. “I don’t like sitting here, like some dumb duck in a shooting gallery.”

“Our intrepid princess is quite sure that these shuttles are an asset the bad guys want to capture in full running order.”

“I’m glad she thinks so. I just hope she got the bad guys’ chop on that.”

“I hear things often go the way she wants,” the command master chief said dryly.

“Me, I’m worried about the first time they don’t.”

“Longboat 4 just touched down, Command Master Chief,” the pilot reported.

“Ah, and now we have activity at the terminal.”

Several trucks and the two tugs now formed a procession winding their way from the tower across the taxiways toward where the longboats lay strung out like a bunch of beached whales.

“Chief Master-at-Arms, you may prepare to deploy your landing force at my order.”

“Thanks be to God,” the other chief grumbled, and headed aft to make it happen.

“Pass the word to the other boats,” the chief told the bosun in charge of the first lander.

“They are glad to hear that, Command Master Chief.”

Command Master Chief Mong waited for a long minute, watching the trucks slowly getting closer and dreading a mortar or rocket grenade salvo from someone who hadn’t gotten The Word from the princess that the landers were worth more captured than burned.

After a minute of stretching his luck, the chief thumbed his commlink. “This is the command master chief. Land the landing force.”

Behind the chief, the aft hatch whined as it dropped open. As soon as it was down, the chief master-at-arms started shouting for his rifle-armed sailors to “Go, go, go. We ain’t got all day. What kind of sailor hangs around in a target this big?”

Sailors raced from the open hatch to take up prone shooting positions in the grass at the edge of the taxiway.

Across the way, trucks slowed to a halt a good hundred meters shy of the boats.

“Time to see if us adults can talk our way out of this situation,” the command master chief muttered to himself as he headed out to see who on the other side was up for a talk.

Jackie Jackson glared at the man riding in the back of the lead truck as it screeched to a halt beneath the balcony where she stood.

“The Longknife woman is coming,” he shouted.

“And you couldn’t just call to tell me,” Jackie said, waving her other phone.

“I tried. Something was wrong with the phone. You’d answer, ‘Yes.’ I start talking to you, and the phone would go dead. After three tries, I came as quickly as I could.”

“Stadium,” Jackie yelled at her phone. It started ringing immediately. It continued ringing. On the fifth ignored ring, she punched off.

“Find the guy in charge of the phone system,” she shouted at one of her lieutenants. “Shoot him and his family.”

“Will do, Your Terribleness,” the guy said . . . and ran.

Jackie reached for the bullhorn she kept on the balcony. She liked the feel of the handle in her hand, the way people jumped when she shouted into it. Sometimes she used it even when the phone system was working.

“Everyone, listen up,” she yelled. “Longknife and her henchmen will be here any moment. You, helpless little citizens, up on your feet. You can finally do me a service. Gunners, get ready.”

Below her, and on the roofs of the buildings across from her, people leapt to respond to her orders. Here and there someone got shot for responding too slowly. After three shots, there weren’t any slow ones left.

Jackie put down her bullhorn and picked up the detonator. That Longknife woman was in for one big surprise.

Kris found herself in the unaccustomed position of watching as someone else started a fight. First platoon belonged to Lieutenant Stubben, and it responded to him.

On his order, the snipers took out the riflemen on the roof of the buildings across the street. The hostages used as human shields showed dismay and shock as they felt the wind from the killing rounds, but none of them were hurt.

The same could not be said for those with guns.

Utter silence hung in the air for a moment after that fusillade. Then smoke grenades landed in front of the mansions across the way. They rolled to a halt, spewing smoke. For a long fifteen seconds, nothing happened as the billowing green smoke swelled up and thickened to cover the windows, where no doubt people with those ubiquitous Greenfeld State Security machine pistols waited behind a cringing wall of human shields.

When Lieutenant Stubben determined the smoke was thick enough, there were low shouts of “Move it. Move it. Move it.” and fire teams of well-spread out Marines did indeed move.

Machine pistols chattered from across the way. One bullet even shattered the window Kris was looking out, leading Penny to suggest Her Highness might back off.

Kris didn’t.

She kept watch as no Marine went down to that poorly aimed barrage.

Doors shattered under trooper-applied explosives. Pistols sprayed on fully automatic. M-6s replied with single shots, and quickly the noise died with the gunners.

Kris headed across the street at a run, Penny and Chief Beni right behind her.

The great room of the first building held its own tragedy. The gunman had found his human shield in the way when he went for the first Marine in. He cut down three of his hostages before the Marine took him down with a single head shot.

Kris shook her head; despite all her efforts and those of her Marines, this was going to be a bloodbath.

“Hold it,” Chief Beni half shouted. “We got a problem. There are live wires coming into all six of these buildings.”

That must mean something to the chief but it meant nothing to Kris.

“Back out, Kris,” Penny shouted.

Kris backed, while waving at the hostages to follow her. Two of them were weeping over the bleeding ones, but a young mother gathered up five kids and drove them ahead of her.

Kris tried to help with the kids, but Penny was half pushing her, half dragging her out the door.

“I got it. I got it,” the chief shouted.

“You got what?” Kris said, standing in the doorway, and pushing back at Penny.

“I think someone rigged these houses to blow right after we took them. Everybody, look around,” he yelled.

“What’s a five-pound bag of coffee doing in the library?” a Marine hollered.

“Does it have a wire leading to it?” the chief yelled.

“It did,” the trooper said, appearing in the hall with said bag of freshly ground Mountain Grown Best, “before I yanked it out of it.”

“Give me your bayonet,” Chief Beni said, acquired the blade and sliced into the bag. Freshly ground beans poured out until all that was left was a large, ugly gray block.

“C-8,” Penny shouted, then added on net, “everyone, look for bags of coffee. They’ve got explosives in them, and our sniffers won’t spot the stuff surrounded by coffee.”

“Somebody really needs a wake-up call in the morning,” the chief said, looking the gray block of high explosives over to make sure it was safe.

“Someone’s going to be very unhappy,” Kris said, as Marines reported more bags found and stripped of their ignition wires. “Jackie is not going to like the surprise at all.”