Undaunted

31

Captain Jack Montoya was a firm believer that few problems could not be solved by the proper application of the correct amount of high explosives. Being on the receiving end of just such a solution was rare for him.

He didn’t like it. Not at all.

He especially didn’t like the feeling of helplessness churning in his gut. At this moment, Kris needed a doctor a lot more than she needed a security chief. Especially one who had failed at his duty.

That Kris had outdone herself today making his job impossible was no excuse for failing it. Not for Jack.

A doctor came out of the crowd near simultaneously with a nurse arriving with supplies from upstairs. She and an assistant carried a backboard and more medical gear.

The doc shook his head at the two bodies compressed together by the explosions from above, and said, “We’ve got to separate them.”

He, the nurse, and the medic wrestled Kris facedown onto the backboard and started an examination just as Bobby DuVale began to moan and come awake.

The nurse left Kris to the doc and medic and began checking out the young man.

The doc was still looking Kris over when the nurse asked for help rolling the man over. “He’ll do better on his back,” she told them. He’s more shocky than anything else. May have a concussion.”

Jack stood guard at Kris’s feet with the sniper at her head. A crowd began to gather, but one look at the rifle at the ready, and no one seemed to feel the need to get overly close.

Jack divided his attention between the look on the doc’s face and the crowd. His pistol was back at high port.

Twice he started to level it at someone who made a move he didn’t like. Twice the person grew wide eyes, showed him open hands, and quickly backed into the crowd.

So Jack could still scare people.

If only the look on the doc’s face didn’t scare him worse.

A siren announced the arrival of the ambulance. Jack stood aside as two emergency technicians joined the circle.

Kris was finally lifted onto a basket stretcher, intubated, and given an intravenous drip. They did everything that Jack had been briefed to expect when someone with his kind of job blew it.

In the middle of this he was distracted by his commlink.

“Captain, in restrooms, the assailants ditched the green coveralls they were wearing when they threw the bombs. We have no idea what they may look like now. I’ll check with the locals to see if they have any security cameras that might have caught them while still in coveralls or as they left the restrooms. Without some camera shots, we’ve lost them.”

“Sal, are there security cameras in this area?”

“I don’t think there is a security camera anywhere on Texarkana, sir. I am in touch with what passes for the local security net. A police captain is en route to Sergeant Bruce’s location. Other officials are following, as well as the only K-9 team in Denver. They are doing their best.”

“Thank you. Monitor and report anything concerning Kris to me,” Jack said, then turned his attention back to the young woman who was his job. No, Kris was far more than that. She was his life.

And just now, they wanted to move her to the ambulance.

“Are you coming with her, soldier?” the doctor asked.

“Yes.”

“You family?”

“I’m her chief of security,” Jack said.

“I see,” he said in that tone of voice that meant he didn’t really but had nothing better to say. “Is there anyone that can give permission for medical treatment?”

“Doctor, she’s a lieutenant in the Wardhaven Navy and the great-granddaughter of King Raymond of United Sentients. I don’t care what your local rules happen to be. Take care of her. Take the best care you can.”

“That, my heavily armed friend, is what we will try to do, but these are not the kind of wounds we have much experience with around here.”

Jack found room in the ambulance. His sniper took station in the front seat, and a still-comatose Princess Kris Longknife began a twelve-minute ride to the best medical facility available for several light-years.

Sergeant Bruce did not take failure well. Marines are trained to win. Failure is something you do to the other guy.

Bruce had a bad feeling that today he would learn how it felt to be the other guy.

While he was waiting for the dog team to arrive, Abby called.

“Do you have a minute to talk to Lieutenant Pasley?”

The intel officer’s dad had been or still was a cop. She’d demonstrated again and again that she knew how to talk to the local police in their own language. If anyone could, she would get whatever the local cops had to give. With a sigh, Bruce said he would take the call.

“Sergeant, we’ve been following events from the lodge via your and the captain’s computers. We know your situation.”

“Then you know Kris is down, and whoever did it is doing too damn good a job of giving me the slip.”

“Yes, Sergeant. That’s why I wanted to let you know that you’ve been doing as good as I could have done. I’m in touch with the local police now. I’ve got them moving, even if their pace is more glacial than I’m happy with. Bruce, they aren’t stonewalling us. They just aren’t prepared or equipped for something like this.”

“You have any idea who did this to Kris?” the Marine sergeant asked.

“No idea at all. I’m going to get me and Chief Beni, along with every Marine tech I can lay my hands on, over to the scene of the crime as soon as the next shuttle lands.”

“How long will that be?”

“It just dropped away from the Wasp. Say half an hour to get here. Another hour to get there.”

The locals weren’t the only ones who had been caught flat-footed by developments; Bruce found his hands were making fists and willed them to relax. More cops arrived, and Bruce managed to get a printout from his computer of the best sighting he had gotten of the pair.

It was of the back of their heads and not very good even of that.

The dog arrived, a real bloodhound. It spent a few seconds sniffing one of the green coveralls, then sniffed the floor around the men’s room. It took off immediately into the crowd, moving at a brisk clip. Bruce and the sniper followed right behind it.

It didn’t head for either of the main exits. Instead, it took them to a small door in a tiny alcove. The door’s lock had been jimmied. Behind it they found maintenance passages leading to a storage area, heating ducts, and a back door to the mall.

The hound went out the door and straight to the curb . . . where it stopped, sat down, scratched itself, and eyed its keeper. He fed it a dog treat before facing the Marine. “I’d say this is where our targets got in a car.”

“So would I,” Bruce said, and rang up the Navy intel win nie. “Dead end here, Lieutenant Pasley. You got any leads?”

“None. Denver police are really sure some cowboy did it.”

“Make that cowboy and cowgirl,” Bruce interrupted.

“Right, my mistake. Anyway, until I can get some of our techs to the scene and go over it, I can’t do any better guessing than they can.”

“You telling me you want me back where the bombs exploded, preserving the scene?”

“Please do. I’ve been promised that the locals are securing the scene. I’d really like you to help them.”

Which was a gentle way of saying she didn’t trust the locals to realize what high tech could do if the scene was preserved. Sergeant Bruce called his team back to the front of the food court and headed for the elevator foyer.

He got there just in time. A local cop was being buffaloed by a building manager who wanted to open both exits from the elevator landing “to avoid jamming up tenants at quitting time.”

An angry Marine sergeant, backed up by seven armed Marines, settled the matter. The tape stayed up.

Sergeant Bruce considered Kris a Marine. To have failed her was something he took personal. He’d guard the crime scene until hell froze over if that was what it took to find out who had done this to her.

Willy Stone held up his hands, showing open palms, when the angry Marine officer pointed his pistol at him. He backed into the crowd, but he did not leave.

From a safer, more distant corner of the foyer, he watched the scene as the ambulance arrived, and more medical people were sucked into the task of keeping the space invader alive.

He got a call for Ralf Ford and told the caller he’d gotten a wrong number. That told him that Aril and Betty had made good their escape, but he continued to watch.

Only after the ambulance departed with the Marine officer and his long-gun friend did Willy leave.

It would have been too much to expect that a doctor would declare Longknife dead at the scene. No, they’d take her to the nearest emergency room and spend a fortune trying to breathe life back into the wreckage the bombs had made of her body.

It would have been different if the slowpoke Anderson had sent out to buy the nails had returned faster. If the opportunity to strike at a DuVale and a Longknife hadn’t developed so fast. So many ifs.

Still, barely alive, the Longknife girl would not cause him any trouble. And while everyone was pointing fingers at each other, he was free to act.

He’d doubted that a plan thrown together this fast could work. He’d demanded and gotten more money. Now, surprisingly, delightfully, everything was coming together!