16
Two hours later, as dawn lit up the sky, an armed mob attacked the Twenty-first Marines in Briarton, the next city to the west. This had turned into a shooting war, which was expected. The Children of Angels were fanatics, willing to do whatever it took to bring humanity to the next level. They weren’t going to let the little fact that they hadn’t the training nor equipment to take on the Perseus Union Marine Corps with augments from three other military forces get in the way of their perception of reality. They were doing the angel’s work, so they couldn’t fail.
Rev didn’t think that was a good bet. Unfortunately, none of the Children of Angels cared one whit as to what he thought.
“Move out,” Staff Sergeant Delacrie ordered.
Yazzie turned to look at Rev, who nodded. She was on point, her first offensive combat action.
No better way to break her in.
True, it wasn’t on a mission for which any of them had been trained, but it was absolutely within the Raiders’ general mission statement. It was just that there hadn’t been much call for a snatch operation against a Centaur, so that particular mission had been shelved. Until now.
With hostilities open, there was a planet-wide operation to arrest a long list of persons of interest with the hope that by cutting off the head of the snake, the body would die. Intel gave that probability at twenty percent. Worth a shot, because even if the body didn’t give up with the head gone, there was over a ninety-percent chance that their combat capabilities would be diminished without their leaders.
A snatch mission was done quickly with an aggressive use of force, hopefully shocking the target with the speed and ferocity of action. Raiders were particularly suited for this type of operation. There were only five Raider teams with the regiment—the four normal teams and the attached Frisian Host flight—however, so they were assigned the most vital targets with recon and infantry picking up the slack.
Third Team’s target was Helen Yesterday. Rev had no idea why she was such a high-priority target, and the Intel part of their operations order hadn’t really delineated the reasons. It didn’t matter, though. She was their target, and so they’d bring her in.
The spaceport was being converted into a Marine camp with the command post abandoning the muni center, and they had to pass through a hastily erected gate, manned by four infantry Marines with two mech Marines in support, standing like statues and hopefully cowing the Children of Angels. Yazzie led the patrol through the gates where half-a-dozen people watched silently.
“They’re giving away our position,” Tomiko passed on the P2P.
“Probably.”
“The grunts should round them up.”
“Agreed,”
“Oh, you’re a gabfest, aren’t you? ‘Probably.’ ‘Agreed.’ That’s all you can say?”
“Not much we can do about it now with the ROI as it stands. But you heard the lieutenant. Pretty soon . . .”
“If we’re still around by then.”
Rev didn’t like the watchers any more than Tomiko did. But watchers weren’t just for one side. There were plenty of people on the planet who didn’t like the Children of Angels’ incursion and would just as soon have them all hauled off. And there were other CoAs who either weren’t as dedicated as the rest or liked money better than doctrine. Rev didn’t know who Intel’s canary was in this case, but Ms. Yesterday’s location had been known since well prior to the Marine landing. The woman had immediately left her home with a bodyguard for what she assumed to be a safe house, and that house was now being watched by a swarm of microdrones and several human assets.
They wouldn’t be able to directly approach the house without alerting her. But they could still achieve an element of surprise. Their target was inside a two-story building on Grant Street between North Eighth and Ninth. The ground floor was a bakery, while the second floor was an apartment. Naval surveillance had five people on the second floor with two in the basement. They couldn’t discount the two in the basement, but chances were that Yesterday was one of the five upstairs.
With Yazzie on point, the patrol moved west from the terminal on South Tenth until they hit Incarta Avenue, two blocks from Grant, then turned north. Some civilians stood on the street, watching them pass, but only a few yelled out the same things that had been hurled at them at the Municipal Center. There were far more furtive looks from people inside and peering out at them. Evidently, the good folks in Natividad had heard what had happened at Briarton, and they realized that the Marines had a pretty big bite when provoked.
“Keep scanning high,” the staff sergeant passed on the team net.
Which everyone was doing, of course. If they were going to be hit, the chances were that it would be someone on a roof or through a window.
“What’s the quantphone traffic like?”
<Heavy, as expected. You can track the patrols out now by the patterns of heavy call volume.>
Rev shook his head. He understood the concept. Let them talk while having AIs screen each call. The Intel guys would be having a smorgasbord of chat to listen to. But just like a real smorgasbord, there was sometimes too much from which to choose, and with so much traffic, they couldn’t analyze everything in real-time. That could put the team at risk.
The CoAs didn’t have nearly the same amount and types of weapons as the Marines did, but there were a number of things they could jury-rig that, if dropped off a roof, could mess up a Marine in a PAL-5.
Was that risk worth letting Angel shit fighters coordinate an attack on them? Rev wasn’t so sure about that.
I hope the overflight drones are on their toes.
Not all the drones were simply surveillance. They had four Tarantula Hawks that could take out a person even with the basic body armor used by police units.
The patrol made its way north, past Zero Street and into the numbered roads. They had to expect that their target knew they were there, probably getting nervous. The team members had to act as if this was a routine patrol, nothing more, nothing less.
A young man stepped out onto Incarta from North Fifth and hurled a rock at them before darting back out of sight. The rock made it halfway, bouncing to a stop thirty meters ahead.
“Should I have wasted him?” Yazzie asked Rev.
“He’s not a threat, and we’ve got a bigger fish to fry. You did good.”
Not now, at least. But later, even a young punk throwing a rock could be a valid target—if it got that far.
The team kept moving past Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh. If Ms. Yesterday was monitoring their progress, she should be shitting bricks right now and ready to bolt. They needed to convince her that she wasn’t their target, so they moved on quickly, past Eighth and Ninth, waiting for word that she was bugging out.
But the net was quiet. Evidently, Ms. Yesterday was hunkering down.
“The Buzzard is thirty seconds out. Stand by,” Staff Sergeant Delacrie passed.
The Marine Corps HH-40 Buzzard was a tilt-fan chopper used for a variety of missions ranging from insertion and ground support, to CASEVACs. Used to be used, that is. They were not heavily armored, and the Centaurs swept them from the skies in early engagements. But here on Alafia, the anti-air threat was much less, so the Buzzard squadrons were getting to play.
“Keep moving,” Rev passed to Yazzie when he saw her start to slow down. They had to wait until released.
Buzzards weren’t particularly noisy, but they weren’t wraiths, either, and Rev could hear it approach from the south. If Ms. Yesterday was shitting bricks before, she had to be shitting entire houses now. But the Buzzard wasn’t coming for her, at least from all outward appearances. It landed on the roof of the nexus center, disgorging a squad of Marines.
If an invading force, say something like the Union Marines, was trying to control a city, then the nexus centers would be logical targets. Controlling comms would be an important step in any strategic plan.
Now, if Intel-Psych had a handle on Ms. Yesterday’s psychological profile, she would be relaxing, coming down from the perceived threat of the Buzzard. It was time.
“Phase Two. Go,” the team leader ordered.
Immediately, the nine Marines and Doc Paul wheeled and started running toward the building. Maxing out their augments, they covered the two blocks in less than thirty seconds. Second Element, with Hussein in the lead, crashed through the ferrocene front door, shattering it into shards. First was right on their heels.
“Up!” Rev passed, pointing to the stairway in the back by the old-fashioned ovens.
During their quick rehearsal back at the Spaceport, Yazzie was first up the stairs, but as things worked out in reality, Rev was the closest, so he charged up, shouldering the door at the top open and throwing in a stun grenade.
“Union Marines! Get on the floor now!”
Three dazed people, two women and a man, slowly got down on their hands and knees as Tomiko, Yazzie, and Doc Paul flowed around him.
A young man, maybe in his early twenties and armed with a Foryce K-60 assault rifle still slung on his back, hesitated, and Rev could see the gears turning as he took in the four Raiders.
“Don’t even think it, son,” Rev said.
Doc Paul was more direct. “Drop that thing, or you’re a dead man!” he screamed.
The man took an involuntary step back, staring at Doc, then he said, “OK, OK, don’t shoot!”
“Let the weapon fall . . . slowly,” Rev said as Tomiko moved to his side, the barrel of her M-49 rock-steady.
“Do it, Raul,” one of the women—their target, Rev recognized—said.
The man hooked one thumb under the sling at the shoulder, then cautiously lowered it, ignoring Tomiko but with his eyes locked on Doc.
When it hit the floor, Tomiko said, “Now, get on your face.”
As soon as he was down, she kicked the K-60 away.
“We’ve got the package and three more,” Rev passed on the team net.
“Roger that. Nix is clearing the two in the basement. As soon as he’s finished, I’m coming up. Secure each of them, then clear the rest of the floor.”
“Yazzie, take the door,” Rev said.
She nodded and stepped out, covering the hallway leading to the two bedrooms. Rev handed his M-49 to Doc, then took out the zips from his cargo pocket. He felt naked, but one of the SOPs was that anyone securing a POW would not have a weapon that could be taken. Rev sincerely doubted that any of this crew would take his rifle, but procedures were procedures.
He secured the young man first, telling him to place his hands behind his back before slapping the zips on. The ends folded around the man’s wrists automatically and sealed themselves. Then it was the other man and woman before he stepped up to the package.
She didn’t look like a Children of Angels VIP. Soft, almost matronly, she could easily be a primary school teacher.
“Your bodyguard didn’t do such a good job, ma’am,” he said, hooking her arms and lifting her to her feet. “You might want to find a little better caliber next time around. If there ever is one.”
She smiled and said, “When the nebula gets here, you’ll see. There will be a next time. Not for you, though.”
Her eyes flicked for the briefest moment to the back of the room where a door led into a bathroom, according to the blueprints.
“Crap! There were five up here,” he said, turning around just as the door burst open.
A large man with a very large handgun jumped out, putting Rev between himself and Doc. For a split second, he considered pulling the package between them as a shield, but with a shove, he knocked her down out of the way. He bunched his legs to jump at the man, but despite his improved fast-twitch muscles, he knew he’d be too late. The way the man held himself as he brought up the weapon told Rev that this man was a killer, not one to jerk a shot off to the side in his excitement.
Leave enough so they can bring me back.
But the shot never got off. A small mist of blood spurted from the left side of his head a second before Rev reached him. He caught the body, and it slumped, the handgun clattering to the floor.
Tomiko stepped closer from where she’d been by the window and looked up at the lolling head flopping over Rev’s arm. “I hate it when people ignore me,” she told the dead man.
“Holy shit, Miko!” You zeroed the bastard,” Doc said, rushing forward. “I didn’t have a shot.”
Because I screwed up.
Yazzie stuck her head back in the room. “What happened.”
“Missed this bastard,” Doc said. “But Miko nailed him.”
Rev’s heart was beating a mile-a-minute, and he knew Punch would start ordering his nanos to start filling him with suppressants if he didn’t calm down.
He lay the body down and looked at the package, whose face was now twisted in rage.
“You’ll pay for that, sinner!”
“You should have paid for better bodyguards.”
He had to take charge again. “Miko, watch the prisoners. Doc, Yazzie, we’re clearing the rest of the floor before the staff sergeant comes up.”
Tomiko acted like she was going to say something, but she bit her lip and nodded.
“What are you going to do with us?” the package asked.
“Whatever the hell we want,” Rev snapped. He shouldn’t have, but he wasn’t feeling particularly charitable.
The main room took up most of the top floor, so clearing the two bedrooms took the three Raiders just a couple of minutes. Rev made sure they checked each closet. The Navy said there were five people on the floor, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
They were returning just as the staff sergeant and Hussein came up. Delacrie took in the dead man but didn’t ask what happened. It would all come out in the debrief.
“Romeo-Victor-Four, this is Echo-Delta-Golf-Three. We’ve got the package plus five. I repeat, package plus five. What do you want us to do with them?” the staff sergeant passed back to the CP over the team net.
It took a moment, then a voice came back. “Bring all six pax for pickup.”
“Roger, out.”
The staff sergeant looked around for a moment and then said, “You heard the man. Let’s get rid of them.”
The four Children of Angels hadn’t heard the comms, of course. All they heard was what the staff sergeant said. The second woman, who Rev had barely given a glance, started sobbing.
“You can’t do anything to us. You have no right!” the package screamed in righteous fury. “We answer to the angels, and not to man!”
“Well, you don’t have to answer. You either walk, or we’ll drag you,” Delacrie said before motioning to the others.
Rev, Doc, Tomiko, and Hussein each grabbed a prisoner under the armpits and pulled them up to their feet. Tomiko had the woman, who could barely stand. After trying to walk a few steps, Tomiko gave up and slung the woman over her shoulders.
“What?” she asked to Rev’s look. “She won’t walk.”
Rev had the other bodyguard, the one who’d decided that discretion was the better part of valor. His face was pale, and he was trembling, but the man walked even if it looked like he was heading to the gallows. That puzzled Rev for a moment until he remembered what the staff sergeant had said. “Get rid of them” wasn’t the most diplomatic way he could have put it.
He was tempted to just let the man suffer, but he leaned close and whispered, “Calm down. You’re just getting transported to interrogation.”
The man looked at him with wary, if hopeful, eyes. But he seemed a tiny bit surer of himself.
They reached the ground floor where Bedam and Nix had two more prisoners. “OK, let’s take them out.”
The package gasped, and the woman on Tomiko’s shoulder started wailing. Rev’s prisoner turned to look at him accusingly.
Staff Sergeant, you really need to watch your wording.
They dragged the prisoners out onto Grant street just as the same Buzzard appeared, tilted its fans, and slowly descended, sending up dirt, leaves, and trash into the air. The sand pelted the bare heads and arms of the prisoners, but Rev kept a firm grip on his.
“That’s it. They’re ready,” the Staff Sergeant yelled over the noise. “Get ’em on!”
The crew chief stepped off the back ramp and motioned urgently for them to approach. Rev didn’t blame him. A Buzzard was not made for streets, and it was vulnerable to anyone with a basic anti-armor missile on the roof of the surrounding buildings. Heck, it could be vulnerable to a large cerrocrete block thrown off a nearby roof.
It took only a few moments to load the prisoners, and the second Nix got his prisoner on the ramp, the Buzzard was already lifting, the fans whining as they pushed air.
And then it was gone.
“Good job, Marines,” the staff sergeant passed.
“And sailor,” Doc added.
“Yeah, and sailor,” he said.
The team leader looked around, then said, “Time to get back. I’ve gotten chow approved before the debrief.”
There was a chorus of cheers.
“But the mission isn’t over until we’re back. This is still a patrol, so don’t take your foot off the gas. Second, you lead.”
The team fell into the patrol formation and started back.
Rev had a lot to think about. He’d survived single combat with a Centaur, but he’d almost gotten taken down by a human.
Combat is combat, Reverent. Remember that!