Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks (44 page)

Her patience was rewarded a few minutes later when two men entered from the left side of her view. One was dressed in loose trousers and the other in nothing at all, and both of them were dead ringers for Mankho. Neither was, of course: the trousered one slouched and the naked one held his right hand to his face when he spoke, stroking line from his nose to the left corner of his mouth. With no need to perform, they weren’t making any effort to ape the boss. But they did seem to be conversing animatedly as they crossed the space to the bar. The naked man kept talking while the other rummaged behind it. From the way the talker was now waving one hand, Kris didn’t think they were merely exercising their prerogatives as Mankho’s doubles (assuming they had any), to grab a late-night drink.

As she watched, both men stiffened suddenly and the rummager glared to his right, hand frozen deep in a niche as a third Mankho walked in. This one was fully dressed and his back was three-quarters to her. Was it him? She crawled forward half a meter but the other two relaxed perceptibly. Not the genuine article either, then—no one relaxed like that at the sight of Mankho. The newcomer went up to the other two, and appeared to deliver a message. As he turned sideways in her field of view, Kris was able to confirm her hasty judgment: three fakes and no proprietor.

Goddammit
.

“Ma’am?” The quiet voice of Sergeant Lopez and a tap on her boot made Kris’s heart jump. She twisted around to the sergeant, just below her on the downslope. “Not wise to expose yourself that much.”

Kris slid backwards off the ridge. “I was just tryin’ to get a better read,” she whispered.

“Roger that. But be careful. Understand?”

Face hot, Kris nodded.

“Post on up then.”

Shifting back into position, Kris saw the three men finish their discussion and go their separate ways. The lights died. She gave Lopez a thumbs down. Lopez checked in with Gergen and Cates: nothing from their vantage either. They decided they’d wait the watch out.

The two moons were twelve degrees lower in the sky when Kris heard Lopez pinging Cates and Gergen for an update. They reported no activity in the residence, no extra power drains, no comms. Lopez tapped Kris’s boot again and motioned her off the ridge.

“No joy, ma’am. I think we’re done here for tonight.”

The waiting had been bearing down on Kris to the point where she’d had to make a conscious effort to breathe. Now the crushing feeling eased with a deep shuddering breath. Afraid of coughing, she signed
Okay
.

“Then head on back, but not the way we came. Take a loop around that big rock pile to the east and follow the gully from there. Roger?”

“Yes, ma’am”—finding her voice and adding the contra-protocol
ma’am
unconsciously.

Lopez took no notice. “Alright. Get going. I’ll cover you.”

Herd
might have been more accurate, at least as Kris saw it, but they got back in good time, and when they arrived, she felt a pang at finding the team awake and in cover positions. At first, she thought it was an alert they weren’t telling her about, but on seeing Gergen and Cates appear wraithlike from the darkness and noting Perez and Argento were missing, she realized it was just
Charlie
coming in as
Alpha
took the dawn watch.

Lopez saw her back to her shelter where Kris safed the rifle. Then she left, with a nod to Huron who came over and knelt beside Kris as she removed her helmet. There was just enough light to allow her dark-adapted eyes to discern his hooded expression, but not what lay behind it.

“Anything to report?” His murmur was a touch gravelly and she didn’t think it was because he’d been sleeping. Everyone was tense—she could feel it.

“Three doubles”—keeping her voice to a whisper. “Proprietor himself was a no-show.”

“Anything else?”

“Nosir.” The meeting of the three doubles could mean anything—or nothing—and she couldn’t think how to explain it anyway. In fact, she couldn’t think.

Huron gazed off to the west, where the primary would be rising in a few hours and shifted as if to leave.

“Uh—sir?”

“What is it?”

“We hear anything? This end, I mean?”

Huron’s eyes flicked back to her. “Vasquez checked in. Overheard enough to think there’s something planned for later this AM. Could be a production.”

“Has she been—um—introduced yet?”

The corner of Huron’s mouth twitched down. “Not sure.
Someone
just gave her a bit of a going-over. Pretty light, she thought—didn’t quite fit the proprietor’s MO.”

“Oh.” Was
that
what the fake Mankhos had been talking about?

He rose from his crouch. “It’s four hours till we move out, Kris. Get comfortable and get some rest.”

Unsealing the torso unit of her armor, she pulled it off. Get comfortable?
Not fuckin’ likely
. Her guts were twisting like a bucket of eels.

She swallowed hard. “Yessir.”

near Nestor Mankho’s Compound
Rephidim, Outworld’s Border Zone

Chained spread-eagle to a huge ornate bed, hung about with diaphanous silk curtains, she stared at her refection in the mirrored canopy overhead. She was dressed in a catsuit of black Antiguan glove leather and matching calf boots with iridium fittings. The suit had strategically placed zippers, all gaping opening, and the gold chains at wrist and ankle clashed horribly with the outfit’s silver-white buckles. Mankho sat on edge of the bed, dining on imported seafood from heavily incised gilt platters and feeding her bites now and then, while he talked about his art collection. It floating about them, not decently hung as paintings should be, but twisting slowly in midair as the images in the heavy knurled frames slid from one grotesque scene to another.

“Pay particular attention to this one,” he was saying in an oily murmur, gesturing at the nearest painting with his wineglass as his fingernail traced a neat line on the thin supple leather across her lower belly to the crease between her upper thigh and groin. “We start the incision here and then move in towards the bone—”

Lurching awake, Kris put a hand out blindly to brush aside the camouflage canopy above her. As she touched it, the boundary between nightmare and reality resolved. It was just after daybreak. Rephidim’s senile primary had barely nicked the horizon and was casting its first thin bloody light across the top of the rise behind them and over the high ground to the south.

The taste of blood filled in her mouth too; she rolled on her side and spat into the dirt. The hollow was still full of purplish shadows, pooling beneath the boulders, and the dawn air prickled on the back of her neck where beads of cold sweat ran down her spine underneath her tank top.

Shaking in the grip of the fading vision, she searched the camp for what might have awakened her. It took a moment to discern Huron and the others in the gloom among the rocks. Huron saw her sitting up, and came over stooped low. Everyone already had their gear on.

“Whazzup?” The word struggled out through the phlegm in her throat. Hawking to clear it, she spat again.

“Boots and saddles, Kris. Looks like we’ve got an open engagement online.”

“Okay.” She shrugged on her combat armor’s torso unit, which she’d been using for a pillow, and slid out from under the canopy. “Did Vasquez call in again? Are we on?”

“No, but they’re prepping for something over there. Tiernan and Cates ID’d a spot three klicks west of the compound to lay up and see what develops. We’ll know more when we get there.”

For Tiernan and Cates to scout a spot that far away, they must’ve left near an hour ago. He’d been letting her sleep. She broke open a ration bar and nibbled. “Ya lemme sleep. Didn’t need to do that.”

“You had a busy night. Be ready in five.”

Before she could do more than move her head in reply, he was gone.

*    *    *

Their new staging area was a sheltered depression, thick with those squat native trees, behind a modest rise, flanked by an escarpment that offered an excellent prospect of the surrounding area. So excellent, in fact, that Yu declined to occupy it, as being the most obvious place for an adversary to keep watch on. Beyond the rise in front of them was a kilometer of broken ground, split by a ravine, and then sloping up to another one of the many ridges that corrugated the local terrain. Beyond that was the two klicks of the barren flat earth that surrounded the compound.

Cates and Tiernan lay concealed along that ridge, keeping the compound under surveillance, with Lopez covering them and Gergen on watch, while back in the trees, Yu, Burdette, Perez and Huron were kneeling around a patch of smoothed dirt, on which they were projecting various diagrams and discussing the final details of their approach. Burdette had located the compound’s Achilles’ heel: a utility bunker on a subfloor of the main garage that was directly beneath the outer wall. Whoever the architect was, he must have thought burying the bunker like that made it safe, not realizing a sapper charge could be shot through a meter and a half of anything softer than granite, and the surrounding earth would provide an excellent tamp. With no more than a dull thump, they could breach the bunker, and once inside they’d control the compound’s power and have access to the main garage. Vasquez had reported seeing three low-orbit capable cargo lighters in there, and there were two stairwells and one elevator leading directly up to the residence.

Once the mole, sitting there assembled and waiting, got them under the fence, that would get them in, but what happened next depended on whether Vasquez already had the package wrapped or if they had to go get him, exactly where the corvette was, what the opposition was up to and what they needed to do about it. Watkins had been especially happy to learn about the elevator. They were easy to hotwire and could then be used to deliver stun grenades, gas cartridges, or any number of other nasty surprises to one or several floors. But all that mattered to Kris was whether they were going to take her along.

That was clearly not the preferred option, but there was no guarantee Mankho would be cooperative enough to make an appearance at a convenient window, at least on a schedule Yu was happy with. Burdette had a flock of optical dragonflies out, loitering as close to the compound as was safe, with low-power line-of-sight masers linking the video back to Cates, who relayed it back to Burdette over a UWB burst link. If one of the Mankhos appeared, they’d ask Kris for an ID. It wasn’t as good as putting eyeballs on target, but Kris obviously couldn’t be everywhere at once and she had a feeling they were reluctant to let her out of their sight.

In the meantime, she had nothing to do but sit by herself and wait.
How long
was the question. Yu preferred to have the corvette in position to provide support—Wojakowski and Donnerkill were up there with the assault shuttle in 5-minute ready mode—and the ideal time for that was forty-five minutes from now. Cutting the power, hijacking a lorry, and blasting your way out of the garage, leaving behind a nicely timed EMP charge to roast all the compound’s electronics as you boosted clear, was all well and good, but it was not to be compared with the comfort of having a shuttle inbound that could lay down suppressing fire on undesirables.

On the other hand, their latest info put the number of undesirables at between sixty and eighty, a manageable number, so that comfort was not essential. What was essential, of course, was getting a line on Mankho, and Vasquez had sent no more than a
hold status
update half an hour ago, meaning there was nothing new to report. She was still in a subspace below the main residence, which Kris, when asked, opined was a little unusual. Mankho liked to keep his new girls handy, unless maybe he had other business.

Other
business. Kris knew about the failure of the Lacaille raid and she also knew—better than anyone—that what had beaten Mankho on Nedaema was really just dumb luck. Whatever else she was feeling that AM besides twitchy and nauseated, it sure as hell wasn’t lucky. She glanced over at Gergen, posted maybe fifty meters upslope and still almost impossible to see unless you knew what to look for, and barely caught Burdette saying, “. . . got a situation here.”

A short conference ensued. Gergen rose to a crouch and took off northeast with his SAW. Perez went off with Fireteam
Alpha
a moment later.

Fuck. I knew it
.

Kris dug her boot heel viciously into the dirt. The op had blown on them.

Fuck’n knew it
.

Yu, Huron, and Burdette had their heads down, intent on some new data that was streaming in. She wondered if she dared get close enough to eavesdrop. A minute crawled by. Another minute. Then Huron looked across at Yu and asked, “What do you advise?”

Yu was conferring with Burdette but Kris heard his answer clearly as he turned back: “We pull out.”

Vision darkening with molten churning in her gut, she clamped her jaws shut in an effort not to scream. Going through all that shit—coming all this way—for
nothing
.

Fuck that
.

*    *    *

“I think we got a situation here,” Sergeant Burdette said, just loud enough for Kris to overhear the last four words, as an alert from one of her dragonflies lit up her xel.

“What is it?” asked Sergeant Major Yu, in an unruffled voice.

“I’m picking up signals to the northwest. Vehicles inbound.”

“Make?”

“Can’t say for certain, but could be lorries.”

Yu pinged Cates, who was positioned the farthest north. “Rachel, we got incoming. You seeing anything north of your position?”

“Negative. Nothing in sight. Shall I send eyes up high for a peek?”

“Affirm. Make it quick.”

“Wait one.” Then: “We got a flock of air-lorries inbound. I count six—no, scratch, make it seven. Coming low along the north road. At the speed they’re making, they’ll be at the front door in seven, eight minutes.”

“Cargo or personnel?”

“Looks like both, but I can’t get a good read on the last three. The four out front are five-tonners, though. You want video?”

Burdette, who was listening, shook her head.

“Negative. I’m sending you Benn. Tap up Marko but otherwise keep low, good quiet, until Benn relieves you. Then haul ass back here, but don’t report in until Andie or I ping you and then voice only.”

“Roger that.”

Yu clicked over to Gergen. “Benn, unknown vehicles inbound from the north. Post up to Marko and relieve Rachel. Take your SAW but do not engage.”

“Yessir. I’m on it.”

“Sam,”—turning now to Perez. “Take your people and move out east. See how badly they’re stirred up over there. Ping us when you’re in position. Andie, anything from Vasquez?”

“Negative. Next scheduled ping-back is twelve minutes.”

“Break protocol. Tell her to expect visitors in six minutes. How soon can we get a shuttle down if we need it? Forty-five minutes?”

“Forty-two. If the IADS is offline.”

Acknowledging Burdette’s caveat with a barely perceptible nod, the sergeant major addressed Huron. “What’s your call, sir?”

Huron drew a winding curve in the dirt with his finger. “They’re following the north road, right? Why follow a road in air-lorries?”

“Protocol?” suggested Yu.

“That’s my guess. Keep the IADS happy. IFF’s no good if you can’t be sure who your friends are.”

“So maybe this is just a delivery.”

“Goddamned big delivery though. Capacity of five-ton lorry is twenty-four men.”

“Packing ‘em in, yeah.”

“So if we stand pat on Rachel’s numbers, we’re talking a hundred men and over ten tons of cargo. That’s two reinforced platoons with heavy gear.”

“If they knew we were here, won’t they have ordered up an air strike from Tirana hours ago?”

“They would—if Tirana’s willing to heed to call.” Huron drew an arc across his squiggle. “No. He must be planning something else. Coordination meeting? Training? Recruiting drive?” Smoothing the patch of dirt, he motioned to Burdette. “Lay out all the data we have—thirty-second ticks, please.”

They considered it together in silence a while. Then Huron looked up. “What do you advise?”

Gergen pinged them, indicating he was in position and Cates was on her way back. Yu leaned towards Burdette to verify when Cates would be in a safe transmit zone—about a minute, he estimated, just as soon as she was into that dead ground along the ravine.

“Well, sir, by the book,” he began, tapping the location of her xel’s display. Burdette nodded in agreement and Yu turned back to Huron. “We pull out.”

Huron detected an underlying tone in Yu’s manner. “But?”

“Let’s see what else Rachel can tell us. At my age, I might not be recalling the book right. ‘Fraid I didn’t bring my copy.”

“Neither did I,” Huron said. “Careless of us.”

Cates indeed had something new to report: another convoy, this one wheeled, that had broken the horizon a minute or so before Gergen arrived. “Long and slow,” was her assessment. They weren’t emitting, but with Perez and
Alpha
now in position, Burdette dispatched a dragonfly to investigate. She showed Yu the stills that it sent back.

“Two dozen we can see. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes out. We could have three-fifty—four hundred men dropping in on us.”

Huron regarded Yu with interest. “Having new thoughts, Sergeant Major?”

Before he could reply, Perez interrupted with a ping. “Got a confab going on the second floor here. Those lorries came in a minute ago. They’ve got loaders running—lots of big crates. Might be equipment.”

“Not munitions?”

“Some could be. Unloading a raft of smaller pallets, now. Can’t see any markings from here. Compound’s swarming. Over a hundred’s my guess, carrying light arms. Can’t see the south end, though.”

“Spot the package yet?”

“Negative on the package.”

“Standby, Sam. Andie,”—this to Burdette—“update status on Vasquez.”

Burdette cycled a xel screen. “They’ve moved her. Antechamber on the first-floor. She’s at ease but not alone.”

“That’s his personal quarters.”

“Roger that. But no sign of the proprietor yet.”

“Plot the second convoy.”

She did. Yu measured the distance, mentally ticking off individual minutes. Then he grinned. “Yes, sir. I am havin’ new thoughts. I’m thinking we crash this party through the front gate.” The grin widen a trifle, taking on a cheerfully ghoulish aspect. “What’s three more outta three hundred?”

Huron stretched his mouth the one side. “Y’know, Fred, I’ve always admired your notion of fair odds.”

“Good to go, sir?”

“It’s your party, Fred. Go enjoy yourself.”

“Appreciate it, sir.” Yu consulted the map again. “Have Benn and Marko rendezvous with me here. Let’s see if we can catch a ride.” The three Outworlders, Huron and Burdette both noted. “Prime some dragonflies so you can play operator in case that second convoy tries to call in. Put Wojo on hot standby, but he’s not to hit air with the IADS up. When Rachel gets here, go link up with Sam and keep eyes out for the proprietor. Leave the mole but take Kris with you.”