School of Fire

by David Sherman

  "I beg you to return with me to headquarters for the making of personal statements, gentlemen," Landser announced. Long laid his hand gently on the commissioner's shoulder. "That won't be necessary right now, Alois," he said. "We'll just sit here and talk to the lads a bit."

  "But, my dear chief—"

  "Sit down, Alois. Relax." Long smiled and pulled up a chair. He turned it around and draped his arms over the back. Compared to Landser, Long looked disheveled, wrinkled clothes hanging loosely about his large frame. He sported no visible gear, just a capacious jacket over civilian trousers, but when he sat down. Dean clearly saw the large handheld blaster slung under his left armpit.

  Landser also took a chair, but he sat in it stiffly, primly, as if afraid to wrinkle his trousers. Long's informal way of conducting serious police business frustrated the little man. He was a capable officer, but subjected himself to very restrictive rules of conduct that never permitted him to relax while on duty—and seldom when off. But he could obey orders. And he was obeying them now, because Long was chief of police at Chairman Arschmann's express instructions.

  "Remember, Alois," the chairman had told him the day Hugyens Long had arrived and presented his credentials, "this man is now in charge. You will be his understudy. You will learn to do things his way, Alois, or you are out. Out at his discretion. I have given him total independence and the authority to act as he sees fit to completely reorganize your force. I want my police to be the best on the planet, and if you do not go along with Chief Long, you are finished. I don't care that your family has served mine faithfully for generations, Alois. This is a totally pragmatic matter. It is business. You will not mess it up."

  At first Landser had been so insulted at his master's command that he'd considered quitting on the spot. Only strong self-discipline and the fact that his family had served the Arschmanns for generations had enabled him to keep his silence—and his job. Landser's family was not a prominent one, but it was respected, and his blood was completely German. Landser felt he was being treated like one of the common mixed-bloods. Most galling was the fact that his fate had been put into the hands of an offworlder. It had taken him a full day to get control of himself. He sensed that things on Wanderjahr would change somehow, with the Marines there, and he intended to be around to take advantage of whatever altered circumstances presented themselves in the future.

  So now Alois Landser sat dutifully at a small table in Juanita's cafe. He would learn something from this offworider. Meanwhile, his resentment against Arschmann smoldered.

  "Tell me what happened," Long asked the two Marines.

  Dean looked at Claypoole, his face white but his eyes burning with suppressed rage, and decided to do the talking for both of them. In a few words he told the policemen the story. During the telling, various police officers approached the chief and whispered information into his ear. Long simply nodded and the officers disappeared.

  "How did you know to duck at the flash of the first shot?" Commissioner Landser asked.

  Dean shrugged. "I've been shot at before by those kinds of weapons, on Elneal. I guess when I saw that first flash, my instincts took over."

  "Claypoole," the chief said, "do you have anything to add?"

  "I will kill whoever did this," Claypoole muttered, his voice tense with anger.

  Chief Long nodded. "Let us do a little more work on this before you start shooting up Brosigville, Marine."

  "Fuck," Claypoole muttered.

  "Look, lads," Chief Long began, "I'm here to teach these people how to conduct police operations. That's something I know how to do real good. You Marines are here to teach the Feldpolizei how to fight, which you do real good. But either of you guys get in my way and you're history. Okay?"

  "Sorry. Okay," Claypoole answered.

  "These officers who've been whispering in my ear as you were talking located the sniper's position, about eight hundred meters straight out the back door. He was shooting from the limbs of a spiker tree out there. No shell casings, few footprints, that's it. Evidently he had plenty of time to get into position. He probably used a semiautomatic projectile rifle firing caseless ammo. The guerrillas have them. Who knew you were coming here today?"

  Claypoole shrugged. "Nobody." Dean nodded.

  "Then they were being watched," Long said to Commissioner Landser, who nodded. "They were watching your compound, and when they saw you leave, they followed you. Did you see anybody suspicious along the way here?"

  "No, sir," both Marines answered.

  "Put some agents in the vicinity of the Marine headquarters, Alois. Perhaps we can watch the watchers."

  "We have our informant network too, sir," Landser said. "I will put out the word."

  Chief Long smiled and thought to himself. Yes, Alois, you do have your "network," and if it's the last thing I do, I'm going to find out what's in it. He returned his attention to the Marines. "Your Commander Peters and I are spending a lot of the Confederation's credit here to establish an intelligence network. Once it's up and going, we'll share information, but for now, Commissioner Landser's agents are all we have. It's not a bad network either."

  Beside him Landser nodded and thought. Good enough to stick a certain prominent old bastard where it'll hurt.

  "Okay, been a long day for both of you. I am really sorry it had to end this way. Whoever did this meant to hit both you and the girls. The first two rounds seem to have been meant for Dean, but the shooter fired the third one at Miss Magdalena. The fourth was meant for you, Claypoole, but he missed. Sometime in the next few days, you lads come by headquarters and see me. We have some details to wrap up. Now you better get back to your own HQ and leave this mess to us."

  The pair rose. "One thing. Chief..." Claypoole said. Long nodded. "When you find out who did this and you go to get him, I want to be there. Will you let me? I promise, no trouble. But I want to be in on it."

  A long moment of silence passed before Long replied. He looked steadily at the two Marines. Claypoole's utilities were stained dark with Maggie's blood. Chief Long could read the character of any man. These were good lads. "All right," he said.

  After the two Marines left, Landser turned to Chief Long. "The shooter did want to hit the girls, didn't he? He wasn't shooting just at the Marines. That impresses me as a very important fact."

  Chief Long nodded slowly. "I think he missed Dean because light travels faster than a bullet and Dean reacted quickly when he saw the first muzzle flash. Christ, what reflexes! That second shot was insurance, but yes, the third one was right on target. He wanted to kill the girl, maybe even more than either of the Marines."

  "Bandits? Cause terror and resentment here in the Brosigville suburbs?" Landser asked.

  Long grunted. "Have the guerrillas been doing much of that?"

  Landser thought for a moment. "No. Propaganda, yes. Sabotage, some. But outright murder to intimidate? No. It might be a new tactic, a desperate move now that the Marines are here to help the government."

  Chief Long rose from the table and clapped Landser on the shoulder. "Alois, let's go back and think this whole thing over."

  Landser sat at the table a moment before following Chief Long outside. Who could it have been but the bandits? he wondered. He did not know Chief Hugyens Long very well yet, but he sensed the chief's instincts were very good.

  With the resiliency of youth reinforced by very hard combat experience that had taught them people close to you get killed, the two young Marines were able to put the bombing and Maggie's shooting in the background and go on with their duties. Still, Claypoole knew he wouldn't rest easy until her death was avenged. It wasn't that he'd gotten to know Maggie at all well, or that their budding relationship, as superficial as it was, had been cut short. What made him angry was the fact that an innocent life had been destroyed by some dumb shit with a rifle who couldn't even hit two man-size targets at eight hundred meters. He'd never had a projectile weapon in his hands in his life, although he'd seen the Siad warrior
s on Elneal use them to good effect. But he knew if he did ever use one, he'd be sure he could hit something with it.

  After a long and very one-sided talk with FIST Sergeant Major Shiro about unauthorized trips in official vehicles, the two returned to duty very subdued. All Commander Peters said to them was, "You did well under the circumstances."

  Two days later. Commander Peters allowed them to visit police headquarters. After they went over the events for the investigative team Chief Long had assigned to the case, the big policeman escorted them to his newly established forensics lab.

  "How much do you know about the police organization on Wanderjahr?" Long asked as they walked from his office to the lab.

  Claypoole shrugged. "There are field police and city police."

  "We advise the field police and you advise the city police," Dean added.

  "Close enough," Long said. "Originally there were no 'field' police. They only came into being when the insurgency started. With no army to speak of, the oligarchs had to create some kind of armed body that could cope with it. The metropolitan police forces were neither equipped nor trained to do that. All the cops on this planet go to the same police academy. Each Staat has its own force and runs its own training program, but essentially the curriculums are about the same. That's something I'm working on. But basically the metropolitan police forces here are pretty good. They know the basic patrol and investigative techniques about as well as any police force anywhere else in the Confederation."

  "I hear the field police are a bunch of comedians," Claypoole said.

  "They're being led by fools," Long replied. "After basic police training, the men selected for assignment to field battalions go to an infantry-type school that's run by the Ruling Council. The field police are commanded by an officer appointed by the Council, and it operates independently of the oligarchs' Staat governments. That's a good concept. Where it's screwed up is, the field police are commanded by idiots. I think your Brigadier Sturgeon will look into that," he added dryly.

  They were at the lab. Chief Long paused just outside the door. "This is the Brosigville Stadtpolizei forensics lab. Do you know anything about police forensics?"

  "That's how you figure out who committed the crime?" Claypoole ventured.

  Chief Long nodded. "That's about it. But it's a science unto itself that includes a lot of things besides taking fingerprints and looking at footprints. A forensics expert can look at the details of a crime scene and tell you volumes about what happened there. For instance, the pattern of blood spots at the murder scene can tell him how the crime was committed, even how tall the murderer was."

  He led them over to a workbench and picked up a twisted metal fragment. "My forensics people did a chemical analysis on this fragment," he told them, holding up the piece of metal. "I brought a good team along with me to teach the Wanderjahrians how to set up their own lab—and imagine my surprise when I discovered they already had some very well-qualified people here." The portly policeman chuckled as he sat down at the workbench. "At least one of Arschmann's nephews has brains. He got the old man to fund a pretty sophisticated forensics program for this police department. Technologically, these guys are way behind most other Confederation worlds' police force forensics teams, but they've got the basic techniques down pat."

  "Lean closer." The two Marines peered over the chiefs shoulders. "There was enough chemical residue on this fragment that we were able to figure out what kind of bomb it was," Long said proudly, turning the fragment slowly in his gloved fingers.

  "Why the gloves?" Claypoole asked.

  "The stuff stinks, and when you get it on you, it's hard to get off. Smell it. Besides, it's been a rule for hundreds of years that you don't handle any kind of evidence with your bare paws."

  Claypoole sniffed gingerly and drew back quickly. Chief Long laughed and held the fragment out to Dean. "Won't hurt you, lads!" The odor coming off the scorched bit of metal was tantalizingly familiar to Dean. He knew he'd smelled it before, but couldn't remember where.

  "Constantine!" Long shouted. A short, gray-haired man in a smock turned from where he was explaining to a group of police recruits the mysteries of latent fingerprints. "Yes, Chief?" He excused himself from his students and limped over.

  "This is Lieutenant Pete Constantine, gentlemen. Lost his right leg in a shoot out with terrorists on Chilban last year. He's my explosives expert, best damn man in that field you'll find anywhere in the Confederation."

  "What happened to the terrorists?" Claypoole asked.

  "Killed 'em all," Constantine answered. "Got 'em with a grenade of my own invention," he said proudly. " 'Course, I was a bit too close when it went off." He shrugged, patting his right leg. "But I got the job done. Nerve grafts haven't quite healed up yet, but I'll be back on full duty anytime now. Look at this arm." He tapped his right forearm. "Lost that in a lab accident about ten years ago. Good as the real one now. And this eye," he tapped his left eye, "took a fragment when a device I was defusing went off prematurely. Can see with it better than I could with the old one. How can I help. Chief?"

  "Give our Marine friends here a rundown on the bomb that was used against their headquarters, will you?"

  "PETN w/M," Constantine answered. "Pentaerythritol tetranitrate with Monroite mixed to military specifications. Until about a hundred and fifty years ago PETN was a standard explosive compound used in military munitions. Then they developed Monroite, and that gave the PETN more stability while increasing its power. Don't see it much anymore in modern military munitions, not since plasma weapons came into use, but it's still plenty available.

  "I estimate these bombs generated a shock wave traveling at about eight thousand meters a second at a temperature of somewhere around five thousand degrees Centigrade. It was that blast wave that got everyone. Pretty respectable, but you'll notice the explosions did little structural damage to the buildings. Not intended to. They were set off to get people in the open. The blast waves dissipated rather quickly. Oh, they destroyed things in the street and blew in the frontage on the lower floors of the buildings, but you don't bring buildings down by setting off bombs in the streets outside. The first one we think was in some kind of handcart, one of those fruit-vending carts you see in the streets around here all the time. The second, larger bomb was in a landcar about a hundred meters up the street from the first, where it was protected from the first blast. Both were detonated remotely; we found enough of the detonator components to establish that fact."

  "How will you catch the guy who did it?" Dean asked.

  Chief Long sighed. "That, my lad, is the question. They use PETN w/M explosives. The whole thing has the earmarks of a rebel terrorist attack. But I don't know... Whoever did this knew precisely where you'd be moving, and had plenty of time to set things up. Same with whoever shot at you guys the other day. I've discussed this with Commander Peters. We know the guerrillas have cells in the city here, but I'm not sure they have the logistics to pull off a thing like this even with advance notice. You lads figure that out for me and I'll buy you both as much cold beer as you can drink."

  Claypoole picked up the bomb fragment again and sniffed at it. "Smells like burning rags," he said. "Um, no, not rags, more like burning grass. Yes. Funny."

  "That's the Monroite residue. Leaves a strong, almost indelible odor. Get it on you, you just wear it for weeks afterward. You spend even a little time handling that stuff and it gets all over you."

  "I've smelled it before!" Dean exclaimed. The three men stared at him. "Yes! Here, since we've been on Wanderjahr. Damn. Where?" He turned to Claypoole, who just shrugged.

  "Take your time, Mr. Dean," Chief Long said. "Make sure. You remember where you smelled this odor, and we might have our bomber."

  And then it came to him: Chairman Arschmann's parking lot, the three drivers standing there smoking mule. "Garth!" he blurted out.

  Chapter Seven

  Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass didn't have any problems with the orders that ca
me down from FIST headquarters; he thought they were exactly the orders that would allow the Marines to accomplish their mission. But others had problems with the orders, and that created problems for him. As soon as the platoon was dismissed after Ensign vanden Hoyt read the orders, Sergeant Hyakowa, the senior squad leader, and all three of his fire team leaders approached Bass. A very angry Lance Corporal Dave Schultz reached him first.

  "No! I won't do it!" Schultz shouted. "I'm not an NCO! I don't want to be an NCO. I'm exactly what I want to be, and that's a lance corporal. I won't do it. You can court-martial me if you want to, but I won't do it!"

  "Now, now, Schultz, calm down." Bass patted his hands on the air in a placating gesture. "Nobody's asking you to fill the role of a noncommissioned officer." He didn't bother looking to first squad's NCOs for help; he knew they wouldn't give him any. Why should they? He knew he wouldn't offer any help if he'd been in their position.

  Schultz glared. "That's sure what it sounds like to me."

  "Hammer, you are the kind of lance corporal every junior Marine strives to become. Before you were a lance corporal, you were one of the best PPCs who ever served in the Corps. When you were a private, you were so good your superiors couldn't wait to promote you to PPC. You are the best at what you are, at what you do. That's what you want to be, what you want to do. Nobody has any argument with that, nobody wants to try to make you be something you don't want to be."

  "Well, what do you think making me a squad leader is?" Bass shook his head. "Not a squad leader, the Feldpolizei doesn't have squad leaders. You're going to be an acting shift chief."

  "That sounds like a squad leader to me."

  "It's not a squad leader. Nobody's making you a squad leader."

  "That's right, and nobody's going to either. I'm a lance corporal, not a sergeant."

  "Listen to me, Schultz," Bass said more calmly than he felt. "I said you're the best. And I meant it. Do you agree with me that these Feldpolizei aren't very good as fighters?"