Merchants of War

by Rick Partlow

  The light was on in the garage, the unfiltered yellow glow of the portable lanterns crawling out into the corridor beneath the swinging doors. He slowed his pace and checked his watch. It was well past one in the morning, 0100 he would have said if he’d still been in the Army or if he’d felt obligated to still use the terminology long after it ceased to have any real meaning. He had his Glock holstered at his waist; he’d been wearing it since the surprise attack, mostly because it gave him a feeling of security. A false one, most likely, since the 9mm wouldn’t do shit against a Tagan, but he pulled it out anyway as he approached the door. This place was pretty remote and the likelihood of a squatter camping out here after all these years wasn’t high, but he didn’t want to get caught napping because he’d trusted in the odds.

  He pushed the door open quickly, knowing it was going to squeak like a banshee on crack and wanting to get through before anyone had time to target it. Shadows drew his eye with flickers of darkness in his peripheral vision and he whipped the barrel of the Glock back and forth from one phantom target to another before he realized he was alone. Trying to relax, trying to get his breathing back under control, he shoved the automatic into its holster and walked across the stained cement floor with affected casualness, as if he hadn’t nearly put a bullet into the shadow of a toolbox.

  The sat-com was still hooked up. He hadn’t taken it apart again after the second time he’d checked it, so that was no surprise. It was also powered up, which was a surprise. It ran off a rechargeable battery and he shut it off after each use to preserve the charge as long as possible before he had to hook it up to the solar generator.

  Maybe Roach snuck in here earlier tonight to see if there was a reply yet.

  The blinking red light on the corner of the screen stopped him in his tracks. There was a message. They’d sent a reply already…but if Roach had seen it, why hadn’t she come and got him?

  He hit a key to turn the screen on and the text popped up immediately, followed by a compressed image of a map.

  POSSIBLE LOCATION OF RUSSIAN BASE OF OPERATIONS DETERMINED VIA SATELLITE SCAN, the text read. SEE FOLLOWING COORDINATES AND ATTACHED MAP. ACT ON YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

  He checked the coordinates, frowning at the nagging thought they looked familiar. Then he scrolled down to bring the map up to fill the screen. It was an old map, pre-war but with all the modern sector designations stamped over the old names. Williamsburg. Yorktown. There was no mistaking the area highlighted as the target, though, across the river past the navy yards. A snort of dark amusement escaped him against his will.

  Busch Gardens. The Russians were set up in Busch fucking Gardens.

  Urgency surged inside him, a conviction they couldn’t wait for reinforcements. He had to get everyone moving on this immediately, get to the Russians before they had time to plan another ambush or surprise attack, before they lost anyone else. He turned to head back into the offices, intent on rousing them from their sleep and getting them geared up…and then he noticed it.

  Had they still been back at the warehouse, it would have jumped out at him immediately because he was used to the arrangement there, knew where everyone’s private corner was, knew where their mechs were set up. Here, the absence gnawed at him unnoticed until he stared right at it. Four Hellfires stood watch from the rear wall of the garage in their maintenance cages, with one metal framework conspicuously unoccupied. Patty’s. It was Patty’s mech missing.

  Where it had stood, a note was affixed to the wall, a small, yellow square from one of the office notepads they’d found all over the place. Nate ripped it away and brought it closer to the light to read it.

  SAW THE MESSAGE ABOUT THE RUSSIANS. THIS IS MY FAULT, DIX IS DEAD BECAUSE OF ME. I’M GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THEM MYSELF. THE REST OF YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO GET HURT BECAUSE OF ME.

  “Oh, Goddammit, Patty!” he exploded. He turned and sprinted through the door, heading for Roach and Ramirez. “Mata!” he bellowed ahead of him. “Roach! Wake the hell up!”

  Patty let go of the handholds at the bottom of his Hellfire’s cockpit and dropped to the pavement, bending his knees to absorb the impact. He’d done it a thousand times, but this time he lost his balance and had to catch himself against the leg of the machine. His knees felt weak, his hands trembled and his stomach was clenching as if he were about to go over a drop on one of the ancient rollercoasters he’d seen on the way in. Their tracks were Roman roads, monuments left over from another time.

  Svetlana waited for him just a few meters from where he’d landed the Hellfire, as starkly, dangerously beautiful as ever, yet he barely spared her a glance. Three Tagans loomed above her, their running lights blinding him whenever he tried to look up at them, and yet they drew his eyes inexorably. Their chain guns weren’t quite pointed directly at him, but close enough for him to move very slowly.

  “I’m gratified you showed up, Geoffrey,” she said, smiling as warmly as if she didn’t have forty tons of metal for backup. “I had begun to worry.”

  “You made it pretty clear what would happen if I didn’t,” he said. He’d meant it to sound angry, bitter, but instead, his tone was petulant, a little fearful in his own ears. “I need you to get your damned goons away from my mother.”

  “Your mother will be fine,” she assured him, moving closer, her hand resting on his chest. “As long as you keep the bargain you’ve agreed to and don’t do anything stupid…like trying to run out on us.”

  “I’m here,” he ground out, not feeling the least bit enticed by the woman. “I did what you said. They should be coming after me…” He shrugged. “…if they’re going to bother.”

  “Of course they will bother, Geoffrey.” Her tone was scolding, as if he were a wayward child who’d said something ridiculous. “You stole several million dollars’ worth of pi-mech and weaponry. They’ll want it back.”

  “They don’t deserve to die because of me.” The words were hollow, worthless. She was going to do what she was going to do and he didn’t matter a damn to her. That much had become clear to him.

  Dumb Kentucky hick, that’s all I am to her. Maybe that’s all I am to anyone.

  “Nobody has to die,” she said, her expression infuriatingly cheerful.

  “You keep saying that,” he snapped, anger finally overcoming fear, if only for a moment. He tried to push forward, but found, to his amazement, he couldn’t move past the pressure of her hand on his chest. She was much stronger than she looked. “But you haven’t given them the choice to do anything but fight. Why not offer them money? Why not give them the chance you gave me?”

  “Because, my dear Geoffrey, they wouldn’t take it.” She cocked her head at him, still the teacher with the slow child who wouldn’t learn his lesson. “You’ve lived with them for months now, yet you haven’t come to know them at least this much? Nathan Stout is a true believer in the American dream, even though it’s been dead for twice as long as he’s been alive. Rachel Mata is a military brat. Her father was a Marine and she would never dishonor his memory by turning traitor. And Hector Ramirez…” She sniffed. “He’d be too scared. He doesn’t have any family, has no home to go back to. If he were to lose this, he would have nothing.”

  She let her hand slip away and began circling him, a cat playing with a mouse.

  “But you, Geoffrey Alan Patterson from Frankfort, Kentucky, the fetid, unwashed navel of this smoldering, radioactive wreck of a country, you have it all. You have a home, a family waiting for you, depending on you for survival. You have no ties to the military, no illusions of patriotism or honor, no allegiance to this country or any other. People in Appalachia take care of themselves or they die? Isn’t that right?”

  Her breath was a knife caressing the back of his neck and he shuddered, stepping away from her but freezing when the stance of one of the Tagans shifted just slightly, the muzzle of its anti-personnel machine gun moving ever so slightly.

  “That’s the way it is,” he agreed, jaws clenching on what he wanted to s
ay, on the names he wanted to call her.

  Psycho Russian bitch.

  “Who better to offer the money he so desperately needs, then? Do you think I don’t know my job?” Her forefinger jabbed into his upper arm for emphasis and he flinched. “Do you think I was sent here to this shithole simply because I was expendable?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted maliciously. “I mean, this ain’t exactly a premium assignment for a KGB agent.”

  “I asked to come here.” Now she seemed genuinely pissed off, which was scary but also something of a minor triumph. It was hard to get a rise out of the woman, except in bed, and she could have been faking that. Probably was faking that, he admitted to himself.

  “I volunteered because I was needed,” she went on, circling back around in front of him. “Because there’s something bigger at stake than who controls this God-forsaken swamp. And it’s important enough to pay an unskilled, uneducated, desperate redneck hillbilly like you a million adjusted dollars, and more than important enough to kill you and your whole worthless family if it comes to it. It’s so close to the end, Geoff. Just play your part.” She smiled and leaned up, kissing him with such fierce passion he almost thought it was real…until he realized it was simply a demonstration of how good she was at her job. “Maybe,” she said breathlessly, “you’ll even live through this.”

  Patty watched the sky through his Hellfire’s canopy. It was a reflexive action—he could have just looked straight ahead at the threat display and seen thermal, infrared and visual all melded seamlessly into one, coherent picture of his surroundings. But he’d seen them coming in on radar and he knew where to look. The night was clear, the moon sinking in the early morning hours, and three stars shone in the sky from the thrusters burning in.

  He was glad it was dark. This place was depressing in the daytime, the fake nature it had once sold now overgrown with the real thing. Buildings had collapsed under the weight of the years and the ones still standing were stained and mottled and peeling. Rollercoaster tracks twisted and spiraled and soared and dove, motionless and rusted. It was a tombstone for a way of life he’d never get to experience. The whole region was a cemetery infested with people too stupid to know they were dead.

  Just like the three people landing their Hellfires in front of him now.

  “Patty, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Roach bellowed, her voice so loud over his cockpit speakers that they exploded in static. He could tell which mech was hers even without the IFF transponder because it took a step toward him, breaking the line with the other two, its articulated hand cocked as if to throw a punch.

  He’d expected her to lose her shit. It was Nate’s place to chew him out, but she was bossy, couldn’t bear anyone else getting a word in edgewise. That made it easier.

  “I was being stupid,” he admitted, trying to put some truth in with the lie to make it more convincing. “I felt guilty about Dix so I thought I’d try to end this myself, but I can’t. There are three of them in Tagans and I can’t take that many on myself.”

  “Where are they?” Nate asked him. He could hear the strain in the man’s voice; Nate was angry, but keeping it under control for the good of the mission. That was Nate, always under control, always holding everything in check. He wondered if the guy ever got laid.

  Ramirez said nothing, and Patty figured the Mule was sweating bullets, scared shitless to be out here with just them.

  “Over in the France section of the park,” he told them. He wouldn’t have had any idea what “France” was if Svetlana hadn’t told him, but he had to make it look like he’d scoped the place out. “It’s over to the north of…”

  “I know where it is,” Nate interrupted him.

  “Yeah, well, the Russian mechs are set up behind this tall stage at the Royal Palace amphitheater, and I think their base of operations is either inside that building or maybe underground. I think there are tunnels underneath the buildings.”

  “You’ve seen Russians going in and out of the building?” Roach asked him, still sounding angry but also curious.

  She turned her armor toward the direction he’d indicated. Nate didn’t, but he was experienced, real military. She was just a wannabe with daddy issues.

  And what does that make me? Oh yeah…desperate.

  “I saw someone poke their head out,” he answered her question. “I was too far away to catch an accent. Hopefully far enough away he didn’t see me or my mech.”

  “All right, here’s what we’ll do,” Nate said. “Roach, you and Mule fly around the other side of the park, come in from the north down into the amphitheater. Make a big show of it, get their attention. Patty, you and I will give them a minute to get into position, then we’ll come in low, between the buildings and take the bad guys from the rear while they’re distracted. Hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em again before they realize what’s happening. Should be simple, hooah?”

  Patty rolled his eyes. “Hooah” was an Army thing, an all-purpose exclamation they used to show how hyped up they were to do something tedious or stupid or dangerous. Still, he was trying to sell this, so…

  “Hooah,” he chimed in with the others.

  “Get going, Roach.”

  “Understood, Boss,” Roach said, which seemed a little odd to Patty but she was an odd chick.

  Roach and the Mule blasted away from them on gouts of wavering, glowing fire, curving off slightly to the left to get around the coaster tracks looming above them. Patty’s stomach churned as he watched them go, knowing he was sending them into a trap, hoping it wasn’t to their death. But better theirs than his…or his mom’s. Less than a year ago, these people had been strangers to him. He kept trying to remind himself of that.

  “Just you and me now, Patty,” Nate said. There was a strange note to his voice, something almost regretful. “Time to be honest.”

  He felt a prickling up the back of his neck, a sense something wasn’t right. He might have ignored it, might have tried to play it off, but not now, not with what was happening. He knew he had one chance, one clean shot while Nate wasn’t expecting it…

  His cockpit went suddenly and irrevocably dark, the instruments going dead, his Hellfire freezing in place with a gently fading hum of servos, not even audible until they stopped working. Patty’s breath caught in his chest and a cold numbness spread outward from his gut as he realized what was happening.

  “How did you know?” he asked, not even sure if his question would leave the cockpit with the power out. “How did you do it?”

  The radio crackled in his headset, the only thing in the cockpit still live.

  “I’m too trusting sometimes, Patty,” Nate said. “Dix wasn’t. He built a remote cut-off for all our mechs. Don’t bother trying to get out the hatch, either. The lock is sealed and the emergency canopy ejection is disabled. As for how I knew…you’re way too young to have ever been here, to have even heard of this place. How the hell would you know which part was the France pavilion? Shit, they’re aren’t even any signs left up. Why did you do it, Patty? How could you do it to us…to Dix?”

  That hurt, a literal, physical pain in his chest and he pounded his fist into the armrest of his seat.

  “For my family, man,” he moaned. “They know where my mom is…they have a guy there. They sent me video.”

  “And before that, it was the money, wasn’t it? You sold us out for money.”

  “You know why I need it, Nate,” he insisted. He hated the words, hated how they made him sound. “What are you going to do?”

  There was a long pause and Patty wasn’t sure the man would bother to answer. When he did, the sadness remained.

  “Right now, I’m going to go kill your Russian friends. After that…well, I’ll decide how much more killing I feel like doing.”

  There was a roar of jets and Nate was gone. Patty slumped in his seat and waited, alone, in the dark, to see who would eventually win, to see which of his friends would wind up ki
lling him.

  Thirteen

  Nate couldn’t understand why he wasn’t enraged. He should have been seething, murderous, ready to kill the damned Russians and then go back and beat Geoff Patterson to death with his bare hands, but he was just…numb. He flew the Hellfire in a curve around the roller coaster track with the rote motions of a trained pilot, checking his weapons and sensor with the flat, emotionless precision of a professional pilot.

  Just as well. Giving in to the anger would just get me killed. There’s work to do.

  “Roach, Mule, you read?”

  “We’re here, Boss,” Roach told him. She was pissed and not trying to hide it. But she’d had time to prepare because, unlike what he’d told Patty, he’d suspected what was going on the moment he’d seen the note. Patty was many things, one of them being a very competent mech pilot, but Nate had known there was no way in hell Patty would take off after the Russians on his own. Patty fought for Patty.

  So, when they’d flown into Busch Gardens, Nate had been looking for an ambush. He’d found it at the amphitheater at the France pavilion, spotted it from behind the trees. There were, indeed, three Tagans standing beside the stage of the old Royal Palace amphitheater, but they were U-mechs, uncrewed, remotely piloted. He wouldn’t have been able to tell without the data Dix had retrieved after the ambush at the old navy yards, but now he could spot the tell-tale signal from the communications system sent back to the Pi-mechs controlling the drones. These weren’t being flown by someone in a van with a joystick and a satellite uplink, they were mirroring Pi-mechs, which meant there were three more Tagans prepped and ready to jump them when they went after the drones.