Kris Longknife Audacious

by Mike Shepherd

  Assuming he didn’t kill her in traffic.

  “Front door guard is down” came over the net.

  “Back door is down.”

  “Rig one is unloading” came almost immediately, followed by rig two through five about as fast as notice could be given.

  That made it time for Jack and Kris.

  The ragtop on the sporty thing folded back.

  Jack mashed the gas pedal and his little red rocket took off for the space by the front door just vacated by a station wagon.

  Then Jack did a hard left turn. There were two large pickup trucks parked parallel to the curb across the street from their target. Jack brought the sports car to a hard stop, nose to the curb, its side doors with at least an inch between them and the front of one truck, the tailgate of the other.

  Kris was on her feet, sliding herself over the tiny trunk and running for the door before the car even stopped swaying.

  Jack and Captain DeVar were only a step behind her.

  “A fine bit of driving,” Kris called over her shoulder.

  “Don’t get a chance to do something like that nearly often enough.” Jack chortled.

  “Let’s hope you don’t need to do something like that for a very long time,” Kris shouted back as she charged through the door and into the hot shadowed cavern of the warehouse.

  “She dishes it out,” Jack growled, “but she can’t take it.”

  Inside, Kris started to ask where to go, but green chem lights lit a path. She followed.

  NELLY, WHAT ABOUT THE BUGS? ARE WE UNDER OBSERVATION?

  I AM TAKING DOWN THEIR BUGS AND SENDING MY OWN REPORT. THEIR BUGS SEND A RECOGNITION SIGNAL EVERY SIXTY SECONDS. THAT IS ALL THE TIME WE HAVE.

  “We got sixty seconds before they notice their bugs are dead,” Kris reported.

  “I’d planned for only thirty seconds,” DeVar replied as they took the stairs two or three at a time.

  The hall before Kris was lined with Marines in civvies, armed with automatics mostly, but a few had M-6s. They awaited their captain’s orders.

  Captain DeVar signaled to four M-6 gunners. They and a pistol-armed sergeant moved to the head of the line.

  SOMETHING IS SPOOFING THE NERVOUS GUY, Nelly told Kris.

  Kris slowed down to glance at Captain DeVar’s battle board. The scene in the hostage room was getting rambunctious. The calm fellow signaled to the shooters to put their guns back together and for two of them, the ones closest to him, to check the door.

  “It’s going down,” Captain DeVar said, alerting his team in a soft voice.

  The four Marines closest to the door moved farther down the hall, leaving room for the new, heavily armed arrivals.

  “Protect the hostage,” the Marine Captain whispered.

  “I’d love to talk to those two suits,” Kris added. “Take’em alive if you can.”

  “But they’re not worth a dead Marine,” the captain snapped.

  And the door opened a crack.

  35

  The kidnappers tried to peek into the hall without exposing themselves. Not a bad approach.

  They didn’t expect Marines to kick the door in.

  The sergeant not only kicked the door in, but rolled into the room himself. Behind him, his fire team took the gunners on at full automatic.

  The two men trying so carefully to open the door were blasted across the room. Their blood splattered the walls behind them. Around them.

  The two shooters from Kris’s favorite gang dropped to the floor and tossed their pistols as far from themselves as they could.

  That left two gunners and two suits. The gunners tried to take the Marines on, about a second after the Marines transferred their fire to them. That second’s delay was deadly. Like the first two gunners, they became gory renditions of modern art decorating the dirty gray walls of the room.

  Both of the suits now had guns in their hands.

  Both swung around to blow a hole in Gramma Ruth’s head.

  Gramma Ruth showed why she was still around after going toe-to-toe with Iteeche warriors. They had figured that taping her to a chair would inhibit her movements.

  They hadn’t planned on her taking the entire chair and laying it over on its back. Suddenly, a metal chair was blocking their aim at Ruth’s skull.

  They started to take the two steps they needed to get a good aim at her head. At least they tried.

  Neither quite made that second step. The sergeant took one. Kris got the other.

  The sergeant put one round in the flaky one’s pistol arm, then moved aim and put three in his body.

  Kris didn’t trust her skills. She put one round into her target’s shoulder, then two more into his side.

  Neither man got off a shot before they were spinning around. Going down.

  “Check fire. Check fire!” Captain DeVar shouted.

  The Marines did. The silence was deafening.

  “Medic. Medic, we got two bad guys down that we want to talk to,” Captain DeVar shouted into the quiet.

  Two Marines with Red Cross–marked bags raced into the room. They raised an eyebrow at the bodies and parts sliding off the walls and went to where Captain DeVar stood over two suits.

  “You want to check Mrs. General Trouble,” DeVar said to Kris, but she was already sliding to a stop beside Gramma Ruth.

  “You okay?” Kris said as she tugged at the tape over Ruth’s mouth. Tugged gently…then ripped it free when it didn’t want to come.

  The bad guys had really taped Gramma’s mouth. Kris could guess why.

  “What took you so long?” Gramma Ruth growled.

  Kris tackled the tape that held Ruth’s arms to the chair. “We took the scenic route,” she muttered. Just like a Longknife to have nothing but complaints for her rescuers, Kris thought.

  Her hands free, Ruth helped Kris rip off the tape on her body and legs. Then started to stand up.

  Ruth quickly gave that up as a bad idea.

  A medic dropped down beside Kris even before she called for one. She shined a light into the old woman’s eyes, asked and was told she had two fingers up. “And now I’m getting up,” Ruth grumbled, and they helped her stand.

  She did stand, swaying a bit, but up. “From the looks of this bunch of hardcases and heartbreakers, I’d say I’ve fallen into the company of Marines.”

  That got an “Ooo-Rah” from around the room.

  “Well, in the name of General Trouble and my grandkids, may I give you my thanks on a job well done. Very well done” got another “Ooo-Rah.”

  Then Gramma Ruth turned to the two suits. “What a pair of sacks of shit,” she said.

  “Dumber and dumberist,” she growled. “I knew they wanted to pop me one between the eyes. Pacer here kept saying it, and game player never showed anything but concern for the timing. So I figured out what I’d do ahead of time.

  “Then you wonderful folks come busting in, and all they can think of is to notch my eyebrows. So I do what I knew I’d do.”

  Ruth walked over and looked down at the nervous one. He was on a stretcher. The other was being loaded. “I did what I’d planned on doing, and what did you do? You idiot, you followed right after me. That chair was no real protection. You could have ripped me a new one. You could have perforated my thighs so much they’d never find an artery to patch.”

  She shook her head. “One of you couldn’t quit complaining about that ‘rich bitch,’ and the other never put down his game long enough to do any thinking. If that ‘bitch’ hadn’t been doing your thinking for you, you’d never have gotten me here.”

  Then Gramma Ruth spun on her heels to face Captain DeVar. “I am very sorry about your Marines. They never had a chance. No one could have seen what was coming.”

  “Your two local security guards?” DeVar asked.

  “Yes. That’s them on the wall. What you left of them.”

  Outside, the distant wail of a siren started up.

  “Company’s coming, troops. Let’s police up t
he area and clear this scene,” DeVar said firmly.

  Kris held Gramma Ruth’s elbow as they headed out. “Thanks,” the older woman said. “I don’t think I quite have my balance back. Oh, and I do need to go to the bathroom.”

  “As soon as we get to the embassy,” Kris said.

  “Please hurry.”

  But they paused among the boxes when a sergeant said, “You might want to see what we found.”

  A Marine was busy attacking more boxes with a crowbar, but it was easy to see from the ones open what the closed ones would show: rifles, automatic pistols, rocket grenade launchers, and boxes and boxes of ammunition for the same. A tarp had been pulled aside to show several mortars.

  “This place is an armory,” a corporal observed.

  “Should we blow it up, ma’am?” the sergeant asked.

  “As much as I’d love to,” Kris said, “I don’t think the neighborhood would much enjoy the experience. Let’s leave it for the local cops to figure out. It will be interesting to see what they make of it,” Kris said, exchanging a glance with Ruth.

  There was no senior to junior in that glance. No vet to neophyte. In Ruth’s eyes, Kris saw an equal approving of an equal’s call.

  Garage-size doors had been opened, turning the warehouse into a drive-through. Three large Marine rigs had been driven in. Two were outfitted as ambulances, the first in line was not, and looked raring to go. Kris aimed Ruth for that one.

  And ran into Abby with the kids. “Kris, I have to get these youngsters home. At least Cara. Not sure where Bronc’s mom is.”

  “See if you can find one of the Marines that took care of her,” Kris said. “I’ll see you when I see you. There’s lots of loose ends to tie up here.”

  Abby looked around at the munitions. “Sure looks that way. You know, a guy could start a revolution with all these toys. I wonder what they had in mind?”

  “So do I,” Kris said. “And I think I have at least one guy alive who knows what’s going on. Take all the time you need to take care of the kids…but don’t take too long.”

  “Oh, I just love working for you,” Abby said, but Ruth was in the rig and the driver was gunning the engine. Kris piled in and in a second, they were headed for the embassy.

  And safety.

  36

  Kris made it to the embassy with no further delays. They pulled up to a side entrance and Kris hustled Ruth inside…and pointed her at a restroom.

  While Kris waited, the announcement came over the net that all hands had successfully withdrawn. Two scouts had been left to observe the arrival of the cops. One patrol car had been followed by two, which were reinforced by five that led to the arrival…very quickly…of, well, just about all of them.

  Kris was glad to hear that. Her one fear was that the first car would relock the place and make it disappear again. If that happened, she might have to rethink her revulsion to blowing it up. But now whoever ran Eden would have to take a good, hard look at those shake-and-bake revolutionary fixings.

  This time, they might even do something about it.

  Revolution. Was that the word for this trip? Was a budding regime change the real reason Grampa Ray had sent her here?

  So, Grampa, am I supposed to help it…or stop it?

  No way for him to tell her this far from Wardhaven. But since the movers for the shake-up had been impolite—in the extreme—to Gramma Ruth, Kris was pretty much coming down on the other side. Assuming there was another side and what Kris did mattered a fig to them.

  Further reflection ended when Gramma Ruth rejoined her.

  And several Marines entered, weapons drawn, and proceeded to encourage the few civilian and Foreign Service types who happened to be in Marine country to make a hasty exit.

  One diplomatic type was talking with Commander Malhoney, the often-passed-over officer whose gut was actually shrinking, now that he was jogging along with the rest of the Navy contingent as a third platoon behind the Marines each morning.

  The civilian was still there as a blood-covered gurney was wheeled in from the transport outside and pushed into sick bay.

  “Did I just see what I thought I just saw?” the Foreign Service officer asked.

  “Most certainly you did not,” the commander said, a tight smile edging across his face. “And if you still think you saw what you saw, may I suggest you immediately forget seeing it.”

  The civilian frowned, then glanced again down the hall as a second gore-covered gurney was wheeled toward sick bay.

  Then he spotted Kris standing at the end of the hallway from which all the bodies appeared. His eyes widened, then narrowed quickly. “Right, Commander. I didn’t see a thing.”

  “Smart man. You’ll go far.”

  “Just like you.”

  That brought a laugh from both, and they headed in the other direction.

  Kris and Ruth followed the smell of blood to sick bay.

  “I figured you’d bring me extra work,” Doc said, greeting Kris as she walked into sick bay, “when that maid of yours waltzed in here with two steamer trunks full of some of the finest medical gadgets I ever hoped to see in my life. But I was hoping to be working on your fine body, not just any near cadaver the jarheads dragged in.”

  “You can never tell, Doc, when there’s a Longknife involved,” Gramma Ruth said.

  “And who might you be, young woman,” Doc said.

  “Ruth Tordon, Doc. My eldest girl had the misfortune to marry into the Longknifes.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Dead some sixty years.”

  “I’m sorry,” Doc said, and seemed to mean it. “Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I think my nurses have stabilized the patients, and I need to see if there is anything that I can do to keep them out of the morgue.”

  “Try, Doc,” Kris said. “I—no—both of us, really want to talk with them while they’re still drugged and pliable.”

  “That old wives’ tale is overrated. This your handiwork?”

  “I nailed one. Sergeant Bruce got the other.”

  “They were both trying to nail me,” Ruth said dryly.

  “Horrible behavior. I ought to let them die for such poor taste.”

  “We think they were paid to develop that poor taste,” Kris said. “We want to know who was passing around the money.”

  “Then I shall let them live. If that is within my poor powers,” Doc said and entered his surgery.

  Kris found herself with nothing to do but pace the room.

  Ruth settled into a chair. “Could you please not do that?” she said a minute later.

  “Do what?”

  “Pace. The last fellow to do that tried to kill me. By the way, do you have a weapon I can borrow?”

  They dropped down to the Marine armory. An old staff sergeant there was delighted when Ruth asked if he had an ancient relic of a gun to fit her old paw. With a sigh of pure pride, he produced from the back of his horde an old 6-mm Special.

  “You don’t see many like this old baby around these days,” he told Ruth. “You want me to show you how it works.”

  Gramma popped the magazine out, pulled the action back, and checked to make sure it was unloaded. “Works about the same as my old one, my lad.”

  “Foolish me,” the sergeant said, “trying to teach my granny to suck eggs.”

  “Or to plug those guilty of outrageously inappropriate behavior.”

  Kris was about to suggest that Abby would have a holster for the weapon, but the sergeant pulled one from the lower shelf that fit Gramma’s new weapon nicely and let it ride comfortably in the middle of her back.

  “You know,” Kris started, “Jack would insist that primaries are not supposed to go armed.”

  “Jack was that nice Secret Service agent trying to keep up with you. What’s he doing in Marine green?”

  “Didn’t Grampa Trouble tell you about that?”

  “Oh no! Did my darling Terry do you in? I thought by now you’d have learned why they all
call him Trouble.”

  Kris made a face. “Let’s say that I don’t need any more lessons on that.”

  “I have yet to figure out whether you Longknifes are just natural-born optimists or horribly slow learners.”

  “I think we’re both,” Kris said.

  “Well, I am not going anywhere without my new pet,” Ruth said, sliding the arrangement into the rear of her slacks. “Whatever started this morning is not finished. Not with all those hot boy-toys and go-boom boxes left at the warehouse. How did that finish out?” she said, turning back to sick bay.

  “Our scouts say half the local police department is presently parked outside the place. I doubt anyone can vanish that revolution in a box now.”

  “Good,” Ruth said, nodding. “However, with that stuff now in the public domain, or at least brought to the attention of management, whoever stocked that arsenal will have two choices.”

  Kris nodded and started to enumerate them. “Run away, go to ground, and hope it blows over before starting again.”

  Gramma nodded.

  “Or throw the revolution into high gear, move H-hour to right now, and roll the dice.”

  “Sadly, I don’t see a third option,” the older woman said.

  “Kris, the ambassador wants to see you in his office,” Nelly announced.

  “You want to go back to sick bay?” Kris asked.

  Gramma shook her head. “Hasn’t been nearly long enough for Doc’s workup.”

  “Want to tag along for my little visit to the ambassador?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Gramma said with a grin of evil pleasure.

  The secretary didn’t look up from his computer as Kris came in. “The ambassador is expecting you.” Then he did look up and frowned as Ruth followed Kris in.

  She flashed him a smile and went right along with Kris. Kris had noticed, following Father around, that if someone acted like they knew what they were doing, people usually let them go right ahead and do what they wanted.

  Gramma Ruth had that I-know-what-I’m-doing-don’t-juggle-my-elbow act down perfectly.

  “What do you think you are doing, young lady” greeted Kris inside as Ambassador VanDerFund came out of his chair.