by John Ringo
“Nobody’s left yet,” his dad said flatly.
She hesitated. “Me. He is, by God, coming in alive,” she said. “As soon as I can swing it, we’re out of here.”
“We’ll get out of your way,” Pinky said, getting up. “Right, Daddy?”
Daddy was letting himself be led around way too much. His eyes had a funny, far away look like he wasn’t exactly paying attention to things. Miss O’Neal looked at him and her forehead crinkled a little.
“Charlie, do you have an appointment scheduled with Dr. Vitapetroni’s office?” she asked.
He looked at her for a second like he didn’t understand what she was asking. “No. I guess I’ve been too busy, ma’am,” his dad said.
“Make one. That’s an order,” Miss O’Neal said. “Dismissed.”
Pinky was glad she did that. He didn’t think his dad was crazy or anything, but seeing that shrink might help, and he didn’t think Daddy would have listened to a little kid, or maybe not to his friends from the unit, either. He caught Cally’s eye and could see they both understood that Pinky would make sure Dad didn’t forget. He could nag and pester. He was good at it.
As boy and man disappeared out the doorway, they passed a couple coming in, the first of the lunch crowd. There would be more, as these no doubt heralded the beginning of the lunch rush. Time for her to go find Sands.
“I didn’t think you wanted to be interrupted, but your husband has made a pickup call. He should be here whenever they can get him in,” the buckley said.
“Why?” Cally asked. “Is something wrong?”
“The call said he was coming in to improve communication.”
“Then he and I have yet another breakdown in it, because I won’t be here.” She was trying to joke but it came out as irritation. Too much was happening too fast, and she still — irrationally, she thought — resented every moment she didn’t get to spend around her husband. It wasn’t like they were newlyweds, even though they’d just had the honeymoon, and just came out into the open as married. Hell, even just as a mistress to the Tong, who didn’t know who she was, being the mistress was sort of open. Kind of. When you got down to it, it was kind of hot.
That’s it. She was acting like a fucking newlywed. Or a no longer getting to fuck newlywed. Mission face, mission face, mission face dammit. She couldn’t help it; she felt a goofy grin sneaking over her face.
Time to find Sands and Tommy. And to stop freaking grinning like an idiot.
Michael Li hated the tropics with a passion, and most of all he hated the Darien jungle in Panama. Despite wearing a white suit of the lightest non-GalTech material he could find, he was sweating like the proverbial pig. This was also despite having the suit jacket off. His collar was not unbuttoned, nor were his sleeves rolled up, because it limited the damage from the bugs who found him far too tasty, insect repellent or not. Oh, it helped. Just not enough.
Li had grown up inside. As a child on the moon, outdoors had been a great adventure he’d preferred to decline, going outside the pressure locks only once, when forced to, on a school field trip. The low-grav playgrounds were cool growing up, but it was also something to take for granted, another familiar thing from home that was absent on Earth.
The city park a few elevator hops and corridors away was his idea of “outdoors.” It had plants. Plants were supposed to be decorative and stay where someone put them — out of the way. Sounds outdoors were supposed to be birds chirping and piped music of flowing water or ocean surf.
Hence, he hated Earth’s outdoors, and the Darien most of all. Every hour of the day or night, some animal or other was shrieking at the top of its damned lungs; vegetation wasn’t occasionally in the way, it was always in the way; and the bugs, and the heat, and the humidity.
He normally stayed in his air-conditioned headquarters, or his room, as much of the time as possible. His goddamned AC, older than Darhel panties and a piece of shit to begin with, was broken again. He couldn’t hide in his bunk all day; he’d look like a wuss. At least there was a chance of a breeze out here.
He also, he admitted, wanted to emphasize the privations he was enduring in the name of the Tong when he called his boss and gave him an update. He had the O’Neal army commanding officer’s report, too, for delivery, but he could just send that as an e-mail after the call. It was damned convenient for the O’Neals to have to send all their communication back and forth through the Tong. Useful.
The boss was really sticking his neck out on this deal, and Li was along for the ride by association, but he was starting to believe it might work. These military guys seemed to know what they were doing and were doing less whoring and drinking than he’d expected. He didn’t know why it surprised him that the O’Neals had ended up with their own private army. It was an unusually good force of mercenaries, a large number of them actual blood family. If they were smart and bribed the right people at the right times, there was no reason they couldn’t do quite well out of it, if they were finally coming around to being practical. Since they had chosen a line that complemented the Tong’s enterprises instead of competing with them, this thing really had potential. In the long run, for his own future, it might even be worth this sojourn in sauna hell.
He looked at his watch. It was a couple of minutes until eleven, and his boss was usually punctual, which fit his military background. Officially, the boss had come into existence out of thin air. Unofficially, he was military and some kind of officer before the Tong recruited him.
“Michael, your boss is on the line,” his PDA said in its pleasant tenor voice.
“Thank you, Huan. Put him through.”
A holo of Yan Kato appeared over the buckley, with enough of the background caught in the stream to suggest that his boss was in the back of a store; shelves stacked with goods rose, ghostly, in the background of the holo, fading out around the edges.
His superior had the kind of face the Tongs gave people who didn’t start out Asian. Unless someone was a very good fit for a specific ethnicity, they tended to avoid having someone look wrong for a single type by having them look like a cross of a number of Asian ethnicities. It was common enough for people to really be half Vietnamese and half Korean, or half Chinese, a quarter Korean, and a quarter Japanese, or half Chinese and half white American. Usually, if someone had a mish-mosh appearance and too sketchy of a background, people just assumed round-eye, but it wasn’t polite to say so. “Yan” looked rather unconvincing to him, but Li didn’t give a rat’s ass for his ancestry as long as the Grandfather accepted him and he kept doing a good job. His boss was a rising star, which made for an auspicious horoscope for Li.
“Status?” Yan asked.
“Quarters and administration are up. Half the storage facilities are up and receiving the first shipments. We have a secondary location up on the coastline and are shipping food and equipment to whichever location has the lowest transportation overhead,” he said. That last consisted largely of the right bribes, but how many people and how much varied. “The Mirandas have quite a hatred for Elves. The O’Neal organizational associations have opened doors there, acquiring information that has kept down costs.” He didn’t like having to admit it, because he was used to thinking of the Bane Sidhe as impractical idealists — which they were. However, in this case, the O’Neal Grandfather had skillfully parlayed that into a business friendship over the years. Mostly low level, but of long standing. Good planning, that.
“How are the soldiers?”
“Better than the general reputation of soldiers, but this is not an area of my expertise. I have a report from their Colonel Mosovich to Sunday. He suggested himself that I send it through you. The soldiers appear to find being here to be of ample training value. Although they drink and visit women, they are not excessive. They are willing to work and have been very helpful camouflaging the buildings,” Li said. Of course they were helpful. The buildings housed their own quarters, food and supplies.
“How soon can you get them
on the boats out?” Yan asked directly, his desire for speed showing on his face.
“It would be difficult to equip and load them in less than a week,” Li replied, meaning that he couldn’t do it in less.
“Get them out in three days. Use money to expedite whatever it takes.” His superior could be disturbingly direct at times like these.
“That would be very difficult within the customary constraints of good business. The soldiers might find their supplies primitive, as well.” Li meant, of course, that there was no way he could get these men equipped well enough to get them onto boats to Venezuela in three days without spending so much money he’d get shot for it, no matter what his boss said. Oh, he could tell them they were equipped, but getting them to agree with that assessment and board the boats was another thing altogether.
“Do what you have to do. There are others who find it in their interests to bear the costs. I have a message from their superiors with orders for the soldiers; they’ll work with you.”
Yan said it firmly, leaving Li in no doubt that the boats would be leaving in three days with whatever and whoever he could have aboard them. He was beginning to get a headache. At least, with their orders in his hands, he would be able to pass some of the headaches on to Colonel Mosovich. He didn’t envy the man. Then again, he didn’t envy himself, either.
“Whatever can be done, I’ll do,” he said. That part, at least, needed no interpretation.
Chapter Twenty-One
Yan Kato cut the call to Panama. His lieutenant was a good guy. Li would bust his ass, and not have kittens because he couldn’t get it perfect. Stewart hated it for DAG that their supply situation wouldn’t be perfect, but it never was. He’d check the situation before they boarded ship, but the pressure driving the schedule wasn’t coming from the Tong or him. They had civilians coming in, they had some of their dependents coming in as refugees. They had an unknown number of Indowy that he, personally, didn’t give a shit about one way or the other, but Cally and the other O’Neal powers that be did care, for whatever reasons. Soldiers did dangerous, deadly, uncomfortable things so civilians didn’t have to. Time for the DAGgers to earn whatever it was the O’Neals were paying them.
Stewart still had trouble getting his head around the fact that he was now an O’Neal. Not just any O’Neal, he was Iron Mike’s fucking son-in-law. The world was a strange place. He was in a strange place.
The shelves behind him looked ordinary enough. High shelves stacked with boxes. In front of him, however, was a great big paper-mache dragon head, painted in tie-dyed patterns, with peace signs of various sizes scrawled or painted on it. It was yellowed with age, and looked brittle under the huge layer of dust that coated it. He was so, so tempted to ask, but he didn’t. They might tell him.
He’d come in through the front of the cutlery shop, the stock of which ran to pocket knives, daggers of various grades, cheap throwing stars, and pan-Asian kitsch, with a couple of mid-grade swords to draw the oohs and aahs. In the display case with the swords, a cheap jade statue of the Buddha sat behind a neatly printed card that swore it had once been in the national museum in Beijing. If it had, it had been in the mark-down bin of the gift shop.
He had picked this place because it was the closest organization spot to one of the pickup locations Cally had told him to use. Well, not exactly a location. In this case, he just called a cab from a particular company and gave a particular address over the phone as his destination. The cabbie would call back when he was pulling up out in front.
Stewart could have gone out front and browsed through the crap. It wouldn’t have caused any notice, as the store was empty other than the owner, who already knew he was back here. Instead, he stood near a wobbly little table and had bad coffee out of a paper cup. Even bad coffee was still coffee, and he flipped a dollar into the honor jar. The stuff was expensive, and who knew if he’d get a chance at any while he was staying with the Bane Sidhe.
The trip was confusing, as always, but this time they didn’t take steps to keep him from figuring out where the hell he was going. He supposed between Tong business policies and family they had confidence in his willingness to keep his mouth shut. As a former general in Fleet Strike counterintelligence, there was no question that he was able to keep his mouth shut. He was protected against every known interrogation drug, unless the Bane Sidhe had some he’d never heard of. Come to think of it, he’d have to ask. With some of their secrets in his head, it would certainly be in their interests to have him protected to the best of their ability. What “the best of their ability” was was another secret he’d love to add to his collection.
The thing that really sucked about his afternoon was when they finally got in to the Bane Sidhe’s secret little Sub-Urb and he found out he’d missed Cally by less than half an hour. It did surprise the hell out of him, though, that Nathan O’Reilly had come to tell him himself. Then Stewart realized he’d been unconsciously thinking of himself as Cally’s husband, since he was here on her turf, instead of thinking in his persona as a fairly high ranking representative of the Tong.
His first trip here had been essentially social. On this trip, he was the man on the front end of a few boatloads of money and a final lifeline for many of their people. That being the case, he was surprised the Indowy Aelool and a ranking representative of Clan Beilil weren’t both here, as well.
O’Reilly offered a firm handshake. “Mr. Stewart, so good to see you again.”
“Just Stewart, please. Or Yan if you prefer,” he said.
“Then call me Nathan. Since Cally and her teammates call you Stewart, that would probably be less confusing.”
Stewart nodded. “My PDA tells me I missed my wife?”
“I’m afraid so. We got an opportunity to pick up a high value target and for once your wife was the person we could most count on to leave him alive.” The priest grinned wryly. “We didn’t have much time when you were here before. Would you like a tour of our little operation here? While we still have it.”
“That bad?” Stewart was genuinely concerned, and not just for the Bane Sidhe. If the Darhel were willing to go to open warfare enough to take out a major installation like this, it endangered his entire family and his organization, too. The latter was, suddenly, a barely important side thought. He was just getting used to being an O’Neal, but they were the closest thing to family he’d had in a long, long time, and his surge of protectiveness for the whole lot of them shocked him. When the hell had that happened?
“I’m being pessimistic. I estimate the chances of losing the base at around ten percent, overall. It just smacks of failure to be evacuating.”
“A tour would be fascinating,” Stewart changed the subject. “I presume Tommy’s with Cally. I’ve got his report from Colonel Mosovich.” He could tell Nathan was just itching to get a look at that report. Truth to tell, so was he. However, since the DAG force in Panama was strictly an O’Neal pidgin, both men knew it would be more than their lives were worth for Cally to catch them sneaking a peek. Getting caught by Tommy would be just as bad, and a lot more likely, given the other man’s formidable cyber skills.
“Unless you’ve got Michelle O’Neal hidden away somewhere around here, Nathan, I think we’re just going to have to wait,” he said it jokingly, but privately admitted that he had no idea of the Bane Sidhe’s capabilities other than by inference, and they had shown over the years that they frequently held back from things they could do for reasons unfathomable to outsiders.
“Unfortunately, no, but perhaps a walk-through of our Sohon training facility might hold your interests in the interim.” The priest grinned like a little kid about to show off his toys.
“Really? The crown jewels. That’s a flattering level of confidence.”
As they spoke, Nathan was steering him to an elevator down a side corridor, pressing the call button as they arrived. “You’re not one of ours, but you are an O’Neal. I’m not taking you around in that capacity, though, but rather in your pr
ofessional persona,” he said. “You’ve made a very large deal with us. I suspect your employers may question whether a deal that good was ever intended to be repaid. It’s my insurance for you to be able to tell them you’ve seen various of our capabilities with your own eyes.”
“Pardon me for poking holes, but your capabilities aren’t very reassuring if you’re about to lose them.” James Stewart, donning his “Yan” hat, had transformed from the in-between land of relative into all business.
“Ah, but we aren’t. Tanks we can afford to lose. Not easily, but they can be replaced. Our nanogenerator is out already. From there, the next really expensive thing is the headsets and the interface that goes within the tank. Those are small. If we can’t keep our practitioners alive, then it will be because none of the rest of us are alive to defend them. All the rest of this,” O’Reilly said grimly, “is replaceable. Expendable. And all the rest of us, too.”
The elevator arrived and they boarded, the head of the O’Neal Bane Sidhe still making his case.
“I’m speaking for the benefit of your employers, of course,” he said. “We had nothing like this in the centuries before recontact, and we survived. We’ve never put all our eggs in this basket; we’re still decentralized as our core operational tradition.”
Stewart noticed the other man did not give any percentage as to what was decentralized, and avoided saying “most.” Nor did he say what quality of individuals were out as sleepers, how much they knew, how much bench strength they had. There was also the matter of the size and sophistication including the O’Neals, versus without them. The O’Neals were pretty concentrated, too, which was both a strength and a weakness.
He didn’t reply, and the elevator descended farther into the bowels of the base in silence. It was an interesting elevator. The walls were Galplas, but they had a slightly rough surface, and there were crayon scribblings all over them, spreading out from around knee level. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “The walls?” he asked.
