CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At the same time first platoon entered the camp of the 7th Independent Military Police Battalion from the coast side, and second platoon entered the camp from the inland side, third platoon silently slipped, one man at a time, through the slightly ajar gate of the POW compound. Inside, Corporal Dornhofer led his fire team directly to the guard tower to the left, and Corporal Dean took his men to the tower on the right; Sergeant Ratliff kept Corporal Pasquin’s second fire team on the ground, watching the towers closely for movement. Sergeant Kerr led second squad past the two barracks buildings—sparing time for a quick look through the windows to make sure prisoners were still kept in them and to check for guards—and the sanitation building to the administration building. He kept his first and second fire teams by the main door of the admin building, and sent Corporal Doyle and his fire team to the interrogation building. The gun squad went to the barracks buildings to free the prisoners. As each fire or gun team reached its objective, the team leader sent a signal to Ensign Bass.
When every element of third platoon was in place, Bass signaled Dornhofer and Dean; the two corporals began climbing the ladders attached to the guard towers, followed by their men. Everybody else tensed, ready for instant action if the guards in the tower realized they were under attack.
When he got the signal from Bass, Corporal Joe Dean swallowed and took a deep breath, then began climbing. He kept his hands and feet at the sides of the wooden rungs, to reduce the chances they’d creak under his weight, but climbed as quickly as he could. He felt vulnerable on the ladder, more vulnerable than when he fought the implacable Skinks, almost as vulnerable as he did the first time he was in combat. On Bass’s order, he’d left his blaster on the ground so it wouldn’t impede his climb or make a noise that might alert the guards of his approach. The only weapon he carried on his climb was his combat knife, held between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand while he used the other fingers to climb with; he worried that the hilt of the knife would thud against the ladder, but he was very careful and made no noise while climbing, and no curious guard looked over the edge of the guard tower to see a knife making its lonely way up the ladder.
Dean stopped with his head just below the wall of the guard post, bringing his feet up another two rungs and moving into a crouching position. When he felt Lance Corporal Godenov’s helmet against his right knee, he signaled Bass that they were in place.
As soon as Bass heard from Dean and Dornhofer that they were in place, he sent the go! signal. Dean lunged up and over; the time for silence was over. Godenov scrambled up the last few rungs and was over the wall almost before Dean landed on one of the tower’s two guards. Both were sound asleep—or passed out, as the empty bottles littering the floor of the guard post suggested. Dean and Godenov secured them with wrist and ankle ties and gags before either gained enough consciousness to realize what was happening. Dean breathed a sigh of relief when the two soldiers were bound; he hadn’t had to use his knife.
The other tower was taken just as quickly and quietly.
Looking through the windows, Sergeant Kerr had seen one soldier with sergeant’s stripes on his shirt sleeves sitting at a desk in an office, half on the desk, obviously out cold. Two other soldiers were in the room with him; one was supine on a couch, the other sprawled on the floor. In another, unlit, room, his infra had shown four more soldiers sleeping on cots. The other rooms all seemed to be empty. When he got the signal, he sent his first and third fire teams rushing into the admin building. Corporal Chan’s first fire team ran into the room with soldiers sleeping on cots; Corporal Claypoole and his second fire team went with Kerr, darting into the office.
Claypoole pounced on the sergeant at the desk, and had the man’s hands twisted around behind his back and tied together in seconds. Then the sergeant emitted a massive snore. Claypoole looked at his men to see what they were doing. Lance Corporal Schultz had bound and gagged the soldier on the floor, and was helping Lance Corporal Ymenez bind the one on the couch.
Claypoole raised his screens and looked toward where his infra had shown Sergeant Kerr. “He’s snoring,” he told his squad leader. “Do you still want me to gag him?”
Kerr raised his screens, but he was listening to his helmet comm, then reporting to Bass. Finished with his report, he said, “Don’t bother, the whole camp is secure. They can make as much noise as they want. I’m going to check on Doyle. Chan’s in charge here until I get back.”
“Aye aye,” Claypoole said as his squad leader left the office.
While the Marines of Company L were closing in on the camp of the 7th Independent Military Police Battalion, Lieutenant Keesey, commander of the 1st MP Company, was the only member of the battalion neither drunk, getting drunk, nor already passed out. Keesey was a sober, serious man; he rarely drank alcohol and never with the drunkards of 7th MPs, and he was deadly serious with what he was about. Quietly, so as not to disturb anybody—anybody other than the one he wanted to disturb, that is—he eased the key he’d obtained into the lock on the rear door of Prisoner Barracks Two, the door that gave way to the women’s squad bay. He unlocked the door and eased it open on hinges he’d earlier made sure were properly oiled, then closed it behind himself. He stood silent for a few moments to allow his eyes to adjust to the somewhat deeper darkness inside the barracks, then located his objective. He didn’t really need to take the time for his eyes to adjust; the room was small, only a dozen bunks, and enough light came through the unshaded windows for him to see where he was going. His objective was, of course, a woman, but a woman he’d taken a particular interest in. Not only was Charlette Odinloc an attractive woman, something about her suggested to Keesey that she was more than the farm wife and refugee she claimed to be.
Keesey believed Charlette Odinloc was a spy. And he had his ways of dealing with spies. Particularly a spy who was also an attractive woman.
Creeping on soft-soled feet, Keesey approached Charlette’s bunk. He withdrew a prepared knockout cloth from a sealed wrap he carried in his hip pocket, and in a flash, clamped it over her nose and mouth. Charlette reacted automatically, and in exactly the wrong way to defend herself—she bolted upright and took a deep breath to gather air to scream. Instead of air, she inhaled a heavy dose of the knockout, and fell back on the bunk.
Keesey stifled a snicker, and lifted Charlette to sling her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Walking silently despite the additional weight, he left the women’s quarters, carefully locking the door behind him. Moments later he opened the door of the interrogation building and carried Charlette to a room he had already prepared. There wasn’t much in the room; a washbasin, spotlights that were off, a straight-back chair, a long bed with bare mattress and manacles to hold wrists and ankles, and a drain in the middle of the floor.
He dumped his burden unceremoniously on the bed, and breathing a sigh of thanks for the condition of her clothing, stripped Charlette naked. He put the manacles on her wrists and ankles, making sure her arms were stretched tightly above her head and her legs spread wide, then turned on three of the spotlights; one on her face, one on her breasts, and one on her pubes. Then he sat on the straight-backed chair and waited for the knockout to wear off.
He waited for only a few minutes before he rose and went to the basin where he ran some water into a pan. Standing next to the bed, he waited for Charlette to breathe in and threw the water on her face. She breathed in some of the water and suddenly awoke, sputtering and shaking her head; she tried to sit up, but the manacles kept her supine. She gathered herself to scream, but Keesey slapped her across the face, hard.
“Now, now, missy, ya be quiet, ya hear? Ah’ll gag ya if’n ya wanna yell. Ya wanna be gagged?”
Charlette looked up at him in shock, trying to blink the tears from her eyes—that slap hurt.
“Ah din’t think so. Ah don’ wanna gag ya anyhow. Ah needs to question you, and if’n yer gagged, ya cain’t answer. Ain’t that so now?” He looked dow
n at her body and tried to imagine what it had looked like before the ship she’d been on was sunk offshore near the MP camp, before she’d been half-starved as a prisoner. He liked what his imagination showed.
“Well,” he drawled, running a clammy hand along her rib cage, “I don’t really keer if you tell me the truth, ’cause what I’m about to do to you is find out the truth my own way, and this will hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me.” He smirked and stroked her silently for a moment.
The feel of Keesey’s hand on her ribs told Charlette everything she had to know about what this monster meant by “my own way,” and “this will hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me.”
“On second thought,” Keesey continued after a moment of caressing, squeezing, and leering, “maybe you’ll enjoy what’s comin’, honey. Most women do.”
Corporal Doyle positioned his men by the entrance to the interrogation building and began a solo circuit of it, looking into the windows. Only one room was occupied, and it was well lit. What he saw when he looked inside appalled him; a naked woman manacled to a bed, a Coalition officer standing over her, molesting her. As fast as he could he finished his circuit. Fortunately, the well-lit room seemed to be the only one occupied.
Back with his men, Doyle quickly briefed them on what he’d seen and what they were going to do about it. He knew he was supposed to wait for the command to go from Ensign Bass, but he couldn’t let that officer do what he obviously had planned for the woman. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked. He pulled it open and crept in, heading for where he was sure the lit room was. A line of light at a door’s bottom drew him to what he was certain was the right room. He positioned his men, then leaned his helmet against the door and turned up his helmet’s ears to hear what was happening inside. He did his best not to fidget; he knew any noise he made before Bass’s signal could cause problems for the platoon’s mission. But, damn he didn’t want to wait to rescue that woman.
There it is! Doyle stepped back and tapped PFC Summers on the shoulder. Summers lifted his right leg and put all his weight into kicking the door next to the latch. The door slammed open, and Summers almost fell through it.
Doyle managed to barge in without tripping on Summers and yelled out, “Freeze, asshole! You are now my prisoner!”
The officer, his pants down around his knees, spun around. “Wha’ the—” he said, but got no farther; Doyle hit him in the head with a butt stroke, and the officer crumpled to the floor.
“Miss, are y-you all r-right?” Doyle stammered. He whipped off his helmet so she could see him, and looked around for something to cover her with. He plucked the discarded shift up from the floor. It wasn’t much, but it would do the job.
Charlette was shouting with joy; as soon as she heard the voice out of nowhere, she knew the Marines had landed. “Marines! You’re here. Oh, Goddess, you’ve saved me!”
By then, Doyle was examining the manacles, trying to open them, but they were locked. He turned to Lance Corporal Quick. “Quick, search that bastard; he must have the keys on him. Oh, and tie him up while you’re at it.”
“Huh? Oh, right,” Quick said. Even though Doyle had told him and Summers that they were going to rescue a naked woman, the sight of Charlette Odinloc’s naked body had momentarily stunned him. “Summers,” he ordered, “give me a hand here.”
“Miss, I’m Corporal Doyle, third platoon, Company L, 34th FIST. We’ve taken this camp and we’re freeing all the prisoners. Do you know if anybody else is in this building?”
Charlette stopped laughing and crying with relief and said, “Corporal—Doyle did you say?—I don’t think so. I think I’m the only one.” She craned her head to look at Lieutenant Keesey where he lay trussed on the floor with his pants still down around his knees. “Me and that piece of garbage.” She tried to spit at Keesey, but her position kept her from projecting the spittle beyond the edge of the bed.
“We’ll have you freed as soon as we find the key, miss,” Doyle said, looking toward Quick and Summers. “T-Take your helmets and gloves off,” he told them; he found the sight of Keesey flopping about disconcerting. It became less so once he could see his men’s heads, and their hands going through Keesey’s clothing.
“Corporal Doyle,” Charlette said, “I think the key’s on the basin.”
“Thank you, miss,” Doyle said and stepped to the basin.
“My name’s Charlette Odinloc. Sergeant Odinloc, Confederation Army.”
But Doyle wasn’t listening, he was looking for the key and not finding it.
It was Quick who found the key, on a corner of the bed, almost tucked under a corner of the mattress. He gave the key to Doyle, who unlocked the manacles that were keeping Charlette supine.
“Can—can you get dressed, miss?” Doyle asked as soon as he had the last manacle opened.
“Yes, thank you, Corporal.”
“All right, turn your backs and give the lady some privacy,” Doyle said.
“Thank you,” Charlette murmured. A moment later she said, “You can turn around now.”
They did. Doyle thought she looked better dressed than she had naked. Perhaps that was because now she was standing on her own instead of being bound.
“Where are the rest of the Marines?” she asked.
“Oh!” Doyle suddenly realized he hadn’t reported what he’d found in the interrogation building. He knew Sergeant Kerr had given his fire team the assignment because he thought nobody was there. He radioed Kerr, and a moment later the squad leader came in, followed soon after by Ensign Bass.
“Sergeant Charlette Odinloc, Army G2, reporting, sir,” she said when Bass arrived.
“Army G2?” Bass shook his head. “I’ll bet this dummy didn’t know what he had here, did he?” he asked, toeing Keesey in the ankle.
Keesey, conscious again, glared up at him, then at Charlette. If he hadn’t been gagged, he would have said, “I knew there was sumpin’ diff’nt ’bout ya!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“They’re coming! They’re comiiiiiiiiing!” a female voice screeched in the street outside the headquarters building of the 4th Composite Infantry Division.
“What the hell’s all that racket?” Major General Barksdale Sneed asked, looking up from the Phelps Independent Courier, which he read every morning. Because the paper had such a low circulation and Phelps, like most other places on Ravenette, was a somewhat backward place, technologically speaking, it was printed the old-fashioned way, on paper. Usually it was only four or five sheets in length but General Sneed enjoyed putting his feet up, sipping his coffee, and spreading out the sheets to read them. He read everything, even the advertisements. The paper was a morning ritual with him. He especially liked the editorial cartoons which often pilloried Cardoza O’Quinn, the self-important and sticky-fingered mayor of Phelps.
The 4th Composite Infantry Division had been stationed at Phelps for some time by then, and during that time General Sneed had come to despise the mayor who literally slobbered with joy over the presence of the soldiers in his town, who spent their pay in businesses mostly owned by himself and his extended family. But O’Quinn hated General Sneed, who imposed a strict curfew on his men and punished those who broke it or committed any other infraction of good order and discipline.
General Barksdale Sneed was an officer of the Old School, one who believed a soldier’s duty was soldiering, not carousing and staying up late. He also resented being stationed at Phelps, which he saw as a backwater in the war against the Confederation. But no matter where General Davis Lyons sent him, Barksdale Sneed was going to do his duty. He kept his men in tip-top physical condition with road marches and calisthenics; they trained intensively, too, in small-unit tactics and battalion-size maneuvers, and when they weren’t training, he found other work for them to do.
Sneed was the very picture of a professional soldier, tall, spare, closely cropped white hair, and a rocklike jaw that jutted aggressively out from his face. His battle-dress uniform was always spo
tless. He kept it that way by changing several times a day.
Today’s cartoon showed “Hizzoner” O’Quinn, pockets stuffed with banknotes, being kicked down the street by an enormous boot attached to a skillfully executed caricature of Major General Barksdale Sneed, who was shouting after the departing notable, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” Little figures clutching overstuffed cashboxes labeled with the names of his associates, mostly relatives, leaped out of the mayor’s way.
“He got me down pretty good,” Barksdale said with a chuckle, slapping the cartoon with one hand. “That artist, Olyphan, he’s a genius! He-he! I bet old O’Quinn is choking on his coffee over this one!” A sudden ruckus outside caught his attention.
“What in the hell is all that screaming out there, Captain?” he asked his aide.
“I believe, General, it is, um, one of our soldiers,” Captain Quang Nigh said from the window.
“Go on down there and find out what’s up, will you, Quang? Find out who’s coming and why that damned woman is screaming about it.”
Captain Nigh groaned silently when he got close to the disheveled young woman swaying back and forth in the street. The General would not be pleased, he realized. Her uniform was soiled, her hair was in disarray, and she smelled awful, even from a distance. And her eyes were wildly bloodshot.
“They’re coming!” she shrieked at the officer.
Captain Nigh could see she was a corporal. “What’s your unit, soldier?”
The young woman pulled herself to a loose position of attention and saluted drunkenly, “S-Seventh MPs, shur, sir! Corp’ral Puella Queege, Fourth Comp’ny!”
“Have you been drinking, Corporal?” Then he did a double take and said, “Whaaat? Seventh MPs? What the hell are you doing here, and at this hour, and drunk?” Queege only stared back at him uncomprehendingly. “What in the hell is that smell?” He gasped.
David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 12] Page 16
