A Time to Fight
Part 2
The first shots woke David McClellan from a troubled sleep. A volley of fire from a weapon he instantly identified as a Merrill M-5, set to full auto. It echoed in the distance, then a muffled CRUMP as some kind of explosive went off, one that shook his bed and sent a flash through his screened window.
As he shuffled to belt his kilt on, cursing middle age, he called for Jack, but got no response. In the distance a warbling siren started from the UN base, one he knew all too well from Mtali. More shots, another explosion, and he cursed. “Bloody idiots!”
“JACK!” he yelled again, still no answer. He slipped out of the room and knocked on his nephew’s door. No answer, so he turned the handle. Locked, so with a well-placed kick, he knocked the door off. The room was empty and the window stood open. The shots across the river reached a crescendo, panicked automatic fire, finally being answered with the hiss crack of a beamer and the thuds of a heavy machine gun.
In a panic, McClellan rushed to the room he used for an office, and stared in horror at the weapons rack bolted to the wall. His own M-5 was missing, and the ammunition drawer underneath stood wide open, empty of all the 4mm clips he had.
“Holy Mary mother of God,” he whispered, praying for the soul of his nephew. Then he forced his fear away and ran down the stairs. At the door to the basement, he stopped and checked to make sure he still had a certain key hanging around his neck. He did, and pounded down the stairs, then flipped on the light. The key fit into a crack, unnoticeable to casual, or even detailed inspection, opening another doorway, also impossible to see. It swung out on oiled hinges to reveal a room filled with stacks of military-grade containers, ones that Minstrel and others had cached here. Thank God Jack hadn’t gotten in here. They might take him alive for just an attack with a rifle and some homemade explosives. If he had access to the stuff stored here…
He closed and locked the door, and tried to call his nephew by phone. Nothing. The gunfire stopped, though the damned siren still wailed, and emergency spotlights flickered. Only the UN would have lights like that in a combat zone.
The hardest part was waiting. If he rushed to the base, he was as likely as not to get gunned down. The whole place would be an anthill, especially as it was filled with rear echelon troops who would be in a complete panic. No, best to wait and see. His neighbors, the Singhs, came out of their shop, asking what happened. “Some damned fool attacked the base, is what. You’d best just go back inside and see what the morning brings.”
They did, and he sat on his porch, looking out over the cleared fields toward the base. A vertol hovered around, sweeping the immediate area with a harsh, glaring beam, but not venturing any further. Good troops would have immediately patrolled to disrupt a secondary attack, but there was no sign of it in the night-vision glasses he placed on his face. Just white-hot figures milling around by the gate, and several motionless ones slowly fading to gray. But he pushed the fear aside, analyzed the scene with a professional soldier’s eye.
Mac thought hard about things he had buried long ago. Although he retired as a logistics warrant, the first five years of his service in the FMF had been straight infantry. None of the Blazer or Black Ops crap, just regular soldiering. Squad-sized assaults on defended positions had been his specialty, until a bad fracture ended those days.
“Ah, to be young and stupid again,” he said out loud. There was so much he could have taught those idiots, the primary thing being that they had no real chance as untrained civilians, even against shitty UN troops. Maybe he should have formed a militia, but that would have been too noticeable with the base right there, and all the decent guys had left. So many decisions and choices, none of them the right ones. None of them ever were.
His thoughts were interrupted by someone stumbling down the road, coming slowly from the direction of the base. Mac stepped off his porch to see who it was, and taking off the NVD, let his eyes adjust to the false dawn. The man, or more like the boy, lurched forward into the circle cast by the lone streetlight, and collapsed.
It was Carl Singh, Jack’s best friend. Mac could smell cooked meat before he got within ten feet of the boy. Microwave beamer, one of the so called “nonlethal” weapons the UN was using. That buzz-CRACK he had heard was probably the unit shorting out; some jackass had set it up way too high. Mrs. Singh rushed past him, screaming, followed by her husband, and Mac let them go. There was nothing he could do for the boy, except maybe a mercy shot; he was surprised the kid had made it this far.
“Take him back to the house, and make him comfortable. Tomorrow,” he said, giving them some false hope, “a UN patrol will be through here. They’ll take him to the base hospital.”
He knelt down by him, and asked gently, “Carl, what happened?” The boy couldn’t really see; his eyes had been cooked. The smell was unbearable.
“Was Jack there? Just nod your head.” Instead, the breath whispered out of him, for the last time, and his mother’s screams rose even higher.
Carl’s father stood, and the look of anger on his face made Mac take an involuntary step back. “I will kill them all!” he shouted, and turned to go back to his shop.
He ran up to the despondent father, and said, “Raj, wait. We need to know more, and you don’t want to make your little girl lose her father, too. I’ll be back here in thirty segs, go get your rifle ready.”
* * *
The road to Harrow’s trailer was empty this early in the morning, and McClellan knew that his truck stood out like a sore thumb. Thank God it was northward, away from the UN base. He drove with his lights on, knowing it would make no difference to a vertol’s sensors, and not wanting to wreck. As he sped down the road, he fished around under the seat for the pistol in the hidden compartment. Hitting the latch, the gun dropped into his hand, and he laid it on the seat next to him. There was a battered truck in the drive, one that he recognized as the Harrows’. Slipping on his night vision, it glowed warmly, even in the summer heat, capacitors still cooling off. Bastard.
Mac slid to a stop in the gravel, barely avoiding the various debris and wrecks scattered across the front yard. The truck had barely come to a stop when he flung the door open and rushed up the porch. “HARROW!” he yelled, “OPEN THE DOOR!” and kicked as hard as he could on it. Then he stepped aside, a moment before a shotgun blast, both barrels, BANG BANG, shattered it. He shot the lock, and he entered as the door swung wide. Harrow was fumbling with the shotgun, trying to reload it, and as he snapped it shut, Mac kicked it out of his hands, pressing the pistol to the man’s forehead.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” he said, filled with rage. “Carl Singh is dead because of you. Where the hell is Jack! Is he dead? ANSWER ME!”
“T-T-Tangler!” the man sobbed out. “He volunteered to act as, as a div-version, and they tangled him and we shot at them.”
McClellan’s heart hammered in his chest, and hope filled him. The boy might be alive after all. “Who else, you stupid fuck?” The farmer babbled the names of several of Jack’s classmates, kids who weren’t old enough to go fight with the guerillas. Kids easily influenced by this shit stain of a man.
“I’m coming back here tomorrow, and this place better be empty. If not, I’m going to kill you. Where are your kids?” Harrow had two twin daughters, who more often than not, were over at a neighbor’s house, begging for food.
“Marcie’s got ’em,” he babbled, meaning the woman on the neighboring farm. “I ain’t stupid enough to git ’em involved in this stuff.”
“No, you’re just stupid enough to get other people’s kids killed,” Mac answered, and, thinking of how much pain Carl Singh must have been in before he died, shot him in the forehead.
* * *
“OK, give me ten segs after you see my truck go through the gate,” Mac said to Raj Singh. “Understand? Let’s go over the plan again.”
The man’s knuckles were white on his rifle, but he nodded. Singh wasn’t a veteran, but he was a hunter, which was even better in this case. “In thirty segs, I am to kill those sons of bitches at the front gate. I am to take as many as I safely can, then withdraw.”
Mac could see that the man didn’t like the idea of breaking off his attack. “Yes, withdraw. Your family is going to need you even more, now.” They had discussed it; Singh was to take his wife and daughter to relatives even deeper into the mountains. “Come back when this all settles down, and I’ll buy you a beer.”
They shook hands, both fearful that a UN patrol would make its way into the town, but nothing had shown. Mac was going to go into the base on his regular supply run, and, if the distraction went well, get Jack out of the lockup. He expected there to be some killing, but surprise was on their side.
The guards at the cargo gate were nervous, on edge after the night before. They had been lulled into a false sense of security, one which an actual FMF squad could have exploited to wreck the entire base. He thought back to his days in 3rd Mob. They were good troops; maybe not Blazers, but good enough. Yeah, his old squad could have definitely taken this place. Twenty against two hundred, fair odds.
Now these bozos at the gate were playing at being soldiers. He was made to get out of the vehicle, and held at gunpoint while they searched it. “Heard you had a little bit of excitement last night!” he said while he waited. “What happened?”
The master sergeant first class snorted, and said “A couple of dumb kids learned not to fuck with the UN. We killed two, and have a prisoner to torture, uh, I mean interrogate.” She laughed at that one. Then she looked at him closely.
“Say, you’re a local. How do we know you weren’t involved?” My God, she was dumb as a box of rocks.
“Would I show up here the next morning, with my regular supply run?” he asked, the sarcasm flying right over her head.
“Uh, I suppose not.” She saw that her troops were done crawling all over the truck, and an indecisive look passed over her face.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m a businessman, and I have business to do with Sergeant Major Nimbutu. I’d hate to see me late for my appointment with him, Captain,” he said, deliberately mistaking her rank. With a smile, she waved him through. Mac climbed back up in his truck, and slowly made his way through the warehouse area of the base. Prefab buildings sat in orderly rows, Some even with Earth trees planted outside offices. That more than anything spoke to how long the UN planned to stay here.
He stopped in front of Nimbutu’s office, hand slipping unconsciously to check that his comm was still in his pocket, and thought about the contents of the truck. Concealed in the false bottoms that he used to smuggle out supplies from the base were what any typical farm town had in abundance. Fertilizer, thirty gallons of it. Ninety-four percent ammonium nitrate, to be precise, mixed with six percent fuel oil. It was for plan “C,” if everything else went to shit.
“Come in!” called the NCO in a jovial voice, and McClellan opened the door. Nimbutu sat at his desk, with his back to his “I love me wall.” Numerous placards and framed letters of commendation formed a continuous wallpaper behind him. There were several weapons mounted there, even, incredibly, what Mac had recognized as a gold plated AK-74, something which must have been five hundred or more years old. He doubted, though, that the fat bastard had ever fired any of them.
What held his attention now, though, was the sword that lay across the desk. His own claidheamh cuil, that he had thought safely hidden away from his nephew. Nimbutu saw his eyes widen in recognition, and smiled. “Interesting weapon, this broadsword. As you can see, I’m a bit of a collector myself. This will make a fine addition. I wonder if your nephew can tell me its history?” Not waiting for an answer, he just said, “We need to talk, David. It seems our arrangement is going to change a bit.” He slowly took a pistol from its shiny black holster, and placed it on the desk in front of him.
“What, exactly, do you mean?” asked the Freeholder.
“I mean, you are going to start giving me information as to who your contacts are in the remaining FMF, and in return I’ll see that your nephew doesn’t get sent to a re-education camp.”
“I thought you were on our side; isn’t that what you said? That you wanted your freedom?” He ignored the offered chair, preferring to stand, arms folded. There had been no way to get a weapon past the guards, even hidden in a container.
Nimbutu laughed, a deep belly laugh, and said, “My friend, I am on MY side! Of course, when such a card falls into my lap, I must play it! My superiors will give me another medal, and perhaps a posting back in my home country! Where I can spend my wealth—”
His bragging was interrupted by the base klaxon sounding again. Grabbing the pistol, Nimbutu stood and turned to look out his window. McClellan dove forward onto the desk, snatching at the hilt of the sword, and crashing into the big man. They both went down in a tangle of limbs, Nimbutu trying to point the pistol at David’s head, Mac straining to maneuver the point of the sword to reach any part of Nimbutu’s body.
They struggled silently like this for what seemed like an eternity, the pistol creeping closer to his eye, and the UN soldier grinning as he used his superior weight to press home his attack. McClellan headbutted him in the nose, and, as the other man winced in pain, used the basket hilt to hit him across the face. Nimbutu went down in a welter of blood, and started to cry out, a cry that turned into a gasp as Mac pinned him to the floor, the point going through his belly and grating on the concrete. Again and again, consumed by a killing rage, the Freeholder plunged his sword downward into the now-still body.
What finally brought him to his senses was the passing of the base Quick Reaction Force vertol screaming overhead, and the whine of an infantry carrier’s capacitors moving full out. He cleaned the blood off the sword, and found the scabbard sitting in a corner. The pistol was a non-standard-issue H&K A6, with two extra magazines. That meant a hundred and twenty rounds to get him into the holding facility and get them both out of the base.
He glanced up at the weapons on the wall, and grinned. The AK-74 hung from brackets, with a bandolier hanging from one peg. He knew many such “trophy” weapons were reproductions, and this could very well be one. Locking the door to the office, he lifted the weapon off the pegs, then pulled a magazine from the pouch. Flicking one round out, he looked the stamp on the back. “JCA 203.” Jefferson City Arms, Freehold year 203. Yep, reproduction. “Fake ass poser,” he muttered to the corpse. Even the “gold plating” was vapor coating.
Then he thought better of using the rifle. It would be loud, and pretty damn obvious. The H&K had a built-in suppressor, and the holding area was only two blocks over. Stepping back out to the truck, ignored by people rushing by to the front gate, he opened one of the containers, throwing the food out and pulling out the false bottom. Inside were UNPF uniform pants and blouse. He stepped back inside and quickly skinned out of the kilt, buckling the sword around his waist. Not unusual, since he wore lieutenant colonel rank and they were notorious for eccentricity. Unlocking the back door to the office, which he knew led to the loading bay of the warehouse, he glanced around, and saw no one. Picking up a tablet from Nimbutu’s desk, he opened the door, stepped out into the bright Iolight, closed the door behind him, and walked toward the holding area.
* * *
No one paid any attention to him as he walked confidently into the military police office. Attitude, he had found, could get you anywhere. Now he just had to hide his Grainne accent, and pull this off.
The woman behind the desk was a civilian contractor, with a patch on her shoulder that said WACKENHUT SECURITY. He’d seen them before; many of the base functions were contracted out, but this was ridiculous.
“I’m here for the prisoner. Transfer back to UNHQ,” he said, as abruptly as he could.
The woman glanced down at her tablet, and then back up at him. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but he was scheduled to be interrogated here at the base at 1700 today. There is no transfer order, I’m going to have to call my…” She stopped when she saw the barrel of his pistol pointed at her head.
“How many others are in the building?” he asked. “Don’t be a hero, lady. Just answer me.”
Instead, she reached for the stunner hanging on her belt, almost smiling as if daring him, reaching at the same time for a panic button hanging around her neck. He fired, once in the chest, a loud POP that knocked her back out of her chair and onto the floor. Shit shit shit. He hadn’t wanted to do that. She started to scream, and he shot her again, through the mouth.
Her cut-off scream brought the sound of running boots down a hallway, and a burly guard in the same shit-brown uniform burst through the door to his right. The man seemed to stop in his tracks, and then swung a stun baton hard at McClellan’s arm. With a numbing CRACK, the baton hit, and the gun fell to the floor.
Dodging sideways, he dragged left-handed at the sword, trying to clear it from the scabbard, even as the guard hit him again with the stunner, trying for his head. Mac managed to free the sword, and swung it in a vicious backhand that caught the man across the throat, even as the emergency alarm sounded inside the holding area. His attacker slowly fell to the ground, grasping at his throat, even as his other hand had squeezed his own panic button.
Reaching down, Mac pulled a blood-soaked security key card from the man’s belt, hoping there were no retinal scanners. The open doorway showed a long hallway, lined with cells. “JACK!” he yelled, running forward.
“UNCLE DAVE! IN HERE!” his nephew shouted back. He was in the last cell on the left, and the two hugged through the bars, tears running down the older man’s face. Even as he tried to work the lock, his nephew kept apologizing for getting captured.
“Stand back!” Mac said urgently, and tried a card against the scanner. He heard shouts outside, and stopped to pull out his comm. Punching in a number, the thirty kilos of explosives in his truck detonated, sending a fireball into the sky. Not a huge distraction, but hopefully it gave them some time.
The door refused to budge. He tried another card, then a third. He flipped it over. They were unidirectional. BUZZclick. His nephew stumbled out, and McClellan caught him. He could see the teen had been viciously beaten; strands of tangler still wrapped themselves around his face.
“Jack, pay attention. We’re going to head out this back door and make a run for it. Do you remember when this was Gots’s farm? The draw in the southeast corner?”
The boy nodded, and McClellan continued, “We’re going to head for that, it’s only about two hundred meters. I have an aircar sitting in the woodlot beyond.”
Outside, the alarm changed tone, to one Mac recognized as infiltrators in the base. He had heard it enough on Mtali. “Time to go, lad.”
Jack McClellan looked at his uncle in amazement. He had called Mac a coward, and the man had fought his way into a UN base to rescue him. “Uncle,” he started to say, but he was cut short.
“Jack, listen to me. You go to Hanging Rock, find a man named Joe Carpender, if he’s still alive. Tell him that you’re Jack McClellan’s son, and he’ll take care of you. Hell, maybe you’ll even learn to fight properly. Now go! Walk like you’re supposed to be here, and then run like the devil for that draw.” And he shoved him to the back door, handing him the bloody security card.
“But…”
“No buts. I told you there was a time not to fight, and a time to fight. This is my time to fight. Yours will come. Now GO!”
His words were punctuated by shouts from the front of the office, and David McClellan’s last glance at his nephew as he turned to stride away from him, toward battle, a giant of a man, pistol in one hand and claidheamh cuil in the other.
He could almost hear the pipes playing.
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