“None.”
“Call me back,” Jackie said, and hung up.
A few seconds later, her phone rang. “Yes.”
There was a brief pause, then Richard said, “You asked me to call.”
“Yes. Have you seen anything of the gunmen we heard about from the south?”
“Nothing, Your Terribleness. I have rocket launchers on the upper levels of the stadium. There are miles and miles of parking lot. If anyone tries to drive across that asphalt, we will barbecue them.”
“I would expect nothing less from you, Richard. Hold the stadium. You may start killing the sheep as soon as you are attacked. I’ll teach them to cross me.”
“It will be done,” he said, and hung up.
A moment later, Jackie’s phone rang again. When it started to buzz rather than talk, she hurled it out the window.
“Damn phones. There’s no one I really wanted to talk to.”
11
Jack had his computer, Sal, project a picture of the stadium for him and Tilly. He tried to concentrate on her fingers as she took him on a walk through the stadium.
It was not easy.
Three million years of evolution had trained the male eye to look for movement . . . and the female form. As the truck bounced from pothole to pothole, it jiggled two beautiful examples of the female breast right in front of his eyes.
Normally, Jack considered himself a very disciplined man. Today, evolution was winning hands down.
So he kept his hands in his pockets and tried to keep his eyes on her fingers. At least his ears worked normally.
“The field is pretty much a mess. They’ve had people living there for the last two months,” Tilly said. “At least they dug latrines down at this end. Still, a lot of people have gotten sick.”
“What about water? Water in? Water out?” Jack asked.
“We have to water the grass most of the summer. Not a lot of rain then. Winter, we get lots of rain. It gushes off the seats in rivers. So, yes, a lot of water comes in and a lot has to be taken out. Why?”
“Because where the water goes out, I was hoping to take my Marines in. You know anything about the sewer system?”
Here, the gal shrugged, and Jack got a glimpse of even more of her. Her tank top covered little of her midriff, and the cutoffs were badly frayed. Everybody was wearing clothes that had seen better days, but Tilly seemed dressed to distract males.
Or attract them.
Yet the woman talking to Jack was self-possessed and unassuming. The clothes did not match the person they covered . . . or hardly covered.
One thing was sure; she had a tight hold on her rifle. And unlike most, her pocket bulged with a box of ammunition. She would not shoot herself dry in one lone magazine.
“I don’t know anything about the underground, just that there is a lot of piping and ducts inside the stadium where no one goes. My job that summer was mowing the grass and painting the seats.
“Here and here”—she pointed—“there’s room to march a band in from the parking lot. You should be able to drive your trucks right onto the stadium grounds.”
“I doubt if we can do that,” Jack said, pointing to where men stood with rocket launchers high on the entrance ramps that ringed the stadium. “We wouldn’t get halfway to the stadium before they blew us away.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Tilly said, and worried her full lower lip. “I never watched many war films. I didn’t like all that killing. It seemed such a waste. Now, there are a couple of guys I really want dead, and I don’t know anything about how it’s done.”
“Movies aren’t the place you learn how to fight,” Jack said. What he really wanted to know was more about the guys she wanted dead . . . and why. Instead, he asked, “Do you know how to use that rifle?”
“My dad used to take my brother hunting. Before they went out, he insisted my brother learn how to shoot. I went along to their target practice and beat them both.” She grinned. “Brother said I cheated. I had these two pillows to rest on.”
She glanced down at the “pillows.” “Dad got Mom and Bro up-country before things got too bad around town. I stayed behind, trying to get a boy to go with me.”
“What happened?” Jack knew if the boy had gone, Tilly wouldn’t be here.
“His dad’s a road engineer. Jackie has him working for her. She’s got his wife and son at the stadium. Sometimes he gets to visit them.”
“And you.”
“I tried to visit his son. Two of the guards said they’d help me if I’d just wait in the locker room. I think I could have taken the two of them, but they brought some of their friends.” Her words petered out, but her grip on the rifle got real tight.
“I managed to find a place to sight this puppy in. I only used three rounds. You get me a target. I’ll hit it. I’m good to two hundred meters.”
Jack didn’t doubt she was.
He concentrated the spy eye on the line of manhole covers stretching from the shipping entrance across the smaller parking lot to the road behind the stadium. He followed more sewer lids until he came to a tree-lined residential street not two blocks from the parking lot.
“Sergeant Bruce, get ready to spin off some small scouts. I’ve got a sewer line I want mapped.”
“Oh joy,” the sergeant replied. “When my DI said to suck it up and soldier, he warned me there’d be days like this.”
Jack pounded on the roof of the truck cab and shouted instructions.
Beside him, Tilly caressed her rifle like she might her firstborn.
Colonel Cortez operated the risers on his chute. It had been a long time since he’d made a jump, and somehow it had gotten a whole lot harder to control one of these things since then. Still, he landed only twenty meters from his stick mate . . . and did so at a sedate walk.
As he spilled his chute, he took in his situation. He was in a farmer’s field, trampling green wheat not yet ready for harvest. The field consisted of several gently rolling hills. Off to his left, a four-lane road hugged the trees, which hid a decent-size river.
Unless he was blind, he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Traffic on the road at the moment was nil. A dozen Marines who had landed closer to the road spread out along the shoulder and prepared to stop anything going in either direction.
Colonel Cortez joined the fifty or so Marines humping their gear toward the road. Word was he’d have transportation along soon.
It was unusual, but it looked like everything was going according to plan.
Private Lotermann hadn’t expected to have his very own command, not with just six months in the Corps, but here he was in charge of three trucks, responsible for getting them to Colonel Cortez.
He was on his own. It was a beautiful day. This was kind of fun.
“Turn left up here,” he told the driver.
The local riding shotgun for him had given up his seat in the cab, preferring to ride standing up on the truck bed. Now he stooped down to the vacant window.
“You want to turn right here,” he said.
“The map the princess gave me said we turn left,” Private Lotermann said, turning toward the volunteer.
And found himself facing a machine pistol with the arming bolt already pulled back and the safety off.
“I could care less about your princess. The Dragon Woman wants us to head for Tranquility Road, so that’s where we’re going.”
The gunman fired; the Marine private heard nothing.
Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife signaled the driver to turn off six blocks short of Tranquility Road. Three hundred meters up the quiet, tree-lined street, she had him stop.
The other two trucks full of Marines spaced themselves at hundred-meter intervals as they halted. Quickly, Marines dismounted and began filtering through the yards, covering for each other as they bounded forward.