Jackie put down her bullhorn and picked up the detonator. That Longknife woman was in for one big surprise.
Kris found herself in the unaccustomed position of watching as someone else started a fight. First platoon belonged to Lieutenant Stubben, and it responded to him.
On his order, the snipers took out the riflemen on the roof of the buildings across the street. The hostages used as human shields showed dismay and shock as they felt the wind from the killing rounds, but none of them were hurt.
The same could not be said for those with guns.
Utter silence hung in the air for a moment after that fusillade. Then smoke grenades landed in front of the mansions across the way. They rolled to a halt, spewing smoke. For a long fifteen seconds, nothing happened as the billowing green smoke swelled up and thickened to cover the windows, where no doubt people with those ubiquitous Greenfeld State Security machine pistols waited behind a cringing wall of human shields.
When Lieutenant Stubben determined the smoke was thick enough, there were low shouts of “Move it. Move it. Move it.” and fire teams of well-spread out Marines did indeed move.
Machine pistols chattered from across the way. One bullet even shattered the window Kris was looking out, leading Penny to suggest Her Highness might back off.
Kris didn’t.
She kept watch as no Marine went down to that poorly aimed barrage.
Doors shattered under trooper-applied explosives. Pistols sprayed on fully automatic. M-6s replied with single shots, and quickly the noise died with the gunners.
Kris headed across the street at a run, Penny and Chief Beni right behind her.
The great room of the first building held its own tragedy. The gunman had found his human shield in the way when he went for the first Marine in. He cut down three of his hostages before the Marine took him down with a single head shot.
Kris shook her head; despite all her efforts and those of her Marines, this was going to be a bloodbath.
“Hold it,” Chief Beni half shouted. “We got a problem. There are live wires coming into all six of these buildings.”
That must mean something to the chief but it meant nothing to Kris.
“Back out, Kris,” Penny shouted.
Kris backed, while waving at the hostages to follow her. Two of them were weeping over the bleeding ones, but a young mother gathered up five kids and drove them ahead of her.
Kris tried to help with the kids, but Penny was half pushing her, half dragging her out the door.
“I got it. I got it,” the chief shouted.
“You got what?” Kris said, standing in the doorway, and pushing back at Penny.
“I think someone rigged these houses to blow right after we took them. Everybody, look around,” he yelled.
“What’s a five-pound bag of coffee doing in the library?” a Marine hollered.
“Does it have a wire leading to it?” the chief yelled.
“It did,” the trooper said, appearing in the hall with said bag of freshly ground Mountain Grown Best, “before I yanked it out of it.”
“Give me your bayonet,” Chief Beni said, acquired the blade and sliced into the bag. Freshly ground beans poured out until all that was left was a large, ugly gray block.
“C-8,” Penny shouted, then added on net, “everyone, look for bags of coffee. They’ve got explosives in them, and our sniffers won’t spot the stuff surrounded by coffee.”
“Somebody really needs a wake-up call in the morning,” the chief said, looking the gray block of high explosives over to make sure it was safe.
“Someone’s going to be very unhappy,” Kris said, as Marines reported more bags found and stripped of their ignition wires. “Jackie is not going to like the surprise at all.”
13
Jackie Jackson stood on her balcony, scowling at the roofs of the mansions two blocks over from her. She’d heard shots and listened as the roar of State Security machine pistols were silenced by the puny barks of the strange rifles.
She had expected better of her minions.
With a grin, she produced the small box with its bright red button. Kris Longknife probably thought that the growing silence meant she’d won another round against the idiots who worked for that wimpy Peterwald the twelfth.
That self-styled princess was wrong. Dead wrong.
Jackie pushed the red button.
Nothing happened.
She waited much longer than she was accustomed to. The technician had explained that even at near the speed of light, it took time for electricity to go from her button to the explosives.
“How long?” she screamed.
None of the men and women standing behind her had an answer for her question,
“Find the idiot who rigged those explosives. Jam this down his throat, then see that his assistant makes sure the next line of buildings blows when I want it to blow. I don’t care if he has to be over there lighting the bombs off himself.”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am,” one of her boys said nervously as he backed away.
She shot him dead.
“I understand, Your Terribleness,” a smart young girl said, stooping to pick up the detonator and racing from the room.
“Don’t ever ‘ma’am’ me,” Jackie said, turning back to the view from the balcony.
Captain Jack Montoya shot the thug nearest him before the dirtbag even knew he was in a fight. Surprise was total, and a big chunk of the gunslingers died no more the wiser.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of people with guns, and some of them did not wait for orders before spraying the people scattered around the playing field and lower bleachers.
Even as Jack took aim and fired as quickly as he could, somewhere deep inside a question was demanding an answer. Where did people like this come from?
For now, all he could do was kill them before they could kill more.
Beside him, Tilly drew a bead and shot. Switched target. Aimed and fired. Found another one, aimed and fired.
Jack wasn’t keeping count, but it seemed she fired just as often as he did.
They ran out of targets before Tilly’s magazine ran empty.
“Some of them are getting away,” the young local said.
“Huh?”
“There are small exits, other ways down and out. You mind if I take care of them?”
Jack didn’t.
While Marines began the slow process of seeing who was alive, who was faking it, and who was sincerely dead, Jack followed Tilly. The young woman fed rounds into her rifle’s magazine as she trotted out to the access ramp.
Sure enough, a small trickle of people with guns was exiting the stadium at the lower level and sprinting across the parking lot.
“Are there similar rats on the other side?” Jack asked.
“Nope, this access was for reporters and VIPs. None of them wanted to have to walk by the smelly garbage canisters on the service side of the place.”
“Are you going to let them run?”
“Nope,” the gal said, wrapping the rifle sling expertly around her arm. “I just want them to all get out where I can get a shot at them.”
“Get all the fish in the barrel.”
“You got it.”
There was no one closer than fifty meters to the stadium. Apparently the rat race was over. Tilly took aim and dropped the last one out, then the next and the next.
That got people who’d slowed down to a walk back to running.
Tilly switched her aim to the farthest one out. One crack from her rifle, and he dropped. Then she started working her way back. It was rare that she needed two rounds to drop a target.
A couple headed back to the stadium.
“You mind if I get the ones that want back in?” Jack asked.
“Be my guest.”
Jack spent three rounds getting both of them.
People quit running back.
They didn’t quit running; some took off to the right or left, presenting Tilly with a deflection shot. That didn’t save them.