Not one of them dropped their weapons or tried to surrender.
Some did start shooting back. That showed the weakness of the State Security machine pistol. Pistol rounds quickly lost accuracy and didn’t do all that good shooting up at the fourth floor of a stadium from a hundred meters out.
Tilly adjusted her target choice to get those shooting back. She ran out of targets well before she ran out of ammunition.
“Are you feeling any better?” Jack asked.
“I think I knew a few of those dirtbags out there. Maybe not. The range was long,” she said coldly as she shouldered her rifle.
“Ever thought of joining the Marines?”
“Never really wanted to kill anyone before now.” She paused for a moment to consider the idea. “You think I’d make a good Marine?”
“Marines only shoot when they’re told, and at whom they’re told.”
“I might have a problem with that. Now, mister, if you’ll excuse me, I have a boyfriend I want to find.”
With that, she took off. Her first couple of steps were actually half skips. Jack shook his head. Even if that gal did ask for papers, he’d really need to see what the head shrink said about her before he’d sign her in.
So he arrived at the entrance of the stadium alone . . . and had to take the ugly sight in by himself.
Civilians were dead and down. Some thrashed in the mud of the grass field. Others lay sprawled on the lower bleachers. Troopers had shot the gunslingers as fast as they could, but some of the bad guys had still spent the last few moments of their lives spraying death on innocent, unarmed women and children.
Jack felt the strong need to empty his stomach.
Instead, he punched his commlink. “Kris, have you got a second.”
“As it happens, we’re in between shoots. How are things at the stadium?”
“It’s ours. That’s what I need to talk to you about.” He explained what he was looking at.
“I’m looking at innocent hostages shot here, too, Jack. With an added twist.” She explained about the explosives.
“Sal,” Jack said to his computer, “get me Lieutenant Stubben and Sergeant Bruce and his computer.”
“On the line,” Sal quickly said.
“The houses the commander just liberated had been rigged with explosives,” Jack said.
“Buried in sacks of fresh-roasted coffee,” Kris added.
“That’s a sacrilege,” Sergeant Bruce snapped.
“So you can’t just send out sniffers,” Chief Beni said, joining the party line. “I had to send out nanites looking for the power cord. I’ll have Da Vinci pass you through a design. Chesty and Sal can spin off a few fast.”
“We’ve spun off quite a few. I feel like that’s myself all over the place,” Sal said.
“It will be done,” Jack said.
In a minute, it was. When Jack was back to having just Kris on the line, he went on. “Kris, I know you’re not going to like what I have to say next.”
“Then don’t say it,” Kris suggested, maybe half-seriously.
“I have to,” Jack said, then paused. “Kris, I know you’ve been the target of way too many assassination attempts. I know you have better reasons than most to hate that whole process. But do we really owe this Jackie a straight-up fight? Wouldn’t we all be better off if we had a nano plant a bomb in her ear. She’s a monster.”
“Your Terribleness,” Kris said softly.
“What?”
“She styles herself Your Terribleness, like it was some kind of title, like my Your Highness. I found that out from a little girl, maybe ten. One of her friends had been taken over to the big house to sing. She told her that Jackson wanted everyone to call her Your Terribleness. About a week ago, the little girl went over to the house and didn’t come back. Maybe she’s still over there,” Kris said, but she didn’t sound all that hopeful.
“Kris, human shields. Bombs. Stealing food. If we took her out, would this whole house of cards collapse?”
“I don’t know, Jack. I’ll think about it. I’ve got to go. We’ve still got a row of houses between us and Her Terribleness’s big house. Stubben says he’s ready to take another layer off this onion.”
“Good luck,” Jack said, and turned his attention to the human misery before him.
Command Master Chief L. J. Mong walked toward the stopped trucks and tugs. He kept his empty hands in plain view. Ahead of him, several men with weathered faces and worn work clothes got out of the trucks.
Halfway to them, Chief Mong halted. “You want to tell me who you are?”
“We work here at the port,” one of the men from the first truck answered. “If you want, we can show you our ID cards.”
“What’d you come out here to do?”
“They just want us to bring your shuttles up to the terminal. That’s all we’re gonna do.”
“And once we got there?”
“They got guns. Lots of those squirrelly little machine pistols they brought from St. Pete.”
“Why are you working for them?”
“They got our wives and kids locked up, some in the main hangar, others at the football stadium. Do what they tell you, or they shoot you, then line your family up after they’ve dug their own graves, and shoot them. A really nasty set of baggage.”
“I hear they don’t hold the stadium anymore. The gunmen there are all dead.”
That lit up some eyes. “How’d that happen?”
“The captain of our Marine company saw to that bunch personally.”
“Who’s seeing to Her Terribleness?”
“We brought our very own Longknife to take care of her.”
That started muttering going through the listening workmen. As if to verify the accuracy of the chief’s intel, three trucks in front of the terminal filled rapidly with men carrying guns.
Quickly, they headed for town.
The command master chief turned. “Guns. Drop a warning shot across their bow. Smoke and noise.”
A petty officer first class took expert aim and a few seconds later a smoke cloud full of fireworks appeared ahead of the lead truck. It made a crash stop, only to be rear-ended by the second, which was violently smashed into by the third.
“Better than I’d hoped for,” the command master chief said.
“A whole lot better than we could have hoped for,” the work leader said. “You want to borrow our trucks?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” the chief said. “Sailors, on your feet. We got a mess to clean up.”
With an eager cheer, the sailors moved out for the trucks.
Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife kept her royal butt well back from the smashed window. That limited her view of the last row of houses between Her Highness and Her Terribleness. It also limited the chance someone across the way could get a shot off at Kris. Nelly had no problem projecting Kris’s words.
“You snipers on the roof. You saw what we did to the snipers on the houses across the street from you. They’re dead, and their hostage wall didn’t do them any good. Put down your guns, and we’ll let you live. Keep working for Her Lousiness, and in a few minutes, you’ll be as dead as they are.”
Kris divided her attention between the shooters on the roofs as they looked guiltily at each other but terrified as they glanced over their shoulders.
The hostages stood as straight as they could and whimpered. A few of the younger ones openly cried despite grown-ups hugging them and otherwise trying to comfort them.
Kris was really getting to hate this day’s business.
The other half of Kris’s attention was locked on the visual feed from Nelly’s scouts. There were several clumps of interest, but Kris kept getting drawn back to the balcony over the driveway of the big house. There were a number of people there.
A few might be hostages; they stood like statues on the edge of the balcony, facing out. Others lurked in the doorway, passing back in and coming back out in random moves that Kris had yet to determine.