“Stand by … This is everything we know about the man,” Tekin said.
“Wah,” Michael whispered. The level of detail impressed him. Even the fact that Cerutti kept a mistress in an apartment ten minutes from his headquarters outside McNair was a matter of record. “So if I said I wanted, say, thirty officers like Cerutti, you could give me that?”
“I could,” Tekin said firmly. “More if you wanted.”
“This is my suggestion, General,” Michael said, turning to Vaas. “Your covert ops people tell you how many two-man hit teams they can put in the field before J-Day. Colonel Tekin selects that many targets; they’d have to be key members of the Hammer chain of command and vulnerable as well. When that’s done, the teams are briefed and sent out. Time is short, so they’d have to wing it a bit. That’ll make it risky and reduce the chances of success, but hit the right people at the right time and the payback could be huge.”
Vaas sat for a moment, then nodded. “General Pedersen?” he said.
“I like it, sir,” she said, “and we are good at this sort of operation. Like Colonel Helfort says, hit the right people at the right time and we should be able to turn chaos into catastrophe.”
“I agree,” Vaas said. He turned to Michael. “Colonel Helfort. I’m putting you in charge of the planning this operation. Colonel Tekin, you’ll be part of the team, of course. Major Davoodi!” Vaas bellowed.
The aide stuck his head in. “Sir?”
“Where’s Major Gidisu?”
“Wait one, sir … She’s on her way back from Yankee-34. She’ll be here in two hours.”
Michael suppressed a sigh. There would be no sleep for him tonight.
“Get a message to her: ‘Expedite return. Need to see you soonest.’ Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” Vaas said after Davoodi vanished, “are we missing anything? No? Over to you, Colonel Helfort. I’ll send Gidisu to join you when I’ve finished with her.”
“We’ll get started, sir.”
Major Gidisu sat back. She was a small woman, chunkily built, with dark eyes and skin so black that it looked blue in the harsh light of the meeting room. “It’s a great idea,” she said at last, “and I wish we’d thought of it weeks ago. I’ll be pushed to get people out there to do this what with Juggernaut so close now, but let me get back to you.”
“How soon?”
“08:00 tomorrow.”
“I’ll have a list of targets by the same time,” Tekin said.
“We’ll meet then,” Michael said. “Well, I think that’s all we can do for now. See you tomorrow.”
Tekin nodded. “We’ll be here,” he said.
All but overwhelmed by exhaustion, Michael set off to find his rack. Getting a few hours’ sleep was all he cared about right now. But he hadn’t gone more than a few meters when a familiar voice brought him to a halt.
“As I live and breathe, it’s Lieutenant Helfort.”
Michael swung around. “Well I’ll be! Matti Bienefelt!”
“The very same,” the woman said. She swept Michael into a bone-crushing embrace he could not resist; Bienefelt outmassed him by a good fifty kilos, not one gram of which was fat. She was huge. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, pushing him back. “And what the hell are those?” she asked, stabbing a finger at one of the eagles on his lapels.
“You know perfectly well, you insolent dog. I should have you flogged, chief.”
Bienefelt laughed, a rumbling belly laugh that shook her enormous frame. “I’d like to see you try, and it’s Warrant Officer Bienefelt now, by the way.”
“Another undeserved promotion.”
“For sure. Speaking of undeserved promotions, I hear your Anna is now a lieutenant colonel.”
“Watch it,” Michael said with a grin. “But I worry about that woman.”
‘Well, don’t. She’s a legend.”
“So I’m told. How’s the arm?”
Bienefelt held up the stump of her left arm. “This?” she said. “It’s fine. Itches like hell sometimes, and I can still feel the fingers, which is weird. They keep promising me a biomech hand, but I think I’ll be dead by the time one turns up.”
“You still with the 246th?”
“Yup. We don’t do much, though a Hammer special forces team had a go at us a week ago. We sent them home wishing they hadn’t.”
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“Chief Chua and Petty Officer Lim are still running their microfabs; everyone else has joined the 3rd.”
“Anna’s battalion? What, all of them?”
“Every last one.”
“Captain Adrissa too?”
“Yup. She’s a grunt. Battalion tried to promote her to lance corporal. She told them to fuck off.”
“Captain of a heavy cruiser one day, private soldier the next.” Michael shook his head. “Hard to believe.”
“You should. Anyway, there are so many Feds in the 3rd, it’s unofficially called the Federal Battalion. The Hammers loathe them. Anyway, I’ve got to get back. Nobody will tell us what’s going on, but there’s something in the wind; I know it.”
“You don’t-” Michael said before common sense stopped him.
Bienefelt looked at him, a faint smile on her face. “You know, don’t you?” She put up a hand the size of a tray to preempt Michael’s response. “Don’t say anything. We’ll find out what when we’re supposed to.”
“Thanks, Matti. You look after yourself.”
“I will. You too, okay?”
“I promise.”
Tuesday, June 29, 2404, UD
NRA command center, Branxton Ranges, Commitment
“That’s a damn shame,” Major Gidisu said as she frowned at the long list of names Colonel Tekin had put up on the holovid. “I’ve scraped every barrel and shaken every tree, and the best I can do is sixty-five teams.”
“So few,” Michael said. “Sorry, Major,” he went on, seeing the scowl on Gidisu’s face. “I’m not being critical. I know how stretched you are with Juggernaut. It’s just a shame we couldn’t target everyone on Colonel Tekin’s list.”
“It is,” Gidisu said, “and trust me, I’m sending anyone who can walk and shoot a gun at the same time. I don’t have anyone left.”
“Your list,” Michael said to Tekin, “it’s been prioritized?”
Tekin nodded. “Yes. The people the Hammers can least afford to lose are at the top.”
“Do you need any more from us?”
“No,” Gidisu said. “My ops planners will brief the teams; they’ll go out tonight.”
Michael frowned. “The Hammers have the Branxtons well and truly sewn up. How will you get everyone out?”
Gidisu smiled. “With the help of our friends inside the Hammer marines, usually in one of their truckbots. And if that’s not enough, we’ll do what we always do: resort to bribery, corruption, and threats of extreme violence. Works every time. Chief Councillor Polk likes to talk about the ring of steel he has put around the Branxtons, but that’s bullshit Hammer propaganda. His ring has more holes in it than a colander. We can always get our people out.”
“What about DocSec?”
“After what they’ve done to the marines, it’s a brave DocSec trooper who tries to stop a marine convoy to run identity checks. DocSec won’t try unless they’re in company strength, and even then they prefer not to.”
“It gets better,” Tekin said. “Last week we airlifted an entire battalion and all their gear from the Branxtons to the Velmar Mountains, 3,000 kilometers, and all courtesy of a friendly heavy lifter crew from the 662nd Marine Squadron.”
“How the hell did you do that?”
“The lifter was returning to Yamaichi for routine maintenance. It made an unscheduled landing to check out a problem, and our guys hopped aboard. Of course, it never went anywhere near Yamaichi. The lifter’s now tucked away in a cave in the Velmars. You never know; it might come in handy one day.”
Michael shook his head at the brass-balled audacity of it all. “General Vaas said the marines weren’t all they seemed to be.”
“They’re not,” Tekin said, “though the general is more positive than we are about the marines’ combat ability. Even after all they’ve been through, they’ll still fight if they have to.”