For a dozen times more than he had ever made as a Sea Lion or a Legionnaire with the Gallic armed forces, former Petty Officer 2nd Class Whitley had attempted to train a group of former thugs to something roughly analogous to Sea Lion tactical standards. Neither tactics nor training, however, were actually Sea Lion strong suits. Whitley, himself, was a walking advertisement for what really were Sea Lion strong suits. He had muscles on his muscles, arms the size of legs and legs the size of trees.
Five of the men he had trained, plus Whitley himself, had waited in and around this sleepy town bisected by the Pan-American Highway for over a week. Two, including Whitley, now sat in a rented automobile. Two others pretended to pray in the small Nata Catholic church; the same church, so said a bronze plaque on the white painted wall, where Belisario Carrera had once prayed for victory in his war with Old Earth.
To the man with him in the car Whitley said, "Go across the street to the telephone booth. Pretend to make a call."
The Santandern nodded and left, crossing the street nervously, carrying his weapon in a small black satchel. He'd free the firearm once he was in the telephone booth.
The remaining two men crouched by the road to either side of the town, east and west, to warn Whitely of Carrera's approach.
* * *
Trees whizzed by as the big Phaeton 560 ESL tore up the highway, east toward Ciudad Cervantes. Carrera sat up in the front of the big auto, rolling his hands together, chewing his lip, and fuming. The news had come from his brother in law, David Carrera, via cell phone just as the Phaeton crossed over the Bridge of the Colombias. One of the dead had turned out to be a cousin of his late wife. A nice girl, he remembered. Bastards! He was in a killing rage.
There were two guards in back. Mitchell drove. He'd seen his chief in this kind of mood before. No sense in chatting to distract him, Mitchell thought, not when he's like this.
Both men, driver and passenger, glanced to the side frequently and regularly. Likewise did the guards. Even so, their attention tended to stay on the road to their front and the buildings and trees to either side. Thus, they missed the man who watched them pass, stepped out, and said something into a radio.
* * *
Randy Whitley, former Federated States Navy Sea Lion, Gallic Legionnaire, and current private contractor, said, "Roger," into the small radio and tucked it back into a shirt pocket. Whitley than returned his right hand to the pistol grip of the RGL, Rocket Grenade Launcher, he carried and whistled at the Santandern across the street, who pretended to be talking into the telephone of a booth. Another whistle alerted two similarly armed, olive skinned, assassins at the front of the church.
Whitley sighed. Damned shitty work for someone who set out to do good in the world. But a man's got to eat and, ever since the drawdown under the progressives, contract work's been the only way to do that.
Sure wish I'd had more time to work with these assholes. Nobody understands; it ain't all just knowing how to shoot.
* * *
Farther on by half a kilometer a lone man stepped out of a telephone booth and into the road. He raised a weapon. Mitchell saw it before Carrera did.
"Oh, fuck!" Mitchell said. He reached an arm over and pushed Carrera down onto the seat. Then, ducking low himself and screaming something mindless, he aimed the car at the gunman and floored the gas.
* * *
You fucking idiot, Whitley cursed to himself as one of his men—the one in the phone booth—stepped into the roadway and raised his PM-6 to a hip firing position.
Buy 'em books, send 'em to school, and what do they show for it? Nothin'.
The submachine gun was silenced. Whitley saw rather than heard the muzzle rise and flash as a stream of bullets tore out of it toward the Phaeton. Many of the bullets impacted on the radiator. Others smashed the windshield. At the last split second the gunman jumped out of the way. The car clipped his leg at about mid thigh, snapping it, and threw him, spinning while screaming, some distance away.
* * *
The Phaeton careened out of control and smashed into a telephone pole. Carrera was thrown forward into the dash. He gasped aloud—"ahhh, Gggoddd!"—at an awful pain he felt in his right shoulder. Briefly stunned, he shook his head to clear it. That hurt, too. Pain or not, he then reached under the seat and pulled out one of the weapons kept there, a Pound submachine gun, along with several magazines. Shouting something to Mitchell and the guards, Carrera opened the door and rolled out, then crawled to a position in front of the caved in grill and next to the telephone pole.
Whitley aimed his RGL at the car and let fly. The backblast smashed shop and home windows behind him. The rocket impacted on the rear passenger door, killing the two guards and causing the rear of the Phaeton to explode in flames. Whitley dropped the rocket launcher, drew a pistol, and walked forward to finish the job. Two men by the church, who hadn't so far done anything to help Whitley's ambush, ran up the street to join him. The original gunman lay screaming in the road. The two lookout men had their own transportation. They were only to fire if Carrera's vehicle had made it through the main ambush and tried to exit town. Since it hadn't, they followed their instructions and rode off separately.
"Keep both sides of the street covered," Whitley ordered. The two unused gunman complied.
Carrera heard the order and thought, I'm so dead.
* * *
Private Hector Pitti, 6th Mechanized Tercio, was new to the Legion, and only a militiaman to boot. His rank was as low as it got without being an outright recruit. Still, he was proud of his military status, proud enough that his F-26 rifle hung over his lorica in a place of honor in his living-cum-dining room cum kitchen. A full magazine sat on a narrow shelf right underneath the firearm.
Pitti heard no shots. Moreover, the sound of a crashing auto was nothing remarkable anywhere along the InterColombiana. But when the rocket grenade launcher fired, and its backblast shattered the windows over the kitchen sink, Pitti thought that it was about time to take his rifle from the pegs that held it. There was no time to don his body armor, the lorica.
With hands still shaking from the blast, he did so. He held the rifle in one hand while the other fumbled with the protective tape that sealed the ammunition in the magazine. That wasn't working too well until Pitti swung the magazine under one armpit to hold it. Cursing, he fumbled with the tape until thumb and forefinger managed to grasp it. A quick pull and the tape came off of the mouth of the magazine. He dropped the tape, then lifted his arm, releasing the magazine and catching it with his hand. Slamming it into the F-26's magazine well, he was already jacking the bolt as his feet carried him to the shattered window.
* * *
Carrera would probably have been dead, too, had not one of the reservists of the town—Got to get that man's name!—stuck his issue rifle out of his front window to fire at Whitley. It was a hurried shot. The militiaman missed.
Still, shocked at the unexpected fire and the bullets cracking the air nearby, the former Sea Lion dove to his belly. "Motherfucker! Where did that come from?" Whitley slithered around on the gravel as he scanned for the source of the fire.
That distraction was all Carrera needed. Rolling over from his covered position next to the car, Carrera winced as his right shoulder temporarily took the weight of his torso. He fired two short bursts at Whitley, the bolt chattering and the bullets making little sonic booms, lower in pitch than those from the F-26. One or—more likely, given Whitley's size—several of the Pound's bullets connected; Whitley spun and then fell to his rear end, torso still upright. He made no sound beyond a surprised 'oomph.' The assassin seemed confused when he looked down at his red stained, ruined midsection.