To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Page 12

  Becky shook her head ruefully. “The stuff she got from three street kids was gold. We knew it was bad out there. Those kids filled in the assumptions with real facts.”

  “So she, this Ruth, got beat up?”

  “Badly.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Aside from the fact that the guys were in State Security Force uniforms, jumped out of State Security Force cruisers and had the gall to plant one of their listening bugs on her while they were beating her up, no, I can’t be at all sure who did it,” Becky finished, with sarcasm in full rage.

  “That’s pretty flagrant.”

  The FSO snorted. “Flagrant? I’ll give you flagrant. Milassi’s telling you to have us pull in our horns within a half hour of his guys beating up Ruth. That’s flagrant.”

  “I forgot to tell you that. Where’d you hear it?”

  “You shot off your mouth at the White House. Besides everyone else, your limo’s chauffeur heard it. He’s one of mine.”

  “Sorry. I should have told you that immediately.”

  “How could you know whom to tell? Thank goodness you didn’t say something to the ambassador. If you had, all of us would be on lockdown for the next month. That guy’s a nervous Nellie in long hoop skirts.”

  “How is the woman they beat up?”

  “Thanks to the Marines arriving in the nick of time, she’ll live. I suspect that was not what her attackers intended.”

  “So they planted a bug on what they intended to make a dead body? I’m not tracking this.”

  “No doubt, they wanted to hear what her husband said over her dead body, and maybe me. Anything is worth a try for these types.”

  “I’m taking a strong dislike to ‘these types,’” Ray said. “May I meet her?”

  “Certainly. I don’t know what you can do.”

  “Neither do I, but I’m getting ideas,” Ray said. He didn’t have an idea yet. But he had some of the parts that might make up a good one.

  He tapped his commlink. “Mary, could you and Du meet me in the embassy’s infirmary in five minutes?”

  “Of course, Colonel.”

  “Who’s Mary?”

  “She damn near killed me, her and her miners who were drafted by the Society of Humanity to fight their last war. She’s good, and, at the moment, she happens to work for me as the chief of security on the exploration ship that brought me here.”

  “And?” the FSO asked.

  “And she may be just the beginning of an idea for what could make this woman a whole lot safer.”

  “Then let’s go see Ruth.”

  EIGHTEEN

  MARY DIDN’T MUCH care for the smell of hospitals. She really didn’t much care for what she saw. Trouble sat beside a bed. In it, a woman was covered in bandages.

  Looking more vulnerable and hopeless than Mary had ever seen a Marine, Trouble held a hand, gingerly, as if to even caress it was to inflict more pain on the woman he loved more than the entire universe.

  Mary approached him. “I’m sorry, Trouble.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. She was doing the job she wanted to do. I gave her all the protection I could manage. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Who would have thought that the local thugs would take on someone from outside?”

  “And a Marine officer’s wife,” Mary added.

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Mary turned as Ray entered with a lovely, tall blonde at his elbow. If she didn’t know how married Ray was to Rita, she’d be worried.

  But both of them only had eyes for the woman in the bed.

  The doc arrived with the visiting elephants.

  “How is she doing?” Ray asked.

  “Better than she has any right to,” the doc said. “That new protective corset did better than advertised. I know the bullyboys couldn’t have stinted on what they were trying to do to her. I’ve patched up Marines who were in a lot worse shape after bar fights that didn’t look all that coincidental.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Ray said.

  Becky made a sour face. “Believe him. I’ve seen them after the doc got done wrapping them in so many bandages that they could pass for an Egyptian mummy. Several we had to disability retire.”

  The Marine captain turned from his wife. “They haven’t done any of that shit since we arrived,” he said.

  “Maybe having a lot of Marines handy has crimped their style,” the FSO said.

  “Well, I intend to have even more troops standing to here,” the colonel said. “Mary, as of now, you and your guards are back in uniform. I know you do not fit the usual expectations for the Corps, but please work with Captain Trouble and his crew to fit in and add to the strength of this embassy’s Marine presence. Also, when this woman is fit to return to her duties, I expect her to have one of your crew in civilian clothes at her elbow whenever she sets foot outside the embassy.”

  “Can we shoot, sir?” Mary asked, maybe a bit too enthusiastically. Well, if she sent Dumont with the woman, he’d go with guns ready.

  The colonel winced at the question. So did the Foreign Service Officer. She answered, “Dead thugs in State Security Force uniforms will be a major embarrassment. I’d prefer we avoid that outcome.”

  “So would I,” the colonel added. “However, if it’s a choice between a dead Marine, or Marine’s wife, and a few dead thugs, I want the Marines alive. Understood?”

  Mary came to attention. “Yes, sir. We are under weapons lock unless things get mortal, and we should use smarts to avoid a confrontation. However, if it comes to it, we win, they lose.”

  “That sounds fine by me,” the colonel said, eyeing the diplomat.

  She scowled but nodded. “Yes. I’ve had enough of shipping broken Marines back to their folks. Be careful, but do what you have to.”

  “Then pardon me, sir, I think I’d better do the escorting myself,” Mary said. “I’ll take along a few folks for distant overwatch, but I think me and this nice woman should become the best of friends.”

  Ray nodded. “Let’s do that.”

  “If you will excuse me, I need to pass The Word to my team. Captain, with your permission, I’ll start working with your second-in-command to merge our two teams.”

  Mary paused for one moment. “Did I understand it right? Trouble’s Gunny and his team beat up the thugs who were beating up this woman. Will there be repercussions?”

  The woman diplomat smiled. “I doubt it. There were five of them. There were only three Marines, and one of them was a young woman. I understand she took out two of the thugs. How many brave boys want to tell everyone that they were beat up by a woman, let alone a woman who beat the stuffing out of two of them?”

  The FSO laughed. “No, I doubt we’ll hear any more of this.”

  NINETEEN

  THREE DAYS LATER, after breakfast, Mary found herself called to Captain Trouble’s office. The captain and his wife were there. The woman still looked like she’d been through a meat grinder, but under the bandages was solid determination.

  If Mary had any skills at reading couples, they were just finishing a fight.

  “Ruth wants to go out today,” Trouble growled.

  “And I understand that you intend to go with me,” his wife said, not rising from the chair beside her husband’s desk.

  “It’s Colonel Ray Longknife’s orders, ma’am,” Mary answered. “I can be out of this uniform and into civvies in a few minutes. I’m told you want to keep a low profile, ma’am.”

  “Yes. I want to keep a low profile. That means me and no one else.”

  “I understand your meaning, ma’am,” Mary said, casting a glance at Trouble and getting a worried look back, but a look that said this was the final phase in a battle he hadn’t done at all well in.

  “I understand that I am to do what you want,” Mary continued, “exactly the way you want, ma’am.”

  “Then what I want is to be left alone to work on this myself,” shot right back
at Mary. But it was a retort the Marine expected.

  “Sorry, ma’am, I’ve got my orders from the colonel. Once upon a time, I could shoot the damn bastard, but now he’s my boss, and I got to do what he tells me.”

  “You could shoot the colonel?” Ruth said.

  “Ma’am, I did shoot the colonel. Busted up his back real good, but now he’s signing my paychecks, so I can’t shoot him, and I got to do what he says. He says I’m to be your new best friend for at least as long as you’re on this mud ball. We can figure out a way for me to fit right in, or you can make my job miserable, but I’m gonna be joined at your hip.”

  “You’re a stubborn old cuss,” Ruth said.

  Mary smiled. She tried to make it as pleasant a one as possible. “Yes, ma’am. My boss at the mines said I was. The Marine officers I worked for said I was. Come to think of it, I can’t think of anyone I’ve met who didn’t say that about me.”

  The Marine wife laughed, but only for a moment. She winced. “We need to avoid humor. It hurts too much.”

  Her husband was out of his chair and at her side. “It hurts too much for you to go out. You need more time to heal. The doc said a week or two more.”

  “The kids are out there. They must be worried to tears. And I won’t let those bastards who did this keep laughing in their beer. I’m going out, Terry. I’m going out.”

  The Marine looked up at Mary, helpless in the face of his wife’s determination. “Can you do anything?”

  “Yeah, Trouble. I’ll go get into civvies.”

  And she did.

  Fifteen minutes later, Mary was arguing with one determined woman over who got the car keys.

  Mary had picked them up from the motor pool. True, this car was a local rental, but when a Marine returned it after the dustup, it had been parked in the back of the motor pool, with its keys locked up.

  A young woman Marine had intercepted Mary on the way out and told her where to get both keys and car.

  So Ruth stood, her hand out, demanding the keys, and Mary stood, with her hands in her pockets, refusing to give them up.

  “You don’t know the streets like I do,” Ruth said.

  “You can tell me where to go,” Mary countered.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Ruth said, then went on. “I can get us there faster.”

  “You’ve still got ribs healing, ma’am. You could end up busting that cute car into some tree or building if you can’t turn the wheel fast enough.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m driving.”

  Possession being nine-tenths of the game, Mary won.

  But she hadn’t driven three blocks when she muttered, “We seem to have developed a tail this morning.”

  Ruth adjusted the mirror on the passenger side, and growled, “Yeah, that’s the Bear. He’s the guy that arranged for me to be beat up.”

  “Then I suggest we lose him,” Mary said.

  “Turn right next chance you get.”

  “Is that my next chance?” Mary said, nodding toward an alley.

  “That’s what I meant. Now you know why I wanted to drive.”

  Mary took a hard right turn into an alley, giving no warning, and no turn signal. The alley was not only narrow, but cluttered with cans, boxes, and other refuse. Fortunately, clotheslines were strung from second-floor windows, and few items fell to the level of their small car.

  Mary dodged as best she could, but some cans got knocked over, and a few boxes got flattened.

  “Turn left at the next alley,” Ruth ordered.

  Mary did just as the Bear’s taxi turned into the alley behind them.

  The second alley was no different from the last.

  “Turn left at the next one,” Ruth said.

  “That will take us back to the road.”

  “Where you can make some time before you duck down the first alley on your left.”

  Mary did. By the second turn, she’d lost the Bear. She’d caught nothing of him in her rearview before she made the left-hand turn into the next alley.

  “Go straight ahead until you get to the next main street, then hook a right.”

  “Back to the embassy already?”

  “No. Make a right the first chance you get. That should take us out of this area fast.”

  It did. There was no sign of the Bear, or any other tail, as Mary settled down at the speed limit and headed down the road. Knowing how buggy this place tended to get, Mary set one of Lek’s jammers on the dashboard and pushed its button.

  “That ought to keep us safe,” she told the civilian.

  Ruth was on her phone. “Alice, I’m traveling today. Can you and the kids meet me at the three trees by the river? You can. Good. See all of you in thirty minutes.”

  Ruth hung up, then told Mary, “Turn right at the next light.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they parked beside the river, just a few meters from three lovely old elms.

  “That wasn’t too hard,” Ruth said, pausing to catch her breath. “I never have figured out how the Bear knew where I was. I was sure I lost him.”

  “Your car was bugged,” Mary said.

  “But the embassy motor-pool staff said they’d cleaned it.”

  “Yes. They washed it down real good while you were in sick bay and found nothing. You’ll excuse me if I say I don’t trust the local hires here. I had a buddy of mine, Lek, go over the car just before we took it out today.”

  “He find anything?”

  “Two. Good ones. The standard-issue debugger at the motor pool missed ’em.”

  “How’d he find them?”

  “Lek makes his own gear, and upgrades it when the spirit moves him, which is a whole lot sooner than the stuff you buy. Anyway, he found the bugs, and he’s dissecting them with a couple of the Marines. Between his debugging and his jammer, you can count on us not being disturbed today.”

  Ruth made a pained face. “But if we head back to the Farm, they’ll be waiting for us.”

  “The Farm?” Mary echoed.

  “An experimental station for growing new illegal drugs. At least that’s what I saw before I got kicked into next week. My handheld got smashed so I don’t have the records of what I found that day.”

  “Did the thugs get your handheld?”

  “They probably would have if the Marines hadn’t wrecked their little show. No, Gunny policed up my gear, but it was too wrecked to make out anything. I’ll have to do the recon all over again.”

  “But not today,” Mary said with determination.

  “Not today,” Ruth agreed without enthusiasm. “That would be too obvious.”

  The kids arrived then, and Mary lost her heart to them.

  There was a little girl who started crying the moment she set eyes on Ruth. The woman opened the car door and took the little girl in her lap, speaking soothing words to calm the urchin.

  “I’m fine, Tiny. My friends stopped the crushers. I’m fine.”

  A wisp of a boy stood at the door, his wide eyes taking this all in. He looked to Mary like he’d like to climb into the woman’s lap, too, but felt his extra year or two precluded such mothering.

  Behind them, a girl in a tiny blue bonnet who might be a teenager stood, looking both ways nervously.

  Mary rolled the rear window down and spoke to her. “We lost the Bear. He won’t be finding us today.”

  “If you say so, ma’am, but we kids still can’t be seen in River Park. It’s for gentry, you know.”

  “Then get in, and we’ll be off,” Mary said.

  The youth got the small boy into the backseat. Ruth held the youngest, and Mary drove. She had no orders on where to go, so she just drove along the river. It was nice. Raised in space, lucky enough to have a job when she graduated from the orphanage herself, Mary had rarely seen so much water.

  Yes, on Santa Maria she’d discovered the ocean, but rivers, lakes, and oceans were still new enough to Mary that she had yet to get enough of them.

  And this river had trees
along it. Lots of green things growing out in the open for everyone to see.

  Unless, of course, they were kids like these whom the authorities didn’t want messing up the view.

  Mary’s opinion of the local authorities was bad and getting worse.

  It was edging toward lunchtime, and Mary could hear empty stomachs rumbling. If not her own, then definitely the kids’. None of them had so much as a spare bit of flesh on them. Tiny, what passed for a name for the small girl, was curled up in Ruth’s lap, no longer crying, but sucking her thumb.

  The boy in the back was now busy looking around, as was the teen.

  Apparently, they didn’t trust Mary that they weren’t being followed.

  They came upon a factory where several lunch wagons were setting up, but the lunch whistle hadn’t blown yet. Mary pulled in.

  “I’ll get you kids something. What do you want?”

  That got blank stares.

  “Get them three sandwiches,” Ruth said, “milk if they have any, and fries.”

  The kids’ eyes lit up, but they didn’t risk a word. Mary suspected they wouldn’t believe the food was for them until they had it in their own empty bellies.

  It hadn’t been easy, growing up in the orphanage. But at least Mary had friends and the promise of two meals a day. They were told that they were the lucky ones, kids whose folks died in the mines and the companies were paying for.

  Mary had a hard time seeing the luck.

  Then her friend Cassie took Mary outside the mining consortium into town to help one of her church groups care for the street kids. Kids with no mom, no pop, and no loving company to tuck them in at night.

  Mary discovered that things could be worse.

  Now she was seeing it again.

  She bought sandwiches meant for workingmen, heaped with ham and cheese on thick black bread. She got the fries; thick slabs of potatoes cooked to golden crisps. And she got three large cartons of milk.

  Loaded down, she returned to the car and doled the food out to the kids.

  It was as if they’d won the lottery.