To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Page 13

  The older girl asked if she might take half of her lunch back to Major Barbara’s. “I’m studying with three other girls at night. It’s not easy, studying when you’re hungry.”

  “You eat that, Alice,” Ruth said. “Mary will get two more sandwiches for us, and your friends can have half of ours.”

  Mary headed back, getting in line just before the whistle blew. She had the two sandwiches cut in thirds. She smiled at Ruth as she, too, ate the smallest part of her sandwich and left most of the fries untouched.

  After lunch, they drove around some more. The kids in the backseat rattled on about the factories and what their fish-eye view of the place told them. Mary hit RECORD on her wrist unit and let it run as the kids rambled.

  To them, it was just the way life was.

  To the specialists back at the embassy, it was the truth about a lot of things that puzzled them.

  Mary had fought her battles, both in the war and after. She knew the value of intelligence. What she was hearing from the backseat wasn’t anything that pertained to troop movements or gun emplacement. Still, Mary had learned a lot by keeping her ears open in the mines and in the Corps.

  What she heard said a lot was rotten here, past rotten to gangrenous. Below the surface, rage seethed. And when that rage came out, it could be all hell, or it might bring hope.

  Mary had seen Marines bring hope where there was none. Hope that she and her friends could survive. Hope that a planet or two would not be demolished down to bedrock, with all its people smashed or worse.

  Mary finished the drive with her trigger finger twitching. There were targets out there, and she was finding out what she needed to draw a good sight picture on them.

  TWENTY

  TROUBLE WAS RELIEVED beyond words to see Ruth and Mary drive back into the motor pool. Losing battles was something that didn’t happen to him.

  Losing arguments with his wife was something he was getting used to.

  He still didn’t like it.

  He’d taken out some of his frustration on the motor-pool manager. When Lek brought him the results of his bug dissection he’d taken the evidence straight to the boss who was supposed to keep the cars running . . . and clean.

  The manager insisted his cars were clean of bugs. Their little talk had gotten hot and loud.

  Before too long, Becky hustled in to calm things down.

  Hand firmly on Trouble’s elbow, she’d half dragged him out of the pool manager’s office.

  “Marine, he’s a local hire. We need local hires. And while that guy may not now be working for anyone besides us, you keep that up, and he’ll go looking for someone to talk to, and we won’t like the results.”

  “But he got my wife damn near beat to death.”

  “It wasn’t him,” she said calmly into his rage.

  Trouble swallowed what he was about to scream. “It wasn’t?” he whispered.

  “No. I’ve had my own bugs drifting around the motor pool. He’s not the man. But I know who is.”

  “Point me at him.”

  “Down, devil dog. We’re playing a long game here. Your wife got out bug-free today, and we’ll make sure she does every day. The guy that’s cashing two paychecks is mine, and I’ll play him the way I want to.”

  “What game, exactly, are we playing?”

  “Follow me,” she said, and quickly led him to the secure room. Once the door was shut, she did not sit down. “Marine, you’re asking too many questions. I like you. I think you’ll do a better job for me if you know something about what we’re doing, but do not expect to have all the answers handed to you on a platter. You don’t tell your wife what you’re doing, do you?”

  “Not as often as she’d like,” Trouble admitted.

  “Well, don’t expect her to tell you a lot about what she’s involved in either.”

  Trouble waited. This was the diplomat’s game. She said she’d deal him in. He stood in front of her, waiting to see what cards she’d allow him.

  “What keeps Milassi in power?” she finally said.

  “His thugs?” Trouble answered weakly. He strongly suspected his answer was wrong. The problem was, he didn’t know another one.

  “Not even close. Not that bunch of brutes and perverts. There aren’t enough smarts in the lot to add up two and two.”

  Trouble waited.

  “Ever heard ‘follow the money’? It was good advice years ago. It’s the best advice right here and now.”

  “Where is the money for Milassi coming from?” Trouble asked.

  The FSO shrugged. “You tell me, Marine.”

  “I don’t do accounting,” he said.

  “You were on Riddle. Tell me what you saw.”

  Trouble took a step back. “Riddle?”

  “Yes, Riddle.”

  “I lived a nightmare, and I saw a lot of drugs growing,” Trouble said.

  “You know anything about the drug you were growing? Anything about where it came from or where it went?”

  “Nope,” Trouble said, “and I doubt many of the people on Riddle did either.”

  “Finally, a smart answer, Marine. Yes. Lots of stuff growing but not a lot of know-how.”

  “Ruth said the folks running the plantations didn’t know how to grow anything.”

  “Yes, I read that in her report. Very observant.”

  “So, we’re dealing in drugs, huh?” Trouble said, and waited for the next card.

  “We’ve done the numbers on Savannah. None of it adds up. These plants could be a lot more productive and profitable, but the way they’re running, it’s a miracle they even break even. No, a whole lot of what’s putting money in Milassi’s pockets and what he’s using to pay the thugs is coming from off world.”

  “And that money is drug money,” Trouble said.

  “But why is he getting drug money to run this place?” the Foreign Service Officer asked, as much to herself as Trouble. “There are no drug plantations in the backcountry. One of the reasons we asked for the Patton was to do a full and exhaustive survey of the planet from orbit. It’s not being grown here. It’s not being shipped out of here.”

  “Drug lords are not known for paying for anything that doesn’t put money in their pockets,” Trouble said.

  “So, your wife stumbled onto something, and they beat her up for it.”

  “What was it?” Trouble asked.

  “Officially, she found nothing,” the diplomat said. “Her handheld was busted up real good by her attackers, and she remembers nothing about the attack or before it. Sad that, but it’s the word around the embassy, and it’s the word on the street.”

  “But?” Trouble said. He’d held his wife. He’d heard her talk about the attack. He knew she remembered every kick.

  Becky grinned. “Ruth told me what she found and the boys and girls at the workstations outside pulled that off her ruined unit.”

  “A drug plantation?”

  “No, a drug-research center. Fields and fields of the next street plague and the poison after that.”

  “So we go in and burn it out,” Trouble said. There were times when it was good to be a Marine, and this looked like one he’d really enjoy.

  “In your dreams, old boy. In your dreams.”

  Trouble eyed the woman.

  She shrugged. “The research center is owned and licensed by a major pharmaceutical research group. I’ve seen its reports. They are all clean and in order. No illegal drugs here. Oh, and the corporation that owns the corporation that runs the research labs. It’s untouchable. Roots all the way back to Earth.”

  “Oh shit!” Trouble said.

  “Or something like that.”

  “Are you going to let them get away with it?” the Marine demanded.

  “That’s not my intention, but charging in there with a flamethrower is not one of the options open to us, so down, boy. Down and heel.”

  “Growl,” Trouble said, then added, “What are you going to do about it?”

  “That is
above your pay grade, Captain. What you are going to do about it is take your wife to dinner tomorrow evening. You’ll pick a place in the hills above town, and you two will have a fine dinner. You may take your field glasses with you, if you wish, and you may even study the research farm from twenty klicks away, but you will not go near it. You understand me?”

  “Orders received and understood,” Trouble said, finding himself coming to attention. “I’m a diversion. A demonstration to draw them away from the main effort.”

  “Something like that. Just do what I want and, come the right time, you’ll get to do what you want to do.”

  Trouble scowled. “I’m not used to being the diversion.”

  “No, I don’t imagine you are. Trust me, you won’t be for long if we get our way.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Trouble said, and turned to go. As he was closing the door, he glanced back. Becky had settled into one of the chairs. She was eyeing the wall, an expression on her face that Trouble had seen before.

  Some of his senior officers wore that look, just before battle. Some of his subordinates had worn it, too. No doubt, Trouble had put it on a few times himself.

  A hell of a fight was coming fast. He and his Marines would be in it up to their ears. And they would not be on the losing side.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MARY GOT RUTH back safely to the embassy, but that wasn’t the end of her job today.

  First, she checked in on her tiny company. Dumont had done good work with the embassy Marine detachment’s first lieutenant in sharing out the duties of this mixed command.

  Some of the Marines were from the original embassy detachment. Most were from the ship’s company that Captain Trouble had brought down from the Patton. Now her team from the Second Chance was being attached to the rest.

  It was a crazy lash-up, but no Marines had been cornered in any bar and beat to a pulp. Not for the last couple of weeks.

  Mary grinned at the thought of someone who wasn’t used to being scared of anything now learning to fear Marines.

  That done, she turned to what she’d accomplished this day.

  She’d reported to Trouble’s office that morning with only the shortest of briefs. She was to protect the man’s wife. Ruth was doing more than it looked like on the surface. Exactly what that was remained unspecified.

  Mary’s job was simple. See that Ruth wasn’t beat up again.

  Mary had driven out of the embassy compound with no idea of where she was going or what she would do when she got there.

  That was no way to run a successful operation.

  Mary settled into her chair in her tiny office and ordered up a map of Petrograd. One glance at the available map, and Mary saw a problem. The map in the screen had none of the alleys she’d driven today. “Computer, can you access a better map?”

  “This is the only map available,” her computer told her.

  “Do you have any orthophotos, aerial photos of Petrograd?”

  “There are none available.”

  Mary pushed her chair back from her desk, which about put her in the hall. This wasn’t right. Every major city was supposed to have regular overhead photos taken, for pollution studies if for no other reason.

  She was about to order the computer to do a further and more in-depth search when there was a soft knock at the door. The knock came as a surprise. Her office was little more than a broom closet, and Mary couldn’t close the door when she sat at her desk. Most Marines who wanted her attention just hollered, “Captain.”

  Standing in the open door was the tall woman diplomat. She was practically leaning over Mary’s shoulders.

  “May I help you, ma’am?” Mary said.

  “More likely, I can help you,” the woman said, and motioned Mary to follow her.

  Mary followed down the hall, down some stairs and up another hall. The door they came to was quite substantial, and it took a swipe of the card around the woman’s neck and the keying in of a long access code to open it.

  Inside, Mary was treated to something she’d seen in videos but never expected to walk into in real life—an honest-to-God war room.

  Men and women huddled over workstations. One wall was a huge screen with a map that changed as Mary watched.

  It was Petrograd. And it showed the alleys Mary had driven today.

  The Marine smiled her happy smile. The woman smiled with her.

  “See anything you want?” she asked.

  “All of it, I think,” Mary said.

  “Let’s not be a glutton. Pete, check her over.”

  A man ran a device that Mary suspected was a bug hunter. It was a lot smaller than the one Lek used and looked store-bought. It passed her.

  “I could have told you there weren’t any bugs on me,” Mary said. “I had Lek check me when I came back this afternoon. Somewhere along the line, I picked up two, none of special interest, not that they reported anything through his jammer.”

  “Well, we like to make sure of things ourselves,” the woman said, then led Mary into a room in the center of the bigger room. She closed the door behind them; it locked with a solid click. “Would you take a seat?”

  Mary did.

  “I’m told you want a good map.”

  “That was what I was hunting for,” Mary admitted. “Is there a law against it?”

  “Here on Savannah, I think there is,” the woman said, with a pained expression. “How can they keep the people in the dark if they let them see things? They do a lot to keep the locals from knowing what’s really happening. Our level of ignorance about the situation is only a blowback from their main effort.”

  “So I can’t have a decent map,” Mary said.

  “I didn’t say that. One of the nice things about having a Society warship in our sky is that it can take pictures from orbit. Pictures like you saw on the main screen. I’ll see that you get a copy of it before you leave here.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Mary said. Then remembered a question.

  “Those kids, what they say when they get to talking. Is that good intel?”

  “Some of the best we’re getting from this place,” the FSO admitted.

  “That drug farm that Ruth got beat up for discovering,” Mary went on slowly. “What do the kids know about it?”

  “Not a lot. It was mainly Ruth and her farm experience that led her to it. That and our orbital analysis that it’s growing crops that didn’t match any in our Ag database.”

  “But you didn’t have me and Ruth go near it today.”

  “Or tomorrow or the next day for quite a few days to come. It’s too hot.”

  Mary made a face. “That’s not good. When are those visiting senators supposed to be here?”

  “How do you know about them?” The diplomat didn’t look happy that Mary did.

  “Ma’am, my job is to protect the colonel. And the only reason he’s here is for that bunch. I have to know why we’re here.”

  “Yes, I imagine you do. Yes, I’d like to blow the cover on that drug lair before they get here, but I’m not seeing how I can. Not without us running a very big risk of getting a mob charging through this embassy and ransacking everything.”

  “What about the kids, ma’am? They could get close to the Farm.”

  “I asked Ruth about them. She doesn’t think they could.”

  Now it was Mary’s time to wince. “Ma’am, Ruth is kind of a mother to those kids. You can’t expect her to go along with putting them out on the pointy end of the spear. But, from what I saw today, they are pretty much invisible, at least when they aren’t around the river park. Anyway, they could check out the neighborhood. They know stuff we don’t, and they can go places we don’t dare. I think they are just what you need.”

  “A Baker Street Irregulars kind of thing, huh.”

  “Baker Street Irregulars?” Mary echoed.

  The FSO chuckled. “You haven’t read much Sherlock Holmes, have you?”

  “There weren’t many books where I grew up, ma’am
, but yes, I’ve heard of him, now that you mention it. He was a smart detective, wasn’t he?”

  “And he had a smart bunch of street kids who helped him find out things that respectable grown-ups couldn’t.”

  “Like Alice and Mouse,” Mary said.

  “We’ll need to talk to Ruth about this in the morning.”

  “She can be a very stubborn woman,” Mary said.

  The woman chuckled. “Yes, so Trouble tells me. We’ll see how this goes in the morning. Now, let’s get you that map and get us all to bed. Today’s been a tough one, and I don’t see any days ahead being any easier.”

  Mary hated it when boss types made predictions like that. Too often, they came true.

  TWENTY-TWO

  RUTH DIDN’T LIKE being summoned to the basement with her husband as an escort. She really didn’t like the soft smile on his face.

  A certain Marine captain knew something she didn’t.

  But when they met the diplomat Becky Graven at the door to some tight security room, Trouble was left behind without so much as a growl from him.

  They passed through a glistening room full of people with their heads down over computers into some sort of supersecret room with three chairs. Mary, Ruth’s so-called new best friend forever, was in one. Ruth settled herself into another and waited to see what the head woman was up to.

  A minute later, Ruth was back on her feet. “No. No. No! You can’t use Mouse and Alice as spies. They’ve got it tough enough just staying alive! You can’t gamble with their necks!”

  When the FSO’s lack of concern didn’t change, Ruth tried a different tack. “You saw how they beat me up. Those crushers would enjoy beating Mouse to a dead pulp or hauling Alice off to one of their brothels.”

  When she still saw no reaction from the woman, Ruth turned to Mary. “You’ve seen what it’s like out there, even for one day. You’ve heard what those kids said. You can’t believe we should use them?”

  “She suggested it,” Becky said.

  “Mary!” Ruth screamed.

  “We need to break this local game wide open,” the Marine said as calm as any woman waiting for a bus. “I grew up in an orphanage. Those kids are tougher than you think. They also are street-smart, and right now, street-smart is what we need.”