Layla, however, was not shocked. She had the door open and was crouching outside, digging in her purse for a pistol and her trademark hand grenade, even before the men in the assaulting cars had their feet to the pavement. Her hand closed on the grenade first. This she donated to the following car. It went off on the asphalt, laying out two just emerging assassins with multiple shrapnel wounds. Red pools began to spread across the pavement.
The remaining four assassins were momentarily shocked. This gave Layla enough time to dig out her pistol, a 9mm job made in Sachsen. With the pistol in hand, she stuck her head over the trunk of her own immobilized automobile and fired at the passengers of the car that had rammed hers from behind. She hit one, she thought.
A long burst of fire from the car that had swerved in front of hers smashed the windows of her own, sending the glass shards tinkling to the asphalt and killing the driver. None of the barely aimed bullets hit her, but spraying glass scored her forehead and face, causing blood to run into her right eye. Desperately Layla used her left hand to try to wipe the blood away and clear her eye for shooting. Even through the haze she managed to jack a couple of rounds in the direction of the first auto.
Achmed, nephew of Ghalib, was shocked by the return fire. The explosion of what he assumed was a hand grenade had been bad enough. But for the woman to have the effrontery to actually shoot back? This was too much.
Unfortunately, the return fire was also too much. Achmed, feeling ashamed, closed his eyes and kept low to the ground to escape the bullets this damned heretic woman seemed to have in great supply.
The rough pavement dug into his face. Achmed forced his eyes open and saw a woman's foot and a knee exposed under the floor of the target vehicle. He pointed his rifle in the general direction of the foot and pulled the trigger.
Layla was reloading her pistol from one of the four spare magazines she kept in her purse when she felt the blow just above her knee. Partly from the physical force of the blow and partly in automatic response to the instant and intense pain, her leg spun out from under her, causing her to drop the loaded magazine she had been struggling to insert. She fell to one side even as her hand groped the asphalt for the magazine.
Unable to stand or kneel any longer Layla forced her back to the rear wheel of her car while her hand continued to feel around, searching for the lost magazine. She found and grabbed it with a joyful cry.
Before she could reload, she stopped. Two angry looking men were standing above her, each with a rifle pointed towards her head and torso. A third sprayed her guard, still sitting in the front seat, knocking his bloodied corpse over onto the lap of the dead driver.
No chance now, Layla thought, dropping the magazine but retaining the pistol.
Layla's last acts in this life were to smile as if her own death were a triumph and to spit at her assailants.
The rifles opened fire. At this range even very bad marksmanship could not miss. Over forty bullets entered Layla's body. When they were done she lay dead against the rear tire, her head lolling to one side and the pistol still held tightly in her hand.
Camp Balboa, Sumer, 19/2/462 AC
Layla's bullet-riddled body was barely in the ground in Bekaa when the first replacement units began to arrive in Sumer. This was the Second Cohort of the now renamed 1st Tercio (principio Eugenio). Whereas the 1st Cohort had never had a strength above four hundred and sixty, the replacement was closer to a real battalion's strength of nearly seven hundred. It was still organized in six subunits though these, in deference to the increase in strength, were called now "maniples" rather than centuries and were subdivided into platoons rather than sections. The platoons were still rather small, as platoons went.
Sporting new sergeant's stripes on his collar, Cruz didn't care about that. In truth, he didn't care much about anything except that this combat tour was over and he was going home for a while, home to his Cara and, hopefully, home to marriage and the beginning of a family. He had a good job with the legion, work he liked and work he had proven good at. He intended to stay even though this would mean frequent separation from his loved ones.
Waiting with his gear for the trucks that would take himself and the rest of the cohort to the Ninewa airport, Cruz mused upon the meeting he and his cohort's tribune had had with Carrera and the legion's sergeant major, that crusty old bastard, McNamara.
He'd been shocked, more than a little, when Carrera had announced that he'd been selected for Cazador School and, if he passed that, further selected for the Centurion Candidate Course.
"They'll be harder than combat, Sergeant Cruz," McNamara had informed him. "I know you don't believe that now but, before you accept the appointment, just trust me on this."
He'd sat silent for a while at that, thinking hard. Finally, he'd decided, "I think I can take it, Sergeant Major… Legate. After all, I have good reasons to."
Interlude
Earth Date 27 May,
2104 (Terra Novan year 45 AC),
Atlantis Base
The shuttle came down from the Amistad carrying a full platoon of thirty UN Marines, all the ship had available. It screeched in to Atlantis base furiously. The Marine commander directed his troops to wait at the small terminal while he went to collect his orders from the Base's deputy, acting in High Admiral Annan's stead.
"The helicopter went off the air several days ago," the deputy advised the major commanding the Marines. "I don't know if they crashed or what."
"Where were they heading?" the major asked.
The deputy's finger played over his computer's keyboard, bringing up a somewhat undetailed map of Balboa colony. "The high admiral said he was going here. "Hunting," he said." Since the deputy had some idea of just what it was that Annan had intended to hunt, and since that was technically illegal, even for a high admiral, he kept his mouth shut as to what Annan's objective had been.
"I've been in contact with our office in Ciudad "-the Deputy laughed; to call such a miserable collection of shacks a city was absurd-"Balboa. They say the high admiral stopped there on his way."
The major could have surmised the hunt's objective but long years in UN service had conditioned him not to dig into, not to even think upon, the foibles of his superiors. He had his own life to worry about and another four years would see him retired to his Botswanan village on a very comfortable, Noblemaire-Rule-driven, pension.
Following Annan's flight path, the shuttle stopped off at the local UN supervisory office in Ciudad Balboa. The bureaucrats there had nothing to add. It struck the Marine major that the guards on the office seemed even more slovenly and undisciplined than was the UN norm. Still, it was close enough to that norm to excite no real interest. After refueling the shuttle from local stocks, and seeing that his men were given a decent meal and some rest, the ship took off heading east.
The shuttle was not equipped to scan the jungle below. Even if it had been, it might well not have noticed the several dozen armed men on horseback over whom it flew, riding hell for leather, westward, beneath the thick triple canopy.
The helicopter was easy enough to find; it had landed in the open and there it still was. When the shuttle descended to a leaf- and grass- churning landing, the major and his men debarked. They found the helicopter, along with twenty-two insect-eaten heads on stakes in a circle around it. Of the high admiral's body, or those of the eighteen Marines who had accompanied him, there was not a trace. The bodies of the three-man crew, or what was left of them after ants, antaniae, and buzzards had taken their share, were found right by the helicopter.