"Montoya?" Cruz asked in return.
"'Oh, Cazador Buddy,'" Montoya answered.
"I didn't know you were going to flight school."
Montoya sighed over the radio. "I didn't do well enough in school"—he meant Cazador School, a miserable exercise in starvation, sleep deprivation, danger and sheer hard work; it was also the Legion's sine qua non for leader selection—"for them to actually trust me as an officer or centurion. So I hung around the Cazador Tercio until someone came to talk to me about becoming a pilot. So it's Flight Warrant Officer Montoya now."
"Good job," Cruz answered, and meant it. Unlike most armed forces the air component of the Legion was a part and parcel of the whole; treated like crap the same as everyone else, rather than as spoiled children with too many privileges. There was, therefore, quite a bit more affection between ground and air than was true of most armed forces. The air loved the ground because they were the honorable edge of battle. The ground loved the air because there was none of this "our pilots are too precious to risk" and "but we need our crew rest" nonsense and because they'd always be there when needed, even at the cost of pilots' lives.
"Yeah," Montoya agreed. "Besides, I'm a better pilot than I was a grunt. I'll be standing by and watching," he concluded.
* * *
The enemy opened fire first, at a range somewhat long for the rifles and light machine guns they carried. From the road, about twelve hundred meters away from the wood, the legionaries had no trouble returning fire with their excellent .34 caliber machine guns. Three medium guns, belting out three to four hundred rounds per minute, sustained, between them, and coupled with return fire from the infantry squads closer in, were more than the insurgents really felt up to dealing with. They began to run.
"Cruz, Montoya; I see them and I'm on it."
"Get some, Montoya."
For the first time that day Cruz heard the thrummm of the Cricket's engine as Montoya gunned it to close to range. Then, mere moments later, he heard the steady sound of cloth ripping as the dual machine gun mounted to side-fire from the Cricket opened up. He couldn't see if they hit anything, as the enemy was running away. He could see the rest of the platoon rise to their feet and begin to run forward, firing from the hip, urged on by Arredondo's wide-carrying shout.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Cruz ordered the weapons squad and then began to trot low from gun to gun, making sure the crews had heard.
Idly, Cruz wondered if there would be prisoners. Hopefully so; this is enough excitement for the day.
Then the brace of Turbo-Finch Avengers swooped in like eager hound dogs. "Where you want it?" they panted. Their lives had been a bit short of excitement over the last year, too, and it showed.
"Save it," Cruz answered, "but thanks for stopping by. This party's about over."
"Fuck!"
Over the radio Cruz heard Montoya laugh. "What? You guys think me and my Cazador Compadre are going to leave anything for the likes of you."
"Tell 'em, Montoya," Cruz added, with a snicker.
"Hey, Cruz, I got a postcard from Khalid in Taurus a few months back. Nothing too personal but he says he's doing well."
"Good old Khalid," said Cruz.
21/9/466 AC, Westminster, Anglia, Tauran Union
The small brass placard above the mailbox said, "Mahrous ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana." That name and address matched his briefing packet was no particular surprise to Khalid. This was his fifth hit in two years and, so far, there had never been a mistake in identity. What he would do if he ever was called upon to make a hit that turned out to be a mistake, Khalid didn't know. At this point, he suspected, he'd probably yawn, then go to a café and read the paper. He'd grown a steel shell, had Khalid, these last five years.
Unlike the previous four, this target was "hardened." This is to say that his house was detached, with broad lawns around it and a wall around them, that his sedan—sedans, rather; Mahrous kept four Phaetons—was armored. He had bodyguards, mostly veterans of the Royal Anglian Army's Special Operations Directorate, or SOD. He was believed to wear body armor of the very highest caliber, religiously. Moreover, Mahrous rarely traveled the same way from his home twice in a week.
If the swine wasn't so paranoid, thought Khalid, I'd have offed his ass months ago.
For those months Khalid had considered and discarded one option after another. Shoot him from a distance? No way; nothing elevated hereabouts and no really good firing positions. Besides, I'm a good long range shot, but not a great one. We Arabs rarely are; I don't know why. Shoot him close up? I'd never get through the bodyguards who are, let's admit it, first rate men. Bomb the house? No way to get close enough with enough material. Bomb the office? Similar problem. Bomb the Phaetons? Which one. How do I get to it? No way.
He'd even considered leaving a small bomb with a chemical agent in it but . . . It wouldn't surprise me a bit if those SOD types carry atropine and nerve agent antidote.
In the end, Khalid had gone for something simple. There was a sewer that ran the length of the street Mahrous lived on. That sewer had one manhole cover not far from the driveway to Mahrous' residence. Khalid had simply made a radio control detonator from parts obtained at a local hobby store, then manufactured—as he had been trained to do in Volga—about fifteen pounds of PETN, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, in his apartment in the city. "Factor P for plenty," the Volgan instructor had said. Fifteen pounds of PETN was more than plenty. An electric blasting cap he lifted from a poorly-guarded construction site.
A visit to the local courthouse had given Khalid the map for the sewer system. A couple of visits to three different uniform shops had given him a fair simulacrum of a sewer worker's uniform and accoutrements. A used automobile dealer provided the van and a paint shop changed the van's color to green to match those used by the public works authority. A few telephonic complaints to the PWA had given him, after a bit of figuring, a schedule and therefore a time frame in which there would be no sewer workers down below.
Making a package of the PETN, descending into the sewers—Blech, that stank!—and finding the right manhole cover had been easy.
And so, now, Khalid waited and watched the road and the manhole from a café not far from the manhole cover. He'd been waiting for four days. If Mahrous didn't soon use the road that led by the bomb, Khalid would have to think of something else. You just couldn't leave a bomb lying around indefinitely. And if it was found, if Mahrous or his bodyguards got wind of it, their paranoia level would go, oh, way up.
"Which would be saying something," Khalid muttered, as he sipped his coffee.
As Khalid put down the cup, he spied a long, black Phaeton easing out of the barred and guarded gate that fronted the driveway from Mahrous' house. He didn't tense; he seen the same thing three times already, since planting his bomb, and three times the Phaeton had gone in a different direction.
Ah, but Allah smiles upon those who wait, Khalid thought, with a smile of his own. Now let's see if the wretch doesn't turn off before he reaches the manhole. And . . . . .bingo. They might stop outright, but there are no good turns before the bomb.