0446 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad
Cally rubbed the orange solvent into the Cordura nylon, trying to get the last stains out. “I wish those white-suits had stayed around long enough to clean this stuff.”
Papa O’Neal chuckled, working a bit of bone out of a crevice. They had both taken fast showers to get the bits of the late Harold Locke off, but the armor had picked up quite a bit of evidence. Getting it cleaned up was a priority.
“Yeah, well, I guess we’re just going to have to use a little elbow grease.” He took a puff off his pipe and scrubbed at another spot of blood.
“Who do you think they were, really?” she asked in a serious tone.
He stopped looking for spots on the black cloth for a moment and leaned back. It was a good question. “Honey, I don’t rightly know. They were obviously here to save our bacon. Now, I’ve got a lot of friends in the business, but nobody that could call up a team like that. And they knew Harold was coming to call. Now, they might have figured on being able to cover things up so whoever sent him didn’t figure out what happened. That’s more or less what happened. If the question gets bandied around we can take quiet credit for it.
“But that still begs the question of who sent ’em.”
She nodded her head and went back to working, but he could tell from the expression on her face she was thinking about something. “Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
“I think it was somebody that thought they owed Daddy a favor.”
He started to open his mouth to dismiss the suggestion and stopped. Mike Junior had told him about the present of the combat suit. At half a billion credits, one of the suits was, to say the least, no small gift. Somebody who thought they owed him a half-billion-credit suit might think they owed him a quick response from a special actions team. Instead of dismissing the thought he nodded his head in agreement. “Okay, I can buy that.”
She nodded in turn and picked up the toothbrush as a sonic boom hit.
Both of them looked upwards and cursed simultaneously.
“Oh, fuck!” said Mike Senior.
“Batshit!” echoed Cally.
Michael O’Neal, Sr., looked at the wet, orange-scented armor in his hands and shook his damp head. “What the hell else is going to go wrong today?” he asked with a slightly hysterical laugh.
The team leader pressed the fingers of his hand into his forehead, as if to press in an idea. There were no safe houses nearby where the team could to go to ground. Even if the lander did not land on them, the team would surely be stopped, the vehicles might be commandeered by the local response teams. And then the shit would well and truly hit the fan. Their hastily prepared covers would not survive investigation.
There was only one possible path to obscurity.
“Turn around,” he snarled to the driver. The monk obeyed without a word, swerving right and spinning the over-powered van into a fishtail. “Go to the O’Neal house.” He pulled out his cell phone for the second time in an hour.
Papa O’Neal had the local weather radio turned up loud as he and Cally battened down the hatches. There was a protocol for a landing, one that they had not been able to perform for their unexpected visitors. Shutters were closed across the windows, even the ones that had cracked at the sonic boom. The horses were brought into the barn. The cows could fend for themselves. Circuits were rechecked, ammunition was laid out, spare weapons were set up to hand.
The phone ringing was almost drowned out by the radio, the automated voice now chanting a mantra of landing warnings. But Cally heard it and ran to pick it up.
“Hello?” she said.
“Miss Cally O’Neal?” asked a faintly accented voice.
“Yes.”
“May I speak to Mr. Michael O’Neal, Senior?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Recent visitors,” said the voice with a note of faint humor.
“Oh. Hang on.” She ran outside and clamped the cordless phone against her side. “Granpa!” she shouted.
He looked up, startled, from where he was fixing one of the defective firing circuits.
She waved the phone overhead vigorously. “He’ll be here in a second,” she said to the “recent visitor.”
There was a pause as they waited for the senior O’Neal to trot up the hill. Cally could hear a background of a growling engine. Their visitors appeared to be in a hurry.
“Might I ask a question?” asked the accented voice in the interim.
“Sure.”
“How to say it? The other visitor. He appeared to be…”
“Me.”
“Ah. That would explain it.” The voice sounded somehow satisfied with the answer.
“Here’s Grandpa. Bye.”
She covered the mouthpiece again and smiled. “Our visitors seem to be coming back to tea.”
“Oh, shit,” said O’Neal, Sr., shaking his head. “Be careful what you ask for.”
“Hello?”
“Mr. O’Neal?”
“Speaking.”
“This is one of your recent visitors. We find ourselves somewhat at a disadvantage…”
“Come ahead. Put the vehicles in the garage. I’ll move the truck out so there’s room. And hurry. If our friends get here before you I’m activating the minefield and you’re on your own.”
“Of course. We’re nearly there.”
In the distance there was a thump of artillery and a rattle of machine-gun fire. The Posleen lander had managed to land squarely between the Fifty-Third Infantry, defending Rabun Gap, and the main positions of the supporting Tennessee Volunteers. And only two miles from the entrance to the O’Neal valley. In all likelihood they would bypass the small entrance to the valley. The turn was deliberately obscure.
On the other hand, the way the day had been going…
Papa O’Neal rotated a shoulder to get the armor seated better. Either it had picked up ten pounds of water in the cleaning, or he was getting too old for this shit. He smiled at the black-masked commando coming up the walkway and held out his hand. “Mike O’Neal. And you are? I didn’t quite catch the name before.”
“Call me Raphael,” said the team leader. He took the proffered hand as his team hurried up behind him. The “white-suits” were following them. Although the black-suited commandos were armed, the white-suits were unarmed and without armor.
“You want to outfit them?” asked Papa O’Neal, gesturing with his chin at the white-suits.
“It would be fairly pointless,” said “Raphael.” “I doubt they could hit the side of a mountain. But if you have some little hidey-hole it would be perfect.”
“Well, can’t say as I’m sorry you came back,” admitted Papa O’Neal. “We can do with the extra firepower if the Posleen come up here.” He gestured towards the house and started walking.
“I take comfort in the fact that we are not the only ones assailed by these visitors,” said the visitor dryly. “Surely we are not forsaken by God if they also land upon the Muslim.”
Lieutenant Mashood Farmazan sighed as he gazed down at the enemy host through the ancient Zeiss binoculars. The Posleen group was a remnant of the mass that had descended upon Turkmenistan. The force had slashed through the impoverished country, spreading out from their landing around devastated Chardzhou and destroying every unit thrown against them. The force that was marching towards the Iranian border was still tens of thousands strong and had cut a bloody swath through Bagram-Ali and Mary following the Old Silk Road. Fellow forces had leveled ancient Buchara and now pressed storied Tashkent. This force was presumably headed for Teheran and the riches it hoarded.