Ghost fleet constellatio.., p.4
Ghost Fleet (Constellation Book 3), page 4
“Something tells me they wouldn’t have issued the order if they didn’t think people would obey it,” Minerva said.
Nellis shook his head. It was the oldest excuse low men used to justify doing what they knew was wrong. I was just following orders. Orders are orders. For Americans, military personnel were only required to follow lawful orders. Lawful didn’t mean moral however, and that difference was often lost on people who would rather not think about it.
“Get to the bottom of this,” Nellis said. “See if you can trace this message to its origin. You have my authority to find out the specific who behind this, Minerva.”
“We’re not going to fit,” Miles’s daughter protested as her gaze fell upon his old ranger. Jim sank into the leather seat and couldn’t blame her as it cradled his stiff body.
“They can track these other vehicles,” Jim finally said. “If not from the software on board, then they have a tracker planted on it. These people are looking for you and they’re dangerous.” He turned in his seat to face her. “Are you confident driving off-road?”
Miss Davis—Jim thought her name was Lanna—looked at him as if he’d just told her he’d robbed Santa Claus.
“I can drive,” the daughter said. “I do it with Dad all the time.” Still, she frowned.
“I wish you had a real backseat,” she said. “We can’t fit Kyle’s booster—”
“There’s a bench seat up front; the booster can fit,” Jim replied. “I used to do it with my buddy and his sons all the time. Just don’t tell his wife, though.”
Though he wasn’t eager to leave the plush interior of the SUV for the bed of his Ford, he had to. After ushering the Davis family out and into the Ford, he and Miles ran to the back of the SUV and opened the back hatch. Jim grabbed the bugout bags the man had prepped for his family and took the lever-action Winchester Davis had lent him. While he missed his Volunteer, it was beyond his ability to repair in the field and the useless gun went into his jump seat. The bugout bags joined it, and when he was sure the Davis family was safe and secure in his Ford, he handed his revolver to the daughter.
“In case you get separated from me and your old man,” he explained. “Hunker down in a field somewhere, wait for a huge giant and at least one woman with him. Shout Hank, and he should reply with Buddy Lee.”
“Is that his name?” Lanna asked.
Jim shook his head.
“It’s the name of his dog growing up.” With that, he joined Miles Davis in the bed of the truck. The older man had secured himself into the bed with a bungie cord through his back belt loops. Jim had a box of magazines for his AR-15 and a box of three-oh-eight for the lever-action he cradled as he strapped in.
“You’ve done this often?” Miles asked.
“Not as often as you’d think,” Jim replied. The truck bed offered them some concealment, but not much protection from anything bigger than handgun calibers. A full-powered round would punch right through the composite material.
Lanna put the car in gear, and a thin smile crossed Jim’s face. “I forgot to ask if she knew how to drive a manual, but I guess that answers it.”
“Taught her myself,” Davis replied. “Someone had to if she ever wanted to drive a classic.”
“Ah, a real man of culture I see,” Jim said. “I should have figured by your taste in cowboy guns.” He heard shouting in the distance and frowned. “She needs to get on the highway ASAP. We need to get where we can have as many witnesses as possible.”
The truck rattled over the uneven ground, jostling and jerking the two men all around. More than once, Jim busted his jaw on the truck’s bed liner, and he had to take care to not bite his tongue. Long grass and weeds parted for the old truck, and the squeaking suspension told him Lanna had turned onto a hard-packed road. Not a hardball but a step up from an ungraded dirt path, especially in the way it gave him and Miles Davis a much less wild ride.
Jim had almost gotten comfortable when the first rounds began to crack over his head. He glanced back to see nothing had broken through the glass, and he concluded two things: first, the shooters were somewhere off to his sides, and secondly, the shooters didn’t know where they were exactly. Oh, they knew the general direction, but they didn’t have a fix on their specific position and heading. Let’s just hope.
SEVEN
Unfortunately, as soon as their truck got out onto the roadway, their pursuers figured out pretty quickly where they were. A blacked-out fifteen-passenger van careened onto the hardball after them, wind and droplets of a baby rain whipping past them.
Not one to just let malcontents follow them, Jim propped himself up on the edge of the truck bed and squeezed the trigger on the Winchester. The rifle bucked, spiderwebbing the van’s windshield. Much to Jim’s chagrin, he’d hit the passenger rather than the driver.
Still, the van swerved, if only to throw off his aim. Jim worked the action and readied another shot. Part of him appreciated that the rifle was doing exactly what it was intended to do: fend off questionable characters from a moving vehicle. Granted, the Ford Ranger was a long way from a stagecoach, as far as the van full of hired killers were from the outlaws of that time. His second shot shattered the windshield, finishing the job his first shot had started. Broken glass would hopefully blind the would-be assassins, but Jim couldn’t count on it.
Muzzle flashes from inside the van forced him and Davis to keep their heads down. Glass shattered and rained into the truck bed. Jim closed his eyes and covered his face with an arm. He looked back to hear the Davis family screaming, but they all had their heads down and he didn’t think any of them were hurt.
“Stay low!” he cried into the roar of the wind whipping past him. He reloaded the Winchester, suddenly missing the magazine capacity of a modern rifle. Miles Davis wasn’t to be outdone, blasting away at the front of the van and managing to punch out a headlight and pepper the radiator with his wild fire.
Jim raised himself out of the back of the truck and popped off another controlled pair. The van swerved to the side of the road, and Jim put two more rounds into the vehicle, only for them to ping off the side as they opened up the gap between them. Damn, it’s armored. Steam rose from the front of the van, and Jim sighed with relief knowing the vehicle wouldn’t be trying to catch them anytime soon.
He used the reprieve to take stock of their situation. They still had plenty of ammo, but his truck had been shot up and both he and Miles Davis were covered in broken glass. They couldn’t pass through the gate like this, not with two guys lying in the bed of a truck, but any stop could cost them time and distance from the assassins, not to mention a call to the police if the wrong people saw them.
“I need to get in contact with my people,” Miles Davis said. “I have engineers, scientists, and staff who could be under attack.”
Jim shook his head.
“You’re the linchpin of all this. Let’s figure out how to get you guys to safety before we worry about your whole company.” He was about to add something else, but he felt the truck downshift and raised an eyebrow. “Lanna, what’s happening?”
“There’s people in the road ahead,” she called.
“Are any of you hurt?” Miles asked.
“No, we’re okay, just shaken,” she replied.
“Okay? We were just shot at!” Miss Davis cried.
Jim was more concerned with the roadblock ahead, and as he turned to look at it, his fears were confirmed. No police lights, no emergency vehicles, just two light-duty trucks with KC lights. The trucks were parked offset from each other, at angles where their lights weren’t blinding but they disrupted his ability to make out details of the people around the barricades. Jim thought he spotted two white plastic road barriers that would have been filled with water to anchor them, and judging by their body language, the roadblock people were armed.
“Lanna,” he breathed. “Stay low, pull off the road if you can, and drive. This isn’t a—” Before he could speak, the men at the barricade shouted and flashlights illuminated the barrels of multiple weapons. Shit.
“Turn off your vehicle, or you will be fired upon!” a voice amplified by a megaphone ordered.
Jim hated their options. Turning off the road now would mean exposing them to incoming fire for far too long, but complying was an almost certain death sentence. Unless maybe he could pretend to surrender. Create a diversion and allow the Davis family to flee.
“Lanna, do as he says,” Jim said. “Mister Davis, we’re not actually surrendering. When I distract them, take your family and run.”
The voice on the megaphone ordered them to turn off the vehicle and come out quietly with their hands in the air.
Rough hands seized Jim’s wrists, and he heard Mrs. Davis cry out as the men dragged her, her daughter, and her son from the cab of the truck. A gloved fist struck Jim across the mouth, and the next thing he knew, he was face-down on the ground, dirt and gravel filling his mouth and nose. A set of flex cuffs bound his wrists. Miles Davis hit the ground with an indignant grunt, and Jim glanced over to see that the older man had his hands bound.
“We should just dome them here,” one of the men growled. “All of them. They’ve caused the boss enough trouble already.”
“No,” another voice said. “They pay us for getting the details right. We need to be sure these aren’t body doubles. Bring me the scanner.”
A boot struck Jim in his ribs, and he rolled across the dirt.
“Who the hell is this?”
“He’s an Espatier,” the voice of whoever was calling the shots said. “Space Farce. We’ll figure out which one after we confirm the main target.”
The distant rumble of a diesel engine caught Jim’s ear, and he prayed it wasn’t just some random passerby.
“Hey, I got white lights. You, go wave them off,” the commander said. “Let’s get the old man’s face in the scanner.”
“Hey boss,” a third voice called. Jim estimated from the sound of footsteps that there were about two dozen of the mercenaries around them, and he’d begun to match a few in his peripheral. How do I get us out of this one?
“It’s just some old farmer and his farmhand,” the third voice said. “They got a trailer that smells like cow shit.”
“Let them through,” the commander said. “Tell them to hurry, though—we’re detaining some cartel smugglers off the northern border.”
Jim wasn’t a car guy, but he recognized a diesel when he heard one and glanced up. Lanna cried out for her dad, and the thuggish one chuckled.
“Man, I’d kill to have a go at her, maybe her mom too? What do you think, boss?”
The truck’s lights flashed as it rolled forward, and the mercenaries cried out.
“Hey, kill your high beams!”
A sound Jim was all too familiar with—the sound of a watermelon being struck by a sledgehammer—squelched over him, and he felt spray on his neck and shirt. A body landed next to him with a thud.
“Holy shit—” Whatever the thug said next was lost in the wash of gunfire that filled the night. Not from the mercenaries but from the back of the cattle trailer.
Jim angled his head up to see the truck jerk sideways with a sudden, unyielding amount of force. He wasn’t a gearhead—far from it—but his best friend was, and he knew 1974 International Harvester Scouts weren’t a common sight on the road nearly seventy years since they’d been built.
So when the truck jackknifed the trailer and Oliver Knight gracefully rolled out the back with his rifle, Jim couldn’t help but smile.
Oliver wasn’t alone either. Jim saw shapes come careening out of the back of the trailer, guns blazing. Someone in the bed of the truck began setting off fireworks, sowing further confusion among the mercenaries who went from complete control of the situation to having a surprise attack in the middle of their group from a foe that possibly outnumbered them. Jim heard an M250 go to work and let out a relieved laugh when he saw it in AJ’s hands, back-to-back with George Teller. A mercenary drew a bead on Oliver’s exposed back, only for the top half of his head to vanish in a shower of carnage. Z’s handiwork.
“Friends of yours?” Miles Davis grunted.
“Family,” Jim replied.
The smell of gun smoke and carnage filled the air. Oliver, and Prince began barking orders, and George directed something outside Jim’s field of view. Arms looped under his and helped him to his feet.
“The hell did they do to you?” Ogden asked. “You look like shit.”
“And you smell like it,” Jim replied. “Who put all this together? What happened to discreet?”
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Mel cried as she approached him with Flora. Prince and Jun helped Miles Davis to his feet as Les, Cai, and Rami guided his stunned family towards Gregor’s massive form waving them into the trailer.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Jim grinned.
“Good,” Oliver growled. Then his meaty, gloved fist filled Jim’s vision, and he saw nothing.
EIGHT
“We went through all that just for you to give him a TBI?” The words were honey-sweet in sound, though the tone was clearly angry. “What good did that do?”
“He had it coming,” a deeper male voice said. “Running off on his own, super-secret special mission trying to get himself killed.”
Jim finally connected the dots as he swayed into consciousness. Oliver and Baker, his best friend, and his . . . roommate were arguing. With a groan, he tried to sit up, only for dozens of hands to push him back down.
“He’s awake, Doc Baker,” Z called. A massive sniper rifle sat next to her, and Jim took a moment to take in their surroundings. He was lying on the floor of a cattle car, while it seemed like everyone else had squeezed themselves against the walls of the car.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Yang said, and Jim hadn’t even realized she’d been with the group. “Just hold still and let Baker do her concussion test.”
Baker shifted and shimmied until she was lying almost on top of Jim. Her body pressed against his both comforted him and caused him quite some discomfort.
“Focus on my finger,” Baker said. A penlight clicked into existence, and Jim felt like she might as well have just stabbed him in the eye. After he followed her finger, the light mercifully clicked off and she rolled into a position that was almost spooning him. “It’s a miracle, but he’s not showing concussion symptoms. Still, maybe a lighter workload.”
“Mister Black, you keep some interesting company,” Miles Davis said. “For a moment, I thought your family had turned on you.”
“Ollie’s hit me harder before,” Jim said. “I was just sleepy.”
“See, Mel? He needed a nap!” Oliver grinned triumphantly.
“Who all came?” Jim asked. “There seemed like so many more.”
“There are,” Oliver grunted. “Stan and Old Man Touchard are up front, and since they don’t have an act to keep up, the Davis family are in the cab with them, minus Mister Davis of course. Flora’s also up front with them. El, AJ, and the three stooges are in the bed with a tarp over their heads.”
“Wait, you brought Elodie Touchard out here?” Jim asked. “And her dad?”
“He’s the only other MFer on post who can drive a stick,” Oliver said. “Besides my boy, but while I am proud of him, if he ever handles my truck like that again, it’ll be the end of him. That’s not even considering the tongue-lashing I’m going to get when we get back.”
“Wait, you brought your son?” Jim gasped. “Ollie, what the hell?”
“Again, he can drive stick, and we needed him in case we couldn’t swing Old Man Touchard,” Oliver replied. “I could have driven, but then that’s one less gun in the fight.” He paused before adding, “The high-beam signal was all him, and he and the old man came up with the farmer act on the way.”
“We needed all the help we could get,” Yang said, “and fast. Minerva contacted us and said something bad was going to start happening around the world, but she wouldn’t elaborate.”
“Or couldn’t,” Z added. “General Nellis might withhold information from her in case our enemy could compromise her.”
“I know of our enemy,” Miles Davis said over the roar of the wind through the trailer, “but you’re going to have to bear with me.
There have been rumors of an off-the-books mercenary group, ever since the First War on Terror. One that acts solely in the interests of a wealthy set of power brokers. A hidden hand of the state, if you will. Pulled from the Special and Black Operations world and selected for their flexible morality. They do the dark things people in power won’t admit to, provide them with a layer of plausible deniability and potentially a cleaner conscience.”
“But why just reveal their hand?” Yang asked. “This super-secret PMC is bound to be something they don’t want getting out.”
“It isn’t, which tells me Miss Sykes’ little book club is ready to make their big move,” Miles Davis continued. “I knew the Global Prosperity Fund was corrupt, but I didn’t realize how rotten until I got a brief about their last few meetings.” He shook his head. “They’re willing to cosign most of humanity to serfdom, no matter where they go, all to keep themselves and their friends at the top of the pyramid.”
“You sound like you have a plan,” Jim said. “Care to share?”
Miles Davis nodded.
“I’ve been working on that. In truth, our ARK project is well ahead of schedule,” he said. “It can feasibly hold a million passengers for a three-year journey, double that if we use the stasis pods.”
Jim considered the mass of the vessel and looked at Yang.
“What if you didn’t need three years?” he asked. “What if we could take your ARK over in an instant?”
Miles Davis blinked, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. “There’s the issue of colony supplies, but I think we could take even more people. However, until we can replicate Constellation’s Renaudin drive, I doubt that’s a possibility.”
