David Weber - The Apocalypse Troll

He was still wondering when Captain Steven Pound, US Army, drew his nine-millimeter automatic and shot him through the back of the head.

"The whole shipment?" Stan Loren stared at Dolf Wilkins in horror.

"Every ounce," Wilkins said flatly. He'd received the report forty minutes before Loren, and he had himself under tight control. "Point-nine-four tons of weapons-grade fissionables. Gone."

"How?" Loren demanded hoarsely.

"We're trying to put that together. The Army, the NRC, and the Department of Energy bomb boys are all going ape-shit, and Admiral McLain is just about as shaken. It would help if there were any survivors from the security detail or the train crew. There aren't."

"None?" Loren's face was bleak as he began recovering from the shock.

"None. They took out one troop car with explosives-some sort of explosively destructive weapon, anyway; we haven't actually confirmed any chemical residues yet-and just strafed hell out of the other with some kind of heavy-caliber automatic weapons. Our people on the scene tell me they've never seen anything like it. Even the container vessels are gone, and each of them weighs tons."

"Vehicle tracks?"

"None," Wilkins said again, even more grimly.

"Oh, Jesus," Loren whispered as their eyes met. They knew who-or, rather, what-had to be behind it.

"All right, Mordecai," Anson McLain said grimly. "At least we know whose side of the pond the bastard is on."

"Agreed. Assuming, of course, that he's gone to ground somewhere within his operational range of the hit." Morris tapped a red-crayoned circle on a huge map of the United States. It passed through Chicago, arced north of Detroit, cut right through Philadelphia, and reached as far south as Daytona Beach before it swept back up to the west of Saint Louis. "If that's the case, then he's somewhere inside that circle, Sir. He has to be. Milla says eight hundred kilometers is about the max range at which he can operate his combat remotes."

"That's an awful big circle, M&M."

"I know, Sir. Every recon plane in the eastern half of the country is up looking, and so are all the satellites we can sweep the area with, but we haven't found a thing. Which could mean nothing or a lot."

He turned from the map to face the admiral.

"We may just be missing him-it's not like we've had time to set up a well-organized search, and we figure we lost at least twenty minutes before the missed radio check alerted the security people, so he had a hell of a head start. On the other hand, it could mean that he's worked out the ECM devices he needs, or even that he'd already gone to ground before we started hunting. But the terrain in the area is extremely rough, Sir. Mountains, rivers, national forests, deer reservations... . Even if he's in fairly close proximity, we won't find him without a lot of luck. We'll try-he'll be expecting us to-but I'm not optimistic, Sir."

He fell silent, standing beside his boss while the two of them glowered at the map as if the combined force of their wills could somehow force it to give up the information they needed. Unfortunately, it couldn't.

"All right," McLain said finally. "We can leave the search up to the Army and Air Force. Put together everything we've got and every reasonable speculation you can come up with, then bring it in for us to go over. After that-" he smiled mirthlessly "-you and I are going to Washington. And I don't think our commander-in-chief is going to be happy to see us.

Major Daniel Abernathy, USMC, Commanding Officer, Company T, Provisional (reinforced), blinked on sweat and tried not to smile as he watched Admiral Aston and "Captain Ross" running side by side in front of him. It was hard.

The admiral was no spring chicken, but he certainly didn't run like an old man, either. His nondescript gray sweats were soaked with perspiration under the hot sun, but he was moving well. Very well, Abernathy thought, with the easy rhythm of a man who knew exactly how to pace himself. A man accustomed to pushing himself to the limit, and wise enough to know that limit when he reached it.

Captain Ross-Abernathy seldom allowed himself to think of her by any other name, and no one else in Company T except Sergeant Major Horton knew she had one-ran along the packed beach beside him, in one of her outlandish shirts, this one bearing a flame-eyed skeletal horseman, a long scythe gleaming over his shoulder. It was strictly non-reg, of course, not that anyone was likely to complain. At the moment, she was as sweat-soaked as the admiral, but she ran with an infinite endurance Abernathy found almost unnerving. She needed two strides to match each of Aston's long, loping ones, yet she gave the impression that she could go on doing it forever.

They always ran together, and she always ran the admiral into the ground, yet there was absolutely no competition between them. With any pair of Marines Abernathy had ever known, enlisted or commissioned, there would have been a rivalry. Friendly perhaps, but always there. Not with these two. It was as if they were beyond that. Indeed, Abernathy felt a bit daunted when he looked up and saw the two of them watching his men train. Their eyes were so similar, so knowing, as if each of them had seen the same thing a thousand times and felt an identical kindly tolerance for the brash, tough young men doing it this time.

But, then, he reminded himself, Captain Ross was not what appearances might suggest, and her relationship with Admiral Aston was no one's damned business but their own. They were utterly discreet-they had to be on a teeming military post like this-but Abernathy knew they were lovers, and he was pretty certain Sergeant Major Horton did, too.

Under other circumstances, Abernathy might have been tempted to object. Certainly his professionalism had been offended when he first realized Aston was sleeping with his aide, but no longer. Those two were one of the most effective teams he'd ever seen, and whatever their private relationship might be, it never colored their actions on duty.

Well, practically never, he amended, smiling as he remembered Captain Ross's first day on the pistol range. She'd nearly wet her pants the first time the admiral squeezed off with his .45 auto, and only later did Abernathy realize that, for all her combat experience, she'd never heard a firearm discharged. But Admiral Aston had known, and his face-cracking grin had told Abernathy he hadn't warned her deliberately.

With her extraordinary strength and reflexes, she'd seemed to levitate as the explosive crash blasted over her, and Abernathy understood instantly why Aston had cleared the range of everyone but Captain Ross and Abernathy himself. Her reaction would have been a dead giveaway that, whatever she was, she was not a Marine captain.

But she was, Abernathy had found, a natural shot. Recoil had bothered her a lot the first day, but she'd settled down quickly. Like the admiral-or, for that matter, Major Daniel Abernathy, US Marine Corps-she preferred the .45 to the nine-millimeters the US military had adopted. Unlike the admiral, however, she preferred the polymer-framed SOCOM .45 to the old 1911 variants, and by the end of the second week, she was pushing Aston, himself a past national pistol champion, hard. Her groups were consistently tight, her first magazine regularly blew the X-ring right out of her target, and her combat range scores were incredible. She'd set a new post record-unofficially, since no one but Abernathy and Aston had been witnesses and Horton had acted as range officer. It was her speed, Abernathy thought. That blinding, smoothly flowing speed ...

Not that there hadn't been problems. She'd insisted on training with every weapon Company T was issued, but though she'd become skilled and deadly with all of them, the men had been uneasy when they realized she'd be coming along when the mission finally went down. None of them were idiots; they knew she was much more than their officers chose to admit, but she was such a little thing, and whatever the official position might be, "No women in ground combat" remained the effective Corps policy.