John Ringo - Cally's War

The balding but fit civilian sitting by the bar over a bowl of what was probably miso soup was not so nice to look at. Frankly, he felt a gut level distaste for traitors in general, whenever he let himself think about it. But dealing with unsavory people went with the territory in intel, and he couldn’t really afford the luxury of that distaste right now. Like any soldier, Stewart could summon a certain grudging respect for an honest opponent or even enemy. People who were traitors to their own cause, though, just tended to arouse a certain visceral distaste that he had to squash with a vengeance as he crossed the bar to meet the other man.

“Mr. Smith, how nice to see you again,” the other man said.

“Mr. Jones. You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” Stewart observed.

“I could say the same thing of you,” the traitor said.

“If you knew where my home was, I suppose you could.” He pulled up a barstool, smiling easily even though the thought of drinking with this worm was enough to turn his stomach.

“So, what have you got to trade, Mr. Jones? Are you still dancing around with the penny ante game, or are you ready to move up to something more rewarding? And, if you don’t mind my saying so, this is a bit of a change of scene for you, isn’t it?” Prod him a bit and see what he comes out with.

“I travel. This time I don’t just want cash. You said you’d pay more for more. Well, we’ll see if you meant that.” There was a thin film of sweat on the guy’s upper lip. Maybe he was nervous?

“Keep talking.” Don’t give him anything to grab onto, make him reach for a response.

“I want a diversion. You want part of our organization. I see a mutual opportunity here. You assist me in placing some evidence, I give you the person it will point to. You might want the rest of the team, in case you have to be kind of rough on your new toys. But that would be where the money part comes in.” The undertone of desperation in his voice was palpable.

Good God, we’ve hit the motherlode. Okay, now the hard question. Why?

“And what, exactly, would this placing of evidence consist of?” he asked.

“The usual and obvious. Put some banking transactions together and tuck away some luxury goods in the right places. When you pick him up, it’ll look like he was feeding you information all along and he went in out of the cold.” The traitor’s grin was a particularly nasty one.

“You know, the object of this game is usually to get the information without the other guy knowing you’ve got it.” He just couldn’t help being a little sarcastic. Try as he might, having to deal with someone capable of betraying his friends for money just really got under his skin.

“If you can. I’ve got news for you. They know they’ve got a leak. So you’re not losing anything that isn’t already lost. They don’t even have to know you have him. Make it look like he went out on a colonist ship.” Baldy obviously was starting to feel the net closing in.

Okay, they’d only buy this fool’s “diversion” if they’re really stupid, and to penetrate us like they have, stupid they’re not. On the other hand, if he actually is giving us insiders, it doesn’t matter. And I got my answer. His people are closing in on him and he’s covering his butt. If that’s the price, I can deal with that. What do I have to pay him per guy? Three million U.S. dollars per team member?

“I think we can do that. We’ll plant the evidence as directed and pay you one million dollars U.S., each, for this guy and every member of his team we capture,” he said.

“Do I look stupid? Five million U.S., each, and it’s for every person whose identity I give you. If you want to shoot them instead of reeling them in, or if you screw it up, that’s your problem.” The traitor obviously had an ego the size of Cleveland.

It took some minor haggling, but they finally settled at two and a half, half on delivery of the names, half on confirmation that the name went with a real person credibly identified as an organization operative, with standard mutual security precautions. A light price, for what I’m getting.

“So, Mr. Jones, just as a good faith gesture as I go set all this in motion, you said you’re giving us a team. I’m sure you’ll understand I have to have something for the people I report to before they’re going to let me have that kind of money. This team you’re giving us, does it have some sort of internal call name?”

“Hector.”

Michael O’Neal, Sr., had never gotten used to waiting. Oh, he’d learned to simulate perfectly still patience very early in life, or he wouldn’t have survived. It didn’t mean he had to like it. And he didn’t. His granddaughter wasn’t exactly late , since there was no set time for their meet and in the field, with her cover, there could be all sorts of reasons why she couldn’t get away early, or maybe at all.

Which made waiting even more of a pain in the ass.

He had trained Cally in battlefield survival, and general survival in hostile environments, since the age of eight. As a little girl in the Posleen war, she’d been more solid than many grown men, first killing the assassin who’d come to kill them if he couldn’t be recruited, then taking her place beside Team Conyers to fight off the Posties as they’d come up the Gap.

He spat carefully into the spare cup the barmaid had so thoughtfully provided.

After the war, she’d had the first-rate training in her specialty provided in a private parochial environment by the Bane Sidhe’s cadre of killer nuns. Her skills had been honed to a fine art. She was, arguably, the best living assassin on Earth or off it — with the possible exception of himself. Although he didn’t have her… natural advantages.

So, all that being true, why , when she was out in the field, did he always feel like a nervous father whose daughter was out on her first date?

He stifled the impulse to stand and pace, strangling and dismembering it for good measure. Cally was long past her first date. That was something of the problem. You could teach a girl how to reliably hit an eight inch circle from a thousand yards, you could teach her how to run and recognize booby traps, you could teach her nine different ways to kill a man quietly in the dark, but you couldn’t teach her how to cope with the stresses of the job. That was something each assassin had to learn for herself, or himself.

Cally had always been a natural. He remembered the first time he’d put a pistol in that kid’s hand. She couldn’t hit the side of a barn, of course, but after she’d fired her first magazine downrange and the slide locked back, she’d turned and looked at him. She’d been a skinny kid, the blond hair tangled and stringy practically every time she shook her head. And there had been a smudge of soot on the side of her nose where she’d scratched. The earmuffs had been big and bright green on the sides of her head, and the safety glasses tended to slip down the bridge of her nose, but the grin she’d given him had lit up her whole face. And as time went on it became clear that besides enthusiasm she had two other crucial traits. Her eyesight was unusually sharp, and her hands exceptionally steady. He’d taken care to protect both — the first from eye strain in bad light, and the second from vices like caffeine. There were vices more workable in budding warriors.

And, of course, she’d been stubborn. Couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten that from. He chuckled, spitting again into the spare cup. And the way she’d taken out the kneecap of that rotten punk who’d tried—