Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

"Aye, sir."

They'd cut the horses free and abandoned the carriage, but there was still a strong-box lashed to the roof, and an open door gaping wide. Otto dismounted carefully, kceping his horse between himself and the upper floor windows dribbling smoke-no point not being careful-and walked over to the vehicle. There was nobody inside, of course. Then the roof. The box wasn't large, but it looked heavy. Neuhalle's grin widened. "You, fetch four troopers and have them take this down. Place a guard on it."

"Aye sir!" His hand-man nodded enthusiastically: Neuhalle had promised his retainers a tithe of his spoils.

"There'll be more just like it tomorrow." There was a loud crack, and Neuhalle looked round just in time to see the roof line of the west wing collapse with a shower of sparks and a gout of flames. "And tomorrow..."

Just as the guard handed Erie back his mobile phone, it rang. "Hey, good timing!" The cop chuckled, Eric flipped it open, ignoring the man. It had already been a long day: back home it was about six in the evening, and he still had to fly back. "Smith here."

"Boss?" It was Deirdre, his secretary: "I'm aware this is an insecure line, but I thought you might want to know that Mike is back from his sales trip, and he says he's got a buyer."

"Jesus!" Eric stood bolt-upright. "Are you sure? That's amazing!" The sense of gloom that had been hanging over him for days lifted. He cheeked his watch: "Listen, I'll be back in town late tonight-can you get him into the office for an early morning debrief? Around six hundred hours?" I'll have to tell Gillian something, he realized. Not just an apology. Take her somewhere nice?

"I, I don't think that will be possible," Deirdre said, sounding distracted.

"Why not?" It came out too sharply: "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. What's the problem?"

"He's, um, he had a traffic accident. He's taken a beating, but he'll be all right once he's out of hospital. Judith Herz is with him."

"Whoa!" Eric blinked furiously. He glanced round the guardroom. noticing the cop sitting patiently behind the counter, the polite SS agent with the car keys. "-Listen, I'll call you back from a secure terminal once I'm under way. Should be about an hour. I'll be expecting the best report you can pull together. If possible get Judith on the line for me, if she's spoken to him in person."

He could just about see Deirdre's eye-rolling nod: "That's about what I expected, boss. I'll be ready for you."

"Okay, bye."

He closed the phone with a snap and turned to Agent Simms: "Come on, we've got a plane to catch!"

There was a secure terminal aboard the Gulfstream, and Eric wasted no time in getting to it as soon as they were airborne. But what Judith Herz had for him wasn't encouraging.

"He got chewed up-one leg is badly broken with surface lacerations, he's got bruising and soft tissue injuries consistent with being in a fight, and he's got a nasty infected wound. I got him checked in to the nearest trauma unit and it looks like he'll pull through and keep the leg, but he's not going to be up and about any time soon. Someone stuck a syringe full of morphine in him and dumped him at a roadside in upstate New York. They called an ambulance using a stolen mobile phone, and no, we didn't get a trace on it-they turned it on just before they called and switched off immediately after. He was still wearing his cover gear, but they'd disarmed him."

"Shit. Excuse me." Eric look a few moments to gather his scattered thoughts. Too many things were going on at once. His head was still spinning from the stuff in the buried laboratory under Building Forty-seven. He'd just about gotten used to the idea that Mike had made it home alive-and that was really good news-but this latest tidbit was a little hard to take. "Okay. So someone sent him back to us? Any sign of Sergeant Hastert and his team?"

"Mike was awake when I saw him, sir." He stiffened at her lone of voice, anticipating the bad news to come: "He wasn't very lucid, but he said Hastert and O'Neil were killed. They walked in on some kind of war and they got caught in the crossfire. I'm sorry, sir: he wasn't very clear, but he wanted you to know they died trying to get him out."

"Shit." Eric rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Any good news? Or was thai the good news?"

"He says he made contact with the target briefly, but there were problems. And something about her mother."

"What's her mother got to do with things?"

"We didn't get that far, sir. Like I said, he's been chewed up badly. I mean, it looks like someone took a whack at his left leg with a chain saw then left it to fester for a couple of days. That's on top of the bruising and a cracked rib. The medics shoved me out of the room just as he was getting to the good stuff-he's out of the operating theater now but he won't be talking for a while. But I'm pretty sure he was trying to say something about the target's mother saving him. I don't know what he meant by that, he was medicated and being prepped for surgery at the lime, but I figure you'll want to follow it up."

"Dead right I will." Eric took a deep breath. "Alright. So he's out of the operating theater now. As soon as he's safe to move, I want him in a military hospital with an armed guard in the room with him at all times-for his own protection. If they can find an underground room to put him in, so much the better. If possible, move him tonight-I want him safe, right now his brains are our crown jewels. Tell Deirdre to get John from OPFAC Four to coordinate with Milton and Sarah on setting it up. Page them if they've gone home, this is important. Got that?"

"I'm on it. Anything else? Will you be coming in tonight?"

Eric shook his head tiredly. "I'm touching down around half past midnight. If you get any pushback between now and then, call me and I'll come in. If it goes smoothly, I might as well get some sleep before I debrief him." A thought struck him. "Another thing. I want a guard with him at all times, with a voice recorder in case he says any-thing. And I don't want random doctors or nurses eavesdropping."

"Already taken care of." Herz's laconic response made him want to kick himself. Of course it was taken care of: Herz was terrifyingly efficient when it came to police work like handling witnesses.

"Good. Good work, I mean, really good." I'm babbling. Stop it. "Well, I won't keep you any longer. If you need backup, call me. Bye."

The seatbelt light was off, the plane boring a hole in the sky towards the darkening eastern horizon. Eric unfastened his belt and stood up, then went forward to the desk where Dr. James was poring over a pile of printouts.

"What is it?" No polite small-talk from James: he was almost robotic in his focus.

"It's CLEANSWEEP. I just got confirmation that we've had a positive outcome."

It was Dr. James's turn to do a double take-or punch the air, if so inclined-and Eric was curious to see how he'd jump. Dr. James was not, it seemed, one for demonstrative gestures: he simply put his papers down, removed his spectacles, and said, mildly, "Explain."

"Agent Fleming is back. He's alive, but has injuries. His condition is stable and I've ordered him transferred to a secure facility pending debriefing. The preliminary report is that the specops team walked into a red-on-red crossfire of some sort, but Fleming was returned to us by someone who presumably wants to talk. There appears to be a factional split in fairyland. I'll know more tomorrow, when I've begun his debriefing: for now, I gather his injuries required operating theater time so we won't get much more out of him just yet."

James began to polish his bifocals with a scrap of tissue. "Good." His fingertips moved in tiny circles, pinching the lens like a crab worrying at a fragment of decaying flesh. "You'll debrief him without witnesses. Record onto a sealed medium and type up the report yourself. Use a typewriter, not a word processor." He looked up at Eric with dead-fish eyes: "the fewer witnesses the better."