The Lotus Eaters

'Were to today, Mitch?' Luci asked, with a friendly but not necessarily inviting smile. Not that she'd have minded having a go of it with the stocky aide, but he'd shown long since that he wasn't available for anything but admiring the scenery.

* * *

'Enough admiring the scenery,' Carrera said, his face mock serious. Mitchell was only slightly less mocking when he braced to attention and sounded off with a 'Yessir' that would have been loud in a much larger space than the anteroom.

Luci rolled her eyes. She knew that the display was as a much a show as she routinely put on herself. Carrera waved goodbye casually as he and Mitchell headed out the door and toward the elevators. Luci then stood, closed the door behind them, and turned to make sure Parilla's door was shut as well. Only then did she pick up the telephone.

Highway InterColombiana, Nata, Balboa, Terra Nova

Randy Whitley replaced the hotel room phone on the receiver. He then stood, picked up a small satchel that had been resting on the bed, and went to collect his people.

Had he but known it, Mr. Keith had a former comrade on the other side. He probably would not have been surprised. The drug lords had recruited a number of foreign-born mercenaries, or, as they preferred to think of themselves, 'contract professionals.' Like most mercenaries in the modern age, these were veterans of various nation's special operations units. Generally speaking, such men were attracted by the money available from contract work, that and the excitement.

For a dozen times more than he had ever made as a Sea Lion or a Legionnaire with the Gallic armed forces, former Petty Officer 2nd Class Whitley had attempted to train a group of former thugs to something roughly analogous to Sea Lion tactical standards. Neither tactics nor training, however, were actually Sea Lion strong suits. Whitley, himself, was a walking advertisement for what really were Sea Lion strong suits. He had muscles on his muscles, arms the size of legs and legs the size of trees.

Five of the men he had trained, plus Whitley himself, had waited in and around this sleepy town bisected by the Pan-American Highway for over a week. Two, including Whitley, now sat in a rented automobile. Two others pretended to pray in the small Nata Catholic church; the same church, so said a bronze plaque on the white painted wall, where Belisario Carrera had once prayed for victory in his war with Old Earth.

To the man with him in the car Whitley said, 'Go across the street to the telephone booth. Pretend to make a call.'

The Santandern nodded and left, crossing the street nervously, carrying his weapon in a small black satchel. He'd free the firearm once he was in the telephone booth.

The remaining two men crouched by the road to either side of the town, east and west, to warn Whitely of Carrera's approach.

* * *

Trees whizzed by as the big Phaeton 560 ESL tore up the highway, east toward Ciudad Cervantes. Carrera sat up in the front of the big auto, rolling his hands together, chewing his lip, and fuming. The news had come from his brother in law, David Carrera, via cell phone just as the Phaeton crossed over the Bridge of the Colombias. One of the dead had turned out to be a cousin of his late wife. A nice girl, he remembered. Bastards! He was in a killing rage.

There were two guards in back. Mitchell drove. He'd seen his chief in this kind of mood before. No sense in chatting to distract him, Mitchell thought, not when he's like this.

Both men, driver and passenger, glanced to the side frequently and regularly. Likewise did the guards. Even so, their attention tended to stay on the road to their front and the buildings and trees to either side. Thus, they missed the man who watched them pass, stepped out, and said something into a radio.

* * *

Randy Whitley, former Federated States Navy Sea Lion, Gallic Legionnaire, and current private contractor, said, 'Roger,' into the small radio and tucked it back into a shirt pocket. Whitley than returned his right hand to the pistol grip of the RGL, Rocket Grenade Launcher, he carried and whistled at the Santandern across the street, who pretended to be talking into the telephone of a booth. Another whistle alerted two similarly armed, olive skinned, assassins at the front of the church.

Whitley sighed. Damned shitty work for someone who set out to do good in the world. But a man's got to eat and, ever since the drawdown under the progressives, contract work's been the only way to do that.

Sure wish I'd had more time to work with these assholes. Nobody understands; it ain't all just knowing how to shoot.

* * *

Farther on by half a kilometer a lone man stepped out of a telephone booth and into the road. He raised a weapon. Mitchell saw it before Carrera did.

'Oh, fuck!' Mitchell said. He reached an arm over and pushed Carrera down onto the seat. Then, ducking low himself and screaming something mindless, he aimed the car at the gunman and floored the gas.

* * *

You fucking idiot, Whitley cursed to himself as one of his men—the one in the phone booth—stepped into the roadway and raised his PM-6 to a hip firing position.

Buy 'em books, send 'em to school, and what do they show for it? Nothin'.

The submachine gun was silenced. Whitley saw rather than heard the muzzle rise and flash as a stream of bullets tore out of it toward the Phaeton. Many of the bullets impacted on the radiator. Others smashed the windshield. At the last split second the gunman jumped out of the way. The car clipped his leg at about mid thigh,