'What about you?' Hampson asked, as he affixed an oxygen mask over Buckwheat's comparatively pale face.
'I'm just an old ex-Corpsman. You're an SF medic. I'll get the next lift.' Biggus slapped the side of the aircraft. 'Just go.'
Before Rattus could answer, the plane was surging down the runway, flanked by the burning wrecks of the Ophiri proto-Air Force. In moments, mere moments, it was airborne with the field and the wrecks rapidly receding below. Rattus looked behind the plane and saw some bright green streaks racing for heaven.
Already one of the gunships, covered by the other circling overhead, was landing to continue the pickup. It would follow the coast, to continue its original mission, while the dustoff risked its wings heading directly back to the ship at a speed that, strictly speaking, was not good for the plane.
About halfway back, with the coast visible in the distance, Buckwheat's body began to thrash uncontrollably. It went limp again as Rattus began applying CPR, though this was difficult in the closed and awkward confines of the plane. When Hampson finally gave up, and it was the radical drop in body temperature more than any other factor that made him decide it was hopeless, he said, with tears in his eyes, 'We're all glad your multi-great granddaddy got dragged onto that boat, too, Master Sergeant Fulton.'
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Mama, just killed a man.
Put my gun against his head
Pulled my trigger; now he's dead
-Freddy Mercury, Queen, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
D-Day, Yemen
Lada knew the way. More than that, she knew the best way to get from the wall into the house without being seen. That way led a short distance along the wall, to a set of concrete stairs leading to the ground. At the base of the stairs all was shadow, under the parapet. This they followed, Musin lugging one leaking corpse and Kravchenko the other, to a noisy heat pump under the wall. There they dropped the bodies. Galkin and Litvinov, holding the dead guards' rifles, were left behind, manning the wall to cover the eventual retreat.
Covered by the heat pump's thrumm, Lada explained the next step. 'There, through that door,' she pointed across a shadowy way, 'is a long corridor that runs all the way through the house. Halfway there's a side branch to the right-'
'What's down there?' Konstantin asked.
'Servants' quarters,' she said, then amended that to, 'Slaves quarters. Storage. And some machinery. Two flights of stairs and an elevator. That's on the side branch. I don't have a key to the elevator.'
'No guards?'
'Only if they're fucking one of the slaves. Yusuf is generous with his property that way.'
'Right,' Konstantin said. He considered, Do we go slow up the corridor, listening at each door? No. what would be the point? If we don't hear anything it doesn't prove shit. And if we do, what do we do? Go in and kill the room's occupants? Too noisy. 'Go on,' he told Lada.
'The far staircase,' she continued, 'goes all the way to the third floor. The nearer only goes directly to the second. We have to go to the far one, go up to the third floor, then come back and use the branch to get to the door to Yusuf's private quarters.'
'Guard on the door?' Konstantin asked.
'Always. Two of them, sometimes three. And the door will be locked.'
'How thick is this door?'
'Stout,' she answered. 'Very stout. Unless you use explosives the occupants of the room are unlikely to hear what's going on in the corridor.'
'Occupants?' the major asked, emphasizing the plural.
She nodded her head. 'Almost always. Sometimes one girl, sometimes two. Sometimes a little boy. Sometimes one of each. Sometimes all three. Or more.'
'How did you-' He stopped his question. For the purposes of the mission it hardly mattered.
Lada shook her head and answered anyway. 'I volunteered. For the Service if not for the mission. Through an intermediary, the old man arranged to have me sold directly to Yusuf.' She shrugged. 'I'm really twenty-four but I look fourteen. I claimed here to be sixteen. Yusuf figured I was a mature looking thirteen and enjoyed fucking me all the more for that.'
'And once you volunteer for the service,' Konstantin added, 'you don't get a lot of choice about the missions. Where ‘not a lot of' is defined as ‘none.''
'No, ‘not a lot,'' she agreed. 'Though I never imagined myself becoming a whore when I volunteered.'
'You're not a whore,' the major said. 'You're just a soldier who uses a different set of weapons. Hang on to that; because it's true.'
'Thank you, Major,' she answered. She didn't sound convinced. 'Questions?'
'How do we get through the door to Yusuf's quarters if it's so stout? I mean, we have explosives but . . . '
'There's a pad with a number control and a facial scan device.' She smiled for the first time this night. 'It knows me and I know the code.'
'Works. Let's go.'
People who had no business being there would have dashed across the open space between the wall and the ground floor door. People who belonged would have walked. Konstantin and his people walked. For added disguise, he pushed Lada's shoulder as she neared the door, causing her to stumble. It looked just as if she were going to be the main attraction at a gang bang somewhere inside.
So well did her discipline hold that she didn't even whisper, 'Asshole!'
She thought it, though, even as she knew the major had done it only for effect.
The door squeaked, causing all of them but Lada to wince. 'Relax,' she said. 'When something becomes routine, and I assure you that squeaking doors around here are the essence of normal and routine, people simply don't hear them anymore.'
