answering. “The Yank.”
Gault flipped it open and heard the American’s familiar Texas drawl. “Line?”
“Clear. Good to hear from you.” As usual Toys bent close to listen in.
“Yeah, well, the shit’s hit the fan round here and we’ve all been scrambling. I’ve been in continuous meetings for the last couple of days. There’s the matter of a tape from Afghanistan. An attack on a village. You follow me?”
“Of course.”
“You should warn me about shit like that, dammit. That’s set a lot of brushfires and Big G has been trying to take over the whole show. There’s been a lot of pressure to crowd the new team out.”
“The DMS?”
He could almost hear the American flinch at the use of an uncoded word. “Yeah. The President wants them in, and everyone else wants them out, and I mean out: closed down.”
“Any chance of that?”
“None, far as I can see. For whatever reason the President seems to be defending this group against all comers. I actually witnessed him read the riot act to the National Security advisor in front of a couple of generals. It’s getting ugly in D.C.
“I’m working on planting one of my guys in this group.”
“How sure are you that you can?”
The American paused. “Pretty sure.”
Toys raised his eyebrows and mimed applause. Gault said, “Keep me posted.”
He closed the phone and set it aside. Toys walked back to his chair and settled into it and the two of them considered the implications of the call.
Toys said, “Perhaps I’ve been underestimating that bloke.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 3:36 P.M.
“OKAY,” I SAID, “so we danced a bit earlier. Is anyone too damaged to train? More to the point, is anyone too banged up to go into combat today or tomorrow if it comes to it?”
“Well my nuts still hurt,” Ollie said, then added, “sir. But I can pull a trigger.”
“I’m good,” Bunny said. He tossed the ice pack onto the floor beside the mats.
Skip winced. “Nuts for me, too, sir. I think they’re up in my chest cavity somewhere.”
“They’ll drop when you hit puberty,” Bunny said under his breath. He looked at me. “Sir.”
“Skip the ‘sir’ shit unless we’re not alone. It’s already getting old.”
“I can fight,” Skip said.
I nodded to First Sergeant Sims. “What about you, Top? Any damage?”
“Just to my pride. Never been blindsided before.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Church wants Echo Team to be operationally ready to carry out an urban infiltration sometime in the next day or two. The last two combat teams were KIA by these walkers. I haven’t seen the tapes yet, but they tell me those guys were at full complement and fully trained, but because of the unknown nature of the enemy at the time they became confused, and that caused hesitation, which proved disastrous. The five of us are supposed to be the new bulldogs in the junkyard. Sounds great, sounds very heroic-but on a practical level I’ve never led a team before.”
“As pep talks go, coach,” Bunny said, “this one kinda blows.”
I ignored him. “But what I have done is train fighters. That I know I can do. So, because I’m the big dog I get to teach you four to fight the Joe Ledger way.”
So far the Joe Ledger way had involved them getting their asses handed to them, so they weren’t all that eager to rush in. Not a “rah team” moment.
“How exactly are we supposed to kill these walker things?” Skip asked. “They, er, being dead and all.”
“Try not to get bitten, son,” Bunny said. “That’s a start.”
“In the absence of further info from the medical team we’ll proceed on the assumption that the spine and/or brain stem is the key: damage that and you pull the plug on these things. I kicked the living shit out of the first one-Javad-and I might as well have been shaking his hand; but then I broke his neck and he went right down. Seems reasonable that there’s activity in the brain stem area, so for us the new sweet spot is the spine.”
“Let me ask something,” Skip said. “The way you dropped Colonel Hanley don’t you think that was a little harsh?”
“Church said something that had me scared and pissed off.” I told them about Rudy sitting there with a gun to his head.
“She-e-e-it,” Top said, stretching it out to about six syllables.
“That’s not right,” Skip said.
“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but it put me in a zero-bullshit frame of mind. I don’t play well with others when they get between me and what I want.”
“Yeah,” said Bunny, “I feel you.”
“Even so,” Skip said, “it reduced our operational efficiency by one man.”
Top answered that before I could. “No it didn’t. Hanley was a loudmouth and a showboat. He got mad and focused his anger on the cap’n as if he was the problem at hand. A man thinking with his heart ’stead of his head has stepped out of training. He’d get us all killed.”
“Yeah,” Bunny agreed, “the mission always comes first. Don’t they teach you that in the navy?”
Skip shot him the finger, but he was grinning.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / 3:44 P.M.
THE FOUR OF them went to change out of civvies into the nondescript black BDUs that one of Church’s people supplied-correct sizes, too, even for Bunny. I was about to head off to the bathroom to swap out of my clothes when I saw Rudy standing by the row of chairs, an armed guard by his side. I walked over to Rudy and we shook hands, then gave each other a tight hug. I looked at the guard. “Step off.”
He moved exactly six feet away and stared a hole through the middle distance.
I punched Rudy lightly on the shoulder. “You okay, man?”
“Little scared, Joe, but okay.” He glanced covertly at the guard and lowered his voice. “I’ve spent the last few minutes talking to your Mr. Church. He’s ” He fished for an adjective that probably didn’t exist.
“Yeah, he is.”
“So, you’re Captain Ledger now. Impressive.”
“Ridiculous, too.”
He lowered his voice another notch. “Church took me on a quick tour. This is not some fly-by-night operation. This is millions of taxpayer dollars here.”
“Mm. I still don’t know anything about how it runs. I’ve only seen two commanding officers-Church and this woman, Major Grace Courtland. Have you met her?”
Rudy brightened. “Oh yes. She’s very interesting.”
“Is that the shrink talking or the wolf in shrink’s clothing?”
“A little of both. If I was crass I’d make a joke about wanting to get her on my couch.”
“But of course you’re not crass.”
“Of course not.” He looked around the room. “How do you feel about all this?”
“Borderline freaked. You?”
“Oh, I’m well over the border into total freakout. Luckily I have years of practice at a professional appearance of calm tranquility. Inside I’m a mess.”
“Really?”
