NRA command center, Branxton Ranges, Commitment
General Vaas looked up when one of his personal aides led Michael in.
“Lieutenant Helfort, sir,” Major Davoodi said.
“Thanks, Major,” Vaas said. He stood and came around the desk to where Michael waited. “Reentry drop shells!” He shook his head. “Insane, absolutely insane.”
“Not the way I planned to come back, General,” Michael said as they shook hands. He thought the man looked exhausted, the lines incised over prominent cheekbones deeper than ever. But the eyes had not changed. Even when the man smiled, they stared deep into Michael’s soul.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to have you back, Michael,” Vaas said. He put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You got my message that Anna’s alive and well?”
“I did, thank you, General. I’ve put in a request to join her. I think my spacer days are over.”
“We’ll talk about that later. The good news is that Lieutenant Colonel Anna Cheung Helfort has been a right pain in the ass. Not to me, of course. To the Hammers.”
Michael blinked. “Did you just say Lieutenant Colonel?”
“A well-deserved promotion,” Vaas said with a huge grin. “We’ve given her command of the 120th’s 3rd Battalion. That’s where most of you Feds have ended up.” He turned to the wall-mounted holovid screen that dominated one side of the limestone cell he called his office. “Let me show you how the war’s going.”
Vaas pulled up a tactical display that summarized the NRA’s current tactical situation. Michael drew in a sharp breath at the sight.
“No, it’s not pretty,” Vaas admitted.
It wasn’t. Michael didn’t bother to count the Hammer units arrayed around the half million square kilometers of limestone karst the NRA called home; there were too many. “Lot of Hammer marines out there, General,” he said. “That’s new.”
“Even the dumbest Hammer general was able to work out that Planetary Ground Defense Force troops are no match for the NRA. I’ve lost count of how many PGDF units we’ve torn apart. So Polk managed to convince the Defense Council that they had no choice but to send in the marines.”
“Is it as bad as it looks?”
“If you’re Jeremiah Polk sitting in your air-conditioned bunker staring at holovid screens, status boards, and tactical displays and you believe the reports you’re given, then yes, it looks bad for us.”
“I hear a ‘but,’” Michael said.
Vass nodded. “You do. Let me see … this is MARFOR 8’s area of operations. They sit across our resupply routes down from northern Maranzika, and here-” He pointed to the town of Daleel. “-is where their 8th Brigade is. Five thousand well-trained, superbly equipped marines. Best unit in the Hammer order of battle.”
“Where’s the ‘but,’ General?”
“You remember Operation Medusa?’
Michael grimaced. “How could I forget?” he said. The Hammer’s operation to take the NRA Branxton base had given him his first taste of ground combat. He’d hated it: the chaos, the dirt, the smoke, the noise, the sound of hypersonic rounds tearing the air around him, the way death lay waste to those around him, the dead so close that he could smell the metallic, coppery reek of blood hanging in the air.
“Well, as is the Hammer way, Polk had anyone even remotely responsible for Medusa’s failure taken out and shot. He started with the commanding general, Baxter, and worked his way down. These guys here-” Again he pointed to the icon that marked the MARFOR 8’s position. “-lost every officer above the rank of colonel.”
“Shit.”
“And Polk did not stop there. He even had a couple of platoon commanders shot.”
“Let me guess. Polk thinks the 8th is combat-effective, whereas it’s-”
“A fucking mess. The 8th’s commanding general and his staff are too frightened to pass any bad news back up the line, so they don’t. We have our people on the inside. They tell me that if we attacked them, they’d fold like the proverbial house of cards. And the rest of MARFOR 8 is not much better.”
“What about the rest?” Michael asked.
“MARFOR 6 is probably the best of them. Of all the force elements involved in the Medusa fiasco, they performed the best, so they got off lightly. MARFOR 11’s somewhere in between. But Polk’s kidding himself if he thinks these assholes are a match for us.”
“And Anna? What’s the 120th up to?”
“They’re dug in northeast of McNair, in the Velmar Mountains. They are part of 9 Brigade, and their job is to keep some of the pressure off the Branxtons. And thanks to your Anna and the rest of them, it’s working. They’ve given the Hammers one hell of a beating. A bit too good, actually.”
Michael did not like the sound of that. “Too well?”
“Yes. Thanks to that Kraa-damned peace treaty with the Feds, the Hammers were able to transfer three marine forces-MARFORs 21, 33, and 92-in from Faith; 33 and 92 were sent south, and MARFOR 21 has been deployed across the Calderon Gap to make sure our 9th Brigade doesn’t pose any threat to McNair City. But what they don’t know is that we’ve managed to get a second brigade up there. It’s taken us months to do it, and now we’re about to teach the new boys one hell of a lesson.”
If it were possible, Michael’s heart sank even more; the Hammers outnumbered the NRA three to one. “One hell of a lesson.”
“Operation Caradoc,” Vaas said, grim-faced. “Part of the deception plan for Juggernaut. And speaking of Juggernaut, thank Kraa you got through with the latest plans and those brevity codes. There are so many damn Hammer ships over this planet, we haven’t been able to get messages in or out for the last month.”
“You didn’t have the latest date?” Michael asked, incredulous.
“No, we did not. We’d have been sitting on our asses twiddling our thumbs when your guys arrived, and that would not have been good.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he said.
“To take the Hammers’ eyes off Juggernaut, we have to make them think the NRA is trying to break out of the Branxtons. We hope … we think Operation Caradoc will distract them enough to let our people take out the antiballistic missile installations around McNair. We’ll also mount attacks on the planetary defense bases at Qian and Kraneveldt, and speaking of Kraneveldt,” Vaas said, turning to Michael, “they still haven’t finished rebuilding after you trashed the place.”
“That seems like a lifetime ago, General,” Michael said, his voice soft as he recalled the way his hijacked lander’s Henschel HKS-30 cannons had chewed their way through billions of dollars of Hammer hardware, with hypervelocity depleted uranium slugs stitching lines of red dots across ceramcrete aprons, the towering columns of flame-shot black smoke rising skyward, and Corporal Yazdi’s adrenaline-fueled triumph as she took out another flier, only to end up in an unmarked grave on a rain-drenched hillside.
“You did well.”
“Only if we can finish this. What about the marine bases?”
“We’ll mount battalion-strength attacks against Besud, Amokran, and Yamaichi. Beslan Island we can’t do much about; it’s too hard to get to, but we will run truck bombs into its main gate and perimeter defenses. Won’t achieve anything except a lot of smoke and noise, but it’ll add to the confusion.”
Michael put his hand up. “Hold on, General,” he said. “Battalion-strength attacks against marine force bases? I’m sorry, but are you nuts?”
Vaas laughed. “Probably, but have some faith in me. They are only diversionary attacks.”
“Still a huge risk.”
“Not really. The NRA has a secret weapon: all the marines Polk had shot.”
Michael looked skeptical. “I’m sure,” he said, “that there are a lot of marines who’d happily cut Polk a new asshole, but that’s because they’re pissed at what he’s done. They won’t sit on their asses if the NRA attacks them.”
“No, they won’t, but we don’t need them to. All we need is panic and indecision, and thanks to the ax that Polk hangs over the neck of every planetary defense and marine commander, believe me when I say there’ll be plenty of that about.”
Michael did not look convinced. “And how can you make sure of that?”
“Let me see … Take Yamaichi. The commanding officer of the marine air wing is one of ours, along with most of his staff. The man’s uncle was shot after Medusa, so he didn’t need much persuading to lend us a hand. And Besud will find that a large percentage of its ground-attack landers are combat-ineffective as well.”
“You can do that?”
“We think so. We own the specialist unit that maintains their fire-control systems.”
“What about Amokran?” Michael asked even though something told him that he would not like what Vaas was about to tell him.
“Best we could do is a couple of senior officers in one of their combat logistics battalions. We’ve given Amokran to Anna’s battalion …”
“Oh, no,” Michael whispered.
“… and that’s because the 3rd is one of the best units we have in the NRA, so I’m afraid they get the hardest targets.”
“Can’t argue with success, I suppose,” Michael said, his voice stiff.
“No, you can’t, not in this business. Now, what’s next? Oh, yes. What to do with you. Now, I know this will come as a disappointment, but I don’t want you joining the 3rd.”
Michael blinked; he had assumed the transfer was just a formality. “It doesn’t bother me that Anna’s the battalion commander, sir.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t, but it’s not that. I have other plans for you. Others may have taken the Juggernaut idea and run with it, but it was your idea, just as what comes next was your idea. Sending you out there,” Vaas said, waving an arm, “in the field with an assault rifle in your hand would be a criminal waste of your talents …”
Maybe so, General, Michael thought, keeping his face wooden, but that means I’ll be spending far too much time away from Anna.
“… and before you tear my head off, I know what you’re thinking. Anna, right?”
“Was I that obvious, sir?”
Vaas chuckled. “I’m psychic, remember?”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
“Look, seeing her won’t be a problem, because I want you to be my roving eyes and ears, someone who’s not part of the formal command structure, my Devil’s advocate, if you like.”
“If that’s what you want, sir.”
“It is. You’ll be … let me see … yes, let’s call you my aide-de-camp.”
“Sounds good, sir,” Michael said. “For a moment I thought you wanted to bury me somewhere in the bowels of ENCOMM.”
“Not a chance, my boy. So trust me, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to visit the Velmars.”
“Thank you, General.”
“Right. The final run-through for Juggernaut is this afternoon. I’d like you to sit in on it, tell me what you think.”
“I’ll be there, and thanks for giving me so much time. I know how busy you are.”
“It’s nothing less than you deserve. Anything else?”
“Colonel Hartspring?”
“Now there’s a coincidence.” Vaas’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t forgotten what Hartspring tried to do to you and Anna, and I don’t suppose you have either.”
“How can I? He hasn’t given up.”
“What’s the scumbag up to now?”
“He runs a unit called Team Victor. It’s a personal project of the chief councillor’s. When I was in jail waiting to be … you know … a message was smuggled in to tell me Team Victor was planning to kidnap Anna and hand her over to DocSec, and … you can guess the rest.”
“That’s answered a few questions we had,” Vaas said. He shook his head, his face a puzzled frown. “But why would they do that?”
“Polk didn’t think I was hurting enough, so he decided to make me really suffer. which I did,” Michael whispered.
“Kraa!” Vaas hissed. “They are something, those people. But why are you telling me?”
“I’m going to hunt Hartspring down and kill him, and when I’ve done that, I’m going after Polk. The time’s not yet right, but when it is, I want your word that you’ll let me do what I have to do.”
“Ah,” Vaas said, “that’s a tough one. You are one of my best assets, Michael. What if I still need you?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll go anyway,” he said, “but I’d feel a lot better if you said okay.”
“What the hell, fine.” Vaas sighed. “When the time’s right, come and ask. Unless you are the only thing that stands between us and total defeat, I’ll say yes.”
Vaas’s aide appeared. “General, the staff meeting?” he said.
“Yeah, sorry, Major,” Vaas said. “I’ll be there in a second. Michael, I have to go.”
“Thanks for everything, General. I know how busy you are.”
“No problem. Now, I was talking about coincidences, so I think you’ll enjoy this.” Vaas tossed a small packet to Michael. “One last thing: The next time I see you, I want you in NRA uniform. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Tucked away in a corner of the staff canteen with a fresh mug of coffee, Michael opened the packet and spilled the contents onto the table: a handwritten note and a gold sunburst on a thin chain.
He picked up the note.
Michael,
One of the NRA’s deep penetration units ran into an old friend of yours, a Colonel Hartspring, a few months ago. His unit, a composite DocSec and marine unit; we don’t know what they do, blundered into one of our operations. Sadly, the bastards managed to fight their way clear. Hartspring was lucky to get out alive, but he did lose the enclosed in the process. The unit’s commander knew about you and Hartspring. He thought the sunburst would look better around your neck, so here it is.
We might have missed him this time, but trust me, his day will come.
Never forget.
Vaas
PS: If that sunburst’s not around your neck next time we meet, I will kick your ass.
Michael rolled the sunburst between his fingers. “Oh, yes, Colonel Hartspring,” he said under his breath, “your day will come, and that’s my promise to you.” The pain and suffering the man had promised Anna drove a wave of white-hot anger through his body; fists clenched, he drove his fingers into his palms so hard that the nails drew blood. He took a deep breath to steady himself as he put the sunburst onto the chain and around his neck.
He finished his coffee and set off to find Shinoda to tell her that that he would not be going with her to join the 120th.
The conference room was set with rows of seats arrayed in half circles around a small table and, off to one side, a lectern. As usual, Michael arrived early and slipped unnoticed into a seat at the back.
Slowly the place filled up. Michael checked the face of each new arrival, looking for anyone he knew. But every face was a stranger’s except that of Major Davoodi, Vaas’s aide, and they’d met that morning for the first time. He’d expected to see Captain Adrissa and the rest of the Fed spacers on her staff, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Strange, he thought. I wonder where they are.
Two minutes after the flow of arrivals had slowed to a trickle and then stopped, Davoodi called the gathering to attention as Vaas bustled in, followed by his new chief of staff and two more officers, one of whom he did recognize: Colonel, no, make that Brigadier General Pedersen, Vaas’s intelligence chief. As the rest of the brass took their seats at the table, Vaas remained standing, his eyes scanning the room.
Michael’s heart sank as he spotted Major Davoodi cutting a path right to him.
“The general would like you down front, Lieutenant,” Davoodi whispered.
Oh, damn, Michael thought as he followed the man to where Vaas waited. Davoodi motioned for him to stand alongside the general. “Don’t move,” Vaas said with a smile.
Michael stood there, baffled.
Vaas turned to look at the assembled officers. “In a moment,” he said, “we will start the briefing for what I sincerely hope will be the final battle sim for the NRA’s operations in support of Juggernaut. But before we do, I have a presentation to make. All of you here know this man-” To Michael’s acute embarrassment, Vaas put his arm around his shoulders. “-if only by reputation. Now, the lieutenant will be pleased to know that I will not prolong his agony much longer, but I do have to say that the Revivalist movement and its military arm, the New Revolutionary Army, owe him an enormous debt of gratitude, a debt we will never be able to repay. But what we can do is make some small recognition of the contribution he has made to our cause, a contribution made in the face of great risk and suffering.” Vaas nodded to Davoodi, who stepped forward and handed the general a small box.
Please, no, Michael thought. I don’t want a damn medal; it wouldn’t be right.
“Michael Wallace Helfort,” Vaas went on, lifting his voice to fill the room. “By order of the Resistance Council, you are hereby promoted to the rank of colonel in the New Revolutionary Army, effective immediately.”
Michael’s mouth sagged open as Vaas pinned the eagles to the lapels of his shipsuit and shook his hand. “Congratulations,” he said; he leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Call me a misogynistic old Hammer, but we can’t have a man outranked by his wife, can we?”
“Er, no,” Michael mumbled, more embarrassed than he had ever been, “and thank you, sir.”
“Nothing to thank me for,” Vaas said. “You earned those eagles.” He turned to the crowd. “Colonel Helfort, NRA,” he declared, and the room erupted in a storm of applause and cheers that rapidly settled into a rhythmic chant of “N-R-A, N-R-A, N-R-A …”
Vaas let things run for a minute, then lifted his arms to call a halt. “Now, go back to your seat,” he said to Michael. “I want you to say nothing and do less. Just listen and watch. I’ll hear what you think once the sim is over, okay?”
“Sir.”
Vaas turned to address the room. “Time to get down to business,” he continued, “but before I do, let me just say one thing. Operation Juggernaut is our last and best chance to take the fight to McNair City, and it is up to each one of you to do whatever it takes to make the operation the success it has to be even if that means sacrificing your life, because we cannot live under the Hammer of Kraa any longer.”
A murmur ran through the room; angry or excited, Michael could not say. Whatever it was, he knew Vaas would get what he was asking for.
“Now,” Vaas went on, “General Pedersen will run us through the latest intelligence. Once she’s done, we’ll start.”
The disembodied voice of one of the umpires triggered a flood of noise as the ENCOMM staff in command of the NRA forces for the exercise stood down. “End of exercise,” he said.
Michael stretched to try to ease the kinks out of his back. He was exhausted. And he had to go talk with Vaas once the hot wash-up was over; that could take hours. He knew Vaas. The man could be up half the night. He sighed. Vaas might be able to get by on four hours of sleep a night, but he couldn’t.
“… all of which are relatively minor issues, General, and therefore easily fixed. The only significant weakness I can see is your ability to talk to the task force commander as the operation progresses. As things stand, you will have to rely on the brevity codes I brought in, and even though they are pretty comprehensive, Murphy’s Law says one of you will want to say something that’s not in the code book.”
Vaas nodded. “Anything more we can we do?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Michael said. “Not as long as the Hammers dominate nearspace. As fast as you put microsats up, they will hack them down. They’re soft targets, and there’ll be no shortage of Hammer ships to deal with them.”
Vaas sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’ve looked at the problem every which way, and we’ve end up chasing our tails. We’ll have to live with it, I’m afraid.”
“I think so, General … though I do have an idea.”
“Oh?”
“It’ll be chaos out there-”
“That is the general idea,” Vaas said with a smile.
“-so can we exploit that to get close to the Hammer brass? We know from experience that they are very top-down, even more so now after all the heads Polk has chopped off. The guys responsible for nearspace defense won’t break wind unless some fat-assed flag officer says it’s okay.”
“That’s true.”
“So why not add to the chaos by taking out some-hell, make that all-of the key Hammer commanders. Then nobody will know who to ask for orders. They’ll be paralyzed. Not forever, of course, but every minute counts.”
Vaas shook his head. “Nice idea and we did look at it, but it’s a nonstarter, I’m afraid. The minute the shit hits the fan, those bastards will be locked up in their bunkers underneath 10 meters of ceramcrete.”
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “Do we know who the commanders are?”
Vaas leaned forward. The fatigue had gone. His eyes sparkled. “You’ve spotted something, haven’t you?”
“Not sure yet, sir.”
“We’ll see. Now, Hammer commanders. Let me see … yes, we know everyone in the Hammer chain of command, from Polk right down to the commanders of every unit and ship, provided they haven’t been shot since we last checked, of course,” he added.
“Do you know where they live, where they work, what their routines are?”
“Wait!” Vaas snapped. He jumped to his feet and made for the door. “Major Davoodi!” he shouted. “I want to see General Pedersen. And see if you can find Colonel Tekin. I want him too. Yes, now!”
Vaas dropped back in to his seat. “I think I see what you’re driving at, and this is why I promoted you. Ah, good,” he said when Pedersen and Tekin appeared. “That was fast.”
“Here to serve, General Vaas,” Pedersen replied, rubbing a hand across her stubble-cut hair, a faint smile crinkling the skin around her piercing blue eyes.
Vaas chuckled. “Colonel Helfort, this Colonel Tekin,” he said, “head of our Hammer personnel intelligence division.”
“Michael Helfort. Good to meet you,” Michael said, shaking hands with Tekin, a thin, cadaverous man. Like most of the staffers who worked in ENCOMM, the yellowing skin of his face was drawn tight by overwork, stress, and fatigue. Michael wondered when the man had last had a day off.
“So what’s up?” Pedersen asked.
“We’ll come to that, but first Colonel Helfort has some questions.”
“Thank you, sir,” Michael said. “How much do we know about the Hammer’s senior commanders?”
“What specifically?” Pedersen asked.
“Who they are, what their routines are, where they live, where they work, what watches they stand if they do.”
Pedersen turned to Tekin. “I think you’d better take this one, Colonel.”
“Wait one … Okay, this org chart,” Tekin said when the holovid screen came to life, “shows the entire chain of command: Polk and the Defense Council at the top obviously, the commander in chief, Admiral Kerouac, and then something new, the Commitment Unified Military Command-UNMILCOMM for short; it’s the equivalent of our ENCOMM-and on down through the various force elements assigned to the defense of Commitment. And we know pretty much all there is to know about most of them. Not all, of course. We don’t have unlimited resources, and given how often Polk purges these people, it can be hard to keep up sometimes.”
“So,” Michael said, “if I nominated, say, thirty officers in key positions, you would have good up-to-date information on them?”
“Pick one.”
“Hmmm, let me see … Let’s try Colonel Cerutti, commander of the 455th Antiballistic Missile Regiment.”
“Stand by … This is everything we know about the man,” Tekin said.
“Wah,” Michael whispered. The level of detail impressed him. Even the fact that Cerutti kept a mistress in an apartment ten minutes from his headquarters outside McNair was a matter of record. “So if I said I wanted, say, thirty officers like Cerutti, you could give me that?”
“I could,” Tekin said firmly. “More if you wanted.”
“This is my suggestion, General,” Michael said, turning to Vaas. “Your covert ops people tell you how many two-man hit teams they can put in the field before J-Day. Colonel Tekin selects that many targets; they’d have to be key members of the Hammer chain of command and vulnerable as well. When that’s done, the teams are briefed and sent out. Time is short, so they’d have to wing it a bit. That’ll make it risky and reduce the chances of success, but hit the right people at the right time and the payback could be huge.”
Vaas sat for a moment, then nodded. “General Pedersen?” he said.
“I like it, sir,” she said, “and we are good at this sort of operation. Like Colonel Helfort says, hit the right people at the right time and we should be able to turn chaos into catastrophe.”
“I agree,” Vaas said. He turned to Michael. “Colonel Helfort. I’m putting you in charge of the planning this operation. Colonel Tekin, you’ll be part of the team, of course. Major Davoodi!” Vaas bellowed.
The aide stuck his head in. “Sir?”
“Where’s Major Gidisu?”
“Wait one, sir … She’s on her way back from Yankee-34. She’ll be here in two hours.”
Michael suppressed a sigh. There would be no sleep for him tonight.
“Get a message to her: ‘Expedite return. Need to see you soonest.’ Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” Vaas said after Davoodi vanished, “are we missing anything? No? Over to you, Colonel Helfort. I’ll send Gidisu to join you when I’ve finished with her.”
“We’ll get started, sir.”
Major Gidisu sat back. She was a small woman, chunkily built, with dark eyes and skin so black that it looked blue in the harsh light of the meeting room. “It’s a great idea,” she said at last, “and I wish we’d thought of it weeks ago. I’ll be pushed to get people out there to do this what with Juggernaut so close now, but let me get back to you.”
“How soon?”
“08:00 tomorrow.”
“I’ll have a list of targets by the same time,” Tekin said.
“We’ll meet then,” Michael said. “Well, I think that’s all we can do for now. See you tomorrow.”
Tekin nodded. “We’ll be here,” he said.
All but overwhelmed by exhaustion, Michael set off to find his rack. Getting a few hours’ sleep was all he cared about right now. But he hadn’t gone more than a few meters when a familiar voice brought him to a halt.
“As I live and breathe, it’s Lieutenant Helfort.”
Michael swung around. “Well I’ll be! Matti Bienefelt!”
“The very same,” the woman said. She swept Michael into a bone-crushing embrace he could not resist; Bienefelt outmassed him by a good fifty kilos, not one gram of which was fat. She was huge. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, pushing him back. “And what the hell are those?” she asked, stabbing a finger at one of the eagles on his lapels.
“You know perfectly well, you insolent dog. I should have you flogged, chief.”
Bienefelt laughed, a rumbling belly laugh that shook her enormous frame. “I’d like to see you try, and it’s Warrant Officer Bienefelt now, by the way.”
“Another undeserved promotion.”
“For sure. Speaking of undeserved promotions, I hear your Anna is now a lieutenant colonel.”
“Watch it,” Michael said with a grin. “But I worry about that woman.”
‘Well, don’t. She’s a legend.”
“So I’m told. How’s the arm?”
Bienefelt held up the stump of her left arm. “This?” she said. “It’s fine. Itches like hell sometimes, and I can still feel the fingers, which is weird. They keep promising me a biomech hand, but I think I’ll be dead by the time one turns up.”
“You still with the 246th?”
“Yup. We don’t do much, though a Hammer special forces team had a go at us a week ago. We sent them home wishing they hadn’t.”
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“Chief Chua and Petty Officer Lim are still running their microfabs; everyone else has joined the 3rd.”
“Anna’s battalion? What, all of them?”
“Every last one.”
“Captain Adrissa too?”
“Yup. She’s a grunt. Battalion tried to promote her to lance corporal. She told them to fuck off.”
“Captain of a heavy cruiser one day, private soldier the next.” Michael shook his head. “Hard to believe.”
“You should. Anyway, there are so many Feds in the 3rd, it’s unofficially called the Federal Battalion. The Hammers loathe them. Anyway, I’ve got to get back. Nobody will tell us what’s going on, but there’s something in the wind; I know it.”
“You don’t-” Michael said before common sense stopped him.
Bienefelt looked at him, a faint smile on her face. “You know, don’t you?” She put up a hand the size of a tray to preempt Michael’s response. “Don’t say anything. We’ll find out what when we’re supposed to.”
“Thanks, Matti. You look after yourself.”
“I will. You too, okay?”
“I promise.”