Backshot (2 page)

“The wave is so tightly focused—don’t ask how, I don’t understand the physics any better than you do—that it is virtually undetectable by any surveillance device not directly in its path. When the target is killed, it drops straight down and shows no external sign of being shot.”

Her grin became wider than ever. “Gentlemen—that means you, Marines!—that means a sniper who is good enough at snooping and pooping can kill his—or,” she cleared her throat, “
her
target without being discovered.

“Now, I know most of you badasses are Expert Blastermen, accustomed to firing plasma bolts at targets as much as a klick away and hitting them nine times out of ten, so you may be wondering what’s so difficult about firing a weapon that can kill only up to four hundred meters.

“It’s that three-quarter-second pulse. There isn’t any recoil, or not much, but you have to maintain a solid lock on your aiming point for that entire three-quarters-second. You might be surprised at how many Marines can’t.”

Lance Corporal Wehrli from second squad raised his hand. When Dwan acknowledged him, he asked, “If that’s so, why doesn’t the maser have a stabilizing system?” He gritted his teeth when she gave him a you’re-cute-when-you-ask-dumb-questions look.

“Weight and noise,” she said. “Snipers have to be able to move slowly and silently. That means carry nothing you don’t absolutely need. And every stabilizing device makes noise, no matter how slight. The maser gets heavier if it has enough shielding to silence the stabilizer. The more weight a sniper carries, the more chance he or she has of making noise. A silent sniper
makes
kills, a noisy sniper
gets
killed. It’s that simple.”

Dwan looked about, but nobody else raised a question, so she continued her lecture.

“Aiming is easy. You look through the optical sight, lock on target, and squeeze. The M14A5 is a line-of-sight weapon, and is unaffected by wind, weather, or gravitational effect within its effective kill-range. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t affected over ranges measured in thousands of kilometers, but that effect’s from solar winds and Jovian-sized gravity wells. And by the time the waves travel that far, they’re so dispersed it really doesn’t matter.

“The basic elements of firing apply, BRASS: Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, Squeeze.” She looked about for more questions, but when none immediately came, Staff Sergeant Athon stepped forward and took over.

“You all know the range routine for new weapons,” he told second platoon. “I have all six of my snipers here, and there are twenty-three of you. Each of my people will take a squad, Sergeant Gossner will take the command element. They will give you dry-firing instruction, supervised by Gunner Jaqua and myself. We’ll go right down the line. First squad, you go with Lance Corporal Dwan. Second squad—”

“Come on, big boy,” Dwan said, stepping close enough to slap Daly on the shoulder. “Bring your kiddies with you.” She marched toward a section of the firing line a hundred meters distant and didn’t bother looking back to see if first squad followed—she knew they would. Daly pursed his lips at the undue, almost insubordinate, familiarity of the “big boy” and shoulder slap—not to mention the insulting “kiddies”—but Bella Dwan was allowed to get away with minor infractions and insults, she was that good at what she did. Besides, like everybody else in the company, Daly was wary of her and didn’t want to do anything that might provoke her anger; she wasn’t known as “the Queen of Killers” just because of the look in her eyes. Everyone knew how she had earned the name.

With twenty-seven confirmed kills to her credit, she had more than any other woman sniper in the Confederation military—more than most male snipers, for that matter. But that wasn’t why the men of Fourth Force Recon Company were wary of her. A tall, strikingly handsome, and drunk—that’s important, he was drunk—Marine who thought himself irresistible to women hadn’t believed pixie-faced Bella Dwan when she repeatedly told him “no.” Nor had he taken her seriously when she had told him he was about to lose the hand he put on an inappropriate portion of her anatomy. When he took further action with his inappropriately placed hand, so did she.

The navy doctors who operated on him successfully regenerated a new hand to replace the one Dwan had removed from the inappropriate part of her anatomy. But as a permanent reminder to him that when a woman repeatedly says “no,” she really means it, they only regenerated one of his testicles. The court martial board that tried him took his drunkeness into consideration and only gave him a General Discharge for Disciplinary Reasons instead of several years of hard time and a Bad Conduct Discharge for attempted rape. Of course then-PFC Bella Dwan had also taken his drunken state into consideration in refraining from killing him. The court martial board that tried then-PFC Dwan found her not guilty of assault and battery, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon (her hands and a knife she was carrying in a thigh-sheath), and several other charges, on the basis that she acted in self-defense and showed reasonable restraint.

And Bella Dwan
never
encouraged other Marines to make advances, or made advances herself. So the men she served with were always very careful with her.

Dry firing was an exercise all of the Marines had repeated many times since they first trained on the range in Boot Camp on Arsenault. Take a solid shooting position. Draw a solid sight picture on the target. Control breathing to steady the sights on the aiming point. Gently squeeze the trigger until the firing mechanism goes off and a plasma bolt, projectile, or beam moves downrange at the target. Keep the sights pinned on the aiming point all the while you’re squeezing. It’s called “dry” firing because it’s done with an empty weapon. Do the same thing with a loaded weapon and it’s called “live” firing. During his dozen years in the Marine Corps, Sergeant Jak Daly had done countless hours of dry firing on all kinds of individual weapons. Dry firing wasn’t any particular fun, but he knew it helped him get his first round on target when he finally got to live-fire the weapon—and getting that first shot on target, that
was
fun. On the range master’s command, Daly lowered himself into a solid prone firing position and swiveled the butt of the maser into his shoulder. Through the maser’s sights he found the target, a simple 40-mm bull’s-eye target fifteen meters distant, and aimed at the center of the smallest circle. A laser pointer that closely matched the weight and balance of a maser’s power pac was used in the maser for dry firing. In the sights, the red dot jiggled around Daly’s aiming point until he let out his breath, then it steadied down. The dot slowly spiraled until it settled where he wanted it, though it continued to move in a small circle, mostly inside the 5-cm bull’s eye. He gave the trigger a steady squeeze until the red dot brightened, indicating the maser had fired. He kept the trigger back for a count of one-thousand, which he estimated was about three-quarters of a second, then let it go. The circle described by the dot hadn’t moved more than a millimeter or two during firing.

“Not bad, big boy,” Dwan’s voice said from too close to Daly’s ear. “Your target’s got some serious sick bay time ahead of him. If his doctors are good enough, they might even be able to figure out why he came down with a high fever.”

Startled by her closeness, Daly rolled to the side away from her and jumped to his feet.

“What do you mean, ‘sick’?” he demanded. “I was dead on for the whole time.”

Dwan nodded. “Mighty fine shot—with a blaster, or any projectile weapon.” She looked from the target and rose on her toes to lean close to his face, staring harshly into his eyes. “That much movement might cook an organ, but you need to hold steadier to cause severe enough trauma for a clean kill. Let me show you what I mean.”

Dwan took the maser from his grasp and dropped into a modified sitting position, with her elbows locked on the insides of her knees instead of her knees tucked into her armpits, and aimed; Daly assumed the modification was because of her short stature. He studied the way she sat, he didn’t think the flesh over any of the arteries in her arms was in contact with her knees; her pulse wouldn’t affect her aim.

“Watch the target, not me,” she ordered. Daly jerked his eyes from her to the target. The red dot on the target didn’t look like it was moving at all, not even when it briefly brightened.

“That’s what we mean by ‘steady,’ ” she said, hopping to her feet and shoving the maser at him. He grabbed it just as she let go of it. “Now try it again.” She stepped back so he could resume his firing position.

Daly dropped into a sitting position, but Dwan nudged his shoulder with a knee. “Stick with prone for now,” she told him. “It’s easier.”

Daly shot her a glance, but did as she said. He paid more attention this time to the almost imperceptible movements caused by the blood pulsing through his arteries, and shifted his position slightly so those points weren’t in contact with anything. He chided himself mentally as he took aim; he’d learned on the range in Boot Camp how tiny pulses in the arms and legs could be transmitted to a weapon and throw off one’s aim; he should have realized they’d have more effect on a weapon that needed to have a tighter lock on its impact point.

This time his aim was steadier. The dot didn’t hold as tightly as Dwan’s had, but the bobble was less than a millimeter.

“Is that good enough?” he asked, rolling to the side and looking up. But Dwan was no longer there; she was five meters away, leaning over Lance Corporal Wazzen, giving the junior reconman instruction.

Daly shot a glare at her, but quickly wiped it off his face; he didn’t want the Queen of Killers to see it. He resumed his firing position and tried again. After a few more shots, his dot held steady within its own diameter on every shot.

“If you can do just as well sitting and kneeling,” Dwan suddenly said, “that’s good enough to qualify as Marksman.”

Daly rolled halfway to the side and looked over his shoulder. She was standing between his wide-spread feet, looking downrange.

“How long have you been there?” he asked.

“Long enough.” She looked down at him. “Your Marines needed more attention than you did. You’re pretty good, big boy. Try the sitting position now.” She gracefully stepped from between his feet. Daly swiveled up and around until he was sitting with his feet spread wide and his knees up. He pulled the maser into his shoulder and leaned forward until his armpits slid into position on top of his knees—the sitting position he’d been taught on the range in Boot Camp, the position he’d used in firing for qualification a dozen times since.

Suddenly, Dwan was on her knees next to him, forcing her fingertips between his armpit and knee, pads up. “Hold still,” she snapped as she wiggled her fingers to where she wanted them. She held them there for a couple of seconds, then pulled her hand out.

“No good, you’ve got a pulse on bone, you won’t be able to hold your aiming point. Remember how I sat? You should, you were eye-fucking me hard enough. Try it.”

Daly remembered and turned red at her comment. “I wasn’t eye-fucking you, Lance Corporal,” he snarled, “I was studying your firing position.”

She sniffed. “Call it what you will, I saw you.”

Daly didn’t confront Dwan further, but slid his feet forward a few centimeters and straightened his back until his elbows were inside his knees. The position felt odd.

“Now try it.”

He steadied himself and aimed. The dot moved more than it had when he was prone, but not as much as the first time he tried prone.

“That’s better, big boy,” Dwan said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep practicing.” Then she moved on.

By the end of the day, Daly had spent two hours in each of the three firing positions used for qualifying with the maser. Dwan declared him good enough to qualify as Marksman, the lowest of the three noncompetition qualification rankings. By the end of the week his proficiency had improved to the point where he was able to qualify as Sharpshooter with the M14A5 maser—he missed Expert by only two points out of two hundred. The weapon Sergeant Jak Daly found most interesting the next week was the M111 sabot rifle with 10X

optical sight. Unlike the M14A5 maser, the M111 had stabilizers in its forestock that the barrel rested on. The M111 was designed for long-range sniping: It fired a fin-stabilized 8-mm projectile, with a maximum effective range of one kilometer and a kill range several times that—even though a hit at three klicks would be due as much to luck as to skill, a hit in a vital spot would still kill at that distance.

“Never,
never
snipe with the M111 at less than five hundred meters!” Staff Sergeant Athon cautioned.

“It makes a loud
boom
and has a fairly large muzzle-blast fireball. A sniper using the M111 needs that five hundred meters to have a chance of escaping whoever—or whatever—comes for him after he fires. A full klick is better: The rifle’s report probably won’t be heard at that distance, and the fireball won’t be seen by anybody who isn’t looking in the shooter’s direction.”

Daly qualified Expert with the M111. He chose not to fire the M2Z mid-range projectile rifle for qualification; two new qualifications were enough for now.

CHAPTER TWO

Ramuncho’s Restaurant, New Granum, Union of Margelan, Atlas

For Jorge Lavager, the Union of Margelan’s leader and a representative to the Atlas League of Nations, dining at Ramuncho’s in New Granum during work hours could be an ordeal, because everywhere he went the press was sure to follow. And in these times when the nations of Atlas seemed on the verge of a war that many commentators and politicians claimed would threaten the precious trade routes of the Confederation of Human Worlds in the Atlas Sector, reporters swarmed like bees about a honeycomb whenever Lavager appeared in public. So he dined during the off hours or late at night when business kept him in town, often in a back room reserved for his use, and always with friends. To the great consternation of Franklin al-Rashid, his Chief of Security, Lavager had dismissed his bodyguards that night. “I can take care of myself,” the old soldier told his security officer, patting the sidearm he always carried beneath his tunic.

“Sir, one of these times—” al-Rashid began. Lavager was a security chief’s worst nightmare, always taking chances and never listening to sound advice.

“Not tonight, Franklin. Now go home, leave us to our dinner and cards.”

After that night’s dinner, cards consisted of some hands at the ancient game of Hearts. Since they were lieutenants together, Lavager and his Army Chief of Staff, General Locksley “Locker” Ollwelen, had enjoyed a friendly competition seeing who could lay the queen of spades on the other. Just then, Lavager had the two of clubs in this hand, so it was his lead. On the deal he had not gotten the right suits to take all the points to “shoot the moon” and pile twenty-six points on the other players’ scores, so he had deliberately shorted himself in clubs to break hearts first chance and maybe get away without taking any points at all. Henri Parrot, the Minister of Finance, had passed him the queen and the two of spades and the jack of hearts. He glanced sharply at the minister, who grinned behind his hand. The dreaded queen and two were the only spades in Lavager’s hand!

Locksley shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, folded his cards into the palm of one hand and slowly rearranged them.

Lavager led the two of clubs. Locksley regarded his hand carefully before following suit, then took the first trick with the ace of clubs. He then led the ten of spades. Lavager played the two. He hoped someone besides Locksley would take the trick and then lead clubs, so he could drop the queen, but the old General took that hand as well. Lavager felt a sinking sensation in his stomach because he knew Locksley would lead a spade next, fishing for the queen and hoping he could make one of the others eat her and take the thirteen points that would add to their score. Grinning evilly, Locksley next led the jack of spades. “Goddamn you, Locker!” Lavager shouted, slapping down the queen because he had no more spades and, according to the rules of the game, had to follow suit. Subsequently he took twenty of the twenty-six points that made the hand.

“Locker, how the hell did you know I was short on spades?” Lavager asked, shuffling for the next hand. He glanced at the score pad. He had eighty-seven points, Locksley none, Henri three, and Attorney General Fitz Cennedry, ten. Thirteen more points and Jorge Lavager would be out and Locksley would be the winner.

“I didn’t. I’ve just been doing that for the past thirty years, just like you short yourself in a suit so you can unload points on me.” Ollwelen grinned, puffing contentedly on his cigar. Often in their games neither Locksley nor Lavager won because their main concentration was on screwing each other, not winning the game, even though they played for money—a credit a point.

“Locker, I ought to put your ass back in the grass, remind you what’s important in this life.”

“Did you hear that?” Locksley turned to the attorney general. “Just another example of how power goes to the heads of politicians in this nation of ours—send a man off to war just so he can win at cards.”

“War? Did I hear someone say ‘war’? May I quote you on that?”

All heads snapped toward the door to the main dining room. There stood grinning none other than Gus Gustafferson, Galactic News Network’s chief correspondent on Atlas.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Lavager asked. “Why aren’t you in bed with some animal at this hour?”

Gustafferson made an airy gesture with one hand. “Ramuncho’s gone home and I gave a note to a waiter.” He waved a wad of credits in one hand and stepped unbidden into the room, making a show of waving the cigar smoke away from his face.

“Gutsy,” Lavager said, “you could very easily get yourself shot busting in here like this.” The reporter’s nickname, one he hated but one Lavager delighted using, was “Gutsy Goofy,” bestowed on him because he’d do anything to get a story and because his big ears and huge nose made him look stupid. He wasn’t. What he was was an insistent, argumentative, opinionated interviewer who never allowed the facts of an issue to override his preconceived ideas.

“You can’t shoot me, sir, members of the media are immune to assassination.”

“Yeah, just like you’re ‘immune’ to the truth,” Attorney General Cennedry commented sourly.

“How many billions of people have you misinformed this week, Gutsy?” Locksley asked. Gustafferson grimaced. “Touché, General. What’s this I hear about you going to war?” He made a show of activating his personal comp.

“Turn that damned thing off!” Cennedry snapped. Gustafferson made a show of deactivating his comp and putting it away. “I have a good enough memory,” he murmured. “Statement?” he asked aloud, looking inquiringly at each of the officials, holding out a fist as if it were a microphone, coming back to Lavager and smiling. “Anybody care to talk about the imminent failure of your Five-Year Plan?” He bowed toward the Minister of Finance, who scowled.

“What’s going on out at that place near Spondu?” The question was delivered like a cannonball, and it was instantly clear why Gustafferson was there at that hour. Despite himself, Lavager stiffened. The facility called the “Cabbage Patch” was a high-security research center in the mountains near the town of Spondu, about forty kilometers northeast of New Granum.

“That’s a top secret government facility, Gutsy. No comment. You know that.”

“But Excellency,” Gustafferson shifted now into his falsely obsequious mode, “Everyone’s talking about a new superweapon you’re developing out there. One you’re going to deploy to propel Atlas into the Confederation’s economy.”

“Only because you’ve been feeding everyone that crap for the past six months, Gutsy,” Perrot replied.

“What we have at Spondu is an agricultural research center.”

“Uh huh. Sure it is. It just
used
to be a weapons research facility.”

“Things change, Gutsy,” Lavager said as calmly as he could. “You know that. Hell, you change facts all the time in your stories.”

Gustafferson ignored the jibe. “Come on, Jorge, an interview? Just fifteen minutes of your time?”

Lavager was not the kind of man who insisted on etiquette in his relationships with people, but the way Gustafferson used his first name was intended to insinuate a close personal relationship that didn’t exist.

“See my Director of Public Affairs and take your place in line, Gutsy. When your number comes up, sure, fifteen minutes. Now get out of here. This is a private gathering and it’s late.”

“You don’t have a private life, Excellency,” Gustafferson said, grinning, but he turned to the door and left the room.

“Jorge, if you’d kept your security team on duty he’d never have gotten in here,” the Attorney General said.

“Yeah, well,” Lavager stared after Gustafferson, momentarily lost in thought, “those guys have a hard enough job as it is without me keeping them up all night to watch over our game. Gentlemen, we’ve got to find out who’s leaking information about the Cabbage Patch. If that guy knows we’re developing something up there, who else knows about it?”

Office of the Director, Central Intelligence Organization, Hunter, Earth

“So, Palmer, my dear fellow, tell us. What is going on in, what is it, the Cucumber Patch . . . ?”

“Cabbage Patch, not ‘cucumber.’ ”

“Quaint name. Speaking of cucumbers, try some of these sautéed Vagarian cucumbers with a slice of this excellent Ciricussian bread. Delicious, I assure you.” He twittered. “That’s probably why I had cucumbers on my mind.”

Palmer Quincy Lowell, Deputy Director for Intelligence, helped himself to the sliced cucumbers so generously offered by J. “Jay” Murchison Adams, Director of the Central Intelligence Organization and ignored the question of the Cabbage Patch while he enjoyed the cool taste of the succulent gourd.

“This wine is exquisite!” Somervell P. “Summy” Amesbury exclaimed. Amesbury functioned as Lowell’s Chief of Staff. The three often lunched together in Lowell’s office at CIO headquarters in the Fargo suburb of Hunter.

“That wine, my dear Somervell, is a specially imported vintage of Katzenwasser ’48, which I received only last week. I was sure you’d appreciate it.” Lowell smiled. He helped himself to a bread-and-cucumber sandwich, delicately wiping his fingers on the monogrammed napkins that were a staple feature on the table at the luncheon gatherings. “Gentlemen, do not overdo it,” Lowell held up a well-manicured forefinger, “we have—I know you’ll simply love this, Palmer!—creme d’collon soup with sherobie crotons as the main course!”

Palmer Quincy Lowell grunted with the pleasure of anticipation: Creme d’collon soup and especially sherobie crotons were a favorite of his and one of the reasons he weighed 170 kilos.

“And for dessert I have the most wonderful sherbet,” J. Murchison Adams announced, taking another bite of his cucumber sandwich. He wiped his lips delicately and sighed. “But now, to business! I have a meeting with the Confederation Security Council tomorrow and I’m sure this business involving Atlas is going to come up. What is going on out there, Palmer? Who’re your sources? And what in Human Space is this ‘Cucumber Patch’ place?”

“Ah, ‘Cabbage Patch,’ old boy. Our source is the chief of the trade delegation on Atlas, of course. He’s a very experienced operative and has spread around quite a bit of money to develop his own stable of reliable informants. You might recall, Jay, a line item in this fiscal year’s budget, quite a sizeable sum—”

Adams waved the comment off impatiently. Budgetary matters, especially contingency funds for agent payments, were of little interest to him. His concept of what the Director of the CIO was to focus on was strategic intelligence, not the mundane day-to-day business of administering a government instrumentality. He left those details to his small army of accountants and clerks.

“Is Atlas and this impossible man, um—?” he turned to Amesbury.

“Jorge Liberec Lavager, Jay.”

“—this Lavager fellow any real danger to our trade routes in the Atlas sector? That is what the President will wish to know tomorrow.”

Someone buzzed. “Yes?”

“The soup course, sir,” Adams’s secretary announced.

“Aha! Send it in! Send it in!”

A functionary dressed in white from the CIO cafeteria wheeled in a cart with three steaming bowls of soup and deftly served them. The three officers sat silently until the man had departed. Then individually they sampled their soup, smacking their lips, wheezing in satisfaction, and grunting with pleasure; for a brief moment each was in his own little world of pure gustatory ecstasy.

“Lavager is an animal, Jay,” Lowell replied at last, leaning back and patting his lips. “A military man, and you know the mindset of those little boys.” They all chuckled. “He is developing some sort of superweapon.” Lowell leaned forward as if to speak in total confidence. “We’re not sure of its capabilities just yet, but we
are
certain he’s going to use it to conquer Atlas and then start imposing demands on us based on his strategic position vis-à-vis our trade lanes with the outward worlds in that sector of Human Space. He is a dangerous man, Jay.”

“One of your agents out there is that rather slick newsman Gustafferson, I believe? The GNN man?”

Amesbury asked.

“He’s developed some very reliable intelligence, Summy. He knows how to dig up a story. But he’s one of several sources on the scene.”

“And this ‘Cucumber Patch’ or whatever they call it is this Lavager’s secret weapons lab?”

“ ‘Cabbage Patch.’ Yes, it is, Jay. We haven’t penetrated it yet but we will, we will.”

“What do your analysts say about this info?”

“Oh, they evaluate this information as highly reliable.” Lowell paused. “The desk officer, on the other hand, is not so sure,” he said, carefully.

“Who’s that?”

“Anya Smiler. She knows that area well,” he added quickly, “she was there as an agent a few years back.”

“God,” Adams let out his breath, “it’s been forty years since I was in the field, more power to the woman! But you know how these analysts are.” He shrugged and raised a spoonful of soup to his lips.

“Yes, we’ve had our derrieres in the reeds, and the young are welcome to the field jobs,” Amesbury laughed.

“Yes, yes,” Lowell agreed quickly, “they sometimes do tend to go native on us, but I assure you Ms. Smiler is a very dedicated analyst. Hers is the minority opinion, I must add.”

“And that is?”

“Jorge Lavager is a George Washington,” Lowell answered, shrugging and tasting his own soup.