The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Pilar shook her head. “I’ll go home,” she said. “I’ll be all right, now.”

She looked toward her van. She noticed the heads of bums silhouetted against the unglazed windows. Coke offered his left arm to her right hand.

“No problem,” he said, whisking his tongue across the syllables like a blade over a whetstone. He walked beside Pilar toward the vehicle, flexing his left hand to be sure that it would obey his needs.

“Terry won’t be home,” the woman said stiffly. Her fingers lay in the crook of his elbow, light contact but warm nonetheless. “He’s found quite a number of friends here since he learned to shake the money tree.”

“He’s smuggling, you mean?” Coke said. His tone counterfeited the sort of polite interest that he thought was appropriate to the statement. Below the surface, his mind considered alternatives with the icy logic of a bridge player assessing his hand.

Pilar stopped. A sailor walking behind them cursed as she blocked his path. Coke drew his pistol and pointed it without a word. The sailor started back and jogged across the street.

Coke reholstered the weapon. “Sorry,” he murmured to Pilar.

“You work for the Confederacy?” she said tightly. She stood as though her feet had grown through the cracked pavement. “You’re investigating port duties?”

“Not us,” Coke said easily. “From what I’ve heard thus far, we’re out of business if the Marvelan Confederacy learns that we’re here.”

By taking Pilar’s hand in his, he made her meet his eyes. In a more sober tone than before he added, “We’re with the Frisian Defense Forces.”

“Oh,” the woman said. The datum fell into place. “Oh!”

“We’re not maybe the best thing that could happen to Cantilucca,” Coke said, still looking directly at her though her eyes had lifted away. “But we’re better than what I’ve seen here so far.”

Pilar gave him a bitter smile. “Sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to Potosi, at least, would be a fusion bomb,” she said.

Coke squeezed her hand. He stepped to the van, reached in through the window, and dragged one of the occupants out by the throat. The local squawked after Coke flung him on the pavement. He didn’t say anything before he hit the ground, because the Frisian’s fingers gripped too tightly to pass the sound.

The remaining two bums bleated. They slid to the other side of the open compartment. Instead of reaching for them, Coke pointed his pistol at the left member of the pair.

“You have five seconds,” Coke said. “One. Two.”

The local jumped up and stuck his head and torso out of the far window. Coke shifted his weapon’s centimeter bore toward the other derelict. “Three. Four.”

The local tried unsuccessfully to rise. His limbs were spastic with fear. He seemed afraid to turn and face the opening.

Coke pointed the gun muzzle sideways and said, “Go on, you’re all right, I’ll give you the time.”

The local thumped out into the street and began crawling after his fellow. He was moaning about his bottle, but the only bottle the trio had left in the van was empty.

Pilar stood close beside Coke. “You’re very direct,” she said in a voice too neutral to be disinterested.

“Yeah,” Coke said. He looked at her again. “What you see is what you get.”

Pilar smiled wistfully. “No,” she said, “I’m afraid that what I get is something else again. Perhaps I should have seen it, but I was younger then.”

She opened the door of the van. The ignition card clinked against the handle. “Thank you very much, Master Coke. I—I appreciate what you’ve done. I’d invite you home for a drink, but people might get the wrong impression.”

Her face hardened. “And it would be the wrong impression.”

Coke bowed formally. He wore a half smile.

Pilar suddenly leaned close and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was in the van, shutting the door needlessly hard.

Coke watched her drive away. He was smiling more broadly now. Someone watching him might have noticed the similarity of the expression to that which Johann Vierziger wore after killing.

The remaining five members of the survey team waited for a moment after Major Matthew Coke walked out of Hathaway House with a pistol and a commandeered shock baton. Georg Hathaway started to close the heavy front door. Margulies touched the innkeeper’s arm to stop him.

Hathaway glanced around. The four Frisians besides Barbour stood in a concave arc, facing out the doorway so that among them they watched a hundred meters of the streetscape. All of them held weapons.

“Oh,” Hathaway said. “Oh. I wasn’t thinking of that.”

Margulies nodded without replying, and without ever taking her eyes off the amazed clot of L’Escorials across the street. Her left hand returned to rest lightly on the foregrip of her sub-machine gun.

“There,” Vierziger said with a slight relaxation of the drumhead tautness beneath his insouciant exterior. “He’s clear of anything we can do—unless we want to follow him.”