The Merchant’s War

"That you, Hastert?"

The shadow in front of him nodded. "O'Neil's twenty yards that way. Go to him now." Bulky night-vision goggles half-covered Hastert's face, in surreal contrast to his baggy trousers and chain mail vest. He'd acquired a gun from somewhere, some kind of machine pistol with a bulky silencer attached.

"Okay, I'm going, I'm going." Mike scuttled away, his pulse hammering with the adrenaline aftershock. Hastert and O'Neil were part of the forward support team in Zone Blue, specialists yanked out of Delta Force to handle the sharp end of the Family Trade Organization's intel operation on the ground in the parallel universe the criminals came from. Dangerous men, but it was their job to get him out of this alive. I could have told her to come with me, he told himself. Could have lied, offered her witness protection. Hell, she asked for it! We could have gotten her out.

But Miriam's potential value to Colonel Smith lay in her connection to the Clan hierarchy; and everything had gone to pieces. "They've got my mom," she'd said conversationally, right after he'd shot the soldier who was trying to murder her. And the royal they'd been trying to marry her off to against her wishes was dead-what the hell was going on? "O'Neil?" he whispered.

"Over here, sir. Keep down."

O'Neil was crouched behind a deadfall. "What's going on?"

"Looks like they're making whoopee." His grin was a ghostly crescent in the darkness. "Don't you worry, we'll get you out of here."

A moment of rustling and crunching, and Sergeant Hastert appeared. "Sitrep, Pete."

"Sam's on point." O'Neil gestured farther into the trees, where the ground fell away from the low hill on which the palace had stood. "He's seen no sign of anybody in the woods. Bad news is, the aggressor faction have got sentries out and they're covering the approaches from the road. There's maybe thirty of them and they've got riders-we're cut off."

"Get him back here, then."

O'Neil vanished into the darkness. "How bad is it?"; asked Mike.

"Could be worse: nobody's shooting at us." Hastert turned to look at him. "But we'd better be out of here by dawn. Did you get what you wanted?"

"Yes and no." Mike hunkered down. "Everything we thought we knew about what was going on here is out of date. I got to talk to my contact, bur* she's in deep shit herself-didn't have much time, they were trying to kill her-"

A noise like a door the size of a mountain slamming shut a hundred meters away rocked Mike back on his heels.

"Down!" Hastert lurched against him, shoving Mike's face down on a matted bed of branches. Moments later, debris thudded off the branches above their heads, spattering down on the summer-dry soil. "Get moving, we're too close."

The next hour passed in a nightmarish crawl through the dark forest, heading always away from the boom and crash of gunfire and the shouts of the combatants. The

royal palace, although nominally within the city of Niejwein, was surrounded by a walled garden the size of a huge park-large enough that the palace itself was out of easy gunshot range of its neighbors. But in the chaos of the apparent coup, the shooters seemed to be inside the compound. Stray shots periodically came tearing through the treetops so that Mike needed no urging to keep his head close to the dirt.

After an interminable crawl, Hastert tapped him on the shoulder. "Stop here, wail till I get back." He vanished into the darkness as silently as a ghost. Mike shivered violently. Trouble? he wondered. There was nothing he could do; on this part of the mission he was baggage, as much as Miriam would have been if he'd tried to extract her from whatever the hell that weird scene back at the palace had been about. I can't believe I shot that guy without warning.