The main gate into the walled government district accommodated two wide lanes of traffic, with a sidewalk on either side. The midmorning traffic was considerable, and the gate guards busy. The workman with a tool chest stopped for one of them.
"Your pass."
The man put down his chest, took out a wallet, and displayed the pass in it. The guard waved him through without looking in the chest. The man had been told it would be that way, but his chest had a tray in the top, with tools, just in case. He picked it up and went through, glancing at his watch as he walked. The better part of an hour yet. Inside, someone hailed him, and he recognized his partner. They met and shook hands, as if they hadn't seen each other for some time.
"Security is as poor as Jenni said it would be," the first commented quietly.
"I'll take all the breaks they'll give me," the other answered. "Barrek and Norri have already gone ahead."
They moved on then, noting the names on the buildings, following the route they'd memorized on a map nearly four hundred miles away.
A van bearing the name and logo of a well-known delivery firm stopped in the horseshoe drive that curved to the front entrance of the War Ministry. Two men in coveralls got out, went to the back, and slid out a sizeable chest with carrying handles jutting out at both ends. Two uniformed armed guards followed the chest out. The two who took it were strong-looking, but even so, it was obviously heavy. The van then pulled out of the drive and stopped at the curb across the street.
They carried the chest laboriously up the steps, then set it down as one of the entrance guards came over to them. He barely glanced at the courier guards; his attention was on the men with the chest. "Whadya got there?" he asked.
"Reports from archives. For the adjutant general's office."
The entrance guard looked at it for several long seconds, as if x-raying it with his eyes, then nodded. "All right, go on in. They'll tell you in reception where his office is."
The two picked up the chest and lugged it inside. The armed guards followed them without challenge. If the door guard had looked inside it, all he'd have seen was report binders held shut with rubber bands. Unless, of course, he'd dug beneath them.
* * *
The morning was already hot. A fan on the windowsill drew in more humid air, mixing and stirring. Colonel Torey Eltrimor wished he hadn't been given a rear office. At the War Ministry, rear was south, and hot. Although it could have been worse, for this was the second floor. The top floor, the fifth, became unbearable on days like this.
Eltrimor made most of the Commissary Department's meat purchases. He bought livestock on the hoof, and was known for driving hard bargains. He liked Fingas Marnsson Kelromak, as much as he allowed himself to like anyone he did business with, but he would not bend when it came to prices.
"I don't doubt your word," Eltrimor was saying, "but the department's overbought on grade B just now. It's only used in officers' mess, you understand. I can pay what you asked for for one car of it, but everything else I'll have to buy as C, regardless of the actual grade."
Fingas nodded. It was cheaper to market to the War Ministry—it was the easy way, so to speak—but with a modest effort, he could sell all the grade B he wanted to commercial buyers, for B prices. He raised very few cattle that graded C or lower—culled dairy cows, mainly, and an occasional sausage bull.
"Fine. One car of B then, and I'll ship the rest to Brisslo. Will someone come out? Or can your man check them on arrival?"
"In your case, arrival will be fine. You've never sent me anything yet that didn't meet . . ."
He stopped in mid-sentence. From some other part of the building came the sound of shooting, muffled by distance and walls. "What is it?" asked Fingas, alarmed.
"Damned if I know. Gunfire, but . . ." A muffled boom followed, spelling "grenade" to the colonel. "Fingas," he said, heading for the door, "we'd better get out of here!"
Others were entering the hall as they did, but Eltrimor's office was nearest the back stairs. On the level, Fingas could move quickly when he had to, but on the stairs his bad leg slowed him. Eltrimor reached the first floor well ahead of him. Others passed him, jostling him as they hurried down. Sporadic shots continued, three- or four-round bursts from an automatic weapon, and he could hear shouting.
Fingas had expected to find the first floor corridor full of people, but there were relatively few. Of course, he thought. There's a side exit. The rear door was something of a bottleneck, but the press of bodies was not severe. He was carried out the door with the flow, then lost his footing on the outside steps. As he fell, there was gunfire ahead of him—a submachine gun, and screams. People in front of him fell. Someone stomped hard on his chest, the pain making him gasp; someone else trod on his hand. Someone else fell on him then, and someone else. Behind him, inside the ministry, a great explosion roared, jarring the massive stone building.
In front of him the shooting continued.
The fuses were short. It wouldn't do to have them noticed. And radio detonators that would have allowed blowing the charges from a distance weren't permitted in a Level 3 War.
The Linnos Ordnance Depot was temporary, had been set up for this particular war. And instead of storing explosives in massive bunkers, as in permanent depots, the Komarsi War Ministry had elected to rely on distance to protect the surroundings from possible accident. It saved the cost of construction, and made access far easier and quicker. They'd set it up in a poor, sandy, grazing area, four miles downstream from Linnasteth. For simplicity in handling and transshipping, materials were segregated by class. High explosives, tons of them, were held in the southeast quadrant.
Of course the area was well secured. A heavy chain link fence surrounded it, eight feet high and topped with barbed wire. Outside lay a double barrier of accordion wire, while beyond the accordion wire was sandy pasture, still picked over by leggy cattle, and providing no cover. Inside the fence, armed sentries walked their posts, and guards watched the surroundings from corner towers.
Loading of munitions was done by dock crews, who entered with the trucks. Invariably they brought their mid-shift lunches, day or night, and no one ever thought of checking their boxes or pails to see what sort of sandwiches they held.
Casual labor was provided by drafts of new recruits, looking awkward in unfamiliar fatigue uniforms. That was how Chelli Morss got in.
The depot mission was the iffiest and most challenging part of Operation Scorpion. It involved the most uncertain preliminary steps, required the most on-site decisions and innovations. For example, Chelli couldn't know in what part of the HE quadrant the charges had been set.
He'd hardly arrived when he'd been given a bucket of paint and a brush, and detailed with several others to paint a shed. A corporal had been with them, and Chelli'd had no chance to slip away. So he'd painted fast, if somewhat sloppily, to finish the job as soon as possible. They'd just finished washing out their brushes when he heard a distant boom. The War Ministry; he knew it by the sound, and the timing was right. It had been scheduled first.
No one else seemed to notice. They'd started handing out sickles to cut grass with, inside the fence and between the piles. Chelli had seen his opportunity and crowded in to get one. They'd hardly started when they heard a much greater explosion, a great thunderous roar that he knew was at the harbor facilities some three miles away. He'd felt it through the ground! Surely someone in command would think of the depot now, and take quick action to increase security.
As soon as he dared, he separated himself from the others, slipping into one of the traffic aisles between piles of boxes. Once alone, he began to scout the piles, chopping at grass now and then in case some noncom looked down an aisle and saw him. Actually he was looking for the red crayon streaks that should mark the fuse locations. Any one charge would do. He saw a red streak on the end of a box, went to it and looked around for the fuse. There! He reached into a pocket and found the small lighter buried beneath his handkerchief.
"Hey, you!"
He turned. "Yessir?"
A sergeant was striding down the aisle toward him, with another man. The sergeant wore a holster at his hip; the other carried a rifle.
"Get your ass back to the trucks," the sergeant called. "Now!"
"Just a minute, boss. I dropped something." He bent, and lit the fuse.
"Yomal damn you Amber-damned recruits!" The sergeant came up to him and punched him. "Don't you 'just a minute' me, you son of a bitch! When I say jump, you better damned well jump! Now let's go!"
"Sergeant," said the private with the rifle. He was staring at the fuse. "What's that? Looks like a . . ."
Chelly hit the sergeant in the throat with a spear-hand, felt the trachea crush and saw the eyes glaze. Before the man could fall, he'd pulled the sergeant's pistol from its holster, thumbing the hammer back as he drew it. The rifleman was good. Quick. He swung his rifle around and pulled the trigger at the same moment Chelli pulled his own.
The difference was that the rifle had a cartridge in the chamber and the pistol didn't. The shock of the bullet knocked Chelli down, then the man dropped his rifle and went for the fuse. Even as Chelli hit the ground, lung-shot, he jacked a cartridge into the chamber, rolled onto his side and pulled the trigger again. The .37 caliber slug took the soldier behind the ear, killing him instantly.
Chelli raised up enough to shoot the sergeant too, just in case, then fell back.
There were shouts now. Men drawn by the shooting were running up the aisle from the other direction. The trooper grinned; they'd never make it. It was a short fuse.