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"I'm . . . fine," Elgars said, shifting her body to track on the sergeant as he stumbled past. "The . . . number of armed perso
"That's normal," Jake admitted. "And not out of reason; there've been some hellacious firefights in these military towns." He looked around and shook his head. "Franklin is out. There are probably places frequented by the locals, but it would be pointless to look for them."
He looked at the sun again, counted on his fingers then looked at Wendy. "Do you trust me?"
She regarded him calmly for a moment and then nodded. "Strangely enough, yeah. Why?"
"I've got a buddy who's got a farm near here. He's got a granddaughter not much older than Billy and he'd probably be more than happy to have some company. We could go there, but it would be an overnight stay."
"Oh." Wendy looked at Shari, who shrugged then looked at the sun herself. "We need to get the kids out of the cold before dark."
"That won't be a problem," Mosovich said. "Getting back might have been a problem, but not getting there. And, frankly, he's probably got some clothes that would fit them; they're the worst outfitted kids I've seen in years."
"All we've got for the surface is what we arrived in," Shari said quietly. "Billy's wearing a jacket I borrowed a couple of years ago. And none of the other children have anything."
As if on cue, Kelly pulled at Shari's hand. "Mommy, I'm hungry."
"That's it," Mosovich said. "The farm or go back to the Urb as a bad plan."
"I don't want to go back underground," Elgars admitted. "Not just yet. I . . . like it up here."
"So do I," Shari admitted, looking up at the sky. "I miss the wind. Okay, if you're sure this friend of yours won't completely freak at having five adults and eight kids descend on him out of the blue."
"Not a problem," Mosovich said. "He can handle anything."
* * *
Michael O'Neal, Sr., pulled the Palm from his belt and frowned. Since the interesting events a few years back he had updated his security systems. The cameras at the front gate now transmitted back to a webserver that, in turn, sent a compressed video stream to the device. So he found himself looking at a Humvee piloted by Mosovich. Not a big deal, Jake had been up a couple of times in the last year. But the fading light showed that the Humvee was packed with other bodies.
O'Neal rolled the huge wad of Red Man in his cheek from one side to the other and frowned in thought. He was not a huge man, but he had an aura of squat stolidity that was almost preternatural; it appeared as if it would take a bulldozer to move him. His arms were overlong for his body, reaching, simianlike, almost to his knees, and his legs were just a tad bandied, adding to the overall aura of a slightly a
He jacked up the gain on the distant cameras and zoomed in on the front seat. Jake was driving and the guy next to him had to be Mueller from past descriptions. But Mueller had two kids on his lap and unless Papa's eyes were deceiving him there was a female leaning between them. Hot diggety. Just what he'd been praying for this last few months; maybe there was a God who took care of fools and drunks.
As he activated the gates there was a scream from upstairs like a panther with its leg in a trap.
"WHERE'S MY GUN-SMITHING KIT?" came a shriek from above.
Ah, Cally had apparently found something to her dissatisfaction.
"Have you looked in your desk?" he called calmly.
"DON'T YOU TAKE THAT TONE WITH ME, GRAMPS!" she yelled. "Of course I looked in my DESK! I keep it . . ."
He nodded at the cut off sentence. Time to get out of the house before she got down the . . .
"I just looked there!" she said, breathing angrily and waving the cloth-wrapped tools above her head as if she was going to use them as a weapon. The young woman was as tall as her grandfather, long of hair and leg with wide, cornflower blue eyes. Her grandfather had often considered that it was a good thing she'd gotten her looks from her mother rather than her father. But those looks, along with the fact that she was barely thirteen and a few . . . incidents had gotten surreptitious pictures tacked up on barracks walls. With the caption: "Warning: Jailbait. To be considered ARMED AND VERY DANGEROUS."
"Cally," Mike Senior said calmly. "Calm down. You found it and . . ."
"DON'T YOUDARE SAY HORMONES!" she shouted.
"And what I was going to say was we're about to have visitors," he continued as if she hadn't said anything. "Mosovich and a packed Humvee full of women and kids it looks like."
"Refugees?" she asked calmly, setting down the smithing kit and holding her hand out for the Palm Pilot.
"I don't think so," Papa O'Neal said, handing it over and heading for the door. "Visitors at a guess. But that's just a guess."
"Okay," Cally said, unconsciously checking the H&K P-17 in her wasteband. "I'll stay back."
"Just follow procedure," Papa O'Neal said. "Don't get . . . don't go overboard."
"Not a problem," she said with a quizzical expression. "Why would I go overboard?"
* * *
"Jesus Christ," Mueller whispered. "Who is that?"
"That is Michael O'Neal, Senior," Mosovich said. "I knew him a long time ago in a much hotter place we generally just called Hell."
"Not the guy," Mueller said, gesturing into the shadows of the front porch. "The girl."
Mosovich looked again and frowned. "She's . . . twelve or thirteen, Mueller. Waaay too young. Even in North Carolina."
"You're kidding me," Mueller said as the Humvee pulled to a stop. "She's like, seventeen if she's a day!"
"No, I'm not," Mosovich said coldly, holding onto the door-handle and staring at the NCO with dead eyes. "And if you want to live through the next few minutes, put your tongue back in your head. If O'Neal doesn't kill you for being an idiot and a drain on the genepool I will. And if you somehow manage to survive both us old fucks, that little bit will kill you without a word or a whisper; there is no proof, but there is some indication that she has done so before, possibly more than once. Last, but not least, her daddy is Major 'Ironman' O'Neal of the ACS, Mighty Mite his own self. And if he comes after your ass he is, first of all, a Fleet officer with the legal authority to kill a Fleet NCO out of hand and second of all god-damned unstoppable. You don't have the chance of a snowball in hell if any of the three of us think you're going to try to make time with her. Do not make eyes at Cally O'Neal. Understood?"
"Gotcha," Mueller said, holding up his hands. "I don't go for jailbait, Jake, and you know it. But . . . Jesus, I want an ID or something! I swear she looks like, seventeen, even eighteen!"
"Sorry about that," Mosovich said over his shoulder.
"Not a problem," Elgars said. "It was a pretty professional dressing down. I've filed it for future reference. Can we get out yet?"
"Sure," Mosovich said, taking a deep breath to clear the anger. Just let something go right today.
* * *
"What was that about?" Cally asked quietly.
"Dressing down," Papa O'Neal responded just as quietly. The throat mike was nearly invisible against the collar of his shirt and the receiver in his ear was invisible to the naked eye.
Just because his military background stretched back to the dawn of time, or Vietnam, which was close, that didn't mean that Papa O'Neal wasn't up to date. His security systems were as state of the art as he could accumulate and a few of the items were, technically, restricted to Fleet perso
The grounds were scattered with sensors, cameras and command detonated mines and the house behind him had enough surveillance equipment in it to be a demonstrator. This had occasioned some embarrassment, in ancient times when he used to have friends in the area. From time to time he would host rather . . . raucous parties at which his friends, mostly retired military who had moved to the North Georgia mountains for the air and the proximity to Ranger students they could mess with, would occasionally forget or ignore that the entire house was wired for sound. And video.