Civilian Slaughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

would have jumped on any one talking about her like that. But he'd changed. What he had felt for her she had burned out of him. “Garrett was the last to try. He was wearing his balls in a sling for a week. He's scared witless of her now.”
    The Jaguar reappeared from between a pair of dapple painted Saxon wheeled APC's. It made a high speed hand brake turn onto the drive, shredding thousands of miles from the tires, and rocketed back out onto the road.
    As the roar of the high revving motor died away it was replaced with another familiar sound. The distinctive thumping beat of a Huey grew steadily louder.
    Vokes shaded his eyes and looked in the direction. “Twin door guns. That will be the colonel, will it not.”
    'That I could do without. What does Ol’ Foul Mouth want with us?” A thought struck Revell. “Where's Hyde and his squad?”
    “Still in decontamination, over by the lake.” “Right, keep them there, or at least out of the way until you see that chopper lift off again.”
    Not asking or waiting for an explanation, Vokes hurried back down from the roof. Revell followed at a more leisurely pace, mentally equipping himself for the trouble he was expecting.
    The colonel was stalking into the lobby as he reached the bottom of the elegant staircase.
    “What the bloody blue fuck are you up to, Major?” Revell waited for the first blasts to wash over him. He knew from experience there was no earthly hope of having his say at this stage.
    “Shit. I get you boys a nice easy number in a quiet sector, so you can build up to strength again after your last blood bath, and what do you do? I'll tell you what you do, you near get me busted all the way back down to civilian convict. And seeing as I start as a full-blown colonel, that's a piss awful long way.”
    “Is it about the patrol?” Revell thought it best to determine that up front. The colonel had been known to spring the odd surprise by blowing up over a less than obvious matter. But this time Revell had it right.
    “You call that a patrol? A patrol?” Colonel Lippincott extracted a sheaf of photographs from his pocket and waved them above his head. “With a runaway regiment of maniacs in kamikaze tanks I couldn't have stirred more shit than you've done with one lousy APC.”
    “Is that a compliment, Colonel?”
    “That is not a damned compliment, and it wasn't when I got it in exactly the same words from a two-star general. Have you the faintest idea how much work went into laying on this truce?” Lippincott waved any potential answer aside. “No, course you haven't. Nor have I, but you can bet your ass it was one hell of a lot. And so while all along the Zone, from the Baltic to the Med even the most head- banging gung-ho bomb happy shit is cheerily putting aside his rifle and taking up knitting, you go out and try to queer it for everyone, and me in particular.”
    Face red, Colonel Lippincott paused for breath. “Let's get some air. This place stinks like a stale morgue.” Not waiting to see Revell tagging along behind him, he strode through the overturned tables of the opulent dining room and out through the elegant conservatory on the back of the building.
    Broken glass crunched under their boots. As they stepped out onto the broad terrace a light breeze wreathed them in wood smoke and they moved to the far end to get out of it.
    “Just what the blue blazes is that guy doing?” Lippincott pointed to the long shallow pit in the middle of the lawn. Tending the red-hot filling of wood ash, and replenishing it constantly from a nearby stack of logs was a sweating smoke- stained figure in grubby shorts, army boots, and chefs hat.
    “That's Scully, the company cook.”
“Is he not used to civilization?” Lippincott jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the hotel. “Back in there must be one hell of a catering kitchen. Does he always do things the hard way?”
    “We're having a barbecue.”
Resignedly Lippincott sprawled on a stone bench.