War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

them. Should they be attacked while still on the river, the Waders would provide the firepower. The front Wader’s legs would be extended so it could fire over the patrol boat’s wheelhouse.

‘So we’re just going upstream in the hope that we discover something?’ Corenbloom asked as he leant on the side of the wheelhouse.

Miska sighed. It had been peaceful piloting the boat, the reflected red light of the gas giant occasionally breaking through the cathedral-like jungle canopy high above, dappling the water. She had been desperately trying to remember everything she had learned about small boat handling as a Recon Marine.

‘Resnick’s people went upstream in a flotilla,’ Miska told him, ‘and eventually they’ll run out of river. We’ll be able to find the boats and follow them then.’

She could see Kaneda and Kasmeyer forward of the wheelhouse. Kaneda was lying on the deck close to the turret that used to contain one of the boat’s railguns. Kasmeyer was practically perched on the bow watching the river ahead. The two Sneaky Bastards were taking it in turn on watch. She knew the others were doing something similar port, starboard and aft. If nothing else they were keeping an eye out for the occasional monstrous branch that fell from the huge trees; the ‘spore mines’, huge sub-surface fungi that exploded when knocked; and bite-seed swarms.

‘How’re you going to track through the mangroves?’ Corenbloom enquired.

Miska glanced over at him. ‘You’re going to dive down and look for footprints under water.’

‘Seriously.’

She sighed again. Nobody seemed to get her sense of humour.

‘It’s more difficult but there are ways and means,’ she told him. Recon had taught her to track. She and her dad had been teaching it to the Sneaky Bastards as part of their own reconnaissance training. Between Kaneda, Hogg Kasmeyer and herself there should be enough trained observers to find Resnick’s path through the waterlogged mangrove swamps. That wasn’t her issue. What worried her was how long it would take. Which was why— ‘You’re relying on the Ultra to track Resnick and leave a trail of breadcrumbs, aren’t you?’ Corenbloom said, interrupting her thoughts.

‘Relying is a strong word.’ She wondered briefly how Corenbloom had found out about the Nightmare Squad’s presence in-country, was it that obvious? Probably Golda, she decided. Corenbloom was desperate to make friends. Golda could be a useful ally for him.

‘Problem with that?’ she asked.

‘The Ultra? Maybe if I was still a profiler, career FBI. This is kind of interesting. Makes sense as well.’

That got her attention.

‘Well, he sort of had a rule. I’m not even sure it was that codified. Almost an algorithm. He only killed parasites.’

‘By his definition, surely,’ Miska said. She felt better without such excuses. If you’re going to kill just get on with it. Don’t dress it up.

‘Let’s say they were pretty popular definitions. He killed people that he didn’t feel contributed in any way: lawyers, estate and letting agents, politicians, oligarchs who were all take and no give, and their useless spawn. There’s no doubt he was a monster but I think he was trying to help. He wanted to kill and thought these people would be the least damaging people to murder.’

‘You think that’s why he’s helping me?’ she asked. ‘There are no good or bad people, just differing points of view, and I’ll work for the one that pays.’

‘I know you’ve refused to commit atrocities,’ Corenbloom pointed out.

‘That’s hardly a particularly sharp moral compass,’ Miska told him. ‘If I’m on the side of angels it’s normally for an easy life.’

‘We’re after some bad people.’

Miska turned to look at Corenbloom.

‘We are some bad people. If you think what you’re doing is about making amends, you’re fooling yourself,’ she told him. Corenbloom held up his hands.

Miska wasn’t best pleased that he was here. She would have preferred him working on finding her dad’s murderer, and somehow she didn’t think this job was going to require an intelligence element. This was all about the seek and destroy.

Corenbloom pointed at her eye. ‘Think they were aiming at you?’

Miska shrugged. ‘I’m going to assume that it was an accident.’

She checked behind her to where Hemi and Mass were tinkering with the Waders. ‘I need to worry about your history with him?’

Corenbloom looked over at Mass, spending some time studying him.

‘We did some damage to each other, it’s true. None of it really matters now, I guess.’ He turned back to Miska. ‘So not from me.’ He nodded towards Raff, who was standing guard on the starboard bow. ‘The lenshead was pretty good in a fight.’

Miska glanced back at him.

‘A lot of war correspondents are. He’ll probably get some kind of prize for that footage, not to mention a tell-all exposé of us nasty mercenaries.’

‘It was more than just skillsofts. He’d been trained.’

‘Lots of them are before they embed,’ she told him. He looked unconvinced. For someone who’d worked for the CIA she didn’t think she was a very good liar. ‘You talked to him?’

‘A bit. Maybe I should some more.’

‘You investigating something?’

‘Always.’

Corenbloom headed aft to give Hogg a break from watch. Miska saw Mass watching as the disgraced FBI agent walked by on the other side of the Waders to avoid the Mafia button man.

‘Maybe a bit more investigating and a little less crime back in the day would have helped?’ Miska muttered to herself.

‘It’s getting dark, maybe somebody with two eyes should drive,’ Mass suggested.

Miska’s remaining functioning eye was protected behind the drop-down goggles on the half-helm she had borrowed for the mission. The goggles formed a hermetic seal that had proved protection enough against the pollen bloom at Camp Badajoz. This meant she still had nightvision capability in her remaining eye. Some of the legionnaires with artificial eyes, who hadn’t got their goggles down quickly enough, had ended up blind. Thanks to her reduced depth perception, though, she had to move her head from side to side so often that it was actually starting to hurt her neck.

‘You know it’s not a mech, right?’ Miska