Read Online Semper Mars by Ian Douglas - Free Book Online Page B

know, Sergeant.”
    “Yeah, but Peregrines. I mean, are they fighting their way through Mexican airspace, or what?”
    “I guess we’ll find out when they get here, won’t we?”
    “If they get here,” Larabee put in.
    Warhurst chuckled. “We’re talking TR-5s, Sergeant. Probably with Valkyries on CAP. They’ll get here. I don’t think the whole Mexican Air Force has anything more modern than a couple dozen old F/A-22s.
    “In any case, Major Bainbridge wants you men to be on your toes. Those Peregrines’ ETA is in another twenty minutes or so… and when they set down, the crowd could get a bit… eager.”
    “We’ll be ready, sir.” Bledsoe slapped the side of his ATAR for emphasis, a sharp crack of palm on plastic.
    “I know you will. Carry on, Marines.” He turned and disappeared into the Residence. “Hey, Bled. Is it true what they say about that guy?”
    “About him bein’ the commandant’s son? Sure is. I got the straight shit from Dolchik in Personnel.”
    “I’ll be damned. He’s not a bad sort, for the son of God.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you. I’d rather have him at my back in a firefight than some of these new-Corps pukes.”
    “Roger that.” They listened for several minutes more to the speech barking from the speakers outside the embassy walls. A final pronouncement sent the crowd wild, cheering and screaming and swearing and shouting, until Bledsoe thought they must be planning to knock down the walls by sheer volume alone. Another volley of garbage hurtled over the fence, bouncing and scattering across the lawn beneath one of the compound’s spreading cypress trees but coming nowhere near the two Marines and their sandbag-barricaded post.
    Bledsoe slung his rifle—with the crisis on, they were not required to remain rigidly at attention, soldiers on parade, as they would have been otherwise—and pulled his PAD out of the thigh pocket in his fatigue pants. When he touched the wake-up key, a keyboard and a display screen winked on, and he began tapping at the unyielding flat surface.
    “Whatcha doin’?” Larabee asked.
    “Linking in to the security net,” Bledsoe replied. Several perimeter camera views were available over the general embassy net. “Ah. Here we go.”
    His PAD’s display screen flickered from the logo of the embassy’s local server to a low-res, real-time image shot from one of the small security cameras perched atop the compound wall. The scene looked out across the Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s Great White Way, a broad and skyscraper-lined boulevard that was now smothered in a seething, shifting mass of humanity. A short distance up the road, El Angel stood gracefully on her pedestal, a towering monument to Mexican independence; a dozen men had swarmed up her base to a vantage point well above the heads of the crowd. Beyond, the elegant but aging facade of the Maria Isabel Sheraton was nearly lost behind the surging mob.
    Several rocks clattered off the embassy gate.
    “Get a load of this,” Bledsoe said, handing the PAD to Larabee. He pointed to the display. The security camera had clearly picked up a number of Mexican soldiers—in full battle gear—gathered in a small group in front of the Sheraton Hotel.
    “Are they watching the mob?” Larabee wanted to know. “Or getting ready to join in?”
    “Damfino,” Bledsoe replied. “Maybe they don’t know either. They might be there just to make sure the rocks don’t get thrown at Mexican property.”
    “Yeah, but if a few gringos get dinged up, no big deal, right?”
    Bledsoe set the PAD on top of the sandbag barricade and unslung his assault rifle. He didn’t like the looks of that crowd—too many tough-looking and angry young men, and no women or children visible at all. If this was really a spontaneous demonstration, like the local sources had been saying, he would have expected to see a more broadly distributed mix representing the local demographics.
    Not something that looked more like