Snyder cursed. “I can’t believe I miss-ed this. The whole thing shorted out.”
Amanda grabbed the device from Snyder’s hand and threw it across the luxury hotel room. “Thanks to your crap, we lost $200 million.”
“But we wouldn’t have gotten to even $6 million without it.”
Amanda shrieked, “Are you saying this is my fault?”
“I did suggest we stop at $3 million. That’s more then enough for anybody.”
She grabbed him by the shirt collar and tossed him off the bed onto the floor. “You think small, Snyder! A big house. A new luxury car. It all could have been ours if you hadn’t screwed it up.”
She grabbed the lamp off the end table and smacked it in her hands like a billy club.
“What are you doing? Amanda!”
Snyder tried to force himself to his feet. Amanda moved closer with the lamp.
Move, Snyder, move.
“Hold still, Snyder. This won’t hurt—for long.”
Amanda hurled the lamp at Snyder’s skull. He threw himself out of the way.
The lamp shattered not two inches from his left ear.
He breathed heavily. Shards of broken ceramic lay all around him.
Amanda threw herself on top of him. She ripped off her scarf, wrapped it around his neck, and began to pull.
Jirel walked through the casino. In the vast sea of humanity, it could take hours to find Snyder.
“Jirel!”
Cutler turned. A seven foot tall police officer with golden hair approached. Wait, that wasn’t a policeman. He knew the Most High would call in the big guns, but not this big. To go any bigger than Michael, a saint would have to be called in.
Michael said, “Snyder is at Roulette Table G15.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“One more thing. Zorba’s there.”
“Thanks, I see her.”
Jirel walked across the casino to where Zorba sat smiling, with a glass of wine in her hand. “Jirel, you’re just in time. The lady has put everything on 00 and that will turn $6 million into $210 million. That’s called breaking the bank.” Zorba whistled. “And then they’ll get ma-married and he’ll end up in the same place as her previous husbands.”
The gamblers all around them were too busy blowing their rent money to pay any attention to them, thankfully. “The Lord re-buke you. It’s not going to happen.”
“What? Are you going to interfere in human free will?”
Jirel smiled. “I don’t have to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your plan is flawed. Snyder is an imperfect human being and this is the first such device he’s built. The device has a small fault that should short it out, about—now.”
Snyder let out a grunt. “Ow.”
The electronic ball hit 00, but bounced into an adjoining space. The attendant called, “Number One red!”
Zorba’s eyes filled with rage. “God cheated! He hid the flaw from Snyder so it would fail at this point.”
Jirel smiled. “Assuming God plays on your level is the first mistake Hell makes.”
Zorba roared and slipped off to her do-main to pout, unleashing sulfuric fumes be-yond the human range of scent.
Acting Corporal A.L. Snyder stared at the growing pile of chips in front of his girl-friend as put she $5,000 on 00 at roulette.
The wheel spun and landed. The dealer shouted, “Number 17. Black.”
Snyder tugged on Amanda’s arm. “Ex-cuse me, Captain Greywolf. Important mat-ters to discuss.”
Amanda growled, “Not now.”
A burly voice boomed, “Ma’am, I’ll have to ask you to take your chips and leave this table.”
Snyder and Amanda turned to face a seven foot tall cop with golden blond hair. “It’s mighty suspicious for someone to win as much or as often as you have at this table. In order to ensure the games are fair for all the customers, the owners request that you change tables.”
Fair. That’s a laugh. The games are rigged, usually in the house’s favor, but thanks to the device hidden by my wig, I control the outcomes.
“Understood officer.” Amanda piled her winnings into a burlap sack.
They hurried away. Once out of the cop’s earshot, Snyder said, “Amanda, let’s cash out. You’re all caught up. You’re now a quarter million to the good.”
“You know what your problem is? You think small, Snyder. We’re going to break the bank. I’ll split the money with you 50-50. Then we can get married.”
“Get married?” I’m eighteen! I don’t want to even think about marriage yet! “Amanda, I’ve still got more than a year to serve, or I’m going to get strung up in Boise. No way will they let an officer marry an enlisted man.”
“Dread has his price, between five and ten percent of our pot probably. We’ll pay it and get our walking papers. One million to the judge in Boise and half a million to the prosecutor should get you a dismissal. Play my way, and you’ll be out of the Army, a free man, and my husband in three months, guaranteed.”
Snyder gave a half-hearted, “Great.”
But what if I like the Army, and just don’t enjoy the whole “under threat of death” thing?
“How do you want to play it? My gen-eral policy is to kill only in self-defense, but, in this case, I can make an exception. I can take her down from two hundred paces and be gone before anyone is the wiser.”
Jirel leaned back in the passenger seat, away from the aspiring hit man at the wheel of the Coke delivery van. Even cut off from direct communication, the Most High’s writ-ten instructions were clear that was out.
The question remained, though. How was Jirel going to protect his charge from the serial killer young Snyder was dating?
Jirel stared at the casino. The lights men thought glamorous only made his head pound and his stomach nauseous, combined with the filthy stench of every sin known to man. If they could smell themselves as they smelled to him, they’d be unable to bear it. Even the enemy despised the stench their work produced; they just found even more repugnant the notion any soul might smell better than them. “This is advanced warfare that you’re not prepared for.”
“There’s nothing on this earth that BlackJack McGraw isn’t prepared for.”
“Trust me. My people will handle this.”
“Excuse me? Army Intelligence, pres-ent company and Snyder excluded, is a bunch of sociopaths and morons.”
“My people aren’t in Army Intelli-gence.” Nor are they people, at least not as McGraw understands the term.
“Given a prophet directed me to you, I’m gonna believe you and let you do your thing. But get Snyder out of there. Ya hear?”
Jirel nodded. “Thank you for the infor-mation, Mr. McGraw. Now please get the rest of this Coke delivered, then return the truck to the person you stole it from, untie him, apologize, and make restitution.”
“You expect me to finish his route?”
“Mr. McGraw, this little stunt has put him hours behind. His employer is quite un-forgiving and will dock his pay if his route isn’t serviced and quickly.”
“How do you know this?”
Jirel stared at McGraw. It’d been so long since he’d had that much information about anything. For His own purposes, the Most High had been letting him experience the grim uncertainty the Fall had subjected man to. “I know Him who knows.”
He climbed out of the vehicle. “Get going, John Edward McGraw, Junior.”
McGraw sighed. “My back’s already hurting thinking about it. Next time I’ll steal a bakery truck.”
Jirel sat at the writing desk in his quarters. A voice came from the HV window behind him. “Meet me at the Wild Acres Casino in Vegas in forty-five. I’ll be out front in a Coke Delivery van.”
“McGraw? Is that you?”
“Quiet, fool. If you care about Snyder, meet me in forty-five. No questions.”
Jirel stood. “I’m on my way.”
~~~
Jirel ducked into a red Coke van. The burly driver had a beard and mustache.
“I got business we need to take care of,” McGraw said behind his fake whiskers.
“Business?”
“Yeah, with that Greywolf woman. Do you know who she is?”
“She’s fornicating with Snyder.”
McGraw laughed. “Believe me, if that were all, I’d be back on the ranch helping those kids.”
“How do you even know about her?”
“I get a weekly intelligence report on everyone I care about, including Snyder. I started noticing the long hours worked in Emergency Ops and trips to Vegas where he stayed in Greywolf’s hotel room. Next I found her making big gambling wins up and down the strip. Snyder’s better than I thought. Cheating machines built to cheat the customer is a tall order. So I became curious about who this lady is. It’s not pretty.”
Jirel’s nose could tell him that. “What did you find?”
“Her record begins seventeen years ago. At sixteen, she got emancipated and obtained a judge’s order to terminate her parents. She married the judge at seventeen. Six months after the wedding, he had an accident and she had him termed. Next, it was off to West Point on the recommendation of her Congressman. That’s when it started.”
“What?”
McGraw handed Jirel a stack of photographs. Jirel sifted through them; pictures of six young Native American cadets.
“All killed in accidents during her time at the academy.” McGraw pulled out a manila envelope. “Another fifteen in here, including two more she’d married. Dig deep enough, and what do you find? Most of these guys got promoted by her before their demise, in many cases right after some unfortunate accident occurred to the person whose job they took.”
Jirel swallowed. “So, Snyder’s in that casino with a serial killer.”
Snyder stared at the seventeen-year-old private seated across the conference table from him. He slid a report across the desk. “Care to explain this, Mardman?”
Mardman peered down at the Iboard. “Looks like my performance ranking.”
“It looks like garbage. You were playing Helicopter Commando so vigorously, you let this report go unanswered for fifteen minutes.”
“It was a false alarm.”
“What if it wasn’t?”
“But it was.”
Snyder put up his hand. “Any report can be, and your first priority is to be there for the report. And then you only got seventy percent of these right. The only good news is that you wasted the time of our specialists with false reports that kept them from their work rather than letting something slide through the cracks.”
“So? They got plenty of time.”
Snyder slammed his fist down on the table. “But they’re doing your job! Effective immediately, I’m suspending your access to Helicopter Commando. Don’t try hacking it. I’ll find out.”
“Jimenez never did that!”
Jimenez probably didn’t know how. “Jimenez ran our team as a last place team in both quality of our scores and efficiency.”
“What do you expect? We’re on Z-row. Only total losers end up—”
“Keep digging. I’ll see your hide in the infantry, on loan to an African warlord.”
Mardman smoldered. “Are you this nice to everyone on our team?”
“No. Some people need help learning the job. I don’t think you do. I think you’re just lazy and undisciplined.”
“Other than staying Intelligence, what’s in this for me?”
“When opportunities or a better seat comes up, the first thing the captain looks at is performance rankings. Do your job right, and you get off my team.”
On Monday, he sat back at his desk. Dread had pulled the plug on Emergency Ops after screaming like a crazy man about the department’s budget. Snyder stared at the boring screen, trying to think of something to do between false alarms.
Amanda stood at his desk, “Snyder, come with me.”
He stood up. “Yes, Ma’am.”
She led Snyder several cubicles down to the Corporal’s desk. “Say hello to your new cube.”
Snyder blinked. “You’re promoting me to Corporal?”
“Not exactly. Corporal Jimenez got in a car accident this weekend. He won’t be back to work until mid-October. However, he’s still on our budget. We need somebody to run this section, but we can’t afford to pay another corporal. Therefore, I’m designating you as Acting Corporal until the end of the fiscal year.”
“When does the fiscal year end?”
“October 1. By then, there will be an opening for a corporal. Since you’ll do a smashing job, it’ll be hard for Dread to justify not letting you keep it officially.”
Snyder beamed. No way. “Thank you, ma’am.” He whispered, “I could kiss you.”
Amanda gave a gentle shove. “Save it for the weekend.” She stepped back. “Enjoy your first command, private.”
Snyder stared at the desk. A holographic gold nameplate read, “Acting Corporal A. L. Snyder, Senior Information Technician.”
Well he could stand to get rid of the acting, but he had the job for five months and a chance to make it permanent.
Snyder sat on the double bed. From the HV window, Zircon Defoe fired a round of machine guns into the criminals and laughed. “A whole lot cheaper than court.”
Snyder leaned back. Darn right.
Amanda came out of the bathroom. “Hey, let’s hit the casino again.”
Snyder yawned. “Maybe we could just watch HV.”
Amanda stared at the screen. “Oh, you can’t be watching that crap.”
“Hey, it’s real action. You know, the type that we never get to see? Somehow, I think the most excitement some people are going to get is cardiac arrest.”
“If boredom is the price of peace, so be it. Now, give me the remote, I want to watch the Native American Cultural channel.”
Snyder laughed. “Oh come on, I mean I know you’re Native American—”
“So are you!”
Three eighths didn’t sound like a heritage, it sounded like a wrench measurement. Besides he’d never known about it until McGraw told him. Plus he didn’t take after that side. “Those professors are pompous and boring. I’d rather have my eyes ripped out.”
Amanda purred. “I can arrange that.”
Snyder ignored the crazy gut feeling she meant that and laughed. “Good one.”
“Now give me the remote!”
No way. Once she got watching that stuff, there was no stopping. Though, it did beat hitting the craps table. “Oh, come on, you can watch it after the movie, the same boring crap will still be there.”
A firm right cross knocked him off the bed. He held firmly to the remote.
Bad move. She jumped on his chest and slammed her fists into him repeatedly.
This is not happening! I’m a gangbanger turned army Intelligence serviceman. I’ve carried out executions in defending my turf from criminal scum. I am not getting beat up by a chick!
Whatever was not happening made watching a Native American Antiques expert groan on for seven hours seem like a pleasant experience. All he needed to do was to release the remote.
His hand wouldn’t cooperate. He could say he gave, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. She ripped the remote from his hands and sat down on the bed.
A warm river of blood trickled down his cheek. She just sat there. How had this happened? How could he have gone so soft? He hadn’t dodged the noose by joining the knitting corps; he was a trained soldier. He should have put up a fight. He should have—something.
Kinda like I thought Donovan the Martial Arts Master shouldn’t have taken repeated beatings from his sensei lying down even after he got shipped out to African warlords for putting the old Steward’s arm in a cast.
That interview had revealed a side of his hero that he would rather have not ever seen, but the stupid media forced it into the light of day by griping about the Steward’s role in toppling his corrupt predecessor.
Now he knew just how embarrassing coming out as a child abuse victim must’ve been for the Steward. Snyder would much rather hang than anyone find out about this.
Amanda’s eyes remained fixed on the TV. “Hey Snyder, take a look. This is from the eleventh century.”
Snyder leaned up and bit off a groan.
Amanda glanced over and laughed. “Oh, looks like I got a little carried away. You’ve got to be careful, Snyder. I’ve got a bit of a temper.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
She paused the HV with the remote. “That looks nasty, let’s go to the bathroom and clean it up. We’ll apply healing balm when we get back to base. After we clean you up, we can watch the rest of the film.”
In a sultry voice, she added, “And then afterwards, we can have some fun.”
The cleaning up seemed more for her benefit, and there wasn’t any compassion in her eyes. But given where he’d landed a few minutes before, he wasn’t going to argue. Even if he’d been minded to try and get out of the relationship, that wasn’t an option, unless he’d rather die than be in it.
Jirel shoved away the glass Zorba had extended to him. The best that this earth had to offer was undrinkable compared to what they had tasted. “How can you drink that?”
Zorba rolled her eyes. “Your loving God doesn’t serve Martinis in Hell.”
A grotesque mockery of a smile crossed her face. “So what did you think of my handiwork? Your protégé just robbed a casino of more than $60,000. All that work you put into him and look what he does.”
Jirel stared around the casino. The odor of thousands of sins assaulted his nostrils. The neon lights threatened a headache rather than dazzling. The Spirit had brought him here. Last time this happened, Snyder had been risking his life attempting to break out of boot camp. This time? Gambling his life on abusing his God-given gifts for a woman without natural affection.
Jirel turned to meet the true enemy’s gaze. “You’ll not win in the end. You gloat over every temporary victory, never seeing your final ruination. Train the child in the way he should go, and when he is older, he won’t depart.”
Zorba cackled. “He’s eighteen and just robbed the casino.”
“Some children take longer to grow up than others.”
“And some won’t get the chance.”
Jirel arched his eyebrow. “What are you going to do?”
She sent him another satanic smile. “Nothing at all, sweet thing.”
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