“Which means that we not only have to stop them from preventingCaesar’s assassination,” added Delaney, “we’ve got to make sure we find everysingle one of them. And kill them all.”
“You’ll need to do much more than that,” said Darkness. “Keepin mind that they’re in a position to affect the lives of at least twopivotal figures in this scenario. Any well planned mission has both a primary anda secondary objective.”
“Cleopatra,” Andre said.
“Precisely. If they fail in their objective to preventCaesar’s murder, they can still affect the course of history by killing Cleopatra.Or Marc Antony. for that matter. Or even Octavian. who will become CaesarAugustus.”
“Hell. I knew I was going to hate this mission,” saidDelaney.
“We can have Antony and Octavian covered.” Lucas said, aworried look on his face, “but they’ve already got Cleopatra.”
“Which is why I’ll have to kidnap her.” said Darkness.
10
Capt. Zeke Hollister of the Special Operations Group sat ona couch in his room at Cleopatra’s house, scowling and smoking a cigar. He wasscowling at the men standing before him, dressed in white cotton tunics andsandals. They were all standing at attention, their eyes firmly fixed on apoint somewhere above his head.
“At ease “ said Hollister in a voice that was quiet, yetlaced with barely suppressed fury.
The men assumed a position of parade rest, their eyes stillfocused on a point somewhere above him. They did not look at all at ease.
Hollister looked up at his platoon sergeant. “All right,Maselli,” he said, around his cigar, “what the hell went wrong’?”
Sgt. Robert Maselli’s jaw muscles tightened for a moment beforehe replied. “We got hit, sir.”
“I know you got hit. God damn it, what I want to know ishow? And by whom?”
Maselli swallowed nervously. “We don’t know, sir.”
Hollister stared at him for a long moment. He took a deepbreath and let it out slowly in an effort to control his temper.”Tell me whathappened.”
“We took three squads.” Maselli said. “Petrone led thefirst. Morton the second. I took the third. I figured we had plenty of time toconduct the operation. I knew we had at least a couple of hours once they wentinto the bedroom and I figured half an hour at most would be enough, plenty oftime to get the A team back before Caesar was ready to leave.”
Their platoon was divided into three squads-A team. B team.and C team. The A team was Caesar’s bodyguard. with Sgt. Morton in charge. Bteam, under Cpl. Petrone, remained stationed at the house with Hollister. Cteam. under Maselli, was recon and surveillance.
“It was going to be a fast operation,” Maselli continued. “hitand run and get out quick. Petrone led the detachment from B team againstSeptimus and the others. They set up an ambush on a quiet side street a shortdistance from their baseops. Morton led the group from A team against thatSabinus character and I went in with four men from C team to get Marcian. Iknow the idea was to take him alive for interrogation. but he was already deadwhen we got there.”
“Dead how?”
“Shot through the heart with a laser.” said Maselli. “Andthere’s one more thing. A guy was watching his house.”
“What guy’?”
“I don’t know, sir. I never saw him before. He was takinggood cover and we almost didn’t spot him. We took a risk and clocked straightin from the coordinates I picked up when we were at that orgy Marcian had acouple of weeks back. We found him dead in his room, with the door locked fromthe inside.”
“Suicide?”
“No chance,” Maselli said. “Whoever killed him had to haveclocked out.”
Hollister frowned. It wasn’t making any sense. “Go on.”
“We decided not to do anything about the guy keeping Marcian’splace under surveillance. Apparently, he didn’t know Marcian was already dead.so I doubt he was involved. For all we know, maybe he was just a burglar.casing the damn place.”
“You should have taken him.” said Hollister.
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I made the wrong decision. It’sjust that finding Marcian dead really threw me. It simply didn’t make sense andI didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.”
“All right.” said Hollister. chewing on his cigar. “What thehell happened with the other two assault teams?”