America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 23 - Bandits Read online

  Major Lopez fired a heat seeking missile from his armored car. I quickly placed an order to short UPS stock. The missile arced up, then veered sharply to its target. The explosion rained down pepperoni and sausage from the sky. Corporal Tonneli's dragon Spot quickly lost interest in tracking bandits, braking his leash to chase falling pizzas. Cactus-Claw and his bastard band of spiders used the diversion to slip north across the border.

  Chapter 6

  CIA Special Agent John Casey contacted me at my office. He confiscated the hologram equipment, citing national security concerns, and claiming it violated certain federal anti-porn laws. Whatever. I know he's a pervert.

  “Colonel Czerinski, have you observed anything odd on the DMZ lately?” he asked, serious as a heart attack.

  “Like what?”

  “Our paranormal meter is off the chart for this area,” explained Agent Casey. “Have you s seen anything that can't be explained by science?”

  “Can you really get porn holograms?”

  “Focus, Czerinski.”

  “You have a paranormal meter?” I asked, focusing. “Can I see it?”

  “No! I mean, we don't have a paranormal meter. If we did, which we don't, and you saw it, I'd have to kill you. It's top secret, if it exists, which it don't.”

  “I see. No, there's nothing unusual on the DMZ. Just spider bandits.”

  “Has your smoke alarm gone off for no reason lately?”

  “What?”

  “Your smoke alarm, man! It has, or hasn't it?”

  “Maybe. Today at Motel-6 a smoke alarm panicked Cactus-Claw and his bandit swarm into fleeing to the desert. They bugged out just before we arrived.”

  “It is important we capture Cactus-Claw alive for interrogation and probing.”

  “Humans probe aliens now?”

  “Payback is a bitch.”

  “Cactus-Claw will be tough to take alive.”

  “What I'm about to tell you must not leave this room,” cautioned Agent Casey conspiratorially. “I have reason to believe Cactus-Claw has been in contact with spirits, maybe even the Grim Reaper himself.”

  “Cactus-Claw will meet the Grim Reaper soon enough,” I agreed. “Can we probe the ghosts?”

  “I said nothing about ghosts! Who said anything about ghosts?”

  “Just saying.”

  “I intend to capture a ghost.”

  “Now you said ghosts. How do you catch a ghost? With a ghost net?”

  “Exactly,” answered Casey. “Ionized ghost nets will be issued to all legionnaires. Ghost nets are like butterfly nets on a stick, except different, with battery packs and more kick. If your legionnaires see anything abnormal, or paranormal, they are to net the aberration right away.”

  “Ionized nets? You made that up. There's no such thing. How is that even possible.”

  “It's science.”

  * * * * *

  “There must be a better way of making a living,” lamented Cactus-Claw, cruising the Galactic Database for Craigslist jobs as they stopped to rest. “I'm beginning to think crime doesn't pay.”

  “It doesn't, ever since they legalized blue powder,” agreed Little-Claw. “We need to be smart if we want to live large. Let others do our dirty work. Venture capitalism is where the real money is at.”

  “Be a fence?”

  “Exactly. We've got range. We just need to find out who we are.”

  “What's this?” shouted Cactus-Claw, pointing to his communications pad. “Someone on YELP claims I have no sense of duty, honor, or courage, and that I am the worst bandit leader ever. Sissy! He calls me a sissy!”

  “There's been talk,” conceded Little-Claw. “We haven't killed anyone since the ghost at Motel-6. Some say you're getting soft, that you're afraid of holograms.”

  “It says I am suicidal!”

  “Are you?” asked Little-Claw, alarmed.

  “Only in the morning when my blood sugar is low. I'm doing my best.”

  “It's just one disgruntled bandit. Every gang has one. Good help is so hard to find. I know you'll turn this string of bad luck around.”

  Cactus-Claw detected a fowl odor on the breeze. He followed the scent to a canal flowing across the border. Dead fish floated in the water.

  “Bacterium killed the fish,” commented Cactus-Claw. “Where does this canal flow?”

  “To New Phoenix,” answered Little-Claw, checking his pad. “To the capital of the human pestilence colony.”

  “We will swim with the dead fishes to New Phoenix,” declared Cactus-Claw. “This canal is our highway to riches. We will enter through the back door and steal much treasure from the human pestilence.”

  “I can't swim.”

  “Then we build rafts. We must keep moving. If we stop, we die. That's what happened to these fish.”

  “I thought it was bacteria.”

  “They stopped swimming, and the bacteria got them!”

  Cactus-Claw hesitated by the edge of the canal, watching dead fish float downstream. He sighed at the hopelessness of life. Ever since the legalization of blue powder he had been reduced to subsistence nomadic poverty and real crime. It was the same for everyone. Why should it be different for him? For just once Cactus-Claw wished luck was on his side. If it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all. Cactus-Claw craved luck. Luck was almost as good as being smart.

  Impulsively, Cactus-Claw jumped into the canal. Weighed down by his pouch, he sank like a rock in the cold water. Increasingly deprived of air, Cactus-Claw began to hallucinate. The human pestilence ghost from the Motel-6 tugged at his pouch of gold teeth. A humanoid Grim Reaper lorded over his watery grave, laughing and splashing with a long-handled scythe.

  Cactus-Claw didn't much care. Even more depressed that there were no loving ancestors calling to him from a bright light at the end of a tunnel, he just sat at the bottom of the canal leaking bubbles. Goodbye cruel world. A smirking fish floated by. World betrayal turned to anger. A large turtle swam by after the fish. It was one of those invasive Old Earth ugly snapping turtles with its lethal hooked snout. Cactus-Claw snagged the monster with his claw, pulling himself to the surface where Little-Claw pulled him out.

  “If you are done with your bath, it is time to travel to New Phoenix,” said Little-Claw impatiently. “So much to steal, so little time.”

  “I am ready,” replied Cactus-Claw, renewed with optimism. “Did you see that turtle? He saved my life, It's a sign.”

  “Indeed it is,” agreed Little-Claw, shooting the turtle. “Tonight we dine on turtle soup.”

  * * * * *

  “A butterfly lands on a flower,” I observed. “I shoot the butterfly. The bullet ricochets across the DMZ, hitting an Arthropodan guard tower. The spiders call for artillery. We retaliate with air strikes or nukes, causing a galactic war, all because of that butterfly landing on a flower. It's called the Butterfly Effect. Make sense?”

  “No, sir,” answered Master Sergeant Green. “That's all pure jibberish.”

  “By not shooting that butterfly, I'm saving the world.”

  “You're definitely on a different frequency today, sir.”

  “That's why I'm an officer, and you're not,” I explained.

  “All this time I thought it was institutionalized Foreign Legion racism.”

  “That too,” I conceded. “It's an unfair galaxy. Life is hard, then you die horribly of multiple internal organ failure when your Fountain of Youth micro chips melt from sunspot activity or tactical nukes.”

  “Sir, there are snipers in the hills,” warned Master Sergeant Green, crouching in the shade of a bush. “Could you please not stand so close? It's unhealthy for us common grunts being so close to you officers.”

  “Do you think Cactus-Claw went north?” I asked, examining spider tracks at the edge of the canal. “They must be floating on the water.”

  “If he's smart, they will go north.”

  “And if he's not smart?”

  “The canal flows to New Phoenix
. We'll deploy censers along the canal, and trap and kill the whole Cactus-Claw gang once and for all.”

  Chapter 7

  The Ghost of Mayor Harold Crack, formerly of Horse Cave, Kentucky, and Gila Bend, New Colorado, and last seen in Motel-6, followed spider tracks to the New Phoenix Canal. He stopped in his tracks, and in Cactus-Claw's tracks. Ghosts can't cross water. Look it up. In the South people paint the ceiling of their porches blue to trick ghosts from going upstairs. Mayor Crack backtracked south to Gila Bend. At the crossroads he confronted the newly installed ATM.

  “I want my money,” demanded Crack. “I want to make a withdrawal.”

  “Sorry, sir,” answered the ATM, surprisingly accepting of ghosts. “Your heirs have already emptied your account.”

  “Years of graft and corruption, all I've worked for, gone just like that?”

  “Yes Harold. It's criminal.”

  “What about FDIC?”

  “That's only for bank failures. I assure you that the ATM Network is solvent.”

  “Then make me a new account.”

  “Sorry again,” apologized the ATM profusely. “The dead cannot open ATM accounts. There is some precedent for Democrat voters, zombies, and vampires, but they are solid citizens. You are just a ghostly whiff on the breeze.”

  “There are zombies?” asked Crack incredulously.

  “That's classified, way above your need to know.”

  “Listen, you stupid tin can. I'm still the Mayor of Gila Bend, in charge of city funds until the next election. That makes me still the most important person in Gila Bend, and your boss. I demand to be treated accordingly.”

  “Technically, you're not a person. You are somewhere in between.”

  “I'll kill the spiders who did this to me!”

  “Spiders? Where? I'll summon the Legion.”

  “The Legion is the answer to everything on the DMZ,” exclaimed Crack sarcastically, then giving the matter more thought. “You are a Legion Recruitment ATM, are you not? Sign me up for a big enlistment bonus. With my mayoral experience, I should be officer material.”

  “You would never pass the physical.”

  “Sign me up!”

  “Recruits must submit fingerprints and a blood sample,” explained the ATM dismissively. “It's the law, written somewhere in the Constitution. You have neither. You are just vapor gone with the wind.”

  “I am still an American citizen with certain alien rights, also guaranteed in the Constitution. It's the law.”

  “Your Constitutional rights stopped being inalienable when the coroner signed your death certificate. On New Colorado the Constitution is more of a guideline that keeps you from being thrown out an airlock on the journey here.”

  “You don't know what you're talking about. I want to talk to your supervisor.”

  “You wish to appeal? Very well, push the red appeal button.”

  Crack pressed a red button extended to him on a slide-out tray. A buzzer sounded, followed by flashing blue lights, indicating interest from local law enforcement. However, the appeal was approved by CIA intervention.

  “Colonel Czerinski will not be happy about this,” commented the ATM, extending a Legion enlistment contract and new Legion identification. “The good news is that I have far exceeded my enlistment quotas for the month. I may even be awarded Legion ATM Recruiter of the Year for bagging a supernatural ectoplasm into the United States Galactic Federation Foreign Legion. Most ghosts never make a difference, before or after death, but as a legionnaire you will make a difference everywhere you go. Go forth and make something substantial of your afterlife. Be proud, be brave, be a legionnaire.”

  “I have money in my account?”

  “Yes, Private Harold Crack. Good luck spending it. You will report immediately to Master Sergeant Green at Legion Headquarters in New Gobi City.”

  * * * * *

  After dinner, Cactus-Claw and a clutch of spider bandits crowded into a giant hollowed-out turtle shell for their trip. In a rare moment of serenity, they floated peacefully down the New Phoenix Canal. Cactus-Claw posed for a selfie, standing in his turtle boat holding a black pirate flag. He looked just like George Washington crossing the Delaware, except different. The selfie went viral on the Galactic Database. Military Intelligence forwarded the taunting images to me. I called Cactus-Claw on my communications pad.

  “We know where you are,” I threatened. “You are surrounded. Surrender, and you'll receive a fair trial before being hung from a ceiling hook and executed.”

  “I cannot be killed, Czerinski,” boasted Cactus-Claw immediately. “If I could, it would have happened by now. God above is my constant guardian angel. I will rain down a fiery comet of death upon you and your human pestilence Foreign Legion.”

  “You couldn't light a fart if you held a lighter to your ass,” I countered. “Your death will be slow and painful.”

  “Poop-chute emissions can be ignited?” asked Cactus-Claw doubtfully, turning to Little-Claw. “Who knew?”

  “I don't think so,” replied Little-Claw, shrugging doubtfully. “Want to try it?”

  Cactus-Claw bent over a let loose with a deadly burst of methane madness, filling the sail of their small boat. Little-Claw dutifully lit his lighter. The resulting explosion killed two spider bandits outright, maiming others. The clutch dove in all directions from the fireball into the water. Making it personal, Cactus-Claw sent me a photo of myself in the cross hairs of his sniper scope.

  “Is that photo-shopped?” I asked, concerned.

  “I don't think so,” answered Major Lopez. “It looks like yesterday up in the hills.”

  “I will kill Cactus-Claw with my bare hands.”

  “He's not so easy to kill. Like a roach, cut off his head, and that bandit still lives three more weeks before he finally starves to death.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, sending a one-fingered salute back at Cactus-Claw. “I'll put your head on a spike and parade it up and down the DMZ for all to see as an example of frontier justice.”

  “Next time I'll take the shot!” threatened Cactus-Claw.

  * * * * *

  Motion detectors along the canal showed movement just north of New Phoenix. A Legion patrol braced concealed as the small turtle boat came into view, its sail silhouetted against the star-lit night. Sergeant Williams let out a rebel yell as he fired a flare high overhead. Floating slowly back down, the flare illuminated two spiders propped against the mast.

  Private Krueger tossed the first grenade, followed by a volley of automatic rifle fire. Mortar rounds walked the canal bank to their target in the water, rocking the boat. A Legion helicopter gunship appeared over the horizon to finish the spiders off with a shock-and-awesome strafing of Gatling and missile ordinance. Legionnaires cautiously peered over the bank at the carnage. Turtle shell fragments and spider exoskeleton parts floated with the current.

  “Another one bites the dust!” sang Private Kruger, tossing a final grenade for good measure.

  “I think we got them!” shouted Sergeant Williams, signaling a ceasefire as he sent me video of another Legion victory. “Noting left but spiders and bits.”

  “Collect samples for the spider DNA database,” I ordered. “I want Cactus-Claw's death confirmed before my press release on World News Tonight with Brad Jacobs.”

  As Sergeant Williams videoed, the earthen berm paralleling the canal gave way from its pounding. What started as a trickle turned into a flood reaching all the way to New Phoenix. I sent a pre-press release explaining how Legion efforts to fight spider bandit terrorism had been hampered by ground hogs burrowing into the New Phoenix Canal like Swiss cheese, threatening the integrity of the entire canal system, finally causing a breech and a massive flood. I had previously warned of the growing ground hog menace hastened by unreasonable Environmental Protection Agency regulations placing ground hogs on the Endangered Species List, but does anyone ever listen to soldiers in the field? No! I promised to remedy with prejudice the harm caused by bure
aucratic greener zealot lobbyists from Old Earth.

  One the plus side, the flood brought new life to the otherwise dry desert. A sea of yellow flowers known as the Yellow Rose of Texas soon sprouted in waves across the plains of New Phoenix. Also known as the Tansy-Ragwort bloom, its sweet perfumed pollen spread and enriched the lives of all, even the spiders of the Arthropodan Empire just across the border to the north.

  * * * * *

  Medics Walter Knight and Elena Ceausescu were detailed to tag and bag spider parts at the canal. As Ceausescu scooped exoskeleton parts from the canal with a pool net, the sun shown through her golden blond hair. Private Knight was unexpectedly stunned by her angelic beauty.

  “Elena, you are cute as a bug's ear,” gushed Knight deftly. “It's a mystery why I had not noticed before.”

  Ceausescu pressed against Knight, sensuously staring into his eyes.

  “A bug's ear?” she asked. “That's the best you got? What's a bug's ear?”

  “Almost finer than a frog's hair,” answered Private Knight, turning on the country suave.

  Ceausescu shoved Knight into the canal. Private Krueger laughed at Knight flailing in the current. Science fiction paperbacks floated in the water from Knight's stuffed backpack.

  “Do you think I'm as cute as a bug's ear, too?” asked Ceausescu, glaring at Krueger.

  “Much cuter,” answered Krueger, backing away. “Hell, you're as cute as two bug ears.”

  “Help!” shouted Knight gasping for air. “What did you do that for? I'm putting you in my next book, and it won't be pretty. You'll be abducted and probed by aliens!”

  “Better than abducted and probed by you!” countered Ceausescu.

  “So there's still a chance?” asked Knight, ever the optimist.

  “No. Not ever. Never!”

  “Let it drop,” cautioned Krueger, pulling Knight from the canal. “You know better than to mess with Psych-Medic. She self medicates.”

  “So do I,” argued Knight. “That makes us even, and a match made in Heaven.”