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Show Acting Alone Page ^ Cicerone had hoped that, being a Marine traveled halfway across the world, a witness to revolutions, and a former captive of self-indulged hellraising socialistic vermin like Sammy himself, the sergeant would have enough sense to do Nimrod's work for him, to hold the line he'd established in the first instance when he'd dumped the obese parasite out among the livestock feces in the unpaved Nebraskan street. But the phonetap had proved differently. That low-grade moron Spikewell (God rest his soul) had readmitted Sammy into the Wamsutter household, and the dossier had been required after all. Even the United States Marine Corps must be scraping the bottom of the demographic barrel these days, just like the other branches of the draft-deprived armed services. In Elder Cicerone's day the Gyrenes had been the true elite - another sad commentary on current affairs. The Elder had known before Sammy - and even before dimwitted Spikewell, in all likelihood - that the hostage boy was going to invite him back to Kiev. Electronic surveillance had seen to that. It is good to have as many "bug people" as possible lounging around in ersatz phone company vans and milk trucks and Bookmobiles: it' s good to keep them bored so that when a "real" situation starts to develop, or to "come down" (to use their terminology which they borrowed, as so much of today's slang and jargon is borrowed, from black slums and penitentiaries), they'll get all over-eager and will engage in downright supererogation, keeping the bugs alive in homes of secondary importance, even after the action has apparently left the inhabitants of those homes behind - even after the subject has left the tiny agricultural community seemingly never to return, his face bleeding and, more importantly in romantic Sammy's case, his little underage semen receptacle staying behind. |