Project - 16 (6 page)

“
Yes, her name was Rebecca,” I replied. “She had I.D on her. I
wrapped her up and took her to the 'Rover, then proceeded to track
the others. When I was sure they were going to the City I drove on
as far as I could and found their trail on the outskirts. I tracked
them into the centre but it was clear that they were being pursued.
There was wild dog spoor everywhere and I quickly came upon the
remains of the first two lads. From there I was able to track the
third who'd retreated inside a train station but had managed to let
the pack in after him. He was dead when I got there.”

“
Can you confirm that? I'm not being a dick, Miller, but I
have to go back to the families with something concrete. You know
the drill.”

“
I was able to look inside. The dogs had got him but they were
trapped behind the shutters with him.”

“
That's a run of bad luck they had out there,” said the
Colonel.

“
That wasn't luck,” said the soldier. “They were badly
prepared and poorly trained.”

“
True enough,” he replied. “Miller, I want you to meet Claudia
Riley, retired US Ranger.” She extended her hand to me and we
shook. She had a warm, firm grip. “She's flown over from the States
and could do with your help but before all that, I suppose I should
come clean with you...”

“
You're leaving,” I said. “I heard.”

“
I'm afraid so. How aware are you of what's been going on for
the last few years?”

“
What, just here or on a larger scale?” I asked, not really
understanding the question. I made a point of avoiding the news if
I could.

“
I'm talking across the world, Miller, and judging by your
response you know fuck and all about the political situation in
this world.”

“
I had a rough idea that when the Russians marched on Paris
they would start looking this way. Why, what's your angle? Are you
afraid they'll invade? They pretty much levelled the place so their
only interest must surely be to grab some land before...” I held my
tongue. It was obvious what the next Russian move would be and I
guess that's why I was starting to be a little concerned that
America was so eager to just let them take it.

“
It's not the Ruskies the brass are afraid of,” he said like
he'd read my mind. “It's what's going on within its own borders
that bothers them. There's a lot of talk about revolution on the
streets of the major US cities, of a major government overthrow
that we can't just put down to crackpots any more. The President is
worried. Any kind of trouble he might have to take action against
will cost him votes in the upcoming election. He doesn't want to be
ejected because deep down he believes he's the only one capable of
getting the States through the coming NSU storm.”

“
You think they have any control in the US?”

“
Oh yeah, plenty!” cried the Colonel. “They've been
engineering this recent trouble for decades.”

“
Trouble?” I asked.

“
Riots, burnings, all part of the uneasiness of the masses.
They see the big bad NSU wolf huffing and puffing and they're
afraid their house of red, white and blue bricks is about to fall
down. They see England and fear what New York would look like with
most people dead and gone. L.A. San Francisco. Even
Vegas.”

“
So they're calling back their troops,” I said.

“
Yeah, they are. Home land defence they're calling it. I'd
call it drastic measures.”

“
When do you ship out?” I asked.

“
The end of the week. I'm overseeing the last of the equipment
lifts, then the personnel. It'll mean you'll be on your own for a
while and there won't be any supplies coming any time soon. We'll
leave you what we can including the items you asked for last
time.”

“
Thanks,” I said with little enthusiasm. I was used to being
alone but somehow this was different in a bad way. It meant the
loss of my only support, my only contact with other humans. Was I
bothered? I hadn't thought I would be until now. Maybe I'd been
wrong.

“
It's a shit-sandwich,” said the Colonel, returning to the
window and lifting a slat with his finger. “And even you have to
take a bite. Unless of course you'd prefer to fly out of here with
us.”

“
I'd considered it,” I said. “But I'm not sure I could. What
would there be for me in the States?”

“
Your knowledge, your skill, it's teachable and maybe in the
coming months it might make the difference to a lot of people
who'll need to wise up and survive if things get really ugly.” From
the way he said it I could see his expression despite the fact that
I couldn't see his face. It was the beginning of the end for his
own people and he knew it. He was looking out of the window at
desolate England, the old 'Great Britain' and he was seeing New
York.

“
I'll give it some thought,” I said, finishing my coffee and
pouring another.

“
You can think about it while you help Riley here,” he said
and spun in his seat to gesture to the soldier who nodded and
turned to face me, those eyes tearing through me like sunbeams in
the dark. She reached into a canvass bag at her feet and withdrew a
manilla folder and passed it to me. Out fingers touched as the file
was exchanged.

“
If you're willing, I could do with your help, Miller. The
folder you have there is of my nephew, Alex DuPont, a Marine of
some 6 years serving aboard the aircraft carrier, the
USS
Dauntless,
in the Gulf. The story goes that Alex was a model
Marine who was average in the class room but phenomenal on the
training circuit. His marksmanship, his drills, the whole package
was near perfect and if it hadn't been for the poor grades he'd
have easily been promoted.”

I was skim-reading the file as she spoke. “It says here he
was given a medical discharge? Cause isn't listed.”

“
Training exercise,” muttered the Colonel. The soldier
laughed.

“
Okay, what was it? I asked.

“
Severe depression. It's not listed because it wasn't properly
identified until he went AWOL. Then the pieces of the puzzle about
his odd behaviour fitted into place,” said Riley in her lilting
accent.

“
How did he manage to go AWOL on an aircraft
carrier?”

“
He was on shore leave when he stole a taxi and fled north. He
wasn't noticed missing until that evening but by then he'd melted
into the sand. It was the kind of thing he was trained to do, to
disappear if he needed to, escape and evade, that sort of
thing.”

“
You think he's here?” I said and the Colonel slow-clapped
me.

“
I told you he was quick,” he said to Riley.

“
I have a pretty good idea he is,” she replied, doing her best
to ignore the Colonel's chuckling. “I picked up a signal on the way
over here, not much of one but a fragment of coded signal meant for
someone else.”

“
Like who?”

Riley shrugged. “Who knows? We stamp on one faction and 10
more pop up a week later. It was DuPont all right, I could tell
from his sloppy Morse code.”

“
And you want to track him down?” I said.

“
Yes,” she replied.

“
Why?”

“
Because I owe my sister one and I spent half my life with
that boy. I was as proud as she was the moment I saw him in his
dress uniform the day he passed out. I felt like I'd contributed to
it somehow, that some of the running and the drills we'd practised
before hand had finally paid off.”

“
Did you keep in touch after he finished basic?”

“
On and off as soldiers with families do. Most of it came
through my sister - we used to call each other once a week without
fail. She works in D.C, some business exec or something. She would
tell me a little about what he was up to but I had to warn her not
to say too much over the phone especially after I'd
retired.”

“
So she was the one who told you about him going AWOL?” I
asked.

“
Yeah. I was in Africa at the time on contract. I flew home to
try and help. That was when we found the letters.”

“
Letters? Not email or text?”

“
Yeah, that's why they stood out to us. When I arrived in
Illinois I asked if I could search his room straight away to see if
he'd left a note or if there was some trail I could follow. We went
through it like a dose of salts and turned up nothing but a stack
of letters hidden in his old kit bag.” She went into her bag again
and produced the letters in a zip-loc bag, handed them to me and
got up to pour herself another coffee. I took one out and had a
look at it.

“
Home-made paper and ink,” I said, turning it over in my
hands. I lifted it to my nose and smelled the raw quality it had.
“Recycled. You're thinking the only reason to do that would be if
you had no access to fresh paper or a computer or a phone. Someone
living here where there are none of those things.”

“
Exactly.”

“
How did she post them then?”

“
She?” asked Riley. She'd rooted round in the cupboards and
found a pack of biscuits. The Colonel was still staring out of the
window and hadn't noticed. She offered me the packet after taking
three for herself. I took four.

“
It's a woman's handwriting. It's a personal letter.
Emotional. Pleading. That's why he ran. But how did she send
them?”

“
We think she had help,” said the Colonel suddenly. “Someone
on this base had been sending the letters for her under the guise
of our own HR dispatches. They would have gone unnoticed for
years.”

“
Any paper trail?” I asked.

“
None. We don't keep track other than numbers. Special
messages are sent via courier and are signed for but I doubt our
guy would have took that risk. No, he probably put them in the bag
before it was loaded onto the plane and they simply flew through
the system unnoticed. The Dauntless receives thousands of
hard-copies, orders, schematics and the like, so it could easily
have slipped through the net.”

“
Have you tried to find this guy?” I asked.

“
We did, but that was just before we realised the last letter
was nearly a year old. In that time we've rotated the men twice.
The chances of finding him now would be slim and unless he were to
confess it all to us we'd have nothing to pin on him.”

“
So DuPont had to have access to the incoming mail at his end
in order for this to work. Surely all personal letters would have
been sent via email?” I said.

“
Yes and as it turns out Alex had weeks of time logged sorting
dispatches into their relevant files,” said Riley.

“
How did he wangle that job if he was a Marine?” She shrugged.
“So we're looking at something that has been planned, prepared for
and has now been executed. But why? To elope?”

“
You may need to read all of the letters for it to make
sense,” she said. “But the brief side of the story is that they
think they've found something here, buried in an underground bunker
this woman found.”

“
Something?”

“
Not treasure or loot but something else. Perhaps you should
read the letters, it'll make more sense to you.”

She stood and drained the last of her cup before replacing it
on the table with the clean ones. Then the Colonel rose to his feet
and I did the same. Military life was catching.

“
Miller, there are digs you can use tonight if you want. Riley
is staying on-base too, but in the morning I hope you can begin to
help her hunt this boy down. If he has found something we need to
know before the NSU get word of it - and they will, mark my
words.”

“
Why do you think the NSU would be interested?” I
asked.

“
Why wouldn't they be?” he replied, laughing.

“
I'll stop over,” I said. “It'll give me a chance to work out
the best way of finding him. What do you intend to do once you've
got him back?” I asked.

“
He'll face a court martial for being AWOL, maybe do a little
bit of time. I can't predict what'll happen to be honest,” said the
Colonel. “We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Riley saluted the old man and he smiled, returning the kind
gesture. Then we both left the stuffy cabin and went out into the
cool fresh air of a British winter.

“
Why don't we get some chow?” said Riley as we crossed the
busy parade ground. She had a long stride that made me increase my
pace a little. She also had the usual walk of a soldier - eyes
front, regimental arm swings and a keen awareness of what was going
on around her. I hung back a little and let her take the lead
mainly because in all my time coming backwards and forwards from
this base I'd never eaten here and I didn't know where to
go.

“
Sure,” I replied and avoided looking at the curve of her
well-fitted combats.

“
You came straight from the place you found those kids?” she
asked. I noticed that the formality of talking to a superior
officer had gone and her accent became more defined.