Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (22 page)

Schiavo shook her head. Not at Elaine’s comment, but at the decision she’d made to centralize the ability to distribute ammo in case of attacks.

“This one’s on me,” the captain said.

“It was the right move for our supply issues,” I told her.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Schiavo fired back.

Another sharp explosion cracked, the few remaining windows in the storefront near us breaking, large shards of glass tumbling to the sidewalk.

“Any movement reports?” Elaine asked.

“None,” Lorenzen said. “The lines are quiet.”

“Weatherly’s just putting us on notice,” Schiavo said. “He knew exactly where the new armory was.”

“Don’t move.”

The voice was Martin’s. I turned with Schiavo and Lorenzen and saw him standing behind Private Quincy, a pistol in his hand, its barrel pressed to the back of her head.

“Martin,” Schiavo said, calm and shocked all at once.

“Weatherly knew because his spy told him,” Martin said. “Isn’t that right, Private Quincy?”

“Ma’am,” Quincy said, her voice trembling. “What’s going on?”

“Keep playing the role,” Martin said. “Feign ignorance. Pretend you have the sniffles. Keep the act up.”

Quincy froze, fear seeming to fill her from her toes to her forehead. Then, without any hint that it was coming, she moved, swinging her M4 quickly up.

But not quickly enough. Martin’s hand swung the butt of his old Colt .45 across the young woman’s face, connecting with her temple. She fell backwards, and at the same instant both Elaine and I brought our weapons to bear, covering the downed soldier.

“Don’t do it!” Elaine ordered.

Quincy stared up at us, recovering from the stunning blow.

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” I said.

Schiavo looked to her husband, but did not speak a word. She didn’t need to.

“I’m certain,” Martin said.

Schiavo thought for a moment, eyeing the private, then nodded to her sergeant. Lorenzen hauled Sheryl Quincy up from where she’d fallen and stripped her of every weapon on her person, rifle, pistol, and knife, jerking her tactical vest off last so that she was clad only in her camouflage pants, long sleeve tee, and boots.

“This is crazy!” Quincy protested. “You have to be insane.”

I kept my weapon trained on the private as Martin holstered his pistol and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He brought it up so that the nearby streetlight illuminated what was written on it. What he’d written on it.

“Leadership believes Four Twelve within town,” he read. “Hidden by Moore.”

Martin fixed his gaze on Quincy.

“That is decoded from a Morse message sent out the night Fletch returned from meeting Olin,” he said. “There were four people who heard the conversation where we discussed that—me, the captain, Fletch, and you.”

Schiavo took a step toward the newest and youngest member of her garrison. A young woman, capable and determined, who’d joined them as a replacement for Acosta, the burly soldier who’d given his life in Skagway as we battled hardened Russian troops. That the person she’d chosen to fill that void might now turn out to be the very one who’d turned against her brethren, who’d turned against us all, was an impossibility that the captain was facing through a veil of building rage.

“Captain, I wouldn’t,” Quincy said, her words half plea, and half proclamation of innocence. “I would not do this.”

“This message was sent hours after we discussed its contents,” Martin said. “From a transmitter hidden beneath the egg catcher in the chicken coops. The coops that Private Quincy here checks every day—your words, private.”

For the briefest instant, Quincy’s gaze broke, shifting among those staring at her. Searching for a sympathetic face. A believer.

“This isn’t right!” Quincy shouted.

Martin looked to the sergeant.

“Paul, hold her,” he said.

Before she could pull away, Lorenzen seized Quincy firmly from behind, pulling each of her wrists back, locking them in his hands that, at that moment, functioned as handcuffs made of flesh and muscle and fury.

“What are you doing?!”

Martin didn’t bother answering the question Quincy shouted at him. He simply moved swiftly, reaching with his free hand to her right sleeve and tearing the material away, exposing the back of her bicep and a small, healing scar there.

“Look,” Martin said, grabbing her arm almost violently and turning her so that Schiavo, Elaine, and I could see.

She’d received an implant. One whose entry point had scarred over. It appeared older than mine, and of those Grace and her children had been given.

“She’s had this for at least a month,” Martin said, fixing on the traitor he’d identified. “What did you do? Slip off into the woods and get your ‘stay healthy’ implant before all this started?”

Quincy gave no response to the question. She also stopped her protests, determination now replacing her faux surprise. Determination and a sly, pitying grin.

That was a mistake.

“Answer the question!” Schiavo ordered, bringing the back of her hand across Quincy’s face.

The traitor’s head snapped from the blow, and when she looked to the captain once again, still grinning, the slim smile was spotted with blood from a split lip.

“Go to hell,” Quincy told her commander.

Schiavo let herself calm. It seemed to me she was working through some internal count to allow her anger and adrenalin to abate.

“Sergeant,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Get her out of here.”

“With pleasure,” Lorenzen said.

Martin reached into his pocket and retrieved a pair of handcuffs. Certain that he was right, that he had the proof he knew would be necessary, he’d come prepared. The sergeant took them and bound Quincy’s wrists, then grabbed the short chain between them and lifted, levering her body forward as he walked her away from the scene of devastation.

“Find the mayor and have him meet us at the garrison headquarters,” Schiavo said when the traitor was gone.

“Will do,” I said.

“Stay with the fire crew,” Schiavo told her husband. “Let me know if anything gets out of hand.”

Martin nodded, his wife holding his gaze for a long moment.

“You did good,” she said.

Schiavo headed off, trailing her sergeant and their prisoner. Martin put a hand to my shoulder, a gesture of thanks. For what, I wasn’t certain. But there was plenty of gratitude to flow in all directions. There always had been in Bandon.

Martin left us and took a position closer to the pumper truck, grabbing a hose when a pressure spike caused it to buck and flail. He had been a leader, a great leader, and, through actions large and small, he continually proved himself to be a fine man.

“I’ll find Mayor Allen,” I told Elaine. “You go get Genesee and tell him what just happened. Tell him
everything
.”

It only took a second for Elaine to understand why I was sending her off on a separate errand.

“Right,” Elaine said.

We made our way away from the raging blaze, explosions still sounding. Our town had been hit. Hard. And more was almost certain to come. But we had finally blunted one of the Unified Government’s most effective weapons. And, in doing so, it was possible that we might be able to improve our situation even more. Much more.

L
orenzen shoved Quincy into a chair in the holding room at the garrison’s headquarters and hooked a set of handcuffs to the pair that bound her wrists behind her back. The other end he pulled roughly downward and secured to one of the chair legs, leaving her body twisted at a painful, awkward angle as Schiavo and Mayor Allen came through the door.

For a moment nothing was said. Lorenzen and I looked to Schiavo as she glared in silence at the private who’d joined her unit before they’d come to Bandon.

“Do you want to tell us anything?” Mayor Allen asked.

“Yes,” Quincy said. “Your time is running out.”

The burst of almost childish insolence didn’t rattle the four of us in the room with the traitor. She was caught, and she was resisting through some expression of bravado. That it might be fueled by a devotion to the Unified Government was beyond me to fully fathom.

“You’ve lived among us,” I said. “You know us. We’re good people. Not perfect, but good. We’re decent. Why would you be party to something that seeks to destroy that?”

“Good?” Quincy challenged me. “You think ‘good’ is what matters?”

“I believe it matters more than anything,” Mayor Allen backed me up.

Quincy, her eye swelling from Martin’s blow and mouth bleeding from Schiavo’s, shook her head, judgement and disdain in the gesture.

“Good equals weak,” she said. “And this is not a world that will allow weakness to survive.”

“We’ve made it this far,” I reminded her.

“You think you can make this work?” Quincy asked us, her face twisted with a mix of pity and disbelief. “You really believe that everything is going to fall back into place without some sort of overall order?”

“There’s nothing disorderly about what we’ve accomplished,” Mayor Allen said.

Quincy smiled at the elderly leader. A man who’d devoted his life to helping, and healing, and community.

“This isn’t order,” she countered. “All you’ve done is evolve into some sort of commune with a few rules that anyone is free to disregard by leaving.”

“We’re not running a prison,” I said.

The private shook her head slowly, now with open contempt toward me. Toward us.

“I can...”

Schiavo didn’t complete her statement, a sudden coughing fit causing her to turn away and clear her throat as she faced the corner.

“You all right, captain?”

Schiavo composed herself and looked to her sergeant, nodding. Then she faced the traitor in our midst again and saw what we all did—a broad, almost knowing smile spread across her face.

“I can have you shot,” Schiavo told Private Sheryl Quincy. “I have that authority.”

“You have no authority,” Quincy said. “Your government is finished. It’s gone.”

“You know nothing of the sort,” Mayor Allen told the traitor.

“Is that so?” Quincy challenged him. “How’s that Navy resupply you were promised working out? Where’s the
Rushmore
? Where’s any ship? And the airwaves are clear now, so where’s the soothing call from
your
government?”

No one bothered to answer the questions she posed. Almost certainly because none of us could.

“If you help us, there will be consideration given toward you in any proceedings,” Mayor Allen said.

“How many troops are we facing?” Schiavo asked, expanding her inquiry with rapid fire probing. “Where is your supply base? How many drone aircraft do you have? Has an attack day been decided?”

“Why would I help you?” Quincy asked, truly incredulous. “Why would I help perpetuate a failing, feel good system?”

We weren’t getting anything from her. Nothing that we could use to better our position or prevent what we all knew to be coming now. That was what we all realized.

A knock on the door proved us wrong.

It opened and Commander Genesee stepped in, Specialist Hart with him. The latter man held a syringe, its needle shielded by a pale blue cover.

“Commander, what’s going on?” Schiavo asked.

Elaine followed both men in as Genesee tipped his head toward Hart. The army medic stepped past Mayor Allen and popped the cap off the syringe as he brought the needle toward Quincy’s exposed left arm.

“Hey!” Quincy protested, trying to wriggle away from Hart. “What are you doing?!”

“Specialist!” Schiavo shouted.

“Let him do it,” Genesee said to the captain.

“Yes,” I said. “Let him.”

Schiavo considered both pleas, then relented with a look to her medic.

“NO!”

Hart jabbed the syringe into Quincy’s arm as she screamed. He pressed the plunger down, injecting her, and before the shrieking sound of her protest was quieted, her head began to loll, eyes rolling back, mostly whites showing. When she was fully unconscious, Genesee crouched next to her and examined the back of her arm through the tear in her shirt Martin had made. After a quick check he looked up to Schiavo.

“Captain, your permission to remove her implant.”

There was no hesitation from Schiavo, and no resistance.

“Granted. Make your vaccine, Commander Genesee. Just keep her alive.”

We all knew what that last admonition was for. If we weren’t certain, the captain left no ambiguity about it with her next words.

“I’m not done with her.”

B
y morning the explosions were over and the fires had subsided to small licks of flame that danced upon the charred debris, smoke curling upward into the grey sky. Elaine and I returned to observe the scene of destruction after catching a few hours’ sleep.

“Schiavo’s going to kill her,” Elaine said.

Private Sheryl Quincy, traitor, had been locked up in the town’s small jail. Its only occupant.

“You mean execute,” I said.

“Dead is dead,” Elaine reminded me.

That was a universal truism. Once gone, you stayed gone. I feared that was also going to apply to Bandon. And to us.

“What if we lose?” I asked.

Elaine had no response to the possibility I was suggesting. That outcome had always seemed unfathomable. We’d overcome so much. Been victorious over long odds. But what we faced here...

“We’re out gunned and outnumbered,” I said. “They can take out our vital installations at will with strikes we can’t anticipate, much less stop. Defeat is a possibility.”

“What happened to ‘there’s always hope’?”

I was surprised that my wife had seized on that mantra, one which she, herself, had discounted so recently.

“It left on a helicopter and went to the other side,” I shot back, almost angrily.

I didn’t like losing. Or even the thought of such. Working hard, being successful, winning—all had been the way I’d lived my life since tearing up the field with Neil on our high school football team.

Team...

In that moment, with that thought, I remembered that there were other players. Others who might be impacted by the same entity we were facing.