Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (9 page)

“Right,” I said. “So why am I alive? Why is Nick Withers alive and standing guard at the door to the town hall?”

I could see the first spark of realization dance in Schiavo’s gaze.

“Nick and I were stationary targets out there,” I said. “We were making no move and they opened up on us, and missed us with every shot.
Every shot
. They were aiming high and wide. Even when I was running with Nick in the open between the trees their fire was still off.”

“You were
perfect
targets,” Elaine realized.

“More than once,” I said.

“They didn’t mean to kill you,” Martin said.

“If they had, you’d be talking to an empty chair,” I agreed.

Just below the tabletop, Elaine reached to my lap and gripped my knee. I was here, but I sensed she wanted to physically feel my presence after what I’d just said.

“Okay,” Schiavo said, allowing the possibility of what I’d suggested. “They’re just feigning an attack posture? That’s what you’re thinking?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it’s psychological. To let us know they’re out there. To ratchet up our stress level.”

“You’re talking about a siege,” Martin said.

“Good Lord,” Mayor Allen reacted, shaking his head.

Schiavo thought on the situation for a moment.

“If that’s their purpose, what’s the end game? All sieges end. Either the besieged give up or fight to the death, or the outsiders are driven off.”

“What do they want?” Elaine asked.

“It would help if we knew who they were,” Martin said. “Where they’ve come from, who they answer to. That all would speak to their motivation.”

His wife, though, didn’t seem certain of his appraisal.

“There’s no secret here,” Schiavo said. “Or at least there won’t be for long.”

“What do you mean?” Mayor Allen asked.

“She means they’ll make contact,” I said, and Schiavo gave a slight nod.

“And it won’t be a genial greeting,” Schiavo said. “It will be an ultimatum.”

That word, that near certainty, hung there for a moment, each of us processing what it might mean to Bandon. To our home.

“They’ll try to weaken us,” Schiavo said, her gaze shifting to me. “You might have been their first attempt at that.”

“The Trojan horse,” Martin said.

Mayor Allen thought for a moment, nodding.

“It’s possible we got that capsule out of you just in time,” the old doctor said. “If it was time release meant to spread some sickness after you’d been back in town for a while...”

Elaine squeezed my knee again and shook her head.

“What’s the ultimatum going to be?” she asked, glancing my way. “What are they going to want? What do we have that they just couldn’t ask for?”

No one had an answer that made any sense.

“Why not attack?”

It was Mayor Allen who posed the question, a suggestion that seemed so out of place coming from the peaceful, almost sedate old man.

“We have the advantage in numbers if Angela is correct,” the mayor said. “Why not use that? Right now?”

He focused on Schiavo. We all did. Though I knew before she spoke that her answer was not going to be in concert with what the mayor was envisioning.

“Because I could be wrong,” the captain said. “They could have a thousand troops out there on the other side of the hills. The aircraft they have could bear armaments. But the bottom line truth is that I have six real soldiers who’ve been trained to execute attacks. I can’t lead them and the few townspeople who could keep up into a lopsided battle. It would be suicide.”

Mayor Allen sat back in his chair, accepting the counter to his suggestion.

“There is one hope to better our situation,” Schiavo said in the brief silence after she’d gently shot down the idea of charging at our unseen, and unknown, adversary. “The
Rushmore
.”

“Can they bring in reinforcements?” Elaine asked.

“They would have already departed for their supply run,” Schiavo said. “But I can ask if they can spare some of the crew so I have a few more shooters. If the Navy is amenable, we might pick up a dozen troops. That would triple the size of the garrison.”

“Our friends out there might be made to think it’s more than that,” I said. “If we play it up big. Make it seem like we’re getting five times that. Six. Ten.”

“They might think twice about making any move,” Elaine said.

“The barbarians at the gate could just slink off, back to wherever they came from,” Schiavo said, agreeing.

“When is the
Rushmore
due in?” Mayor Allen asked.

“Three or four days from now,” Schiavo said.

“Can you get a burst transmission to them?” Martin asked.

His wife nodded and was about to say something more when the door to the conference room opened with sudden urgency, Sgt. Lorenzen coming through, his gaze sweeping the room before landing on his commander.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

Schiavo knew her second in command well enough that his tone, and his amped manner, pointed to something profound having occurred. She rose slowly, her chair sliding back as she did.

“What is it?”

Now Lorenzen looked to me, gaze widened over quickened breaths.

“She’s back.”

I stood now, as did Elaine, neither of us with near as smooth a motion as the captain. Our chairs screeched noisily away from the table, mine nearly tipping from my haste.

“Who?”

Asking the question was natural. But so was suspecting the answer. There was only one ‘she’ whose return would elicit such an announcement.

“Grace,” Lorenzen said. “And she’s not alone.”

G
race Moore had simply walked into town from the east, Krista at her side and a baby in her arms. They’d approached a checkpoint and were being sheltered there from a morning rain as we raced across town in a pair of Humvees to pick them up.

We took her and the children to their house. To what had been the house she shared with Neil. For six months it had sat vacant, but not empty. All that they had abandoned, minus the weapons, had been left undisturbed. A neighbor had come by one day soon after my friend’s inexplicable departure and made the beds. Once a week after that the same neighbor had entered the silent house and dusted, keeping the home as clean and tidy as possible, maybe in the hope that the family would someday return.

That hope had been realized in part.

“I need to feed the baby,” Grace said, shedding her coat and settling into a comfortable chair in the living room as if she’d just returned home from a trip to the market. “Can you hand me that blanket?”

The request was directed at Elaine, who noted the nod Grace gave toward a small, fuzzy throw neatly folded over the back of a high backed rocker. She retrieved it and handed it over.

“I’m just not one of those women who can let it all hang out when I’m breastfeeding,” Grace said, slipping the blanket over her shoulder and opening her blouse beneath as she began to feed her son.

Their son.

“A boy,” I said.

Grace looked up, some incalculable distance in the expression.

“His name is Brandon,” Grace said, gazing down at the infant in her arms. “Neil wanted that name. He said it was the closest to Bandon that wouldn’t get him beat up in kindergarten.”

She tried to smile at the mild joke. We all did. But the confusion that reigned over her sudden reappearance muted any natural reaction. Questions swirled without being asked. Doubts raged. Pity simmered as we looked upon those who had come back to us. Those who had come home.

I turned away from Grace and looked to Krista. She sat on the couch, ill at ease, as if she was visiting a stranger’s house and was afraid of offending her hosts.

“Hey sweetie,” I said, taking the space next to the child. “How are you?”

She didn’t verbalize any answer, but responded with a quiet nod. A child’s backpack sat on the floor near her feet, pretty and pink, its top zipper open to reveal a collection of toys and colored pencils inside.

“All your things are still in your room,” Elaine said. “Nothing’s been changed.”

Krista looked up to Elaine and let a small smile form, as if allowing the expression despite what she felt within. She clutched a small, hardbound notebook on her lap, its blue fabric cover bare, thumb and fingers rubbing nervously at the spine.

“What’s that?” I asked Krista.

Her gaze dipped to the notebook.

“My drawings,” Krista said.

She opened the cover and flipped through several pages of colorful, fanciful pictures. Animals drawn from memory. Horses. Elephants. Giraffes. Creatures that, almost certainly, existed only as recollections in the child’s mind.

“Those are very good,” Martin said.

“Micah showed me a lot of pictures of animals on his computer,” Krista said, closing the notebook, the smile she’d managed now fading.

“He had pictures of everything,” Martin said, his own smile building. “He loved showing them to you.”

Krista didn’t respond to Martin’s kind, bittersweet words. Her attention shifted, instead, to the front door. I looked and saw that the crowd which had gathered outside was growing, Lorenzen and Schiavo working to part the phalanx of townspeople so that familiar faces could make their way through.

“I hear we have a baby,” Mayor Allen said, Commander Genesee at his side.

Grace looked up and nodded. The gesture was slack and subdued. No feeling in it whatsoever. Almost robotic. Without any training to back up my assessment, it seemed to me that she was in a state of mild shock.

“Grace, how are you?” Mayor Allen asked.

“I’m okay.”

The old doc tipped his head toward Krista.

“Is it all right if we give big sister a quick checkup?”

“Sure,” Grace said, her flaccid gaze shifting to her daughter. “Krista, Doc Allen is going to examine you.”

Krista, too, nodded almost without thought. Just a motion, head tipping up and down, because that was what the moment required.

“This is Commander Genesee,” Mayor Allen said, offering the introduction. “Trained in the Navy, so he must know what he’s doing.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Grace said, adjusting the baby against her breast.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Genesee responded.

“Why don’t we give Krista a quick look in her bedroom,” Mayor Allen suggested, smiling at the young girl. “I’m sure Elaine would come along to keep you company.”

“Absolutely,” Elaine said, reaching her hand out toward Krista.

“Can I bring my notebook and my backpack?”

“Of course,” Mayor Allen said.

Krista slid her small hand into Elaine’s and stood, slipping her notebook into the open backpack and lifting it by one strap. She and Elaine led the way down the hall and into her bedroom, Allen and Genesee following them in.

That left Martin and me with Grace and the son she’d had with my friend.

“Grace...”

She looked to me, a skim of tears glistening on her eyes. There were questions, too many questions. The both of us knew this. We also knew that answers would not change things. Would not turn the clock back.

Not while there was still one person missing.

“How is Neil?”

The simple question, so ordinary in another time, now carried with it pain, and disappointment, and worry.

“I’m so sorry,” Grace said, her gaze shifting to Martin. “I didn’t know this was all going to happen.”

Was she sidestepping the question, or was the answer she might give something she could not give voice to? I instantly wondered if something had happened to my friend.

“Did something happen to Neil?” I pressed her.

As she hesitated for a moment, Schiavo came in, leaving her sergeant outside to manage the wondering crowd. She stood close to Martin, and he let his hand come up and rest against the small of her back, a simple show of caring, maybe all either would allow while she was in uniform.

Grace, I saw, noticed this gesture, this warmth between man and wife, and loss already plain in her eyes seemed to double on itself.

“Is Neil okay, Grace?” I asked again.

“He’s...not hurt. He’s doing what he thinks is right with the Unified Government.”

The conversation stuttered there as she uttered those unfamiliar words.

“The what?” Schiavo asked, the slightest abruptness in the delivery of her question.

Grace shifted a bit, pulling her infant tighter against her body and regarding the captain with sudden wariness.

“The Unified Government,” Grace repeated, taking in our puzzled reaction for a moment. “The new government. You don’t know about this?”

“No,” Martin said. “We don’t.”

“I didn’t know we needed a new government,” Schiavo said.

“Nothing was working,” Grace said, trying to explain. “You know that. They’ve got it working again. Neil promised me that. Neil promised...”

Her words trailed off there, as if the meaning that drove them was too tenuous to sustain. Too convenient in the face of what she knew, what she believed, in her heart, in her mind, and in her soul.

“We’re doing all right here, Grace,” Martin said. “Before you left we were on a good footing. It’s only gotten better.”

She looked to each of us, confused. Then her gaze shifted abruptly, cast downward to the new life held close against her breast.

“Grace,” I said.

She looked up at me, and for a moment all I could think that I was in the presence of someone lost on the outside, and broken within.

“Why is Neil’s voice on the signal?” I asked.

“It was an honor,” she answered, almost timidly. “That’s what he said. To give the command which would unite the country.”

Schiavo looked to Martin, and then to me.

“Unite by force,” the captain said.

Grace, though, took quiet, almost confused exception to that. She shook her head.

“No, that’s not it at all,” she protested, patting her baby gently on the back as he fussed while feeding. “That’s not true. I’m the proof of that. The three of us are.”

“What do you mean, Grace?” Martin asked.

“We’re a goodwill gesture,” she said. “To show you that no one wants conflict.”