New Praetorians 2 - Shetani Zeru Bryan

by R. K. Syrus

  The marshlands are separated from the facility by triple-layered fences. To the northeast are hills. Perched on them are slowly rotating wind turbines. There must be access roads throughout the thick woodlands there.

  Ran has to have gotten my message that Sienna needs him more than ever before.

  He always talks about how brainy his eccentric secretary Melanie is. Bryan’s been in contact with her a few times. He’d pass along updates on Sienna while they kept up their cover story of Ran trying to recruit Bryan into his corporate paramilitary group.

  Screw this waiting.

  Something else nags. How they got off the Lee. It was way too easy. Something’s up with that. And what’s up with Denbow? The SEAL seemed really interested in taking the girl Anis to his home base at Doha, Qatar. Bryan can’t figure it.

  Sienna was always better at that figuring out sneaky stuff than him. Is better at that stuff, he corrects himself.

  He checks his team.

  Nobu helps Anis take off her big flotation vest.

  T-Rex texts some of his Ramstein homies. Fast fingers over a small keypad is now a mandatory skill for special-ops soldiers.

  Snakelips takes an inventory of her custom rifles. As if the cheap-assed Navy would reimburse her for damage resulting from their sometimes bumpy ride from the Indian Ocean.

  Whitebread is on the tarmac having a one-sided tussle with a young airman who was about the size of his thigh. The specialist wears his most innocent-looking expression.

  “Nothing in there,” he says. “No weapons, I gave ’em all up like your special order says.”

  The Ramstein base guards are backed up by two squads in armored Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. A welcoming committee?

  What now?

  Securing heavy ordnance is not unusual for an active-combat element returning to what is basically a US enclave inside a surrounding German civilian community.

  Bryan saw it from the air. It is complete with a huge new shopping mall, Ferris wheel and boardwalk. It even has a man-made lake big enough to float a paddle wheel boat.

  But normally they let you get past the gate and check in at the armory on your own. He and the Dogs have never had to suffer the indignity of some pasty-faced airman going through their crap on the runway.

  The Ramstein security guy rummages deeply inside Whitebread’s double-sized duffel. Some metal clanks, like hollow pipes.

  “Those are just our musical instruments,” Whitebread explains, projecting ultra-earnestness. “We have a pan flute quintet. We play for the kids on holidays.”

  After the inspector checks out a jumble of stainless steel tubes, he is waved onto the air base. All of them get searched. They keep their knives, which is good because he could tell Snakelips was about to show her even angrier side had they tried to take Jane Bowie away from her. After all, it’s not hers—she’s just keeping it for their CO.

  Nobu’s tomahawks perplex the paper pusher.

  “These are religious heirlooms,” the multiracial soldier says, pointing to the carbon-bladed axe collection. “Only for dancing. Recall the spirits of ancestors. Great White Father treaty with Apache guarantee our right to keep.”

  Feather decorations on the handles seem to back up his story. No one wants to be accused of cultural insensitivity. But they take his swords.

  “Sorry, base commander’s orders,” the guy keeps repeating like a robot. Their personal armaments pile up in a table.

  “That’s everything,” Bryan says. “Unless you think we’ve got bioweapons in our shorts.”

  “Fess up, Whitebread!” T-Rex spouts off. “What’s in your skivvies is like a cross between anthrax and Ebola.”

  “We’ve had a long flight. Are you puttin’ us in the southside visitors’ unit?”

  The young man shakes his head timidly. “No, Sergeant. Orders are for you to accompany me directly to the East Wing. It’s a new mess hall and commissary area still under construction. Beds have been put in for you.”

  He stares back at Bryan. He can see reflections of his own golden metallic eyes in the lenses of the young man’s glasses.

  “Yeah. Base commander’s orders. I get that.”

  What crap.

  Bryan is about to demand to speak to someone more than a year past puberty. A low glint catches his eye. It came from the edge of one of the plane hangars. He doesn’t get a good look at it.

  Luckily, that’s no longer a problem. Not for anyone with millions of dollars of implanted bio-optics. He stoops over, grimacing, and puts his hand to his face.

  “Anything the matter, Sergeant?”

  “Just some grit. Prop wash must have blown it in my eye. These implants, they’re tricky sometimes.”

  Are they ever.

  Bryan flicks back, digital frame by digital frame. There! Now zoom in, he wills his artificial optics. Gotcha.

  The glare had come from bifocals stuck over a rumpled face with a scraggy red moustache and sticky strands of hair blowing in all directions off a nearly bald head.

  Fox.

  Major Fox. Of all the jerks in uniform. That guy had been punted from West Point after nearly drowning a student during a waterboarding demo. Cadet Sienna saved the student’s life and told the truth at the faculty inquiry. Fox has been on a vendetta against her ever since.

  What the heck is he doing here shadowing us?

  Bryan straightens up. Best way to help the colonel is to play along.

  “Lead the way, airman.”

  Bryan flashes a glance back to where the Pentagon spy had been standing. Empty.

  “Hey, Sarge, how come they puttin’ us here?” T-Rex says, looking around the half-completed mess hall. “Some kinda neo-segregation thing?”

  Bryan drops his bag on the dusty floor of their accommodations. Inside the heavy swinging doors are flimsy cots dumped in the middle of the room.

  “No reason to write your congressman just yet, Rex. Flyboys like to think they’re all tough and hard. That illusion all comes crumblin’ down if they catch sight of your manly pecs. They’re keeping our Army mojo hidden.”

  Bryan sits on a folding bed. Sagging springs nearly let his butt hit the bare concrete floor.

  “Looks like we’re back in the doghouse, just with no bars this time.” Bryan motions to the RTO. “Nobu, check the place over. Smells like someone’s been cooking something. They may already be using this as a backup kitchen in advance of it being the official mess hall. Check for exits, access points.”

  No sooner have Bryan and the Dogs settled into their sparse accommodations when there’s a knock at the entrance. A woman in a blue RAF service uniform sticks her head in. She is small, young, and has a low center of gravity. Ramstein hosts NATO’s Allied Air Command; uniforms from all over are a common sight.

  “Sergeant. Hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Not at all,” Bryan replies warily. That military police snoop Fox might have sent her. He reads her rank and name tag.

  “Lieutenant Brannigan,” she says.

  “Squadron commander sends his compliments and a selection of newspapers so you can catch up on doings in the world.”

  Bryan takes the bundle of newsprint and optical coated plastic. Through the doorway, he catches sight of two base cops lounging at the far end of the corridor. Besides the windows, it’s the only exit.

  Nobu, silent as a cat, appears behind him.

  “What do you think, Sarge?”

  Technically they are not being detained at Ramstein base. Looks like someone just wants to keep them isolated and watched. Maybe listened to as well.

  “I think it’s too quiet in here. You should play some music.”

  Nobu nods and switches his personal audio player to ghetto-banger mode. A cacophony of organ music floods the room from thumbprint-sized speakers.

  “Ow, Chief!” Snakelips says grouchily. “Are we practicing to be Phantom of the Air Base now?”

  Bryan holds up his hand. Everyone shuts up.

  Nobu checks his
player, which is also a hacked Lux/Net-enabled device. He nods to Bryan.

  “Huddle up. Thanks to Bach, no one can hear us.”

  “Is that still Fantasia, man?”

  Nobu shrugs. “It’s the best piece to cover the white noise that’s programmed in. Not even a laser mic is going to pick up what we say.”

  “What about Lux/Net’s photonic net?”

  “Disabled on the air base. They can’t use foreign Lux/Net frequencies to spy on people,” Nobu says. “That’s our own government’s job.”

  “The Lee’s captain let us out of the brig to see what we would do,” Bryan says. “They’ve got guards at the end of the hallway. That mangy critter from mil-intel Fox is nosing around.”

  T-Rex is instantly ornery. “They think we’re gonna lead them to our CO? So they can violate her inalienable rights, too? Those lowdown mother—”

  Snakelips interrupts T-Rex’s cursing, visibly brightening at the prospect of their CO’S return, she asks, “You mean she’s—”

  “We don’t know yet. I don’t think they do either.”

  A repeating image on the front page of one of the animated newspapers catches Bryan’s attention. It’s made of photographic filaments. Like a scroll screen, it can play video and be updated wirelessly. On it is a moving photo of Buckingham Palace with a bunch of yellow roses right in the middle.

  Bryan launches over to the table and grabs the paper. The Citizen Juggernaut is open to the Homes and Gardens section. A featured story leads:

  Battle for the Roses

  by

  Dame Dr. Rosario Klegg, CH, OBE, Science Editor-at-large

  LONDON—It was a close call for the beloved rose bushes in the Royal Gardens after an antiquated propane appliance malfunctioned last week, sending out plumes of carbon monoxide. Quick action by groundskeepers and the head eco-gardener in charge of the forty-two acres of beloved green space resulted in the rescue of the besieged buds. Due to contamination of soil and groundwater, the unique and highly prized yellow roses had to be plucked out of harm’s way and are resting comfortably in the royal flora and fauna nursery, which is also playing host to an under-the-weather woodpecker. The blossoms are expected to make a full recovery in about a week with no long-term consequences anticipated.

  Bryan reads over the story several times.

  Finally, he sits down. One hundred hours of relentless tension flow out of his body and threaten to make his legs unsteady.

  “She’s safe.”

  With those two words, the spirits in the room silently lift and fly upward, propelled by Bryan’s revelation and the crescendo of Bach’s Fantasia.

  The organ piece starts from the beginning, and all the Dogs talk at once.

  “Where is she?”

  “How is she?”

  “How did she get out?”

  “Told ya I’d fix it. T-Rex got it done again!”

  “Quiet Terrence!”

  “¡Gracias a Dios!”

  “Kishi kaisei!”

  “Whoa, nuff o’ that foreign lingo, Nobu! I let Spanish slide ’cause it sounds cool, but don’t be goin’ jibber jabber on us.”

  “Settle down.” Bryan looks to the heavy swinging doors. “The SPs outside aren’t deaf.”

  Bryan leaves out some specifics but gives them enough to satisfy them for now. Snakelips, not wanting to show it, has taken Sienna’s absence hardest. She has the pink-handled bowie knife. She holds it as though Colonel McKnight is going to walk in and ask for it back.

  “She’s gonna be okay, right?”

  “After what happened.” Nobu’s lips compress in a silent whistle. “Anyone else, we’d be burying them in a matchbox.”

  Snakelips shoots an irritated glance at her teammate.

  “For real, Sarge?” she asks. “She’s gonna come back to us, right? If this is about replacing her, I’m outta here. Even if…” The corporal searches for the most outrageous example to show her friends how impossible it is for her to think of their unit without Colonel McKnight. “Even if I got to get pregnant!”

  Nobu, like Terrence, just never knows when to zip it.

  “Now if you need any help with that particular undercover mission…”

  “Yo! Hold off, Chief Tiny Weiner,” his friend cuts in. “She don’t wants no Japache baby with crazy black hair that stands straight up. Latinas and the T-Rex just naturally go together like ribs and batter fries.”

  Snakelips shakes her head with weary relief. “You guys, it’s more like my elbow and your big mouths.”

  Bryan can tell she’s happy. She doesn’t even make a half-hearted attempt to stab either of her antagonists.

  “Okay, I’m going to check on something. Everyone try to get some rest. Hooah!”

  The washrooms are down the hall. They are spacious and designed to eventually accommodate hundreds of Air Force bladder and bowel movements per hour. The newly installed toilet Bryan sits on probably has only seen action from the guards in the hallway.

  He has the Citizen Juggernaut. Inside the newspaper. There is a small tab on the laminate insert spine. It allows him to record a short message. He does that in the stall, remembering to flush as he leaves.

  Bryan runs into Whitebread coming out of another stall. In civilian life, bathroom habits are not the subject of polite conversations. But when every team member’s life depended on the other’s fitness for combat, there are few, if any, privacy barriers among them.

  “You been in there all this time? Anything wrong, Specialist? Now’s the time to get checked out.”

  Whitebread shakes his massive head.

  “I had trouble going in the Lee’s brig,” he says sheepishly. “I mean everyone was right out in the open. At least back home, stockade’s got a little privacy.”

  “We aim to please. Just try to stay out of jail as much as you can. One T-Rex is all the Army lawyers can handle.”

  “I will, Sarge. Say, we’re all good, right? I know you’d never hose us.”

  “You know it,” Bryan says. “Now, if everything’s good, I’ve got to—”

  Whitebread turns away, then pauses, troubled by something.

  “Sarge, I wasn’t really gonna use it. It was just for show.”

  “What?” Bryan thinks back to what the scary-looking but contentious soldier could be talking about.

  “The Miggle,” he says sheepishly.

  “Oh, that.”

  Whitebread’s referring to the multiple-grenade launcher suitable for firing high-explosive antitank rounds. The one that Whitebread was found with while tromping around the North Carolina woods on a deer hunt. That fiasco caused Sienna to have to sign him out of jail on her personal recognizance in order for him to go on the Sidewinder mission.

  “Just don’t do that again, a’right, Specialist?” Bryan starts to walk away.

  “It was just… They made fun of me. My friends, the last time we went hunting. They always said, ‘Hey, Whitebread why don’t you come hunting?’ ‘Why don’t you ever go?’ All taunting like. ‘Beer and rifles,’ they said. Right, sounded like fun.

  “So the first deer hunt I’ve got this scoped thirty-aught-six Springfield, and they line up a deer for me to shoot. I mean, it was so close I could have wacked it from my hip.”

  Whitebread squirms.

  “So, I’m lookin’ at this big old feller. He’s just standing there, munching on bog lettuce or spinach or whatever they eat. He looked right at me like he was saying, ‘Hey’ with his big dark eyes. I couldn’t pull the trigger. Shooting an animal who was just standing there having lunch. It wasn’t fun like they made out. Made me kinda queasy. So I put a round in the trees, and the deer ran off. More of a trot, come to think of it.”

  Bryan follows Whitebread’s logic.

  “So, you decided you could still hang out with your off-base buddies, and they’d stop messing with you for being a lousy shot if you carried around a six-round grenade launcher?”

  Whitebread affirms this was his design.

 
“Honest, Sarge, like the colonel said when she was defending me at the court martial, I didn’t even have any real ammo. I just painted some flare rounds so they’d look like HEAT smart rounds.”

  “That actually makes a weird kind of sense,” Bryan says. “But ordnance like that’s gotta stay on base, okay?” He’s sympathetic to the other man’s face-saving ploy.

  “And, Petr, you don’t have to shoot a deer or any kinda animal if you don’t want to. Lucky for you, there’s plenty of human varmints who are asking for, and deserving of, a bushel full of killin’.”

  That thought brightens Whitebread’s mood.

  Their Air Force hallway monitors do not try to stop him from exiting the building. As he passes by, one of them mumbles into a microphone. Well clear of the building, Bryan tosses the newspaper into the nearest recycle bin. The diminutive RAF officer will have a way to retrieve his recorded message.

  A light rain dusts Ramstein Air Base. Bryan feels it on his close-cropped scalp. He also feels eyes on him as he walks toward the sprawling housing and school complex that serves the nearly 60,000 servicemembers and their families.

  Despite the good news, Bryan still has his backup—that knucklehead Stahlback. Short of treason, or intentionally shooting noncombatants, what the captain of the Lee did was the worst. You never ever leave one of your own behind.

  Now this new crap with Major Fox from Army CID internal affairs snooping around. Something’s up. Something Sienna might be able to suss out but is above E-7 paygrade. For now, she is better off with her father, Ran. He can’t risk going to her.

  Not before we figure this all out.

  RAF Lieutenant Brannigan walks in the opposite direction on the other side of the causeway. Bryan nods and moves on. Behind her, he sees a few people running in the direction of the front gates. Probably auxiliary guards following anti-bomb protocols over some car just having mechanical trouble.

  Bryan ignores the false alarm and breaks into a slow jog. After being jammed into one tin can after another the past week and a half, it’s worth the slight creaking in his joints to breathe open air deeply for a bit.