Diligence (Determination Trilogy 2)

by Lesli Richardson

  Usually, that meant a predator.

  It took a while until his ears heard what his instincts had already picked up—the footsteps of several people walking along the crumbling tarmac of the old highway. No one spoke.

  He didn’t move, kept his breathing slow and light through barely parted lips.

  Still, his pulse raced. From the sound of it, many or all of the people in the group wore boots similar to what he wore on his feet, military-issue tactical hiking boots, thick and waterproofed and made for keeping troops vertical and mobile as long as possible. They made heavy, unmistakable footfalls to the trained ear.

  Especially when the troops wearing them made no effort to stay quiet.

  Russ didn’t spot any telltale lights and suspected they were using the moon for illumination, conserving precious batteries so they didn’t have to resort to loud hand-crank chargers. He didn’t dare move or lift his head over the brush to see how many there were.

  Craige and Hicks had both been off-base when Russ left, not due to return until the next morning. He hadn’t responded to their requests to speak with them one last time before his opt-out forms were formalized, and he wasn’t hanging around to wait on them, either. His chip code had already been changed to reflect his freeman status. Sure, he could have spent one last night at the barracks.

  As a civvie, he didn’t owe them shit.

  Still, he wouldn’t put it past Colonel Craige to send someone after him “just to talk.” To try to coax or haul him back in by whatever means necessary so they didn’t lose the best sniper they’d had in over twenty years.

  Hell, the best sniper the Nanners ever had, period.

  Russ was no idiot. He’d heard the rumors during his conscription. About how Craige had the highest overall re-opt numbers of any Red commander, Houston’s specialty re-opt numbers higher than any barracks in general. Low-level wonks or people without specialized skills, no one cared. Those numbers ran along the average of other barracks.

  But the specialists, the techs, the Reds—there was definitely a spike in Craige’s re-opt numbers in that bell curve when compared to other barracks.

  Numbers reportedly obtained by bribing or coercing people into re-opting, if the scuttlebutt was true.

  Dead Reds didn’t count.

  Russ didn’t plan on boosting their numbers, much less dying.

  As Russ remained motionless and listened, the footfalls passed his location without slowing. Either they weren’t looking for him, or they were but weren’t equipped with one of the precious few night-ops glasses the Houston barracks had for just such an occasion.

  If they were looking for him, he suspected they weren’t looking very hard.

  Or weren’t very good at it.

  Either option was fine with him.

  Russ remained invisible in his nest in the tall brush. He’d started to relax when something else pinged his attention. Still on high alert, he held his breath again until, yes, he sensed someone else. This one moved far more stealthy than the first batch. Much lighter on their feet, possibly even a woman.

  There were more men than women in the Red units overall, but the second-best sniper in the NNAA was a woman, as was the best assassin, both of them stationed out of the Houston barracks. Russ knew the sniper, because she was in his squad, but he had never personally met the assassin, Captain Wright.

  The unseen presence slowly worked their way down the old highway, pausing now and again as a night noise apparently caught their attention.

  Then they stopped, not too many yards from where he’d entered the high grass off the highway. In daylight, a trained eye would easily pick out his trail. At night, however, even with the bright moon, they couldn’t. Not without a light.

  Eventually, Russ heard the person continue on until, once again, he was alone and the only noises surrounding him were the usual nighttime sounds of this sparsely inhabited region.

  Still, he knew his sleep was shot for the night. Instead, he chose to think about Ted, about how he’d soon be reunited with him. Be able to hug him again. At six-one, his partner was only two inches shorter than him, with blond hair and blue eyes and a snarky sense of humor, combined with a gentle soul, a combo which never failed to get Russ’ motor running. Russ wanted to do nothing more than hug that man, hear his laugh.

  See him smile.

  Russ knew it’d be too easy to close his eyes and let his mind wander, but he didn’t want to be distracted. It’d be too easy for someone to sneak up on him. Knowing there were other people out there in the dark, unseen, meant he couldn’t let his focus slip that much.

  Instead, he smiled as he stared up at the sky and fantasized about getting home, where he belonged. To getting on with his life. To reconnecting with friends.

  To reuniting with Ted.

  * * * *

  Captain Zola Wright mentally cursed the four men walking a short distance in front of her.

  Could they possibly make any more noise?

  At that point, it wouldn’t have surprised her if they broke into bawdy drinking songs.

  They might as well, for all the racket they were making. Sneaking up on someone trained in concealment and who didn’t want to be discovered would be damn near impossible at this point.

  Then again, she hadn’t wanted this mission. She sure as hell didn’t want to be in charge of a group of lifer wonk privates who didn’t give a shit about what they did because of their job security.

  And, frankly, she didn’t want to find the man she was looking for.

  Not that she was dumb enough to admit that to her CO, or to the wonks assigned to go with her on this mission.

  She had less than two weeks left in her own two-year opt-in term. It was just like Half-Assed Hicks to assign her some bullshit job like this, even though she suspected the orders came directly from Colonel Craige above him. She’d never met Captain Russell Owens in person. Now that decorated sniper was a civvie, she really didn’t have any desire to meet him. Owens had earned his freedom, as far as she was concerned. Did his time, and opted out.

  Lucky bastard.

  Although unknown to her personally, she respected him, his reputation, and his record. They’d worked several missions together, without actually being face-to-face, him and his squad providing sniper cover to her Red troops on the ground. She knew his rep and his skill level—the best sniper the NNAA had, bar none.

  He had countless logged kills, maybe as many as she had, but she envied his ability to do it from a distance. Even though he was a Red, they were assigned to separate squads that never mixed despite being stationed at the Houston barracks.

  If that was by design of their higher ups, Zola didn’t question it. She focused on doing her job, no matter how much she hated it, and herself, as a result. Besides, with over ten thousand people stationed at the Houston barracks, not counting civvie personnel and civvie NOKs, it was a city unto itself. And as much time as Zola spent on the road on missions, there were people in her own unit she barely knew, much less people in other squads.

  Once she’d been assigned to the covert Red assassin unit at the Houston barracks after basic ended, Zola had never been able to get herself transferred out again despite despising the job. Had she known being good at what she did would mean seven years of hell doing it, she would have faked clumsiness, ineptitude with a blade and a choke wire, pretended she couldn’t track a blind, three-legged bull in a china shop at high noon—anything to keep from having to take lives and being pigeonholed as an assassin.

  Now they wanted her to find and talk to Owens, try to convince him to come back, opt-in for another term.

  How the frak am I supposed to do that when I don’t even want to be here for another opt-in?

  Not that she’d ever admit that to Major Hicks or Colonel Craige. She was no idiot.

  But she had to at least make the effort in front of the wonks, even though they didn’t know the specifics of her orders. If she found Owens, she was to talk with him. If he didn’t wa
nt to return, she was to report the conversation, his last-known whereabouts, and pass along his exact intended destination, if that intel was available.

  She hated that, too. Hated that she knew, deep in her gut, that her higher-ups wanted him back, dead or alive, regardless of what they’d told her.

  She’d found Owens’ burned uniform shirt earlier and had a hard time not laughing in front of the lifers when she told them it was probably from a hunter or transient, and they’d believed her.

  Burning the unneeded traces of her military life. It was something she planned to do herself in very short order, eliminate all hints of her Red career once she was a civvie.

  She wouldn’t be able to so easily get rid of the memories, or the bad dreams, or the 9001 chip status that would follow her to the grave and likely earn her looks of fear and grudging respect any time she had to be scanned, but at least she’d be free.

  Not that Hicks had said as much, but she suspected if or when Zola found Owens and reported his inevitable go-fuck-yourself reply, Colonel Immanuel Craige would order someone else be sent to take care of him. Likely from a Red unit under his command out of a different barracks, someone who didn’t know Owens and who hadn’t worked with him personally.

  If scuttlebutt was to be believed, it wouldn’t be the first time Colonel Craige had someone eliminated who he’d deemed too valuable to lose. Either that, or non-medical retirement opt-out Reds from Craige’s command had the worst luck ever. Maybe he didn’t want trained Reds running around with civvies, possibly able to hook up with Fundie rebel groups or thug bands that sprouted from time to time. Able to join with opposition forces, or even train others in their specialized and highly deadly tactics.

  Worse, someone who would know the Red playbook and be able to come up with counter tactics.

  That was her guess, anyway. She didn’t know for sure. No one had ever offered up a better supposition for it, and she never contributed her own opinion to those conversations. Last thing she wanted to do was have word get back to Craige or Hicks about her thoughts.

  Thus she kept them to herself.

  Besides, she’d never been assigned that task, to eliminate a Red opt-out. She had no concrete proof it ever happened in the past, either. Had never talked to anyone who’d admitted to doing it. Early on, she’d thought maybe it was just a calculated mind fuck meant to discourage Reds from opting out. Even though amongst the Reds the rumor mills sometimes worked overtime, there was too much circumstantial evidence of it to be merely coincidental. Usually, it was rumored, they picked a lifer Red to do the dirty work.

  It apparently wasn’t a widespread practice amongst the Red units under other commanders, as far as she knew. Zola wasn’t stupid enough to blow the whistle on something she couldn’t prove, especially not this close to her own opt-out.

  If Colonel Craige couldn’t have them, no one could. That was, she’d heard, his unofficial mantra. A dead Red didn’t count against his opt-out stats. She also knew he took great personal pride in his opt-in numbers, for some crazy reason.

  She didn’t care why. That was above her pay grade.

  She knew his philosophy would likely apply to her as well. Which was why she’d never come right out and told Craige or Hicks that she wasn’t going to opt-in a second time. They’d just assumed she was, a belief she was happy to nurture and encourage despite never outright saying so.

  What they didn’t know was that people from her closely-knit area in the Carolina Territory had a long history of rigging the conscription, ever since the system was created following The Great Turning. They had been smart enough to fake their info when registering children, traveling for days or even weeks to rego centers far from their homes, and once there lying about where they lived.

  The NNAA didn’t have a means of verifying anything before it was entered in their computers. Rego center wonks rarely questioned someone claiming their origins in the local region when they registered children, even when they obviously weren’t from there. And if doubts were raised, the lifer wonks running the rego centers were easily convinced to look the other way with a token of appreciation, such as a bottle of home-brew, or a pack of 420 smokes, or a medium coin passed under the table to them.

  Zola and her brothers had all been registered via the San Antonio rego center. Her mother had been registered out of Detroit, and her father out of Chicago.

  The NNAA wouldn’t be able to track Zola once she opted out. She’d made sure to verify that. Once a conscript opted out, their chip status was changed to freeman. If someone ever wanted to check her, once the ID number was cross-referenced with the status database, that was it. They didn’t have the ability to check names anymore. The overtaxed and ancient computer database system was far too fragile as the population had slowly begun to rebound, placing even more of a strain on it and the quickly degrading satellite network.

  Zola already had her plan in place, had done her research. She’d claim she was heading back to her listed hometown region of Tampico, in the Old Mexico territory. That was where she’d reported for her conscription not long after she’d turned twenty. After she opted out, she would even journey south along the Texas coast from Houston, in case anyone followed her from the barracks.

  Once she was sure no one was able to track her true destination, she’d head home to the Carolina Territory.

  And then figure out a way to make a normal life for herself. She was still young. She still had a long life ahead of her.

  Hopefully.

  A long life to figure out how to rid herself of the nightmares she suspected would plague her for years.

  At least pet cats and dogs wouldn’t care how dead and broken she felt inside. Although Zola struggled not to think of the pets she had to leave behind in her parents’ care when she’d left home for her conscription.

  It hurt too much, knowing that most, if not all of them, had probably passed in the time she’d been gone.

  She’d always envied those who’d lived before The Great Turning. They’d had life so much easier. No forced conscription period. Their wars had been fought in distant countries with aircraft and missiles that could bestow death from a distance. What had been America had been peaceful. A population that could stand together and help one another.

  Her great-grandfather had told her stories as he showed her books stored in his basement, pictures of a time well before her birth twenty-seven years earlier. Before a meteor struck the Earth and devastated a massive section of the eastern Asian continent, as well as triggering tsunamis and cataclysmic global conditions that killed off over two-thirds of the world’s population within the first five years between starvation, diseases, and violence.

  Before billions of people died and countries fell, dissolved by the disaster and by the deaths of their people.

  Before the New North Americas formed, when there were still separate countries and states comprising the North American continent, and not one central government slowly rebuilding things one industry at a time.

  Before, they had technology and machines that made life a breeze compared to today.

  Fuel that flowed from pumps anyone could operate, filling vehicles that could take you anywhere you wanted, without a care. Vehicles nearly anyone could afford to own and operate and drive.

  Next year marked the one hundredth anniversary of The Great Turning. People had finally eked out lives and rebuilt communities as the weather patterns improved, making large-scale farming of crops and livestock possible again in much of the continent. She wanted a chance to live. To work.

  Maybe even find someone to love and raise a family with.

  She damn sure couldn’t stomach spending her life as a paid killing machine for the NNAA. The only reason she’d stayed in for one opt-in period was because she’d stupidly believed John Porter when he’d said he loved her. He was staying in, and had begged her to opt-in, to stay with him.

  That they could have a life together. He had spent months seducing her, getting her to f
all for him.

  And she’d fallen, hard and painfully.

  She’d been dumb enough, naive enough, to fall for everything, thinking someone could love someone like her. A paid killer.

  Not this time. Never again.

  Zola paused and held her breath. Ahead of her, the sounds of the men faded into the night. But there was…something.

  The feel of a large animal close by. A predator.

  Watching her.

  It wouldn’t be a bear or a large cat, because those had been hunted almost to extinction in the warmer, open climes of the South. They were only found in the North, and in mountainous regions.

  This was neither.

  And they weren’t close enough to a body of water for it to be an alligator.

  She closed her eyes and waited, listening not just with her ears, but with all her senses.

  It could be a person, but she’d scented no traces of a fire, spotted no signs of human life, other than the idiots ahead of her, ever since they’d found the campsite earlier.

  If it was a person out there, they definitely didn’t want to be found.

  This was, she’d told Hicks, why she was refusing a vehicle when he offered her the use of one. Owens was smart enough to head out on foot. She couldn’t be expected to track the man if he went off the road if she was zipping along and couldn’t watch for subtle signs.

  Half-Assed Hicks had agreed with her rationale. Then he’d said Colonel Craige wanted her to take the wonks, and she knew she couldn’t argue with him about it. It’d look too suspicious.

  What she didn’t want Hicks to know was that refusing a vehicle had also been a stall tactic on her part. One well-trained man, alone, could move far faster than she and four lifer wonks could. They would hike through the night tonight and stop for a couple of hours around noon tomorrow to nap and rest during the heat of the day, when they could more easily set a watchman.

  In this case, her rationale was that she wanted to try to get ahead of Owens, let him catch up to them. Again, logical thinking that Hicks and Craige couldn’t argue against. Owens likely would have holed up for the night and only move during daylight hours. Without someone to stand guard, he wouldn’t camp out in the open and would want every advantage.