At the Merest Glance: a military paranormal romance (Shadowforce: Psi Book 3)

by M. L. Buchman

  Katie pointed off to the southeast. “Actually, FEA and FLAG-1, which reaches to New York, both come ashore at PK, that’s Porthcurno, about halfway back to Mousehole.”

  They all blinked at her in surprise, close enough in unison to make her laugh. Something she hadn’t done in a long while.

  “Shit!” Ricardo recovered first. “We ran through there this morning.”

  “We did?” Anton swiveled his head around as if he could see it from here and ended up looking in completely in the wrong direction.

  He finally groaned and turned back to her.

  “I have no sense of direction here. From my family’s farm in North Carolina, the sea does a fine job staying to the east. From San Antonio, the Gulf of Mexico is always to the south.”

  “Southeast,” Michelle cut in.

  “Hush when your betters are talking.”

  Anton ignored the fist that thudded against his back, aside from winking at Katie.

  “Here it’s just all messed up with the sea on every which side. Can’t seem to get a hold on it. Anyway, our colonel has a weird sense of humor. It’s probably his idea of a rip-roaring joke to tell us to start off with Sennen Cove and see what we find. How did you know about the FEA cable anyway? Are you a plant by Colonel Gibson?”

  Katie shrugged. “All the locals know. It was cut into Porthcurno when I was a kid in 2001. There are so many cables that come ashore in Cornwall that the locals keep a tally like a game. Porthcurno received the two FLAG cables—short for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe—for the US and Asia links. But Bude up north is getting the new 2Africa cable.”

  She saw Isobel and Michelle exchange quick glances. A moment later, Ricardo swiveled around to stare at Michelle, then her. Katie sighed, exactly as if Michelle had spoken to him without making a sound.

  Anton leaned down to whisper loudly by Katie’s ear. “Don’tcha just hate it when they do that mind-to-mind thing?”

  “Is Isobel telepathic, too?” It was hard to believe those words had just come out of her mouth.

  “Nah. But she and Michelle were college roommates for four years. They developed some weird secret women’s language ever since then. Well, if the cable comes up somewhere else, I guess that we’d better go there. Then we can trace where it goes.”

  Katie again couldn’t help laughing, just because she knew it would irritate Anton. It worked.

  “What now?” He let out a long-suffering sigh.

  “If we trundle back to Mousehole by way of Porthcurno, we’ll drive close by the main junction point for all of the southern Cornwall cables. It’s halfway between these cables and Porthcurno. It’s named Skewjack. Skewjack Farms used to be a big hippie, surfing enclave back in the day. All the locals know about this area.”

  Chapter 7

  Anton had almost thought Katie was pulling their leg. For one thing, he’d never met a woman who laughed so easily. For another, one who lit up so much each time she did.

  But, exactly as she’d said, just five kilometers from Land’s End Airport, they drove by it. Skewjack was a low, rounded building, like a Quonset hut on steroids that someone had flattened until it was little more than a massive metal hump. There were only glimpses through a perimeter of trees, but if she was giving it to them straight, it was right there for all to see.

  “Take a left here,” Katie pointed out an even narrower road than the “main” A30 that they were on.

  “We don’t want to be too obvious.”

  “It won’t be. There are a couple farms back there. If Janice is in, we can go visit Bunker Cottage. This whole area is an old RAF radar site. She converted one of their bunkers into a lovely little tourist place.”

  Hannah steered them in. The screen of trees wrapped around the second side of the Skewjack building, but thinned along the third.

  Anton tried to appear casual as he studied it out the window. To the back was a row of massive air conditioning units and big emergency generators. If a dozen undersea cables all terminated here, they’d need massive computing power, which would generate a lot of heat.

  There were only three cars in the parking lot at the other end. And it was all wrapped in a three-meter-high fence topped with razor wire. The building was studded with security cameras.

  Katie definitely wasn’t pulling their leg.

  The final key was that there were no signs identifying the building. The main gate’s only label said to keep out.

  Hannah drove them another three hundred meters and pulled over where Katie indicated. They were in the middle of cultivated fields. One was a big sheep paddock, but two were row crops, and the fourth looked like an orchard of hazelnut trees or something.

  Bunker Cottage, now that they could see it, had absolutely been a bunker. In the middle of the flat landscape, a grassy earth mound rose from the north. Then partway along, it was chopped off and a wall of mostly windows had been installed. In front of the bunker’s opening, a sitting area of wooden chairs and a slightly wild English garden made it look very cozy. Though he’d never pictured scattered palm trees in an English garden, they seemed to fit.

  As the others got out of the car, Anton knew what he needed to do. “I’ll just stay in the car.”

  Katie hesitated halfway out the door, then looked back at him. “You’re going to…” He could see her swallow hard.

  He nodded. Now was where she dismissed him as a freak. And this time he wasn’t going to be able to just shrug it off when she did. He liked her.

  “Really?”

  He sighed. “How many fingers are you holding up behind your back?” This time both her hands were in plain view, but she caught the reference to last night’s demonstration.

  She stared down at the car’s floor for a long moment. When she finally spoke, it was so softly that he could barely hear her.

  “And you think that I…can do…something that…”

  “Something strange and kind of cool that’s scaring the crap out of you?”

  Katie just nodded, looking up at him through where her hair had fallen forward again. This time he didn’t resist the urge to brush it back so that he could see the honey-amber color of her eyes.

  “Yeah, Katie. I’m guessing you do. It’ll be okay.”

  “Can you prove it?” But her tone was wry.

  “Sure. Later. Maybe over dinner…without those jokers horning in.”

  “I think I’d like that.” And they traded smiles.

  Was it a date? Stupid question. Woman was freaking and it was his job to calm her down some.

  “But right now I need to go take a hike.”

  “Isn’t that my line?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “A hike while sitting in a car?”

  “While sitting in a car.”

  She studied him a moment longer, then nodded before following the others toward Bunker Cottage.

  Anton closed his eyes and let his vision slip out after her.

  Katie walked like Ricardo and Hannah, as if she wasn’t quite touching the ground. Only she did it better. When a woman was better than a pair of Delta Force operators, that was a hell of a sight to see.

  She turned to look at him. Not where he sat in the car. Him. Watching her.

  Damn! Couldn’t get away with shit with this woman.

  He headed back up the lane toward Skewjack.

  After Anton had declared he was done peeking around Skewjack, they’d all driven the few kilometers south to Porthcurno—the tiny town where so many undersea cables surfaced.

  Katie had played tour guide as they’d strolled all through town, all two blocks and a beach of it, before climbing up to the top of the cliff that rose fifty meters above the sea.

  Anton’s whisper tickled her ear, “Too bad you aren’t a TK. We could really use a TK for this.”

  “TK?” The words slipped out before Katie could stop them. “We’re in PK…”

  “Why’s Porthcurno called that anyway? Mousehole isn’t MH. And shouldn’t it be PC?”

  Katie wav
ed a hand and Anton and the others looked around. They were seated in one of her favorite spots on the Cornish coast. The tiny village was slipped into a sharp, narrow valley. The only road in and out was appropriately named “The Valley.” The short sandy beach lay just to the east. But here, atop a jagged cliff just south of the beach, sat the Minack Theatre.

  Carved from the granite by an eccentric woman in the 1920s and ’30s, the outdoor amphitheater boasted a circular stage, backed by a partial stone wall and a vertical drop to the sea. The broad steps of the curved seating would have fit perfectly in an old Greek theater. Shakespeare under the stars were her favorite performances. She could feel—

  Bloody hell!

  She could feel the actors who had stridden across this stage time and again only to—

  Katie shut out the thought and covered it over with more explanations.

  “Many of the early transatlantic cables were landed here. By the Second World War, this was the largest undersea cable hub in the world. During the war, they dug deep tunnels under this very cliff to protect the cables and their operators. Telegraphy was all done in Morse code, and PK was Porthcurno’s call sign. In Cornish, curno is spelled with a K and it means Pinnacle Cove.”

  “Oh,” Anton looked around again. “Not what we need. We need a telekinetic, with a T, to go in and knock out Skewjack’s cameras and unlock the gate so that we can get in without them seeing us.”

  “Isn’t that cheating? I mean if the security is good enough to stop people who are normal, isn’t that—” Her voice actually squeaked as she cut herself off in panic.

  Anton’s big hand rested over hers and held on until she could start to breathe again.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “No skin off any of our backs, Katie. It’s okay. We all have lived with it long enough to know that we’re more than a little outside the curve.”

  She clenched his hand in both of hers when he went to let go. She didn’t care what other people thought, he simply made her feel better.

  The only people seated in the theater at the moment were Anton’s team, and she could certainly see that they were thinking about something happy. Michelle took Ricardo’s hand and Jesse took Hannah’s, and Isobel just offered one of her beautiful smiles.

  Katie thought better of it and let go of Anton’s hand.

  Chapter 8

  Cornwall was having a typical April evening, surprisingly chilly after the warmth of the day. At least the sea fog was staying just offshore.

  Katie lay beside Anton atop the hump of Bunker Cottage, which offered a splendid view of the Skewjack building, especially with the powerful night-vision binoculars that the team had provided.

  The team. Michelle, Isobel, and Jesse lay with them. Ricardo and Hannah were somewhere out there in the night.

  Again she wondered if she was doing something horribly wrong. Perhaps she should have reported them all to the police or the telephone company. Maybe to the social media sites that owned so many of the cables. Or someone.

  These people were invading a site that they themselves had told her was of critical national security. Critical to nations at both ends of the cables, and now she was complicit with helping them attack the UK’s terminus.

  If that’s what they were doing.

  She’d looked it up. Not counting all of the little cables to Ireland and Europe, almost every major cable came up in Cornwall or Somerset. It was a little unnerving to realize that three small bombs could essentially sever the UK from the rest of the world. Internet, phones, financial data, all of it. Of course the financial data wasn’t such a big concern considering her current bank balance.

  Was Isobel Manella a sham? Some sort of secret agent?

  Well, actually, she’d said they all were, but for the US government.

  They didn’t feel bad.

  Feel! There was that stupid word again. She just…

  Deep breath, Katie. Deep breath.

  One of the things she could feel so easily was Anton lying beside her. Except he wasn’t using binoculars. He was stretched out on his back, not staring at the stars. Somehow, his mind was inside the Skewjack building.

  But his body was here, as he proved by reaching out and taking her hand. It was so much bigger than hers that it should feel strange and awkward. Instead, it felt safe, as if he could hold back the world with hands like those.

  “Inbound,” Jesse said softly.

  Katie looked toward Skewjack.

  The next technician’s shift was coming in. Two cars rolled up to the front gate. The gate opened almost immediately.

  Anton spoke up, “Tell them to follow the second car for three meters past the gate, then roll off to the left.”

  Michelle was silent, apparently relaying the message telepathically to Ricardo.

  When she’d asked why they didn’t just use radios, Ricardo had explained that they might have systems to monitor that, but that no one had a way to pick up on their telepathy.

  Even watching for them, she could barely see Ricardo and Hannah slipping through Skewjack’s front gate behind the second car. Dressed in black and carrying no weapons, they moved as smoothly as the shadows they were hiding in.

  No weapons. She’d take that as a good sign that this really was just a test.

  “Oh come on, guys. You’re making this too easy,” Anton groaned. Then he spoke quickly, “The staff are inside jawing it up. Nobody looking at the security monitors. Approach from the left corner at sixty degrees. That’ll keep you clear of the cameras, just in case someone turns around. Move. Move. Move.”

  Katie couldn’t spot the two former Delta Force operators this time until they were actually at the front door.

  Hannah crouched and quickly picked the lock and opened the door.

  “Clear to go through. Cut hard right across the threshold.”

  “In and holding,” Michelle spoke for the first time, apparently repeating something Ricardo had told her. From inside the building over a hundred meters away. Without a phone or radio.

  Katie buried her face in the thick grass.

  “Call this number,” then Anton called it out.

  “How did you…”

  “Reading it off the face of their own desk phone. Call it now, Isobel!”

  For some reason, that simple act was what really brought it home for her. He and the others were inside that building, reading a secure phone number.

  “Ringing,” Michelle and Isobel said almost simultaneously. One reporting from Ricardo, and one with the phone to her ear.

  “Hello,” Isobel spoke up in a calm and pleasant voice when it was answered. “I hope you’re having a wonderful evening… You are? Good. Now I’d like you to remain very calm. There’s no threat. But your site has been the subject of a security test… No, this isn’t a hoax. We’ve placed two people inside your building. They’re unarmed and no threat to you. We just didn’t want to surprise you unduly.”

  “She is so smooth,” Katie whispered to Anton.

  “Hello. Professional actress. Though she had her shit together even back in college enough to humble any man.” He kept his voice soft enough that they could have been alone under the stars.

  “Is that the real reason why you never went for Isobel?”

  “No, it’s because she’s scary.”

  Katie narrowed her eyes at him. She’d already learned that he was a pushover and that was all the push it took.

  Then she remembered that he couldn’t see her between the darkness and his vision being inside the building. Just as she started feeling foolish, Anton shrugged.

  “She was Michelle’s roommate and best friend. Michelle needed a friend really badly at that point in her life. I didn’t want to mess that up.”

  How could such a big man be so sweet?

  “There was never any real click anyway.” He squeezed her hand, indicating he felt one with her. It gave her stomach a quick flip of vertigo, like when she’d watched guillemot chicks leap from the cliff before they
could really fly.

  He was here.

  And there.

  And she was still holding his hand for reasons that were thoroughly perplexing. She’d never really been the handholding type. It implied trust, something that her parents and the boarding school had taught her to never have.

  Trust nothing and no one.

  Tom Brown Jr. suffered from a similar affliction, he just assumed that anyone who wasn’t himself wasn’t quite good enough. Even when she did something perfectly, that she was pretty sure he couldn’t have duplicated, he’d find something to pick apart as if dissecting a specimen for study. Maybe just trying to make her even better, but it had still stung.

  “What are they doing?” Isobel asked softly. “They’re reluctant to believe me.”

  Anton hesitated just a moment. “Woman on the phone is looking bored. Other three are still jawing. Carrot top is scratching his balls.”

  Isobel spoke into her phone again. “Why don’t you put me on speaker phone? Or at least tell your red-headed teammate that it isn’t polite to scratch his genitals in the presence of a woman.”

  “That got a response,” Michelle reported from Ricardo.

  “Yeah,” Anton laughed. “She’s staring at the ceiling looking for a hidden camera.”

  “She also yelled at Andrew to stop it and check the area.” Ricardo-through-Michelle again.

  “Is Andrew always so thoughtless?” Isobel asked ever so politely. “I’d say that’s enough of a test. My people are going to stand up now, introduce themselves, and then we’ll leave. The report will be filed with no criticism of yourselves as your jobs are to be technicians, not security officers. There are clearly some large problems with that side of the operation.”

  Anton laughed aloud.

  “What?”

  “Hannah just stepped out of the shadows to join the circle of three guys as if she’d always been there. Ricardo sat in the chair across the desk from the woman on the phone before she even saw him. The four are twitching worse than a hound dog dreaming of a thousand rabbits.”