Dead Zone

by Robison Wells

  “I’ve never thought about it,” Jack said. He glanced in the mirror. Aubrey’s head was against a window and her eyes were closed. Only Rich and Tabitha looked like they were awake.

  “Neither did I till I was in the middle of it. Fortunately you’re always walking—I spent five months going up and down mountains. Your hands get chapped, but your body stays warm.”

  “And Green Berets don’t get cold,” Jack joked.

  “Damn straight.”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  Nick laughed. “You’re asking because I look like I just got out of junior high, right? I’m twenty-four. Started out as a grunt in Iraq and did that for four years before I went in for the Green Berets. Coldest decision of my life.”

  “You seen a lot of action?” Jack asked.

  “Depends on what you call action and how you define a lot. Are you asking if I’ve fired my gun much?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m just talking.”

  Nick laughed. “I understand you’ve seen plenty of action for your short time in the army.”

  “Plenty,” Jack said.

  “Well, you’re going to see even more.”

  “I know.”

  Nick brought his foot up and put it against the dash, leaning back in his seat.

  “He doesn’t seem worried,” a voice said. It startled Jack. He was so used to his hypersensitivity that he knew how sounds rang around in his ears, and this was different. It was a voice in his head—Tabitha.

  “I can’t believe they’re sending in six kids and one soldier,” she said. “It’s suicide.”

  It wasn’t suicide, Jack thought. He looked in the rearview mirror and met her eyes. Then he gave a small shake of his head.

  “You’re saying it’s not suicide? Are you kidding? We’re unarmed, driving straight toward a roadblock that is specifically looking for people like us. There might even be Russian spy planes watching us right now.”

  Going into a situation unarmed was their job. They were spies.

  “You know,” she said, “not all lambdas are doing this. Not all of them are just going along with everything that the military is telling them to do, and getting in the middle of a fight when they’re totally unprepared.”

  Jack wanted to respond. To argue. For starters, Tabitha wasn’t “totally unprepared.” She was a full private. She’d gone through basic training—or, the rushed lambda version of it. And more than that, she had volunteered to join the army. Just like the rest of them.

  He looked at her in the mirror again and Tabitha’s blue eyes stared back at him. Even though it was dark in the van, he could see every bit of her face—every strand of hair and eyelash. She was smiling. Maybe so little that she didn’t think anyone could see it, but Jack knew faces. He knew how the muscles pulled around the lips and along the cheek, how tiny creases formed about the eyes and mouth, how the eyes dilated ever so slightly, how the teeth were revealed. He observed it all.

  If they were really going into a suicide mission, why would she be smiling?

  Jack’s first thought was that she was a traitor, like the lambdas he’d known before—the lambdas who had been terrorists.

  But Tabitha wasn’t like that, he told himself. It had taken nearly all of their time at basic training for Jack to learn to trust people again, but he’d convinced himself he could. The terrorists had been hunted down. Even the army had stopped forcing the lambdas to wear the horrible bombs around their ankles—that was as close to a stamp of approval as Jack could get. The military believed the terrorists were rooted out. He had to agree.

  “If we survive this,” Tabitha said, “then we should talk about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up when we’re getting ready for a mission.”

  Brought what up? That lambdas shouldn’t be in the army? There was no point in talking about that. They were already there. Already assigned to a Green Beret ODA on the front lines of a war on American soil. There wasn’t anything else to talk about.

  Jack glanced back at Aubrey. She was still sleeping, her lips slightly parted.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Tabitha said, and Jack’s eyes darted to Tabitha’s face. “We’re the Trio, remember? She’s in good hands.”

  Jack gave a slight nod in the mirror, and then focused on the road.

  “She’s talked about you, Jack. She’s told me a million good things. How you used to hunt together back home. How you were always there for her. She cares about you a lot.”

  He didn’t look back. He didn’t like that Tabitha could just get into his head, and he didn’t like that she was talking about Aubrey. It felt too personal. Too intrusive.

  He focused on the street, staring at the road ahead of them. He could see the curves and contours of the mountain highway, far beyond the reach of the headlights. And he saw the seemingly never-ending line of cars headed in their direction, driving away from danger. Danger that he was driving into.

  Jack thought back to Aubrey’s question. What had made them decide to join the army?

  FOURTEEN

  AUBREY WAS NUDGED IN THE ribs, and she sat up with a start. She glanced first at Krezi, who had woken her, and then looked forward at the shapes appearing in the headlights.

  She adjusted her glasses and saw three vehicles blocking the road: two large six-wheeled trucks and one single tracked vehicle that looked like a small tank with a fixed fifty-cal machine gun mounted on the low-sloping turret.

  She recognized it from training, but the name escaped her.

  Jack was continuing to drive toward the roadblock, but a Russian soldier was lowering his hand, signaling for them to slow.

  A floodlight in the back of one of the trucks burst on and filled the van with light so bright she had to shield her eyes. The van slowed and came to a stop.

  As they’d planned, Nick opened his door and stepped outside, causing immediate shouts from the Russians. Aubrey disappeared and slipped between the driver and passenger seats—pausing to kiss Jack on the cheek—then climbed out into the light.

  They were well within one hundred and forty yards of the Russian vehicles, and she knew she was safe. Half a dozen Russians were pointing assault rifles at Nick, who had his arms up in the air and looked as nervous as a teenager facing down the Russian army was supposed to look.

  “Get in your car!” a man called with a thick accent.

  “We have to get to Seattle!” Nick called back, his voice shaking. “Our families are there. We have to get them out.”

  “Get in your car!” the man shouted again.

  Aubrey began walking toward the armored vehicle, watching as its turret pivoted and aimed at the van. This was it. This was the first real contact with the enemy. She felt a wave of nausea and fought to stay calm.

  “We need to get into the city,” Nick continued, his voice pleading.

  Aubrey walked past the soldiers to the back of the roadblock and looked behind it. She didn’t see any reinforcements. She raised a set of binoculars to her eyes and searched the darkness farther down the road, but there was nothing there either. That wasn’t saying much—it was dark and she’d just been blinded by the floodlight. She’d have to wait until the white spots disappeared from the center of her eyes.

  She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the bottle of Flowerbomb perfume. She sprayed it on her wrists, and then misted her neck.

  The Russians were continuing to shout and Aubrey glanced back at them, getting a full count. There were eight men on the street, all pointing their rifles at Nick and the van. Another man stood up in the turret of the tracked vehicle—a BMP! That was what it was called!—and another man sat in the driver’s seat, his head sticking up through a hatch in the front. From what she remembered, there would be one more crew member inside, with passenger room for a squad of infantrymen. They were probably the guys out on the street.

  There was a man standing in the back of one of the trucks, pointing the floodlight, but there were no soldiers in the cabs of either truck.
So that was a grand total of twelve men.

  She felt for the gun at her hip, and the grenades she wore on a harness inside her long coat. Just the thought of using them made her feel sick again.

  The commander of the BMP was talking on a radio, saying something in Russian. In the street Nick was starting to get back into the van.

  “Turn around!” the lead soldier ordered.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Nick said.

  “Mnyeh vsyo ravn. I don’t care. Turn around and go.”

  “Our families are there,” Nick said.

  “Your family is on road,” the soldier argued. “You go back. Find them there.”

  “We don’t know where to go.”

  “You go back,” the soldier said again. “Or we shoot.”

  Nick held his hands up higher and nodded. It really was a convincing performance, Aubrey thought. He looked young and innocent and totally intimidated.

  He got back into the van, but didn’t close the door.

  “You go,” the soldier said, taking a step forward.

  “We’re trying to figure out where we’re going!” Nick said, his voice pleading.

  “You go. Idi ot suda! You go.”

  Nick pulled the door shut, and Jack started the engine.

  Aubrey suddenly felt very alone. Jack turned the van around on the empty street and pulled away. He drove slowly, hugging the shoulder, and after a hundred yards or so he turned off the median and into the trees that separated the eastbound lanes from the westbound.

  “Aubrey, you okay?” Tabitha’s voice appeared in her head.

  “I’m good, Jack,” Aubrey said, relieved to be communicating with them.

  There was a pause. “Jack says you’re okay. Can you give Nick a sitrep?”

  “Twelve soldiers,” Aubrey said, watching the Russians. “I think the main cannon is still aimed at you guys, but I don’t think they can see you. No one is wearing night-vision goggles, and I can’t make out much of the van through the trees. But, you know, my eyes aren’t the best. Still, I think you’re okay to send Josi and Rich.”

  The plan was for Josi and Rich to trek through the thick pines until they got close to the roadblock. Then Aubrey would create a diversion. What the diversion was going to be was something Nick was supposed to decide, and Aubrey didn’t like that she couldn’t make her own choice.

  “Roger that, Aubrey,” Tabitha said. “Josi and Rich are changing clothes.”

  FIFTEEN

  JACK HAD HIS EYES CLOSED, focusing all his attention on Aubrey. The perfume was strong, and he was pulled to her location—it was almost like he could picture her in his head: she was close to an exhaust pipe of one of the trucks and a soldier with body odor. He could hear the low conversation of the Russians and he wished he could understand the language. That was something they needed on their team—a translator.

  Josi and Rich had taken off their coats. They were wearing all-black clothing underneath. They both pulled on ski masks, and then waited for Nick to give them the order.

  “Ask her if we’re clear to send them,” Nick said, and Tabitha, who was leaning against the side of the van, nodded.

  A moment later Jack heard Aubrey’s voice. “It’s clear. I can still see a little bit of the van, but they don’t seem concerned about you. It looks like you’re trying to get into that traffic jam on the other side.”

  “They’re good to go,” Jack said.

  “Just like we talked about,” Nick said to Josi. She nodded, and then, crouching, began moving into the trees toward the soldiers.

  Nick turned to Tabitha. “Find out if there’s anything she can do about that light.”

  Jack listened as Aubrey moved—she got higher, like she was climbing. The wind carried her perfume more.

  “The floodlight is run by a generator in the back of the truck,” she said. “It’s weird and all the instructions are in Russian, but it looks like the gas ones back home, like at Nicole’s cabin.”

  Jack turned to Nick. “She can turn off the generator. That would look like an accident.”

  Nick nodded. “Do it.”

  Tabitha was motionless.

  “Okay,” Aubrey said.

  Jack listened to the hum of the generator motor, and Aubrey’s scuffing footsteps as she got closer to it. He could smell the exhaust coming off of it.

  Someone lit a cigarette.

  “This is weird, Jack,” she said. “Not the generator. I mean, it’s weird being right here with all the Russians.”

  He couldn’t help but think it was strange, too, and it made him nervous. She’d been face-to-face with the bad guys before, with terrorists, and even with Green Berets who thought she was the enemy.

  But this was war. That was an armored personnel carrier. These were Russians.

  It still blew his mind that Russians were the enemy.

  He could hear her doing something—moving something metallic. There was a scrape, and a heavy thud.

  He held his breath.

  “Ask her if she’s all right,” Jack said to Tabitha.

  “I’m okay,” Aubrey said, slightly out of breath. “I had to push the generator away from the side of the truck. The soldier up here looks confused, but he’s not drawing his gun or anything.”

  “She’s okay,” Jack repeated to Nick. When Aubrey moved something while invisible, whether it was opening a door, or picking something up, or even pushing a person, the confusion that her brain created always seemed to cover it up—people assumed there was a gust of wind, or that they’d stumbled, or that something had been off-balance to begin with.

  “I’m going to unhook the battery,” she said. “That should work, right? You know motors better than I do.”

  “Tell her yes,” Jack said.

  “Got it,” Aubrey said a moment later.

  He heard a pop—probably the plastic cover coming off the battery terminal.

  “Tell her not to electrocute herself.”

  There was a scrape of metal on metal.

  Aubrey laughed nervously. “I’m not dumb, Jack. And tell Tabitha she’s not funny.”

  The metal continued to scrape—to squeal. It was a tiny sound, but he was hyperattuned to it. She was pulling the cable off the terminal. He could hear her breath get heavier.

  “This is tight,” she gasped. “Hang on.”

  Nick interrupted his thoughts. “How are Josi and Rich?”

  Jack was shaken from the moment, and opened his eyes. He tried to refocus, hearing the sound of feet sliding over rock and past brush. Compared to the battery cable they sounded like elephants.

  And then the generator motor puttered.

  The light immediately dimmed down to the flicker of a candle.

  “Blyad!”

  “Schto sluchilos?”

  Jack breathed a sigh of relief, and he heard Aubrey say, “Thanks.” Tabitha must have congratulated her.

  He focused back on Josi and Rich, who sped up now that the light was out.

  “They’re okay,” Jack said. “Maybe fifty more feet to go. Josi’s in the lead; Rich is following.”

  “Now what?” Aubrey asked.

  “Now what?” Jack asked Nick.

  “Where are the Russians?”

  He didn’t have to ask Aubrey that, but Tabitha apparently did, because Aubrey started talking just as Jack opened his mouth. He paused to listen to her, and then repeated the information to Nick.

  “Four of them are in the bed of the truck. The others are still standing around the BMP. There’s a lot of talking.”

  Nick had his arms folded, his thumb in his teeth. “How long before they can get that light back on?”

  “All they need to do is replace the battery cable and restart it. Not long if they have a wrench.”

  “I want Rich to touch that BMP, not the trucks,” Nick said. “They might not be hardened like it is.”

  Jack took in a sharp breath. It would take a big diversion to get everyone on the other side of the road.
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br />   “What?” Aubrey said. “The BMP?”

  Tabitha had been talking.

  “What do you propose?” Jack asked, feeling tightness in his chest. This was the part they were supposed to play by ear, and it could go any number of ways.

  “A gun misfire,” Nick said. “Someone on the far side of the road. I want a gun to go off and for it to hit someone.”

  There was hardly a pause before Aubrey responded. “He wants me to shoot someone?”

  “How?” Jack asked. “With her gun?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Pull the trigger on one of their AKs. Fire a burst. Hit someone in the leg.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” Aubrey said almost immediately. “And I don’t like it, Jack. I told you, I don’t want to be an assassin.”

  “What if she can think of something else?” Jack asked.

  Nick chewed on his thumb, thinking.

  “Jack,” a whispered voice said. Josi. “We’re as close as I dare to get.”

  “Josi’s in place.”

  “Tell them to wait,” Nick said to Tabitha.

  There was a pause.

  Josi barely breathed her words. “Roger that.” She was probably twenty feet from the nearest truck—the truck full of Russians.

  “I don’t want to shoot anyone, Jack,” Aubrey said.

  “Ask Aubrey if there’s a target,” Nick said. Jack already knew there was. There were three soldiers standing close together, on the far side of the road.

  “A target?” she asked defiantly. “There are soldiers. They look like you, Jack. They’re just teenagers—maybe a little older. I’m supposed to shoot one?”

  Jack didn’t repeat what she’d said, but turned to Tabitha. “Ask her if there’s anything else.”

  “There’s dry grass,” she said, and then started to move. He followed her movements as she crossed the pavement to the three soldiers.

  “She’s going to try something else,” Jack said.

  Nick unfolded his arms. “What?”

  “I think she’s going to start a fire.”

  “Hang on, Jack,” she said.

  “A fire will just create more light,” Nick said. “Tell her to shoot him in the damn leg.”