Going Grey

by Karen Traviss

  GOING

  GREY

  KAREN TRAVISS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, companies, locations, countries, objects, situations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.

  Copyright 2014 by Karen Traviss

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Karen Traviss

  www.karentraviss.com

  DEDICATION

  To the memory of SPC T. Jocic and SPC T. Fisher, US Army, killed in action in Zhari District, Afghanistan in 2012, and to their friend SPC J. Bakerink, who keeps their memory alive.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  About The Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My grateful thanks go to Ray Ramirez, for firearms and technical advice, and for steadfast friendship; Jeanne Marie Coleman, for technical advice on police procedure; Sean Baggaley, IT genius and smart marketeer, for cover and formatting support; Anthony Serena; Jim Gilmer; Martin Welsford; Mary Pletsch; Bryan Boult, patient beta tester, for his uncanny ability to zero in on plot holes; and Alasdair McLean, inexhaustible source for perception and cognition research.

  I would also like to thank those who provided technical advice but preferred not to be named for professional reasons, including private military contractors currently working in the industry, and scientists in the fields of transgenics and fertility.

  I couldn't have written this book without the generous input of all those mentioned above. Any errors in this book are entirely mine.

  Karen Traviss

  May 2014

  PROLOGUE

  DUNLOP RANCH, NORTH OF ATHEL RIDGE, WASHINGTON: NOVEMBER, THREE YEARS AGO.

  The world's full of mirrors.

  They're everywhere. You probably don't notice, but then you're not trying to avoid them like I am.

  I don't mean the regular variety. There's just two in the house and I don't use them. I mean all the shiny surfaces that spit your reflection back at you when you're not expecting it. Today it's the water trough in the top field. I need to break the ice for the sheep. I've got seconds to step back before the surface settles and shows me how I look today.

  The sheep crowd around the pickup, expecting hay and pellets, so I flap the door a few times to get them to back off and give me room to climb out. They're Jacob sheep – biblical-looking, cranky, and hard to herd. The ram's got six curly horns and letterbox-slit pupils like the Devil. But his name’s Roger, not very Satanic at all. He blocks my way and stares at me, head tilted on one side.

  "What's the problem, buddy?" Roger knows when I'm having a bad day. I think he can smell it, like those dogs that sense when their owner's about to have a seizure. "Come on, move it."

  Roger backs off, looking baffled, but then sheep often do. When I stab my hunting knife into the ice, the chunks tilt and sink. I pull back before the water gets a chance to become another mirror.

  Here's my problem. Sometimes I don't recognise myself.

  I don't mean the split second that everyone says they get now and again, when a store window catches you unaware, or that distracted second when you're brushing your teeth. I mean that I really see a stranger, someone else, someone different, and I never go back to the way I was. A week, a month, a year or two later, I risk looking in the shaving mirror, the fold-up one I've learned not to need, and I might look different again.

  It's not real. It can't be. So there's only one explanation; I'm crazy.

  I've looked in medical books, and all I know is that it isn't dysmorphia, and it isn't prosopagnosia. They don't fit at all. This is my own special kind of crazy. Dunlop's Syndrome. Maybe it'll get its own Latin name one day.

  When I hit a bad patch, my face and scalp start to feel wind-burned for a few moments, like the skin's pulling tight. Then I look in a mirror, and I'm not me. But what's me, anyway? I can't remember. I just get used to the new face and that's me until the next time it happens.

  So Gran doesn't allow shiny surfaces in the house. Blinds cover the windows. There's no glass in the picture frames. The bathroom mirror folds away. Even the photo of her dad and his helicopter, the one on the bookcase, is under a sheet of matt acrylic.

  The sheep seem happy, so I head back to the house. There's not a lot to do around the ranch in the winter apart from looking after Gran's rescue animals and catching up on my lessons. When I open the kitchen door, Gran's putting on her sheepskin jacket to go out. Sometimes I wonder if it bothers the sheep. Do they recognise it? Do they ask themselves why Gran looks after them like pets, but wears one of their own? Maybe they're just like humans, happy to turn a blind eye when it suits them.

  "I'm off to town, Ian." Gran studies my face. She can always tell when something's wrong. "Want to come?"

  When I can feel a bad patch coming, I want to hide from everyone, even Gran. "No thanks. I've got math to do. Maybe watch a DVD. I'll fix dinner."

  "You okay?"

  "Yeah. Sure."

  "Anything you want me to fetch back?"

  I get through a lot of movies on our DVD player. We've even got old video tapes. Gran doesn't trust cable and satellite companies, like she doesn't trust banks, credit cards, and the Internet. The only phone we've got is an unregistered cell, a really old one without any fancy features.

  "If you're passing the thrift store, could you see if they've got any movies, please? Or documentaries."

  "Which war?"

  "World War One. I haven't got many on that."

  Gran nods, looking off to one side for a second like she's running through a mental database of movie titles. "Okay, checklist time. Keys?"

  "Gun locker, ammo store, truck." I count them off on the rack on the kitchen wall. It's our drill every time she leaves the ranch. She says Mount St. Helen made her jumpy and now she's always ready to run. "Safe. Desk."

  "Folder?"

  "Locked in the desk. Open it if you're not back in four hours, and follow the instructions inside."

  "Emergency supplies and grab bag?"

  "In the hall closet." It's like reciting my times tables, an automatic stream of sound. "And I call Joe if I need to move the animals."

  "Good. We're all square, then. See you later."

  Athel Ridge isn't far to drive, but it might as well be Outer Mongolia. Our nearest neighbours are a couple of miles away — Joe and a bunch of other folks who live off the grid as well. We avoid the town because every move gets seen and recorded somewhere, according to Gran. She's careful about that sort of thing. Government agencies and big business are all the same species of bastard who spy on you all the time, she says, and she said so years before everyone else found out it was all true.

  But I always knew she wasn't crazy. Unusual, maybe, but not crazy. I know what crazy is.

  I finish my chores and choose a DVD from the tight-packed bo
okcase. The photo of Great-Granddad – David Dunlop, Huey pilot, the guy who did his duty in Vietnam — sits on the shelf at eye height, a reminder of what I've got in me somewhere. I never knew him. But then I never knew my parents, either. Gran never talks about them. She just says Mom was a waster, and that she doesn't know who my father was. The fact that she tells me everything about her dad and nothing about Mom says it all. Great-Granddad's the guy I need to take after. He's the one to emulate. I don't want to be a waster like my mom.

  But I'm sixteen next birthday. I should be thinking about what I'm going to do with my life. One thing's for sure: the Army doesn't take crazy people.

  Knowing what I see isn't real doesn't help. It's enough to fuck up your whole life. Gran says I’d end up on the streets or worse if I tried to cope in the outside world, so I'm better off on the ranch, miles from anywhere, home-schooled and out of the reach of well-meaning doctors and do-gooders from social services.

  For once, I can't even wrap myself up in the movie. All I can see is David Dunlop, a man who did amazing things and put his life on the line for his buddies. Forget your flag and country, Gran says. People spat on Great-Granddad when he came home from 'Nam. So much for a grateful nation. War brings out the best and the worst in people, she says, and the best of it is a pretty good example of how to live your life. I've only got to watch the news to see what the worst is like, or think of Great-Granddad Dunlop coming home and wondering what the hell it was all for.

  It was for his buddies. That was reason enough for him. I can see that in the movies. It's the one truth that shines out of all of them.

  One of Gran's greyhounds, Oatie, jumps on the sofa and puts his head in my lap. It's enough to distract me. My focus shifts from the photo to the TV screen for a second, and — damn, it's another mirror. I don't normally see the TV that way, but the light from the window's at the wrong angle. Before I can shake it off, I see myself.

  Did my nose look like that yesterday? Does my hair seem lighter?

  It's not real, any of it. But if you know you’re nuts, does that mean you’re not? If I was crazy, I'd think it was real, right?

  Maybe I'll grow out of it. Maybe I'll get sane. And maybe I won't, and this is how I'll spend the rest of my life. I don't know what I look like, I don't know much about where I came from, and I don't know where I'm going.

  But there's Great-Granddad. Something of him must be in me, something that made him fly that Huey into enemy fire time after time because guys were depending on him for their lives.

  I just have to look for it. It's got to be there.

  ONE

  In my capacity as Career Manager, I write to notify you that with regret, I must issue you with 12 months' notice of termination. This notification can now be treated as an executive order to start planning and make use of the resettlement package available to you.

  UK Ministry of Defence notice of compulsory redundancy, issued to Sgt Rob Rennie, Royal Marines.

  NAZANI, EAST AFRICA: 48 HOURS BEFORE THE END OF THE NPROFOR / AFRICAN UNION PEACEKEEPING MISSION.

  Time was like falling off a cliff. One second you were alive, and the next you weren't: one minute you had a good career with a few years left before you had to find a job in Civvy Street, and the next you found yourself out on your ear without so much as a thank-you or a kiss-my-arse.

  The e-mail from the company handling the MoD's Dear John letters had arrived two days ago. The services of Sergeant Rob Rennie were no longer required. The timing couldn't have been worse.

  You bastards. You binned me.

  And short of my pension date. So no lump sum on exit. Fuck you.

  Rob fidgeted in the passenger seat of the armoured ACMAT pickup, staring at the bleak prospect of unemployment and an equally grim cluster of ruined buildings in the distance, all that was left of a town called Wadat.

  There'd been a lot more of Wadat around on his last deployment, but the place was doing well to cling to the map at all given the pounding it had taken. A cluster of shell-shattered, abandoned buildings refused to give up. In a saner world, Nazani could have been a resort for trendy adventure tourists playing at roughing it, but this was Rob's world, the real one, greedy and destructive, another angry, broken place where schoolboys were waiting to kill him.

  One of them was loafing in a derelict shop doorway with a scabby ginger dog as the ACMAT passed. The kid couldn't have been more than twelve, smoking with all the weary assurance of a forty-a-day man while he drummed one heel against the shuttered door. Rob couldn't work out whether he was a look-out or a decoy. He didn't seem to have a phone in his hand. Either way, he wasn't waiting for the shop to open so he could go in and buy a Mars Bar.

  Sam Obado drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and gave him a quick glance. He must have seen Rob's eyes lock on to the kid.

  "He's not a look-out, Robert." Sam was an accomplished mind-reader. "Relax."

  Rob craned his neck and didn't take his eyes off the boy until he was completely out of sight. It didn't make sense for anyone to harass patrols when the peacekeepers were pulling out, but the end of deployments was a favourite time to pick off tired foreign troops with home on their minds. He'd be out of here soon along with the rest of the peacekeeping force, and then it would be someone else's problem. Rob had enough of his own to worry about now.

  How am I going to top up Tom's university fund now?

  I was counting on that fucking money.

  He'd thought he'd have a few more years to get things sorted before he had to face Civvy Street for the first time in his adult life. But he'd thought wrong. He had a year to find a new job in a world that didn't have much use for what he did best.

  Private security, maybe. Yeah, me and a few thousand other blokes. Not so easy to get your foot in the door now.

  Sod it. I'll think of something. I'm thirty-seven. I'm not washed up yet.

  If they'd just let him see out his twenty-two years, he could have picked up a tidy lump sum when he left. Now he'd have to wait another twenty-odd years for it, way too late to help Tom when he really needed it.

  Bastards. Just to save a few quid on this year's budget. What do I get? A resettlement grant. Ten grand or whatever.

  Rob opened the window a couple of inches, letting in air that now smelled of damp earth instead of lightly-toasted war zone. A zebra-striped bird with a rusty pink crest stabbed its long beak into the grass verge like a man searching for land mines. Somewhere a few miles north, a vehicle carrying aid workers and their mobile security guy — no confirmed number or nationalities yet — had missed its last radio check. Rob and Sam headed down the route the party should have taken, expecting to find them trying to repair a broken-down SUV.

  It didn't explain why they hadn't called in, though. Rob checked his watch again.

  "Be nice to them when we find them, Robert," Sam said.

  "I'm charm personified. I don't have any problem with security blokes."

  "I meant the aid workers."

  Rob realised he'd griped about NGOs more than he thought. "Yeah. One minute we're compromising their precious neutrality. Then it all goes to rat-shit and they want us to rescue them."

  "At least we have the moral high ground."

  "I'll treasure that if I get my arse shot off saving them."

  Sam steered through a slalom course of potholes. Shallow mortar craters were mixed with puddles of overnight rain, each one still a potential IED as far as Rob was concerned. Roads had long since ceased to be paths from A to B. Even back in the UK, he was a jumpy passenger. He fidgeted, trying to find a position to keep his boots off the floor, ready for a shockwave from below that could break his back. Sam should have let him drive. He was happier when he was in control.

  "Don't worry," Sam said. "You'll find work. Your son will go to college. And the floor won't deform if we hit anything."

  "I'm really obvious, aren't I?" Rob studied himself in the wing mirror again to check that he still looked fine for a man who was knocking o
n the door of middle age. "I just haven't got the civvy skills they want these days."

  "You have time to acquire some."

  "Not without a brain transplant."

  "Try maritime security. You could call at Morrigan's office in Mombasa before you go home."

  Bev would have called that mercenary work, but she'd given up having a say in Rob's life when she left him. He had to focus on Tom now. Maybe getting binned was Nature's way of telling him he'd done his duty and now it was Rob Time.

  "Yeah, you're right." Rob tried to sound upbeat. No wrapping or whingeing, that was the rule: no giving up and no complaining. However bad things got, a Marine just cracked on with it. "I'll end up guarding luxury yachts. Sorted."

  The ACMAT passed a couple of African Union Humvees with Senegalese and Kenyan markings, parked about twenty meters from the tarmac. Sam acknowledged one of the guys on the Miniguns with a discreetly raised forefinger. Then something bounced against the underside of the pickup with a loud clunk, probably just a chunk of concrete, but Rob still held his breath and waited for the bang that never came. It was enough to take his mind off his money worries.

  "Relax." Sam read his mind again, not that it was hard. "Morrigan cleared the road this morning. Did you hear they lost another man last week?"

  "Course not. Contractors are even lower on the food chain than us." Rob stopped himself mid-whinge. Cheerful in adversity. It was such a central part of being a Royal Marine that it was specified in the recruiting leaflet. "That'll be me this time next year."

  The radio interrupted. "Echo Two Three Bravo, this is Zero — confirming three Dutch, one French NGO personnel, plus one US mobile asset, armed. Nothing heard for thirty minutes now, over."

  Rob adjusted his headset. So that was four aid workers and their American minder, what the civvies would have called their bodyguard, and he had a weapon. No problem there, then.

  "Zero, this is Echo Two Three Bravo, any UAVs to give us eyes on, over?"