Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5)

by Noah Mann

“You’ll make it,” I told myself. “You’ll make it back to her.”

  The words were both encouragement and promise. Sleep began to summon me. My eyes grew heavy. I was cold, but not in danger of succumbing to the elements anymore.

  You’re going to wake up in the morning...

  That further assurance came without spoken word. Existing in my thoughts. Precisely where other musings raged.

  What happened? Is Elaine all right? Who did this? Who was the stranger?

  I fell deep asleep with my mind screaming dark thoughts and fears.

  Four

  Sometime just after dawn my eyes opened, snatched from a dream abruptly. So quickly that what had lived as I slept seemed to exist in my waking world for a moment.

  Ranger... Ranger... Ranger...

  I had been dreaming about Neil.

  Ranger... Ranger... Ranger...

  The words repeated in my head as I lay there, shivering, the fire reduced to small licks on the glowing remains of the logs. I pulled myself into a ball and slid as close to the shrinking fire as I could without being burned.

  Black is white. White is black.

  More words from my friend. He’d said that to my face in the moments before he’d been spirited away in a stealthy chopper with Grace and Krista at his side.

  You can’t trust anyone.

  That, too, he’d emphasized. The entire exchange between us, our last in person, maybe forever, had been a very clear warning from my friend to me.

  But a warning about what?

  He’d urged me to get out. To find a hole somewhere and hide.

  “Bandon,” I said, the word drowsy and dry.

  My body trembled as I thought on that. On the place I’d come to believe was home after some initial, fleeting doubts. Thinking that it was somehow the focus of Neil’s warning and worry, and that my friend, my lifelong friend, was somehow privy to knowledge of a danger facing it, both troubled and vexed me.

  More questions. That’s what I was left with. After what he had done. And after what had happened to me in the past forty-eight hours. Questions whose answers would have to wait as something else drew my attention.

  A noise. Tickling my ears through the softly falling rain. A sound from beyond the cabin walls, faint, rumbling in the distance, low and rhythmic.

  It was real. Not some phantom sound spiking up from my nearly hypothermic brain. It was there. It was faint. And it was familiar.

  “A diesel,” I said.

  I pushed myself up. Next to me the fire was crackling down, the last of the dry wood fueling it almost consumed. But out there, through the weather, beyond the grey woods...

  “A truck,” I said.

  A burst of energy powered me as I came to me feet and stumbled through the space where the blasted wall had once stood. The throaty growl grew louder, out on the road somewhere to my front. I pushed myself and began to walk down the dirt path that had brought me to the ramshackle cabin. Then I began to run. And stumble. Three times I fell into the mud before I came within sight of the road. And within sight of the most wondrous thing I could imagine.

  Vehicles. A large military truck following a smaller Humvee, both of which I recognized. Each left by the Rushmore. Each from the place I now knew as home.

  “Hey!”

  I shouted as I scrambled up the path, my voice weak and raspy, drawing no notice. The vehicles lumbered on. In each I could make out silhouettes. People. Drivers and passengers. There was no definition to them. No features that gave me any clue as to who they were. And for an instant I wondered if, along with what had happened to me, the town itself had suffered some attack. And with that musing rose the fear that the people in the vehicles might not be those I wanted desperately to see.

  Then, I heard my name.

  “Fletch!”

  It was the nick Neil had given me so long ago, when we were just goofy kids. Now it was being called out by one of those I’d come to know, and respect, from our adopted hometown.

  “Martin!”

  I screamed his name as I lost my footing on the rutted shoulder of the road, the pair of vehicles a hundred feet past my position now. They weren’t stopping. My hands grabbed at the edge of the asphalt and pushed off, lifting my body so that I stood now, unsteadily, waving my arms as I shouted again through the rain falling lightly.

  “Help!”

  Brake lights bloomed suddenly red, both vehicles slowing. Then stopping.

  “Hey!”

  I began to stagger toward them as the passenger doors of both opened, Martin emerging from the Humvee and Sergeant Lorenzen from the truck, each geared up and armed as they jogged toward me.

  “Fletch!”

  Martin shouted my name and I stopped, relieved, the strength I’d managed to summon draining instantly away. I fell slowly to my knees on the harsh surface of the road.

  “Are you okay?” Martin asked as he reached me and crouched to support me.

  I nodded and looked past him, Private Quincy stepping from behind the wheel of the Humvee and Nick Withers, one of the town’s three mechanics, leaving the same position in the truck to join those already surrounding me.

  “Just cold,” I said.

  “Let’s get him in the Humvee,” Martin said.

  He and Lorenzen took my arms and eased me off the ground.

  “Send a signal, private,” Lorenzen said.

  Quincy jogged ahead to the truck and retrieved a stubby grenade launcher from the cab, loading it with a short, fat shell before bringing it to her shoulder and taking aim at a point in the sky roughly northwest of our position. She squeezed the trigger and the weapon bucked with a solid POP. A few seconds later, lost somewhere in the cloud cover, a rattling explosion rippled, sounding like a thousand loud firecrackers going off in quick succession. The military grade noisemaker, meant to be used to disorient and discourage unruly crowds, sent a series of sharp cracks echoing across the landscape in every direction. In this weather the signal might carry only a few miles, or twenty, depending on the terrain. But without having to be told, I knew what message it was meant to convey—they had found me.

  But was I the only one out here to find?

  “Elaine,” I said as Martin and Lorenzen eased me into the back seat of the Humvee.

  “She’s fine,” Martin assured me. “She’s back in town.”

  “Cap wouldn’t let her come on the patrols sent out to find you,” Lorenzen said.

  Warm air from the vehicle’s heater washed over me, but still I shivered as I managed a chuckle.

  “I imagine that went over well,” I said.

  “Two alpha females,” Martin said, grabbing a blanket from the seat and wrapping. “We married into trouble.”

  A soft, distant thud rumbled across the landscape, followed by a timpani of small popping sounds.

  “The other team responded!” Quincy shouted from near the truck.

  “Let’s get him back to town,” Lorenzen said, eyeing me with more than a hint of concern. “He looks shaky.”

  Martin nodded and reached to close the back door, stopping when Nick approached and leaned halfway in to give me a quick hug.

  “Damn glad we found you, Fletch.”

  I looked the longtime Bandon resident in the eye, all bout me telegraphing confusion before any words came out.

  “What happened, Nick?”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Martin said, closing the door before climbing in the passenger seat. “We need to move.”

  Quincy got behind the wheel, Lorenzen and Withers hurrying back to the truck. In a minute we were moving, pulling ten point turns to get the vehicles heading back the way they’d come. I pulled the blanket tight and let my body collapse against the Spartan seat.

  “Martin.”

  The man who’d led Bandon through the worst of the blight was already looking back from the front seat, watching over me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Seriously...what happened?”

 
He didn’t answer right away. Thinking, instead, it seemed to me. Searching for some reply that might satisfy my wondering, and calm the vague fear that I could see on his face.

  “I wish I knew,” he said.

  I asked no more as we headed west. Toward home.

  Five

  In the brief time I’d been gone, Bandon had changed.

  What had been a relaxed town by the sea, just beginning to thrive, creeping toward a sense of normalcy, was now an armed camp much like the hardened community of survivors we’d arrived at after fleeing my Montana refuge. Checkpoints, abandoned after returning from Skagway with new life blooming in our absence, were once again manned. Residents who had fallen back into a sense of some new normalcy held rifles and scanned the roads and terrain with binoculars. Patrols moved about the woods to either side of the road we followed from the east.

  “Where’s Elaine?” I asked as we were waved through a checkpoint.

  “I’m not sure,” Martin said.

  I looked through the thick side windows of the Humvee, past droplets of mist condensing on the blast resistant glass. Friends and neighbors gawked at our mini convoy, surprise and relief plain on their faces. My return had not been expected, it seemed.

  “How long was I gone?”

  Quincy steered us around a corner, taking us north along familiar streets.

  “Three days,” the private answered. “Elaine looked for you around the cottage and down the coast before she came back to town.”

  “There was no sign of you,” Martin said.

  “Three days,” I said, almost gasping at that fact. “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Martin said. “Once the doc gets a look at you we may have a better idea.”

  I noticed the route we were taking now, driving quickly into town. Toward what had become the town’s administrative buildings.

  That wasn’t where I wanted to go.

  “Take me home,” I said.

  Martin looked back at me as the town blurred past the windshield in front of him.

  “The doc will be waiting,” he said. “The cap—”

  “Home,” I interrupted. “If Elaine knows I’ve been found, that’s where she’ll go.”

  The town’s former leader offered no resistance. In a time past, when his son was still alive and he felt responsible for the lives of all those who’d aligned themselves with the fragile boy’s genius, Martin Jay might have told me that we were going where it had been decided I should go. This was not that time. Not anymore.

  “Take him home,” Martin said without looking to Quincy.

  “But—”

  “She’s your commander,” Martin said, half smiling as his gaze angled toward the private. “But she’s my wife. I’ll take the heat for any detour from plans.”

  Quincy drew a breath and made her decision quickly, slowing the Humvee and pulling a wide turn at the next intersection. The truck followed the maneuver, and trailed us as the private steered us into the neighborhood and to the simple yellow house.

  I was home.

  Six

  Martin brought me a cup of coffee. I took the mug from him with one hand and cinched the blanket tight around my shoulders. The worst of the chill that had nearly killed me was gone, beaten down by the fire I’d built, the remainder fading now in the warmth of drink, dry clothes, and the concern of friends.

  “Drink,” he said.

  Behind him, at the front window, Lorenzen stood, looking out to the damp street. Quincy and Nick Withers had left with the vehicles, leaving the street out front vacant but for a few concerned friends and neighbors who Martin had shooed away, sharing that I needed a little time to decompress.

  I knew there was more to the near privacy he was seeking than that.

  “Cap is gonna be pissed,” the sergeant said.

  “Yes, she is,” Martin said as he set a pile of kindling to blaze in the fireplace, small logs catching. “Sergeant, can you give me and Fletch a minute?”

  Lorenzen looked away from the window, his gaze shifting between us. It might not have puzzled him that two men, two friends, might want a moment of privacy to discuss something, particularly after one’s enforced absence. But it did. And he hesitated, puzzled and wary, it seemed.

  “Just a minute,” Martin prodded and promised all at once.

  Lorenzen moved from the window and stepped out onto the front porch, saying nothing as he pulled the door behind to ensure our privacy. When he was gone, Martin came to where I sat and stood close.

  “How’d they know you were at the cottage?”

  His question was clear, even if the answer was not.

  “How did anyone who wanted to grab you know you’d be there?”

  “Wait,” I said, seizing on one implication in his questioning. “You think I was targeted?”

  “From what Elaine remembered after they knocked her out, the bunch that took you was professional. And uniformed. Black from head to toe, tactical gear. And they had what they needed to subdue the both of you. But they left her behind.”

  “Me...”

  I spoke the word not with any disbelief based on the facts at hand, but simply because I couldn’t fathom what purpose snatching and then releasing me, or anyone, would serve.

  “They took you, kept you, and dropped you twenty something miles from Bandon,” Martin said, recounting the bare particulars. “And from that I return to what worries me—how did they know you, the person they wanted, was going to be where you were?”

  Martin glanced to the door, and the window, Lorenzen’s shadow hovering beyond, out of earshot.

  “That team had to know where you’d be, and when you’d be there,” Martin told me.

  “You think...”

  I didn’t have to finish what I was about to suggest. Martin nodded, fully aware where my mind was going with this. Maybe it was influenced by what we’d faced on our journey to Alaska to find Martin and the others. Infiltrators. Moles. Spies. People who were not who they said they were. Who feigned friendship and loyalty to aid an enemy.

  “You think we have someone who’s passing information outside the town?”

  “I don’t know how they would do that, but it makes sense,” Martin said.

  Now I glanced to Lorenzen’s dark silhouette on the porch outside.

  “You haven’t told Angela your suspicion,” I said.

  “She may have the same thoughts,” Martin said. “But I don’t want to add to them if she has.”

  Now I wasn’t certain where he was going with this. Where his thoughts, his worries, were leading.

  “You don’t think she needs to know?”

  Martin shook his head.

  “We have an adversary out there,” he said, pointing east, though threats could come from any direction, we both knew. “If we start looking inward, we lose focus on what may be a real danger.”

  The man was no longer the leader of Bandon, but he had been. His concern for the town he’d guided through the blight, and so many things that spun from that, still resonated, whether he wanted it to or not.

  “Angela is a soldier,” Martin said, with cold admiration apparent in his voice. “She, all of her people, they’ll aim themselves at anything, at anyone, who might harm us.”

  “You’re afraid of a witch hunt,” I said.

  Martin shook his head.

  “I’m afraid of a disaster.”

  I thought on what Martin had suggested, and on his reasoning for keeping his suspicions quiet. All that he was thinking was sound. I could see myself making the same assumptions, and coming to similar conclusions.

  But, still, I was uneasy.

  “One of us?”

  My words were born of pure disbelief, not doubt.

  “I think there’s a more telling question,” Martin said.

  He was right. Both of us knew precisely what that was.

  “Why me?” I asked, giving that curiosity voice.

  Before either of us could muse on any possible an
swer, the roar of an engine sounded and tires squealed on wet pavement. A flash of headlights swept across the front windows then went dark. Vehicle doors opened and closed. Footsteps raced urgently up the walkway and onto the porch.

  Then the front door swung fast inward and she was there.

  “Eric,” Elaine said, my name half breath as she spoke it.

  I rose from the chair and let the blanket slip from my shoulders. She came toward me, and I toward her. No frantic rush to drive us together. Just a gentle union, arms wrapping each other. Embracing. Tears welled in my eyes as she sobbed softly against my shoulder.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “I was terrified you wouldn’t...”

  “I’m back,” I said, trying to ease, if not erase, the worry that had pained her. “I came back.”

  She eased back and looked up at me. I leaned in and kissed her softly. Briefly.

  “They wouldn’t let me come look for you.”

  “I’m sure you were fine with that,” I said, eliciting a quick, thin smile beneath glistening eyes.

  “Good to have you back.”

  I looked up and past Elaine to who had offered the greeting. Schiavo stood in the doorway, Private Quincy just behind her on the porch, the Humvee that had carried them all nosed toward the curb in front of the house.

  “Captain,” I said.

  She glanced toward her husband, then behind to her sergeant still waiting on the porch.

  “Thank you for looking for me,” I said.

  Schiavo nodded, a sternness about her. She’d always been a capable leader, from the first moment Elaine, Neil, and I had encountered her on Mary Island. The traits that allowed that had only blossomed since her promotion from lieutenant to captain, and since her arrival in Bandon to lead its garrison.

  But amongst those very laudable characteristics, a sternness had subtly emerged. It exhibited itself not with directives or diatribes, but as I was seeing it now—silence. A quiet that might have been simply a momentary burst of contemplation, but, I sensed, was not. The seriousness with which she took her position, her responsibility, was hardening her. Perhaps that was why Martin was reluctant to share his concerns with the woman he’d married.